Section 01 - How I Learned About Demons and Deliverance

I would like to share with you how I learned about demons and deliverance.

This is a subject that a lot of people like to avoid and some people go overboard on it. So I want to try and bring a balance. And instead of giving you some heavy teaching, I am going to start by sharing with you how I learned about these things.

I consider myself somewhat of an expert on this. A lot of the reason for this is that I experienced so many things in this realm.

So I want to share with you all of my experiences in the spiritual realm. I want to do this particularly as it relates to the powers of darkness and evil, so that you can understand how this works.

No Awareness of the Spiritual Realm

I grew up in a Christian home. I was just an ordinary believer who didn't have much warfare. The main reason for this is that I wasn't filled with the Spirit. I was not aware of the spiritual realm.

I knew Jesus as my Savior. I knew that I was saved and I was going to heaven. I shared with people about the Lord, but I wasn't really aware of the spiritual dimension.

I had not entered into the place where I experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I had not come to know the Holy Spirit and God's dimension. And at the same time I wasn't really aware of Satan's dimension.

Yes we knew there was a devil. We all had an idea of what he might look like and everybody was speaking about what the devil does. But I can't say I really had any personal experience with demons or anything like that.

I mean demons were things that happened in overseas countries in foreign lands. I had seen movies or read about some of the big evangelists that cast out demons and things like that.

It didn't happen where you lived though did it? I mean it didn't happen in my life. I never even saw anything like that in our church.

A New Spiritual Dimension

Then God brought me to the place where I finally received the full baptism of the Holy Spirit. I was probably about the age of 20.

I remember the very first experience that I had with God that was supernatural. It was when I came into the presence of God in a little place where a lot of people were praying.

Most of them were young people that were all filled with the Spirit. They were speaking in tongues, and there was a big noise and a real anointing of God in that place.

As I walked into that little room I began to feel something I had never felt before. I began to feel a sense of my own sin and of how unworthy I was.

Even though I had grown up as a Christian and served the Lord all my life, I had never been a bad sinner and never done anything really bad. But suddenly I became aware of something.

I began to shake inside as the Spirit of God began to move upon me. I started to feel really rotten and bad about myself and my self-righteousness. I began to weep and cry out to the Lord and come under conviction of sin.

God turned me inside out that night and I touched a realm that I had never experienced before.

I was at a youth camp during that time and they were having daily meetings. And I remember that at the very next evening meeting they invited people to come forward who wanted to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

A Touch of the Supernatural

Well I had begun to experience God that night. But I can't say I had received the baptism because I don't remember speaking in tongues. So they came and laid hands on me and I felt a power come upon me.

I remember that as I stood there with my hands raised and they prayed with me, I suddenly began to feel something in my hands. It was like I had taken hold of the mains of the electricity. It was like there was electricity in my hands.

I had experienced that before because I nearly died once from being electrocuted. I knew what that power felt like and I thought,

"What is going on? Where is this electricity coming from?"

It was so strong it was just pulling the muscles in my hands and making them close and I thought,

"Wow, I have never felt anything like this before. There is no electricity here. Where is this coming from? This is something supernatural and powerful."

I began to touch God and experience the spiritual realm in a way that I have never experienced it before.

A New Power and Boldness

Well I still don't think I spoke in tongues, although I may have muttered and mumbled a few things. But that didn't matter because I experienced God. I experienced the power of His Holy Spirit and something happened inside of me that transformed me.

A new boldness came on me. Before that time I was a coward who was afraid to even pray in front of other people. But now I got all the young people together and I started preaching at them. I started sharing with them and doing amazing things.

I was so turned on with God. I was floating on Cloud 9. I thought,

"Wow this is such good stuff."

It was as though I had found a new drug. It was beautiful.

Not All Feeling High

Then suddenly I started to get a bit of opposition from all the old staid Christians. They were the ones who had been sitting all their lives without knowing much of the power of God. The whole impression from these older, more senior believers was,

"Calm down boy; don't get carried away. There is stability in the Christian life. You can't live on dessert all the time. You have to come down to earth sometimes. Just come down and be a normal Christian."

Well I had been a normal Christian all my life. I was tired of being a normal Christian and wanted to get turned onto God. I also wanted everyone else to get turned onto God as well.

With all the opposition I got I began to feel a bit discouraged. And I found that when that power wasn't on me, it was sometimes like a cloud of darkness that would come over me. I would start to feel a bit depressed and discouraged.

I thought, "What is going on? Why do I feel so negative all the time?"

Well my solution was to get the young people together and have a prayer meeting. I would get in and feel the power and the anointing again. Then I felt the cloud lift and it was great. I was in the presence of the Lord all over again.

And so I found that I needed to be recharged all the time. I needed to overcome these negative feelings and opposition from people and discouragement.

Suddenly there was a dimension there that I had never experienced in my life before. Suddenly I would start to feel down for no reason. I would get discouraged and feel depressed for no reason.

I thought, "Where is it coming from? I have something new and exciting. Why am I feeling so negative?"

Ministering in the Power

Well as I said I began to get people together and I created my own little group. At times as we got together and the power of God came down, I began to once again feel this power in my hands.

While we were sitting praying together in a circle I felt the power in my hands and I thought,

"Man, what is this power? This is the power of God. I am sure if I just touched somebody they would feel something. Maybe it is for healing."

So I began to ask the little group of people,

"Is anybody sick here? Let me pray for you."

I prayed for them but nobody got healed, so it couldn't have been for healing.

Then I thought that maybe somebody was not filled with the Spirit, so I said to them,

"Who wants to be filled with the Spirit?"

I laid hands on them but they also didn't get filled with the Spirit.

I thought, "Man this power is so strong. Surely somebody must feel something."

But they didn't seem to feel it. I was still zealous for the Lord though, and we used to have prayer meetings before the main church service. Then we would come into the church service all charged up, and sit and get bored through the whole message.

We would wait for the pastor to get finished with his boring message. Then I would gather the young people together. We would go to somebody's home and we would pray again after the meeting.

A Frightening Experience

It was so exciting. But one night as we had this pre-church prayer meeting there were a lot of young people there.

Even the pastor's children were there, as well as some people who were supposed to be of repute but weren't turned on like me. They were supposed to be there though because they were the pastor's kids.

There was also a new guy there who had come into the church and was saved the one night. He was strange and he began to give weird testimonies of how God had saved him.

Then one night we heard him speak in tongues, and the next moment we heard him prophesy. Wow he was only saved the other day and he was ahead of me already.

I thought, "I can't even do those things yet. This man must be really close to God. He's awesome."

Well we were having the prayer meeting before the church service, and this guy stood up and said,

"I have had a problem that has bothered me for most of my life and I would like you guys to pray for me for it."

Well I thought maybe he was sick. It must be something physical. So in my zeal I got the others to gather round.

I laid my hands on him, and somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered seeing a video once of an overseas preacher. He was one of the big evangelists who was praying for someone who had a sickness and he said,

"I bind this demon of sickness and disease now in Jesus' name."

So out of my mouth came the words,

"I bind this demon now in Jesus' name!"

I thought I was praying for the guy for a sickness. But as I did that suddenly he began to change. His face began to change and he started to go down towards the ground. Then a weird sounding voice came out of him and said,

"No, leave me alone! Leave me alone!"

I went cold all over and thought,

"This is a demon! This doesn't happen in our country. It happens in America with the big evangelists and in the big crusades. It doesn't happen here."

But there it was; a demon was talking to me and telling me,

"Leave me alone."

Well I got in there and commanded,

"You are coming out in Jesus' name. I bind you and take authority over you!"

We prayed and he made some funny gurgling noises. Then it stopped and he stood up.

Nobody knew what had happened. The guy went to the pastor's son afterwards and said,

"What happened to me?"

He replied, "You just got filled with the Spirit tonight."

Well I knew what had happened. There was a demon there and I thought to myself,

"Wow was that real? Did I really get involved in confrontation with a real demon?"

Not as it Seemed

Man this guy took off spiritually after that. He was just amazing. In fact we got to know him so well, and it turned out he was a single guy living by himself. We spoke to my folks and we decided to invite him to come and live with us in our home.

He was such a nice guy. We could fellowship and pray together and have awesome times. He was so spiritual he was giving me revelations from the Lord and telling me what God wanted to do in my life.

Then the one day I began to just speak about my own spiritual life and I said,

"You know the Lord is really there. And even when I feel I have really failed Him, sometimes I just wonder whether He still cares for me."

He looked at me and he said,

"Yes I do it as well."

I knew what he was referring to. You see as a young person I had grown up ignorant about sexuality. I began to experiment with my own body and ended up in bondage to the habit of masturbation.

Now that I had become turned onto the Lord I knew this was wrong. But somehow it was still there, and every now and then it would overwhelm me. And you know somehow since he had been in the house it had become worse.

Well he knew exactly what I was talking about. Something started to look a little strange and we discovered that this guy just wasn't all that he said he was.

It turned out he was an ex-spiritualist medium. He used to go into trances and do the whole demon thing. And now he was actually doing the same thing and calling it the Holy Ghost.

He was a very strange fellow, and eventually we realized he was actually out of order. We asked him to leave the home and there was a big conflict about it.

I was a bit shaken up by the whole thing. But I didn't realize that God was already beginning to expose me to what happens and how Satan works in peoples' lives.

The problem was that I had opened my heart to him. I received from him. And when I did that I began to open the door to a demonic influence in my life and I wasn't even aware of it. I was just aware that there was a struggle going on in my spiritual life.