The other thing they don't like, is you praying in tongues. They absolutely hate it. I've heard them scream at me when I've prayed in tongues, and so now get this. I'd pray in the spirit, get energised in the spirit, turn to this one, push against it, push against it, and then turn around and then just begin to meditate on the truth, and open my heart to embrace the truth, and reject the lies. Now what I found was, now this was the first stage of doing this, and I did this for something like three weeks; I'd get up, begin to pray in the spirit, turn to the spirit go in Jesus' name, I have authority over you in Jesus' name. Now of course they would think the next day hey, we've been around a long time, we're not going that easy. So I'd wake up the next day, they're still there, and I never felt any change. I just did it by faith, and then I would meditate that God is with me. I declare the truth, I'm accepted in the beloved, meditate in the truth, and I'd search my heart for any experience of rejection, so I could forgive and release blessing to those people.
I'd meditate, primarily meditate in the truth. Then one day I stood up, got into praying [Prays in tongues] just like every other day. [Prays in tongues] Prayed in tongues, and I pushed [whoosh] like that, and I pushed [whoosh] like that against them in the spirit using words. Suddenly I felt the atmosphere change. I thought I've actually just hit these things, and engaged. I've actually got the victory over them, they've gone. They've backed up finally, and then when I began to meditate in God's presence and love for me, I just fell over, because I was just so touched by God - but for three weeks it had been just a journey of faith, and then the actual experience of recognising I could feel these spirits back up, because after three weeks they realised I was not quitting. They backed up, and they were gone, and I had a great space of freedom in my life for a long time - until the next stuff came up. [Laughter] Getting the idea? It's not so hard to do.
Now if I was to ask you now, to identify what are the things that most commonly press in on you, and trouble your thoughts and emotions, so that you would say actually, these are besetting things. They seem to sit around me all the time, and push against me. If you could write them down, what would they be? There's usually not many. I wrote down these ones; I wrote down rejection, because I felt that I always felt not good enough, then self-rejection, because I actually rejected myself. Then fear of rejection, because I actually did fear that this would happen to me, then unbelief, because I realised unbelief was under-girding all of those, and finally self-pity, because I'd get in a pity party, down, depressed. So I realised there was a cluster of them, just like that, and I just pushed against them and pushed against them, stood and decreed they were subject to me, their powers broken, and I'd turn, meditate in the word of God, and arise in my spirit, and it shifted. I wonder what sits around your life, that you could say: I refuse to tolerate this any more.
Now there may be root systems in your heart, but I'm sure if you'll identify first of all what the problem is, and you start to pray and resist it, and declare the truth over your life, that many things will shift pretty quickly. Other things you may need to actually identify when it first started, how it got in there, and be willing to acknowledge sin, or acknowledge unforgiveness, and let it go. That'd be great. It'd be easy to get rid of these things now. Every time they come around, oh, that's just you, in Jesus' name be gone! This is who I am. Now you'd be surprised how effective it is, because we declare, we make confession of what God says. How about that?
Okay, now suppose there was some stuff there, so that's how you deal with some spiritual attacks, and you just end up praising the Lord and redirect your attention, and there you are. Now I learned that if I didn't rise and fight, I could go down into a pit quite quickly, and stay there for quite some time, and be quite depressed. You know sometimes all it takes, is for someone to just say: come on, you're not yourself, stand up again. Okay [Prays in tongues] and suddenly it's all gone, it's all gone away. You've just stood up inside and pushed the stuff back, so spiritual pressure comes and goes. It'll try and lock in where there are strongholds in your heart. Jesus said: the devil comes, he's got nothing in me, got no hold in me. So let's just have a look if you needed to get delivered, and I want to teach just a little bit on how you could deliver yourself, so then I don't have to do it all. [Laughter] It gives you empowerment to deliver yourself, and many of us, rather than wait a whole week in torment, it would be better if you just rose up in prayer, and pushed the stuff away from you.
So in Proverbs 6, Verses 4 and 5: give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. In other words, this is a very important matter - deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of the fowler. So of course the fowler is a reference to Satan who hunts and traps and destroys wild birds, captures us, and wild animals of course in a snare struggle violently to get free. So God says - notice the command - deliver yourself. In other words, He says: seek your own deliverance. I've found I'm surprised how many people want someone to do it all for them, but actually this is your life, and you have authority over it, you do something for yourself. So what would I do? The Bible tells us that freedom is my responsibility, not someone else's. Your freedom is your freedom, it's about you. It's about what you have in your life, so I have to co-operate with God, and here's the key verse. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you, so how can I deal with some of these things, and get myself free?