Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire: What Happens When God's Spirit Invades the Heart of His People by Jim Cymbala

Author:Jim Cymbala
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian
ISBN: 0310251532
Published: 2008-08-18T23:00:00+00:00

The five-foot-one-inch girl lunged for my throat. Before I knew what was happening, I had been body-slammed backward against the platform.

Some in the congregation stood and began to pray aloud. Others gasped. Some covered their eyes. Meanwhile, several deacons jumped up and tried to pull her off of me. Despite her size, she fought all of us with tremendous strength.

We finally managed to subdue her. Amy, the evangelist, began to pray fervently. I leaned over the girl to address the spirits: “Shut up! In the name of Jesus, come out of her!” I demanded.

Diana’s eyes rolled back in her head, and twice she spit directly into my face, no more than a foot away. The church kept earnestly calling out to God for his help. Clearly, we were not battling some imaginary “spirit of anger” or whatever. This was a classic case of demon possession.

Within a few minutes, the girl was set totally free. She stopped cursing; her body relaxed. We relaxed our grip on her, and she gently stood up to raise her hands and begin praising the Lord. Soon she was singing, with the rest of us, “Oh, the blood of Jesus! It washes white as snow,” as tears streamed down her cheeks, ruining her makeup.

Since then, and for many years now, Diana has been serving the Lord. When she eventually married, both she and her husband gave strong testimonies of their faith in front of mostly unbelieving relatives. Today, she remains a wonderful Christian who loves the Lord and only wants to do his will.

Diana has allowed me to tell her story to make the point that I believe in confronting satanic activity. Was her experience unique or weird? Not by New Testament standards. This was just “mere Christianity,” the kind of thing Jesus and the apostles did on a regular basis.

But we should not expect to discover new shortcuts in the spiritual realm. Have we forgotten that when Jesus sent out his twelve disciples, he specifically “gave them authority to drive out impure spirits” . . . yet he also told them that some towns would not welcome them. “You will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues” (Matt. 10:1, 17). If the twelve, with one sweep of the hand, could have bound the opposing spirit in that city, wouldn’t Jesus have explained this? It would have spared Christians a lot of conflict.

Instead, Jesus addressed the various churches in the book of Revelation with somber warnings about the opposition they were facing:

To Smyrna: “I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death” (Rev. 2:10). Christ warns that they are in a hostile environment and there are no quick fixes.

To Pergamum: “I know where you live—where Satan has his throne.” The next sentence does not read: Kick him out! Bind him! No. Jesus calmly continues, “Yet you remain true to my name.

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