How They’re Hooked Into You

(John 8:32 (NIV) "Then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."

(1998) I was riding my bicycle to work one cold winter morning, pondering the deliverances at the Georgia Men's Advance. In each case it seemed like the demonic oppression was rooted in something deeper and far less obvious than I would ever have imagined. And this root was not necessarily what you or I would call a sin. Often it was a misconception of the truth. One man was delivered with these words: "You find it impossible to meet the exceedingly high standards you have set for yourself." Another man was delivered when the rejection he suffered as a child was dealt with. This man was my friend, and I played a small part in his deliverance. His adult life was a mess. He was as dejected and defeated as they come. When he prayed a rather general prayer of confession, I heard the Lord say in my heart,

"No one who comes to Me seeking mercy is ever turned away."

Oblivious to his real condition, I told him what I had heard. Apparently this gave him the assurance he needed to finally deal with a situation that had plagued him for years. Later that night he confessed his bondage before me and another, at which point we did a deliverance from demonic spirits. Something akin to electricity crackled throughout my body as they left him - or rather, as they exploded from him - in abject terror at the name of Jesus. After the demons fled, I anointed my friend's head with oil. But not just a dab. “This is going to be messy," I told him, "but I think the Lord says to pour out the whole thing!” So I did. Perhaps this was the Lord's way of assuring him that his deliverance was complete.

A few days later I was still full of questions like, "How does so much evil come from such small beginnings? and "How does childhood rejection lead to demon oppression in adult life?"

My thoughts were interrupted when my glove snagged in the twisted end of a piece of baling wire. I tugged several times in random directions in an effort to free my glove. No luck. The wire held fast. I tugged harder. Still no luck. I remember thinking it through like this. "If I continue to blindly struggle like this, I will probably tear my glove and ruin it. Then my wife will be right once again. She says that whenever something is jammed, we men force it. And when it breaks, we claim that it needed fixing anyway. Well, this time I am going to be different." So I slowed down and took a closer look at things. "Oh! So that's the problem! The wire is not hooked into the glove the way I thought. I need to slide it the other way." Quickly and effortlessly, I disentangled the wire from my glove. No rips, no tears. What a contrast to my original brute-force approach! The key was to understand how the wire was hooked into my glove. At this point the questions I had been pondering earlier came back to mind, and the Lord said to my heart,

"You've got to see how these things are hooked into you."