Familiar Spirits

One thing you see often on the streets are familiar spirits.

Nearly interchangeable faces operating the same. Drunk, self-loathing, full of pride men gravitate towards other drunk, self-loathing, prideful men.

Battered women are attracted to abusers.

A drug dealer walks into a store and immediately, almost instinctively, knows who needs to score.

It is spiritual warfare and no amount of psychological studies will lead you to a better understanding than what God's Word has to say.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12


Sometimes we don't even realize the invisible war raging around us.

Makes sense, though, doesn't it?

Have you ever wondered why you are tempted with the very thing you struggle with?

I remember taking a bus trip to Detroit when I was sixteen. It was a 30-plus hour ride from Louisiana and I was alone. Terrified, but too rebellious to show it, I remained aloof. Yet three different people approached me with drugs on that trip.

Why?

Because I had a familiar spirit.

I remembered wondering if I had a neon sign over my head flashing the words DRUG ADDICT. I didn't resemble a strung-out junkie; if anything I resembled a curveless Barbie doll.

Little did I know there might as well have been a sign. Every spirit that had taken up residence in me (from ADDICTION to JEZEBEL) battled for marquee headlining on a giant screen for the whole entire spiritual realm to see.

While those spirits were looking at me, the spirits in me were looking around as well.

Some of those spirits I put in there myself. I'd opened the door to drugs and manipulation and even suicide (as the ultimate manipulative tool). Yet others entered at an age far too young to know evil (fear, sex).

I don't know if the Jezebel spirit came the day my neighbor molested me or if that opened the door for it to come later on, in my quest to regain the control I'd lost as a five year-old. But I let it stay, unaware of spiritual warfare and a mighty force for Satan, for years.

It destroyed several marriages, including my own.

But while it was not uncommon to be hit on at work, or on the Little League field, I was shocked to find it happening at other places.

Like church.

I was trying to live right and be a good mom. I'd gotten off drugs and I was visiting different churches in my quest to get things right with the Lord. So when not one, not two, but three different church leaders hit on me, I was shocked.

It was then that I decided that church was no different than the streets. They just wore different clothes on Sunday.

A few years later I would surrender my life to Christ, learn about spiritual warfare, and remarry. I'd also realize that I was right- and wrong- about church and the streets.

Yes, in some ways, there is no difference.

The people in church have their demons, their strongholds, their hindrances (whatever term you prefer to use) just like people on the streets do. Some of them are completely unaware, some pray daily for help with their struggle, and some are just putting on a show.

But they are in church, for whatever reason, and I believe most WANT a change. Prayerfully, if they are clueless, sitting under the Word will reveal it to them.

Those church leaders are held to a higher standard...and one day they'll have to stand before God and answer for what they did. That's between them and God; I'm nowhere in that equation.

If anything I feel a little bad for them. Once I realized it was a powerful demonic spirit and not some irresistible charm, I realized they were just pawns in this heavenly game as well.

We are just putzes, the proverbial henchmen, thinking we are all that, while the devil laughs at our ignorance.

It took me a year after identifying it to banish that spirit for good.

My husband and I were newlyweds, eating dinner with my new sister-in-law and her husband, at a steakhouse when I saw him.

He was leaned back in his booth, arms outstretched, and staring straight at me with that Joey Tribbiani "How YOU doin'" grin on his face.

I looked behind me.

Nope, he was looking at me like he wanted me for his dessert.

I wanted to throw up.

My husband, sitting beside myself, noticed my discomfort.

"Why is he looking at me like that?"

I was saved, married, dressed conservatively, and in a booth with three other people. WHY?!

His answer confirmed my worst fears.

"Oh, it's just a familiar spirit." Oh. my. goodness. Is he going to want a divorce? What did I do wrong? Maybe these jeans are too tight. I was trying to deal with a spiritual matter in the flesh.

What he said next blew me away. "I wouldn't worry about it."

Wait. What?! You wouldn't worry about it?!

Well, why not? Am I not worth worrying about? Do you like guys to flirt with me? Are you saying I'm always going to have guys leer at me? Am I just always going to be a floozy? I had a long list of questions I planned to ask him as soon as we were alone.

His calm demeanor, in the face of my oft-stormy nature, has served us well over the last few years and this evening was one of the first examples.

"You'll let it go when you're ready to let it go," he simply said when I cried, argued, and confronted him about nonchalantly dropping that I was still harboring an evil sexual spirit.

To dismiss it for good, I had to get to the root of it, and I was too scared at what I'd uncover.

So I kept the spirit buried as much as I could.

It wasn't easy.

What fellowship hath light with darkness?

I wanted the Holy Spirit to have complete control of my life but I'd allowed this spirit to remain locked in a closet I was unwillingly to open.

Several months into our marriage, I knew it was time.

Through prayer and Holy Spirit guidance, I recalled the events I'd long-ago buried and put the pieces of a neighborhood sex scandal together in my mind. One of several child victims, the truth was that the fear of remembering was much worse than the actual remembering.

It was then that I was able to banish that sexual spirit for good.

I've never again been approached for sex or drugs.

I actually have the opposite problem now. I was once thrown out of the walkway of a New Orleans Voodoo Shop. I was standing there with a friend, trying to decide where we were going next, when the owner flung his door open.

"GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! YOU CAN'T BE HERE!" he screamed. I was perplexed until I realized what kind of shop I'd been banished from.

I guess the headline has changed on my spiritual marquee.