Seeing the Voice of God: What God Is Telling You through Dreams and Visions (24 page)

A few days later, I asked my new pastors what on earth this creature could be. They introduced me to the biblical topic of demonic principalities and territorial spirits, and they suggested that perhaps this entity was a general in Satan’s army who had been assigned to this region. I was familiar with the Daniel 10 story of Daniel battling territorial principalities, but on that day I saw Ephesians 6:12 with new eyes: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

I heard every word my pastors said that day, but I had no idea what any of it had to do with me. My stepmother, Janice, would go on to say that this creature had shown up to see who was causing him so much trouble in prayer and to check her
out. I did not know for sure. I just wanted to be healed, write plays and change diapers. I filed the whole experience away under “P” for principality.

The Deaf and Dumb Spirit

A few weeks later, as I was finishing up my first-ever class on prophetic ministry, I missed the final exam because I had a very violent convulsion. The teacher had not known until then that I had this condition, but was scheduled to speak at our church soon after. He prophesied over me: “That which hinders you hinders the city.”

I was utterly baffled. What did God think “hindered” me? Another piece of this word included, “ . . . and when he falls, many under him will fall and widespread healing will be released.” All put together, it linked my health struggle with something greater. Perhaps it was a prophetic embodiment, meaning that something hindering
my
body was symbolic of something hindering Jesus’ Body in my city. It was then that I discovered Mark 9, the only passage in Scripture where Jesus gave a spirit a precise name. It was the story of the little epileptic boy and the “deaf and dumb spirit.” Please take a moment and read this carefully with me:

Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.”

He answered him and said, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.” Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth.

So He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?”

And he said, “From childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it: “Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.

And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”

So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”

Mark 9:17–29

My entire focus changed that fall. How could a spirit affect a city? How could a deaf and dumb spirit affect a population of people? Was that the general who had come to check me out that day in my foyer? I began praying prayers I had no previous vocabulary for—using Matthew 12:29 and 18:18,
binding
spiritual deafness and muteness and
loosing
freedom over people in my city to pray, praise, prophesy and evangelize like never before. Nashville is known as the Protestant Vatican, with more churches per capita than any other city, and so I could not imagine why God would think such a spirit plagued our town. Nonetheless, I threw all of my faith and obedience into these prayers.

The convulsions increased even more, and doctors were dumbfounded. Nobody could help me, not even the best doctors or medicines. The convulsions became cruelly violent; I lived with constant bruises, my tongue was constantly torn and bleeding, and I was beginning to suffer memory loss. I would go on to have more than eighty convulsions. One doctor said
I should be dead. I would be unconscious for hours after each episode, unable to hear or speak. Thus, Jesus’ Mark 9 title: the “deaf and dumb spirit.”

Simultaneously, I saw the Body of Jesus in my city taking a beating. Such denominational competition. So much religiosity and stale tradition. Church splits seemed as rampant as church plants in our city, creating an atmosphere of spiritual strife. Of course, everybody was happy between 9:00 and 12:00 on Sunday mornings.

Then in 1998, I read a copy of
Possessing the
Gates of the Enemy
by Cindy Jacobs (Chosen, 2009), and it fueled my soul. As I researched more about Cindy and Generals of Intercession, I discovered that she oversaw the USSWN, or the United States Spiritual Warfare Network (later changed to USSPN, or United States Strategic Prayer Network, and overseen by Chuck Pierce). Wanting to participate, I went to their website to see who the Tennessee state coordinator was and discovered there was not one. After talking it over with Chris, I sent a brave fax to the Generals of Intercession headquarters and volunteered for the post. After submitting my bio and talking with Cindy, I was invited on board.

Even though I was a published author, had spoken regularly and had done some TV, my health struggle had left me with a keen understanding of how small I was and of how dependent on God I had to stay, so in short, I could not believe Cindy received me. Oh, did those years with Cindy and her husband, Mike, change my life. At their feet I learned so much about spiritual mapping, territorial strongholds and how to change regions and nations without ever leaving my closet. It was on certain prayer coordinator trips with them that I first worked with James and Michal Ann Goll, who eventually moved to Nashville, to my great delight. I kept plugging away, with Nashville’s deliverance always at the forefront of my mind, speaking about it when invited and writing about it, too.

Somehow, I knew Nashville’s liberation would coincide with mine—
not
that God was “allowing” me to keep having seizures or was denying me healing. In fact, I already saw myself as healed. God’s Word offers His children healing without strings. It is just that I began to interpret the seizures creatively. I began studying the discernment of spirits gift (see 1 Corinthians 12:7–10; Hebrews 5:14; 1 John 4:1–6) and came to the conclusion that I was just very sensitive to the presence of that deaf and dumb spirit and seemed to be affected in my body when it was operational nearby. Some people smell things when they discern evil spirits (like sulfur) or see things (like demons) or even hear things (like hissing), but perhaps this was my version of the discernment of spirits gift with this evil spirit. It also explained why doctors could not help me medically.

Let me use the analogy of allergies. People cannot see the invisible allergens that affect their bodies, but they see the reactions that occur at the allergens’ presence. The pollen and dander are invisible, but the hives and watery eyes blow their cover and give them away. People then take medicine, and the allergic reaction subsides. I began noticing that this was happening to me, spiritually speaking. The deaf and dumb spirit was my pollen, the seizures were the reaction and my only medicine was intercessory prayer for the Body of Christ in my region.

I could walk into an event, a conference or even just someone’s home and tell if that spirit was present. And not just because I would have a small absence seizure, but because I began to notice patterns of behavior in people in the room, which I will discuss momentarily. But also, when I traveled, I noticed that in some cities I would not have the small seizures. Coincidence? Maybe. But the seizures would return in the air as our airplane approached the Nashville airport. I could have a four-hour, seizure-free flight, but the seizures often would return when I hit the air above Nashville (and they did not when I landed in
other cities). It was not a reaction to something in Nashville’s city air, because keep in mind that I was still enclosed in an environmentally controlled airplane. My body was reacting physically to what hindered my city spiritually.

I began to make mental notes—and eventually written ones—of what was happening contextually whenever I had these seizures and suspected this spirit’s presence. For instance, my husband and I would be sitting in a counseling session with a couple whose marriage was ailing, and they would find themselves in the middle of a calm he-said, she-said exchange. No one would be yelling, but no one would be listening to anyone else, either. The conversation would almost seem comical because Chris and I could hear the trap in which this couple was caught, but they could not:

Husband: “You told me to take out the trash.”

Wife: “No, I didn’t. I told you to take out the trash.”

Husband: “That’s what I said. You told me to take out the trash.”

Wife: “No, I didn’t. I told you to take out the trash!”

Chris and I would snicker, but then it would happen. I would have an absence seizure. No one knew it and I would never tell, but I would stop the whole conversation and ask that we pray for the removal of the deaf and dumb influence. We would continue the conversation afterward, and it was as if their ears had been unclogged.

That is one of many examples. I would like to share the list of others I have made over the years:

Emotional manifestations of the deaf and
dumb spirit:
communication breaches (cannot hear each other), accusations, concentration issues, manic-depressive and bipolar issues, depression, phobias, grief, extreme fatigue, dullness, escapism, emotional bruising, extreme fatigue, cutting and the like.

Physical manifestations of the deaf and dumb spirit:
autism, epilepsy, seizures, deafness, muteness, fainting spells, learning disabilities, ADD, ADHD, narcolepsy, comas, inner-ear problems and equilibrium issues, vertigo, Alzheimer’s and all memory
conditions, mental retardations, dyslexia, stuttering and many neurological disorders.

Spiritual manifestations of the deaf and
dumb spirit:
spiritual deafness, unbelief, religiosity and rigidity, skepticism, doubt, the inability to concentrate on God’s Word and receive revelation, the inability to hear God, spiritual muteness including the inability to receive one’s prayer language, the inability to pray out loud, the inability to worship freely, the inability to prophesy and the inability to share one’s faith.

Some things from that last category, spiritual manifestations, actually come from the Mark 9 text itself, things such as unbelief. The father of the epileptic boy says, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (verse 24). We see that when that spirit is present, it is very easy to lose faith. Even Jesus exclaimed, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you?” when He heard that the disciples could not cast the spirit out (verse 19). Also, notice that the boy was described as being rigid when this spirit came upon him (verse 18). Likewise, I have noticed a rigid religiosity in people who are spiritually influenced by this spirit.

Five Rankings of Satan’s Army

Whenever I discuss the deaf and dumb spirit—the only spirit in Scripture that Jesus names Himself—I notice that it is easy to lose the listener unless I give scriptural support (which is wise and easily done, so that is fine). You would be hard-pressed to find someone who does not believe in God’s army of angels, but ask a person if the devil has an army and you might get some strange looks. Truth is, Satan’s forts are full of one-third of the angels, those who fell from heaven with him—namely, now demons (see Revelation 12:4–9). Several key verses in the New Testament clearly outline the enemy’s armed forces and their rankings. I have italicized these soldiers’ key titles as revealed in the verses that follow, so please resist the urge to speed-read. Study these attentively:

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles 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, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:10–12

The New Living Translation of this passage says in verse 12, “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil
rulers
and
authorities
of the unseen world, against mighty
powers
in this dark world, and against evil
spirits
in the heavenly places.” Here are more verses:

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones
or
dominions
or
principalities
or
powers
. All things were created through Him and for Him.

Colossians 1:16

He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all
principality
and
power
and might and
dominion
, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.

Ephesians 1:20–21

Now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the
principalities
and
powers
in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 3:10

Let’s now step inside the enemy’s garrisons and see who is there.