There’s a Demon There! – Choosing Your Battles but Standing in Truth Purity 1171

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning! Today's photo of the sun and Chicago city skyline reflected in the stainless steel surface of the Bean, Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate sculpture, comes to us from yours truly as I captured this scene during my visit to Chicago's Millennium Park during a walking tour of Chicago's downtown Loop last Saturday. Well, it's Friday, thank God, and even though I am back to work and facing the harsh reality of a shifted work schedule that have me working on Saturday, I am still thankful because I really needed the day off on Tuesday. And even though my life can seem particularly busy at times because I walk in the Spirit as close to 24/7 as I can, I have been continually and progressively blessed by the Lord for making the decision to follow and serve Him where called as my purpose for life. About a year ago, the call came to pursue increased training in Freedom, or Inner Heal Prayer Ministry, and since then I have not only learned how to minister to others in new ways, but I have received healing from things rooted in my past, from misconceptions and lies I believed about life or myself that I didn't think I would ever divulge to anyone, ever. Well, I won't be sharing any of the details of the things I've been set free of through the prayer ministry sessions I had with Deeper Walk certified prayer minister Christy Edge today. I will give you an example of what I'm talking about. For instance, a child's parents' divorce just be— just happens to coincide with a mistake or misbehavior of the child. Say they broke something like a vase, or they didn't do well in school, had failed failing grades, and the child internalizes the trauma of the divorce and their misdeed as a cause-and-effect relationship. "I know if I never broke that vase, my, my parents would still be together," or "If I had only done better in school, my parents wouldn't have divorced." Obviously, we can see that one doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other, but it could feel true, and because it is somewhat irrational, the child may never speak of it, but it can be internalized and create all kinds of misconceptions about life or themselves that could affect their course of life, uh, course through life. Uh, the healing in this situation is for someone to validate, um, the person's feelings of pain and comfort them with the fact that their belief wasn't true. And all the vows or beliefs they made internally because of the false belief were thus not true either. And through care and counsel, we could help them recover by living in the light of the truth. Truth dispels the darkness, and so we should turn on the light. So in my prayer ministry sessions with Christy Edge, and with the help, guidance, and presence of the Lord, the light got turned on. Some things I had realized long ago weren't true were finally confessed, released, and healed. Even though I had grown out of those childish secret beliefs long ago— really, I did— the healing wasn't complete until the Lord brought them to my attention so we could expose and renounce them once and for all. Those sessions removed what I think of as residual lies, things that may no longer play a part in our day-to-day existence but were back there in the past and should be cleaned up and removed through the Lord's help and a healthy dose of the truth. So now, as my certification training for prayer ministry is in its final months, I'll practice leading someone else through prayer ministry to help them experience their freedom in Christ and assist them in allowing the Lord to heal traumas of the past. Recently, I was in a group where a prayer minister was describing a difficult session of guided prayer that they were leading that was, in a word, complicated. While the participant presented no particular issues that needed to be addressed and just wanted to, quote unquote, connect with Jesus, after the session began, all types of trauma and issues were revealed. But because it was a one-time appointment, the prayer minister had to choose which battles to fight and which ones to let go of. Don't get me wrong, in guided prayer the Lord leads the session and we just follow his lead. When the sessions are limited in scope by time or other factors, the prayer minister has to decide how far they want to go. Generally, as prayer ministers, we don't want to open up wounds that we don't have time to deal with, and we don't want to leave a participant more traumatized than when we found them. In this session, the prayer minister led the participant into a particular area of their past and was surprised when the participant, who was actually a trained prayer minister themselves, announced, "We can't go there. There's a demon there that won't let me go there." So what do you do? While you might envision the prayer minister breaking out the rites of exorcism or rebuking the devil and casting out in the name of Jesus at the men— you know, at the mention of a demon, because of our commitment to the care of the people we minister to, we don't necessarily jump into the fray at a moment's notice. This session was a one-time appointment and limited in scope and time, and despite the prayer minister's choice not to take on the demon encounter head-on, the Lord guided the session to move the participant to finding healing in some other areas of their life. I have to admit that I was shocked to hear it myself, but I saw the wisdom of just dealing with what you can. However, I think that this episode just points out the need to lead people through a discipleship process and the Steps to Freedom in Christ as a first step to prayer ministry. I understand that in this situation there was no time for that, and the Lord still came in and did a wonderful work of healing. But it just goes to show us, to me anyway, that even someone who is trained in healing prayer ministry should not be assumed to have their freedom in Christ. People come to faith in different ways. We have no idea about the instruction and care they have received in the church, nor whether or not they understood, absorbed, and applied it to their life. I think the worst thing we can do as Christians is to assume we are all one in terms of our theological understanding or levels of maturity. Other Christians may be proven to be that in name only and have little or no biblical education, training, or experience to, to the point where they can have a demon. So seek the Lord, know his word, know his presence, and if you don't have it, pursue your freedom in Christ. Because the gift of God's grace is priceless but doesn't inoculate us from the, from demonic oppression if we give ground to the enemy through sin, unforgiveness, or unresolved spiritual or personal conflicts. While someone may ask for healing, we should ask them if they know Jesus and have done the work of applying His teaching to their lives in repentance. If they haven't, we may discover they believed childish lies about their faith, life, or themselves that make room for the spiritual forces of darkness to have a place in their lives. So while time may be a factor, always keep first things first by instructing others in what God's word says and helping them to repent and become free by leading them through the steps to freedom in Christ. Healing is a priority for sure, but freedom in Christ should be the first thing we direct people to who need it. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the Quick Scripture Reference, uh, for Counseling by John G. Cruis. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on Assurance of Salvation, and today's section of a passage of scripture is 1 Peter 1:3-5 from the NASB. The word of God says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Today's verses fall under the seventh and final point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on the Assurance of Salvation. And that seventh point is: A Christian has a living hope Through Christ's resurrection. Today's verses remind us of our born-again status that comes with our faith in Jesus. When we put our faith in Jesus, we are said to be crucified, die, and raised to life with him. So our hope comes from Jesus's resurrection, the sign that Jesus was who he said he was, God the Son. And when we place our faith in him We receive an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away. We are protected and saved because of Christ, and it will someday be fully revealed when Jesus comes again, comes back to rule and reign in his resurrection. We have a living and eternal hope. As always, I invite all to go to M.t. Clark.org um, where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. Um, today we share— continue sharing from A.W. Pink's The Holy Spirit as we begin sharing from chapter 30, The Spirit Fructifying, and the section is in the Song of Solomon. And if you don't know what fructifying means, you should look it up in the dictionary, but I'll let you know. It means producing fruit. So it's, uh, I didn't know that myself and had to look it up. Um, basically something that produces fruit is fructifying. So I think it's a funny word. So anyway, we should all be producing fruit, and so we should all be fructifying. Our lives should be a fructifying example of a life in the Spirit. Anyway, we do encourage a life of Christian discipleship. Obviously, we do that on the podcast and the blog and our YouTube channel, basically by encouraging you to go through our discipleship process of going through our classes. Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ are a series of discipleship classes that, that are based on the Word of God in the work of Dr. Neil Anderson of Freedom in Christ Ministries. That we, that we did back in 2021, and we audio recorded them so people can know who they are in Christ and could know how to resolve their spiritual and personal conflicts. Um, you might know the Lord, but are you free in Christ? That's the question. And if you're not sure, we direct you to go check out those teachings and to go through the steps to freedom in Christ so you can know full assurance that you're saved and that you've done everything on your side of the, you know, with— you've done everything you can to cast out all the sin and unforgiveness and spiritual forces of darkness that could possibly afflict you by coming to the Lord and committing yourself to the truth and to life with him. I've done it, and I teach on it, and I recommend it highly because it's our purpose. Our purpose is to go into eternity, and we're either gonna go with God or be cast out ourselves. So we recommend faith in Jesus and a lifestyle of Christian discipleship. Well, it is Friday and I have to work, and I have little or no time here, so we're gonna pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you so much for the freedom that you've given us in Christ. And the eternal hope we have through his resurrection. Lord, we pray for anyone who's listening today, uh, that they would know their freedom in Christ and pursue it and live it every day. Uh, Lord, we pray for you to come alongside them and their prayer requests and their walk of faith. And Lord, uh, as always, we need your help too. And we just pray for you to go before us today, open our eyes and the things you want us to see, and lead our steps in the way we should go, because all we want to do is represent you. And show other people, um, the wonderful life they can have in Christ. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you. We pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.