Day 6: These things you are releasing may never return to you

Matthew 12: 43-45 ““When an evil[a] spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order. 45 Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before...”

This might just be the most riveting revelation that you receive from this entire devotional. When you release toxic mindsets, demonic forces, and unsettling spirits from your life it is important to replace that with something from the word of God in a process of renewing your mind as well as making sure to pray that the thing will never be able to return to you again. This scripture points out in Matthew that if the spirit returns, it will bring seven more spirits more evil than itself. This is why when you thought you got over something, yet you end up encountering it again, you feel like it’s worse and worse each time around. Those spirits are inviting their buddies back in multitudes time and time again.

Regaining your confidence in Christ can be applied more effectively when you believe that the victories you win are actually victories. If you are thnk you are being delivered from fear, anxiety, hopelesness or discouragement, then something else happens to add to the list of reasons you were experiencing those things, it can seem as if you arent really being set free. It can discourage you from believeng you will ever be whole or set free from the afflictions that mentally persecute you. Because to a certain extent, if you don’t use the authority that yu have from your Abba Father to forbid those spiritual afflictions from returning to you, they feel open to coming back into the fold of your life at any moment they see fit.

Another reason they feel comfortable coming back into your life is because you haven’t replaced their place in your “house” (or life) with something from the word of God. Jesus explains in the scripture that if the spirit finds the home “swept and in order”, then it feels comfortable. For the longest when I read this scripture, I was thinking literally being “in order”, like not dirty. Yet that would mean that Jesus is endorsing you to have a filthy house, so even though most of us overlook this part of understanding the scirppripture, it makes perfect sense. Here what i believe Jesus is referring to when He says “swept and in order”, is that everything still looks and feels the same as when they left.

For instance, if you were struggling with confidence and believing in loving yourself, and the spirit comes back and find your life still filled with your doubt, with you not understanding you God-given rights as a born again believer, he will see that your life is still fitting and suitable for him to return to his normal day-to-day operations. On the contrary, if the spirit returns and finds that you have rearranged your entire life, you have completely been restructured in your thinking, then he feels uncomfortable and actually has no place to stay in your life. Replace every thought and former dead spirit that was in your house with a fortified truth from the word of God about yourself.

This part seems as easy, but it is a daily process as well towards enacting your confidence in a new way. You know how you can move furniture around in your house, but if a carpet was laying in a certain place for a long time, there is a lighter color under where the carpet was laying before? You can apply this analogy of your house being your life in this respect too. Sometimes you will look at that spot where the carpet used to be in your house, in parallel sometimes you will see or experience things that will try to remind you of the mindset and spirits that used to taunt you, but it is up to you at that moment to acknowledge the new you. It is up to you to agree with the pattern of the mindset that is currently in your life. It is up to you to forbid what used to be in your life, to change how you respond when an opportunity to use your confidence presents itself.

Today I want you to take the time and write down everything that was in your house that was/is holding you back from fully receiving your confidence and walking in the goodness that God has promised you. From there, I want you to find a scripture in the word of God that correctly disputes every lie that you wrote down. If you need to google scriptures on this or scriptures on that, be my guest to get as accurate as possible.
Then I want you to rip up the paper that has all of the lies on it and pray that all of those things are gone from you and have no permission to return again, or to even enter within 1,000 feet of your premises and your loved ones. Recite the words “I forbid the previous thought to enter my life, and replace it with (insert scripture here)”.

Do this for every single scripture on the paper and end the prayer with “In Jesus name, I decree these things, Amen.”