As mentioned in Chapter Seven, you will have more success discerning atmospheres if you do not agree or come under their influence. The healthier you are, the more effective you will be. Make sure to pray through any issues you face before starting your own journey working toward discerning atmospheres. Jesus describes this need for inner healing in Matthew:
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when there is the log in your own eye? (Matthew 7:3-4)
Once healed, you will find it is much easier to pick up/discern broadcasts and atmospheres.
Discernment is perhaps the single most important tool relative to shifting atmospheres. The Bible makes it clear discernment is a spiritual gift we should be pursuing (see 1 Cor. 12:10). It is part of wisdom personified:
I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion (Proverbs 8:12).
The church has, to a degree, stepped away from the influence of discernment because unhealthy believers have concealed jealousy, suspicion, and control in the guise of true discernment. I also find that many believers tend to have a misunderstanding of what “loving others” actually means.
In much of the church, there is a misconception that love does not confront, and therefore we tolerate all forms of sin. While this topic is much too large to debate in these pages, it is important to note that Jesus never minced His words and He was love personified. He even confronted Peter, one of His closest friends, for allowing Satan to speak through him.
When we devalue truth, discernment is diminished in our lives.
IN MUCH OF THE CHURCH, THERE IS A MISCONCEPTION THAT LOVE DOES NOT CONFRONT, AND THEREFORE WE TOLERATE ALL FORMS OF SIN.
Stephen De Silva, head of Prosperous Soul Ministries, explains a way to train yourself to discern atmospheres. In his manual Prosperous Soul Foundations, Stephen writes:
Because we are in Christ, we have authority to displace powers of darkness and shift them [to] heavenly atmospheres. As we tune in and listen to the heart of God, it becomes easier to discern evil frequencies trying to fill our atmosphere. We can then be empowered to keep our focus on God’s promises instead.1
Knowing what God says about you, your situation, and your city will help you recognize broadcasts that do not line up with His voice or His nature.
The most common way people pick up atmospheres is through their senses. Through sight, smell, taste, and even touch, people “feel” what goes on around them. Although many Christians would not at first say they feel spiritual dynamics around them, once they learn this concept of atmospheres, puzzle pieces begin falling into place. They start paying attention to the subtle shifts in their moods throughout the day. For many “feelers,” the teaching of shifting atmospheres provides much-needed relief. Having been told their whole lives that they were either crazy or hormonal, these highly-discerning individuals now have language to describe their unique way of discerning.
I woke up one morning on a ministry trip in a really bad mood. I prayed and asked God for a better attitude. As I got ready, I found myself getting more and more frustrated. By the time I got down to breakfast, I was in a really irritable mood. I did not want to hurt my team’s feelings, so I said, “Hey guys. I just want to warn you that I am feeling really hormonal so if I snap at you today, do not take it personally. It is not you.”
As I looked around for my team’s reactions, I did not see concern. What I felt, instead was annoyance. I asked them, “Is anyone else feeling irritable?”
“No!” came the loud response. Ha ha, I thought. I realized they, too were frustrated and probably picking up the atmospheres hovering over the region. I had our team ask God to forgive us for partnering with grumpiness and commanded it to leave. Instantly, our attitudes shifted.
One of my friends went shopping with her young son at a store that had just changed its bathroom policies. The new policy, catering to gender identity issues, allowed customers to choose the bathroom they wanted to use.
While shopping, her son stood up in the shopping cart and shouted, “I am a boy! Not a girl!” His mom looked around to see who her son was talking to only to realize there was no one else around. Her son was not addressing flesh and blood. He was addressing and declaring to the spiritual realm that was harassing him about his truth in his identity.
WHEN WE PARTNER WITH UNGODLY MINDSETS (AND SOMETIMES WE ARE NOT EVEN AWARE WHILE DOING IT), THEY ARE AT ODDS WITH THE MIND OF CHRIST IN US.
One year, my team and I ministered in Australia. We had just finished a weekend seminar, and we and the local church team had enjoyed ourselves. We were leaving early the next morning, so we were transferred to a hotel in a city much nearer to the airport. This hotel was significantly older and quainter than the accommodations we had left behind; this also meant the hallways and guest rooms were smaller.
After our hosts dropped us off and checked in, we hauled our luggage up to our rooms. Only one of us at a time could fit in the elevator with our bags. Upon entering the lift, my heaviest suitcase rolled across my toes. While pulling it down the hallway, my bags bounced along the walls like some scattered game of ping pong. As I wedged myself into my hotel room, my coat pocket got stuck on the door handle and ripped a hole in my jacket. Needless to say, I had to bite my tongue to keep from spewing frustration all over the place.
After we were all situated, we grabbed dinner in a small restaurant across the street. We were seated right away but no one came to wait on us. After twenty minutes, the same irritation I had felt at the hotel began harassing me. Thoughts like I can’t believe they are ignoring us and wow, there goes their tip filled my brain. As a Christian leader, I know not to give these thoughts a place in my mind. But in this moment, I struggled to take them captive.
I have always found it best to bring such thoughts out into the open, I took a deep breath and asked my team, “Is anyone else struggling with frustration?”
The team confirmed that they too were having some less than glamorous thoughts. As we tried to pin down the exact spirit we were listening to (so we could renounce it), Teresa Liebscher said, “We are in the business district.”
“Ah-ha!” I said. “I’ve got it.”
It turned out my team and I had been dealing with a spirit of entitlement. (Please note, I am not saying all business people carry a spirit of entitlement. This just happened to be the atmosphere settling in the region.) Not realizing this earlier, my team and I had begun partnering with its prevailing spirit and acting out accordingly. The broadcasts of entitlement released an I deserve message.
When we partner with ungodly mindsets (and sometimes we are not even aware while doing it), they are at odds with the mind of Christ in us. Instead of capturing these thoughts, we let them run their course. This frequently happens when we embrace the atmosphere’s messages as our own.
Once my team and I realized we had been partnering with a spirit of entitlement, we asked God to forgive us. We repented for partnering with this I deserve attitude and repeated one of my favorite phrases, “We see you, spirit of entitlement. We are no longer going to partner with you, and we send you back in Jesus’s name.”
Instantly, we felt the spirit realm shift around us. Soon after, a waitress strolled over to take our orders and the rest of our dining experience was great.
In this example, it took us a while to recognize that we were actually entertaining thoughts of an outside influence. This is not all that uncommon, even for those trained in the gift of discernment. Oftentimes, we are too busy or are so enjoying ourselves in “vacation mode” that we fail to accurately discern the surrounding atmospheres. This is why it is so important to surround ourselves with trusted accountability. If one person fails to discern the enemy’s broadcasts, another will help:
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to hi
m who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)
Pay attention to the attitudes you experience throughout your day and partner with others in stewarding this increasing gift of discernment. Having another set of “spiritual eyes” will help you in moments when you fail to quickly detect the enemy’s presence on your own.
It can be a challenge to find a mature prayer partner. I encourage people to find someone who is further along in their giftings. Partnering up with someone who has a stronger gift than you is an excellent way of expanding your own skills to the next level. I was blessed to find some great partners early on who helped me tremendously. Since then, we have built lifelong friendships and continue to discuss our findings of the spiritual realm.
Another way to discern the atmospheres and spirits around you is to pay attention to the voices/messages you hear internally. As discussed in Chapter Seven, these voices usually mask themselves as your own thoughts. They typically appear in the first person with phrases like I am, I can’t, or I’m not.
Sometimes, I hear an uncharacteristic phrase while praying for people. I pay attention to the wording because as unfamiliar phrases, they often signify the atmosphere the person is themselves emitting. Other times, it is the Holy Spirit teaching me how to confront a person’s mindset.
PARTNERING UP WITH SOMEONE WHO HAS A STRONGER GIFT THAN YOU IS AN EXCELLENT WAY OF EXPANDING YOUR OWN SKILLS TO THE NEXT LEVEL.
Many times when people arrive for sessions, they come with a preconceived notion of how things will go. The two most common atmospheres people bring to the room as they come for prayer are hopelessness and discouragement. I have trained our teams to listen to the Holy Spirit’s promptings and to discern the atmospheres the clients bring with them. After being trained in this, our teams can quickly dispel any atmospheres the client gives off and work to set them free from the corresponding mindsets.
One time, as a client entered my room he began to tell me that he was only coming to see me because his wife was being ministered to at the same time with another one of my team members in the next room. He did not feel like he needed to be ministered to because his wife (according to him) was the one who was truly messed up. As he continued to describe all the years of their marriage lost to her personal therapy, I heard the Holy Spirit say, Ask him if he would like to deal with his loneliness. When I asked him this, he stared at me in shock and asked, “How did you find that? I just told my wife that I felt lonely inside.”
Another time while praying for a young man struggling with sexual addiction, I heard my mind say, I can’t help this guy. He has no moral grid. I do not normally use this language, so it was easy to discern that the Holy Spirit was prompting me to confront this mindset. After leading the young man through a quick prayer of repentance, I asked God to exchange the man’s mindset of sexuality for God’s truth about intimacy. Shortly after, he was set free.
Sometimes the comments we hear in our minds while working with people are not promptings from the Holy Spirit but, instead, are spiritual broadcasts. I tell our Sozo team—if you fail to discern whether you are picking up your own or the client’s spiritual broadcasts, you will agree with their struggles and not have authority over them.
One day, a man came in for his session. I had just finished with another person who had experienced tremendous freedom so I was confident this next man would also be set free. After shaking my hand, he said, “I don’t see, I don’t hear, and I don’t feel. I have been prayed for by all the great ministers, and I am still broken.”
SOMETIMES THE COMMENTS WE HEAR IN OUR MINDS WHILE WORKING WITH PEOPLE ARE NOT PROMPTINGS FROM THE HOLY SPIRIT BUT, INSTEAD, ARE SPIRITUAL BROADCASTS.
I was starting to feel a bit out of my league, so I tried encouraging myself and thought, Well, at least he hasn’t had a Sozo yet. As soon as I had finished this thought, he blurted out, “And just in case you think Sozo is any better, I have already had three and none of them worked.”
I was either going to win or lose this session right there. I heard my mind say, Great. Thank You, Jesus. You sent me the one person on the planet even You can’t heal! Instead of agreeing with this thought, I heard myself say, “Great. Then I cannot let you down.”
He looked at me, confused, and said, “What do you mean?”
I answered, “We can only go up from here.”
He chuckled. In this small moment, he broke agreement with the atmosphere of hopelessness. Soon after, we were able to connect him to God for his freedom.
Many times, we hear thoughts or experience feelings while engaging in normal life. For instance, if I feel confident but walk into a drug store and begin to feel insecure, chances are someone in that store or the store itself is dealing with an atmosphere of insecurity. If I developed my sense of normal as a naturally confident person, thoughts of insecurity are going to seem extremely odd and out of place.
When this happens, I can quickly dispel these feelings as not my own and realize that the insecurity is coming at me and not from me. I can then renounce insecurity and ask God what He would like to install in its place.
Atmospheres in stores or buildings can be just as potent as those coming from individuals. A grocery store in my home-town is an example of this. For years, every time I returned from this specific store, I found myself with extra cans of chili and corn. When my husband asked why I bought so many, I simply answered, “They were on sale.”
It did not seem to matter that I never really needed them. I always came home with more. Curious about this impulse, I started paying attention to how I felt when entering the store. Sure enough, every time I walked by the rows of canned chili, I heard my brain scream, What a great buy! I know I don’t really need these but why not buy a few.
As I continued to listen throughout the years, I noticed the store’s underlying message of buy me—you really need to buy me.
Although this sounds absurd, you would be surprised how many people confirm my findings. They also hear the same voice calling to them while strolling down this specific aisle. Once, when I was in Norway and jokingly sharing this story, the translator, who had lived in Redding for years, stopped me mid-sentence and shouted, “I know what store that is! I’ve heard it too.”
Months later, while lecturing at a drug and alcohol rehab class, I found myself retelling this story. Just when my brain was saying, Wow. These guys are gonna want to ask you for the drugs you are on, one of the students shouted, “Is it this store?”
When I said yes, he said, “That makes so much sense. I shop at that store and wonder why I always buy so many cans of chili.”
Years later, I met a man who had actually worked at that store. He said the managers always told him to stock the shelves so that the “Cans would call out to the customers as they passed by.”
Some people actually see angels and demons intervening as well as sense or hear the atmosphere’s broadcasts. These people are called seers and possess a unique spiritual gift that allows them to see into both the physical and spiritual realm. It is far more common to see pictures internally in your mind rather than externally like an open vision. Both can be powerful. Dreaming is one of the most common ways this gift manifests.
Years ago, our flight had just landed in the U.K. That night, in my hotel room, I tossed and turned to wake myself up from a series of violent nightmares. In each one, I woke myself up right before being raped. This continued throughout the night. The next day, I went to my son’s, Tim’s, door and knocked. He answered it rather sleepily.
“Ha!” I said, “You’ve got jet lag!”
“It’s not that, Mom.” He said. “All night long I dreamt I was rescuing women from being raped.”
My eyes widened. During the night, we had picked up the atmosphere over that city of sexual violence; now we could strategize with the church leaders on how to reverse its hold.
The next day, we partnered with the street pastors and released atmospheres of honor and protection to di
splace perversion, addiction, and violation. Since our visit, the city has seen a drastic decline in sexual violence.
Sometimes, it is possible to smell the spiritual realm. While I have heard Christians saying Jesus is sweet and lovely, I have so far only been able to smell demonic activity. One time One time, while teaching at a seminar, I noticed a terrible rotten-egg smell. My first thought was, Wow, someone has really bad gas, so I moved to the other side of the stage. No matter where I moved, the scent followed. About an hour into my teaching, the scent finally faded. I took a deep breath of relief. After my session ended, I left the stage and sat with my intercessor friend, Renee.
“Did you smell anything while I was on stage?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “There were three snakes behind you on stage. But don’t worry, I took care of them.”
WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO DISCERN BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL, BECAUSE MANY TIMES THE ENEMY WILL TRY TO MIMIC WHAT GOD IS DOING.
Another time, I was on a trip to Tennessee. We explored the World’s Fair buildings that were replicas of famous structures. As we were walking into the Parthenon, I smelled the same scent that assaulted me every time I went to the hospitals to pray for the sick. Until then, I thought it was the combination of human waste, body fluids, and cleaning supplies. I thought, How is this possible that I am smelling it here? I heard the Lord respond, It is the spirit of death.
A good friend of mine visited her ailing mother at the hospital weeks later. Her mother had been ill on and off for several years, but this time the doctors told her to gather the family to say their goodbyes. As she walked into the room, she smelled the smell of death and remembered my earlier comment. She rebuked the spirit and told it to move aside so that all her family members could arrive and say their goodbyes. Her mother rallied back and was coherent for the next few days while all the family got to spend precious time with her before she passed.
Shifting Atmospheres Page 8
