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j3anvivian0-blog · 11 years ago

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A night of adventure - my first blood in casting out devils

God used me to heal the sick and cast out devils! Had the most epic night ever. Nothing went according to plan, but it was all in God's plan.

When the day began, my thoughts were very much on my job interview. The Ogilvy Fellowship is my first choice for my job, and it is extremely competitive! I don't think I fared well for the interview. I stammered a little at the beginning, and half the time I didn't know what I was saying. So, I was feeling somewhat worried and unsettled. After that, I went to meet a new brother in the faith to help him understand more about his faith. And then I went home.

I wanted to call it a day. And Brother Yeuann texted me to ask if I would like to accompany him to find an aunty who hangs out at Cineleisure and pray for her. It was Celeste, another sister in Christ who used to be from my cell group, who initiated it. Truth be told, I didn't really want to go. There were already 2 people after all, did they really need me? But God gave me the word "Adventure". I sensed He wanted me to go.

So, we arrived and she was nowhere to be found. And Celeste went off for her cell group, she was running late.

Ok, now what? Yeuann and I decided to go for the weekly prayer meeting at our church's congregation venue. That was when it started to get interesting.

We went the wrong way. And along the wrong way, we met this uncle who sells tissue papers. He has speech problems. So we prayed in the name of Jesus that he would recover his speech. We prayed 3 times, and each time his speech became clearer. Amazing! After the second time we prayed for him, he could articulate his name, his address, his telephone number, his work hours and venues, and we could actually converse more easily. He did not want to hear more about Jesus Christ as he wanted to continue selling tissues, but that is fine. It sure looks like there is opportunity for further contact.

Then we continued toward our church venue. In Somerset MRT, we walked past a man who was clearly drunk. I had seen him before. He once followed my cell group and spoke strangely. And Yeuann had this crazy idea to follow him and see if he needed anything. And I was crazy enough to go for it.

So we talked to him. He mentioned that he was going to commit suicide, because Satan wanted him to. Then, he was back to normal. Then, he was back to behaving strangely. Then, he was back to normal. After a while, we realized that there was a struggle within him. Those brief moments that he was in control of his own voice, he said that he was fighting and told us to keep praying for him. Demons were possessing him, and he was fighting a losing battle. Apparently, the demons were trying to convince him to commit suicide because they wanted to lure him to hell for eternity. They were also trying to bring him away from us, because we would keep mentioning the name of Jesus.

We prayed for him as we followed him around. We kept calling upon the name of Jesus Christ, asking him to cast out the evil spirits within the man. The demons were stubborn. They didn't want to leave. So we just kept following him around, and kept praying.

It gets interesting here. The demons started talking to us, using the man they possessed. "We cannot challenge you, you have a power that is so great!" "You have the Messiah with you, please go away." Clearly, they were afraid. Quoting the Bible, the demons actually said that the moment Jesus said "It is finished" on the cross, every one in hell had no choice but to bow down to the Christ.

We persisted following the man around. The demons used the man to say a lot of profanities and lies to distract us. He said things like "F*** your Messiah", "Jesus is a Pharisee", "The devil is in control", "He has sold his soul to the devil, he cannot be saved", "Jesus is a loser", "We are in huge numbers, you dare challenge us?", "Do you know how stupid you look when you talk about Jesus?" Clearly, the demons were getting desperate. They were trying to provoke us to be irritated by mocking Jesus and mocking us, but we were not buying it. We just quoted Bible verses to expose their lies, and they were dead scared. On hearing the word of truth, they just had to admit that they lied. We could hear the demons telling the man "Don't listen to them". They would keep causing him to produce some weird-sounding noise keep him from hearing any more verses. The Word of God is indeed the sword of the spirit, an offensive weapon to fight spiritual forces!

We noticed that the demons were trying real hard to get the man to stop listening to us. They made him wear earplugs to listen to some demonic music, so that he would not hear anything else. They also made him go to the supermarket to buy rice wine to get him drunk, so that he would lose even more control. Sensing defeat, the demons begged us to let them take control of the man. They tried to sound pitiful, as if they were needy. They really had many tricks up their sleeves.

The breakthrough came. We decided to stop talking to the demons. There was no point, they were distracting us. The Holy Spirit is truly amazing. He gave Yeuann and I the same prompting: "Don't talk to the demons. Talk to the man instead. Ask him to repent." When I told Yeuann what I sensed, he immediately confirmed it.

So we had to ignore and shut out the many things the demons were saying through the man's lips. They were just making a lot of noise to throw us off the trial. We just kept speaking to the man to pray for himself, to repent. The demons did not want us to realize that the man could actually hear us, even though he could not act by his own will due to being possessed. We simply preached the gospel there and then. The demons just went crazy. They complained that the moment the man repents, all is over for them and there is absolutely nothing they can do. We just persisted. Suddenly, the demons all left him. And there was the man, looking really tired.

We learnt that his name is Brian. He used to work as a cleaner. Under demonic possession, he drank 16 bottles of alcohol. He was very thankful that we stayed all the way with him, and he loudly professed that Jesus is Lord and forgiver of his sins! He repented there and then! He hugged us and said thank you! He even gave us his half full bottle of alcohol, and said "I surrender!" So, we poured it away. Praise the Lord! However, he was still insistent on keeping his satanic neckring. He took it off, but still kept it with him, saying "I can handle it." We asked him to throw it away for his own good, but he refused. I guess, he is still a work in progress and we need to be patient with him. Well, he finally did take out the ear plugs and Yeuann played Christian music from his phone. He said that the music made him feel peaceful inside.

We wanted to get him a hostel to stay for 3 nights while we get other Christians to come over to attend to him. But thank God we managed to find out that Brian is actually connected to a halfway house (halfway house is a shelter place for homeless people to stay while volunteers help them get back to normal state) run by Christians from Full Gospel Church. We contacted his cell group leader, who drove over with another brother and picked him up.

In the end, we didn't go to the prayer meet. God planned this whole night for us. And it was such a great adventure. Yeuann and I were just amazed and speechless after the whole incident ended. Wow! What a privilege to be used by God and to gain insight into the spiritual realm.

I have an afterthought. Jesus did not cast out the demons immediately. We spent more than 2 hours with Brian, commanding the stubborn spirits to leave. Jesus actually allowed the devils speak a little longer, but for a purpose! I realized the reason why upon reflection. Whenever they complained that Jesus was with us and desperately tried to make us stop, it actually felt encouraging. If the demons were scared of us and avoiding us, it means that we must be doing something right. The presence and power of God is with us, what a compliment! Unknowingly, the demons were actually spurring us on to trust Jesus more. In their attempt to convince Brian to keep away from us, their conversation revealed to us their plans, making it easier for us to learn how to more effectively cast them out. It was as if Jesus was conducting a workshop for us during that time. God is so wise!

I also learnt that you don't need to be spiritual, or meet a certain standard, or be feeling good. I wasn't feeling good that day because of my interview and because I was feeling very tired. And I was worried about my future. But God brought me on an adventure. And He always brings me back to the same lesson: It is not about how good you are, it is about how good God is.

Love conquers all. Even while he was possessed, every time we took out tissue to clean his leaking nose and mouth, his heart would soften. The demons would become even more afraid and start reacting. I realized love is such a powerful force in the spiritual realm! In fact, it was love that brought us to pay more attention to people and approach them in the first place. Without love, we wouldn't have approached Brian and gone so far. We would have gone ahead for the prayer meeting and this whole incident would never have taken place. Without love, someone might not have gotten his speech back. One does not need to know a lot, one just needs lots of love. :)

#love #castoutdevils #healthesick #cleansethelepers #matthew10:8 #jesus #demonpossessed #christ #god #christianity #miracles #deliverance #spiritualwarfare #spiritualrealm #holyspirit

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