God has been speaking to me over the last few months or so about a question I had asked in the early 1990’s, when a story was told to me by an acquaintance of Christians who found themselves confronted by a demon in someone they had gone to visit. I don’t remember much detail other than I got the impression the demon was winning the battle, and I distinctly remember asking “Where was the Holy Spirit during all of this”? I wondered how Christians who had the power of the Holy Spirit within them could be so easily defeated.
Why the Lord chose these many years to wait to impress upon me the answer, I don’t know. At that time in my life, God was in the process of ripping apart the faulty foundation I had laid and rebuilding it upon His truth, so I suspect there were a few lessons I needed to learn first.
His answer to me was all about the choice He has given us to love and follow Him. Through this, it is also our choice when, how, and where to walk in His authority (or not). The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gentleman I have ever known. He has never forced His will upon me. I have always had to get to the point where I was willing to choose Him and the path He set before me, not just once but often moment by moment. He has greatly impressed upon me lately that the life of victory and power is a life yielded, or as Paul so adequately puts it when he says “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Galatians 2:20
Here is what it boils down to. The Holy Spirit does not step outside of our bodies in order to kick butt. It doesn’t work that way. We are His vessels. WE are the ones who pray down the Kingdom of Heaven, not only regarding demons but against all the forces of the enemy, so we may know what it means to walk in His Kingdom here and now. One reason I am convinced that praying out loud is essential is because the powers of darkness don’t know our thoughts and can’t read our minds. If the Holy Spirit is waiting for us to take the authority given, then these pathetic little demons need to hear it! Angel armies may indeed battle on our behalf, but I believe these little twerps tremble and fear most a Christian who is fully yielded and walking in the authority of Christ, and they are counting on us not to walk in it!
How many times have we either made an attempt to use our own authority apart from the Holy Spirit (such as in Acts 19), or else yielded that authority by asking the Holy Spirit the wrong thing – for Him to somehow bodily step into the room apart from us so we can watch and marvel? Listen my friends, we are His vessels and the only way He will be let loose to kick some demon butt is through us. We must learn to take hold of our God-given authority through the Holy Spirit so that we realize the difference between us calling on Him to rescue us, and us being so rightly aligned, so in tune and prayed up, listening and obeying our Heavenly Father, and taking the authority given to us as children of God – to call down HIS Kingdom into this realm and do some butt kicking of our own!
Lord I pray, draw us ever nearer to You. May we be one with You, even as You are one with your Father. Although You did not ask the Father to take us from this world, You did ask that He would keep us from the evil one. You told us that all authority has been given to You in Heaven and on earth, and we know You in turn have given us authority over the power of the evil one. Teach us to walk in your authority and power, and not our own, so that we too can live in victory here on this earth as You did, and so we understand how the enemy is kept away.
Alabastersky 