Movies, overzealous preachers, and an underdeveloped sense of identity in Christ have caused many misconceptions about demons. Some think that the world is stuffed full of evil forces poised and ready to pounce the moment you pick up that heavy-metal album or step into that horror movie. Others think that the only thing holding back the torrent of darkness that aches to pour into your life is a healthy diet of good deeds and teeth-gritting resistance to temptations of the flesh and eyes.
The truth is that demons are attracted more by what you think than by what you do. The deeper truth is that knowing who you are in Christ determines how you think. The only way to know who you are in Christ is to know what He thinks about you. That is to say, if you know what God has to say about you, then the lies of the enemy seem silly. This is the majority of what you need to know about dealing with demons.
A girl in a coffee shop I noticed one day who had a demon harassing her hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe she saw a friend say something bad about her on Facebook, maybe she got frustrated at a homework assignment, or maybe it was just the end of a hard day. Whatever the reason, the demon was attracted to her distress not because he wanted to tempt her to commit some sin but because he wanted to use that moment as an opportunity for accusation.
The demonic tries to hold our mistakes over our heads as proof that we have failed as children of God. It’s ironic since Jesus came and died so that our inadequacies would no longer be capable of keeping us apart from Him. I think that’s why He tells us in 1 Corinthians 14:1 to pursue prophecy. If you know what God has to say about you, then it doesn’t matter what anyone or anything else has to say.
Knowing who God says you are is just as important as knowing who God is. It’s all well and good if you see God as the all-powerful man in the sky with a lightning bolt in each hand and a white beard that reaches to His toes, but none of that does you any good if you don’t know what He thinks about you. I had attended church my whole life. I had heard that God loved me and had been told I was His child a thousand and one times in a thousand and one ways. But I didn’t connect with what that actually meant until I realized that God wanted to talk with me daily.
For the first time in my living memory after I learned that truth, I experienced what it felt like to be a child of God. I grasped only a corner of this massive truth but even that small piece completely transformed the way I approached life. Jesus died so that you could be a co-heir with Him. If you don’t believe me, read Galatians 4—the first seven verses lay it out nicely. Our Christian life is designed to be an expression of how good that truth is.
But if you know what Jesus’ sacrifice has won you, if you know even a piece of what God thinks about you, then you have the answer to every problem that crosses your path. {eoa}
Excerpted from Blake Healy’s The Veil (Charisma House, 2018). You can purchase the book by clicking here.
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