Getting Attacked After Deliverance

Some people are afraid to walk in God-given authority because of traditional religious teaching. This teaching causes fear in the hearts of Christians. This teaching is not in the Bible, and it benefits the devil very much.

Traditional teaching says that if you are going to embark on the work of spiritual warfare, there will be repercussions and negative consequences for doing deliverances. They say that accidents, depression, heaviness, and nightmares are the devil’s way of fighting back for walking in authority. I have heard some people warn young believers to be careful with doing spiritual warfare due to a dreadful backlash that might occur. I know all this sounds spiritual, but it is not scriptural.

Jesus declared,

Behold I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Luke 10:19

That is a promise of protection for those who will “trample on serpents and scorpions.”

Jesus didn’t warn his disciples about a possible backlash or that some hidden sin can cause the enemy to come and attack them. The early followers of Jesus weren’t perfect, yet they had authority. The only warning Jesus gave was to not rejoice in our victories due to our authority but to rejoice in our eternal salvation which is the foundation of that authority.

When I was a teenager, I believed in this tradition more than in Jesus’ teaching. I remember that before any big youth meeting where we would expect a huge harvest of souls and prayer for deliverance, we would pray fervently to cover ourselves with the blood of Jesus against potential attacks of the devil.

Our problem was that we sincerely expected the devil to hit us back because of what we were about to do. We even told our leaders that we are going to cause damage to the kingdom of darkness and the devil will not just sit there idly, he will fight back. We thought that after great revivals, great attacks would follow. We used the stories of Jesus’ temptation after his baptism at the Jordan River and Elijah’s battle with depression after attacking the prophets of Jezebel as our proof that the enemy would attack us afterward.

The interesting part is that what we expected is what happened. Sometimes before conferences, our people would get into bad accidents like flipping on the highway while driving to the event, or singers would get so sick that they would have to be admitted to the hospital, or after the events, our team would get physically sick. All of that confirmed to us that what we were saying was really true. All those things were repercussions by the devil for causing damage to his kingdom, so we thought.

That’s what we believed, but it was totally contrary to what Jesus promised. He said that “nothing by any means shall hurt you” if we trample on the enemy. Jesus’ words clearly carry more weight than traditional teaching on warfare. Ever since then, we have been teaching and standing on what Jesus promised us, and we have done more deliverances in one weekend than we used to do in one entire year.

It’s not that the enemy does not attack us, but we carry an invisible shield of faith in the spiritual world that quenches all fiery darts of the devil (Ephesians 6:16). If our faith is in what Jesus promised us, then that faith becomes a shield in the realm of the spirit. And if the devil decides to attack back in retribution, the shield of faith will stop that attack. Now, this doesn’t mean that bad times won’t happen to those who walk in authority. What I am saying is that we must not be afraid to exercise the authority of Jesus, expecting the devil to fire back and cause us to get wounded by his shots

This is an excerpt from my book Fight Back