27: How to Evict Demonic Activity from Your Life – Practical Spiritual Warfare, Part 2

[00:00] Stephanie: Season three, episode 27. Today we are talking about practical warfare. Continuing our little series on that, and we’re happy to be with you.

Hello, Father.

[00:11] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. This is what, The Art of War that we’re talking about?

[00:15] Stephanie: Yes.

[00:16] Marcus: What’s his name?

[00:17] Stephanie: Sun Tzu.

[00:18] Marcus: Sun Tzu, Yeah. I mean, a different kind of spiritual war.

[00:23] Stephanie: You know, there are some tactics there. There are some tactics.

Last week we started talking through what I find I have been calling “the whistle while you warfare” acrostic, because it is the word SONG. So we have:

• Stop giving permission,
• Oust the enemy,
• Nurture new habits and
• Guard your ground.

Today we are going to be talking about oust the enemy, which, you know, other people will just call eviction.

[00:57] Marcus: Sure. But ousting is so much more…

[01:00] Stephanie: Oust the enemy!

[01:02] Marcus: Epic.

[01:07] Stephanie: We talk about Karl Payne’s CCC a lot, and I’m pretty sure we talked about it last episode, but that is confessing, canceling, and commanding. Do you want to just give a rundown?

[01:20] Marcus: It’s basically the idea that demons have to have permission. So when you get to evict a demon, you’ve got to get rid of the permission by confessing what gave a permission, canceling that permission, and then you can use your authority to command it to leave.

That’s the three C’s: confess, cancel command.

[01:36] Stephanie: And then we also like to add a fourth C, which is Commit. Now commit that area from which you have ousted the enemy.

[01:43] Marcus: I actually got that idea from a church down in Lexington that was using the model, and they said, “Hey, we’ve added a C!” And I’m like, “Great, perfect. Yeah, we’ll do it.”

[01:52] Stephanie: Yes. Because we want to commit it back to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and it all comes back to Jesus. So I love it. Would you just give us a story or two about this process so you can see it?

[02:07] Marcus: So the simplest I’ve ever heard was a guy who said, “Any ghost that is not the Holy Ghost has to leave.” That’s probably the shortest.

[02:17] Stephanie: No, he said, what was it? “Holy Ghost, be the only ghost here.”

[02:21] Marcus: Oh, is that what it was? Okay. Yeah. Holy Ghost, be the only ghost here. That’s the shortest I’ve ever heard.

When I was seven and this thing showed up in my room, and I just said, “I plead the blood of Jesus, and in Jesus name, you have to leave!” And it left. That was pretty short.

In certain settings, this is not complicated, but in most settings, what you’re doing is as a facilitator. I’m not an exorcist who is uncovering the demon, calling it forward, and evicting it.

I am kind of facilitating the person, who is a Christian, into finding out where (they) have opened doors, helping them close those doors through confession and canceling, and then I’m coaching them through using their authority in Christ to command these things to leave, so that they realize that in the future they can do it themselves.

And so the difference again is that a power encounter is more like when you have a witch doctor versus a missionary. It’s more in the realm of the miraculous. The difference between a power encounter, I put all those things in the realm of the miraculous and I put these in the realm of authority, which is a legal category.

And that’s why we talk about a legal approach to warfare. So there’s my seven year old story. A classic one that often comes to my mind is of a young lady who had a psychic reading.

After her psychic reading, she developed some psychic abilities herself. And so she had to confess that she had done this. And it was a co-worker who was like, “Oh, you’ve got a problem? Let me help you. You need to do this.” And her  co-worker got her doing all kinds of crystals and tarot cards and things like this. So she confessed that she had done it. She then said, “I now renounce doing it. I ask you, Jesus, to cancel any permission that this has given to the enemy to be here.”

And then I walked her through the foundations of her authority and she said, “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command any spirit that has taken advantage of this to leave now and take your works and effects with you.” And that was it. It wasn’t a very long prayer. And then,  “I now commit this part of my life back over to the lordship of Christ.” And she said afterwards, I feel lighter, I feel clearer. And when I saw her a few months later, she said she had lost her psychic abilities.

Part of the idea here is using the binding and using the legal process to kind of keep things under control so that they don’t get crazy unnecessarily. But that was a classic case.

[05:13] Stephanie: I love it. Dan Allison is leading a cohort later this year that’s like no drama deliverance.

[05:21] Marcus: Yeah, no drama deliverance. Yep.

[05:25] Stephanie: Yeah, because there are a lot of people, they hear ousting the enemy or eviction, and they think lots of drama. Would you speak to that a little bit?

[05:32] Marcus: Yeah, when there is drama, again, most of the time where there is drama, I would kind of put that in the category of one of two things that’s going on generally.

That is that the person didn’t know to bind the spirits and put ground rules in place, or it’s in the realm of the miraculous. For example, when Jesus showed up and just said, “Go!” That’s a power encounter. That’s in the realm of the miraculous. And my mind just went to about a hundred things I could say about that story. But what about. Well, what about.

[06:08] Stephanie: Also, I know a lot of times you’ve said, in your personal experience, when there has been a lot of acting out or something if you’re in a freedom session, your experience has been that that’s because there’s occult in the background. Whether that was them, their participation, or an ancestral participation, or something that there’s some sort of occult activity.

[06:29] Marcus: I’ve only seen that kind of acting out when the occult is the ground for the demons to be present. I will also say that when you get into complex situations in which maybe somebody’s got multiple personalities.

Or I’ve had people too, when you got in the middle of an eviction and all of a sudden they just sort of went into a trance. And no matter how much we bound and how much we did things, it was like they were in this trance and God had them walk through some kind of an experience and when they got done with that, then we finished the eviction.

But what we often found was that while they were in that trance, Jesus showed up and healed something for them. So when you get into complex things, you can kind of throw out a few of the rules. It’s not that the rules don’t apply, but the process doesn’t always go 1, 2, 3.

[07:21] Stephanie: You’re learning the basics so that you can then build off of.

[07:23] Marcus: You’re learning the basics so that when things deviate from them, you can count on the fact that it’s going to come back to this eventually.

[07:30] Stephanie: And this isn’t an advanced issues thing, but it is helpful to talk about things like that. I know we have a lot of people who listen to the podcast who do deal with advanced issues.

How about when you’re working with somebody else through the CCCs, or helping them oust the enemy. Could you give us some principles for what authority do you have? We talked a little bit about this in our Q and A, but I know we said we’d continue that conversation.

[08:01] Marcus: All right. So the foundation of the believer’s authority –  is that you’re asking?

[08:06] Stephanie: Or so when you’re not just saying, you’re not just confessing, canceling, committing.

[08:19] Marcus: Yeah. Commanding and committing. I get it.

[08:21] Stephanie: All the Cs are going wibbly, wobbly. Sorry.

When you’re not just working this through for yourself and you know what’s going on and you’re praying with a friend or a family member or even someone in your church or whatever, are there some standard principles that you need to keep in mind when you’re praying with someone else through the Cs?

[08:43] Marcus: Yeah. So one is that they need to be participating. If they’re not participating, that’s again, where I tend to put it in the category of the miraculous. Like, if this works, it’s a miracle, because they need to be participating in the battle.

And that can be as simple as. I’ve had people who were so kind of tied up in knots that the best I could get out of them is, “Do you give me permission to do this? Just nod.” And they would nod.

And so I say it in agreement with this person and go through the process that way. But in most cases, I want them to exert some level of participation and to be fighting that battle. Partly because you’re trying to train them that, “You’re not coming to me as a specialist every time you’ve got a problem. This is something you can learn. You can learn how to do this.”

[09:36] Stephanie: Yeah, well, because even to the extent of, you are rarely saying, “I am casting this demon out, and so in the name of Jesus, I am going to evict this. I’m going to oust the enemy.” You’re approaching them through doing it for themselves. Can you dwell on that?

[09:50] Marcus: I tend not to do that, again, unless the person is so out of it that they just can’t. In which case I will at least try to get affirmation from them that I have permission.

Like in one case, I was working with somebody who wasn’t from this religion. They weren’t Christian. They were from another country, they had a different religion. But I asked even there, I said, “Do you give me permission to ask Jesus for help with this?” And they said yes. And so then I went forward and I did the casting out at that point. It worked. Yes. But as much as possible, try to get them to participate.

[10:26] Stephanie: Jesus loves it when you ask him for help. He says, “I would love to help you.” That’s really cool. Can you press into that?

[10:33] Marcus: It was a funny story. It was actually a funny story. I mean, you know, if you can’t laugh at warfare stories, what can you laugh at?

Anyway, I get it. The warfare when it’s going on is no fun at all. But in this case, I had just become the president of this ministry. It was a long time ago, right? It was still called ICBC, and it was known almost exclusively as a spiritual warfare ministry at that point.

And I came to visit my dad in Fort Wayne, and he had. He got a call shortly after I showed up from somebody saying, our grandmother is rolling around on the floor and comatose, you know, out of her mind, we think it’s a demon. Would you come and help?

[11:16] Stephanie: And so were they Christians who called?

[11:18] Marcus: They were Christians who called, but the grandmother having the effect was not. So this is the one I said where I got permission. This is the rest of that story.

And so my dad said, “Well, you want to go over there?” And I said, “Well, let me follow you, because then I may need to leave.” And so he pulls over in front of the house, and I follow him there. As he pulls in front, we find out later that she sat bolt upright in the middle of the kitchen, and in clear English, which she did not speak, said, “Don’t let him in here.”

And then I pulled up behind him, and she did it again, “Don’t let him in here either!” So we come in. The demons already know they’re in trouble, right? And so it’s not because it’s Dr. Timothy and Dr. Marcus Warner. It’s because there are Christians there who know that they have authority.

[12:07] Stephanie: They have a track record of understanding how to deal with this.

[12:13] Stephanie: Not a special anointing.

[12:14] Marcus: Wasn’t a special anointing. Like, “Oh, no! It’s somebody with an anointing and a power we can’t deal with uniquely!” but somebody who understands what’s going on.

[12:23] Stephanie: Every Christian is anointed in this way. Yeah.

[12:26] Marcus: So at that point, my dad started the process, but his hearing was starting to go at that point in his life and it was pretty clear I needed to jump in and finish this. And so I began. At some point, I just began praying and I just prayed and prayed, renouncing curses, breaking things, all this with her permission, “Can I do this?” And she said, “Yes.”

And then I just started praying. At one point, I began to wrap up, and she said, “Don’t stop. It’s working!” And so I continued going and then ended with the command. And then she was classically clothed, sane, and in her right mind. And at that point, I told her kids, who were Christians that had invited us, “You need to lead her to Christ.”

Because this is the classic case of somebody having a house, a house swept clean, but unfilled because she’s not a Christian. A lot of Christians wonder about that. They go, “What about that pastor that says the house was clean but unoccupied?”

If you’re a Christian, your house is occupied. The Holy Spirit is there. So that’s for non-Christians. You can get deliverance as a non-Christian, but unless you invite Jesus and the spirit of Jesus into your life, that house is going to remain unclean. What we’re doing by committing is not inviting Jesus in for the first time. We’re just reasserting his rightful control of that part of our lives.

[13:46] Stephanie: Now that’s really good. What’s the fastest you’ve ever seen a CCC process go?

[13:57] Marcus: Two minutes?

[13:58] Stephanie: Yeah. It was effective because it’s legal.

[14:03] Marcus: Right. And the longest is probably two hours.

[14:06] Stephanie: Interesting.

[14:07] Marcus: And it’s got to do with the complexity of the situation.

[14:12] Stephanie: Since you brought it up, the idea of praying about curses and things like that. Could you address if you’re ousting an enemy that got sent at you?

[14:20] Marcus: Right.

[14:21] Stephanie: How to deal with that?

[14:22] Marcus: So one of the earliest counselors at ICBC, when it was ICBC Sioux City, Iowa, was Jim Logan. And Jim was a missionary to American Indians. I forget which tribe.

But he was routinely getting curses placed on him by witch doctors. And he would say he got used to kicking them out of his room at night and commanding them to leave. It was curses placed on him that had led to spirits showing up in his place to intimidate him, to cause him harm.

[15:00] Stephanie: Like paranormal activity.

[15:02] Marcus: Yes, paranormal activity and just sensing darkness, feeling a weight on your chest, seeing things float around. Yeah, okay. So he got to the point where he wasn’t bothered by this again. “Oh, this again.” Right, exactly.

But one time, for some reason, he said he decided to not just send it away, but tell it to go back to the person who had sent it. And the next morning, the witch doctor of that village was not very happy because something had come back to him.

And so curses. Basically, the theology of curses, a lot of people know that it says that an undeserved curse does not land, so they think, “Well, how could a Christian ever get cursed?” And it doesn’t mean that if I’m affected by a curse, it’s because I deserve to be cursed.

Jesus became a curse for us on the cross. And so part of what we’re doing here is we are standing on the finished work of Christ in the same way that, let’s just say in Romans it says, “I have died to sin and I have been set free from sin.”If you just take those words, it sounds like I therefore never sin again. But experience tells us that can’t be what he means. I have been set free from sin. I am no longer a slave of sin. I’m not a sinner anymore, but I do still sin.

So in the same way, Christ became a curse for me. But it’s on that basis that I can tear up curses, that I can reject curses, that I can renounce them. And I don’t always have to know when a curse is happening.

Sometimes God just protects me from that. But every now and then, I think he allows us to discover our own authority and how to use it by allowing us to face that battle and see that it’s winnable through the authority that we have in Christ.

[17:04] Stephanie: Yeah. Sometimes it’s a training ground, or sometimes when you see the enemy at work, it’s exposing the broader narrative that you might not have understood the context of what you were in at that time.

And you’re like, “Oh, I know how to deal with this better now. Or I understand. Or it’s shifting my perspective because I didn’t have that fact. And so I was stringing these facts together and coming up with a faulty conclusion because I didn’t understand that was happening.” So, yeah, yeah.

[17:33] Marcus: And so that’s kind of where that goes. When you get into the idea of curses, again, it can get complex. So I’m talking about the core principles here.

For example, one level of complexity is, somebody actually comes on the property, does a ritual on the property, buries something in the ground, whatever. There’s an object now that’s associated. Sometimes you’ve got to ask the Holy Spirit to show you if there’s something more going on here.

And I know people who had to dig up the object, destroy it, cancel the ritual or the curse placed on it for everything to break. And there are things like that that can take this to another level. But in general, I’m just talking about spoken curses.

[18:19] Stephanie: Okay. Would you give us some quick resource recommendations if somebody’s like, “Yes, I need this.” And also, it might be, “I would like help walking through just this process. Where do I go?” And also. “Well, we’ll start there. I need help with this.”

[18:36] Marcus: Well, of course, my book.

[18:39] Stephanie: What Every Believer Should Know about Spiritual Warfare

[18:41] Marcus: What Every Believer Should Know about Spiritual Warfare is designed to be immediate help. Short, simple, to the point. If you want a more expanded understanding, there’s a lot of good books that can help you with a basic understanding.

I like the one my dad did with Neil Anderson, The Essential Guide to Spiritual Warfare; Karl Payne’s book on spiritual warfare, Christians, Demonization and Deliverance. Those are three good ones to start with.

[19:05] Stephanie: Okay.

[19:05] Marcus: And then there’s Mark Bubek and Jim Logan. There’s a bunch of Fred Dickason. We got a lot of people who are connected to us who have written great books on it.

[19:11] Stephanie: Yes. And not to be overwhelming, but some people want to take notes. They’re like, “Yes, I need all the resources!”  I would also just say Understanding the Wounded Heart has a lot of spiritual warfare in it, and it will walk through this as well. And from that level, if you’re wanting something even more interactive than a book, The Freedom Course walks through Understanding the Wounded Heart and also some Breakthrough.

And then if you’re wanting even more, if you’re wanting to actually go through something in a group or with a live teacher or things like that, I know Melissa Finger is teaching the advanced issues stuff.

[19:51] Marcus: Although you’ve got to qualify to get into that course. It’s not just for anybody, but they can apply, but it’s not just open to the public, whoever wants it.

[20:00] Stephanie: You got a good clarification.

[20:01] Marcus: Yeah. It’s an advanced course for a reason.

[20:04] Stephanie: Yes, yes.

[20:04] Marcus: And then, of course, we have prayer ministers on the website. You can go through various listings from Freedom in Christ and from other ministries as well as graduates of the School of Ministry who are listed there if you’re looking for one on one help.

[20:17] Stephanie: All right, awesome. Well, any final thoughts for ousting the enemy?

[20:23] Marcus: I sure like the epicness of ousting. Let me just say that when you’re in the middle of a battle like this, it does feel overwhelming and it can feel dark and hopeless. One of the things signs that there is a demonic component to this is the hopelessness of the situation.

A lot of times we pray in a warfare way, like saying “In the name of Jesus, leave.” And it doesn’t work and we panic and we don’t understand it’s because that’s not working because they have permission. So we need to remember it’s not enough sometimes just to say “In the name of Jesus, leave.” Sometimes you’ve got to do a little digging to find out what is opening the door here, what doors need to get closed if it’s still not working.

My experience is that most of the time, because they’re still another open door I haven’t gotten to, and so you take this to the Lord in prayer, “God, would you show me what the door is that’s open? Would you begin exposing what needs to get closed up here?”

I would just say that there are some basic things about spiritual warfare that every Christian ought to know because there are a lot of things that aren’t that hard to deal with that we don’t have to put up with. It’s easy to get bogged down in the complex cases. But there’s also a whole lot of things that are relatively simple and straightforward if we just knew how to deal with them.

[21:35] Stephanie: Mm. Yeah, that’s good. All right, we’ll continue next week. Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to, like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend.

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Thanks again. We’ll see you back on the trail next week.