Revelation 12:10-11
I was 12 when I found myself running to the alter weeping with the feeling of my heart simultaneously exploding and melting out of my chest as I gave my life to Christ during a conference.
Something had changed. Something was different. I felt different.
I now had this desire to know God, to spend time with Him, to pursue Him, and to commune with Him but I didn’t really know how too.
The night of my salvation encounter with God, I gave Him my heart (at least all of what I knew how too) and my yes…
…but I did not repent of or confess the hidden sin that was in my life and my demons were never cast out of me (I had no idea I had some).
Since I was 3 years old, I had…
Something about encountering God’s presence and His love for me made me feel/come alive and temporarily brought relief to the tormenting pain and rejection I felt inside.
I did not know how to continue to encounter God on a day-to-day basis.
I had been masturbating several times a day for temporary relief from the torment.
I was addicted to the neurotransmitters dopamine and oxytocin highs in my own brain that masturbating provided.
The demons present inside of my soul used their power to enhance the intensity and increase the frequency of the temptation for perverted sexual encounters and relief from the desire to perform a certain act at a certain time would not cease until the action was carried out.
I did not know how to crucify my flesh.
My flesh and the demons were two enemies I did not know how to overcome or deal with.
John 3:6
Galatians 6:8
Romans 8:8
Galatians 5:24
As time progressed…
*Some of this could be seen and was not all hidden.*
Matthew 17:18
Luke 4:35
Mark 16:9
Mark 9:22-23
I remember the first time I confessed sin to someone.
I was terrified and trembled in my own skin.
I had been with a woman of whom you could say I fell hard for, who was now cheating on me with another woman and bringing the other woman into our bed to sleep with her in front of me.
I had started to drink very heavily, continued to be suicidal and started to be homicidal with the temptation being presented to me to take revenge for all the pain, rejection, and betrayal I was experiencing.
I knew that was not the answer and sought help from someone I felt safe to share with.
The individual I started to confess sin and explain my life circumstances to, loved Jesus and loved me well. The individual pointed me to God’s word, to Jesus, to seek professional counseling, and continued to be a mentor God used in my process of first stepping out of the dark and into the light.
1 John 1:9
Proverbs 28:13
Romans 12:19
For a season I started to step out into the light.
I continued to open up and confess sin.
I started to be in and around community and other people who loved Jesus.
I started to seek God.
But I was still struggling.
I was still hurting and dealing with torment.
I was still drinking.
I was still suicidal…
…and a new woman came on the scene that I started a relationship with.
There was something different though…I noticed I was more spiritually sensitive.
I could see the demons in my room more clearly.
I was more sensitive to the Holy Spirit and His leading.
I knew by His Spirit what His will was and what He did and did not want me to do.
Even so, I started resisting the Holy Spirit and actively/knowingly disobeying/rebelling against Him…
…and I kept doing so.
Months if not a year went by and one day, the Lord came to me.
His presence filled the room.
He spoke to me directly, firmly, honestly, full of truth, justice, mercy and love.
He came to warn me, rebuke me, and to command me to repent.
As He spoke to me, He took me into a vision where I experienced hell along with an emphasis on time in an eternal continuum.
As I was experiencing the vision, the Lord spoke and told me if I did not repent of how I was living then hell/the vision was the eternal destination I was headed too.
He took me out of the vision.
His presence remained with me in the room, but He was now quiet.
I sat there in His presence, wrestling with what He had just shown and told me.
Although He was speaking to me about condemnation, He was not there to condemn me but to rebuke me to save me.
He does not want anyone to perish or to go to hell.
His judgement, His rebuke, His exposure, etc. is His mercy.
He loves us so much.
I sat in His presence for a while.
He patiently waited for my response.
In the encounter with Him, I felt the fear of the Lord and loved.
I knew how I had been living was wrong.
I knew I had been living in rebellion against Him.
I realized I did not know Him, and I did not know who I was or what my purpose was here on earth.
As I finished processing, I came to a place of giving up or surrender.
I surrendered/entrusted my life to Him, His Lordship.
I had been trusting myself more than Him.
I had been living out my will, not His.
I looked at Him and responded with a simple prayer/communication, “I do not know You. I want to know You. I do not know who I am or why I am here. I feel lost. I want to be who you created me to be and to live the life You have for me.”
Acts 7:51
Matthew 15:8
I Samuel 15:23
Ezekiel 12:2
Revelation 3:19
Proverbs 15:32
Acts 3:19-21
II Peter 3:9
Matthew 10:28
I Corinthians 5:9-13
I Corinthians 6:18
Hebrews 13:4
I Corinthians 6:9-11
Luke 14:25-33
Joshua 24:14-15
Psalms 107:14
Colossians 1:13
Romans 8:14
John 10:25-29
Joshua 24:24
Deuteronomy 30:8
Matthew 4:4
Romans 12:2
Matthew 22:37
Romans 10:17
Psalms 91:1-2
Proverbs 18:1
*Self-isolation vs. Holy Spirit led isolation are not the same thing.*
Hebrews 10:24-25
Luke 15:18-20
Psalms 27:4
Psalms 84:10
Galatians 5:24-25
Romans 8:5-11
John 3:5-8
James 4:7-10
Ephesians 6:11
II Peter 2:1-3
Matthew 7:15
Religious demon's activity in churches led by demons
Jeremiah 3:15
I Timothy 5:17
Religious demon's activity in churches led by man
Colossians 1:17-20
Religious demon's activity in churches led by Jesus
One summer, I was invited to a weekend retreat at another church in the community.
The presence of God was in this church. I had not experienced His presence like that in a church before up until that point in my life.
During the last service of the retreat, one of the pastors started to preach and teach about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire.
The presence of the Lord was thick in the building.
When the teaching was over, many including myself were Baptized in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.
I started praying in the Spirit all the time.
After a few months a familiar demonic attack came in the night.
I felt hopeless, depressed, and suicidal.
For years I had struggled with hopelessness, despair, depression, and suicide.
Just a year or two prior, demons had entered my car, grabbed my hands and my steering wheel as an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and a desire to kill myself came over me.
The demons were trying to get me to turn my car into the concrete median on the highway.
I texted someone that I wanted to kill myself with my car and the demons let go of me and left the vehicle.
This night was different.
Something about having been Baptized in the Holy Spirit gave me something I did not have before.
I now had power.
The Holy Spirit led me in self-deliverance.
“I have been bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ and you have to leave!” I yelled, as I held my hand over my stomach.
Something like a giant hand, a snake, an alien (a demon), moved inside of my abdominal cavity.
As the demon left my body, I ran to the restroom to throw up in the toilet.
The Holy Spirit’s presence then filled the restroom and the place inside of my abdomen where the demon had occupied.
I never struggled with suicide again.
A few months past and I had another familiar demonic attack that came in the night.
This attack was different than the depression and suicide attacks that would come (but was now free of!).
This attack came with intense tormenting pain and rejection.
My room was blacked out due to my black out curtains.
I sat up in my bed looking into the darkness when a spirit illuminating bright light leaned to its side as if to peer around a wall and looked at me.
I saw him with both my spiritual and natural vision/eyes.
It startled me and I jumped several feet backwards and hit the wall.
Then the spirit leaned the other direction and disappeared into the darkness.
He emanated light in the colors of green, purple, and gold.
His eyes were full of light, and he had a crown on his head.
Attacks and torment from this demon, who was coming in the form of an angel of light, continued for 4-5 more years.
Matthew 3:11
Act 2:4
Acts 1:4-8
Acts 2:38
II Corinthians 11:14
If you are visual like me and want to see what the religious spirit is like, watch the Disney movie Tangled.
The character in the film named Mother Gothel is a great example of the religious spirit.
In the movie, Princess Rapunzel is kidnapped (while young) from the palace in the middle of the night by Mother Gothel.
Rapunzel is taken to an isolated tower or a “prison”, where Mother Gothel begins to lie to her about where she comes from, who she is, and about the outside world.
Rapunzel grows up thinking/believing Mother Gothel is truly her mother and that her living conditions and how she is being related to by Mother Gothel is normal when it is actually abusive.
Rapunzel does not know any different and does not have anything else to compare her reality too.
Rapunzel grows up in a tangled web of lies that control her mind and her perceptions of reality.
Even in the deception Rapunzel was living in, she had this inner knowing that there was something more.
She was drawn to the lights in the sky that she would see every year on her birthday.
When Rapunzel leaves the tower for the first time, she experiences a taste of freedom and then starts to go back and forth with herself within her own mind on whether leaving the tower is ok or not.
She starts to worry about what Mother Gothel would think and is back and forth between exuberant joy and anxiety/depression. (When I started following and obeying the Holy Spirit, the religious demon would attack, torment, and punish me for doing so).
Mother Gothel eventually realizes Rapunzel is gone and works to get her back in the tower and back under her control. Listen to Mother Gothel’s lies and how she speaks to and treats Rapunzel. The religious demon sounds similar.
Towards the end of the movie, Rapunzel is taken back to the tower by Mother Gothel.
She has a flag or a piece of cloth with a sun on it that she brought back with her from her journey to the village/kingdom.
While sitting in her room she looks up and notices she had painted the same sun all over her ceiling and has a flashback memory or an experience like a vision where she remembers who she is and where she comes from.
She realizes she is the lost princess, her entire life has been a lie, and Mother Gothel is not her mother.
Mother Gothel continues to make decisions and moves to steal from Rapunzel, and even kill and destroy people or everything and anything in Rapunzel’s life in order to keep Rapunzel bound.
Mother Gothel chains and muzzles Rapunzel and states, “Rapunzel really, enough already, stop fighting me!” (while Rapunzel is actively trying to pull away and break free from the chains).
Rapunzel falls to the floor yelling back at Mother Gothel and respond, “No! I won’t stop for every minute for the rest of my life I will fight! I will never stop trying to get away from you!”
I will not stop fighting.
For the rest of my life I will fight.
I am also fighting for you...
To heal the broken hearted...
To proclaim liberty to the captives...
To proclaim the opening of the prison to those who are bound...
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
Rapunzel, the lost princess, returns home, is reconciled to her parents, and rules and reigns as royalty over the kingdom.
I’ve had a few experiences in God’s presence where He has enlightened the eyes of my understanding.
He has given me visions and shown me Himself, who He created me to be, and some of what He has for me to do.
I had an experience similar to Rapunzel where I had a vision that brought me into a revelation of who I am and where I come from.
I realized that the demon that had been tormenting and lying to me my whole life, posing as God, claiming to be God, and had been “fathering me,” was really the one I needed to turn on and get away from.
Much like Rapunzel realizing she needed to get away from Mother Gothel.
The demon portraying itself as an angel of light was really an angel of darkness and I turned on it, resisted its lies, and cast it out.
It was a religious demon.
The process of having this religious demon finally leave happened while I have been in a small, on fire, Holy Spirit filled church named Rocky City in Corpus Christi, TX.
With other on fire, sold out, lovers of Jesus who have loved me well.
I have been reconciled with my Father in heaven and now get to rule and reign in this life with Him.
Ephesians 1:18
Job 33:30
II Samuel 22:29
Revelation 3:19-22
Revelation 2:1-7
II Corinthians 5:17-21
Romans 5:17
Revelation 5:10
Isaiah 32:1