Do Not Fear the End Times Part 87: When Satan Gave Me a Beating in the Spirit

The LORD uses our failures for His purposes too. He used my failure this time to educate, strengthen, and correct. It wasn’t pleasant, but I can see it was a part of my Spiritual growth in the LORD. And growing is often painful.

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Previous End Times Post

Part 50 Recap Post

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Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another End Times post.

When I say “hope all’s well,” I mean it. And I hope you’re doing better than I am right now, Readers. Today I’m recovering from a vicious demonic attack against my Faith. I got beaten down hard with intense feelings of despair, hopelessness, and faithlessness over the last two days. I was attacked by the Python spirit or something like it.

Now I’m trying to recover the momentum I had before Python (or something) attacked. The optimism, the productivity … the momentum. I need to get my momentum back. And I will soon enough, because Jesus lifted me up from the low point the demons brought me to. I already feel much better. But I learned some important lessons from what happened to me over the past couple days. I learned about demonic attacks. And I will share those lessons with you today.

So let me tell you what happened to me over the last few days.

I Faltered, I Fell

If you follow the blog, you know the last few posts have been about the Book of Job, and the lessons on suffering it teaches. The Book of Job is all about suffering, the suffering of life. But it has a happy ending and a positive message for all believers. It’s one of my favorite books in the Bible because it’s so honest and real.

One of the lessons of Job about suffering that I repeated over and over was this: Suffering is temporary. No matter what it seems like at the time, our suffering will not last forever. Nothing lasts forever, good or bad.

Well, after finishing up this series of posts on Job, I ended up having a “Job moment” of my own. Everything I’d just finished writing about—having Hope in God during suffering, holding on until the end, remembering our suffering is temporary—it all went out the window as I was hit by a crushing attack of hopelessness, faithlessness, and despair.

Here’s how that started ….

I’ve been battling a certain sin for years now. I’ve been battling it since before I started this blog last year. It’s been a bitter struggle, but sometimes I make progress. I had been doing good for the few days when I was writing the series of posts on Job. But the whole time, demons were attacking my mind more and more each day with thoughts of returning to this sin I struggle with.

I would cast down the imaginations (thoughts of indulging in the sin) I was being assaulted with and rebuke them in the name of Jesus. But there were too many imaginations to cast down them all. My endurance wore down day by day, until finally I gave in to the demonic imaginations and indulged in the sin. I wiped out a nice seven days of “sober time” or “clean time,” which was a bitter disappointment.

Though the actions were mine and I take responsibility for them, the demons are the ones who made me trip myself up so I fell. Now I’m struggling to get back to where I was.

The fall into sin was bad enough … but things would then get even worse.

The bitter disappointment of losing my “clean time” made me bitter and angry. I was resentful and angry toward God, because I had prayed and prayed to Him to help me and save me from the demonic imaginations. But the imaginations didn’t stop, the demons would not stop tormenting me. I had no relief from the torment of these demonic thoughts. I indulged my sin and wiped out my progress in some part just to get relief from the constant demonic torment in my mind.

In my disappointment, shame, and sadness, I was angry at God for not helping me more. For not making the demons shut up. I felt like God had abandoned me, left me at the mercy of the demon spirits attacking me.

In other words, I forgot what I had just finished writing about in my series on Job. I said that God never abandons us, no matter what it looks or feels like in the depths of our suffering. God didn’t abandon Job when he was sitting on that pile of ashes, devastated. And God didn’t abandon me either, but in my shame and despair, I lost sight of that. I committed the sin of getting very angry with God, bitter and resentful toward Him and the way this world is.

I was tested, and I failed. I couldn’t practice what I was preaching. When the demons attacked me with despair, I despaired. They got me. And they succeeded in shaking my Faith, the thing that should have been the strong support for me to fall back on. I believed their lies because my Faith wasn’t strong enough.

So the demons won that round, they managed to make me doubt the LORD and my relationship to Him. I stopped praying for two days, because I felt like it wouldn’t do any good (because prayer didn’t save me from relapsing into sin). But prayer is our lifeline, our connection to God. The demons succeeded in making me cut off my own lifeline.

I felt so ashamed and hopeless when I felt abandoned by God, when I felt like He wasn’t helping me because He didn’t love me. I felt so bad that I even thought about suicide, and thought about completely giving up on the Christian path. Giving up on this blog, on Christ, on everything Spiritual in my life. I was seriously considering this. This is how deeply the demons were able to shake my Faith with doubt and shame.

Speaking of this blog, during this time when I was feeling so low I wrote a post. It was supposed to be published today, but I stopped it from going up. It’s in my drafts folder now—maybe one day I’ll publish it as an example of the level of despair the demons can push us to. I’ll think about that. But for now, that post will stay in my drafts folder and I have no plans to publish it.

The blog post was filled with despair, and I wrote out my thoughts on quitting Christianity and giving up. I decided that the demons wanted me to put that post up. The post was demonically-inspired; it was written when I was very demonically oppressed. My depression and hopelessness was of demonic origin. If I published such a hopeless post, it might affect others who read it. And that would only achieve the demons’ goals.

I pray my blog will be one that builds Christians up instead of tearing them down. That inspires and encourages them rather than demoralizing them. The demons, by getting me to write such a hopeless post, almost succeeded in perverting that purpose and turning it to evil.

But thanks to the LORD, He showed me what was going on. He showed me that the hopelessness, faithlessness, and despair were demonic attacks—I was under intense demonic assault. And now that I have some more Wisdom, I can share with you what I learned about this demonic assault and how it worked.

Analyzing the Attack

Why Me??

I once watched a YouTube video of a sermon by the famous demonologist Derek Prince. In this sermon he was explaining demons: What they are, what they do, and so on. And I remember him saying that many victims of demonic attacks would tell him, “right when I was getting closest to the LORD, that’s when I fell away.” Prince emphasized that this was a common tactic of demons—they attack people right when that person has started on the right path to seeking out Christ.

Demons attack people right when they’re on track to find Christ and experience Spiritual growth in Him. The demons want to stop people from finding, following, and loving Christ at all cost. If a person makes it to the safety of Christ, the demons lose, for Christ’s power silences their attacks and drives them away.

I’ve been growing closer to the LORD this past year than at any other time in my life. Right before this attack I suffered, I realized that I enjoy reading my Bible every morning. I like going to church (usually, heh heh heh). I like writing this blog (usually, heh heh heh). The point is, I’m engaging with my Christian Faith now on a new level like I never have before.

Although I’m not by any means getting this whole Christian thing perfect, and I’ll be the first to admit I stumble and fall a lot, I now have a life where every day I try to follow Jesus. Every day, I try to be and do good, and work for the Kingdom.

And that’s exactly why I received an attack of this level. The extent of my influence (with less than 100 blog followers, it isn’t much of anything at all right now) is irrelevant—what matters are my intentions and what I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to evangelize and educate, and that’s why the demons tried to put a stop to what I’m doing.

So we know why I got an attack. But how did the attack work??

How Did they Attack??

One area where I fail far too often is in thinking good things every day. The real battlefield is in our mind, as that’s where the devil and his minions is trying to attack us most of the time. These tormenting spirits torture our minds, where they assault us with negative and unholy thoughts.

Doubt. Faithlessness. Feeling shame over sin, feeling unloved by God, abandoned by God. Making us doubt our relationship to Christ and our identity of who we are as blood-bought, forgiven believers in Christ. Who we are as part of the Body of Christ.
These are the unholy and untrue lies the demons assault us with. We have to reject these demonic lies as untrue the moment one pops in our head. We can’t entertain the lies of the devil for even a moment—this is the battle, the struggle. And it’s in our mind.

As for me, one reason I failed this time is because the demons are so relentless in attacking my mind. They never stop, it feels like. They never let up. There’s no respite from their assault. And that led me to despair. I faltered, stumbled, and fell under the weight of their nonstop mental assault.

Since I felt like God had not helped me during this relentless assault, despite me praying for help, when I fell under the weight of this demonic assault I wanted to give up on Christianity. But after two days I could see that’s exactly what the demons wanted me to say and feel, after succumbing to their attack.

Remember: The demons attack our mind with unholy thoughts because they want to drive us away from Christ, the one power who can save us from the attack.

One thing that put the event into perspective for me was finding this video in my YouTube recommendations. The video is from evangelist Jentezen Franklin, and it’s about tormenting spirits—like the Python spirit—that attack us in our minds. The video was a great source of knowledge for me, and gave me insight into what was really going on. It’s long, but I leave it here for you to check out if you like:

It’s no coincidence that I found this video in my recommendations, and watched it. This was the LORD sending me the knowledge I needed. As soon as I started watching the video, I knew it was describing the situation I was going through. I knew I was under intense, sustained demonic assault. That’s why I had fallen into such a painful state of hopelessness and faithlessness so quickly and drastically.

The LORD was using YouTube to tell me what I was dealing with. To give me insight into what was going on. To give me the knowledge I needed to get back up, and get back on track.

Why now??

And there was one more video the LORD showed me. It gave me some interesting knowledge I hadn’t been aware of. This attack happened during the Chinese Lunar New Year in February (I’m writing this post in mid-February, though it will be posted in March). Pastor John Tanyan from True Life Church in Canada explained that when hundreds of millions of people visit temples during this Lunar New Year and pray to idols, all that idol worship opens demonic portals around the world. Demonic spirits come out of those portals, and search the world for believers to attack during this time. One of the spirits that comes out during this event is probably the Python spirit.

You can watch the video here:

Again, it’s no coincidence I found this video. The LORD gave it to me. He was giving me the info I needed to shake off this demonic assault and get back up with His help. He was rescuing me, and putting a stop to the attack. Because a part of me had known the whole time that this was a demonic attack, but I couldn’t explain exactly what was going on or how to get out of it.

When the LORD placed the knowledge of these two videos in my path, it blew the demonic deception wide open and neutralized the power of this demonic attack. Now I knew what was going on, and why I was feeling such despair. Now I could fight back, and my Faith in the LORD was restored. Actually, my Faith came back even stronger than it was before—my will to fight was renewed. God had never abandoned me, like He never abandoned Job in the midst of his despair. God was with me the whole time.

That’s why I’m sure the LORD allowed me to be attacked. It was all part of His plan. He Planned for me to be defeated by this demonic power for a few days, so He could pull me out of the attack and reveal to me what was going on. It wasn’t pleasant, but now I have a first-hand experience of being attacked by the Python spirit (or some tormenting spirit like it). And the experience has given me new knowledge, strength, and Faith earned from Spiritual warfare.

Growth Is Painful

This demonic assault was intense. It left me feeling horrible despair, hopelessness, and faithlessness. I was about to give up on everything. I came very close to abandoning this Christian walk after giving up so much to start it. Even with everything I knew about a life without Christ vs. a life with Him, I lost sight of that and was still ready to give up on Christianity.

All this happened in my mind and emotions. That’s where the battleground is—that’s where the enemy attacks.
I admit I was defeated this time, in this attack. My mental Fortitude wasn’t strong enough and I listened to the lies of the enemy. That led to my downfall. But the LORD picked me back up, and now I have new knowledge and experience. Now I have more Spiritual warfare knowledge and some stronger Faith.
The LORD uses our failures for His purposes too. He used my failure this time to educate, strengthen, and correct. It wasn’t pleasant, but I can see it was a part of my Spiritual growth in the LORD. And growing is often painful.

That’s how powerful the attack was. Whether it was the Python spirit that attacked me or some other tormenting spirit, I’m not fully sure yet. I need to pray for the Discernment of the Holy Spirit to be able to say for sure. But what really matters to me here are the lessons I learned from the experience.

I pray you’ve been able to follow my explanation of this Spiritual warfare experience I had. I pray I articulated it coherently (it’s hard to explain these things, y’know).

Here’s what I pray you’ll learn from my experience of being defeated by a tormenting spirit attack and recovering from it:

• The battleground is in our mind, and the devil attacks our thoughts with despair, negativity, and unholy LIES
• Christ is the Truth—stand firm in the Truth of the Gospels and reject the demonic lies
• The enemy attacks when we’re on the right track, when we’re living Righteously and trying to follow Jesus
• The enemy wants to corrupt the message we’re preaching
• The enemy can attack at any time, but certain events in the year create some extra danger
• God is always with us during our struggle, He never abandons us, like He never abandoned Job when he was sitting on that pile of ashes in despair

Stay alert, and stay with Christ!! He is the King of Kings and LORD of LORDs. There is Power and Victory in His name. Call on Him, and He will deliver you from demonic attacks. Keep your Faith strong, and never fear. Although the enemy doesn’t fight fair and hits us with sneak attacks, the final Victory belongs to Christ and Christ alone. No power of the enemy will harm us (Luke 10:19). Amen!

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Until next time, be strong and do good!

Your new best friend in Christ,

99:9

<<<EXALT THE LORD OUR GOD AND WORSHIP AT HIS HOLY HILL; FOR THE LORD OUR GOD IS HOLY>>>

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