Deliverance Today
By Jeremy Groves
The ministry of deliverance is a hot-button issue in the Church today and has been for some time. In my current ministry experience, I have seen deliverance come to people almost as frequently, if not more than healing.
Deliverance has been something I have sought to learn from the Holy Spirit over the years, without going too much into books and other sources, because of just how much distortion of this aspect of ministry has become prevalent.
I believe deliverance is much simpler than we make it and is one of the two primary anointings Jesus revealed in His ministry that demonstrated the inbreak of the Kingdom of God.
I have learned that the core grace of deliverance from demonic bondage is worked out in many unique ways as the Spirit of God leads the hungry to the fruit of righteousness and freedom from a life of bondage.
God is a relational being, and true freedom is received ultimately through accepting the divine nature of Christ in our lives and living it out in our day-to-day walk with Him.
Tragically, I have also witnessed people take principles found in the Bible and turn them into methods and ways of doing things that are not relationally dependent on God for them to work, and this often leads to endless dogmatic debate with others that see differently even if they agree on deliverance and its relevance for today.
I believe this is due to our tendency to over-exalt our experience and memorialize what God has done at one point in time, and because it “worked” for us, that is how we should all do it.
Dogmatic methods of deliverance can be harmful because they overlook God’s design that all ministry flows from our relationship with Him, and being dogmatic about a particular ministry approach can quickly become a house where pride can easily set up shop and corrupt the vine of our ministries.
How he walked one person through deliverance may be different for the next, while the principles of deliverance remain intact for both. I say all this to orient our hearts to take a fresh look at the ministry of deliverance and remember that it is God’s power that delivers and not our ministry methods.
My goal at this moment is to share the why we should value and see deliverance as a current ministry for today through the Church.
I have begun by sharing a caution due to my passion for a pure expression of Jesus in the Church with an exhortation for us to remain dependent on the Holy Spirit as He guides us into the full expression of the life and ministry of Jesus, remembering that all ministry flows from relationship and especially deliverance.
We must walk humbly with our God as we learn new ways of doing things, because there is always more to learn.
I believe deliverance is one of the most powerful operations of the Spirit through His Church because of its ability to transform the inner world of a person so entirely and so instantly.
Deliverance is an expression of the finished work of Christ and His love for humanity and is outworked through a Church surrendered to Him to bring freedom to a world bound by sin.
So, with these truths in mind, let us discover why deliverance is for today and why we, as a Church, are called to carry it to the nations.
Deliverance Is Our Inheritance in Christ
I have heard it said that “Jesus is perfect theology.” There is no more accurate statement. The life of Jesus is our example and pattern for how we live out and express the New Covenant ministry of the Spirit of God and how we understand and relate to Father God.
Jesus reflected this when He said in John 14:12, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (NIV, 1973/2011)
He was pointing out that we are called to do what He has done, and even more, because when He returns to the Father at His ascension, the Father will release the Spirit of God to anoint the Church and empower them to continue the ministry of Jesus.
Jesus Himself sent out His disciples to cast out demons, and His disciples saw so much fruit that in Luke 10:17, they returned saying, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” (NIV, 1973/2011)
Jesus repeated the mandate to deliver the oppressed from demons in Mark 16:15-18 right before He ascended to the Father by saying:
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In My name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not harm them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will be made well.” (NIV, 1973/2011)
In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus told the first apostles to teach us the same things so that all of His people throughout history would accurately and thoroughly represent the life and ministry of Jesus, pointing all people to the true nature and character of the Father.
Derek Prince echoes this in his book, “They Shall Expel Demons: What You Need to Know about Demons—Your Invisible Enemies,” stating:
“The commission was simple and practical: to make disciples and then to teach them to obey all that Jesus had commanded the first disciples. Then these new disciples would, in turn, make further disciples and teach them all that Jesus had taught. So it would go from one generation to another—’even to the end of the age.’”(1998, p. 30)
Christ in Us, The Hope of Freedom
In the surrounding context of John 14-16, Jesus taught about the ministry of the Holy Spirit through His disciples because He was about to go to the cross.
He wanted them to know that at the current moment, He is limited to the constraints of His human body but that the Spirit of God will come and live in them, giving them the same connection with the Father as He enjoys and then take of what belongs to Jesus, give it to us, and send us out to do the same thing He is doing.
In the West, we have often made the Gospel a “die and go to heaven” Gospel, but that is but a small part of the Gospel. Jesus did not do what He did to get us into Heaven, but to get Heaven back into us.
The presence of God IS the realm of Heaven. It is Heaven because it is where He dwells, and now, through Christ, we have been made dwelling places for the King of Glory. We are temples fit for a king (see 1 Corinthians 3:16, John 15:17).
We could get into so much, but for our purposes, I want to highlight the core purpose of deliverance. The primary purpose of deliverance is not to cast out a demon. It is to restore the temple of our being where God dwells and give Him full access to express who He is in us and through us.
1 John 3:8 says, “The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” (NIV, 1973/2011)
How did Jesus do this? He modeled truth as the embodiment of all God is and told us to follow Him so we could again be transformed by His love and power and restored to reflect His image on the earth, destroying all that the devil has built to separate us from God.
Breaking demonic bondage and casting out demons removes the obstacles we face to fully and freely manifest the life of Christ and live in the freedom he paid for us to receive.
The Truth Versus The Lie: The Ultimate Contest
You could see demonic bondage in people’s lives as “life blockers.” Through His Spirit, God removes roadblocks to the abundant life Jesus came to give us.
Jesus declares in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (NIV, 1973/2011)
In this scripture, Jesus talks about false teaching or “false shepherds” that lead us by lies into the wolf’s mouth, dismantling our lives to emulate the lie we were led into destruction by.
This understanding is what the ministry of deliverance revolves around. Jesus calls satan the “father of lies” in John 8:44.
The devil continually works to steal the purpose of humanity to reveal God’s glory and enjoy communion with Him by sowing lies into people’s minds is causing them to believe it and through wrong believing set the stage for the lie to become an experienced reality in the life of the person, forming what is called in deliverance ministry a “stronghold.”
A “stronghold” is where a demon has sown lies into a person’s mind to the degree that demonic powers have set up shop to control that person through the lie because that person has come into “agreement” with the whispers of the devil.
This requires God’s power to break the lie and replace it with the opposing truth, manifesting the reality and experience of the truth into that person’s life, bringing freedom where there once was bondage.
Jesus echoes this reality when He says in John 8:31-32, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” (NIV, 1973/2011)
Deliverance is simply God confronting the lies of hell that have caused us to live according to what they represent by revealing who He is and who we are in light of the life and sacrifice of Jesus and who He has called us to be as a victorious people covered by His blood who overcome sin and the power of the devil by yielding to the truth of who He is and the power of His Spirit in us.
I like to say that deliverance is an aspect of “renewing the mind” and aligning people with who God has made them to be. We all need deliverance at one point or another in our lives because, whether Christian or not, we have believed lies that are not according to our created value.
We need the One who is truth to shine a light in our souls, breaking us free from its bondage and releasing us to live the life we were created to live.
Deliverance Today
Deliverance is for today because God is still setting bound souls free from sin, giving them the abundant life of His Spirit, and working in them to bring them into the reality of the Kingdom of God expressed through their surrendered lives.
Although I cannot be comprehensive in this apologetic for deliverance within the scope of this writing, I have endeavored to highlight the core purpose of deliverance, explaining why it is necessary and empowering you to continue your journey of discovering every facet of our saving and delivering Messiah, Jesus.
So let us go in the name and power of Jesus to bring freedom to a bound world so they may know the One who is truly Lord of all.
References
Holy Bible: New International Version. (2011). Zondervan. (Original work published 1973)
Prince, D. (1998). They shall expel demons: What you need to know about demons - your invisible enemies (27872nd ed.). Chosen Books.