Breaking the Shackles of the Demonic

Effective Prayer If my people which are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. —2 Chronicles 7:14 I cannot emphasize enough the importance of prayer to a believer. In these days in America, we are seeing more evil becoming more commonplace in every area of the country. We are seeing shootings in the schools. The evil is more frequent and on a larger scale than we could have ever believed. We are hearing of policemen being shot and killed in our streets while sitting in their cars. When I was a young girl, if I heard of someone getting killed, it was very unusual. Now it seems to have become commonplace. Shootings are happening in movie theaters, in shopping malls, at gas stations, and on the streets while people are taking walks at night. We see people openly professing to be into witchcraft, Satanism, and New Age. We see psychics proclaiming to us on television and on the Internet to call their hot lines, and they will tell us our future. I went to a restaurant one night with my husband and my nephew. We went to a restaurant that we used to go to all the time, but this night something felt very different. I felt uncomfortable and didn’t know why, but I didn’t say anything. I sat down and opened the menu to order my food, and my husband said to me, “Honey, look around you. I asked him why, and he replied, “Just trust me. Look behind you!” I did, but I didn’t notice anything. I didn’t want to be rude by staring at people, so I said, “Honey, I don’t know what you are talking about.” He said over and over to look at the people who were around us. I looked again, noticed a person reading a Bible, and said, “Oh, how nice.” My husband quickly said, “No, that is not the Christian Bible—that is a Satanic Bible.” I looked around and noticed something very strange. Everyone was wearing black—black clothing, black jackets, and black makeup on the ladies. The next thing I noticed was a man with a picture of Satan on the back of his jacket. Then I noticed long, black fingernails on the women. My husband overheard some of the people talking about their course they were taking in college in witchcraft, which was required by the college. At that time, my husband turned to me and said, “We are sitting right in the middle of a witchcraft club!” After my husband said this to me, our waitress came to take our order. I will never forget the stress on her face when she asked us if we were ready to order. She shared that she was so confused she could hardly write down our order. She explained that since these kids had started coming to the restaurant, she couldn’t think clearly and was having severe headaches. She was upset and said, “I can’t even think.” I began to pray. “Lord, what do you want me to do? How do you want me to deal with this?” The Lord clearly told me to anoint this place. He told me where to anoint. He told me to get up go to the bathroom and start there. Then he said to come back and anoint under our table. He told me that he wanted it anointed with oil in places that would not be easily washed off, and so I did. He told me to start breaking the curses and spells of witchcraft. When I finished and looked up, everyone was gone. They left so fast that I couldn’t believe my eyes. But my job was not over. I knew that God wanted to penetrate this cult group, and so every day I prayed for these kids and all of the kids in my city, praying for God to be revealed to them. I prayed for their curses to be broken, and I prayed for God to saturate them with his truths and break the deceptions in of their lives. I felt a strong feeling to pray for that waitress. I broke the curses of confusion on her, and I broke the curses of witchcraft. A month later, this restaurant was shut down, and it never ever reopened. That was years ago, but I never forgot what happened. I became fully aware of how much witchcraft had entered our culture. It was growing and becoming a part of our everyday lives. But that first time, I looked and didn’t notice anything wrong. I realize now that it was because I would never have suspected it to this degree. Therefore I was not looking for witchcraft in the public arena to this degree, just out in the open. They weren’t hiding it at all! It wasn’t until I looked again and again at what was going on that I noticed it. All through this situation, I continued to pray to God for direction. I asked him to show me what to do and how to deal with it. We can never underestimate the power of prayer. If I didn’t seek the Lord in this matter, I wouldn’t have known how to handle it in an effective way. Months later, one of the girls from this group came to us and accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. This girl continued to get ministered to, and she was set free from the occult. She has been with our ministry now for years and is a very strong person in our church. What she used for the devil, she now uses her gifting for the kingdom of God, bringing souls to Jesus Christ.