Spiritual Warfare - Lesson 24

Dr. Gerry Breshears
Spiritual Warfare
th251-24
Curses
Lesson Transcript

A couple of things that are a little bit different than what I've been talking about in terms of just a demonic presence in your life, the influence that comes through accusation, temptation, deception, whatever. One of the things that happens is curses. We find them in scripture because God can curse people. He curses Satan, curses the ground. Deuteronomy 28 is talking about curses in your life because of disobedience that he brings. But there could be curses that happen in different kinds of things. I worked with a couple in Africa and they're doing work with teen boys there in Africa, doing amazing work. And somebody didn't like what they were doing. Ended up putting a magical item, a cursed stick, and buried it on their property and told them that he had done that. And the idea was, the belief system was, as long as that cursed item was there, you guys are toast.

And they saw some stuff happen that was, I mean, they had some animals on the farm. I think they were raising, I don't remember what they were raising, sheep, pigs, something like that. Chickens. And they were having some animals die that shouldn't have died. And apparently, as the impact of this cursed item. So we were connecting. And they know that I do this sort of stuff. And they're saying, "Gerry, what do we do? I mean, we've got a fairly large place. We can't find this object that's buried on our property somewhere." And I said, "Well, here's my take on this. There's nothing Bible that describes how to do that. If you're in the dark side, you have to do a counter curse or something like that. And you've got magic against magic sort of things." And I'm not going into magical stuff at all.

But what I said is, "It seems to me that what happens is that this cursed object is there, but my belief is, a curse has impact in our life as we receive it. And this guy said anyway that he had buried this cursed object on their property. And I'm confident he did. And then he told them about it. And what happened, I think, was they, "Oh my gosh. This thing is there. We're in trouble."

And what I did is I say, "Okay, what we're going to do is we're going to reject this curse. We're going to walk the property and we're going to dedicate this ground to God," which they had done before, but to do it again. And in this process, to reject the authority of an influence of anything that was there that was opposed to the things of God. And in that process, what I asked them to do is to reject any impact so that I'm pushing the curse away and then turning my attention to Jesus. This is ground dedicated to God. This is like the holy land in Joshua. This is when the angel of the Lord shows up and Joshua runs into him. "Are you forced against it? I'm the commander of the Lord's army. Whoa. This is sacred ground. Take your shoes off."

And what we're saying is. This little farmlet is sacred ground and we reject the influence, authority, curse of anything there. We reject, rebuke, and will not tolerate. And that base principle is, I asked them to do that. And they did. They had some of the boys on the farm that were Christians with them and they just walked the whole area and did those prayers out loud. And they said, "We render this thing null and void," so to speak. That was the end of it. They didn't have any more trouble.

And that's a commitment that I have in the context of those curses. First time I ran into it, I was teaching a course on spiritual warfare in Omaha at a big church back there that asked me to come back. And I was doing this kind of stuff I've done here with you. And a guy came up to me and said, "Hey, could we talk?" I said, "Sure." "Away from site?" "Oh yeah. Okay." So we went off to a more private kind of place. And he said, "I had the weirdest thing happen to me recently." I said, "Okay, like what?"

And I'm shortening a longer story. He and a buddy, they were mountain climbers. And they wanted to climb the 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado. And there were several of them. Now, some of them pretty easy. Mount Evans, you can drive a car almost to the top of it. Others, there's nothing. And you're driving quite ways to get to the foot of the mountain. And they're having [inaudible 00:04:58] time do it. And they were up toward the top of one of these 14,000 footers. Maybe it's over 12,000. Anyway, the high mountains there. And they both experienced an attack that was just an overwhelming dread. "You're going to die." And it just caught them out of the blue. There was nothing dangerous around them other than the fact they're high up on a mountain. But there was nothing dangerous about that. There were good climbers and it was not a perilous place. But this overwhelming dread of this thing. And what ended up happening, and shorten a much longer story, they summited and then came down and after they got down to the bottom, within 48 hours, the other guy was dead.

And it just scared this other guy, the one who was talking to me. And this had been several months before. "Gerry, what happened?" I don't know what happened, but I took his story and I said, "Let me tell you what might have happened." Being very careful. "This could be true. I suspect what happened is that you were up there and some sort of demon that was on this high place attacked you from coming into its realm. I mean, that could be true. And it said, 'You're going to die.' That's a curse." And okay. And I said, "Again, hypothetically. I don't know. But I think what happened is your friend received the curse with his, I don't know, grinding over it. And that curse became real in his life because he received it and he was dead not long after that."

And he died of some medical type thing. I don't know what it was. A brain aneurysm or something. There was some identifiable medical thing that happened. So the cause of death was pretty natural. But I think what happened, and I still suspect this to be true, is he received this demonic curse into his life and it became effective. But the guy who was talking to me was more resistant toward this and he didn't receive it, but it was still bothering him. So what I said is, "Okay, here's what we're going to do." And the sort of thing I've talked about before, lay foundation in Jesus Christ. Demonic realm has no authority. Whatever happened in the mountain is, we're going to reject, rebuke, and then bring back. "Lord Jesus Christ, I belong to you. The day of my death as yours and yours only." That kind of thing. And we just set up some stuff from scripture, Philippians chapter one. And I just led him through that kind of a prayer to reject any impact of this curse from this demonic attack and to place the day of his death completely in Jesus' hand.

And we were about a three-day process. I was there in the church and I talked to him one more time and I said, "How are you doing?" He said, "I feel so relieved." And I don't know what happened after that, but this is the sort of thing I'm talking about that can happen in these attack type things.

The one experience that I had with a demonic attack was while in the Philippines. Sherry and I ended up serving three years at Faith Academy. I was 22 years old with a two-month-old baby when we arrived there. Ended up staying for three years. And I got involved with [inaudible 00:08:42] Calvary Baptist Church. Helped plant the church. A good church. It's still going. They've planted two other churches and have a school. And the pastor, last time I was there, was a godson I'd done when we were there. His father was a friend and I'd become the godfather to the son and then we left and I'd never seen him again until I went back.

And I'd been at that church and it was tomb sweeping days. If you know the Chinese calendar, part of your ancestor worship is you go to the tomb of your ancestors and you sweep the tomb and you do honor, almost a worship, to your ancestors. And it's an issue for Chinese believers because this is very much in the ancestor worship and the things related to that. And it's a place where some Chinese do that and some don't. And we'd talked to some Chinese people there in the Philippines and they were telling us what was happening.

And as we were driving back from the church ... Well, actually riding in a taxi, we came back and we went past a cemetery on the way home. I knew the cemetery well. But in that process, I found myself wondering, "I wonder if there are Chinese people out there sweeping tombs," and that kind of stuff. And I let my imagination get involved in, "I wonder what that'd be like," and that kind of stuff because my curiosity just going. And didn't think much about it. And when we got home, I walked into our apartment there. And as I walked in, I would say I had a demonic attack and suddenly there was this overwhelming negative, I don't know. I don't know how to describe it exactly, but this, "I'm here and you're toast," kind of thing. It wasn't a voice or anything like that, just overwhelming impression. Clearly, it was darkness and clearly felt like an attack.

I had not done anything in terms of spiritual warfare at that point. But just as a 23-year-old kid ... Well, young man. By that time, I had two kids. When I realized, "This is something from the dark side," without even thinking about it, I just automatically just know, "Get away in Jesus' name." I mean, I knew that much. And I didn't do it out loud. I did it silently, but just strong, "No." And within a very short period of time, it went away. And I never had anything like that after that. Now, I think we can be attacked by demons. I mean, Jesus was, although he was led the wilderness specifically for that to happen. But you get the Peter kind of thing going on. Again, stories.

I had a daughter of a good friend of mine, she and her husband were having a date night. And really special. They had kids arranged for babysitting and they had the whole night to themselves. And it was an epic time, all the big things. They went to see a movie they really wanted to see and they were going to do a really nice dinner after and have a romantic night together. I mean, it's this kind of thing. Husband and wife of kids.

And when they walked into the theater, they walked to their seats and as she sat down, she had this overwhelming, dark, evil death kind of stuff just landed on top of her. And she was just holding onto the side of the seat. It was so overwhelming. And the movie is about to begin, and it did. And she's there for the entire movie just hanging on for dear life with this, I don't know, just dark dread, fear kind of stuff coming on. Not a voice kind of thing. And she's just hanging on for dear life. They get done with the movie. They go out to dinner. She again, is white knuckling it because she doesn't want her night for her husband. This has been worked so hard and she did not want to bring him down. Didn't say anything to him. He knew things were not right, but he, "Is something wrong?"

"No, I'm doing fine. I love this night with you, honey." All that kind of stuff. And you can imagine a good woman. And all that kind of stuff. Well, the next morning it was still there and she finally fessed up and told him what had happened. Of course, he was ticked. "Why didn't you tell me?" But I get it. She didn't want to ruin this beautiful romantic evening and she did the best she could white-knuckling it. And so she called her mom, talked to her. Mom called me and I did the same kind of thing. And I didn't talk to her until later, but I gave, through her mom, what to do and she did the same thing. She looked back at this thing, commanded Jesus' name to go away. It did. And then when she came up, she was up in Portland a couple of weeks later. And we sat in my office and worked through that thing again. She had been attacked by demon as she came into the theater.

These things happen. She's a strong believer. How can she be attacked? Well, it happened to Peter. Happened to Jesus. And she had been resistant to it but didn't really know as much as she needed to know to really reject it effectively until her mom talked with her. And then we finished things up a bit when she was talking with me and just laid groundwork so if it happened again, she would know what to do.

And the reality is, these things happen. One of the more dramatic stories, I had a friend who's, it's somebody's name you'd probably know who really doesn't believe in demons. He's a really good Bible guy and he reads it in scripture, but he really doesn't believe it because, I mean, it's just the way he is. And we've had conversations and such. Well, he and another pastor were at a church. And a woman in the church got really sick in the, oh, 20 something. Couple of friends took her to the ER because she was really sick. And she was in the emergency room doing all the things you do in the ER to do diagnostic, try to figure out what's going on with the sickness. But she is reacting in a very different way. This is really nice young woman, Christian. And she is cussing people. She's angry, she's venomous and things. And her friend's like, "What in the world?"

And they couldn't both be in the room at the same time, but one could be. And there were a couple of times that suddenly, things would change. And she said, "help me, help me." And then she back to the venomous self again. They said, "This is weird." Now, my friend who doesn't believe in demonic stuff was one of the people who was there. And he was in the room and saw this stuff happening and he's like, "What in the world? Why is this woman so agitated? What is causing it?" The doctors and nurses were doing their kind of assessment of things, trying to find out what was going on.

Well, the lead pastor finished the service at the church and they'd been texting him. He came to the emergency room and he and my friend went in together. And this woman's laying on the gurney there in the ER. And when he walks in, he had brought a big black Bible. And he walked over to her. She jumped up, pulled some tubes out, slapped the Bible out of his hand, cussed him to his face. I mean, this is so not this woman. And laid back down on the gurney. My friend walked over. The lead pastor walked over, put his hands on her forehead, and commanded the demon to get away. Within 30 seconds, the woman was laying on the bed there weeping. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I couldn't get rid of it."

She had been attacked by a demon as she came into the hospital and it overwhelmed her. And it wasn't until somebody came who had a bit of experience that could help her drive the demon away and released her. I met with my friend who doesn't believe in demons. I had a appointment with him the next morning and it was the funniest breakfast ever.

"Gerry, I think you might be right." We post-processed and stuff. And the lead pastor, he is not super experienced, but he knew what to do. And the night with the lead pastor and another friend. I met with a woman later that week. And we had a deep two-hour conversation, just what else was going on. And it turned out there was some secret stuff in her life she'd never told anybody that had happened to her as a girl. And that was what the demon had used as am opportunity to attack her.

It wasn't a ground that we had to get rid of, but what then we did was, this thing the demon had been using for its opportunity, we ended up overcoming that through just cleansing prayer type stuff. This was, I don't know, seven or eight years ago. And we're Facebook friends and I see her and we message each other from time to time. But that's the kind of stuff that can happen.

Another thing is, what about a house? Can there be demons in a house or in a building or something like that? And my answer is yes, there can be. Again, to use stories just to explain things. Another friend of mine, he and his wife had a good relation. Couple early kids. They were like seven and five. Good pastor. And he was talking to me one day, one of the guys that I mentor. And he said, "Gerry, I don't know what's happening. Suddenly, my wife and I, we're on each other all the time. It's like, we're always critical. I don't know what's going on." And we talked about stuff and he was the one that said, "I just wonder, we just moved in a new house and I just wonder if there's some sort of demonic thing in the house." I said, "Well, it could be." I said, "Did you do any kind of spiritual work with the house before you moved in?" "No," he said, "We didn't." I said, "Why don't we just do that?" "Okay."

So I went over his house. So he and his wife and their two kids were there. And this is what I do in terms of house-type things or building-type things is, we have the four of them plus me. And I said, "Okay, we're going to go through every room in the house and we're going to dedicate it to God. We're going to consecrate it for divine purposes. And in that process, we're going to just reject and rebuke anything that stands opposed to the things of Jesus."

Okay. So we started in the living room and I'm a kid-oriented type person. So this little girl was five years old. And I said, "Okay. What do you do in this room that's good?" And she had several things. "Oh yeah. And we laugh together. Yes, this is good." And went through the family and they did Bible studies in there and they played games in there and all that kind of stuff.

Okay. So we gather around held hands and we dedicated this room to those activities and just did verbal rejection of anything that stands opposed to this, anything opposed to it. And we just, "In Jesus' name, you must depart and leave it alone." No particular thing. We did that. One of the next rooms was a bathroom. And the pastor's wife is saying, "Bathroom?" I said, "Yeah, that's an important room." "Yeah. But you know what we do there?" "Yeah. Yeah, I know what you're doing there. That's the whole point. Some people, bathrooms are kind of a dirty place. We want to consecrate it to things of God. This is where we'll clean up." And then so on.

And so we did that. Couldn't all fit in the bathroom, but we looked into it. And went to the kitchen. Did the same thing there. And there was a downstairs. And the kids were hungry being in the kitchen. So she made some snacks for them and we were just chatting there. I said, "Okay, let's finish this up now." And she said, "Well, the kids are a little tired and a little hungry. Well, I'll just stay up here with the kids." Ding. I said to myself, "Uh oh. This is not the way it should be." I just knew in my spirit, something was wrong. And I said, "What's going on?" "Well, I don't know. Kids are hungry." "No." I said. "What's wrong?" She said, "I just don't like downstairs." "What do you mean, you don't like downstairs?"

And shortening a longer story, she told me, "There's something down there that hates me," kind of thing. And clearly, I mean, I figured out pretty quickly that she was reacting to something demonic. I didn't say that. But we went downstairs. She went with and the kids went with us too because I want all them to be there. The kids play. This is Oregon. So that's a key play place for much of the time is downstairs. They had their laundry stuff and that sort of stuff down there.

Same thing. I had her start. "What do you do?" And we consecrated to God. And I could watch her. She was looking over toward the washing machine pretty regularly. And I said, "Okay, I want you to begin praying," to her. "And I want you to do the consecration prayer and I want you to speak to that thing over there and tell it to get away." Because we had talked about something before. She did. And there was some sort of demonic spirit down there. I don't know where it came from. Don't care. And she was the one, and we reinforced it, to tell that demonic thing to get out. And it did.

And the inexplicable conflict between them went away. There was something in that house. Well, why was that? Frankly, I don't care. I don't care. It was something demonic. It was malevolent and it was causing conflict in their marriage somehow. And I mean, they had a good marriage. It wasn't like they had some major problems or anything, but that's what can happen. So my thing is, anytime you're in a house, consecrate it to God.

I just worked with parents of, they do foster care. And I mean, a long story. I won't give you any details on it here because it's not appropriate. But what I suggested for their home, because kids bring bad stuff. Foster kids bring bad stuff with them because they're just out of horrible backgrounds. And they had a couple kids that were really, really in bad shape. And so I just prayed, "Let's go through the house and dedicate the entire thing to God in this kind of way." And I told them, "If you want to anoint things with oil, that's perfectly appropriate. There's nothing magical about oil, but if that helps you, do it." And they have done that now.

And so that kind of thing, just dealing with houses, dealing with curses, the thing of it is is, a curse, I believe, has no authority over me no matter what it is, whether it's from a dad or a kid or a demon. It only has authority over me if I receive it. And I don't have to go back and know all the details of the curse. But the thing of it is, I reject this in Jesus' name. I will not receive it. I will stand in the name and authority of Jesus Christ. And do that. And different things. That's where I've done it. And it's been effective. Now, there's a lot more to it than that. I've dealt with people with intergenerational curses. But the same kind of thing. So I dealt with one where I think it was a great-grandmother had a curse put on her and had gone down the bloodline. And my friend was dealing with that. I wasn't present when they broke the curse, but I was part of the prayer support team.

And they set up some stuff and then when she came into the room, she was having strong physical reactions as she came into the room. Part of this was an illness type thing. And what they did, her husband and a fellow who's well experienced in deliverance stuff went through and they named the curse, because they knew what it was. It was specifically. They named the curse and they went down the generation lines and said, "We reject this curse at every one of the generation lines." And then in her particularly, they rejected and she rejected the curse. It was absolutely life-changing for her. But the same kind of thing. A curse has authority when we receive it.

Now, in her case, she was completely unaware of the curse until she found out about it through ancestry.com type thing. But once she identified it, then we broke it. And that was 18 months or so ago. And I talked to her recently and I mean, different life after they broke that curse.

"I don't know if these things are real." Well actually, they're in the Bible. So I take them pretty much at face value. But instead of being afraid of it and trying to go find who did what curse and what magic they used and that kind of stuff, no, no, no. I stand on the name authority of Jesus Christ. This thing is from the darkness. I reject it. I rebuke it. I have nothing to do with it. My attention is in Jesus. That's where I go. And I think that's the key to it. I don't think I have to go back and find who did the curse, what magic they used, what incantation was there. I'm have to find a counter incantation, that sort of thing. So just in principle, that's where I come from.

So bottom line on this whole thing, bottom line is instead of dealing so much with the fearful, I want to build the courage. Instead of dealing with what demons do, I want to build what Jesus has done. Instead of dealing with what is impacting what the name of the demon, the information of the demon, that kind of stuff, I want to know more about the name and power of Jesus. Instead of dealing with what's happening in the darkness, I want to say, "I reject the darkness. I want to live in the light with Jesus."

In spiritual warfare, much of it is just ordinary, will I live godly life? Sanctification process. So thus, live no lies. I want to become more in spiritual practice, more firm in my faith, more committed to the mission of Jesus Christ, more involved in the community of Christ. That's ordinary spiritual life. Because what Satan wants to do is to isolate from God and others, leave me on my own, and then take me out kind of thing. I would increase my love for God, involvement in the community. And where these things are happening, I want to do as little as possible to bring the name and authority of Jesus Christ against the demonic spirit. Command it to get away following the example of Jesus by quoting scripture, demanding it get away, and then bring my attention back to Jesus and living. You were darkness. You are light in the Lord. Therefore, we live as children of light. Build your courage, build your hope, build your joy. That's the secret to spiritual warfare as I see it.