Every minister who has spent real time in deliverance knows the moment. You’ve prayed. You’ve commanded in the name of Jesus. You’ve seen people walk free before. Yet the person in front of you is still bound, and you drive home wondering what you missed.
I know that moment well. In the first ten years of my 30 years in deliverance ministry, about six out of every ten people I ministered to walked away free. The other four broke my heart. I refused to blame them, and I refused to blame God. Instead, I prayed a simple prayer: Lord, there are things I don’t yet understand.
What He began to show me changed the way our teams minister across the nations. And it started with a story most of us have read a hundred times.
The Disciples Had a Track Record
In Matthew 17, a desperate father kneels before Jesus: “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him” (Matthew 17:15–16).
Notice what’s assumed here. Why bring the boy to the disciples at all? Because they had a reputation. They had been sent out with authority, and demons had obeyed them. This wasn’t a team of beginners. It was a team that had seen real fruit, and then hit a wall.
Then “Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment” (Matthew 17:18). Scripture doesn’t tell us what that rebuke was, and that matters. A rebuke is a specific command with a specific instruction. Shouting “I rebuke you” with great faith and volume, but no actual command, leaves the demon with nothing to obey.
The Question That Changes Everything
Later, the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” (Matthew 17:19).
That question, asked in humility, is where growth begins. Some of you have been asking it for years about the people you couldn’t get free.
Jesus addressed their faith. But Mark’s account records the deeper answer: “This kind can only come out by prayer” (Mark 9:29).
We should pray and fast, but not as a currency to purchase more authority. We pray and fast to commune with the Lord, and in that communion He reveals the authority He has already given us. The real key in Jesus’ answer is the word kind. The Greek word is genos, the root of our word genetics. It speaks of family, lineage, and type.
Jesus was telling His disciples: you succeeded with other kinds. This was a different kind.
Three Kinds of Demons
Once you recognize that there are different kinds of demons, you begin to minister very differently. In bloodline deliverance, we place them in three broad categories.
Sin-level demons carry the name of the sin they drive: anger, lust, hate, pride, unforgiveness. They’re the easiest to discern and are usually the first to manifest.
Trauma-level demons gain entry through the pain and confusion of traumatic events: rejection, grief, shame, self-hatred, loneliness. They work to keep wounds open.
Both can wreak havoc in a person’s life, yet both are surprisingly low-ranking. They’re frontline spirits.
The third kind is different. Occult-level demons are the strongmen. They typically go by proper names tied to ancient false gods and religious systems, and they’re often anchored in the bloodline through generational covenants, sacrifices, and long-standing agreements. These are not principalities, though they may share names with them. They are the chiefs that other demons serve and protect.
Jesus asked, “How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man?” (Matthew 12:29).
Why “Free” Isn’t Always Free
Here’s what changed everything for our teams. Demons rarely operate alone. They’re arranged in kingdoms, with a hierarchy that Jesus Himself pointed to when He spoke of spirits “more wicked” than others (Matthew 12:45).
During a session, a chief demon will often push a lower-ranking spirit forward and sacrifice it. We cast it out, everyone celebrates, and the strongman stays hidden. A week later the person manifests again, and we assume the demon came back. More often, it never left, or it’s a different spirit entirely.
So how do you reach the top of a kingdom, strip away its legal rights, and drive the entire structure out together, instead of fighting one exhausting battle after another? And why do ministers in certain regions keep encountering the same ancient names generation after generation?
That’s exactly what I unpack in a free video teaching, 4 Hidden Dimensions of Deliverance & Spiritual Warfare. I cover two of those four dimensions in depth there, including how kingdoms are structured and the specific systems our teams confront around the world every day.
You don’t need to know all of this to see people set free. Love and perseverance still matter most. But if you’ve been carrying the weight of the ones who didn’t get free, hear me: you’re not unspiritual. You may simply be under-equipped. The disciples asked Jesus why. He answered. And He’s still answering today.
Mike Brewer is an author, apostolic leader, and founder of The Equipping Company. Over three decades of ministry in 24 nations, he has helped launch two church-planting movements and written Bloodline Deliverance. Watch his free teaching at:
TheEquippingCompany.com/charisma-watch.
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
