Demonic Oppression vs Demon Possession

Moore's Corner Church

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So this evening, we're going to be looking at the subject of demonic possession versus demonic oppression or demonic influence.

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So let me begin with a story, okay? Several years ago, a gentleman walked into the church on Sunday morning and someone noticed that his wife wasn't with him.

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So they asked, because they always came in together, hey, you know, where's your so -and -so, where's your wife?

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I won't mention their names, they don't attend here anymore, but where's your wife? And he said, oh, she's not coming to church this morning.

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The devil got into her. And that was probably a figure of speech. And of course, it's generally accepted that born -again

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Christians cannot actually be possessed by the devil. And I don't think he was saying that.

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Maybe he was joking, maybe he was half -kidding, I don't know.

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But what I think he was communicating is that she was either influenced by the flesh or the devil, maybe, enough to where she was just, she didn't want to worship

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God that day, whatever happened. And listen, we've all probably felt that way, so it's not to be hard on her.

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But does the devil get into us? Maybe not inside, like the devil's possessing us, but does the devil influence us?

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You see, there's Christians who would listen to this and they'd just dismiss it. Like, yeah, I know that in the

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Bible that type of thing happened, but it doesn't really happen today. It's not like we would ever experience anything like that.

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And then other Christians realize that, no, this is real, this type of thing does happen.

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So you have demonic possession and demonic oppression, and they're two different things.

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So who believes that demons are real? I do. I was in law enforcement.

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So whatever your reaction is to this, let's define our terms and then we'll look at what the scripture says.

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So here's how demon possession is defined. A spirit enters into a person.

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Probably we're talking about people most of the time or some living being, and the demon controls that person's behavior.

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OK, the Bible, according to the Bible, the symptoms of demonic possession include the inability to speak seizures, people throwing themselves on the ground, immodesty, nakedness, self -harm, excessive strength and screaming, or what

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I might describe as like a shrieking sound. Typically, we think of demons only inhabiting people.

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But if you remember, in Mark chapter five, Jesus commanded the demons to come out of a man and they entered into what?

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A herd of swine, at which point the pigs ran violently to their death off of a cliff.

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OK, so that's demonic possession. It's in the Bible. It's described. And when someone is demonically possessed, it's clear there is something very, very wrong.

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Demonic affliction or demonic oppression is different. The person who is possessed is owned by the demon.

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Right. You think of the term possession. The demon owns them and controls them.

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But the person who is demonically influenced or oppressed, they can control their behavior.

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The demon possessed person can't control it. The demon oppressed person can control their behavior.

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So here's a good definition I found for demonic oppression. It says, as Satan attempted with Jesus in Luke four, verse two, demonic forces tempt us to sin and oppose our efforts to obey

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God. Should a Christian allow the demons to succeed in these attacks?

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Oppression results. Demonic oppression is when a demon is temporarily victorious over a

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Christian, successfully tempting a Christian to sin and hindering his ability to serve

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God with a strong testimony. If a Christian continues to allow demonic oppression in his or her life, the oppression can increase to the point that the demon has a very strong influence over the

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Christian's thoughts, behavior and spirituality. Christians who allow continuing sin open themselves up for greater and greater oppression.

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So hopefully, can you all see the difference? Demonic possession where the person really can't control themselves.

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It's very obvious something is seriously wrong. And then demonic oppression, which isn't always as obvious, but the person is in control of that.

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All right. Any questions to start with? Yeah. Yeah.

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Not necessarily. I think that is a possibility of the flesh, right?

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Because sin can come from Jesus has three categories, the world, the flesh and the devil. So if you're having wrong thoughts, is that possible that there could be demonic influence?

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I think it's possible, but I don't think we can say that's definitely what it is. It could be the flesh like you've seen things in the past and they come to mind and it's it's your flesh.

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We don't. Here's what we don't want to do. And I'm going to talk about this more later. We can't blame everything on demons or demonic activity.

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It's like the person, you know, the devil made me do it. You can't blame it on that all the time. So let's turn to first Samuel chapter 16.

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But just to start out with, I want us to all recognize the difference between demonic possession and demonic oppression or demonic affliction.

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OK. First Samuel chapter 16. This, of course, is the story of King Saul. King Saul was demonically oppressed or demonically afflicted.

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I do not believe that King Saul was demon possessed. The scripture indicates he was oppressed by an evil spirit.

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And we see that the evil spirit had a real impact on his behavior.

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Incidentally, King Saul, you remember, was replaced by King David. And even

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David, the man after God's own heart. David allowed the devil to get a foothold, didn't he?

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When he committed adultery with Bathsheba. And David did not immediately confess this sin.

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And because of that, he recounts in Psalm 32. David says, when I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all day long.

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For day and night, your hand, God's hand was heavy upon me. He said, my vitality was turned into the drought of summer.

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So David living in sin, he could feel it in his body. Now, it doesn't say that David was specifically afflicted by a demon.

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But he felt like the joy in the life was being sucked out of him. Until he finally confessed his sin and got right with God.

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At which point he says in Psalm 51, create in me a clean heart, oh

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God. And renew a steadfast spirit within me. And that's what God did.

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And then David goes on to say, I'm going to teach sinners these things. And they'll be converted to the

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Lord. I think this is a message that people need to hear. Whether it's a Christian who has given the devil a foothold.

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Or it's an unbeliever who's just living in misery with no hope.

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Either way, I think this message applies. Okay, so King Saul here in 1st

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Corinthians, or excuse me, 1st Samuel 16. Saul started out well.

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He was chosen by God to be king. And he didn't end well, did he?

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Why? Because he started rebelling against God. He definitely allowed the devil to get a foothold.

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All right, 1st Samuel 16, 13. It says, then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him.

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This is David, in the midst of his brothers. And the spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.

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So Samuel arose and went to Ramah. But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul.

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So you see that the spirit comes upon David. But the spirit leaves Saul. And a distressing spirit from the

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Lord troubled Saul. And Saul's servants said to him, Surely a distressing spirit from God is troubling you.

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Let our master now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man who is a skillful player on the harp.

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And it shall be that when he will play it with his hand, when the distressing spirit of God is upon you, you shall be well.

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So Saul said to his servants, Provide me now a man who can play well and bring him to me.

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Now skip down to verse 23. It says, And so it was, whenever the spirit from God was upon Saul, that distressing spirit, that David would take a harp and play it with his hand.

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Then Saul would become refreshed and well, and the distressing spirit would depart from him.

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Now, does it sound like Saul is demon possessed and he can't control his behavior? No, if Saul was possessed, the spirit wouldn't come and go.

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The spirit would just stay. So we all agree Saul was not demon possessed. Okay.

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But the Holy Spirit departed from Saul. And I know we can debate whether Saul was saved and is he in heaven today?

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And I don't want to get sidetracked on that, but the Holy Spirit departed. And here's what confuses people.

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Those of you who use the King James version, which I love the King James version, and I don't think this is a problem, but I understand why people would be confused.

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What does the King James say? Right. An evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.

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You say, well, wait a minute. How can, if it's from God, how can it be an evil spirit?

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Right. And the new King James says a distressing spirit. But either way,

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I think the explanation is simple. If demons do something, and again, a lot of people just dismiss this.

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And I don't know about that. Well, it's in the Bible. So we have to deal with it somehow. If demons do something,

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God is allowing them to do it. And if God is allowing demons to do something,

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God has a reason to allow it. At times we see this, the demons do what the

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Lord says, right? In the New Testament, Jesus would command the demon and the demon would do whatever

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Jesus told them to do. The Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, said about Satan, he said,

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Satan is God's devil. So the distressing spirit from the

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Lord, I believe was a demon, but God sent it or at least allowed it to trouble

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Saul. Yes. I mean, you could say God did create Lucifer and he fell.

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So that's the, and you said you didn't want to get sidetracked. So I'm trying not to.

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Okay. Isn't it fair to say that a born again believer cannot be demonically possessed?

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Right. You're getting ahead of me. We're going to cover all of this. So, yeah, I agree that a believer cannot be demon possessed.

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Okay. I mean, some people will disagree with that and I'll cover those who disagree. Yes. And can't we also say that someone that is leading a spiritual life and striving with all their being to live for the

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Lord can expect oppression, can expect the enemy. Why wouldn't the enemy?

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It's why we have to pray for you. Because if I was the enemy, you would be the one

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I would want to knock off. Sure. Yeah. Okay. And I don't want anyone.

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Let's say there's somebody thinking right now. Yeah. I think I have felt like this oppression now that it's described this way.

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I think I've felt this. I think any Christian. I think every Christian has felt it.

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Whether they categorize it this way or not. This is very common. Now, possession is a totally different thing.

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Right. Okay. So, like I said, Martin Luther said that. And I agree with this.

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Satan is God's devil. Remember the beginning of the book of Job. We see that Satan presents himself before God.

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Satan really had little to no ability to do anything unless God permitted him to do it.

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So God is in control of all of this. And what's happening in the spiritual realm. We simply don't know.

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We have a little bit of insight that we get from scripture. But we don't know more than we do know.

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I think that's safe to say. Okay. So Saul is being oppressed by this evil spirit from God.

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Flip over to 1st Samuel 18. Saul now is prone to questionable judgment.

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The fear of man. He struggles with bouts of anger and depression.

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And again, you don't hear me saying that anyone who struggles with anger, depression or questionable judgment has a demon.

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That's not what's being said. But these are some of the influences. Right. I look at 1st

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Samuel 18 verse 6. Says now it happened as they were coming home. When David was returning from the slaughter of the

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Philistines, that the women had come out of all the cities singing and dancing to meet

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King Saul with tambourines with joy and with musical instruments. So the women sang as they danced and they said,

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Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands. Do you think this made

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Saul very happy? He's being outshined by this young kid. Right. Verse 8.

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Then Saul was very angry and the saying displeased him. And he said, they have ascribed to David ten thousands.

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And to me, they've only ascribed just a few thousand. You know, Saul's feeling sorry for himself and he's upset.

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And he says, now, what more can David have but the kingdom? So now he's worried about his position.

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So it says Saul eyed David from that day forward. So does it sound like Saul is starting to give the devil a foothold?

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Oh, yeah. And look at the next verse. And it happened on the next day that the distressing spirit from God came upon Saul and he prophesied inside the house.

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It doesn't tell us what he said. Sometimes I wonder if he was speaking a curse over his life.

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I don't know what he said. So David played music with his hand as at other times.

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But there was a spear in Saul's hand. And Saul cast the spear and said,

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I will pin David to the wall. But David escaped his presence twice.

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So Saul or now Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him. But he had departed from Saul.

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Therefore, Saul removed him, David, from his presence. And what did he do? He made

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David his captain over a thousand men. Think about what just happened here.

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Saul tries to kill David. And then the next thing, he makes him a captain in his military.

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Now, does that make a lot of sense to you? That doesn't seem like a very wise thing to do. What's happening?

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Saul is under satanic or demonic influence. So he's doing illogical things.

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Sin will cause people to do some very illogical things.

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But Saul, who is made king by God, put in that position by God himself, is now paranoid.

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Which is why it says that he was eyeing David from that day forward. And this happens again in the next chapter to the evil spirit comes upon him again.

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And we see this back and forth in Saul's life. Sometimes he feels bad. And, yeah, David is really a great guy.

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And I'm sorry, David. And then the next minute, he's trying to kill him. And then he goes back and, right? If you've read the story, you remember that back and forth.

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So I think this is a good example with King Saul. It's a good example of a man who sinned.

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He continued to sin. He let the devil get a foothold in his life. And then because of that, he suffered from demonic oppression.

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Okay. To me, that's pretty clear what's happening. Here's the thing.

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All of that could have been avoided. Here's a verse or two. James chapter 4 verses 6 through 8 says,

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God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. King Saul started out a humble man, started out well, but then he became very proud.

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And he wanted to do things his way instead of God's way. And because of that, that was his downfall.

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So God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. James 4, 7. Therefore, here's the solution.

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Submit to God. Resist the devil. And what? The devil will flee from you.

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But if you're not resisting the devil, what's he going to do? He's going to stick around. And if he's sticking around, you're going to feel the affliction.

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And that's what Saul did. James 4, 8. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double -minded.

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So this is good advice. But it's also good news that demonic oppression or affliction, whatever you want to call it, it is avoidable and it's fixable.

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The person who's demon -possessed, I mean, this is a whole other level of bad. Yes. I'm reminded, because we're talking about spiritual matters here.

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And on the other side of things, we're familiar with Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.

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It says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will direct your path.

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So acknowledging God and saying, wow, I'm seeing God at work somewhere in my life or in some other area.

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If you acknowledge him, he'll direct your path and you'll be heading in the right direction.

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By the same token, if you recognize Satan's satanic spiritual things, if you just resist him, you say, oh,

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I know where that's coming from. You know,

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I announced to you all how the Lord has led me to teach fourth grade.

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And one of my dear friends said, are you sure? Are you sure you're up to teaching?

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And I almost said, get thee behind me. Because I said, no,

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I'm not sure, but I am sure of the Lord. So resist, just be aware of these spiritual things.

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Don't be so involved in the physical.

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Yeah, but I know there's somebody thinking right now, oh, please, you know, give me a break. Demonic influence, oppression, whatever, you know, and they're going to dismiss it.

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But OK, I think that's what the devil would want you to do. Like, yeah, I don't know if this is real.

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The devil tried to do this with Jesus, and obviously it didn't work with Jesus. And Jesus had to say, get behind me,

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Satan. And he was tempted in the wilderness, and he never gave in. But we give in, don't we?

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At times we do give in. OK, so submit to God. That is, we must obey

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God and resist the devil. If you fail, or I should say when you fail and give in, what do you do?

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Right away, confess your sin and turn away from it.

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Because the other option is to kind of let things slide, continue to do it again and again.

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And by failing to fight that spiritual battle, we open ourselves up to the oppression.

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So believers have this promise. If you draw near to God, he will draw near to you.

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Draw near to God. That may include and may require you to make some serious changes in your life on how you live day to day.

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But the promise is pretty clear. It might be difficult, but it's possible.

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OK, so that's demonic influence, affliction, oppression. Now let's look at demonic possession.

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Let's turn to Matthew 17. And I'll just be honest with you. Apart from what's said in Scripture, I know very little or I know

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I could say I know nothing about it. Apart from what's in Scripture, right? Because we all have our own thoughts and ideas about this.

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But honestly, if it's not stated in the Bible, I don't really know what's going on in the spiritual realm.

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And I don't want to be reckless and speculate. There's a lot of people online who will speculate.

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And I'm going to try to be biblical here. That's what we always want to do.

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So like I said, I'm not an expert. I don't know that much about this, but I do know what the

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Bible says. Because what are some of the misconceptions, right?

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We've all heard like the Catholic priest with the crucifix in the holy water. And there's that movie,

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The Exorcist, right? I want to ask who's seen The Exorcist. But I mean, that's kind of in pop culture.

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Like everyone's heard of this. Is that really the way it happens? Is that really how you cure demons?

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See, there's all this stuff out there that's not really in the Bible. So we want to be biblical.

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And then the other big question is how do you differentiate demonic possession from the serious mental illnesses?

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That's a pretty touchy subject, dangerous. And people are very reckless sometimes where they just want to categorize everything as demonic possession.

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And I don't think we can do that. So this is a challenging subject, and it's probably why so few bother to address it.

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So before we read this passage, why are some people demon -possessed? I don't know.

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Honestly, I don't know why people are demon -possessed. I would assume that people get demon -possessed by playing with Ouija boards and having seances and inviting the spirit in and all of that.

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But honestly, I don't know that. The Bible never says that. LSD works pretty good, too.

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You know, I think there are some people that maybe are on, you know, drugs maybe can push them over the edge or lead them in that direction.

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But yeah, I don't know. I want to stick to what the Scripture says. So Matthew 17, starting in verse 14, says when they had come to the multitude, a man came to him.

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And this is Jesus kneeling down to him saying, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely.

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He often falls into the fire and often into the water. So I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.

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So is this young child into seances and Ouija boards? Well, it doesn't say.

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I'm thinking probably not, but we don't know. It does seem like some people are demonically possessed, and there's like no reason.

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There's no obvious reason for it. Your chapter 17? Matthew 17, yes. One verse?

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Starting verse 14. Now, a few other things.

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The Old Testament, this is something that I just kind of discovered while studying this. The Old Testament doesn't really mention demonic possession hardly at all.

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Actually, I don't think it mentions it a single time, which I thought was interesting.

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But when you see the ministry of Jesus and the disciples, Christ's ministry in particular, it's like there's a flood of demonic activity around the ministry of Jesus, and then it carries over to the ministry of the apostles, which is what

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I would expect because they want to hinder the Lord's work, right? But after Jesus and the disciples, after the first century, where did all those demons go?

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Where were they before? Where did they go? I still assume that they're active in the world, but I have to be honest.

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The Bible doesn't give us concrete answers with this stuff. Don't you think that what it's talking about when the verse that says that Jesus came in the fullness of time?

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The world needed him. Couldn't stay with his father any longer.

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He had to come. Yeah, like I said, there's a lot of speculation. Okay. Matthew 17, verse 17.

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So they bring this child to Jesus because he, according to them, what's his problem? Yeah.

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Okay. King James says lunatic. Modern translation say epileptic.

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Of course, that raises questions, right? Verse 17. Then Jesus answered and said, oh, faithless and perverse generation.

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How long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to me.

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And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour.

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So this is a child who's demon possessed. Okay. Let's turn to Mark chapter five.

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But the thing that kind of jumps out at me is that it says he's an epileptic.

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So we have to realize that that doesn't mean that it's epilepsy like we think of today.

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It could be. It might not be. Could demon possession cause that?

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It might. It might not. Could it give symptoms that just look like epilepsy?

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Maybe. See, we don't really know. One thing we do know for sure is that this child,

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I mean, his life was not like there was something obviously wrong with him.

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And Jesus said it was a demon, and the demon was trying to harm the child.

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Right. You'd fall into the fire, fall into the water. Okay. One commentator says this.

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I think this is important. So if you haven't been listening, listen to this.

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This is really key. It is important not to label every depressed person, angry person, or epileptic individual as demon possessed.

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You can't say that. You can't say that. Well, they have this problem, this illness, therefore it must be a demon.

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You can't do that. On the other hand, Western cultures probably do not take satanic involvement in people's lives seriously enough.

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So you can't blame everything on demons and Satan, but you don't want to just dismiss all of this.

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The truth is somewhere in between. Where exactly? Again, I'm not sure

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I know. So where does that leave us? Just to comment on this idea that every illness is somehow caused by a demon.

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This is actually a growing movement within the charismatic Pentecostal world.

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In fairness, not all charismatics believe this. So, but many of them are now saying that if you have any, and I've talked to people who believe this and they were taught this.

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If you have any bad habit, any illness, any addiction, it is the result of a demon.

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So if someone is an alcoholic, they have the demon of alcoholism. Who's heard this? I mean, this is taught more than you think.

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I think that's a stretch at best. Totally false at worst. Could demons be involved? Yeah, they could.

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But there is a resurgence in this charismatic deliverance ministry where now there's all these

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Protestant ministers who are casting out demons. And I think we need to be very, very careful with that.

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And they say some of them, the more extreme teachers that are very popular online, they say that Christians can be demon possessed and that Christians need to cast out demons either on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

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I mean, think about that. I, I totally reject that 100%.

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If you ever hear someone teaching that, I would just recommend you do not listen to that at all.

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Yeah. And of course there's people who try to make money off it too, but I just think that's false. But remember, and I'm not trying to pick on charismatics and Pentecostals, but they believe you can lose your salvation.

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So if, if you can lose your salvation, then yeah, you can do something. Now you're not saved.

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Now you are open to potential demonic possession. So I just think that's a really dangerous, slippery slope that we don't even want to go near.

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Okay. Look at what a demon possessed person looks like. We were talking about demon oppression before.

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Now look at demon possession. Very, very different. Mark five verse one.

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Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes who's heard of the maniac of Gadara, right?

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This is that, this is that story. And when he had come out of the boat, Jesus immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit who had his dwelling among the tombs and no one could bind him.

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So he has that kind of superhuman strength, not even with chains because he had often been bound with shackles and chains and the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces.

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Neither could anyone tame him. And always day and night he was in the mountains and in the tombs crying out and cutting himself with stones.

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When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped him and he cried out with a loud voice and said, what have

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I to do with you? Jesus, son of the most high God. I implore you by God that you do not torment me.

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So you notice the demon recognizes Jesus and the demons afraid of Jesus. He knows that Jesus can just send him to the abyss, send him to hell.

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Really, if you want it to. Verse eight, Jesus said to him, come out of the man, unclean spirit.

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So a demon, unclean spirit, we believe the same thing. Then Jesus asked him, what is your name?

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And he answered, who's speaking? The man? No, it's the demon speaking.

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He answered, my name is legion for we are many.

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So this man is not just possessed by a demon. He's possessed by, well, he says legion.

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And back then a legion was like 6 ,000 or more soldiers. So, I mean, if that, if we take that literally that this man is possessed by 6 ,000 demons,

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I mean, that I guess is a possibility, but obviously this is an extreme case, right?

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I mean, if you're possessed by that many, this is extreme. But if you think of all and examine all the new

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Testament examples of demon possession, it's not just someone who's living in sin and they're struggling with it.

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And they're, you know, dealing with all this stuff in their life. No, this is very, very serious.

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It's obvious that he's demon possessed or that there's something very wrong. Again, I don't know everything about this, but this is just my personal story, okay?

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Don't take this as doctrine. But when I go through Greenfield, you know, it's hard not to notice just the people who walk the streets.

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Some of them, their behavior, some of them is very, very bizarre, right? They're not just talking to themselves, which we all do, right?

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We don't typically talk to ourselves in public, but they're having full -blown conversations with themselves.

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And some of the people I'm talking to are like shouting at themselves. Presumably they're shouting at the voice in their head.

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Is that drugs? Is that mental illness? Is it demon possession? Is it a combination of those things?

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Lord knows. But again, we can't just dismiss that as a possibility, but we can't say, yes, this is definitely what it is.

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Because how would you, how do you know? How do you discern? So there's a lot we don't know, but we do know demonic possession is real.

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Demonic oppression is real. So there are very powerful unseen forces out there.

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So don't dismiss it here. Here's the takeaway. After all of this, here's what we need to do.

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We need, as Christians, we believe that a believer cannot be demon -possessed.

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My response would be, the Bible says, greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.

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Ephesians 4 .30, that we should not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by which we are sealed until the day of redemption.

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The believer has the Holy Spirit who has sealed us until the day of redemption.

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So we who are saved, we cannot lose our salvation. We cannot be possessed by a demon, but we can be oppressed.

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You might say, well, I don't believe that. And hey, you know, again, that's your opinion.

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From studying this, I believe many Christians not only can be demonically afflicted, but many of us probably are.

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I'll be honest with you. I think I can think of times in my life where I have felt oppressed, not possessed.

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I don't want to scare anyone, but yeah, I felt demonic oppression.

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But you have to recognize this is a spirit. And then there's the flesh that we deal with. So it is a challenging subject.

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Here's the takeaway. Don't give Satan a foothold. When you sin, confess it right away.

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Turn away from it. But if you do it again, you don't confess it. And you do it again and again.

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Now the devil has a foothold, right? That's the term we're using. And once he has a foothold, we keep doing it.

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It gets worse and worse. That's where we feel the oppression. So I think there are people in this world,

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Christians, who Christianity is not working for them. There's no joy.

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There's something very wrong. They know there's something wrong. But they also know that there's this behavior they're involved in that they're just not dealing with.

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And that may be the source of the problems. So what's the solution?

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Turn away from it. James 4, 7 through 8. Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and what?

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He will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.