An alternative approach would be to sit with the child and talk with them. When you talk with them, ask them about the dreams they have at night. Get talking, and let the child talk about what they feel about this stuff. Engage the child in their language, at their level. So, you’ve got to talk, and present truth, at a child’s level. You could say something like this – after the child’s talked to you - you say: “Do you know what’s causing these dreams?” “I don’t know why I have these dreams.” “I think it’s a bad spirit. You know there are bad spirits, and they come and trouble us. It’s not your fault, you haven’t done anything wrong, it’s just that’s what bad spirits do. Jesus dealt with bad spirits. Jesus had a good spirit with Him.”
You notice I’m putting the language at a level a child could understand. “...and sometimes bad spirits get into people, trouble them and make life very sad - or very frightening. But Jesus came to release us from these bad spirits. You know, in the Bible, wherever He found them, He got rid of them. Did you know that the bad spirits are afraid of Jesus? In fact, they’re so afraid of Him - they want to get away as quick as they can. So, we could ask Jesus to come; and He’s stronger than the bad spirits - and He could help you get rid of these bad spirits. Would you like that to happen?”
You see, it’s kind of like talking at their level. Then they say now: “Yeah yeah ok.” “Alright then. This is what we’re going to do. In a moment, what I’m going to do is I’m going to pray for you, and I’ll speak to the bad spirits. I won’t be speaking to you - you’ll know I’ve changed - I’m speaking to the bad spirit. We’re going to command the bad spirit to go. You may feel something inside your body. The bad spirit might become frightened. It’s not you that’s being frightened - it’s the bad spirit being frightened. All you need to do is breathe out – make him go, push him out.” A child can understand all that sort of language. “...or you could cough. So when I speak to it - you cough. Let’s work together, make the bad spirit go. Jesus would be very happy.” See, we’re using a language a child could easily get a hold of.
Now, you could sit down beside the child, or you could sit the child on your knee. The problem is that about 8 years old, if they got manifesting, they could be a real difficulty – quite strong. So we would hope that the spirit would go quite easily, now you’ve engaged cooperation.
You want a parent there when you’re doing it, so that this is kept totally transparent. You say and do nothing that will frighten the child. You should constantly build confidence – “This is going to be straightforward. This is going to be good. If you feel something happening inside you, you just cough that thing out. We’re going to get rid of this thing.” Then, go through that process. If a child manifests, you can hold on to them to restrain them, but it can be difficult. It would be better to engage the child’s cooperation, because in doing that, they work with you to resist the spirit.
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A lady’s been helping this person. This person has family inherited problems – sickness - insomnia, can’t sleep well for a long period of time, and it caused all kinds of sickness in the body. Many of them in the family, in the end, they even committed suicide. This person came to church and also attended many deliverance conferences or meetings, but every time, they didn’t really react much - no response at all. So, after yesterday and today’s teachings, because the person has started to hear things, causing them more suicidal thinking; and because it seems to be both generation and occult related, she’s wondering: how we can identify it, recognise it, and how can we help this person.
“Was the person involved in the occult themselves?” “He never mentioned it.” “Was it asked?” “Before this teaching, they never had the idea to ask.”
“Generational?” “Idolatry is all the way in the family.”
There are a number of reasons for insomnia - some of them may be medical, related just to the body - some people just don’t sleep well. Some of them may be related to anxiety, or spiritual issues. So, sometimes you have to apply both medical and spiritual remedies.
You can see the way I have approached this, is to be systematically asking questions. Try and discover the root system. If you don’t deal with the root system, you can never get the person free. The person needs to take ownership of their things. Sometimes people just want you to fix them up, but they don’t want to actually recognise: “It’s my problem, and my responsibility to apply, and reach out in faith to Christ.”
There’re various ways to look at it. See, immediately you tell me that there’re suicides – plural – there’s something in the family line - spirits of suicide; oppressing spirits; occult powers; idolatry. So we have to identify what the feeding causes are. The person takes a stand to resist those things, and bring them to the cross. Sometimes I find that people don’t have faith for their freedom. Deliverance isn’t some passive thing - we have to arise in faith, to take hold of what Jesus said. Sometimes, instruction is needed prior to ministry.