Help! Tormented dreams

[Aquila]

Continued...

So, do what you want with it, but people have been warning you. The smart thing to do is step back and reconsider. But, you're a big boy, you can make your own decisions.

I'll step back and reconsider. But try to understand me. I'm not coming at this from a purely theoretical position that is only on paper. I've either been there or done that. It's an experience. I can't deny what I've personally seen and know.

And to the charge that I'm the expert on everything. I'm not. I get eaten alive on the eschatology threads. LOL I'd like to submit a possibility for you to consider as I step back and reconsider things. Is it possible that I primarily respond to things or post about things that I am rather familiar with? And as a result, I sound like a know it all? I mean, I can pretend I've never seen or experienced the things we talk about, but that would be a lie to join this "club" of sorts that seems to attack me from all directions. It wouldn't be honest. It wouldn't be truth.

For example, have you ever been involved with fishing out evil spirit in a home? Sure, you've said prayers rebuking "bumps in the night" and the "spirit of anger" or "lust" or "addiction" in your own home and for a couple other people. But this is different. It's a "deliverance prayer meeting". You're told that it might go on all night "if necessary". You have several brothers from a couple different churches who showed up with pop, tea, coffee, chips, and sandwiches. They greet each other and laugh and chit-chat like old friends, but this is your first time. You're introduced and they ask you if you've done this before and you say no. They look at each other and smile, "You're going to see the power of God, my brother.", they say to you. One quotes a Scripture, "The gates of Hell shell NOT PREVAIL.", in joyful voice. They others individually say, "Amen." One starts setting up snack trays, sandwiches, and drinks in the kitchen. You don't know what to expect. You feel like you're primarily an observer. The woman who lives in the home is divorced. She has her aunt (who says "Somethin' just isn't right in this house.") is at the house with her. Her kids are at her mom's. You're thinking, "Wow, they must take this kinda seriously to evacuate the kids." There's a box of a couple things the lady of the house had boxed up to be thrown out. All you see in the box is a few CDs, what looks like a paperback book or two, a roach clip, and the side of a dream catcher. Two brothers take it outside and dump the stuff into the garbage. Matt calls the group into the living room and introduces everyone. He explains that the goal is to "confirm and cast out" any evil spirit in the home. He shares that Rachel, the woman who lives there, has experienced: anxiety, nightmares, mood swings, had thoughts of suicide, and feels like she's being watched. She's afraid for her children. He shares that she occasionally hears something call her name, but nothing is there. She also states that she's heard something moving around, like walking or crawling on occasion. So Matt opens in prayer, everyone prays. Some speak in tongues others do not. There is praise, worship, clapping, and a few whoots and "Hallelujahs". People are pleading the blood over one another, in the name of Jesus. Matt has everyone take a seat. Some are on the couch, some are seated on a love seat, and the rest are on some folding chairs. You're thinking they must be from a church, they have that white plastic seat and back to them. Matt opens his Bible and starts reading in Mark 16:15-18, and then he re-reads verse 17 where it says, "And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils." Matt begins teaching on what evil spirits are (fallen angels) and offers some of the traditional verses to support that conclusion. He begins talking about Jesus and how many times he cast out an evil spirit in the Gospels. He gets into the church and the book of Acts where it describes devils being cast out. He reiterates, "The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the church." After the Bible study which lasts maybe 30 to 40 minutes, Matt closes the meeting with prayer and opportunity for repentance and the confession of sin, he talks about how the devil is a liar and is already trying to discourage people from casting out devils by making them feel unworthy and throwing their back into their faces. Matt then requests that we thank God for the victory ahead of time and then he speaks straight to any spiritual presence that isn't of God, telling it that it's days are numbered and that tonight will be the last night it will be in the house. Everyone praises and worships one last time. He then explains that we are going to have a deliverance prayer meeting. He asks that the lights be softened and that some praise and worship music be played on the living room stereo. Everyone gets up and begins walking around the house, in different directions, praising Jesus and praying for others and reminding any spirit in the home that it is already defeated. Rachel is praying and crying. Now, some time has passed. Rachel and her aunt are in the living room watching television and yawning. A couple brothers are walking the yard in prayer. You and Matt are in the dining room praying, rocking back and forth on chairs, another brother is in the kitchen praying. You're feeling board. And you're wondering why all the worship and praise just to fish this thing out...when you could have already said a prayer and gone out to eat? How did you feel when suddenly things get real strange... like a weird silence and a strange lull falls over the group... the lights flicker, and the two dogs that were in secured in the laundry room suddenly break into a dog-fight-to-the-death, with snarling, growling, and yelping. Rachel and her aunt get up to split the dogs up and that's when Matt says it, "There it is. Here we go..." and without warning he begins pleading the blood and commanding it out in the name of Jesus. A couple other brothers are praying similarly and are worshipping in the middle of Matts prayers. There are a few whoots, a shout, and people start clapping harder, Matt encourages everyone to keep worshipping, saying, "I rebuke you in Jesus name, I cast you out, you have no authority in this place!" A couple people stomp and shout rebuking the enemy in their own words, something breaks and soon there is this sense of peace and people start crying. Matt is in the living room praying with Rachel and her aunt while holding the dogs. Rachel is crying as Matt prays with her telling her it's gone and is affirming her identity in Christ. There are some more shouts of praise and worship, only now people are thanking Jesus for removing the spirit. Matt is walking the house and pleading the blood with Rachel in every room to insulate it from the enemy. He's fired up. Things die down and a couple brothers help clean up the kitchen. Everyone is happy and talking about how good God is as people start putting on their coats and gathering their things to leave. People walk by Rachel and affirm that she's going to be blessed now that the thing is gone. You walk out to your car and Matt waves before getting into his car. He rolls down the window and says, "Hey! Call me tomorrow, I know it's late. I want to know if you had any questions about what happened here tonight." You agree to call him the next day and then you look at your watch. It's after 3am. You get into your Jeep Liberty and drive home pondering the events of the evening.

Can you just sit that experience, and experiences like, them aside and think, none of that is real...but some criticism from a stranger on the internet is?

[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by Aquila

MM,

My heart goes out to you sister. Things like this can be truly unsettling. You indicated that you've experienced these unwanted dreams for nearly 15 years and that you just want them to stop and that you don't know what to do. I assume that you've prayed about this for some time and that they keep happening.

Everything others have posted above is excellent advice and consideration. But I'm going to go way out on a limb here based on several points in your original post. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But if you feel something in your gut about what I'm about to say, please heed your gut.

I was involved in a local deliverance ministry for nearly two years. A few things you mentioned in your post caused me some concern because those things are also signs of spiritual oppression. If it is a spiritual oppression, and you've already prayed and rebuked it and yet it continues, there might be a stronghold to address before it can be permanently removed. Uprooting the stronghold could be as simple as getting rid of an item connected in some way to the occult or an old relationship/lifestyle. Or it could be more complicated. Once the stronghold is removed, the spirit has no anchor and must leave upon command.

Thoughts?

This post, right here, Aquila, is the issue. Everyone else is offering what you yourself said is excellent advice and consideration.

Then you go way out on a limb with someone you admit you don't know, who you have not personally observed regarding her walk with the Lord, and more than insinuate that she's suffering demonic oppression.

A sincere woman, coming for help, clearly already troubled and afraid has that thrown her way. You give yourself off as a deliverance minister, and as the minister, you are concerned by the things she posted, because they are "signs of spiritual oppression".

You later list those signs as though they are all of them legit and need to be taken seriously, but when I called you on the fifteenth sign, you shrug it off with a "meh, didn't know". Then you later go on to say that when you left the deliverance ministry, you got the list and saved it on a disc, and otherwise, didn't pay much attention to it.

Imagine Modest Mama or anyone else reading this thread, even lurking non-members, seeing that list, looking into low vibration trauma, not knowing what it was, Googling it and finding a website about shamanistic psychotherapeutic energy healing, and they go off investigating what that's all about and begin to put stock in it as a legit form of spiritual healing, and end up so far away from Christ they become a demon-possessed reiki healer or worse.

But you just casually, dare I say, flippantly dismiss the issue like it wasn't that big of a deal. This isn't recommending a different toothpaste to fight cavities. This is the Accuser of the Brethren, the Murderer from the Beginning, and you just assume you're leading people straight, even though two different people who both used to be demonically possessed and involved in evil spiritual witchcraft keep telling you to back off of this stuff, and you won't.

This post quoted above is all "might be", "could be", feel it in your gut, coupled with assumptions about what she has or hasn't done, all of which amounts to the following:

YOU HAVE NO IDEA. You are guessing, wanting to be appear honest that you're not sure, while making it sound like you have it already figured out. I don't truck with that.

So now, a sincere but highly vulnerable sister in Christ Jesus has been made to think she has a demonic stronghold in her life that prayer and fasting and rebuke can't handle. Now, she's got to search her house for some hidden, demonically energized item in the house that has given Satan power over her mind and body.

And all you care about is "Thoughts?". Hey, if you're wrong, you're wrong. No harm, no foul. It's just AFF, after all. The things we post don't really matter. I guess it's fun to be academic about someone's suffering.

If you are as serious as you seem to claim about deliverance and deliverance ministry, don't you think you'd be WAY more cautious in giving this kind of advice?

Why was it the first thing you jumped to?

So, yeah, I'm a bit worked up over this garbage. But I noticed how you insinuated quite carefully and cleverly that the real issue I'm having is that there is an evil spirit on my brain causing me to become irrational and argumentative, just like some of the symptoms of Mr. Matt's list you were willing to post but not willing to carefully examine for error. Nice dig at Elder Benincasa, too. That was awesome!

[votivesoul]

And as far as my reference to the post you made years ago about this "doll" situation, I posted what I did from memory, and sure, I got some of the details wrong.

I posted what I did. Then I went hunting for it, and edited my post to insert the link. There is nothing nefarious happening here but for an accidental, incidental slip of the memory about a small detail that was discussed nearly four years ago.

But you want to blow it up into something it's not.

So I will, too. Here goes:

Your girlfriend brings you a doll and says "Read it". You claim a supernatural download from God came to you and she was shocked. Years later you share how evil spirits, particularly Dybukkim, can be transferred into dolls, for example, and become cursed objects that need to be destroyed.

Please tell me I'm not the only one reading the handwriting on the wall?

Don't you think it possible that the doll you "read" contained a Dybukki, and that's the source of your supernatural download about it? After all, you have made sure we all know items like this can contain residual spiritual energies from evil spirits.

[votivesoul]

All of this is highly interesting to me, because, in the Psychiatry thread I locked, you were adamant that if years of prayer and fasting and whatever doesn't heal a person's mind, that if "healing tarries", that a person who is mentally ill should carefully consider seeing a psychologist and perhaps, if prudent begin taking medications.

But here, in this thread, when a member shares some personal information about her subconscious mental state, that is causing her lots of problems and pain, you say there might be, could be, do you feel it in your gut, a demon involved.

So which is it?

You're playing both sides against the middle. The mentally ill person might not get healed, so go see a counselor, you say. A sister is having nasty dreams and other psychological issues which are common symptoms of mental illness and maybe it's a demon.

Jesus might not heal the mentally ill, you say, so go see counselor, but Jesus won't tell a sister it's parasomnia, He'd cast out the devil, and not tell her to go have a sleep study.

Sure, you can keep flipping this coin if you want to, but it's never going to land on its edge.

[votivesoul]

As far as my initial post is concerned...

Look, I've had some horrible nightmare as a saint. I've been spiritually attacked in my dreams.

The very night I exposed what's his name and his wolf in sheep's clothing endeavor here at AFF, I had a pretty ugly dream with a demon in it as a result.

I know these dreams are real and can plague a person's mind, if they let it.

Or, they can realize that dreams are chaff compared to the wheat, and most of them are Salvador Dali-esque recycled memories and thoughts from the subconscious mind which don't mean a thing, no matter how spiritual they are.

I've also had prophetic dreams that have come true after the fact, to the very last detail, dreams that would shock and disgust and bother most people, but were from God, so wickedness in the church could be exposed. God even gave me a dream in which the very room number of the hotel a sister was secretly going to once a month to have an affair with her husband's brother, was right there before my very eyes. And it all went down-hill from there.

But when I said I had a dream about her, she realized her covering was cast off, and she confessed to it all.

So I know somethings about dreams, both from God and from the devil. And I am telling Modest Mama, and you, Aquila, and whoever else is reading this, that focusing in on the demonic ones is THE WRONG APPROACH.

Hence why I indicated they are mostly a distraction to get people's eyes off the Lord and His calling for their life. Because that's what they actually are. I was trying to show Modest Mama that fretting over them and trying to interpret them and make them something they are not, is serving the devil's design. Because now, she's freaked out, and has been for awhile, and all you seem to want to do in this thread is make her focus even more on the possibility of there being an evil spirit holed up in a fortress inside her mind, that has power over her body while she sleeps.

[votivesoul]

Modest Mama,

Here's what you do:

1.) Trust Jesus. You believe in God? Believe in Jesus also (John 14:1)

2.) Take everything you've read in this post, and compare it to the Word of God and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.

3.) Settle in your mind that anything that doesn't line up with the Word of God and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit in this thread is garbage and therefore meaningless, and can be rejected outright.

4.) If you are married, you and your husband should approach the elders, shepherds, and ministers of the Gospel in your local assembly, and get them as involved as you possibly can, in your life. If you are not married, do the same thing.

5.) Continue to post here at AFF if you are so inclined. You are quite welcome to do so.

6.) Know and trust that members here who have read or even participated in this thread are praying for you. Find comfort in that. Whatever disagreements have been presented doesn't mean any of us don't care about you as a person, and want the Lord's very best for you.

7.) Don't give up or give in. Ever. No matter what. The suffering you are currently experiencing will not ever compare to the glory that awaits you.

[Esaias]

Originally Posted by votivesoul

Modest Mama,

Here's what you do:

1.) Trust Jesus. You believe in God? Believe in Jesus also (John 14:1)

2.) Take everything you've read in this post, and compare it to the Word of God and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.

3.) Settle in your mind that anything that doesn't line up with the Word of God and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit in this thread is garbage and therefore meaningless, and can be rejected outright.

4.) If you are married, you and your husband should approach the elders, shepherds, and ministers of the Gospel in your local assembly, and get them as involved as you possibly can, in your life. If you are not married, do the same thing.

5.) Continue to post here at AFF if you are so inclined. You are quite welcome to do so.

6.) Know and trust that members here who have read or even participated in this thread are praying for you. Find comfort in that. Whatever disagreements have been presented doesn't mean any of us don't care about you as a person, and want the Lord's very best for you.

7.) Don't give up or give in. Ever. No matter what. The suffering you are currently experiencing will not ever compare to the glory that awaits you.

[Esaias]

I would only add that praying and fasting and seeking God's direction will, hands down, ALWAYS beat getting spiritual advice from an internet forum.

[votivesoul]

Finally, about "atmosphere".

Yeah, I've heard that buzzword half a dozen million times in Pentecost. And yeah, I know what people mean when they use it to sound spiritual. But it's pseudo-spiritual garbage. It has no clear definition and doesn't carry any Biblical weight behind it at all. It's meaningless, no matter how one slices it.

Less than a couple of weeks ago in one of my church's meetings, as we were singing and worshipping the Lord in my mom's living room, God gave me the word "atmosphere", and the verse in Isaiah 6 about the train of God's robe filling the temple, coupled with the NT concept of believers being the temple of God through the Holy Spirit.

I didn't fully understand it at the time, and considered sharing it, but decided against it, as I could tell the direction the Lord was leading didn't include sharing this word.

But then, this thread shows up, and the word "atmosphere" gets bandied about several times like it has potent Scriptural force to mean something important. Then I knew why the Lord talked to me about atmosphere.

It is simply uncanny the way the Lord works. His understanding is infinite.

So, when I see people talk about the Lord's presence, that it has to be invited in, that we have to create an atmosphere of praise and worship and whatever else, so the Lord will feel welcomed and become willing to respond to our prayers and petitions, I know it's a bunch of nonsense. God is already there, whether you feel or know it or not. He is Sovereign Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. We don't invite and welcome Him anywhere, He invites and welcomes us into His presence. Further, He goes where He wants when He wants. We are simply graced with His abiding presence through the Gospel. He is a loving Father, more than always willing to hear us and respond to us and answer us in prayer and petition.

We don't need to jump through hoops (like the prophets of Baal) to get God to come around and inhabit the "atmosphere" we create for Him so He can do the stuff we want Him to do. Rather, we need to enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. The atmosphere, if you will, is already holy, powerful, full of love and mercy and grace, without our help. We just need to go in boldly as the author of Hebrews indicates.

[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by Esaias

I would only add that praying and fasting and seeking God's direction will, hands down, ALWAYS beat getting spiritual advice from an internet forum.