Springs Article 2024-03 (1)
Further Meditation: Mark 4:35 – 5:20, Luke 8:22-39
What is an unclean spirit?
- It is a demonic spirit of perversion and self-harm – deriving pleasure from acts that dishonour, defile, damage and destroy the body
- An unclean spirit influences a person to do filthy, shameful, twisted, vile, crazy and harmful things to their body, Romans 1:24
- It promotes the perversion of gender and sex (acts or behaviours that corrupt the male-female gender distinction and the male-female sexual relation), Romans 1:24-27
- It promotes self-harm (e.g. body-cutting and body-piercing, which are usually symptoms of internal depression)
- It promotes cross-dressing/adornment (e.g. males feminising [weaving] their hair, wearing earrings and/or using lipstick), Deuteronomy 22:5, 1 Corinthians 11:14
- It promotes unnatural sex acts
What are the characteristics of unclean spirits according to Mark 5:1-20?
- They love to oppress, obsess and possess humans who practice uncleanness, Luke 8:29
- They love to torment their hosts
- They can invite more of their kind to live inside their hosts
- They are intelligent and manipulative
- They are religious and hypocritical
- They are loud and audacious
- They are strong and do not like to be restrained
- They are stubborn and intimidating
- They are territorial and organised
- They promote nudity and insanity
- They are wasteful and promote self-destruction
- They are sadistic and masochistic: deriving pleasure from defiling and harming their hosts
What opens the door for unclean spirits?
- Practicing uncleanness, Galatians 5:19
- Living in habitual sin
- Resisting the truth
- Resisting the Holy Spirit
- Refusing to repent
- Seeking after signs and wonders
- Dabbling into occultism and witchcraft (sorcery and divination – includes palm reading, tarot reading and witchcraft books e.g. Harry Potter!)
- Blaspheming the Holy Spirit
- Matthew 12:22-45, Romans 1:24-27
How can a person be delivered from unclean spirits?
- Willingness and repentance
- Faith in the Name Jesus! (Faith is a firm decision to trust/rely/depend on God)
- Power in the Holy Spirit (the anointing can be increased by prayer and fasting)
- Matthew 17:18-21, KJV/NKJV
- Renounce the unclean spirit
- Rebuke the unclean spirit
- Receive prayer for deliverance from a genuine minister of God (involves binding and casting out of the unclean spirit)
- Submit to the Lordship of Jesus
- Be filled the Holy Spirit
- Commit yourself to holy living, 2 Corinthians 7:1, 1 Peter 1:15-16
- Stay in active fellowship with true believers
- Stop practicing uncleanness!, John 5:14
To find out more, listen to the audio sermon