Extracting Roots
Remember, if you want to get the demon out, you need to remove the reason the demon got there. Understand how it got into the person. There is a weakness, there is a crack in their life and there is something that has gotten in there. We talked about the inroads. You know, the ancestral ties, the habitual sin, we covered a whole list of those things. These are the inroads the enemy has into our life and so he has driven that stake in there because we have given him that opportunity. We have given him that place and usually what the truth encounter does is simply expose what that area is, removes the right to be there and that way demons slide off. That's the way that it usually happens.
A lot of times God won't remove that demon until he has removed the right to get there. Otherwise, if He just takes out the demon and He doesn't remove the right, there still is something there that another demon can come and hook right into. So, you're going to want to remove that right to get there.
What should you do if demons don't come out when you tell them to? As we get into the process, as I'm praying for people, I'm asking the Lord to show me where these things are, what's going on. Remember, the way you get rid of a demon is kind of like the same way it got in there. There's a stake that drove in there. Sometimes when you're praying for somebody who's got a demon, the first thing I do is just rebuke this thing. In the name of Jesus, I come against you with the power of Jesus and I tell you to leave. I tell you to go in the name of Jesus. And sometimes those things go. They just leave then. But if they don't go, you have to ask why the thing isn't going.
So when I'm ministering to a demonized person, the first thing I do is presume the Lord has already taken care of the demon's right to be there. I just rebuke the demon. I tell that spirit to go. In a few minutes, if that spirit has not gone, then I start searching. Why is that thing still there? A lot of times it's because this area hasn't been taken out or removed. If you're ministering to a person and all of a sudden you see a demon manifest and you tell it to go and it doesn't leave, then you start saying, "Holy Spirit you're going to have to show us what we need to deal with."
I used to always address the spirit, but demons lie. So, that's not my first choice. You know that lying is part of their job description. So I always ask the Holy Spirit to show me. There are times when I have to address the spirit, but only with the instruction of the Lord to do so. I used to do that all the time; that was my only mode of operation. That was the way I learned. You rebuke this spirit, you call it forth and begin to tell it to tell you things and give you commands. You bring it into truth, before the judgment of the Lord. That's the way I used to do it. Every once in awhile, I might have to revert to that in an occasional power encounter, but most of the time I don't do that.
Most of the time I operate out of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which is a better way to operate. Holy Spirit show me, reveal to me, show me in my heart, show me in my spirit and reveal to this person the things, the inroads, where this thing has gotten into this person's life. Is it a curse of words? If it turns out to be a curse, we break the curse. We break the power of those words and that thing pops out. The demon has nothing to hang on to and he's sliding down the cliff.
If the inroad is habitual sin, I ask where the first time that habitual sin started. Where was the inroad? I don't want to know all the times in the past. I want to know what was the root. What was the one that the enemy drove its stake in that gave him the right? He may not have occupied it at that time, but he drove it in at that time and later on, through habit, then he hooked it in. What is that root? Where does it begin? Holy Spirit, show us what that is.
We're asking God to give us words of knowledge. We're asking Him to give us information we don't know by the natural. We're having the Holy Spirit reveal things to us and He will show you. He will show you dates. He will show you faces. He will show you rooms. You will be able to see the room and all the furniture and everything that was in it. Don't discount that. He will show you addresses, streets, cities. He will give you all kinds of information and you will know what kind of spirit it is.
You're asking the Holy Spirit, "Is it a spirit of infirmity? Is it a spirit of death? Does the spirit have a name? What is its role or function, because usually the name shows the function the spirit has in that person's life. So you ask the Lord to show you because you want to know when that spirit is gone, too. That's what discerning of spirits helps you to know. Is it gone? Has it left? And to discern whether the spirit you're speaking to is the Holy Spirit or a demonic spirit. So you really need to ask God, "Show me. Show me."
As you do this, help the person, too. Ask God to reveal things to that person. Ask God to search through their memory banks and bring something out. If the person brings out something and your spirit goes, "Oh no, this is not it," you pray for that area. Then say, "I think there may be something else we need to move on to and get it out. So, you've got to remove that right, that stake that the demon has in that person's life. So those inroads we talked about earlier, look at those. They may be the avenues the demon used to get in. But, you're going to have to work with the Holy Spirit.
Then begin to rebuke the demons and tell them to leave. Tell them to get out. Take authority over them.
What if they don't get out? What happens if you tell them to leave and they don't leave? First, the reason they got there in the first place hasn't been taken care of. This thing hasn't been pulled out. Often, the Lord won't allow a person to find freedom until they are willing to take out the source and the root. And you may be very frustrated ministering to them when in reality what you're struggling with is their will to let God be very thorough. God may not deliver them until they're willing to really get rid of it.
When It's Hard To Get The Demon Out
I was in India working with pastors and showing them how to minister deliverance. We had done an evangelistic meeting in a little village. We had about 80 to 100 people attending the meeting. I preached the gospel. A lot of people got saved and it was the first time this village ever heard the gospel. Somebody came to me and said, "Rodney, could you go help pastor Peter? He needs a little help." So, I looked and there was a woman who had been manifesting as I was preaching. I knew she was demonized, but I never had a chance to get over there. But, pastor Peter had made his way over there to minister deliverance to this middle-aged woman. Pastor Peter was sitting on the ground and he had a handful of her hair and was going, "Whoaaa, whoaaa, whoaaa!" I went over and patted him on the shoulder and said, "Now, pastor Peter, we don't have to do deliverance this way. There are other ways we minister deliverance. This isn't the way that we do it."
I began to talk to the woman and I said, "Are you willing to give your heart to Jesus?" And she said, "Sure, I will give my heart to Jesus." And I said, "Are you willing to forsake all of your other gods to give your heart to Jesus?" She said, "Well, no. Those are our family idols and I won't give those up. I will simply just add Jesus to the family idols." I said, "Jesus can't come into your heart with those conditions. The only condition He asks is that He has to be the one and only God in your life and you have to set aside and renounce all those others." She said, "Oh. I can't do that." So, I looked at pastor Peter and said, "If she's not willing to turn from all those other idols and give her heart to Jesus, we're going to leave her as she is." Because if we rebuke that demon, and we could have wrestled that thing out of her, all she was going to do was go home that night and invite this thing back. So, I said, "We're not going to waste our time wrestling with something that's going to come right back." The Bible says the second state is going to be worse than the first, so, we don't want to create something worse for her.
By the way, one of the solutions is finding the root cause for the right for the demonic to be there. I recommend you read Neal Anderson's book, "The Bondage Breaker." Chapter 13 goes through the steps of deliverance. I'm not going to cover all of the things that give a demon a "right" to a person, because it's in the book. It's very well laid out. If you haven't read it, go back and read it. If you haven't got the book, get it.
The other thing that makes it hard to get demons out is when there's no desire or intent to occupy the land. Remember when Israel was told to go in and take the Promised Land? God gave them instructions and He told them what was going to happen. It's in Exodus 23:29-30. It says, "I will not drive them out before you in a single year that the land may not become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. I will drive them out before you little by little until you become fruitful and take possession of the land." That is the way God works deliverance. If you're not willing to possess it, conquer it and rebuild a godly stronghold in this place, you're not ready for deliverance.
One of the reasons people are not finding deliverance is because God knows they have no intention of ever building a godly stronghold in this place. They may be lying to themselves and deceiving themselves. You're going to have to discern that by the Spirit if there's really any intent. And that may be one reason there's absolutely no deliverance going on. God isn't going to free them until they get really ready to be freed. God will allow something to stay as a thorn in your side until you're ready for complete freedom. Finally, when you get sick enough of it, you'll do something about it. That's what it took for me and my rage.
The same thing can happen with an illness. It can be a spirit of infirmity causing the physical problem. You finally get sick enough of it. You get sympathy at first and so you kind of embrace it. But, that's short-lived. You can't get the spirit of infirmity out of someone until he truly wants to be well.
After you complete the deliverance session, process the event with other team members. It's helpful to do this. And you should always take time to "deslime" after a session. You always want to take time to pray for each other. For example, let's say you're ministering and there's a woman being delivered who talked about sexual things that have happened, the way she's been abused and hurt. At the moment it's tragic. Your sympathy goes out in stuff like this. Later, the enemy will try to use those thoughts for imagination. You need to deslime so the enemy has no inroad into your life.
So after you minister deliverance, you want to pray for each other on the team. You might even want to call them a day or two later to ask how they're doing. Ask if they are depressed or something like that because the enemy will try to attack later. You need to cover and pray for each other. So after you minister deliverance to anybody, always take time to deslime.
Frequently, after I pray for people on a Sunday morning, I'll try to spend a little time on the altar just kind of desliming. I spend time in prayer just asking God to purge, cleanse and remove anything the enemy would use to gain entrance into my life because I minister to people, or through the stuff that was shared with me when I minister to them.
One of the questions people ask is where demons go when they're cast out? I don't know. I used to always send them to hell. I thought that was a good place to send them. Go to the pit. Then I go, oh, Jesus sent them to the dry places. OK, I send you to the dry places, and then it finally occurred to me that I'm not the one delivering them. Jesus is the one delivering them. I figured He is perfectly capable of sending them where they need to go.
Now I simply say, " OK Jesus, you send them where you want them." A lot of times I'll just tell them to go, I don't have to give them directions, I let Jesus do that. He's the one who's freed and delivered them. Angels, I'm sure, are accompanying them wherever they're going, so I don't figure that I have to do that. I used to really want to make sure they didn't go here or there. I wanted to give them directions as to what they did and where they went. But I don't do that anymore. I just say, "Lord, take these and free this person in this area."
I don't have any real answers on that one. All I know is it's not going to be like a flea that jumps on you from one dog to another. It's not like the movie, "The Exorcist". All of a sudden these demons jumped on this priest at the end. I think that is one of the fears the enemy would try to bring upon us. He lies and says, "If you get too close, I'll get on you. " My response is simple. "I'm covered by the blood. I'm sorry, man. I got my Teflon coating. You can try to slime me, but I'm covered by the blood." So take time to deslime and protect yourself, cover yourself and they're not going to jump on you like some bunch of fleas.
They lie to you. They try to deceive you. They say they're going to and they'll threaten you, and if they ever get a chance to speak, they'll do that. Just don't listen. Just rebuke them and tell them to shut up. That works for me.