So she’s calling this out, and the effect of it was that Paul felt quite grieved, or irritated, or there was a struggle in his ministry because of her. So this spirit was actually creating difficulties for him. It said: she did this for many days, until finally he confronted the spirit. Once he confronted the spirit, it triggered off a riot in the area, and he was thrown in jail!
So divination means: consulting evil spirits for hidden knowledge. There are a whole range of practices of divination. It seems that Chinese people are addicted to it - just want to know about the future; and rather than walk by faith with God and trust him, they try to find out information from evil spirits. Now I know there are heaps of different activities, so I’ll just give a few of them: Consulting the fortune-telling or a psychic; Consulting an Ouija board, where they have letters around and they put a glass in the centre and they ask questions - that’s consulting a familiar spirit. Going to a medium – that’s a person who goes into a trance, and the spirit begins to speak through them. Astrology; Tarot cards; Numerology; Horoscopes; some people go into pendulum-swinging. Every culture has their own forms of these things - the water divination.
The key question to ask is: what is the source of the power. If a spiritual power is operating, there’s a spiritual source. What is the source of the power? Another type of divination is séances – calling up spirits. I’m sure that in your culture, you’ve got all manner of different kinds of ways this is done; but in the end, the key question is this – what is the source of the information?
If the source is evil, the influence will be evil also, and God forbids us to be involved in these things. So sometimes people reach out into this realm of divination - just curious, but then that opens up a whole realm. Unfortunately, many of the movies recently, have been filled with all kinds of things of divination. The Harry Potter movies, for example, are full of divination – all kinds of different forms of it. I think you’ll find, when you look, that many of these are drawn from some things which actually exist; and they can be very seductive, because you have the thought of getting secret information- find out about your future – will I be blessed, will I prosper? People want to know those things; but if we consult with the demon, he has a legal right to access our lives.
The Bible says: when you’re involved in divination, you prostitute yourself with an evil spirit, and you defile yourself. So any person involved in fortune-telling has become defiled; and they would need to renounce the words spoken over them, and the evil spirits behind them. You can’t walk with God, and hold on to what the demons have been saying.
So core foundations to being set free from divination would be: Repentance – turning away from it; Confession of sin – because it’s a sin, an abomination to God. It would also involved renouncing attachment to the spirit, and any words they had been given from these demonic spirits. You can’t serve two masters. There’s no ground for holding on. We’re either going to put our life in the Lord’s hands, and respond to His leadership, and His promise of guiding us; or we consult these others. If we consult the demonic realm, we’re slowly drawn into darkness. People get quite addicted, and they can’t make decisions, or begin a day, without consulting their horoscope, or reaching out to these diviners.
The last thing you notice is that, when the demon came out, the girl had no power to do this again - the source of the information was an evil spirit. I remember someone coming up to me after church one day, and they said: can you pray for my friend? I said: “Why’s that?” She said “Well, he’s in a bit of a mess, and he’s going to see a fortune-teller”. I said, “Yes, bring him to me”. I said, “I understand you’re going to see a fortune-teller”. He said: “Yes”. I said: “Well, God knows your future. You should learn to look to Him.” I said, “Let me pray for you”, and I asked God to give me a clear, sharp, accurate prophetic word, and I delivered this to him. And he left, saying thank you. I knew he was going to go to the fortune-teller, so I prayed a simple prayer: “Lord I know he’s going to the fortune-teller - turn her counsel to confusion.” So he comes back a week later, came up, and gave his heart to Christ. He said, “Oh you know, I went to that fortune-teller”. I said: “Yeah, how did it go?” He said: “That was a waste of money”. I said: “How much did you pay?” He said: “I paid 50 dollars! What she told me was a lot of nonsense - very confusing.” And he came to Christ.
So, you must learn to lean into the flow of revelation yourself. We cannot abandon the supernatural realm, and leave it for the psychics. We need to press in, and develop the flow of revelation in our own life - words of knowledge and prophetic flow. These are gifts God has given the church. The psychics are substitutes. The real thing, is the gift of the Holy Spirit. It’s a reproach to the church that some of these psychics have become so good, and so influential; but the church struggles to just embrace simple things of the spirit world.