FINDING DELIVERANCE / PART 1 OF MY DELIVERANCE JOURNEY

True or false: Christians can have demons? If you said false…sorry, babe, that's not accurate.

If you are familiar with the Christian faith, you may or may not have heard the term "deliverance." If we look at the dictionary definition, deliverance means "The act of delivering or the condition of being delivered. Rescue from bondage or danger." (Shoutout to Wordnik for the definition.)

Many in the Church refer to God delivering them from something, but we rarely hear about deliverance from demons or impure spirits. If you mention anything about casting out demons, people deem you crazy, shut you out, and deny the obvious fact that Jesus Himself cast out demons and commanded the disciples to do the same.

This leads many, my *past* self included, to believe that deliverance is unnecessary for Christians and Christians cannot have demons.

This ignorance about deliverance is one of Satan's most potent schemes, but I've come to expose it and tell you that Christians can have demons, and they can be cast out - I am living proof of both.

If you have read my Letters to the Lord devotional, you know that I came into true relationship with Christ in 2015 after being raised Christian and believing in Him all my life. Over the last 7 years, I have noticed and grappled with several traits that are not of God - anger and lust being the strongest. I knew I didn't want to pass these things down to my children or bring them into my future marriage, so I did what the Church tells you to do. Pray.

I prayed away these things for years on YEARS, yet they would still show up. Lust was the more significant issue of the two. Sometimes I would feel I had the victory, and then it seemed to come back that much harder. It got to the point where I genuinely believed Lust was my thorn, and I would have to live with it forever. Let me repeat it for those in the back. I, a blood-bought-born-again Child of God, believed that a sin was my thorn. To me, there was no other explanation for why something would remain when I steadfastly prayed it away and asked God to do what only He could do. To add fuel to the fire, the Church did not seem to offer solutions except to say that Paul never said what his thorn was in 2 Corinthians 12:7. (Let me add a note here that God is God, and I am not; He is sovereign, can do what He wants, and can allow anything to be our thorn. However, we should not allow the fact that Paul didn't explicitly mention what his thorn was to deter us from the reality of demonic oppression and the need for deliverance.)

It wasn't until this last year that I started feeling the nudge that there was more to the story of what I was experiencing. After all, the Bible says that who the Son sets free is free indeed (John 8:36), and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17). So it didn't add up to me why I would be in this bondage if He says I am free.

Enter TikTok. I saw a TikTok of a woman who was listing the demons she had been delivered from. I had no idea that certain things she listed could be demonic, like eating disorders and double-mindedness. I knew Lust was a sin and had heard of it being a spirit, but this video validated that it is indeed a spirit, it can be inside of a Christian, and it can be cast out. In the TikTok video's comments, the creator mentioned Isaiah Saldivar and his Deliverance Map. I searched for a ministry near me on the map and found a couple but chickened out on moving forward. I had no idea what deliverance truly was; it intimidated me and was never discussed in church, so I wasn't sure how legitimate it was (I was blatantly ignoring the fact that Jesus cast out demons on the regular).

Months went by, and I would have the nudge that I needed to look into deliverance, but I still was intimidated by it. I would watch videos about it to try and learn more and figure out what it entailed. Finally, this year, 2022, the Lord told me that deliverance was necessary for me to move forward into the things He had set aside and planned for me. I returned to Isaiah's map, but this time I pursued learning more about one of the ministries I found.

I had a lot of anxiety as I clicked through the website of Flawed and Free ministry, and I knew that was either a fantastic thing or a horribly awful thing.

I took my time to research the ministry, review its materials, and pray for confirmation from the Lord. The stuff I found seemed to match what I had learned, so I submitted the intake form to them at the end of April. In May, I got word that the Holy Spirit cleared me to go through their ministry for deliverance. I was excited and anxious about freedom, but I had no idea the process and fight that was just beginning.

The Holy Spirit provided Flawed and Free with a process for each person seeking deliverance from them, and the next phase was a fast. Y'all… I have never done a more challenging fast in my entire life. A part of the fast was, of course, no social media, TV, or secular music; essentially, no distractions for the duration of the fast so that you could hear from the Holy Spirit. At the end of the fast, the Lord gave me some continued instructions, part of them being to continue with no social media, TV, or secular music until deliverance. Before I started the fast, I knew that my deliverance may not be immediate, but I didn't know how long it would take. My last day on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc., was May 12, 2022. I had no idea what was happening in the world over the summer unless someone told me. (Sidebar: the number of messages I received asking what I thought of the new Drake drop was low-key heartbreaking.)

As I waited for my deliverance date, I continued praying, binding, and seeking the Lord. I would be lying if I said I didn't grow frustrated. I wanted deliverance, I wanted freedom, and God was the one giving the Go/No-Go decision. Finally, toward the middle of June, about a month after I completed the fast, I had a dream where the CEO of Flawed and Free said, "June 30." I just knew that was going to be my deliverance date! I got a renewed excitement and looked forward to the end of the month.

Imagine my surprise as June 30 approached with no correspondence from the ministry. I was upset, I'm not gonna lie. I had gotten to the point where I was absolutely desperate for my deliverance. Yes, I wanted to watch TV and listen to Drake and see if I had any DMs waiting for me, but more than anything, I wanted to be FREE. On June 30, I told the Lord that if I didn't hear from the ministry by the end of the day, I would reach out to them. I woke up on July 1 to nothing in my inbox, so I stuck to my word and sent them a message. God really knows His kids because I was at my absolute breaking point, and it only took a couple of hours for me to hear back from Flawed and Free with the date and time of my "D-day."

I cried tears of joy and relief, knowing my freedom day was coming. Right after I got the email with my D-day information, I saw a prophetic broadcast with Dr. JoLynne Whittaker that spoke to my situation exactly.

I was amazed and beyond grateful to God for His faithfulness.

I spent the first three weeks of July continuing to prepare and build up to something utterly foreign to me, doing my best to pray away my fears and anxiety about what may occur on July 20, my D-day.

If you're interested in hearing about my actual D-day experience, including what demons I had, if the demons manifested, and how I felt during and afterward, check out Part 2 of My Deliverance Journey.