Get Behind Me Satan!

               

                When I realized what I was reading, I almost couldn't believe it. What I saw seemed as if it was profoundly disrespectful. As a matter of fact, it seemed to be borderline heartless, cold, and downright distasteful. This normally wouldn't have shaken me so much, had what I was witnessing been performed by anyone else. This act, however, was executed by Jesus. I stopped and asked the question: Isn't He supposed to be our example? How could He do this?

                The act I am referring to is the famous rebuke of Peter. The story begins as Jesus asks His disciples a simple question. Who do men say that I am? The disciples throw out various comments they have heard. Peter however, he is different. He has a revelation. He boldly declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus is so taken, He comments that this could not have been revealed to him by any man or process of cognition. This revelation was given to Peter by God the Father. Jesus then exhorted His disciples to tell no one.

                So far so good, right? However, Peter had a tendency to put his foot in his mouth. Jesus went on to explain some very difficult concepts to His disciples. He explained to them that He would have to go up to Jerusalem. Once there, He would suffer many things of the elders and priests. He would be falsely accused, He would be mocked, He would be mistreated, and He would be shamed. Ultimately, He would have to die and then be raised on the third day. This proved to be too much for Peter. Like many great friends out there, he went out of his way to do something he perceived to be in the best interest of his friend. He rebuked and attempted to convince Jesus that there must be an alternative course of action.

                Now we arrive at the part of the story that I simply could not believe. While I had read and heard this account on multiple occasions, the book of Mark offers a phrasing that brings out a shocking element of the story. Peter gets up and takes hold of Jesus, rebuking Him (Matthew 16:22). As Peter attempts to talk Jesus out of what he perceives to be a bad decision, Jesus doesn't just rebuke him. Jesus actually begins by facing him and then turns his back to Peter. Before Jesus speaks he fully turns his back on one of His most passionate followers. Talk about making a powerful point! In this position, facing the other disciples with Peter now standing behind Him, He rebukes Peter with the famous words, "Get thee behind me Satan!"

                "But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men." (Mark 8:33)

                This takes the situation to another level. It would be one thing if Jesus quietly rebuked Peter to conceal his error and bring private correction. Frankly, even if He wasn't quiet about it, had He at least said it to Peter's face, as I had always presumed, it wouldn't have been so extreme. The idea that Jesus first turned His back to the disciple, and then rebuked Him to everyone else, now that just seemed cold. That is, until I realized what the Lord was illustrating.

                In this case Peter represents any number of people, things, or responsibilities that have a degree of importance in our lives. There is no doubt that Peter was important to Jesus. However, sometimes these things, and even the most well meaning people in our lives become tools in the hand of the enemy. The fact that Jesus rebuked Satan and not Peter clearly indicates that Peter's actions were inspired by the devil, even though He didn't perceive it that way. The words that came out of Peter's mouth were a temptation to Jesus. The Bible is clear that Jesus was tempted in all points and we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

                What Jesus illustrated with his actions becomes a powerful lesson in how to overcome temptation. We first turn our back to it, then we begin to rebuke it. Let me explain. Let's say someone is trying to quit smoking. Does it make more sense to throw away all of the cigarettes in the house first and then pray for God's grace to overcome the temptation? Or does it make more sense to keep a pack of cigarettes in every room of the house, meaning the person is rebuking the habit every time they reach for the next cigarette?

                Sometimes temptation can be so strong in our lives that we have to first turn our backs to it so that our prayers and rebukes are not hindered. Jesus loved Peter so much that he turned His face from him before rebuking the devil! This was no easier for Jesus than it was for Peter. What we need to understand is that attacks often come through those that are closest to us. The devil is extremely intelligent, and seeds deception wherever possible. He will use the most well meaning people at times to seed advice and counsel into our lives that is entirely at odds with the leading of God. He will use what sounds like good advice to point us in the opposite direction of God's purpose for our lives. It is a difficult lesson.

                There are times when following the Lord will require us to turn our backs on the advice and counsel of those closest to us. We may even need to rebuke it. Jesus illustrated this with Peter. The most important thing to Jesus was fulfilling the purpose given to Him by His Father in heaven. God wants you to fulfill your purpose as well. Thus we need to learn to turn our backs on temptation when necessary.

Generational Curses

Greetings,

                Have you ever heard the phrase, “like father like son”? Of course you have. The reason: oftentimes children will imitate aspects of their parents. Granted, no child is an exact duplicate of either one of their parents, but he or she will inevitably have some of their characteristics. More often than not there is no rhyme or reason to which characteristics a particular child may take away. It’s always a mixed bag of good traits and bad traits. Why?

                There are several answers to this question. One involves the concept of modeled behavior. Life is way too complicated to figure out everything. A parent is to model necessary behaviors so that their children will not have to figure certain things out on their own. For instance, parents actually model language and communication. The child will learn how to communicate by observing their parents from birth. No child has ever grown up in a family that speaks mandarin Chinese and invented a Spanish dialect as their preferred mode of communication prior to speaking their first words. This would be ridiculous. Children learn modeled behavior.

                However, there is another level to this that goes even deeper. Have you ever seen someone do something and say, “It’s in their blood”? Take musical families for example. Why is it that in some families everyone can sing well? In other families, everyone sings horribly. As a matter of fact, some families are so bad—the birthday song can be a moment of embarrassment. If this is your family, just remember that there is no condemnation in Christ. My point is that there are traits that seem to be more genetic in nature. While modeled behavior is one aspect that gets passed down through the generations of a particular family, genetics is another.

                Then there is sin. I truly wish this were not the case but it often is. Keep in mind that when Jesus became a curse for us by being nailed to the cross (Galatians 3:13), His death and resurrection only purchased the potential for us to be completely free. It is our responsibility to claim freedom from curses by faith. Everything in Christianity comes by faith as an act of our free will. If we don’t ask Jesus to do something, He won’t force his goodness upon us. The Bible says that whatever we ask, believing that we receive it, we will have it (Matthew 21:22). It doesn’t matter whether or not Jesus CAN do something for us. What matters is that we BELIEVE He can do it for us, and then ask. This is when we begin to have the things that He wants for us, which is life and life more abundantly (John 10:10).

                With this being said, there are curses that are often with us for no fault of our own. These are called generational curses. These are the result of sins that were committed by those in our family line. The consequences for these sins, which were not repented of, were passed from one generation to the next like a form of spiritual DNA. The reason is found in the following verse.

                “And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)

                It is a spiritual law that the sins of the parents will come down upon the heads of their children. Most sins seem to have a lifespan of three to four generations within a family line, however, some may span as many as ten (Deuteronomy 23:2). Just like genetics, this does not mean that every possible curse that a parent could be operating under will be passed to their children. There will be some curses passed to one child and others passed to another. Regardless of which curses are passed down, or how many one particular child might be operating under, the solution is Jesus who has all power in heaven and on earth.

                “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” (Matthew 28:18)

                “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” (Luke 10:19)

                What are some examples of possible generational curses? Here is a list which by no means is all inclusive: abortion, rejection, isolation, bad marriage, divorce, can’t marry, greed, prostitution, fornication, adultery, alcoholism, anger, rage, depression, anxiety, sore loser, bully, impatient, lust, pornography, arguments, laziness, suicide, not teachable, always quits, foolishness, failure, poverty, witchcraft, gambling, rebellion, disrespectful, cowardly, etc.

                As you can see, just about anything negative can come upon someone’s head as a curse. The key to identifying generational curses are patterns. Just because a destructive pattern or sin is present in someone’s life does not mean it is a generational curse. We must look at the destructive activity that is manifesting across generations. Do alcoholic tendencies run through the family? Are there a lot of children being born out of wedlock? Is drug abuse something that seems to repeat itself from one generation to the next? Is everyone divorced?

Patterns are a great indicator of potential generational curses. However, there are certain generational curses that seem to skip an entire generation and reemerge. Whatever the case, the solution is always the same. The curse must be broken by the power of Jesus Christ.

In order to break generational curses it is necessary to repent of the sins of our forefathers. We can learn a lesson here from Nehemiah.

“And said, I beseech thee, O LORD God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments: Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father's house have sinned. We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandedst thy servant Moses.” (Nehemiah 1:5-7)

                Notice how Nehemiah not only repents of his personal sins, but also the sins of his forefathers. In doing this he was breaking the power of generational curses. Today, we can break generational curses in the same way. You may be wondering how you can repent of sins you don’t know about. When dealing with generational sins, it is much less necessary to be specific than when we are repenting of our personal sins. God gives grace, and there are inevitably going to be things your ancestors have done that you will never have knowledge of. A prayer like the following is good for breaking generational curses.

                “Father, I thank you that if we confess our sins, you are faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I repent of the sins of my forefathers coming down through both my mother’s lineage and my father’s lineage going back ten generations. I specifically repent for (name sins you know have been committed by your ancestors). I receive your cleansing from these sins. Right now, according to the power of the blood of Jesus, I break the power of all generational curses and I declare that both I and my offspring are free from the generational curses of our family tree. I specifically declare that the generational curses of (name specific generational curses you have identified) are no longer permitted to operate in my life. I make this declaration in the precious name of Jesus. Jesus became a curse for me and I receive His promise of life and life more abundantly. Thank you Father for setting me free, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

Repentance and Renunciation

Greetings,

                Repentance is a huge part of spiritual warfare. As a matter of fact, its importance cannot be overstated. Before we get into its applicability for spiritual warfare, I must first address a misconception. It is a true statement that Jesus died to forgive us of our sins. Not only does His death pay for the sins that we committed before we came to Him, but it is sufficient to pay for those sins that we commit after coming to Him. Therefore, some have erroneously concluded that we are cleansed of every sin we commit as a Christian even before we commit it. Let’s take a look at the following verse.

                “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8-10)

                Notice the “we” and “us” language that the apostle uses here. This passage is clearly not intended to be applied only to when we initially repent of our sins and acknowledge Jesus as Lord. This passage is relevant throughout our walk as Christians. We are certainly cleansed when we initially repent, but we will all fall short of the mark again. For those of you that don’t know, sin literally means to miss the mark.

                When we miss the mark we need cleansing. This is why we repent. Our repentance allows God to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This means that although we are Christian, when we do unrighteous things—that unrighteousness follows us. Think about garbage. What does garbage attract? It attracts flies, vermin, rodents and other undesirables. Plus it stinks! What does unrighteousness attract? It attracts the activity of the kingdom of darkness to you in the same way garbage attracts flies and vermin.

                To solve the problem of flies and vermin our first step is to remove the garbage that attracted them in the first place. Once the garbage is no longer available they have nothing to stick around for. Just as one might imagine, they will leave in search of garbage and filth somewhere else. It is similar when we begin to repent. When we repent God cleanses us of all that unrighteousness that was attracting the activity of the kingdom of darkness. When the sin is removed from our lives, the emissaries of the kingdom of darkness have little to continually attract them. Sure they may be sent on assignment to attack us from time to time, but the difference is that they are no longer being attracted by our sin.

                Theologically speaking, repent simply means to change our mind. It means to do a complete turnaround; to stop doing what you were doing and to start doing what you weren’t doing. It’s much more than a mental assent. True repentance means that we not only acknowledge that what we are doing is wrong, but that we are ready to let God change us. Once God cleanses us of unrighteousness, we need to stay cleansed. If we continue to go back to the same filth, we will keep attracting the same activity. We must change our mind about our sin and follow through with the change that God introduces into our lives.

                If repentance is not a normal part of your relationship with God, something is wrong. Soberly ask yourself the following question: When was the last time I made repentance a part of my prayer time? If you can’t remember you’re in bad shape. Don’t waste any time, why don’t you repent of the dirt you’ve been doing right now!

                With that taken care of, we will now move on to discuss how repentance is vitally important to spiritual warfare. On a personal level, certain types of sin will open the door to very real demonic activity in our lives. The activity will not stop until we repent.  Even if someone drives the demonic activity out, should we fail to repent the activity will resume after a short amount of time. As it is written:

                “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45)

                I will now share a brief example of how repentance leads to deliverance from demonic oppression. The following example will be taken from my own life. Before I start, I understand that there are people that teach that a Christian cannot have a demon. They will base this lie on passages like Galatians 3:13 (which states that Christ became a curse for us) and argue that if Christ became a curse for us it is impossible for us to be cursed now (or have any kind of demon). I know from personal experience that this notion is flat out wrong. Just like we are healed by the stripes of Jesus (1 Peter 2:24) yet we can still get sick; Jesus became a curse for us but we can still be cursed. The provision purchased for us by Jesus must be activated by faith…it is not an automatic.

                When I was in college and backsliding in my faith, I was in an ungodly relationship. I was involved with a girl who had a family history racked with witchcraft. She actually had a cousin (whom I never met) that would disappear and reappear at times, being taken to places by spirits. The child was only five or six.

In any case, after we started having sex I developed a twitch. It wasn’t something that affected my life during the daytime, but only when I tried to sleep. As my body would relax it was very difficult for me to stay still. At times my arm or leg would simply jut out violently. I had no explanation for the activity. If I was sleeping next to her, the violent spasms always seemed to be directed towards her. Yes, there were some punches and kicks that happened in my sleep.

As time went on it became more difficult to control and I still didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was that something wasn’t right spiritually. I finally solved the problem one weekend when I was home from school. It was night time and I had lain down to go to sleep in my parent’s house. I was convicted of my fornication and I decided to repent at this time. When I did, I realized (by divine revelation) why the spasms were occurring. A demon had entered me because of fornication! After I repented I commanded the spirit to leave in the name of Jesus.

What happened next was pretty crazy. Right there in that bed my back arched involuntarily. As it arched I felt the spirit leave. It actually came right out of my chest! How do I know the spirit left? From that point forward, the spasms left and never returned. The physical manifestation was completely demonic in origin. Only by repentance was I able to be set free from that oppression.

Some of you reading this are suffering from demonic oppression that is directly tied to the sin that you refuse to part with. Some of you have sin from your past that you have never repented of. Sins like abortion, Ouija board, séances, fornication, adultery, envy, drunkenness, rape, strife, and other sins can all lead to direct demonic oppression in your life. Repent of specific sins, not only from here on forward, but also from those things in your past that you have never specifically repented of.

As a last note, renouncing often goes along with repentance. To renounce simply means to negate the involvement you had with something. It’s almost like rewinding time and allowing the redeeming power of God to make it as if you had never “had that involvement” or “done that thing”. Renouncing is done by simply saying the words, “I renounce all involvement and activity with (or regarding)…” Below you will find a sample prayer that incorporates both repentance and renunciation. As usual, it is just a blueprint so allow the Holy Spirit to cater the prayer to your specific situation.

“Father I repent of (list the specific sins). I renounce all involvement with (list specific activities). I thank you that your word says that if I repent you are faithful to forgive me of my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. I thank you for cleansing me with the precious blood of Jesus. Now all spirits associated with (specific sin) I command you to leave me now and never return in the name of Jesus. I command every door to be closed and sealed by the power of your Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name, Amen.”