a family that worshipped ancestors, families involved in the occult or with a pattern of generational sin. Second, they can come to us from an outside curse. This happens mostly to high profile Christians that Satan wants to sideline. Third, demons can gain permission through a person’s decision participate in patterns of sin—for instance pornography or addictions.
The important thing to remember about demons is that Jesus has already conquered them on the cross and he has given us authority over them in our lives. In fact, I rarely deal with demons directly at all. In Charles Kraft’s book Deep Wounds, Deep Healing he says, “demons are like rats and rats go for ‘garbage,’ the kind of inner emotional and spiritual damage to which deep level healing seeks to bring health. If there are demons, then, there automatically is deep-level damage that needs to be healed.”Charles Kraft, Deep Wounds, Deep Healing (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1993), 258. Therefore, if through prayer we help a person receive cleansing, forgiveness and healing, then the garbage is cleaned away. The rats have nowhere to hide, lose power and leave.
When I do need to deal directly with demons, I just ask Jesus to do it for me. Demons often try to be scary, presenting themselves as huge frightening beasts. I always ask Jesus to reveal what the demon truly looks like. Then I’ll ask Jesus to show the prayee what he wants to do with that thing, and he will usually do something very final, like stepping on it or locking it up in a box or making it dissolve. There is no shouting or power play or posturing. Just ask Jesus to gently deal with it and he will. I’ll give three stories about demons so you will get a better idea about how this part of prayer works.
Once I was praying for a Christian musician who’d come to ask a rather simple prayer request. Suddenly, he was feeling tormented by demons who were chasing him around in a house from room to room. Being an inexperienced prayer minister, I let this go on for much too long, giving the demon too much power in this situation. Still, I didn’t know to look for where the demon was getting its rights to torment this young man. Finally, my wingman got a Scripture from the Old Testament describing an attack coming from the outside. I realized this demon got its permission from an outside source, a curse that had been brought against this high profile young man. Once I understood where it was coming from, we were able to pray against that curse, breaking if off and asking Jesus to deal with the demon for us. After that, things settled down and we could move on to the real issues at hand.
I was sitting in a dorm room full of pentagrams where I met Sammy. She was dressed in black with dyed-black hair and thick black make-up. Sammy had a Christian roommate and had heard about healing prayer. She wanted Jesus and prayer healing but as we talked it became evident that her family had long been a part of occult involvement. She had “spirit guides” that helped her, and sometimes hurt her, but she wasn’t ready to let go of these family demons completely to follow Christ. I explained that Jesus wasn’t willing to share space with any other spirits, and she had to make a choice to get rid of them if she wanted him. Sammy wasn’t ready that day, but over the next few years continued her involvement in our fellowship. When she finally felt ready, she prayed to receive Christ. Then it was time for some spiritual house cleaning.
I asked her to picture the cross of Jesus before her, and place each thing she felt was evil at the foot of the cross. I asked her to name each thing out loud so that I could hear. I assured her that as a child of God, she had the authority to send each thing out, breaking off any ties or hooks they had in her life. I coached her as she did this and it sounded something like this: “I put fear at the foot of the cross in the name of Jesus. I put suicide at the foot of the cross in the name of Jesus. I put death at the foot of the cross in the name of Jesus.” As she did this, the evil that had been a part of her family’s life since before she was born lost power and fled. She said that she felt more peaceful and lighter. A year later if you saw Sammy, you wouldn’t know it was the same girl. She had beautiful red hair and colorful clothes; she was changed from the inside out.
Most often when I sense demonic activity during prayer ministry, I won’t even mention it to the prayee. I know that as they repent and receive healing, these things will naturally leave. Or, I may coach them to take the thing they are identifying as oppressive and send it to the foot of the cross in Jesus name. They don’t even need to know it was a demon for this to be effective. After prayer I will do a short “demons are like rats” explanation and encourage them continue to send things that come up, that are obviously not from Jesus, to the foot of the cross. This short training allows them to continue to gain spiritual strength and do their own spiritual house cleaning as the need arises.
These may seem like dramatic examples but with the easy Internet access to pornography, the prevalence of broken homes, drug abuse and the culture fascination with the occult, demons have unprecedented ability to influence people in America. When I first started sharing these experiences with missionary friends, they said, “Jacci, that kind of stuff happens here on the mission field, not in America!” Unfortunately, this may have been true in the past, but not anymore. Demons are very common in prayer ministry but they are nothing to fear. As 1 John 4:4 reminds us, “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (KJVScriptures marked (KJV) are from the King James Version of the Bible.).
Physical Healing Prayer: This is one area I needed help with early in prayer ministry. I felt confident that God would forgive, heal past hurts and vanquish demons, but rarely have I seen God heal someone physically. And I could not pray with confidence because I wasn’t sure how. I felt the pressure that I needed a certain kind of faith, certain words or authority to pray for physical healing.
I’ve learned that praying for physical healing is no different than any other kind of prayer ministry. As with spiritual direction, it’s not about me. It’s not about my faith, my words or my belief; it’s about Jesus. If someone comes for prayer for a physical issue, we pray the same way. Often we will find that the “stomach ache” goes away when the person receives inner healing of a hurt from the past. Or, a physical problem might be related to demonic oppression and sending the demon away might eliminate the pain.
We need to remember our theology: God is good, he loves us and wants to heal, and it is okay to ask him to do that. He might do that right away, or his answer might be to wait. We live in the “now” and “not yet” world. We are “saved” by Christ’s death on the cross and we are “being saved every day.” Christ defeated Satan on the cross, yet he is still allowed some power in the world. God is good, and yet he is not a vending machine, he allows some prayers to go unanswered—or at least that is sometimes the way it feels to us. We should ask with assurance, and trust him with the outcome, just as we do with spiritual direction or the other areas of prayer ministry.
Often we stop praying too soon for a physical issue. Ken Blue, in his book Authority to Heal writes, “Our experience is that most healings are not instantaneous but progressive. Persistent prayer is invaluable in this process.”Ken Blue, Authority to Heal (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987), 104. Once I was leading a weeklong prayer training with my husband David when a young man I’ll call Bob came to our room looking for prayer for healing from stomach pain. He reminded me of the woman with the flow of blood. Bob told our class how he had gone from doctor to doctor and endured test after test for the pain but nothing helped. The students were very excited to pray for him but extremely nervous. They gathered around and began to pray. We prayed for a long time but nothing was happening.
David was standing outside the circle when he received discernment that this pain was connected to a mission’s trip the young man had taken to India. He felt God say he wanted to heal Bob slowly in order to increase the faith of the students in the class. He stepped in and asked the students to step back. He asked the young man to lift his hands to Jesus and focus on him. He told him that Jesus would begin to take the pain away over the next forty seconds. Almost at once Bob started to smile. David said, “The pain is lessening isn’t it?” Bob said “Yes, I can see Jesus drawing out this ugly black thing from my stomach.” Forty seconds later Bob was healed and the students’ faith was given a huge boost. That night Bob stood to testify to his healing in front of the whole camp.
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Next Steps
If this method of prayer intrigues you, find some training to hone your skills. If not, find some people who know how to do this kind of prayer to add them to your resource list. For some of the people we minister to, prayer ministry may be the path by which God breaks through.
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One Last Note
My mentor in prayer ministry and coworker with InterVarsity, Laura Thiel, says you can boil prayer ministry down to three words: heal, bless, and send. Pray for healing, pray a blessing, and send the person out into the world to, in the words of Jesus to the healed demonic “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” (Mark 5:19, NIVScripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™).