Invisible Enemies

by Jim Croft

  Satan’s demons do much the same with us when they create strongholds in our memories. Many of our negative emotional reactions are the result of deceptive misinformation planted in our personalities during our formative years by injurious experiences. Our adverse reactions as adults often spring from strongholds of misinformation implanted in childhood.

  Satan uses demonic forces to goad young, innocent minds to interpret injurious events as their own fault. In doing so, demons establish strongholds that will ensure future difficulties. The deceptive programming in our cognitive processes makes us feel hopelessness, shame and guilt about our repeated sins. In addition, the misinformation twists our perceptions about the nature of God. We envision Him as a bully looking for opportunities to scold and punish us for our sins. The outcome of such misinformation, and the strongholds it forms, is that many believers treat the Lord more or less like a dentist: They avoid contact out of fear of what He might say and do.

  All the while, Jesus Christ is available within. He is far kinder than performance-centered religion and demons would lead us to believe. In fact, if we simply ask Him, He is prepared to intervene in our lives with mercy and tenderness, rather than with the wrath and judgment we wrongly attribute to Him.

  The Voice

  When Jesus speaks into a stronghold, all misinformation is dispelled. Every syllable of every word of His voice from within has power that resonates in the believer and produces satisfaction, instant peace and resolution of inner conflicts.

  In the following pages, I give you two personal ministry experiences where the voice of the Lord shattered strongholds in my mind and demons fled. In the first scenario the details about how and when the demon established the stronghold were irrelevant to my deliverance. I called on the Lord, asking Him to speak into the matter. I was candid with the Lord about what I really felt and thought. It included the confession of my fear of what God might say about my sins.

  The second ministry experience employed a mode of pulling down strongholds that requires detailed information. It might sound a little like the healing of the memories, but it is not. Memories of events are not eradicated or changed. Current emotions are used to trace back to memories where demonic forces established strongholds. The Lord’s voice, spoken into the situation, destroys the stronghold, but the memory remains intact. I will show how I used this “backtracking” technique in a conference ministry time, and then help you employ it yourself.

  A Nasty Distraction

  From 1978 to 1983 I served as what might best be described as an overseer of a global nondenominational network of churches. The constant travel and ministering to congregations required for this position was easy for me. The function that I found difficult was working through interpreters when counseling pastors about everything from troubled marriages to church squabbles. I earnestly wanted to help them, but often felt that I was not as successful as I could have been had we not had a language barrier.

  My reaction was frustrated anger. Frustration seemed to seethe beneath the surface of my emotions all of the time during those years. I constantly had to suppress inclinations to lash out at people. I managed to maintain a pleasant tone of voice and a ready smile when in public. Around my home and office, however, when I was not directly engaged in conversation, I let down my guard. My expression darkened into a scowl.

  My office crew began to call it “the face.” I did not like the idea of people tiptoeing around me for fear that the emotions behind “the face” might suddenly explode. But that prospect, rather than helping to temper my emotions, only increased my agitation and led me to do something I thought I would never do: I began to use tobacco. I did not smoke it, as the smell of smoke would have been too risky for my reputation. I chewed it. It was a messy, disgusting business. Somehow the misinformation that got programmed into my psyche was that my use of tobacco was a suitable escape valve to prevent the frustration that would cause me to exhibit “the face.” It did nothing of the kind.

  I never got hooked on the stuff, but chewed often enough to be scandalized by my own behavior. After each use I would repent and throw away the unused portion, only to find myself buying another bagful a month or so later. Then I slipped into the miserable offender pattern, plagued by guilt and shame at my nasty indulgence.

  I was sure that if God ever spoke to me about the matter, it would be a flaming indictment. I feared judgment from Him in the form of the loss of my ministry. With these ongoing frustrations and guilt taking a substantial toll on my peace of mind, I decided to take a month off to find relief.

  Run Hard, Put Away Wet

  During my month off, I decided to go to the Benedictine Monastery in Pecos, New Mexico. The monks there were charismatic by experience and ecumenically disposed. One day during that time, while meditating in one of the prayer rooms, I gathered the courage to ask the Lord to speak to me. He did so with a symbolic vision that relieved and revitalized me, and it was far from the scorching indictment I had expected to receive from Him.

  In the vision, I saw an Arabian horse that was sweaty and streaked with saliva all along its neck. Its head hung low as though it was too heavy to lift. As the expression goes, the horse had been “run hard and put away wet.” Horses left in that condition are subject to pneumonia and paralysis.

  Next in the vision, a distinguished-looking trainer entered the scene and placed a training halter and lead on the horse. He led it to a stable where he bathed it and brushed it down. The horse’s deep red coat began to glisten. Its mane and tail, freshly washed, showed a gorgeous strawberry-blond color. Suddenly, it dawned on me. That Arabian steed was me, and the Trainer was the Lord.

  The Trainer then saddled the horse with a western saddle. When He mounted the horse, its nostrils flared and its head perked up with excitement. The Trainer then worked the horse around the ring and, after putting the horse through its paces, reined it to a stop. The Trainer leaned forward, patted the steed and affectionately hugged its neck. Then He whispered into the horse’s ear, “I appreciate you.”

  When I heard those words from the Trainer in the vision, spoken to that horse that I identified as myself, I sobbed with joy and slipped to my knees in worship. At that moment, the constant sense of frustration ended. From that moment on, “the face” disappeared, as did my need for chewing tobacco. The deliverance was accomplished without my ever needing to utter a single command for a demon to leave me.

  Roots Revealed

  Years later I revisited the Arabian horse vision and was thanking God for what it had done in my life. I asked Him about the origins of my frustrations leading to tobacco use. He reminded me of an incident when I was eight years old. I was spending a weekend with my grandparents. While wandering around their neighborhood on Friday afternoon, I spotted two boys of my age smoking. I reported it with no little indignation to my grandfather, who was a smoker. His response was covert and mischievous.

  The following day was Saturday, and he and my grandmother had to go to work. Before Granddaddy left, he tore a cigarette in half. He placed one half in the den ashtray, and the other half in the living room ashtray. I resisted the temptation until about noon. I gave in, lit up and coughed my way through both halves of the cigarette.

  That evening after supper, Granddaddy called me into the den. He had both ashtrays in his hands, with the butts of the halves I had smoked glaring at me. “I suppose those naughty boys that you saw smoking broke into the house and smoked these?”

  It frustrated me to no end that I had been so easily set up and busted. Apparently, it was that incident that the devil used to create a stronghold within me interlinking tobacco with frustration. The blessed news is that God intervened by giving me the Arabian horse vision. Regardless of my sullenness and my nasty periodic tobacco blunders, the Lord told me that He appreciated me. What a gift! What a liberating God!

  Words of Liberation

  The second ministry example where the voice of the Lord shattered strongholds came from a time my past
or friend Seby Matacena, whom I mentioned in the last chapter, invited me to hold a deliverance seminar at his church. Seby is well versed in deliverance. During our pre-seminar discussions, I asked him to update me on how he was ministering deliverance in personal counseling sessions.

  “You know, Jim, though Jesus promised that He would speak to His sheep and lead them by His voice, most have never heard the voice of the Lord. Many are afraid of what they might hear, especially those entangled with habitual sin issues. Though they genuinely love the Lord, they keep Him at a reverential distance.

  “Now, of course they need deliverance,” he continued. “The question is what mode is most suitable for each individual. At times, it is right for deliverance ministers to battle demons into submission with spiritual warfare Scriptures. At other times, nothing will do as well as Jesus’ voice speaking words of liberation to a captive.”

  He went on to state his belief that much of the preaching today conditions people to anticipate that God’s comments about their sins will be harsh and condemning. His solution was to begin each deliverance session by counseling the people about God’s love for them.

  “I want them to know that God enjoys His kids even when they are going down the mistake-filled road to maturity. Encouragement about God’s love paves the way for them to want to hear from the Lord. It also helps them recognize the Lord’s cheerful, comforting words that they might normally brush aside as wishful thinking.

  “Once the love factor soaks in,” he said, “I ask them for the details about why they made the appointment. From there, I encourage the person to ask the Lord to speak to them about His perception of the situation they are faced with. Regularly, the Lord speaks tailor-made words of comfort and affirmation. The Lord’s voice within the person’s soul knocks the condemning supports out from under the demons. The resident evil spirits normally leave without a fuss.”

  I asked him to give me an example of what he might say to convince people of God’s affection. He replied by speaking to me as he would a counselee.

  “Do you know that God chose you to be His child and appointed you for a high calling of good works before time began? That’s right! You were discussed by name in the divine council of the Godhead. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to their infinite wisdom and foresight, saw you as strategic for this generation.

  “God knows the end from the beginning. No matter what you’ve done following your conversion, you haven’t shocked or scandalized the Lord. If today were your adoption day, Father God would pick you for adoption just as He did when you were saved years ago. That’s why there was such joy in the presence of God when you were born again. Just like the scene in the musical Little Orphan Annie, when everyone was rejoicing about Annie’s adoption, the host of heaven was gleefully shouting, ‘We got Jim! Jim’s in the Kingdom. We got Jim!’ There has never been a day that God was not happy to see you at His throne of grace. Now, what problem brought you to me today?”

  This approach resonated with me. All that my colleague had shared matched my own growing understanding of pulling down strongholds of misinformation. I told Seby about an experience I had had in prayer in which the Lord helped me understand why, years before, I usually responded to situations that required patience with anything but. Traffic jams, for instance, that threatened to make me late for an appointment could set off volleys of profanity.

  After one such incident, I followed that feeling of impatience all the way back to an experience I had had as a toddler. I was standing in a driveway with my back to a partially open garage door. Both the driveway and the door were painted white, and the slight opening of the door revealed a dark and scary interior. I was gripping my diaper like a guardrail for fear that I would fall backward into what looked to me like the yawning blackness of oblivion. I was crying and screaming for help. No one in the family tried to rescue me. They just laughed and, amazingly, got a camera and took photographs.

  I asked the Lord to give me His take on what had happened. Instantaneously, I got an answer. As I heard His words of explanation within the inner man of my spirit, I felt something evil loosening its grip in my heart and my mind. I believe it was a demon of impatience. At that moment, I sensed the Good Shepherd was saying, I didn’t orchestrate the happenings of your formative years. What the enemy meant for evil, I have turned around for good. Throughout your life and ministry you have been sensitive to others. You’ve done all within your power to respond to people in a manner affirming their worth and their relevance to Me. I commend you for your faithfulness.

  I told Seby that ever since the time that stronghold was toppled by the Lord’s voice, I had not had a single episode of impatient fuming and cursing.

  Seby and I agreed that for the conference’s deliverance session, he would begin by speaking about the love of God. Then I would address the issue of how demonic strongholds are rooted in our memories, and walk the attendees through the deliverance process.

  “Backtracking” Emotions

  During the conference in which Seby and I were ministering, as time came for the actual deliverance, I used the technique the Lord had shown me, and which I call “backtracking,” to help people identify the misinformation strongholds that need to be obliterated. I helped them backtrack current disruptive emotions to earlier events they held in their memories where strongholds had been established. Here is the way the ministry unfolded.

  “I would like for those who sense they have demonic issues, and who want help, to stand,” I said, as I began the time of ministry. Approximately thirty people stood to their feet.

  “Now I invite you to identify the negative emotion that accompanied the last incident you had where a suspected demon caused you problems. Once you have recalled the event and have identified the negative emotion you experienced, please raise your hand.” Most everyone responded.

  “The next step is for you to try to recall the earliest life incident where you felt that same intensity of the negative emotion. That is likely the place that a demonic spirit established a stronghold of misinformation in your psyche. When you’ve located the memory, raise your hand.”

  Now, it could be that if an incident happened to us early in infancy, we would not be able to recall it. In that case, our spirits are smarter and more mature than our brains. Scientists are making headway in proving even prenatal awareness of external events. I have cast spirits of the fear of death from habitually whiny babies whose mothers gave strong considerations to abortion. The incessant crying stops. We can be assured that the Holy Spirit will bring to our awareness whatever will help us receive healing.

  “Examine that memory for any misinformation,” I continued. “It will be whatever you think about yourself that is not in agreement with what God’s Word says about you—anything that is contrary to that which makes you feel good about being you. When you identify it, raise your hand.

  “Now ask the Lord to speak directly to you, giving His perspective about the incident and the misinformation that was planted with it. Raise your hand to signal you have heard from the Lord. Those who want to come up to share what they experience and who want to receive personal ministry may do so.”

  Becky’s Testimony

  After a few minutes, at least half of the people volunteered to come up, ranging in age from young teens to an 86-year-old woman. The results of that time of ministry were wonderful. To illustrate, I will relate one woman’s story. Becky was in her early thirties and the mother of three children.

  “Becky, what was the nature of your emotion?”

  “It was rage and self-hatred. It has been in me for years. I’ve vented on everyone in my circle of relationships. I loathed my unpredictable personality.”

  “What was your earliest memory of those emotions and what stronghold of misinformation was established in you?”

  “My father used to sexually abuse me. It made me feel so dirty. He and my mother divorced and I did not see him for years. My mother later died and during my t
een years, I got pregnant out of wedlock. When my daughter was three years old, I decided to look for my father. I really needed for someone who was family to see how well my child and I were doing. I located my dad in another state. When he saw my daughter and me at his door, and I told him who we were, he did not invite us into his home. He yelled at us to leave and said he didn’t ever want to see us again.”

  “Becky, what did Jesus say to you about all of that?”

  “He told me that I was in His family, and that both He and His Dad were really proud of me.”

  “How do you feel now? Do you feel any of that old self-hatred and rage?”

  “It is all gone. Suddenly, I really like me. I truly feel that I’m somebody who is cherished by the best of families.”

  Hearing Becky’s testimony, I was nearly overcome by grateful emotion myself. It became apparent that the anointing to break strongholds of self-hate and anger as in Becky’s experience was available to everyone there. I turned to the congregation and asked for all those who had issues with anger and self-hate to stand if they wanted liberty. Several did so and I commanded those evil spirits to leave them.

  Many who resonated with her testimony and God’s voice to her were also liberated. The Lord’s voice had toppled the strongholds of misinformation in them. The demons had lost the deceitful armor that had previously secured their place in their hosts, and they vacated the properties.

  Self-Deliverance from Strongholds

  If you sense there are misinformation strongholds in your memories, you can likely deal with them in self-deliverance in the same way just described. From the testimonies provided here, use either model of hearing the voice of the Lord that seems best for you. Please begin by building yourself up with confident affirmations of the love of God. Also remember that the essential factor in destroying strongholds is the voice of the Lord. His words spoken into your darkness will dismantle the strongholds of demonic misinformation.