As an exorcist I spend much of my time helping people get rid of their demons. Many individuals want to walk close to the Lord and have a successful Christian life. But they are hindered because of indwelling evil spirits. No matter how much they try or how often they go to church and read their Bible, they don’t spiritually progress as they wish. They seem to be constantly held back from achieving their freedom due to demonic impediments. Once their demons are gone, they are then able to make healthy decisions and walk in spiritual consistency. For this kind of person, they must FIRST get their demons cast out before they can know the fullness of Christ. But I want to speak to you about another set of circumstances that is the reverse of what I just described.
Instead of needing demons cast out to release their full spiritual potential, certain suffering souls need to make fundamental changes in their lives BEFORE their demons can be made to leave. I bring up this possibility because of a virtual ministry encounter that I recently did with a woman who lives half a world away. There was no question that she was under severe spiritual attack. Her demons readily manifested with facial contortions, violent shaking, and screams of, “I hate you, Bob Larson!”
As I proceeded further with ministry, I realized that this woman’s demons were not going anywhere. Why not? Her personal life was in disarray, giving the demons a stronghold to stay. As I’ve previously pointed out in our International School of Exorcism, the first department of Bob Larson University, there is a difference between a demon’s legal right to remain and its stronghold to abide in someone’s soul. The legal right is a spiritual technicality, like an unbroken curse. The stronghold is an emotional bondage in the soul, such as bitterness, unforgiveness, or rejection. In this case the stronghold was the woman’s moral lifestyle.
She loved God. She was saved. She knew she had demons and wanted to be free. But she had tragically fallen into moral sin that kept her bound by soul-tie circumstances. She had gotten illegitimately pregnant and remained in a relationship with the father of her child. They lived apart but met several times a week to have sex. She didn’t want to marry him, and he hadn’t asked her. She wasn’t sure she loved him, but she felt obligated to stay in this arrangement for the sake of the child. I told her this was wrong, dead wrong. She needed to set some boundaries until she worked out God’s will for her life. She took my advice. Because of her decision to stop living in sin and bring spiritual order to her life, the strongholds of the demons were pulled down, and they were cast out.
What’s your situation? Do you have demons that you need to have exorcised so you can move forward for the Lord? Or do you have things in your life that need to FIRST be addressed so you can be delivered and THEN move forward. Whatever your situation, beware. Bringing spiritual order to your life may be more important than immediately trying to cast out your demons. They likely won’t leave anyway because of your moral equivocation. Get your life right with God and then the demons won’t have anything to hang on to. Don’t be like the person in the proverbial expression Jesus used in Luke 9:62 — putting your hand to the plow and looking back on the attachments of your former sins.
