Very often, if you're in a relationship which is controlling or abusive, where particularly men, sometimes men get incredibly abusive of women. They have unresolved conflict with a woman. They begin to really put down women; what can happen in that relationship is the woman actually becomes stunned and numbed totally by the violence. Maybe he never touched her once and physically harmed her, but the words. Sometimes young people growing up, they've been subject to that kind of verbal violence and angry outbursts, and it hurts their spirit. So first of all, number one, it's violence. Number two, it releases demons against you. In Ephesians 4, Verses 26 and 27, tells us be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger, and don't open the door to demons, so it tells us it's okay to feel angry, it's okay to have expressions of anger, but don't let it explode and hurt people. Deal with it the same day, so you don't open the door to demons, so very clearly angry people open the doorway to demons.
You go into some homes and you wonder, whoa, what is this? You feel the atmosphere. See, people came here the other day at the funeral and whoa! What's in here? They can't see it, but they can feel it, because we're spirit beings. So the atmosphere of heaven where there's glory, nurtures us the most. The atmosphere of the earth, which can be at times filled with violence, can destroy your life, so we have to actually determine to run our life, so while we're in the growing phase, we have continued access to the presence of God, words of encouragement and atmosphere of life, so our spirit and soul are nurtured and become strong. If you're in a situation where you're exposed to put downs, you've got to make some decisions what you're going to do about it. I'll give you a few options of what you can do, but we need to understand that demons are released. You get someone who gets violent or angry, yelling, accusing and putting down, afterwards you have had a fiery dart, and have you noticed after you walk away, it's like you can't get the words out of your ears? It's like for three or four days you say oh Father, I forgive them, but you feel like oh man! This thing, I can't seem to get over it, and now instead of being able to enjoy the next two or three days, something someone yelled at you is just echo, echo, echo. You think man, what's happened to me! Actually the Bible calls it a fiery dart. That was an arrow that had some flammable material, they'd fire it at a building, and they'd fire it at you, fire it at your shield, and set you on fire.
That's what's happened. You've had a dart come, that set you on fire. That's why we need to know the armour of God so we can quench those fiery darts. The devil doesn't always personally come to us. He often works through people around us, that are near to us, and they speak scornful or sometimes they don't even know what they're doing. They say words, and you go away and you think oh, oh, oh. You notice how often you come to a conference, or go to a camp, and you've had this wonderful, wonderful time with God and about five minutes after you're out the place ZONK! Aah! It feels like all the thing was stolen from you, because an arrow has come, and it's a living spirit that's come, using words to try and quench you, knock you down, get you out of the place God has brought you.
If you don't know how to deal with it, what to do with it, you will actually then lose all the benefit of the time you had when you went to the camp, so you've got to learn what to do. So the third thing is that verbal violence wounds people. Verbal violence wounds your soul, and your spirit. In Proverbs 12:18, it says there is one that speaks like the piercings of a sword. There are some people's words have got an ability to get right inside you, and absolutely wound you. Now if I got a sword and cut you, you'd see you're bleeding all the way out to the toilet to get fixed, but if someone spoke words into you, you could be bleeding on the inside all the way home, and all the next day, and the next week, and no one saw you, see? Because we look on the outside, God looks on the heart.