Freedom Conference (1 of 4)

Mike Connell

Page 2 of 11
The kingdom of the devil's a kingdom of darkness and deception. Now if you never know how or when you opened your life, all you do is have a problem that you got used to living with, and think that's just me. And so there's a deception, so part of what I need to do is just open the word of God for you for a little, so you begin to start to think about your life, and you may begin to realise hey, that thing that I think is just me, actually it's a spirit operating, and that area where I was involved in before I got saved, I've opened my life to some things, and so I want you to just allow God to help you understand that.

Now what can happen is then, spirits can get stirred up inside people, even while I'm just talking like this, and what happens is the presence of the Holy Ghost comes, and the demon which was hidden begins to get frightened or angry or hostile at what's happening, and begins to start to manifest within a person. So what you might feel, for example, during the meetings you may feel at some point in the meetings, either while I'm speaking or while we're ministering, you may start to feel highly agitated inside. That's not you being agitated. That's a spirit being agitated - or you might find you suddenly feel a tremendous fear grip you. Now that's not you being afraid, that's a spirit being afraid, but expressing it's feelings in you, so you think it's your fear, but actually it's the spirit that's terrified.

You may feel like you've just got this panic thing; I've got to get out of here, I've just got to get out of here - I've got to get out of here! And yet you can't somehow get out of there. That's not you that's wanting to get out of here, that's the demon. I encourage you to stay and let the demon leave [Laughter/applause] That's a better way of doing it aye? Or you may find as I begin to talk, you start to get very angry, and you're angry at me. You think I think I should kill that man and [Laughter] I know, it's happened. It's happened. I remember going into a meeting, and sitting down at a meeting in Taiwan, just sat down and I turned around and looked at a guy, and as soon as I looked at him I thought oh, he's started to manifest, and he said “I want to kill you”! [laughs] I said you'll have to get in a line mate, there's others before you [Laughter] but he actually couldn't speak any English at all - it's the spirit, see. He had no words of English whatsoever. It was the demon.

So when you're not used to spiritual manifestation - all you've got's Hollywood's model - then you kind of just haven't got a clue really. So if you have some of those feelings take place inside, you feel agitated, you feel fear or panic, want to run away, you feel like you want to attack me, or you find that your thoughts like a hand just grips your head, and you suddenly feel frozen and you can't think or focus on much of what I'm saying, that is a spirit manifesting, and we'll give an opportunity for you to be prayed for and ministered to, get set free of whatever that is. Often there's not just one; there's often a group of them together, and so deliverance can be progressive, and over two or three sessions, so tonight we will have an altar call, but I won’t try to fix up everything. Over tomorrow we'll have several altar calls, after I've just laid out a little more foundation, and I encourage you just to come up and let God do whatever He wants to do in your life. Let Him help you, and you might be quite surprised what happens.

It's that person next to you's got the issue haven't they? Yeah, yeah. Tell them - turn to the person next to you. Say you need to listen to this, I'm thinking it's about you, you know?

[laughs] Is this ringing bells? [laughs] Great. Well we're not going to be all spooky and oooh like that. We want to just stay in the flow of the life of God, and the joy of the Holy Ghost, so I'll get to share a couple of stories on the way; got heaps of stories and stuff that you'll love, but let's just get started, open the word of God first of all. I want you to look with me in Acts, Chapter 10, Verse 38 and I want to look just at the ministry of Jesus, so you understand a little bit about what He did. Then when you see it and understand it, you realise oh, it's not such a big deal after all. It's just something I haven't been aware of. Verse 38; now God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. Notice He's describing the ministry of Jesus, the ministry of the anointing of the Holy Ghost. Notice what He says; He anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and power; the power of God came on him as a result of prayer, fasting, and prevailing and establishing his dominion over evil spirits. He had a season where he was anointed with the spirit, then a season of prayer and fasting, and as the outcome of that he returned - Luke 4:14 - in the power of the spirit. And God wants us to have the power of the spirit in our life, and to do that we need to be free of the other powers that are around. It said He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him.