Some of you have been experimenting with divination. It seemed like it was harmless – “Well, everyone else is doing it. why don’t we, let’s do this eh?” So people sometimes do this in school, sometimes in their homes, sometimes on the weekend; and there’s a fascination that comes. Did you realise, serpents, the python, when it rears up, looks at the animal, often the animals become paralysed. They become fascinated, they cannot seem to move away from the gaze of the serpent.
When you get involved with evil spirits, there is a fascination because the power is real. There’s an attraction, there’s a spiritual draw; but you are opening your life to increase the bondage of spirits in your life. Some of you, your families have been involved in fortune-telling. This has allowed that kind of spirit to come into your life as well.
Some of you, your families have been involved with sorcery or magic, all kinds and forms of that – reaching out for spiritual power. Idolatry is one form of that. When people are involved in idolatry, they make a sacrifice, they make an exchange – they give the idol something in return for something. What are they getting in return? They’re getting an evil spirit. It’s the same kind of thing – it’s a prostituting.
We are not made for evil spirits. Our life is not made to be demonised. We are made for the loving spirit of God to be in us. God’s desire is His spirit flows out of our heart like a wonderful river. But when we’re involved in idolatry or in divination, fortune-telling of any kind, or in sorcery, magic, when we open our life to those things, we are opening our life to an evil spirit and then the trouble starts; and it’s progressive trouble.
When people are involved in these things, they often have nightmares, they have struggles spiritually, there can be heaviness and depression, they have premonitions, sometimes they have things begin to move in their rooms, or they hear voices speaking to them, they can’t shut the voices out. Sometimes people are tormented at night with nightmares, horrendous nightmares. Or they’re tormented, they wake up and like someone’s trying to kill them. Or they feel themselves being sexually molested but no one is there. Once evil spirits have a doorway, they will seek to increase the bondage. They seek to advance their hold. They seek to bring total defeat in your life. Jesus said: the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. Jesus came to give us life.
Let’s go back and have a look at the story again. Let’s look back now, and we read in Acts chapter 16. In Acts 16, we find the girl with the spirit of divination, and it says: “She cried out, she was following Paul and crying out saying – these men are servants of the most high God, who proclaimed to us the way of salvation.” Now what she was saying was absolutely true. A lot of people wouldn’t know that. They’d just see another couple of people. But what she was saying was real. So, these spirits do have knowledge.
When Jesus confronted people with evil spirits, they would cry out, they knew who He was. So evil spirits recognised Jesus, and they recognise those who follow Him. They know who you are.
I can remember I was in Bali and we were driving past this park and I saw some people there and some snakes. I stopped to go and talk and find out what’s going on. New Zealand’s wonderful, we have no snakes. No snakes. Very good. So, you want snakes, you have to stay here. So I haven’t see snakes very close up, so I went over to have a look. They had a big mat on the ground and these people are handling these snakes. Very scary stuff. I think I stay away, I don’t get too close to the snakes.