Yes I still believe we can shift powers from their place of domination and make space for people to find a freedom where God’s presence is more intimately experienced.
Let me first quote a recent report where a team went to Africa and were engaged in spiritual warfare against local spiritual powers- the result was of it proving too much for one person who was deeply adversely affected and 12 others being taken to hospital.
I have had such reports on numerous occasions recounted to me. All of which can lead to: don’t engage in anything involving ‘second heaven’ level conflict, it is forbidden and there is no protection. Maybe. But I still believe!
However (see a few posts ago I said all posts need a ‘however’)…
When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but it finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it returns, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So will it be also with this evil generation (Matt. 12:43-45).
Certainly true of a person as is indicated in the opening sentence, but the final sentence indicates that this is not only true at a personal level but Jesus applies it to a generation, and probably in using the term ‘house’ in the middle there is a multi-levelled application indicated, for ‘house’ had an application to the house of ‘Israel’, or the particular tribe, or family… and I suggest at the forefront anyone listening in that context would have thought about the temple – the ‘house of God’. [On the latter we could expand this to the references of the house built on sand / rock; your house being left desolate; the so-called cleansing of the temple etc.]
We know how important it is for ‘repentance’, cleansing and filling when it comes to that of helping an individual to a place of freedom, and the principle is the same with a ‘generation’, a ‘house’, a location, a nation etc.
Knowing what the problem is very helpful. Let me make it simple / simplistic. We ‘discern’ a spirit of witchcraft is dominant in an area; research shows this to be a very real possibility. The question now is what do we do? Approach #1 we go to ‘warfare’, rebuke, bind, jump, fly, levitate and shout (some words were more biblical that others there, and not all were to be taken seriously!). Result… either a great exertion of energy but nothing shifts, or we end up in considerable trouble ourselves! Approach #2 is a process… a process of responding to God (called repentance) so that ‘we’ are clear of everything to do with witchcraft – control, manipulation and domination. In other words that which manifests in the society at the level of fruit has to be removed from us at the level of seed (anger –> murder; lust –> adultery; greed –> idolatry). And the process has to work its way on, for demonic powers find their attachment through history. Yes I believe a glorious day can come when an announcement can be made – your time is over! But probably not on the first day of arriving on the scene as the high and mighty ones.
There are big global powers that really do have a stronghold. War and blood lust; patriarchy; mammon, and others. The Gospel comes to set us free from the powers, after all they were openly displayed as stripped of their power; my passion (I think core passion) is to consider what it would mean for the glorious accomplishment of the cross to become a visible reality, and therefore what it means to live in a different way, to come at things from a different orientation to any of the above.
I once had the opportunity to address a gathering of prophetic streams outside of Europe. One of the two themes I took was to say that their government had never passed any legislation concerning abortion. I said that ‘you in this room passed the legislation’. If we are happy to endorse the killing of those that are visible, or even to pick up the computer console and fire away and kill those ‘bloody…’ (fill the gap in with whatever ethnic group is the current ‘enemy’) we should not be surprised that our society moves to being able to easily kill that which is not visible. We must make the connection. To shift issues of abortion we have to be ‘pro-life’ and pro-life is not a catch phrase, but a way of living, and has to embrace those who are visible… and in the Jesus-way embrace anyone who sets themselves as our ‘enemy’.
The Gospel is counter-cultural.
I still believe! Entering certain countries one is asked ‘have you ever sought to overthrow the government of this country’. Correct answer is ‘yes’ and every other government so that the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and Christ. I appreciate it is not quite the question they are asking.
Can we shift powers? Well Jesus descended to the lowest point, ascended to the highest point, fills all things… all on behalf of the ekklesia. I have no idea what will be done, hence I take a non-millennialist position but I still believe we are to follow where Christ has gone, and that will include a strong reminder to the powers that they will shift. Follow…a process.
I have lived in a location where invited in to shift a ‘presence’ in a home and afterwards the person saying, we used to live here years ago, now we have moved back and the area is different (in a positive sense). How was it changing? Through people loving the people and land, through a process, and probably through prayer, some of which might have been in an over-stretching way, but hopefully not in an arrogant and simplistic way of ‘and we bind you powers…’
Warfare is one of the story lines of Scripture, warfare between the ‘seed of the serpent’ and the ‘seed of the woman’. I still believe. And amidst crises I dream of changes where shalom comes.
I receive some daily / regular prayers that are written out. I received one recently where the prayer for the shalom of Jerusalem was quoted as a way to pray into the Gaza conflict (I use that term simply because that was the perspective in the email… I could only use such terms as ‘atrocity’). The peace / shalom of the middle east would be wonderful, but we have to run with Jeremiah, it is the peace / shalom of Babylon – which includes every Jerusalem. Shalom that does not come through the sword, but was established through the cross. Shalom, whatever we believe about powers, shalom in my life will always prove to be more of a threat to the powers than any of my activity.
I believe in jumping, raising my voice, expending my energy… I still believe… And Jesus still says to every storm, ‘peace be still.’ Shalom – that total re-ordering for me will affect those around me, will affect a wider circle, will bring us to a place where ‘what you bind on earth, will have been bound in heaven’. Hope I got a lot of years left as I would like to make a contribution to the ongoing possibilities becoming reality.