Sid Roth - Ryan LeStrange Shares How to Overcome Depression, Fear and Lust
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it's naturally supernatural. Many believers are under spiritual attack and here's the thing. They don't know it. How can you fight an enemy if you don't even know you have an enemy, if you think it's yourself? There are many believers that are under attacks of loneliness, under attacks of depression, under attacks of fear. There are so many areas. Once you can identify that these attacks are demonic you can throw them out the window every time. You ready? Ryan, you remind me so much of myself. When you were a young person you were gifted and you didn't even realize you were gifted. You had no grid. You had no education in things of the Bible and things of the supernatural. And then you had a relative that how cruel can humans be, he locked in a closet and what did he do?
Ryan LeStrange: Well he locked me in and told me ghost stories and scary stories, which really opened up the gateway to the supernatural on the dark side. Of course, in our family we didn't understand the principles of the Bible, as you said. We didn't understand the Gospel. And I really believe it's one of the great dangers, Sid, of a generation that's void of the supernatural.
Sid Roth: But it's not void of the supernatural because wherever you look on television, in school, they got the supernatural, the devil on display. They just don't say it's the devil.
Ryan LeStrange: That's right.
Sid Roth: That's what happened to you. I mean, you got into things like hypnosis and new age, and all the things that everyone is getting into today. And today they have all these games that open the doors and videos, and movies. And you're doing just fine, you thought until the best thing that ever could happen to you, happened. You got arrested.
Ryan LeStrange: That's right.
Sid Roth: What did you do?
Ryan LeStrange: Well this just led me down a pathway of darkness. When you're introduced to darkness you're going to live in that dark realm. So I kept advancing darker and darker into that dark supernatural realm and not the supernatural real of angels and the Holy Spirit, and Jesus. So now as a teenager I'm looking for some kind of thrilling activity. So I've got friends that are going on these excursions to see how much merchandise they can steal out of the store, and I get swept up in this. So I'm doing this, not for merchandise, but for the thrill of this adventure so we think. And I get caught, and I end up spending a weekend in juvenile hall, and in that weekend, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me because in that weekend God sent somebody to preach the Gospel and prayed a prayer, Sid, that is still working in my life all these years later. I basically said, it's the prayer that everybody prayers when they get in trouble, but God really hears and answers it. I said, "God, if you deliver me out of this situation and get me out of this I'm going to serve you the rest of my life". And I can't tell you how many times being in Haiti and sleeping under a mosquito net, traveling around the world, being away from family, God has reminded me of that prayer.
Sid Roth: I'm sure.
Ryan LeStrange: That prayer took my life in a whole new direction.
Sid Roth: I mean, you opened yourself up to a lot of demonic spirits.
Ryan LeStrange: I did. I did. I got saved and I was probably like a lot of people. And this is why I'm passage about this message about overcoming spiritual attack, because many people get saved Sid, and they're going to what I call a nice church. That's what I was doing. We loved Jesus, we sang songs, but we didn't understand breaking the power of the enemy. We didn't understand spiritual attacks. We didn't understand the realm of the spirit. So fortunately, I end up through a supernatural event, the Lord, the voice of the Lord comes to me in a service and says, "I've called you". I'm then given a tape series by Norvel Hayes on the spirit of prophecy. Now remember, I am prophetically gifted but not trained. So I end up going to his Bible college. I'm there the first day. His daughter is directing the school and she calls me up with a word of knowledge. You see, one revelation can turn your life in a whole other direction. And that's why we need churches and ministries, and Christians and people that believe in God's supernatural realm and operate in the gifts of the Spirit and the power of the anointing, and the Glory of God. Because when you have a bondage, when you're under that cloud of depression, when you're that cloud of heaviness, you're under that financial attack, that marriage attack, that mind attack, you need supernatural insight and you need supernatural power to break it. Now Sid, sometimes, people get so far under an attack that they need the help of somebody else's faith or anointing to break through and that's where I was, because I didn't know how to break through. So I'm there in Bible college, I'm called out through a word of knowledge, the attack is discerned and then it's broken just like that. Now here's what happened to me. I leave that class. I go back to the place I'm staying at. The Bible says, "The thief comes immediately to steal". Immediately he comes to steal the Word. When you get a healing the devil comes to tell you you're going to get sick again. When you get a breakthrough from a spiritual attack the devil tells you you're going to fall back into that. Immediately he comes. Right after I get set free I'm sitting alone and the enemy says to me, "They embarrassed you. They shouldn't have called you out and prayed for you in front of everybody". And I'm warring with this in my mind, because your mind, without the Word of God, will think crazy thoughts. That's why you've got to have teaching and that's why you've got to understand how to renew your mind. And so my mind starts agreeing with the voice of the enemy and says, "That's right, they should attack". Thank God for the voice of the Lord because the Lord says to me, "Did you come here to get free or did you come here to serve your pride"? And in that moment I got a revelation to change my whole life. When you want to be free, you're desperate, Sid. You don't care what it takes. You don't care how hard it is. You know, I remember one night preaching at this place and the Lord gave me a word of knowledge about breaking the spirit of people. And it's a long story. We don't have time to get into it. But it was challenging. I didn't want to do it. In the realms of freedom, there are radical realms of obedience and I told the Lord, I don't want to give this word of knowledge. I don't want to pray for people about this. This is embarrassing. And the Lord said, "Then you can do the meeting on your own". I said, "I don't want to do that, Jesus". So I began to give the Word and I'm praying in a prayer line and this man grabs me. Now I learned something from this about how to break the spiritual attack. This man grabs me and I thought he had a demon. I thought he was attacking me because that has happened to me before. He grabs me and he says these words to me. He says, "Preacher, you are not going to leave me until I get free". Sid, when he said that to me it was like a thousand volts of electricity shot down from my head to my toes. I leaped forward and laid hands on him. The power of God hit him and down he went. He said, "I was molested as a child repeatedly and a dark cloud came into my room one night and entered into my body, and I've been bound ever since. No matter what I've tried to do I've been bound". But through desperation he got free. And one of the keys to breaking a spiritual attack, you've got to get desperate, that you don't care about your pride, you don't care what it costs you, you don't care what it looks like.
Sid Roth: Define for me "spiritual attack".
Ryan LeStrange: It's a great question because most people don't recognize it and recognition is half of the battle. So a spiritual attack, well the devil is stupid, but you to have understand the devil has studied humanity for its entire existence. There are demons of anger. There are demons of depression. There are demons of fear. I had the spirit of fear. That was one of the demons that plagued me. It's a literal spirit. The Bible says God has not given us a spirit of fear. There are classes of demon powers and God has given us the gift of the discerning of spirits to recognize and discern these. Every believer has that. But a spiritual attack is a coordinated series of events coming from the realm of hell to stall out destiny and to shipwreck your faith. So I want to give the picture, Sid. In Hell, they have planning sessions where they say here's how we're going to target this person. They understand the destiny declared over someone, sometimes far greater than we understand it. I had a prophetic destiny. God had called me to the realm of seeing and knowing. And so the enemy, how does he come? He comes with a counterfeit. He comes with familiar spirits, with dark side stuff, with hypnosis, he comes to get me off track. In a spiritual attack, sometimes it begins many, many years ago, even as a child, the devil starts introducing things to you.
Sid Roth: With you, it started as a toddler.
Ryan LeStrange: Literally.
Sid Roth: I'll tell you what, when we come back, not only was he set free, but he says once you identify what the enemy is doing, who your enemy is, it's easy to get free. Now he moves in amazing signs and wonders, but this is off the table. He sees someone that has no eye on one side and the other side, no pupil, totally blind. This person ends up seeing. But I haven't told you the great miracle yet. It's way beyond what you think. I'll be right back.
Sid Roth: You know, you made a brilliant profound statement. You said if you can recognize a spiritual attack you can conquer it, as if to say, many people don't even recognize it.
Ryan LeStrange: Absolutely. This is one of the critical things that I preach on this and teach on this. It's in the book. But it's half the battle, Sid, because here's what people find and they tell me. They say, I'm just going through this thing and I don't know how I got here. I'm having a blue Monday. I'm having a bad day. But do you know, a spiritual attack is multi-prong. The devil doesn't just come after your mind. He comes after your mind, after your marriage, after your finances and the ultimate goal is to separate you from destiny. One of the strongest, greatest revelations we can have is what we were put on Planet Earth to do and the anointing, the power of the Holy Spirit is attached to our destiny. So if the enemy gets us separated from destiny, he gets us separated from the power, and if we're separated from the power we're empty. So we recognize an attack and that step one to breaking it, it's not random. It's coordinated and it's got an intention to shipwreck your faith, to get you so discouraged you don't believe in God anymore, to get you so discouraged you forgot about the prophetic words. You forgot about the promises and many people even watching this today, this is what they're going through. They're under a cloud of heaviness. They're under depression. They've got fear of leaving their own home. They're under financial attack. But if they look deeper, they're also giving up on the call of God. They're giving up on the plan of God. The devil is not just after your money. He's not just after your car. He's not just after your child. He's after your destiny and your assignment as a child of God.
Sid Roth: Well if that man had not gone to the jail and led him to the Lord, what you're about ready to hear could not have happened. He's in Belize, Central America, and he's ready to speak, and he hears the voice of God. What did God tell you?
Ryan LeStrange: Well the first great miracle I ever saw was in America and it was a blind lady being healed. So I'm in Belize, I'm getting ready to minister, and the Lord says, "Don't preach. Tell a story". Now you know, Jesus can do more with a story than all of our revelation, and revelation accesses faith, and faith moves the substance of Heaven into Earth. So faith moves healing into Earth. Faith moves victory into Earth. Faith moves the angelic realm into Earth. But revelation is the stairway into faith. What is revelation? It's understanding what God is saying. So God says to me, "Don't preach. Tell a story. Tell the story of the first miracle you ever saw". So I'm telling the story about this blind lady, and in the middle of it, Sid, out of spirit it hits my mouth before my brain can understand it. I say, "And tonight, God is going to heal the blind". So that night there is a young lady, she's blind, she's never seen in her entire life. She got some type of fever type of thing as an infant. It destroyed her eyes. She's got an empty eye socket and a white eyeball. She comes to the front to receiver her miracle and the voice of God says plainly to me, "She's going to see". So I'm praying, but I don't close my eyes, Sid, because I want to see God paint a pupil and put in a new eyeball. So I'm watching and nothing that I can see happens. But remember what the Lord said. The Lord said she's going to see, but she's still got while eyeball with no pupil and an empty eye socket. So honestly, I'm not sure if she's seeing or not. And so I say to her, "I want you to follow me". And we look at her to figure out what is she seeing out of? Do you know what? She saw out of the white eyeball.
Woman: I can see! I can see! Thank you, Jesus. I can see!
Ryan LeStrange: Then she covers the white eyeball? How many fingers do you see? She props open an empty socket and she's seeing out of the empty socket.
Woman: I see two. I can see! Oh my God, I can see!
Sid Roth: Wait a minute, that's impossible. You can't see out of an empty socket unless God is real, unless all things are possible. Guess what? God is real. All things are possible. Now in the Bible, we talk about people, we read about people that have nothing. Our whole world is falling apart. Tell me very briefly about when that happened to David.
Ryan LeStrange: The enemy has one opportunity with us and it's deception. He's been crushed, he's been defeated, he's been dethroned and we have been given all power, all authority. But if he can get us to believe he has authority then we give him authority. And so he deceives us. He makes us think, well this is happened to you because you're out of the will of God. David is in the will of God, comes home, family guy, house is burned, and suddenly, Sid, the people turn on him. See, in a spiritual attack the devil hits you on all sides and David all of a sudden says, "Bring me an ephod". Now listen to this. He says, "I'm not going to forget who I am. Bring me that garment of identity". A spiritual attack comes to separate you from your identity and one of the things you need to do to get free from an attack is remind yourself of who God said you are. Get those prophetic words out. You keep on preaching. You keep on prophesying. You keep on marketplace ministering. You keep on raising your children, whatever God has called you to do. In the midst of an attack you wrap yourself in that ephod and you square your shoulders up for battle and say, I am who God says I am, and that's what David did.
Sid Roth: Okay. When we come back I want him, this will amaze you. I want him to identify some areas that perhaps you're under spiritual attack and then I want him to tell us how we can get free. Be right back.
Sid Roth: There are, let's call them symptoms of spiritual attacks. Tell us a few that we might not even think of. You mentioned one to me that I never even thought about it: loneliness.
Ryan LeStrange: Loneliness. The enemy plays a real trick on people's minds in their loneliness, delayed promises. You know, there is a Kairos time for every prophetic promise and Galatians talks about. "We will reap if we faint not". Well the enemy tries to weary us, that we give up on the promise. You were talking earlier about a prophetic promise in your own life. Sometimes there's a passing of time. Confusion about purpose is another attack. People get confused about what am I supposed to do? Do you know a spiritual attack can actually create physical fatigue and exhaustion. Elijah was under the juniper tree and couldn't wake up. He was under an attack of heaviness. So there's many, many symptoms and if you can identify the symptoms you can recognize the attack. That's a key.
Sid Roth: You told me you were at a major ministry and you were explaining these principles and then, and this is a large ministry. These are really quality people. And they came up to you, members of this ministry, and what did they say?
Ryan LeStrange: They said, "When I hear you describe these symptoms" I have the majority or several of them said, "I have every single symptom and I had no idea I was under an attack. Will you pray and break it". And we started praying and breaking it, and that breaker anointing, that Micah 2:13 breaker anointing came into that room and God started setting those people free.
Sid Roth: Is it difficult? Was it difficult for, I mean, you did so much junk before you were a believer, as I did, too, as many of you did. Was it difficult for you to get free once you were desperate and you wanted to be?
Ryan LeStrange: No, it wasn't, Sid. And here's the thing. The Bible says where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. And you know as you're talking I just feel right now the power of the Holy Ghost coming to set people free. It's not hard for you to get set free. I see people with attacks of confusion. I see somebody with the spirit of fear that you're fearful to leave your house. I believe ever here in the studio audience people are under attack. Someone has a frozen shoulder. There's a spirit of infirmity. Your shoulder can't move. It's being healed right now. Somebody else, your neck, you had an injury and they fused something together. The Lord is miraculous healing your neck. I want to pray for you. I want to ask the audience at home and here to lift your voice right now and begin to cry out to the Lord. Come on, lift your voices and begin to cry out to the Lord right now. Father, I thank you for that Micah 2:13 breaker anointing. I break the spirit of fear. I command the spirit of fear to loose people. I command the spirit of pain and infirmity to loose people. I command deafness to loose people. Somebody that their left side has not been restored after a stroke, I release the healing power of the Lord Jesus Christ on your left side. I say receive a miracle right now. I break confusion, prophets that are confused. I break that spirit of confusion. I say you will and you shall prophesy with clarity. I release that breaker anointing now. In the name of Jesus, be free right now. In Jesus' name, shout to the Lord with a voice triumph. Hallelujah!
Sid Roth: You know, some of you may be thinking, well if I could just get a hold of those two guys and they would set me free, if the King of the Universe lives inside of you, Jesus the Messiah, if you have repented of your sins and been born from above, you are qualified to cast out demons, pray for the sick, speak in new tongues. Give me a break. There's millions of people that are going to need your help shortly and God has chosen you. Now what are you going to do about it? The choice is yours. This is your moment. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.