Derek Prince - Follow These Steps To Be Delivered From Demons
This is an excerpt from: How To Expel The Enemy
Now we come to what is the center of the whole thing. How to be delivered. This is what all of us need to know. And I'm going to give you a list of simple basic steps. I don't say you have to follow all these steps, but I've observed that these are the things that are relevant. Number one, be humble. OK? Now you'll see why I say that when I write out number two. Be honest. Understand it takes humility to be honest. I tell people: Don't call your problem by some fancy psychiatric name call it what it really is. Call a spade a spade and not an agricultural implement. If it's lust, call it lust. If it's hatred, call it hatred. I say to women, call it by the same name you'd call it in your husband and you've got the right name. But that takes humility. You won't face the truth unless you first humble yourself.
And remember, the Bible always puts on us the responsibility for humility. It always says ‘humble yourself.’ Don't pray to God to make you humble because He'll humiliate you. Then you'll have to be humble. But it's your decision. Like this, you see. If you are seeking deliverance there may come a moment where you have to choose between two things: Your dignity and your deliverance.
Now if dignity is more important to you than deliverance, you know what your problem is? Pride, that's right. I always think of this doctor's wife in the state of Alabama. She was a kind of Southern style lady. She heard me teaching and she came up and said, Mr. Prince, if I understand what you're saying, if I'm to be delivered I may scream. I said: It could happen. She said: I was brought up that a lady doesn't scream in public. Suppose you were in a river drowning and you were going down for the third time and you thought there might be someone who could rescue you.
Would you be too ladylike to scream? Well see, that's an option. You can choose to drown, or you can be a little less ladylike for five minutes. My advice to people is let your dignity go because it'll come back. And when you've been delivered you'll be much more dignified. You won't have this thing inside you struggling all the time. But I really say humility is the key. The next is: Confess your faith in Christ... I will not put "your", but you will understand that. Because He is the high priest of our confession. When we confess right He comes to our help. But if we don't make the right confession... we don't get Him on the scene.
Number four, confess any known sin. All right, I'll write ditto there: Any known sin. And I want to put, but I don't have room on the line: By yourself or your ancestors. In some cases, you have to identify yourself with the family problem... and say: It's my problem. I confess it. I ask for forgiveness. Even though it was your grandmother or your aunt or whoever it was.
Number five, repent of all sins. Without repentance, you remember what we have been saying all along? Without repentance there is no deliverance. And I'll put here Proverbs 28:13... which says: He that covered his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confessed and forsake them shall have mercy. Do you want mercy? You got to do two things: confess and forsake. That's old-fashioned but then God hasn't changed. A lot of people have the attitude: If I don't confess my sin, God will never know about it. Really, I've met many people. That's a mistake, God knows already. He's not asking you to confess in order that He can find out. He's asking you to confess in order that He can have mercy on you. And let me tell you some other good news, God is un-shockable. You can tell Him the worst about yourself, He already knows it and He still loves you. But if you hold it in, you've held your problem in.
Alright. Number six. Break with occult curses which we're going to deal tonight. I can't go into that in detail now. And secret societies. Especially Free Masonry. That is a source of the most tremendous demonic problems. And it goes from generation to generation, including retardation, crippling, all sorts of problems. Really, that's part of repentance, but I've put it up separately.
Number seven, forgive others. All of them, everybody. Don Basham and I had a friend years back who was a veterinarian. He needed deliverance but first had to forgive the whole IRS. That was his problem. None of you have that problem, I'm sure. Jesus said in Matthew 11:25: When you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anybody. That leaves out nothing and nobody. It's your responsibility to forgive. Don't wait till they say: I really am sorry for what I did. You forgive them not for their sake primarily but for your sake. I tell people: Forgiving others is not being super-spiritual or sentimental, it is really, simply, enlightened self-interest. That's all it is.
And number eight. One beautiful brief word. Expel. We'll come to that a little later, but passivity doesn't get you anywhere. You've got to take action. The simplest action to take is to begin to breathe out. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for spirit is the same word for breath. I remember a little boy, or rather the mother, came to me, asked me to pray for her little boy of about four or five. What's his problem? "Allergies." What kind of allergies? "Food allergies." What's he allergic to? Tell me what he isn't allergic to! I'm going to deal with it as an evil spirit, is that okay?
She said fine. But I need to talk to your son. I talked to him in child language, said, there's a bad spirit like a breath, inside you. I'm going to command it to come out... in the name of Jesus. I want you to let it go. So when I say, In the name of Jesus, you blow it out. He was like a soldier, prayed for him, said in the name of Jesus and he went... That was all. So I thought, Did it work or didn't it? So I just had to leave it with the Lord. But three days later the lady came back and said: Pray for me! What is your problem? She said: Allergies. Tell me first what happened to your son.
He marched straight home, went to the refrigerator, opened it and sampled everything in it and nothing did him any harm! See how simple? Except you become like a little child you don't get these benefits. All right. Now that's how to get them out. That's the most important piece of information. What matters is to know how to get them out.