God is a loving and just God who dwells in pure holiness. When Satan sinned against Him, the heavens themselves became defiled. Job 15:15 ESV “Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight;” Job 25:5 ESV “Behold the moon, and it shines not; yes, even the stars are not pure in His sight.” Luke 10:18 ESV, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”
When Jesus died as the Lamb of God, His blood not only forgave our sins here on earth, but it also cleansed and purified the heavens themselves. Hebrews 9:25 ESV “Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.”
Before Christ purified the heavens, all people who died went to Abraham’s Bosom, which was separated by a gulf or chasm from hell. This story is told by Jesus in Luke 16:19-31. After Jesus purified the heavens with His Blood of Atonement, He was able to tell the thief on the cross, “Today you will be in Paradise with me.” (Luke 23:43) Paul was caught up to the third heaven or Paradise in a vision, hearing words not lawful for man to speak. (II Corinthians 12:2)
Satan’s sin polluted the heavens themselves with his prideful rebellion and disobedience; preventing man, without the proper atonement, to be able to enter into God’s Presence. It took the Blood of Christ to pay the devil’s ransom for our souls, and to make a way for us to have fellowship with our Father and go straight to heaven when we die. The Bible says angels carry the soul of the righteous to the Father.
Satan, since he was cast out of heaven, has sought to destroy all that God has created; including nature and our environment, as well as countless lives of men, women and children. As mentioned in the previous two posts, he has been busy using his demons to attach themselves to our wounded souls, and to our rebellious and disobedient habitual sins.
He starts out with a ‘thought’ outside the boundaries of the Word of God. When you entertain that thought, he bombards you with more thoughts, until you begin to attach an ‘affection’ to the thoughts. He makes sure the right people and the right circumstances cross your path to encourage your affections. Then, because you like what you are thinking and you like the circumstances and the people (who think and feel like you do about these affections) that have come into your life, you begin to ‘imagine’ more ways to fulfill these thoughts with ‘actions’. Satan brings more opportunities into your life to help you along, all the while letting you think that it is you who desire these affections and thoughts and imaginations and actions, and it was just by chance that you met your new friends who think and feel like you do.
When you have ‘acted-out’ your imaginations often enough they turn into a habit. You have been able, by self-justification and false arguments, to quiet your conscience and the voice of the Holy Spirit. The more you override the safety valve of the conscience and the Holy Spirit, the harder your heart becomes to anything convicting you of wrong. Soon your habit has turned into a way of life, and you find yourself compelled to do sinful things even when you would rather not do them anymore. This is when the ‘Strongman’ has used his ‘demons’ to gain a ‘stronghold’ in your mind and body. This is where you need help in being set free from the enemy of your soul.
There are ten steps from the above process through to deliverance.
1-Thoughts entertained outside of God’s Word (demon origin)
2-Feelings for these thoughts become stronger (demon influenced)
3-Imaginations run rampant on how to fulfill these affections (demon fed)
4-Action is taken and sin is committed (demon initiated)
5-Opportunities appear out of nowhere to fulfill this sin (demon arranged)
6-You tell your conscience to be quiet and give many reasons for justifying your sin (demon inspired)
7-Habits are formed from repeated sins, and the conscience becomes seared as with a hot iron (demon encouraged)
8-A lifestyle shapes your character and your life; you are now a thief, a drug addict, a sex addict, an adulterer, a fornicator, etc. (demon controlled)
9-You are controlled by demons, as they have set up a stronghold in your mind and body, and your conscience is in a coma. (demon infested or demon possessed)
10-You need deliverance. (demons expelled)
Keep in mind that these ten steps are without any emotional trauma or hurts. When there are hurt feelings with anger, resentment, and unforgiveness, then the process in quickened and enhanced, making the stronghold even stronger. Repentance and confession of past hurts are a must before any deliverance can be accomplished.
Remember that man is made up of spirit, soul and body. The spirit is the part that is like God. The soul, filled with the living breath of God each day, is like God’s image with its moral and creative capacities. The body is of this earth and will go back to the earth at death, but with the hope of Christ, it will be changed into a body like His glorified resurrected body.
The soul is made up of the ‘will’, the ‘intellect’, and the ’emotions’. The will is the guard to the soul and nothing can enter your soul without you choosing to allow it to do so. When you disobey God’s Word, you are telling the devil that it is okay to make himself at home, thus you have opened the door of your will. The intellect is where we use our imaginations and reasonings to justify our sinful, disobedient behavior. The emotions are where we attach affections to our thoughts and arguments.
God created us to have fellowship with Him with our spirit; while using our minds to willfully choose full obedience, out of love, to His Word. Adam messed this up for all of us. Now we are left with a natural mind, instead of a spiritual mind; and the natural mind cannot know the things of God, for they are spiritually discerned. When we walk in our natural arguments we always choose what is pleasing to the flesh, instead of what is pleasing to our Father. The mind listens to all the worldly input bombarding our souls and says, “Yes!, This is what I like!” While the soul is restless and ill at ease, and the spirit is reflecting a carnal soul and tastes like stale water.
I lived on a farm for a few years of my childhood. We had a 30′ foot well in the front yard of the house, for our water supply, with no plumbing in the farm house. I used to have to go down into that well to clean out all the debris that fell through the crack of the concrete slabs that covered the opening. I would find everything from tools to frogs, which I would put into a bucket and dad would haul it up out of the well. Then, dad would pour some Clorox into the well to purify the water. That was the best tasting water there ever was, especially after working in the haymow all day. I would just pump the water, letting it wash over my wrists, and it would cool down my whole body; then I would fill a tin cup and drink to my heart’s content. Nothing better than cold well water, unless it is an iced cold watermelon!
Before my day, they drew water from the well with a wooden bucket. As long as the wooden bucket was used on a regular basis, the water from the well tasted clean and refreshing. If the bucket was allowed to sit in the sun for a few days, without being used, it changed the experience from being refreshing to spitting the water out of your mouth! What was the difference? The water took on the flavor of the bucket.
Our souls are just like the wooden bucket. If we allow all the worldly things to saturate the surfaces of our bucket, we begin to taste like the world, or like our soul. Because of our sinful ways and habits, many people are repelled away from us and we don’t understand why.
If we fill our buckets with the Word of God and with time spent in His Holy Spirit, then He fills our human spirits and they overflow into our carnal souls and minds, transforming us with new thinking and affections. Suddenly, the things of this world’s system don’t taste as good to us anymore, and we find ourselves thinking and feeling differently about our former ways and lifestyles. Our mind has been renewed into what Christ’s mind is like, and His mind always pleases His Father’s mind. We find that we are attracting different types of people into our lives now, and we begin to draw away from old friends and old places, spending more time with the One who has changed us from within our souls.
Satan always starts with deception and lies cloaked in partial truth, just enough for us to be able to justify our sinning against our Father. God always starts with Truth, and points out that the way is narrow and that you must deny yourself and others to follow Him, as He informs us of the Power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to walk with Him.
Click here for Satan’s War for Your Soul-Part Four