Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5)

Mike Connell

We had a problem in the sound gear. Sound people do well in the world. They learn their stuff and they do their stuff, you come into the church and it's just got something else to it that no one told me about. It's called demons [laughter] and something can go well, then you don't even touch it and it's suddenly changed. How did that happen? There's a spiritual influence around what we do, and so often when we have meetings like this, I'll have unusual pressure come on me through the week. Lyn would know this, Sargin knows that, Joy knows it, we all know. We've been around a while, we just know oh ho, yeah, we've got a meeting coming up, demons are getting agitated, must be going to be good. [Laughter] You know, just go for it, so the tough get up and get going. So during ministry you can have some demonic pressure come on you as well. This is all it amounts to; in the middle of ministering, you can just have this overwhelming feeling, I just want to quit and go home, I've had enough, I'm out of here. Now you'd be surprised, it's so simple, but it can just overwhelm you, just like that. I don't want to do it anymore, I've had enough.

I've been amazed, very often when I've been in ministry calls, almost the whole ministry team quit on me, just gave up, just left me to it. You'd be surprised how many - have you had that Lyn, they all give up? They all give up, and you find you've got hundreds of people to pray for, and the ministry team pray for a few and then they quit, they gradually walk away and they're all gone. You think what happened? And I'm just left there with all these people, because they came under spiritual pressure, and just quit - so quitting is one thing.

A second thing that can happen is, you can get an immense block in your mind, so you can go up to someone and say hello, I'm so and so, what's your name? They'll tell you, well I'm Jeff. Then about 30 seconds later you cannot remember who you're talking to, and you can't remember what they said they came for. It's like blank. Your mind goes totally blank, and you think whoa, then you feel a bit dumb. [Laughter] I might have to ask again, I've forgotten. How could I have forgotten, they only just told me. But what it is, it's witchcraft operating, and the witchcraft freezes your mind. The witchcraft pressures on you, and you just get confusion in your mind, so sometimes when you come to pray for people, you'll feel all this confusion come around your mind. It is just witchcraft, and all you've got to do is very simply, just step back from the person, pray in tongues, [prays in tongues] You don't have to pray loud, just stir your spirit up praying in tongues and reaching out to the Lord again, just consciously resisting that demon. Let the flow of the spirit come, and then suddenly your head will clear - or you might just do this. You might say in Jesus' name, I take authority over witchcraft and unbelief. That's the other one, they're what you call blocking spirits. They block the flow, and I've found sometimes just that, was enough to unlock something to happen. Interesting isn't it?

The another thing that can happen, is you can have the most outrageous sexual temptations while you're in ministry, right in the middle of praying for people. You're supposed to be the holy person praying and bringing deliverance, and suddenly this ghastly stuff comes into your mind. You think where did that come from! Straight after it of course comes condemnation, and the reason is very simple, that many of the people are carrying unclean spirits, and so you get there, and you're starting to engage them, and the way they engage you is they fill your mind with pictures, then straight after condemn you, to try and get you to lose confidence, so you'll either be distracted, and give in to the temptation in some kind of way, or you'll just get condemned, and lose your authority in ministry. Most people don't talk about it, but that's what goes on, it's what happens, and it's outrageous. I mean you'd be surprised how many times people are worshiping in church, and suddenly unclean sexual things come into their mind. In one church I got them to put their hands up, and I had about three-quarters, almost all the church put their hands up. They were all astonished, because everyone thought I'm the only one who's got that problem, I'm really bad.

Can you understand, it's just the demonic realm. They just work in a predictable way, so those are some of the things you have during ministry, and the pressures that come upon you just during the flow of ministry. All you do is step back, pray in tongues, rise up in your spirit and go back again and continue to pray. Then the last thing is after ministry, so pressure can come on you after ministry, and the pressures that come on you after ministry are very simply, because one, you're physically depleted; two, you're emotionally depleted; three, although your spirit may be stirred up, you do need to recover, and come before the Lord. So the kind of things that happen after ministry, is that you can - here's what you can feel, now get this: you can feel immensely rejected. You can feel a total loser [laughs], and totally rejected, and of no value to anyone or anything, and you just think that's it, I've had enough, I'm not even going back to church.