A number of years ago,
a woman started visiting the church where I was pastoring
and she came pretty regularly,
and after a couple of weeks, she asked if we can meet.
And so I said sure, and we met
and she started telling me about herself.
And I don't know that I was entirely prepared
when she looked at me and she said, "I see demons."
And I said, "What?"
She said, "I see demons, like I see them wherever I go,
I see them at my house, I see them outside,
I even see them while I'm sitting in church,
they're inside the church,
even while we're worshiping, they're there I can see them."
And then she went on to tell me
that she had grown up in an occult family.
A family that was very big into the occult
which is the worship of Satan and the worship of demons.
And a lot of what she was experiencing as an adult
had a lot of roots in her childhood and how she was raised.
In fact, her father held a very high position
in all of this, and it had a big impact
on how her life was going.
But she assured me that she could see demons.
Whether or not you believe that's true,
we know from scripture
that demons have always been very real.
From the beginning of creation,
that they were created not originally as demons
like they were created whenever the angels were created,
the same time and the demons, the bad demons,
they were originally good,
but they were led away by one main demon, Satan,
and then they followed him
and then they were confirmed in their evilness,
and they've been demons ever since.
And we know from scripture
that God has given demons the ability to make an impact
on what happens in the world.
You may not have any experience with that,
and that's okay, I'm not telling you that you should.
Experiences like the one
that the person I was ministering to,
they seem to be less common in America,
and more common in other countries, but they do happen.
And it even happened during the time of Jesus.
Time and again in scripture,
we're told that Jesus had run ins with demons.
And demons they had control over people's bodies,
they made people strong enough to break chains,
the demons made them blind or mute
or they threw them to the ground in convulsions,
or they compelled them to pick up stones
and started cutting themselves with it.
Demons are also given credit for having an influence
on what people think and how they act.
When Judas was making the deal to go and betray Jesus,
it says that Satan entered into him
and that's part of what compelled him to move forward.
In the book of Acts, a man named Ananias
was lying to the Apostle Peter
and the Apostle Peter saw right through it,
God gave him that ability
and he said "Ananias, how is it that Satan
has so filled your heart?"
But demons, demons are real.
But demons know something.
They also know that Jesus is real.
And we see that time and again in scripture.
Just a couple of examples in Matthew chapter eight,
when Jesus was faced with a Legion of demons,
Jesus said the word go and they went.
Or in Matthew 12 when a man was possessed by a demon
and he was a blind and mute as a result,
it said, Jesus, he healed him, and, and he was.
In Matthew chapter 17, there was a demon possessed boy
and it says that Jesus rebuked the demon,
and it came out of the boy
and he was healed at that very moment.
In Luke chapter four,
there were many who were possessed by demons.
And it says that Jesus laid His hands on each one of them
and He healed them.
Demons are real.
But so is Jesus.
And He's always more powerful than them.
I got to see that in a very unique way.
The woman who came into my church
and let me know that she could see demons,
she was tormented in a lot of different ways by demons.
And one time after we had met a couple of times,
and after I discovered that there were other pastors
who had worked with her previously,
it was during a time where she was especially troubled
and I was sitting down with her
and with another pastor who had worked with her previously.
And as we were talking, kind of the, what you might imagine
as the stereotypical demon possession
things started happening.
The temperature drastically changed,
and her voice changed very dramatically.
And she started talking in ways that just were not her
and started doing things,
bodily movements and things like that
that were very highly, highly unusual.
And as this began, my friend, who was a pastor
who had ministered to her before
he took something out of his pocket.
It was a piece of paper
that he had had in his inside pocket,
and he unfolded the piece of paper
and he showed the piece of paper to the demon.
And the demon stopped, immediately.
Not because it was a special piece of paper,
but because of what the piece of paper represented.
It was actually a photocopy.
It was a photocopy of the woman's baptismal certificate.
The certificate that her family had received
on the day that she was baptized.
And that baptismal certificate
was a reminder of something to that demon.
In Galatians chapter three,
it says, "All of you who were baptized into Christ
have clothed yourselves with Christ."
That piece of paper was a reminder to the demon that,
it said that woman was as much a part of God's family
as Jesus Christ Himself.
And that as such,
God held her.
And God's grip on anything
just as Jesus Himself showed time and again,
is always stronger
than the grip that anything else in life has on a person,
even a demon.
Demons are real.
But so is Jesus.
That passage from Galatians
gives us such a beautiful truth to hang on to
that you are as much a part of God's family
as Jesus Christ Himself.
So I guess I'd like to ask you,
what aspect of being a member of God's family
is most meaningful to you?
Like, what is it about being in God's family
that puts a smile in your heart?
I'd love to see your answers,
get some encouragement from them,
and then we'll see you the rest of the week.