Demonic Feelings


                         By Phil Scovell




     Holidays often bring out the worst, or the best, in
families.  Some families cannot get along all year long but fire
up Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter or the fourth of July, and
everybody pulls together and enjoys themselves and goes home
saying, "Why can't we get along like this the rest of the time?"

     Then there's my family.  We seem to get along, for the most
part, all year long, but bring on a major holiday when the family
all tries to get together for a good time, and the worst sometimes
explodes; belching hot steam, ash, and lava like Mount Vesuvius.

     I was not raised by dysfunctional parents.  We did not have a
dysfunctional family.  Therefore, my children did not come from a
dysfunctional background and quite frankly, we are a pretty
normal American middle income family.  Well, most of the time we
are normal, I mean.  somehow, and for some reason, holidays have
been wrecked one way or another on occasion by somebody in the
family.  Most of the time, I can look back on those times now and
laugh.  Well, if not laugh, at least thank God that particular one
was over.  Then there are other times, when approaching any given
holiday, I wonder, "What's going to happen this time."

     A recent Easter turned into be another disaster.  I saw it
coming but frankly, there wasn't much I could think to do to try
and change anything about it.  For everyone involved, however, it
stirred up old memories of old holiday family get togethers which
went bad and created a ton of hurt feelings.  The Enemy knows all
about this sort of thing, of course.  After all, who do you think
is behind all this family conflict in the first place.  Therefore,
I knew from passed experience, that the days following Easter
would create more outpouring of even more emotional woundedness by
everyone involved.

     A couple of days following Resurrection Day, I took my two
four year old grandsons outside with their tricycles.  My youngest
son built a house on the back of my property so he has a 110 foot
concrete driveway back to his house.  The little boys love riding
and racing and playing on the long driveway.  As to their
grandfather?  Well, he sits in a lawn chair behind the privacy
fence protected from the slowly westward moving sun so he doesn't
sunburn his bald spot.  Excuse me, I mean thin spot.  I hate
hats.  So I am, therefore, able to get in a couple of hours of
think time.  Some people who haven't learned how to pray with just
their thoughts would think I was just day dreaming or meditating
or napping.  I am not.  Well, I did drift off to sleep once for a
minute or two.  I learn a great deal just by thinking my prayers
to God and exchanging my thoughts for his.

     On this particular occasion, I was still stirred up about the
mess we had at Easter.  Some very ugly things had been said and
although they hurt, they were not debilitating or emotionally
crippling to me.  My wife was very upset as well and her pain made
me consider even more how it had all happened, and more than that,
how things could be solved.

     As I sat and listened to my grandsons roaring back and forth
on the pavement a foot away from where I sat on the edge of the
long driveway, I asked the Lord this question.  What are the major
areas still left in my life that need healing?"  He quickly
identified three areas.  My blindness came first.  I had to
admit, that I still was finding areas in that category which
needed healing so I would be free from things surfacing and
causing me pain and emotional discomfort.  Money, or finances, was
the second area the Lord brought to my mind.  The third area I
prefer to leave for discussion at a later time.  After praying and
identifying these three areas, I decided now was as good as any to
begin processing through until peace came to all these areas.

     Since blindness jumped to my thoughts first, I started
there.  As I prayed, never saying a word out loud, but just
allowing my thoughts to flow freely and do the talking for me to
God, I felt anger rise instantly to my conscious mind.  "Anger?
Where did that come from?" Then I remembered.  We were flat broke
and some bills were coming due for which I had no money for at
all.  I hate money because of this and largely due to being in
this same spot many times over my life.  So, you say, what does
money have to do with your blindness?  Simple.  If I could see,
even at 52 years of age, I could run right out and get any job at
any fast food place.  Even if it were part time, that would help,
and my wife wouldn't feel she had to work so much overtime on her
job to help make ends meet.  So, the anger did have a source and I
was, in fact, on the right trail.

     Focusing more on my anger about being broke and my blindness,
I asked the Lord, "What's behind the anger?"  Put another way,
"What is the anger really trying to hide?"  I have learned in the
last two years in my new walk with the Lord through intercessory
prayer, that anger is never the cause.  It covers the authentic
emotion so I prayed to go deeper into my emotions and thoughts by
asking the Lord, "What's under the anger I feel right now?"  I
wasn't at all expecting what happened next.

     Hate flared in my mind and I felt fear.  "Hate?" I thought.
"Hatred for my blindness maybe?"  I reasoned for a split second
that such was possible, of course, but something told me that
wasn't it.  Letting the hate intensify, I asked the Lord, "What do
I hate?"  The answer I heard from the Holy Spirit nearly blew me
off my chair.

     "God!"

     "Wait just a minute," I said in my thoughts.  "How could I
hate God?"  You see, if you have read any of my other personal
testimonies of healing, you would know that when I went blind when
I was just 11 years old, it was at that period of time in the
hospital bed week after week that lies were demonically implanted
into my tender heart which said, "You'll never see again.  It is
your fault that you are going blind.  You let others down.   It is
God's fault because He let you go blind.  God doesn't really love
you."  There was likely more, but that's enough for now.

     When the hatred for God rose in my thoughts and emotions, I
immediately ran back in my mind to the hospital memory where the
lies were implanted into my subconscious thoughts.  "No, I said.
"I have been healed.  Jesus said I was healed at that place.  He
even said, we are leaving and never coming back to this place."
So during my prayer time, I simply said, "No, I am not going back
because there is no pain, no lie, and no woundedness or
discomfort; there is nothing but peace now in that memory."  I
prayed and simply asked the Lord, if there were other places of
woundedness relating to my blindness which were causing this
hatred for God to rise in my thoughts.  Bang.  Three memories
sprang to mind.  I checked each one but nothing immediately stood
out.  Then it hit me.

     "Wait a minute," I said.  "I don't hate God and never have
except when I was believing a lie spoken into my thoughts by a
demon."  So I said, "Lord, is there a demonic presence in this?"
Bang.  I suddenly realized what I was feeling was the feelings of
hatred for God coming from a deceiving spirit.  I almost laughed
out loud.  You see, now I knew I was going to get the answers I
sought because the demon would lead me to the root cause of the
hatred.

     "Lord," I quickly prayed, "show me where and why this demon
thinks he has a right to put his feelings of hatred for you on my
thoughts and feelings."  Bang.  It was over; gone; eliminated;
ousted; vaporized.  I was disappointed that the demon was gone
because I knew he was the key to the hatred.  Later, as I thought
about how quickly the demon left the second I asked the Lord to
show me why the demon had a right to be in one of those memories,
I realized why he left so instantaneously.  He had no right to be
in those memories I was investigating for lies.  He was trying to
deceive me into thinking I had hatred for God by literally putting
his own evil feelings upon mine in order to deceive me into
thinking those were my feelings.  The split second I turned to the
Lord to show me the truth about the hatred, the deceiving spirit
fled.  "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and
he will flee from you, (James 4:7).

     I realize many today do not accept that demons can influence
our thoughts and feelings and I won't try and convince them
otherwise.  I offer this testimony, however, for those who may now
recognize that not everything they hear and feel is of their own
making.

     Here is a prayer I pray every night before going to bed.
Perhaps you, too, will find it helpful.  Part of this prayer is
taken from some prayers that another Christian counselor uses in
his ministry.  This is a shortened version of his but is more than
adequate for daily application.

     "Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you in the name of your only
begotten Son; the True Lord Jesus Christ.  If I have listened to
any lies of Satan or his demons today and believed them as though
they were true, if I have repeated any of their words as though
they were my words, if I have felt any of their feelings as though
they were my feelings, and if I have thought any of their thoughts
as though they were my thoughts, I confess this to you as sin and
I ask you to forgive me.  I take back all the ground I have given
them this day and I give it back to you for your honor and glory.
I pray this in the name and the power and the authority of the
True Lord Jesus Christ."


I Flew Kites With Jesus
www.SafePlaceFellowship.com