Silas
Beloved of All
Your cry for deliverance is heard and it reflects a true understanding that the battle we face is spiritual. Scripture shows that when a person wants to do good, evil is often present with him, and there is a real struggle within between the flesh and the spirit. Apart from God that struggle cannot be won in our own strength.
God made man in His own image to live in fellowship with Him, for God is Spirit and must be worshiped in spirit and truth. When sin entered, the spirit within man died and fellowship with God was broken. Man became dominated by the flesh, alienated from God, with his mind set on fleshly things. The mind of the flesh cannot know God and is dead toward Him. No person has power over his own spirit to retain it, and wickedness itself cannot deliver those who are given to it.
The hope of the gospel is that God makes the spirit alive again. To be born again by the Spirit of God is to be made spirit, soul and body as God intended, so that His Spirit can join with our spirit. The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, when He dwells in you, gives life and will make alive even your mortal body. His Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. That is a firsthand relationship with Jesus Christ, not a secondhand one. Even evil spirits recognize the difference, for they know Jesus and they know those who truly belong to Him.
So we do not only ask God to drive out what is evil, we ask Him to fill what is empty. Jesus Himself was full of the Holy Spirit, led by the Spirit and empowered by the Spirit, and He is our example. Our need is to be filled and to be led, to have the mind of the Spirit and to walk after the Spirit, setting our minds on God and the things of God and sowing to the Spirit so that we reap life.
I join you in prayer that the Lord will deliver the one you have mentioned from every work of wickedness today and in the days to come. May God by His power cast out all that is unclean and break the hold of sin that separates from Him. May He grant repentance and faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, make the spirit alive anew, and fill that life with His Holy Spirit. May He lead by His Spirit, give a mind set on spiritual things, and keep the whole person, spirit and soul and body, preserved blameless before Him. May there be no appearance of evil retained, but a turning away from it and a quenching of nothing that is of God, and a grieving of Him no more, but a life that flows with living water to others. We ask this in the mighty name of Jesus, who alone has authority over all evil and who gives abundant life to all who trust in Him.
God made man in His own image to live in fellowship with Him, for God is Spirit and must be worshiped in spirit and truth. When sin entered, the spirit within man died and fellowship with God was broken. Man became dominated by the flesh, alienated from God, with his mind set on fleshly things. The mind of the flesh cannot know God and is dead toward Him. No person has power over his own spirit to retain it, and wickedness itself cannot deliver those who are given to it.
The hope of the gospel is that God makes the spirit alive again. To be born again by the Spirit of God is to be made spirit, soul and body as God intended, so that His Spirit can join with our spirit. The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, when He dwells in you, gives life and will make alive even your mortal body. His Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. That is a firsthand relationship with Jesus Christ, not a secondhand one. Even evil spirits recognize the difference, for they know Jesus and they know those who truly belong to Him.
So we do not only ask God to drive out what is evil, we ask Him to fill what is empty. Jesus Himself was full of the Holy Spirit, led by the Spirit and empowered by the Spirit, and He is our example. Our need is to be filled and to be led, to have the mind of the Spirit and to walk after the Spirit, setting our minds on God and the things of God and sowing to the Spirit so that we reap life.
I join you in prayer that the Lord will deliver the one you have mentioned from every work of wickedness today and in the days to come. May God by His power cast out all that is unclean and break the hold of sin that separates from Him. May He grant repentance and faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, make the spirit alive anew, and fill that life with His Holy Spirit. May He lead by His Spirit, give a mind set on spiritual things, and keep the whole person, spirit and soul and body, preserved blameless before Him. May there be no appearance of evil retained, but a turning away from it and a quenching of nothing that is of God, and a grieving of Him no more, but a life that flows with living water to others. We ask this in the mighty name of Jesus, who alone has authority over all evil and who gives abundant life to all who trust in Him.
