Christ Destroyed the Inevitability of Demonic Power That Delights in Deforming God’s Children

Let us turn to Luke chapter 13, and this morning I want to conclude this part of the larger series on spiritual health and emotional health. As you know, we have already spent many Sundays on this subject. We have approached it in different ways, focusing on its various components, the tools and instruments God provides us to remain healthy and whole amid life’s crises, struggles, and losses.

In this last session—over the last four Sundays—we have been talking about that dimension of coming directly before God, no longer merely using the conceptual tools provided by the Word of the Lord and its principles for life, but entering into that dimension of seeking the energy that comes from God, because there are also times when we simply need God to touch us with His Grace, to release something, to break something, to place a spark within us that enables us to get out of the mire, sometimes in a supernatural and instantaneous way, but certainly for God to add, as it were, a note of energy and power to our lives.

That is why we have emphasized the importance of prayer as one of those fundamental principles. If you do not pray, you will be weak; you will be deficient. We have said that prayer should not be something in which we only ask the Lord specifically for something, for direct intervention, or for something we need, but that prayer should also be like a principle of life that accompanies every moment of our lives.

There must also be prayer in a preventive way—prayer like breathing, prayer as a habit in which we engage at every moment of our lives, always presenting our needs and burdens to the Lord. And when there are times when we are battling something specific, prayer also helps unleash the Power and energy of God that makes the difference, that supplements our own weaknesses and complements them with divine Power. So prayer is important.

Then, after that, we moved on to spiritual warfare—that is, what is called spiritual warfare. Or rather, I could say that it is like that dimension of prayer and life in the Spirit that takes into account that, as the apostle Paul says, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,” against spirits, against evil hosts that want to harm our lives, fill us with anxiety and self-contempt, bind us, and take advantage of the weak moments in our circumstances to plant a seed of neurosis, doubt, fear, anxiety, and sometimes resentment, as well as other things. Sometimes they exploit conflicts that already exist in natural life, stoking them, setting them further ablaze, dividing a family, dividing a marriage, driving someone to kill another person or to commit suicide, because they want to destroy, steal, and kill; that is their function.

We must also be aware of that dimension of struggle against powers that want to destroy us, cause us to stumble, and make the journey of life difficult. It is not that we should live obsessed with this, nor that we should blame demons for every flaw, every problem, and every struggle in life. But on many occasions we will indeed have to address that dimension because we will discern that there is a dimension, a spiritual component, that must also be confronted and attacked with the power and authority we possess as children of God.

Now, there is a passage that I hope I can touch upon, although we will definitely get to the principles contained in it: Luke chapter 13, verse 10, about this bent-over woman whom the Lord healed on a Sabbath. Luke chapter 13, verse 10, says: “Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath.” Notice that He is in a church—well, one dedicated to Judaism—but Jesus is there, right? And this woman is a devout woman. She is not a pagan and corrupt woman, but a God-fearing woman. “And there was a woman there who for eighteen years”—I imagine she had been going to that synagogue all her life—“who for eighteen years had a spirit of infirmity.” It does not say there that she was sick, but that she had a spirit of infirmity. In this case, her illness was due to a demonic spirit that was lodged in her life in some way, and the way this illness and this demonic presence manifested themselves was that she walked bent over—that is, she walked completely doubled over; her spine was affected and made her walk completely stooped.

“So that she could not straighten herself up in any way”; she was completely bent downward. “And when Jesus saw her, He called her and said to her, ‘Woman, you are free from your infirmity.’” That was all—five or six words. How wonderful it is when there is power; you do not have to go on: “Oh, Spirit of God, we invoke You; come down.” No. Anointed prayers are sometimes swift, devastating, brief, and to the point, and boom!—a fatal shot to the heart of that demon.

“Woman, you are free from your infirmity.” He did not even address the demon; He simply made a declaration, spoke a Word. It is interesting. Wow, I am already getting myself into trouble, because that is what happens—the associations start coming.

Years ago, I spoke to you about that dream I had about the Lion of Judah and about how, in this powerful dream that changed my life and our ministry, I saw those immense, powerful demonic forces perched on the skyscrapers of the city of Boston. It was like a cloud of demonic spirits in the form of venomous spiders.

And let us say that these are the buildings of Boston, and above them is that cloud of demonic spirits. But over here, looking up into the firmament to the left from my perspective, there was the face of a lion with very powerful human eyes. But what has always captivated me is that, in the dream, when I looked at that scene and saw that lion looking toward the scene of demonic infestation over the city, the lion said nothing. In fact, it was only the face, but it did not move or say anything; it simply watched. And in the dream I understood that the mere act of looking upon that scene of demonic infestation already constituted an act of power and control. What He was saying to me was: I am in control. I am watching. I am ruling over this. I have it under My gaze. But it was a gaze of authority and total power.

And that is why, in the dream, from where I stood, I said three times, piercing through those powers that were above the city: You are Lord, You are Lord, You are Lord—declaring the Lordship of Christ.

Why do I make that comparison? Because here the Lord simply says: “Woman, you are free from your infirmity.” He spoke a Word. He did not bother to confront the demons. He did not say, “I rebuke you; come out of her; leave this space.” No. He said to the woman, “You are free from your infirmity.” The Lord does not have to exert much effort. The Lord is in total control of all things. His Word has power.

That is the power dwelling within us, brothers and sisters. The Bible says that the same power that raised Christ from the dead also dwells in us. And I believe that, in the Christian life, with regard to the demonic powers that rule over and contaminate our lives, the problem is not so much asking the Lord to give us power as it is using the power we already have within us and believing that I have authority over any power of the devil. He does not have the final word; I do. And we must live with that confidence, that assurance, right?

“Woman, you are free from your infirmity. And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and glorified God.” Imagine that scene. I would have liked to have had the YouTube video of that moment.

But here comes another part of the scene, right? It says: “But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people”—a fat-blooded, envious fellow, right? Neither eating nor letting anyone else eat, as we say about María Ramos’s little cat—“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come and be healed on those days, and not on the Sabbath.” Then the Lord answered him and said, “Hypocrite”—He really filled His mouth with the word—“hypocrite,” He told him, “does not each one of you untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to drink? And should not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound for eighteen years”—it is clear that this woman’s case involved demonic contamination; it was not merely a biological and physical illness, no. It was this: Satan had bound her for eighteen years.

“Should she not have been released from this bondage on the Sabbath?” When He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame, but all the people rejoiced over all the glorious things done by Him. How beautiful—glory to the Lord.

So we see that many times in our lives there are afflictions and situations that appear biological, that appear circumstantial in nature, but often have a demonic component. Sometimes we do not discern it and simply limit ourselves to seeking a solution in the psychiatric, sociological, psychological, emotional, circumstantial, or medical aspect of the problem. But sometimes that problem needs to be confronted from the perspective of the powers behind that symptom. How wonderful it is when God gives us spiritual discernment so that we can know. The presence of the devil and his intervention in the lives of God’s children are sometimes very subtle.

Some time ago I shared a little personal story with you. I told you—and this was in the context of prayer, the importance of prayer, and the changes it produces even in our perspective and our state of mind when we bring our needs and distressing situations before the Lord—that I was going on a preaching trip to Spain. That was about a year and a half ago or something like that. It was the summer before last; I think it was the summer before last, in June, right?

The fact is that the day before leaving, on Saturday afternoon, I was extremely busy, still trying to put together this retreat that I was going to lead over there in Spain for a church one weekend, along with other churches that had joined it. And I knew that this was a great responsibility. These people had invited me and had invested money in that invitation and all these things, and of course they were expecting the Word of the Lord to do Its Work. They had asked me to speak about emotional health and emotional healing. But it was three or four o’clock on Saturday afternoon, and I still did not even have a clear idea of what I was going to present there, and I was going to give several talks over the course of a long weekend. Nor had I prepared the Sunday sermon here, which I wanted to preach before leaving Sunday night so I would not miss Sunday here. I had not packed my suitcase either. And you know how it is: the anxiety began to rise, along with the feeling that time was slipping away. And you know that when you become anxious, the more anxious you get, the less successful things are, the more time you waste, and the less able you are to bring your ideas together. The truth is that I was there, uncomfortable about everything. It all became a tangled ball of confusion and need.

But at a certain point I said, “You know what? Wait a minute. This is not normal,” because I had been having great difficulty putting my ideas about this together, and I sensed something. And this is where I want to say that, when I spoke with you before, I spoke from the perspective of prayer, but I did not tell you about another dimension of that struggle because I wanted to save it for this time. And it was that, at that moment, as well—I know that many times in the lives of God’s servants, and in all our lives, the devil’s intervention does not necessarily have to look like a demon with a pitchfork and a little red tail coming up to confront you. Often the presence of evil is something general, something that is there because it is part of the condition of this fallen world. And we also sometimes have to discern when something, a situation in our lives, has a component of that sinful condition of the world that connects and relates to the powers of the devil and of darkness.

And I understood in my spirit that this dimension was also present, because the enemy often wants to confuse us, and he is always trying to obstruct the Work of God. Whenever he can introduce a problem or a difficulty into the life of a servant of God, a son or daughter of God, or simply contaminate that person’s mind or put a little pebble in their shoe, he does it. If he cannot hit them in the head with a rock, he puts a pebble in their shoe, let us put it that way.

And then I discerned that this struggle I was having also had a dimension, a spiritual component. So I addressed the enemy directly and clearly as well, and I rebuked Satan, and I rebuked the anxiety, and I rebuked that obstruction of what I had to do to serve the Lord. I addressed it directly, because you can do that as part of your normal hygiene in life, as I was saying. There are times when something is present in your life, and it is not necessarily that there is a specific demon there, but there is indeed a principle of evil that obeys the power of darkness.

I do not know how the enemy manifests himself in every dimension of life, but many times it may be in very indirect ways, so I addressed that power as well, rebuked it, and restrained it, and then I went to our bedroom and lay down on our bed, prayed to the Lord, cried out, asked for the Lord’s grace and peace, and remained there quietly for a while. And as I told you, brothers and sisters, when I got up from the bed a little while later—I think I rested for a few minutes as well—even before I got up, while I was still in bed, I already knew what I was going to preach. I went downstairs, put together the series of teachings I was going to give, packed my suitcase extremely quickly, prepared the sermon for the next day, and in about an hour or an hour and a half, I had everything ready and prepared.

It was as though everything changed, as though something broke, something shattered. Not only that: from those sermons and those ideas that came to me there at that moment arose this entire series of sermons that I have been preaching over these past few months about emotional and spiritual health. How glorious—and it all happened because I was able to discern that dimension of spiritual warfare and break the confinement that had gripped my mind.

I want to read you a section from this book that I have been writing for some time and that I have left sitting there, but which also has to do with this, so that you may have a fuller understanding of spiritual warfare: “The Kingdom of darkness seeks to exploit our weaknesses and negative experiences in order to fill us with bitterness, complexes, and deforming circumstances, and to neutralize us as effective servants of the Kingdom of God. On the cross, Christ decisively triumphed over the principalities and powers that wage war against the well-being of the human race. Colossians 2:15 says: ‘On the cross the Lord defeated the principalities and powers, made a public spectacle of them, and canceled the record of the decrees that stood against us’—the devil’s accusations. No child of God has to suffer under Satan’s accusations; we are forgiven and set free by Christ Jesus.”

“The Lord accomplished all of that on the cross of Calvary; He made a public spectacle of them and won a definitive victory for future generations. From the time Christ died on the cross, the might of evil was broken as an irresistible power.” Today, anyone who wants to resist evil through Christ Jesus can do so because he has been set free by Christ. Those who want to remain under evil do so, whether it is a society, a city, a family, or an individual; but anyone who wants to be free can now be free in Christ Jesus. Something powerful took place in the world, in the cosmos, when Christ died on the cross of Calvary. The Bible also says that Christ came to destroy the works of the devil.

“Christ destroyed the inevitability of the diabolical power that delights in deforming the children of God, seeking to distort the mark of divinity and greatness borne by every human being.” What Satan wants is to erase that beauty within us, that divine spark, and fill it with deformities so that the divine touch present in each one of us will be lost.

“Through the sacrifice of Christ Jesus, everyone who places himself within the realm of the Kingdom of God and of Christ is freed from diabolical jurisdiction and comes under the administration of a new authority, a benevolent and loving government whose sole desire is to restore our communication with the Creator and reestablish the divine bond with that source of divine energy which assures us a life of fullness, creativity, and power.”

The Bible says that our lives have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of light; now it is God, not Satan, who holds our record. If you understood what I am saying, you would be jumping there and dancing on top of these chairs right now. We have been transferred from the Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of light, says the Word of the Lord, through the sacrifice of Christ Jesus on the cross of Calvary.

“Christ has said in His Word: ‘The thief comes only to kill, steal, and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly.’ That thief is Satan, who embodies the principle of evil that opposes everything that affirms light, life, and love. God’s purpose in sending Jesus as His exclusive ambassador to the world is to establish a Kingdom of light and truth, a new government aimed at the restoration of life. God wants the original purposes that governed His creative Work in the act of creation back in Eden to once again direct and govern human life.

Christ becomes a transmitter of unlimited power from the Throne of God to His creation. That benevolent power wants to give life to the nations and eradicate poverty, war, and oppression. It wants to make possible all the reforms and transformations in the human realm that the great idealists of all time have devoted their lives and talents to trying to accomplish. Christ has come so that every man and woman may attain the fullness of their potential, so that we may stop living stunted lives filled with envy over the achievements of others, allowing us to live out our own heroic drama, climb our own mountains, and fulfill our own magnificent dreams.

Satan’s purpose, as the great destroyer of lives and potential, is to ensure that no human being ever fully reflects the image of God in his or her life. The ceaseless activity of the powers of evil is devoted to a single purpose: to prevent a child in a Brazilian favela or an African village, nurturing dreams of greatness while caring for younger siblings who are hungry, from receiving enough education or nourishment to develop healthily and become a successful man and a blessing to his community.

The Kingdom of darkness exists and moves, as we have said, only to kill, steal, and destroy. The dark powers that illegitimately rule this world identify very early on every human being who has the potential to develop and bless humanity with his or her gifts, and they do everything within their reach to cut short that person’s dreams, to make that person stumble in his or her dreams of fulfillment.”

Do you know that the devil, with his millennia-old wisdom, recognizes when a young person, a child, has potential, has talent, has the potential to bless his community, and from the very beginning of that child’s life, he tries preemptively to put obstacles in his way and destroy him? That is what Satan has always done. He tried to kill the child Jesus through Herod, and Moses the deliverer as well, always trying to murder the life of God in a person beforehand; and sometimes he tries to do it by preemptively deforming us from childhood, using people and circumstances in our lives to kill the spark of God within us and keep us from becoming everything God wants us to be.

“But in the new economy of Christ that He has established, God makes sure that every human being has the opportunity to achieve his or her potential”—and that includes you. “God levels the playing field, and then it is up to us to decide freely whether we will take advantage of the resources He has made available through His Son Jesus Christ.”

In a very real and profound sense, the personal road to success—and we could say here: to success, to emotional health, to a full life, to a creative life in which we are always developing new skills, growing, and living competently despite life’s natural struggles—that personal road to complete success will always have to begin with some kind of spiritual warfare; that is important. There is always a dimension of spiritual warfare in that desire of the human being—you and I—to reach our fullest potential.

“There will always be negative energies within us or around us that will have to be confronted and overcome so that we can successfully embark on the journey toward self-improvement and the fulfillment of our aspirations. They may be destructive habits and addictions that act like chains, weaken us, and cause us to stumble again and again when we set out toward our destiny. At other times they may be complexes, wounds, dependencies, and fears that hold us back and frighten us when we first contemplate the vast territory of personal development stretching out before us.” Whenever you try to move to a higher level in your life, you will discover that there are subtle obstacles in your path—from your past, from people, from voices within you that tell you: no, you cannot do it.

Just last night I read about a classical dancer in the Netherlands. This young woman was born in an African country, and her father was murdered by one of those military groups when she was three years old. Her mother starved to death because they were placed with a family that gave them nothing to eat, and this little girl was taken to a refugee camp. She says that one day, when she was four years old, the wind blew a magazine through the wires of the refugee camp; it contained a photograph of a beautiful ballerina in her little ballet outfit, a woman whose beauty was so well cared for, so athletic and energetic. And this little girl was actually considered unattractive and had white patches on her neck and hands from an illness she had suffered, and people told her that she was extremely ugly and that no one would adopt her because no one would want her, as homely as she was. The fact is that a woman from New Jersey here in the United States adopted her, and when she arrived in New Jersey, she took out the magazine cover with the ballerina on it, which she had kept hidden in her underwear all that time, she says, and her adoptive mother quickly enrolled her in a dance academy.

And this unattractive young woman became a tremendous dancer who today is one of the principal dancers in the Dutch National Ballet, and she is a celebrity because she wrote her story in a book. Today, she says that her problem is having to contend with all the agencies, magazines, and people who call asking her to share her story and offering her modeling jobs and so many different things. She is living her dream.

When this young girl awakened to the idea that she could live a creative life, she had voices telling her that she could not: that she was ugly, along with her poverty, her misery, the country where she lived, and an oppressive society. But by the grace of the Lord, she was able to free herself from all of that and become the woman she is today.

But that is how we are in our own lives: when we want to do something, pursue a dream, study, become something better, or improve some flaw or affliction we have, the devil always begins to whisper, and the circumstances of this fallen world wage war against us; and that is a demonic element—there is a demonic dimension to that struggle, isn’t there?

“It may be the distant, stern voice of a father or mother who marked us during childhood through neglectful or abusive treatment. It may involve the environment around us, riddled with subtle restraints and chains and characterized by the failure and stagnation of our schoolmates, neighbors, and/or relatives. It constitutes a subtle voice announcing disaster and imminent defeat if we take the sword in hand and begin cutting away the weeds that choke our aspirations.

All of that, brothers and sisters, constitutes the inertia of a fallen world separated from God, where we human beings are frequently deformed and bound early in life, before our inherent creativity can blossom and assert itself within us. And when we awaken to our aspirations, we frequently discover subtle bonds around us. Like the Gulliver of Jhonathan Swift’s novel, we find that our journey is limited by a multitude of tiny circumstances and beings that immobilize us and whisper that it cannot be done, that we are abnormal, that we are offending and destabilizing the status quo with our aspirations for personal fulfillment.”

Do you know something? Many times, when the people around us—our loved ones or others—see us trying to improve in some way, they immediately begin to feel threatened and start criticizing us: ‘Oh, you’re becoming a fanatic! Look at you going to church every Sunday and giving your money to those corrupt people over there at the church!’ And so on, right? And sometimes it is a mother, a father, a friend, or a loved one. ‘Go to college? But girl, you don’t even know how to speak English!’ The devil sometimes uses those negative voices to try to crush us and destroy the creativity that is trying to be born within us.

“The enemy of our souls spends a great deal of time weaving a web of negativity around us, plunging us into helplessness and making the undertaking of self-realization exceedingly difficult. Part of the battle lies in recognizing the true nature of that struggle”—listen to that—“part of the battle lies,” or depends, “on recognizing the true nature of that struggle and engaging it with the proper weapons. Spiritual warfare must be waged with spiritual weapons: with the weapons of prayer and inner cleansing, personal purification, renunciation of the interests and dominions of the forces of evil, and total surrender to a higher power capable of supporting, equipping, and protecting us during the painful ascent toward personal greatness.

There have to be times of confession, of acknowledging our own sins and bondages, of renouncing the power of darkness, of positively affirming the Grace of God that is within us, of rejecting the devil’s mutterings that tell us: you cannot, you must not, you do not have, you do not deserve; that is where the power lies, that is where the ability lies, those are the weapons of faith that we use: the confession of God’s truth, the faith that believes that despite the circumstances God can do great things in us, believing God that we are forgiven and that we do not have to live under the condemnation of the devil or of the sins we committed in the past. Those sins have already been cast into the depths of the sea, and God does not even remember them, yet sometimes we are pulling them out again, going in our boat to where we cast them, hauling them out again, stinking, and putting them into our boat so that they contaminate our lives; that is what the devil wants.

God wants us to live free, to confess what He has done in our lives, and to dare, in the Name of Jesus, to undertake great things for His Name and His glory. Believe that God—that the bondage and sinful gravity of this world—cannot stop you; your ship can go out into space, and you can undertake great things in the Name of the Lord, and that is why you must wage your war with those weapons.

In Ephesians 6:11 and 12, the apostle Paul warns us: “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age”—look at how judicial and spiritual that language is—“against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Never let anyone come along and sweep that passage aside, watering it down and diluting it with mental and intellectual pretensions. Those are real powers; they are personal; they are evil consciousnesses; they are beings with intentionality, constituted spirits that manifest themselves at both the collective and the individual level. But those spirits will always have to obey that same initiative, that Word of Christ that says: Woman, you are healed of your illness; rise and walk with authority.

“The Bible warns us, as we see, that ‘our struggle is not against flesh and blood,’ that is, against people and human circumstances that overwhelm us and cause us to stumble, but ‘against principalities and powers’; in other words, against spiritual entities and processes, against an entire system vastly superior to any other human force, which exerts its harmful influence from a dimension beyond this world. And that system resolutely opposes our reaching our potential and entering that dimension of abundant life that Christ has declared over us.

And that is why Paul advises us to put on the whole armor of God, because our enemy requires us to have armor for protection. To fight effectively against the evil that binds and limits us, we need the power of heaven; to live fulfilled lives, we require the weapons of light. We need to mobilize on our behalf a power far superior to that of darkness. Our lives must move under the banner of a Kingdom capable of neutralizing the subtle attacks of the kingdom of darkness and death, of failure and personal stagnation. We require the support of heaven so that our fragile boat may sail the seas of personal growth, propelled by a gentle breeze that will carry it safely into port.”

“Luke 13,” the passage we have just read, “tells us the story of a woman who for 18 years had been afflicted by an illness that forced her to walk completely bent over. When He saw her, the Lord discerned that the true source of her illness was an evil spirit manifesting itself through a sinister deformity. With one kind and powerful Word, Jesus set her free from her illness, and the woman was free to go on with her normal life.

The text adds that when the official of the synagogue where the woman had been healed saw the miracle, he complained bitterly that Jesus had healed her on a Sabbath day.” Hey, why don’t you help me there—do you have an image of the bent-over woman that you could put up there? Had you already put it up before? Maybe I didn’t notice because I was reading. Put it there so the people will be inspired and wake up a little bit (laughter).

No, this official complains bitterly. “He indirectly accused Jesus of violating the statutes of Jewish law”—the Sabbath—“and the Lord rebuked him harshly, exposing his hypocrisy and lack of mercy. This passage has always seemed extremely revealing to me in connection with what we are discussing.

The bent-over woman represents an entire humanity exploited and oppressed by the forces of evil”—put your name there—“living a humiliating life. Until the power of Christ intervened in her life, her days slipped away under the dark sign of a humiliating illness. At first, the woman’s predicament appeared to be purely physical and biological in nature. The evil that turned her into a painful symbol of helplessness and failure seemed to belong merely to the human, biological realm”—but if you look closely, the evil is highly symbolic and very clear.

This bent-over woman, always looking downward, right? We human beings were created to look upward. The devil is very cynical and very subtle. I believe he had made that woman into a kind of symbol of: you must not, you cannot, you must have no aspirations, you are humiliated. That woman is a symbol of this humanity that lives under the power of evil and sin, and in many ways we are at different levels of oppression.

Some of us are looking completely downward; others can sometimes look around a little with our eyes; others perhaps a bit more. But all of us, in one way or another, are bent to some degree; we all bear certain deforming marks in our lives. Christ wants us to walk looking upward, with the great hope of victory and blessing and life. We are beings made to soar through the air, not to be down there crawling like a snake all over the ground. It is interesting that God condemned Satan, the serpent, to crawl and eat dust all the days of his life, because that is the symbol of decline and defeat. And that is why this woman was there in that condition, right? And the Lord could not bear it, so He set her free.

“Behind that medical affliction there was another, far more sinister element: a demonic spirit that had lodged in her spine. A sinister entity was forcing her to live and walk looking downward, toward the earth, instead of being free to look toward the heights as God had originally designed her to do. Only Jesus could diagnose the true nature of that woman’s suffering; only Jesus could give the Word that set her free to continue toward her destiny.

The reaction of the synagogue official reminds us, brothers and sisters, that our battle does not end with a single fight or a single confrontation. The world is populated by numerous agents of evil who will be outraged when they see us striving to get out of the mire. We will have to fight many enemies along the road to personal fulfillment.” This is a lifelong process. Throughout your whole life, you will have to fight against this fallen, deforming world—your whole life—against your own bondages and sins, all of them. You, me: it does not end when you accept Christ, or when Christ has set you free from an illness or an addiction, or from a life of physical abuse or misery. No.

Throughout your whole life, you will have to walk with the sword in your hand—your whole life—because you will never be able to banish evil one hundred percent from your life. This world is contaminated, and whenever one giant is defeated, another comes, and then another. But how wonderful it is that Christ will give you strength and vitality, and that every day you will experience more and more joy, more and more strength, a greater sense of adequacy and of “I can do it in the Name of Jesus, because I won that last battle and I am going to win the next one too, and I am going to be better every day.” Believe it in the Name of Jesus.

You have a glorious life ahead of you if you believe the Lord, if only you can lift your gaze from below and say, “The Lord has set me free—wait a minute!” and look upward. Because many of us have been freed from that bent spine, yet we continue looking downward. Dare to believe the Lord and look upward, and believe that God has great things for you. Do not fear the world or your limitations.

Nothing is impossible for God, nothing: neither death nor life, nor principalities, nor powers, nor angels, nor future things, nor things to come—nothing, not even the present, can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” says the Word of the Lord.

“We must be prepared to discern the true nature of those opposing forces. We must denounce their true satanic origin and continue our efforts toward liberation and personal growth, no matter what. In any case, through the understanding that comes from knowing the principles of the Spirit and of the Word of God, we will be prepared to interpret our daily experience spiritually, and we will be able to use the whole armor of God to achieve our dreams.”

May the Lord bless you, and may the Word of God inspire you this morning and fill you with hope and joy, and with that sense that everything is possible through Christ Jesus, amen? If only we believe, everything is possible, brothers and sisters. If you have the Power of God in your life, if Christ has given His Word of freedom, He can do anything in you. Do not let your past, your poor origins, the parents who did not affirm you, or your first academic steps cancel your aspirations. You can still do great things.

You can educate yourself; right there in your home you can learn many things. You can come out of depression; you can free yourself from the bad memories of a failed marriage or a long-term illness. Brother, the limit is your capacity to believe, you know? Because, frankly, Christ has no limits for us. He wants us to reach the greatest heights of our lives.

Undertake new things, brother; dare to launch out on the road to personal greatness, right? Do not let yourself be limited by what happened five years ago or three years ago. Do not let the losses of the past limit your present or your future. God’s good Will is with you in your life; believe it.

Let us bow our heads right now. Let us lower the music a little, because I simply want—alright, keep it there softly in the background—but this morning, to the extent that God has spoken to your heart, I want you to take hold of a little piece of that Word that has been declared.

If something has touched you, if the positive energy and the promise that we have lifted up this morning have reached you, receive it; grasp it: this truth that God is with you and is for you, that He knows the good purposes He has, the thoughts of good and not of evil for your life; that He has endowed you, it says, “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”; that nothing in this world will be able to harm you, but quite the contrary, you will have authority over serpents, scorpions, the powers of the devil, the circumstances that afflict you, the afflictions that torment you, and the bondages you have. God wants to give you freedom from all those things, depending on your capacity to believe the Lord.

This morning I invite you, right now—do it with me, because I do it continually—and repeat there in your heart: Father, I embrace the freedom that You have made possible through Christ Jesus. I declare that Satan is defeated not only at the cross but also in my life through the victory of Christ, and he has no power to chain me, torment me, accuse me, or stop me. You have made me free in Christ Jesus, and I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Everything is possible through the Power of Christ in my life.

I renounce pessimism; I renounce defeatism; I renounce “I can’t,” and I confess that I am capable of doing incredible things through the Power of Christ in me. You give strength to the weary; You multiply the strength, Lord, of the one who has none. Those who trust in You will have new strength, and I will have new strength.

This morning I receive Your Power, Father, to rise up on wings like eagles, to run without growing weary, to walk without becoming faint. I receive a double portion of Your Grace this morning; I receive my healing; I confess that I am free through the Power of Christ in my life. I sever every relationship with Satan and with the forces of evil. I renounce sin; I renounce hell; I renounce Satan, and I embrace the Kingdom of light. I declare myself the property of Your Kingdom, Lord, and I receive all the good things You have for me, for my children, for my descendants, for my household, for my city, for my Church, for my body, for my finances, for my emotions, and for my mind. I receive Your healing, Your medicine within me, Lord Jesus. I am free, and I embrace that freedom You have given me, Lord.

Every day cleanse me more and more, and use me for Your Glory. I am an instrument in Your Hands, an instrument of life and light, and Your light will always dwell along my path and lead me to new heights. Thank You, Lord; I worship You. Thank You, Father. I receive Your blessing this morning in the Name of Jesus. And the people of God say: amen, glory to the Name of the Lord, hallelujah! We are free in Christ Jesus; we are free in Christ Jesus.