Now the word oppressed is a Greek word that means something like this: to use spiritual force or power and hold someone down. To use spiritual force or power and to hold someone down.
One of the most common things that people feel after they've been delivered, they say oh, I feel much lighter, meaning there was something holding me down, it's lifted off me right now. That word comes - it's the word [canadenisco,] which means - comes from the word down, to hold someone down, and the word [denisco,] coming from a word where we get dunamis or spiritual power, the Holy Ghost calls supernatural power. So we're called to be filled with the dunamis of the Holy Ghost, the supernatural power of the Holy Ghost. Jesus was anointed with the dunamis of the Holy Ghost, but it says here that the devil oppressed or uses spiritual power, dunamis, to hold people down - so we desperately need the power of the Holy Ghost in our life if we're going to carry the Gospel into a culture which is infested with demonic operations.
So Jesus had in mind that they were going cultures where idolatry was open, where they would have encounters with sorcerers, all kinds of occult things; they needed the power of the Holy Ghost, and power to be able to overcome another power. Now you can't overcome demons with medication. You can't overcome demons with willpower. You can't overcome demons with just trying hard to do good, you just can't. You need the power of the Holy Ghost, and so He healed or He addressed the root causes in people's lives, so that they were freed from the power of spirits that held them down.
Now I want to just touch on this just for a moment. I want to just use a word that often people equate - they think about the New Age when they think of this; I use the word spiritual energy. I want to describe what it's like when a spirit is operating in your life. There are many ways this happens, but I want to describe - because you get asked the question well, how would I know if I have a spirit? And there are many ways you can know, but one of the most obvious ways is this, it's that when a spirit is in a person's life and is operating, one of the most obvious ways it does is that there's a spiritual pressure that seems to restrain or restrict them or drive them.
In Ephesians, Chapter 2 and Verse 1 and 2, it says that before we came to Christ we were dead in trespass and sin. We separated from God - and then it says - now notice this; it says we walked - that's how we lived our life - according to the course of the world, according - now notice this - to that spirit which works in the children of disobedience. That word 'work' is a word [energayo], meaning to energise, or a spirit energising something in your life, so many of the struggles and problems that people have, they come because sin works in their life, or demons energise things in their life, so that there's a pressure and you can't seem to get over it.
Now there's a number of uses of that word, for example - I'll just give you a couple of them, just to give you some examples of it; it says in Philippians, Chapter 2, Verse 13, it says it's God who works in you, to will, and to do, of His good will. That's the word energise. God energises you, so the operation of the Holy Spirit is called energising you, to be able to do the will of God, so when an evil spirit is inside you it energises you to violate the will of God, to actually live in bondage, and live restricted, and restrained. And so every time you see that word [energayo] it's the word energise, so evil spirits energise something in your life. Now they have to have something to work with, and so they work on an unresolved issue, a sin, an inequity, a cursing. They work on traumas. They work on unresolved barriers or walls or conflicts in the heart, and we'll identify those tomorrow for you. I'll identify and give you a list of them, so you become aware of the kinds of things that they energise, so part of the issue is getting the person delivered, the spirit out of them, but you do that by coming to deal with the thing that it is energising. So for example, if you have in your heart a deep hatred against a - perhaps it's a woman been abused by a man - and so as reaction to being hurt, she develops a deep hatred in her heart, then a spirit energises the hatred, and so you have hatred the sin, and you have hatred a spirit of hate, and the spirit of hate energises the sin, so it becomes something the person can't seem to break out of, and they feel trapped in this bondage they can't seem to break out of.