In Mark 5 we read the story of the man possessed by 2000 demons. When he saw Jesus he ran and worshipped Him. It is not only possible to worship Jesus with demons in you, the reality is that most church people do this, because most church people

love both the world (the things of men, Mark 8:33) and Jesus.

Correction exposes demons

You can test the truth of this statement by simply challenging or correcting people with the truth and observing their reaction. If you won’t submit to the truth, you’ll attack the truth. The Pharisees wouldn’t surrender to the truth so they killed the Truth. King Saul attacked David for no other reason than the fact that David’s honourable and truthful spirit discomforted and exposed Saul’s dishonourable deceitful spirit. If you are speaking God’s truth and the hearer gets convicted yet won’t listen, they will attack you with their attitude, separation, threatening, finding fault with the corrector, or direct confrontation.

If you’ve lied, do you confront the corrector? If you’ve cheated, do you challenge the corrector? If you’ve envied someone’s position, do you confront the corrector? If you’ve committed illegal sex, do you confront the corrector, or do you submit to the truth? Most people hide and hope it goes away, but if the corrector persists, most people attack the corrector, and end up blaming the corrector for not being able to forget the incident when they themselves have conveniently forgotten it.

God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth John 4:24.

John 4: 22 & 23 clearly states that there are true worshippers and false worshippers.

I am the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by Me John 14:6

If you are not under the influence of the Spirit of Truth (John 14:17), you not only have no relationship with the Father of spirits (Hebrews 12:9), but you are directly under the influence of a spirit of Lying, for there is no truth in Satan (John 8:44).

The spirit in us lusts to envy James 4:5

“Self” hates being told it’s wrong. If, at a young age, you set in place a pattern of resistance and defiance to your parents or any authority figure by saying in your heart “you won’t tell me what to do“, or “you won’t make me feel bad”, or “you’re not going to do this to me”, then you are automatically vulnerable to the control and influence of demonic spirits. From that point on, once “self” defends itself, the spirit in you will fall to its inherent envy and the consequence will be that you will be controlled by demonic spirits of fear (2 Timothy 1:7) and demonic lying spirits (2 Chronicles 18:22), and this situation will remain and even worsen until you surrender to the truth and repent.

It mightn’t sound fair that it happens that way, but if that’s your reaction to this truth then that confirms what spirit you are functioning under because instead of surrendering to the truth you are attacking the truth, and blaming the Creator for not doing it right, and ultimately telling the Creator how to do it.

God actually set it up this way to expose what spirit you really serve.

Satan’s dream is to tell God what to do, rather than being told by God. Satan hates being told, and human beings under the influenced of satanic spirits hate being told too, and hate the person doing the telling.

The consequential pathway that a foul spirit follows when it’s been corrected, is outlined in Genesis chapter 3 …

1. Fear of being caught out
   
2. Hide from the Truth
   
3. Lie
   
4. Blame the other person
   
5. Blame God for letting it happen v.12
   
6. Tell the Creator what to do
   

Be not wise in your own eyes Proverbs 3:7

Evil always blames the authority for causing it pain or embarrassment or getting it into trouble. A foul spirit will quickly defend itself with deductions such as “you don’t understand”, or “your reaction is just over-the-top”, or “what’s the problem, it’s not that bad”, or “I don’t think it was that bad”, or “I’m a good person, I only made an error, why are you over-reacting?”

Once you are wise in your own eyes, you’ll only see through your own eyes and you are blind to the Truth. The Spirit of Truth is hidden to those who are wise in their own eyes (Matthew 11:25).

In Genesis 3, Satan manipulated Eve with the temptation of a better and higher position deal. Eve lusted after the feeling of a higher rank and persuaded Adam to sin too. Immediately they saw differently. When you are under the influence of a demon you will be wise in your own eyes and only see through your own eyes. From that position you will only see what bad thing is being done to you and thus you will blame the authority for the unjust correction.

If you are in the Spirit of God you will see through His eyes. If you are in a foul spirit you will see through the eyes of a demon and think you are wise. Like Adam and Eve, under the influence of a demon, you’ll see yourself in a higher position than your created calling; you’ll dream and believe you are to be the future prime minister to fix the country for God, or the future Australian idol to witness for God in the music scene, or one of the end-time prophets, or an Olympian to witness for God like Eric Liddell. Satan has raised up many false prophets seducing people into the dream of a higher rank of importance.

The truth is … just like Eve, your dream is a satanic vision appealing to your lusts. You won’t find in the Bible, dreaming about being personally elevated as the pathway to humility. Humility under the Spirit of God rests in God’s allocated position and waits for His call and time. Humility doesn’t seek to find its purpose, it serves the Lord wherever it’s finds itself, and patiently waits, like Noah, David, Moses and Jesus.

“He that speaks of himself seeks his own glory” John 7:18. Unless, like Jesus, your objective in life is to seek the glory of the Father, you won’t speak the truth, you’ll speak under the influence of another spirit.

Calling the sin, ‘good’

Modern western society already calls evil, ‘good’. Modern youth uses foul words such as … “filth, sick, wicked” to mean “that’s good”. From this platform, it’s not a difficult step to call sin, ‘good’.

When you call the sin, ‘not bad’, or label the sin as only 20% bad, you call the sin ‘good’. When you conflict with the authority on the label of the deed, you actually express your disagreement and consequently disrespect of the authority’s good opinion. Thus you expose that you are really your own authority, that you have the right to your own opinions, and the right to not be told what to do. Thus you expose that you are under the power of a foul spirit because your attitude contradicts the Truth of Hebrews 13:12 “obey them that have the rule over you”, and Ephesians 5:11 … a pastor is to “expose the unfruitful works of darkness”. A true Christian already knows they have the right to their own opinion, they don’t have to defend it; they trust God.

The curse of calling sin, good

The Word of God states … “woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil” and “woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight” Isaiah 5: 20,21

The ultimate consequence of calling the sin that the Spirit of Truth confronts, ‘good’, is blasphemy. The scribes said Jesus cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub. In other words, they called the only one who is perfectly good, ie Jesus, evil. That was an unpardonable error of judgment.

Everybody loves the truth until the truth targets them personally

Demons are happy with the truth if they can manipulate it to their advantage. Satan spoke the Word of God to Jesus when he tempted Him in the desert, to try and manipulate Him to his way, with the truth. Demons frequently spoke out the truth that Jesus was the Son of God and they worshipped Him (Mark 1:24,34 & 3:11,12), but they obviously did this to manipulate Jesus to tempt Him to elevate Himself in the sight of all the people, or to distract him from addressing them.

Many people have perfected the art of pretending to submit

Let’s not be naïve; foul spirits can preach the gospel of Christ and pretend perfect love (Philippians 1:15-18). Satan can come as an angel of light to trick and manipulate. Who can you trust these days? …only the Word of God is reliable; not the religions of the church.

Many people have learnt from the pain of getting bitten by authority that it’s easier to pretend to submit to correction when they’ve been found out for sinning; but in reality they’re just trying to quickly escape the embarrassing pain of correction by agreeing with the corrector.

People, under demonic influence, often own the truth of their sin to quickly dissipate the pain of the correction, and soften the corrector into not punishing them. Others like to keep the authority happy for their own personal value, so they just agree with the authority.

Demons hide. They don’t like the light.

Demons don’t tell you much, you have to guess, and if you don’t guess exactly, demons deny you are right. Anyone under the influence of the Spirit of God can sense something’s wrong with your spirit, but a foul spirit doesn’t expose itself unless cornered; it lies. God addresses the spirit, whereas, humans argue their defence in the physical, and miss the correction of the Spirit.

The truth is, if you flaunt correction you are a bastard, not a son Hebrews 12:8. There’s only one avenue of escape … unconditional surrender to the Truth through repentance of your sin.

May the Lord remove your scales to see his Truth.

Pastor Greg Coynes