Thursday, July 21, 2005

Deliverance ...

Wasn't it a Clint Eastwood movie?

My cell group leader and some other friends came over last night because I asked for a deliverance session.

For people who have watched the Exorcist, it's something like that but milder.
For people who haven't watched the Exorcist and who "don't believe" in spirits and the ilk, this would surely freak you out.

Background: Although I grew up in a convent school, was baptised at birth and my father was a faithful Novena attender, my interest in the occult began when I was about seven or eight. My uncle had a cupboard full of occultic books, and he also had a ouija board which he played with (but not in front of us kids). My parents would leave me to my own devices while they chatted with my uncle, so I'd hole myself in the cupboard and read all about astrology, palm reading, tarot cards etc.

When I was 18, studying for my A Levels there was one day I took a nap and when I woke up I could not sit up. I felt someone stepping on my chest, and I could hear an audible voice amidst a sound of rushing wind and groaning, "I'm going to get you." I remember struggling very hard to sit up. I couldn't breathe at all. I started repeating the Lord's Prayer in my mind, over and over. Finally the "person" went away.

My mother told me it was because I didn't study during the year that's why I was being punished with stress. My father dragged me off to Novena.

When I started work I developed a deep love for the Sandman comics (by Neil Gaiman, who was recently here). Gaiman's intellectual employment of religion, mythic legends and great literature seduced me deeply. I started dressing in black all the time, wearing an ankh, which is the Egyptian symbol of fertility. Basically I modelled myself after Death, a character Gaiman had created who was basically Sexy Miss Goth.

As this playacting grew deeper I started studying astrology. I wrote two astrology columns, which were always sworn by for their accuracy (hahaha! I'm sorry, if only the readers could have seen me write down 12 scenarios, put them in a box and tikam tikam, they would surely freak out). But I did study it quite deeply, and followed the moon cycles etc. Charting etc not a problem.

I could read palms, auras, do astro-travel (this one I learned from a writing workshop during my playwriting days).

Then I got into witchcraft. I just got deeper and deeper, because I was looking for something supernatural. Finally my husband couldn't take it anymore, he told me "Can you please not bring that witchcraft book to bed?"

My life was a mess. I was everyone's favourite party girl because I could read palms and always carried a tarot pack with me — who doesn't love a fortuneteller? (ME!) But I was deeply unhappy, very insecure, and wondered if I would get another chance when I died and got reincarnated.

AS YOU CAN TELL, I WAS ONE S****ED-UP CHICK.

Thank God He loved me so much He started calling me back.

After the birth of my first child I broke a lot of soul ties — no more tarot cards, I set aside my witchcraft book, no more pagan pendants hanging round my neck.

On 7 Oct 2003 I was finally born again. The realisation that I had sinned so deeply against God, offended my creator in so many ways, was painful to the core. But the amazing thing was that He could forgive me, He WANTED to forgive me and make me clean by the blood of Christ ... and I took that step of repentance and accepted Jesus, and the Father ran to me and brought me back into the kingdom.

Then I discovered that there was another kind of supernatural — that of the Holy Spirit. The spirit world definitely exists. It is folly to think you can just dismiss it by denying its presence as most people do. It exists and it wants to keep you away from the Truth of Christ.

On 1 November, the night before my mother died, I was baptised in the Holy Spirit. I was so hungry for Him, I just cried out to Him to come, and He came into me and I felt Him flow through me, through my belly, and my palms, and I broke out in tongues and wept. It was the single most incredible supernatural encounter I had had in all my years of looking for something beyond myself, in the spirit realm, and it was PURE, REAL and TRUE.

I was transformed overnight. My husband actually said to me "You're not the woman I married" (and not in a nice way, mind you, but he didn't understand back then. He does now.)

I felt set free that night, light as a feather.

But often I would see people manifest during deliverance prayer - vomitting, thrashing, screaming, as demons fought to stay in their bodies but were all cast out. I wondered with my past incantations and invitations to spirits, did I have any living in me who wouldn't go away?

I spoke to my cell group leader. He very kindly came with his wife and my other friends and they laid hands on me last night and prayed deliverance for me. I felt the Holy Spirit descend (it becomes a deep familiar feeling of "knowing") and it got very hot. As they prayed I wondered why I felt nothing ... then I felt the tiniest leap in my stomach, like a hiccup. It was not voluntary. But nothing else, just the Holy Spirit filling filling filling me. I guess when a body is completely filled with Him there's just no room for anything else.

I admit I don't feel physically different. But last night for the first time I walked through my house without the lights on and didn't feel the spirit lurking outside my children's room — PRAISE BE TO GOD!

My husband, who got prayed over as well, was so filled with the Spirit he couldn't move for 10 minutes. It was funny and wonderful!

When I shared with him later about my "non-event" deliverance session he said "it was this tiny demon, and when he poked his head out he saw these FIVE GIANT SPIRITUAL SHARKS and freaked out, and could not escape and he's gone!"

Luke 11:24: "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left'. 25 When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26 Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of the man is worse than the first."

V25 says the evil spirit came back to find the house EMPTY. That's the important verse, really. If you chase out demons and do not fill the space with the Holy Spirit, then you open yourself to 7 times the demonic possession. But fill yourself with the Holy Spirit and the demons will flee.

(though Smith Wigglesworth does have something to say about demon-possessed Spirit filled believers ... another day! my friend will pinch me for being so late)

Thank you Jesus for loving me. Thank you Holy Spirit for being inside me and guiding me even though I'm often stubborn and silly. Thank you Father for creating me. I just want to live for you.

2 Comments:

Blogger cybeRanger said...

Amazing testimony... Praise God!
I 100% believe God can & will use you mightily for His glory!

12:10 PM  
Blogger Soft Shell Crab :o) said...

Hello there, I just happened to come across your blog. Thanks for sharing your testimony so honestly. I'm trying to help a friend of mine who's stuck with the wrong type of soul ties too. May I ask you some questions: e.g. how can someone best journey through with this person when she's in the thick of it, not realising what she's gotten herself into?

I'm praying a hedge of protection for myself and my family.

3:19 PM  

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