Seeing the Supernatural

by Jennifer Eivaz

  In addition to a religious spirit, Belial, Leviathan, Mammon and Jezebel will continue their sinister attacks until they are discerned and overcome by the Body of Christ. With that said, let’s discuss in more depth in the next chapter what to do with the things we spiritually discern.

  Kingdom Principles

  Satan works to blind our minds from the truth (see 2 Corinthians 4:4). Spiritual blindness can only be overcome spiritually.

  People will not turn to Jesus at the hearing of the Gospel until the prayers of the Church bind those blinding demonic spiritual powers.

  When the Bible says that Satan has blinded people’s minds from the truth, understand that Satan has a rank-and-file army of dark angels that facilitate his evil wishes (see Ephesians 6:12).

  In order to discern and overcome our spiritual enemies, we have to first study them.

  The most common powers and principalities that afflict and deceive cities, regions and nations, as well as persecute the Church, are Belial, Leviathan, Mammon and Jezebel.

  Thoughts for Reflection

  Does it frustrate you when people cannot see the truth and continue to ruin their lives and the lives of others through their sin? Have you ever considered it to be spiritual blindness instead of willful blindness?

  Some believe that putting any focus or study on demons is being spiritually negative. What are your thoughts?

  Do you recognize the characteristics of Belial, Leviathan, Mammon or Jezebel in your family?

  Do you recognize the characteristics of Belial, Leviathan, Mammon or Jezebel in your city?

  Have you ever failed to discern your spiritual enemy and suffered the consequences?

  8

  What to Do with the Things You Discern

  I was on a relaxing vacation with my family when I began to discern a spiritual problem in connection with our upcoming Sunday service. My husband was ministering out of town, which meant that I would be speaking at our home church during the morning services in his absence. I felt anxious and uptight. It began as a gnawing feeling in my gut, which just grew stronger and stronger. I also kept seeing a young man in my mind’s eye. This young man was new to our church and was already showing signs of trouble. He claimed to hear God and be prophetic, but he was really overly spiritual and boundaryless. I don’t believe he was being led by the Holy Spirit nearly as much as he claimed. And our security team and I had already rebuked him a few times for getting out of hand. The thought that came to me over and over was, He’s going to do something. Only I did not know what he was going to do.

  That Sunday morning, I could not relax at all. I did pray about the situation, but I could not get a grip on it in my emotions. I had become consumed with the thought that this young man was coming to the service to do something disruptive. As I walked from the parking lot into the back room behind the sanctuary, I instructed our security team to be on alert and told them why. As the worship service began, I looked around, and the young man was not even there. Had I made a mistake? Was I falsely discerning something? About twenty minutes later, the young man finally appeared and made his way to the very front of the church with arms wide open, dancing wildly in exuberant worship.

  This is where I began to encounter overwhelming discernment. Again, overwhelming discernment is when the feelings associated with this gift negatively control you, instead of prompting you to lead out in a mature response to whatever you have discerned. I turned to my left and spoke to our associate pastor: “I need you to take that man out of here right now!”

  Keep in mind that I had nothing tangible to justify my reaction; I only had a strong, overwhelming feeling. And then things got very strange. As I spoke this to our associate pastor, again overreacting and not leading in this properly, I lit up with several hundred tiny, moving lights. These little lights moved all around me, up and down and around my person. They reminded me of the lights you would use on a Christmas tree. Our associate pastor pointed his finger at me and said, “Angels! You’ve got angels!”

  At the same time, another young man standing in my row dramatically lifted his arms and threw his head back in worship to God, as if he had made a sudden and deep spiritual connection. He did not cause a disruption, but I believe he did this spontaneously, in response to the presence of angels.

  Right when I lit up with all those lights, the young man in question, whom I had been feeling anxious about, leapt onto our platform, dancing wildly right next to our worship leader. She bravely kept leading worship while he gyrated and intermittently stared in arrogance at the congregation. My associate pastor and our security team responded instantly, escorting him off the platform and into the lobby to sort out the situation. When that happened, I stopped glowing and was able to preach and minister as if nothing had happened. The peace of God really took over.

  To distinguish effectively between spirits, we have to remember that this gift is a sensory process before it is an intellectual one. “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14 NASB). The Holy Spirit causes us to discern good and evil through our physical senses—our eyes, ears, smell, taste and touch, as well as through our emotions. Mature believers, through community and accountability, have learned through practice how to sort out accurately what they are sensing so they can respond to the information appropriately.

  In hindsight, what I was discerning about the young man was accurate. My response, however, could have been better. I could tell by the activity of the angels around me that I was dealing with something very satanic that was happening with him. Still, I should not have insisted that this young man be escorted from the service without any evidence, even though he did, in my best observation, manifest demonically on the platform of our church. As disruptive as that was, there was no gun, no violence or anything else to prove that I should have had him removed from the service prematurely. This incident, at least, gave us one more window of opportunity to minister some prayers for deliverance to him, as well as to warn him sternly. What I was experiencing was overwhelming discernment, which can lead to an overreactive response. Overwhelming discernment is not wrong in itself to have, but it is our response to accurately discerned information that makes it either right or wrong. We need to learn from these situations so we can manage our responses better.

  What Do I Do?

  What do I do with negative information about people? This is one of the top questions I receive from those wanting to know about the gift of discerning of spirits. How do you handle negative information that you discern? The gift of discerning of spirits is a truth-telling gift and a gatekeeping gift. You will supernaturally discern both good and evil. We usually know what to do with the good, but what do we do when we discern evil in people?

  The Bible gives us a remedy: “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment” (Philippians 1:9 NKJV). This verse instructs us that love needs to be balanced with discernment, and discernment needs to be balanced with love. This is where we experience true tension. When you have discerned that a deceptive or possessed person has come into your life or your church, what, then, does love look like?

  1. Pray redemptively

  When you discern by the Holy Spirit something negative about another person, remember that God just told you a secret. Secrets remain in the secret place—meaning between just you and God in prayer—unless God gives you permission otherwise. Remember that God loves that person, even if he or she is demonized, struggling or wicked. There will be times you are called on to deal with the situation more openly, but prayer is usually all that is required of you.

  When we pray, then, we are to pray redemptively. Discerning the negative about someone can be disappointing, shocking and sometimes terrifying. To be redemptive means to save someone from error or evil. This means we don’t condemn a person in prayer, but instead, we advocate for the person’s salvation and deliverance. This can be difficult to d
o, especially when we have discerned terrible evil in someone. Instead of condemnation, we begin to call out the person’s name before the Lord for salvation and/or deliverance. We bind Satan from blinding the person’s eyes to the truth, and then, if he or she needs salvation, we ask God to release laborers into this person’s path who will present the Gospel of Jesus Christ (see Matthew 9:38). We then continue to pray until the burden of prayer lifts.

  Years ago, I was invited to teach and equip on prayer at another church. Something did not feel quite right, yet I knew the Holy Spirit was telling me to go. A week before the prayer conference, I received a call from the senior pastor there. He shared with me that his wife had been caught in a very scandalous kind of affair. At her husband’s urging and to my surprise, she received my invitation for lunch to discuss the matter while I was there. When we met, she was honest and seemed repentant, but still, I discerned two hidden spiritual strongholds. They were rage and a spirit of religion. I discerned these strongholds in my emotions as distinct, lingering feelings that I knew were not mine, but hers. I had also left the door open for her to call and talk if needed, knowing by the Holy Spirit that their marriage would not make it.

  I admit that I was very concerned for her soul at this point, but I just kept the matter private and in prayer. I also attempted to follow up by phone with her a few times after I returned home. When the divorce happened, I received a strange message from her husband, who insisted that I cut off communication with her. She had continued the adultery, and he was “turning her over to Satan” (see 1 Corinthians 5:5). That means he planned to exercise his spiritual authority as an apostle and remove her spiritual protection from her so she would be subjected to physical destruction. (By the way, that is a very extreme move and one of last resort. I don’t know of anyone who has done it besides this man, or at least done it successfully, and I have only read of it being done just once, by the apostle Paul.) When I did not comply, he cut off communication with me, too.

  I am not justifying or excusing her sin for one moment, but I did connect the dots as to the root of her rage. She was reacting to a spirit of religion that had been controlling her through her husband. Religion always tries to kill you when it cannot control you. Still, both husband and wife needed me to pray for them, and to pray redemptively, without reacting to their negative behavior and spiritual conditions.

  During a ministry event, Jorge (not his real name) was praying in a side room for one of the conference speakers while the speaker ministered to the conference attendees. As he prayed, mostly in his prayer language, he encountered a sudden jolt within himself. Through this jolt he discerned that the speaker was ill, and not just with a flu or cold, but with something more serious. Jorge was then compelled to call out the speaker’s name before the Lord, weeping and crying, declaring the Bible promises about healing for him. He also rebuked the spirit of infirmity several times and commanded it to leave the speaker’s body (see Luke 13:10–13 NKJV).

  After the conference was over, the speaker shared privately with Jorge about his physical condition. “God already knew he was struggling,” Jorge said. “He allowed me to discern it through that strange jolting feeling so I could sustain him in prayer.”

  Jill, an accountant, encountered a problem at work when a man with an evil spirit walked into her office complex. “First, I felt the hairs on my arm go up,” she said. “I knew by this physical sensation that he had an evil spirit.”

  Jill then described his behavior as gruff, mean and terse, and she knew that whatever business he came in for was not going to go well. Jill began to pray under her breath for the situation, asking for God’s intervention.

  “The man noticeably softened,” she said. “I discerned the problem and then prayer fixed it. I thank God for that!”

  2. Know when to address what you discern

  When you discern something negative in another person, love not only considers the individual with the spiritual problem and/or evil agenda, but also the impact of that individual on others. In these situations, you might need to do more than just pray. You might need to act on the information you have spiritually discerned. How you address such matters will depend on your level of authority in the situation, as well as the context of the situation and the relationship you have with the individual.

  Many times, wives or husbands have identified by the Holy Spirit a person with an adulterous spirit who is getting too close to their spouse. Then they appropriately and privately raise the red flag to one another. Dads and moms, too, have discerned predatory friendships and romantic relationships getting too close to their underage children. Good parents pay attention to their spiritual discernment and will put up the proper boundaries when needed.

  Leaders of organizations or churches will often exercise their spiritual discernment in ways that take into account the strength and maturity of those they lead. It is true that mature organizations and churches can much better navigate dealing with people who have come in with evil, demonic agendas. The mature will show more love, patience and spiritual authority when dealing with such people than the newer and less mature can show. Mature leaders also will wait for evidence to substantiate what they spiritually discern when it happens to be negative. They don’t overreact, label or mistreat people because of their discernment, although they will proceed with caution. Like King Solomon, they know how to surface those hidden agendas and motives in people wisely and lovingly (see 1 Kings 3:16–28). They can lead or pastor an individual through a situation without compromising the entire organization in the process.

  If you are not the leader of an organization or a church, but you have spiritually discerned something negative, don’t be quick to point it out until you have truly spent time praying redemptively about it. If the matter you are discerning does not leave you or lift off you, it might be appropriate to mention it to whoever is leading, but that all depends on the mindset of that leader and the urgency of the matter you are discerning. Keep in mind that unless leaders really know and trust you spiritually, they most likely will not receive what you have “discerned” because (1) they don’t agree; (2) it is the first time they have heard it and they need confirmation and tangible evidence; or (3) they already know it, but it is delicate and they cannot let on that they agree with you. For that reason, more often than not, you will just need to keep the matter in prayer and not speak into it. If you do say something, check your motives first. If you are insecure or spiritually prideful, you might be expecting personal validation from the leader for what you have discerned. Instead, you need to leave it in God’s hands and not make the situation personal.

  Taylor Bergthold can see and discern a spirit of fear in the people she interacts with on a friendship level, as well as in her role as a pastor’s assistant at our church. A spirit of fear, by the way, is a demon and is mentioned in 2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV): “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” Taylor explained how she could see this spirit at times behind people’s words. “It can look like insecurity and half-truths, but it’s really a spirit of fear,” she said.

  When this happens, Taylor prays bold prayers for such people in the privacy of her own home. She prays for their emotional healing and also casts the spirit of fear off them.

  “Sometimes the Holy Spirit will then nudge me to go talk about it in a conversational, nonthreatening way,” she added. Taylor has seen noticeable change in people when she has done this.

  One of our worship leaders, Joshua Vera, was leading worship at a prayer gathering when he spiritually discerned a heavy demonic presence on a young man in the room. The young man was new to their prayer gathering, having been invited by one of their regularly attending intercessors. Joshua was troubled by what he was discerning, mostly because he could not distinguish what it was.

  The leaders of the prayer gathering, including Joshua, also brought the issue to one another’s attention. They, too, discerned the deep spiritual issue with th
is person, actually distinguishing it as a homosexual spirit. They decided then to watch and wait for an opportunity to minister to him. Through the gift of discerning of spirits, Joshua and the leadership team were armed and ready to bring counsel and deliverance to the young man, if it came to that.

  “We finally did get to pray for him and minister to him,” Joshua said. “We only scratched the surface, though, and could not get to the real issue.”

  I, too, have spiritually discerned negative things about people. One instance in particular involved the theft of some equipment at our church. We had some technical equipment stolen, and the items taken were from places around the building that just happened to be “off camera.” In other words, the person who stole the items knew the location of our cameras and was careful not to be seen on video. This caused us to suspect the theft was an inside job. One Saturday afternoon, I came to the church and then walked into the lobby of the sanctuary. While driving just moments prior, I had had a vision that was strong and very clear. In the vision, I saw the face of one of our employees, and this employee said to me in anger, “I’m going to get back at all of you!”

  When I walked into the lobby of the church, that same employee just happened to be exiting the sanctuary, even though this person was not on the schedule to work. Here I had spiritually discerned by the Holy Spirit the secret motive of the person’s heart. Now, armed with that information, I secretly texted our facility director and requested that someone check all of our equipment, doors, alarms and the like. Sure enough, there was a side door from the sanctuary to the outside that had been left ajar. And later, as you may have guessed, the employee was released from his or her position.