One of the main things Jesus did when He was on the earth was something He commissioned every disciple to do and something we see the early church doing in the book of Acts. Yet in today’s Christian landscape it’s not being taught or talked about. This is why I decided to write my new book: to give people simple and practical steps to casting out demons.
Many people are hesitant to pray for someone who is demonized simply because they don’t know what to do or where to start. I did my best to keep these seven steps as simple as possible while equipping you with everything you need to conduct a deliverance.
Remember, deliverance sessions are often dynamic, meaning no two are ever the same, and things change fast. The Holy Spirit is your guide, empowering you to adapt and respond in the moment. Do not be dogmatic or ritualistic about the steps I’m going to give you, as these just provide a baseline to get you started. Not every step is always required for someone to receive complete freedom. At the end of the day it is not these methods or steps that set people free but the power of the Holy Spirit and the authority of Christ. God is the one doing the work; God is the one doing the heavy lifting. We are privileged enough to play a part in this entire process.
In every deliverance I do, I usually go through all seven of the steps outlined, but there are times when the Holy Spirit does or says something different. When that happens, I go off-script and follow His lead. These steps are designed for one-on-one ministry but also work when praying at the altar for people; you just may not have the time to be as thorough. If you’re confused by the difference, let me explain.
Deliverance Environments and a Few Ground Rules
I would place deliverance ministry into two categories: altar deliverance and personal deliverance. At the altar it is more of a power encounter and less strategic than personal deliverance. With altar deliverance, let’s say you’re on the altar prayer team, and the pastor calls up anyone who needs deliverance prayer. Someone comes up and as you pray, they begin to manifest. At this point it’s just you and them. You don’t have a team with you, you don’t have 45 minutes to talk to them prior and you don’t have time to take them through all the steps. It’s just a few minutes of deliverance prayer. In that case, I would begin to command the demons out in Jesus’ name and not worry so much about doing all the steps in order.
I would define personal deliverance as meeting at a neutral location, such as your house, the home of the person being delivered, a prayer room at a church or somewhere similar. I recommend having two or three people help you in this process and allocating at least two hours for a session. Sometimes it’s good to say we are setting aside two hours no matter what, and if more prayer needs to happen, we can schedule something else at a later date.
As a male I will never, under any circumstance, pray for a woman alone; I always have other women with me helping to pray, just to be safe and avoid any appearance of evil. If I were a female, I would recommend never meeting up alone with a male to pray, as you can put yourself in a dangerous position.
To recap, altar deliverance is dynamic, often fast-paced and takes place in the moment. Personal deliverance is planned and affords the opportunity to take your time and be thorough. Now that you understand deliverance environments better, let me take you through all seven steps of casting out a demon.
Step 1: Make sure the person is a believer and wants to be free. Let me be clear on something. I only pray deliverance over believers or those who want to become believers. The reason is very simple: If the person does not get filled with something to fill the void the demon left, the demons will come back worse. I have seen this happen over and over: Someone who is not a believer gets some deliverance, then goes right back to their sin, and the demons come back seven times worse.
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Another essential component is that the person wants to be free, and I mean desperate. Just as God recognizes free will, so do demons. If the person genuinely does not want to be free, the demons will recognize that and refuse to leave. My general rule of thumb is you have to want to be set free more than I want you to be set free.
It’s very important that the person receiving deliverance participates in their deliverance and helps out in any way possible; this might mean they are telling you what the demons are saying to them or simply staying engaged throughout the entire process. Do not feel bad if you realize someone doesn’t want freedom, and tell them you can no longer help them. Too many people want freedom to waste your time on those who do not. Finally, never force deliverance on someone; it’s almost always ineffective.
Step 2: Lead them through prayers of renouncing, dealing with unforgiveness and verbally commanding the demons to leave. Now that you know they want freedom and are believers, this is where the deliverance begins. I can’t overstate how important this step is before even confronting the demons. You will now lead the person through the process of renouncing. To renounce simply means to deny something; the person is basically saying, “I sever attachment to this [particular thing], and I no longer want it in my life.” Remember, the demons are there because they were invited somehow. This is saying, “I do not want you in my life any longer.” When they renounce the demon, they are breaking its legal right to be there.
I usually start with the main three to five things they are dealing with and make them verbally say, “I renounce lust, I renounce hate, I renounce witchcraft, I renounce addiction, I renounce perversion,” and so forth. If there’s something they feel they can’t say verbally, there is probably a demon there preventing them, so encourage them to push through and take note of that for when it’s time to confront the demons.
Dealing with unforgiveness is the next thing you want to do and should not be rushed. Demons have the ability to root themselves into unforgiveness and use it as a legal right to stay, so make sure the person verbally forgives anyone they harbor unforgiveness toward. I often say unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It only hurts and harms you.
The last part of Step Two is having the person verbally tell the demons they do not want them there. I would lead them through a prayer like this: “I command every demon to leave me now. I do not want you any longer, I am not your home and you must go now in Jesus’ name. I am a child of God and no longer live in the kingdom of darkness. Christ is my master, and I am a temple of the Holy Spirit. Every unclean spirit must leave me now, in Jesus’ name.” This is powerful in letting the demons know the person no longer want them in their life.
Step 3: Confront the demon. At this point the person may already show signs of a demon manifesting. Usually, during the renouncing portion, the demons have already been stirred up and are beginning to show themselves. The key to deliverance is that the demons must be confronted; you need to talk to them boldly and not back down. Let the person know beforehand, “Hey, I may sound a bit aggressive or harsh, but I’m not talking to you like that; I am talking to the demons. Remember, these things are evil, vile personalities that have no mercy on their victims. This is not the time to confront them nicely.”
If the demons aren’t manifesting, you can do a few things. For clarity, the word “manifest” means to bring something to the light; by manifesting, I mean the demons have made themselves known by talking through the person and so forth. You can plead the blood of Jesus against them; they hate that. You can have the person look you in the eye; for whatever reason, demons hate looking Spirit-filled believers in the eye, and often this causes the demon to manifest.
If someone is manifesting and a demon is talking out of them, and you want the demon to stop, you can call the person back by name and say something like, “I command Ashley to come back. I no longer want to talk to you, spirit.” Usually this will stop the demon from manifesting, and the person will gain full control of themselves again. If you’re wondering if it’s possible to receive deliverance without manifesting a demon, the answer is absolutely. Now that the demon is manifesting and you have confronted it, it’s time for Step 4.
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Step 4: Bind the demon in Jesus’ name and command it to go into the abyss. This is where the principle of binding and loosing comes into play. When Scripture mentions “heaven,” it refers to the spiritual realm. The term “bind” means to arrest or tie something up. In the spiritual realm we have the power to bind or arrest demonic spirits that are not authorized to be there. Now that the demon is bound, where do we send it?
The Bible does not give a lot of information on where we should send the demon, so this can be subjective, but personally, I command them to go into the abyss, or the pit (they are the same thing). In Luke 8:31 the demons begged Jesus not to send them back into the deep, or the abyss. So if the demons do not want to go there, that seems like a good place to send them.
I have noticed that when demons leave, they often leave through the mouth; this might be through a loud scream, a long yawn or even coughing. Gagging and having the person feel as if they want to vomit are normal in a deliverance, as this is simply the demon making its way up through the esophagus, causing the person to gag.
There will sometimes be signs of the demon leaving. At times, you will know a demon leaves because the person goes limp or seems lifeless. Demonic spirits usually leave through a loud scream, according to Acts 8:7. There is an unlimited number of ways a demon might leave someone. I am mentioning only the most common. Just because these do not happen during the deliverance does not mean the demon hasn’t left.
Step 5: If the demon doesn’t leave, find out why. There is always a reason a demon is disobedient. This could be that they still have a legal right to be there, in which case you may need to go back and have the person renounce something or deal with unforgiveness again. I have, at times, been in deliverance for several hours, only to find out the demon is not leaving because the person still has unforgiveness toward someone.
To find out why demons are not leaving, you can simply say, “I command you to tell me why you won’t leave. What legal right do you have to be here?” The demon may then speak out loud from the person and tell you why, or the person might hear the reason in their mind. Interacting with the person and asking them what they hear is important.
During this portion of the deliverance, it’s easy to get frustrated. Do your best to stay patient and calm, and if you need to, take a five-to-10-minute break, drink some water and regroup. I would also inquire of the others helping you pray and ask their thoughts; they may have a word of knowledge or insight as to why the demons are not leaving or why the deliverance is stalling out.
Step 6: Go back and make sure everything is gone. Demons are very good at hiding, and at this point of the deliverance you may feel as if you’re done and the person is completely free. I highly advise going back through to make sure nothing is left. You should have had someone taking notes and keeping track of what demons manifested and what demons revealed themselves. I would now say something like, “I command the spirit of lust to reveal itself; I command the spirit of anger to reveal itself; I command any hiding demon to manifest itself now in Jesus’ name.” What you’re trying to do is make sure the demons you thought left didn’t go back into hiding. Sometimes demons will try to fool you into thinking they left when really they are just hiding.
When commanding the demons to leave again, look at body language; if the person starts twitching or reacting in a weird way, it might be a sign the demon is still hiding. Sometimes I will look the person in the eyes and be able to see in the spirit realm that the demon is still there, or it may just begin to manifest again. You’re probably tired at this point and want to be done, but do your best to finish the job. It is much easier to finish a deliverance you have already started than to bring the person back another day and try to finish it. I will also ask the Holy Spirit for a word of knowledge and to confirm that everything is gone. If I feel peace in my spirit, I will go to the last step; if not, I will continue to apply pressure on the demons that might be hiding.
Step 7: Pray for the Holy Spirit to fill them. I teach people a simple four-step process to help them receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
- Repent. Peter reveals this to us in Acts 2:38: We must repent. There is no way to get around it. To repent is to completely turn away from our rebellion and sinfulness to say, “Lord, change how I think; I am wrong. You are right, and I want You to change me.” Repentance is not a one-time thing. It’s a lifestyle.
- Ask God for it. Some say if God wants me to have it, He will give it to me. That is not scriptural; you need to ask!
- Be thirsty. We must be thirsty. God does not force His blessings on those who don’t feel they need them. Many people never receive the fullness of the Spirit because they are not really thirsty. If you think you already have all you need, why should God bother you with more? To be thirsty is essential. It means you recognize you need more than you already have. Thirst is one of the strongest desires in the human body. When people are really thirsty, they do not care about eating or satisfying other needs. All they want is something to drink. Jesus says this has to be all you want.
- You must drink! Jesus said you must “drink” (John 7:37). This is so simple that some people don’t discuss it. In a natural sense, to drink is to receive something within you by a decision of your will and a physical act. A similar process is required for receiving the Holy Spirit. Being passive means saying, “Well, if God wants to do it, let Him do it!” That response is not drinking. To drink is to receive within you actively.
Now that the demons are gone, as Jesus says in Matthew 12, the house is empty. It needs to be filled—filled with the Holy Spirit!
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Isaiah Saldivar preaches a message of revival and repentance, having spoken in more than 500 churches, conferences and other events. His ministry reaches 6 to 8 million people each week through his social media platforms. including his YouTube channel with over 860,000 subscribers. He also hosts a weekly podcast called “Revival Lifestyle,” currently in the top 1% of podcasts in the world. Isaiah and his wife, Alyssa, have four daughters and reside in central California, where they attend The House Modesto church. His new book, “How to Cast Out Demons,” will debut next month and is available now on amazon.com.
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