I am a capable adult but she was treating me like I was five years old. This went on all day. She checked on me every half hour or so and each time decided I wasn’t doing it right. It was awful and the result was even worse.
This incident sent me into a spiraling depression. The next morning I didn’t have to go to work so I stayed in my bed and asked God for some scriptures to help me. He gave them and I read them silently to myself. But nothing changed until I got the rest of the revelation:
“Read the scriptures I gave you out loud!”
It was a fight, but as I read out loud, I got more convicted and more aggressive, and the spoken words of the Bible literally forced the depression right out of the house and out of me. It was awesome!
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he calls the Word of God the “sword of the spirit” (Eph 6:17). Matthew records that sometimes the kingdom of heaven has to be taken by force. (See Matt 11:12.) Well, I took down that depression with force by speaking God’s Word out loud with conviction, and it worked!
Even after becoming a Christian, there are battles to be fought. Your buttons get pushed and then you’re caught in the same awful place you don’t want to be. Why does this happen?
Because we have a personal adversary, the devil. Peter wrote, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8). He’s looking to see who he can get to, who he can devour. So how does he do it?
One means is by way of what the Bible calls “familiar spirits.” They are called that because they are familiar with you.
They know your life. They’ve been hanging around and have seen what it takes to really irritate you, what it takes to overwhelm you, scare you, depress you and get you angry. They know just how to set up a situation so you react in the same way you’ve always reacted.
When they saw the opportunity to have that girl cut me down on everything I did, they used it to call in the spirit of depression to see if I’d take it. Stupidly I did! Jeremiah wrote, “All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him” (Jer 20:10).
I had been enticed by listening to the degrading words of the girl and taking them to heart. Then those words prevailed against me and my personal adversary got to take revenge on the happy Carolyn by making me feel depressed. But not for long!
Jeremiah spoke the following verse right after he talked about the familiar spirits trying to get to him: “But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail” (Jer 20:11).
So, why didn’t God just take care of it and make me not feel depressed? Why did the familiar spirit get to work its evil on me?
Because I allowed the thoughts in and then began to dwell on them. But now I am getting to know the keys to use against my adversary. I am getting better and better at recognizing the traps and letting the sword of the spirit—that is, the Word of God—do the fighting. As I spoke the scripture out loud, aggressively and forcefully, the Word itself sent that depression on its ugly way.
James said, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Jas 4:7b). I was so excited to see the power of the forcefully spoken Word of God. It chased that depression right out. Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63b). It’s really amazing to know that even though we are attacked at times, God is always there with a way out. Our spiritual persecutors will never prevail against God and His inspired spoken word!
Love, Carolyn Molica
P.S. You can find my books on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com under my name.
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