Step to deliverance

Colossians 2:13-15, NLT

‭You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins.‭ ‭He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.‭ ‭In this way, he disarmed  the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.‭

A step of deliverance in my life that I still remember clearly took place in the summer of 1997, during a conference of Near East Ministries. Up to that point in my life, I had developed a pattern of seeking comfort from the wrong source. Especially in the area of sexuality, there was impurity again and again. I was so tired of it. That’s why I went to the conference with a deep longing for breakthrough and freedom — and with questions I desperately wanted answers to. In particular, I wondered why putting on the helmet of salvation from the spiritual armor every day didn’t help. Impure thoughts kept returning.

I decided to talk about it at the conference, and when people prayed for me and I was on my knees in surrender, a clear inner voice spoke: “If the problem is on the inside, putting on the helmet of salvation won’t help at all!”

That was it! The problem was inside. I had opened the gates to unclean spirits. They needed to be cast out — and that’s exactly what we did together, in the name of Jesus, who also tore up my record of debt. But not without first confessing all the wrong choices I had made and asking for forgiveness, because only the blood of Jesus sets free.

From that moment on, the battle against impurity did not disappear, but one crucial thing changed: the battle no longer came from within. It came from the outside, and I could now put on the spiritual armor in full faith to resist.