Different person, same spirit
When I was seven years old, I heard an internal “voice” say “no one cares what you have to say, so stop talking”. For some reason, I believed the voice and overnight I went from a confident, opinionated, talkative child to a quiet child. I told myself that I just couldn’t be bothered to speak.
Fast forward many, many years later and I’m doing my God assigned role of sharing the gospel through public speaking, God gave me my voice back and I loved it. God was using me as a vessel to help people with their salvation and deliverance. All was going well, when I was told to say less in my talks and make them shorter, even though feedback from listeners in the audience was that my words when I spoke were helping people on their faith walk. This time a very different environment and it is an actual person saying it. However it felt like it was the same “voice” first telling me to stop talking when I was seven years old.
When I was 22 years old, on a work course I was randomly told “not to write War and Peace” by a manager. If you don’t know, the book War and Peace is a very long book. The type of job I was doing didn’t involve having to do a lot of in-depth writing tasks, so it seemed strange that they singled me out for that. I’m naturally an overthinker, so internally I thought I must write too much, even though this manager had seen no evidence that this was true. When I was in school, I always got high grades in English and got an A in AS Level English Language. However this manager had no idea of any of this.
Then a decade later, in a totally different location and career I heard the same thing from a different manager, who had no idea who my previous manager, from 10 years ago, was. This time I was in a job that involved a lot of writing for all colleagues in that role. I enjoyed this aspect of the job and it reminded me of my love for words and writing that I had put to the back of my mind. So hearing that comment knocked my confidence a bit and I thought maybe writing isn’t for me.
So fast forward to nearly another decade. At this point I’m doing God's assignment set for me. I took a blind faith move and was blogging Christian content to help people heal from their past and current traumas. I bet you can guess what happened next? I hear the same phrase from someone else! This person made it clear they didn’t like me at all. Also like the first person, they hadn’t seen any of my writing to come to the conclusion that I write too much. However, the difference is when it happened for the third time, I was securely and unashamedly in Christ. I didn’t doubt my ability this time… this time I knew exactly why this person and the other two people said the same phrase. It was to make me hide my writing ability that helps people find God or get closer to God, even if these three people didn’t realise the true reason why they were saying what they said. After the third time I knew that each time it was a different person but the same spirit.
Patterns
If you’ve found yourself encountering the same type of problematic people. It seems their sole purpose is to belittle you, make you doubt yourself, distract you or worse emotionally, verbally or physically abuse you. You find that this happens in different situations, different locations and different periods in your life. Then you could be encountering an ungodly spirit assigned to prevent you fulfilling assignments that God has set for you. These spirits are going from person to person to achieve this.
Why does this happen?
God is omnipresent. This means that God is everywhere at any time. God is also omniscient. This means that God knows everything. He knows what happened in the past, present and what will happen in the future.
“I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there” - Psalm 139:7-8
“God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything” - 1 John 3:20
The only one who is omnipresent and omniscient is God. Satan is not God, even though he wants to be. As Satan isn’t God, he isn’t omnipresent or omniscient. So instead of being everywhere at one time and being all knowing, Satan has to use another strategy. Satan uses patterns. Ultimately Satan wants to take as many people to the lake of fire with him because of their disobedience to God. Satan doesn’t care what strategies are used to get us to the lake of fire, he just wants us all separated from God.
So this is where Satan’s demons come in. These demons' assignments are to make people not fulfil the assignments that God has set for them. The assignments that were set before God placed them in their mother’s womb. Satan can get a sense of our God given assignments, even if he doesn’t know exactly when God sets for us to start them.
As Satan can’t be everywhere watching everyone at the same time, he has to use an army of demons to go around and watch people. These demons monitor our lives, looking for patterns of what makes us happy, what makes us angry, what makes us upset, what distracts us and what makes us sin. Once they work out our triggers, they will use these triggers to get us to sin. If they can’t get us to sin then they will use these triggers to bring us trauma, discouragement or distraction. All to get us to stop doing what God has planned for us, or to get us to blame God for the people bringing negativity into our lives.
How does it happen?
In Matthew, chapter 12, Jesus explained to the teachers of the law and the Pharisees that when an evil spirit leaves a person, that spirit goes out to dry places but finds no rest there. The evil spirit then decides to go back to the person that they came from.
Demons are spirits, so they need a body to carry out their manipulation and destruction against us. Satan and his demons know God's spiritual realm rules better than a lot of Christians. Therefore, they know that they can only access a human body through legal access. They know they can't just inhabit a body that they have no legal right to.
Some of the ways that demons gain legal access to a person is through:
Unrepentant sin that’s listed in the Bible.
Not renouncing other cults, religions, witchcraft and ungodly practices once the person leaves.
Taking part in necromancy- tarot reading, seeing mediums, doing an Ouija board, taking part in a seance, praying to your ancestors.
Praying to the universe.
Taking part in new age practices.
Drug taking and getting drunk.
Consuming entertainment, like music, films, TV shows that promote sinful behaviour or the occult i.e. horror films.
Watching porn.
Asking someone to give you a spell for protection.
“Do not be drunk with wine. That will ruin you spiritually” - Ephesians 5:18
“Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God” - Leviticus 19:31
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” - Revelation 21:8
Now going back to Matthew, chapter 12, Jesus said that evil spirits can leave a person. Evil spirits can come and go from a person, as they please. An evil spirit leaving a person and never being able to return can only happen through deliverance AND the person not continuing to behave in a way that would open up spiritual doors in them by doing the things listed above.
Jesus goes on to explain that when the evil spirit goes back to the person, they find their former home, the person’s body empty, swept and in order. Notice Jesus said the body is empty, this is because when the evil spirit left, through deliverance, it wasn’t replaced with the Holy Spirit, through salvation and sanctification. As a result, the spiritual door was wide open which allowed not only the evil spirit to return but for it to also bring seven other more evil spirits to come and enter the person!
On a separate note, this is why it’s very dangerous to do deliverance on someone who is not ready to fully surrender to Christ and turn away from their old worldly life.
So evil spirits, aka demons, can hop from person to person, they have legal access to, bringing their demons friends along for the ride. This is why you can be in a different place and totally different season in your life; and a person in your life can bring the same negative or problematic behaviour and energy into your life as the last person. It’s the same spirit or spirits just in a different person.
“When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. 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. 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. That will be the experience of this evil generation” - Matthew 12:43-45
The same spirit in different people
Jesus encountered this himself with Peter and Judas.
Satan entered Judas when he went to the priests, captains and temple guard to discuss and agree the best way for Judas to betray Jesus. Then Satan entered Judas a second time at the Last Supper. As Jesus was present when it happened, for the second time, He said to Judas (or Satan), “Hurry and do what you’re going to do” ( John 13:27)
With Peter, Jesus actually called out Satan directly when he entered Peter. When Jesus told the disciples that He was going to be killed but will rise on the third day. Peter said to him that it will never happen. At this point Jesus said to Peter “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Matthew 16:23). Jesus didn’t even address Peter, He went directly to rebuking Satan because he knew that was the spirit operating within Peter. Satan was there purely to lie and confuse Jesus.
On both occasions even though Jesus was interacting with different people, He knew he was really interacting with the same demonic spirit.
It’s hard but keep going
If you feel like the same types of negative, distracting or abusive people keep popping up in your life, no matter how much you try to be around positive, kind and wholesome people. Then I know it can be hard, frustrating and emotionally draining but please keep going because whether the person actually fully understands or not, the spirit in them is assigned to stop you fulfilling what God wants you to do in life.
Here are four ways you can build that resilience to not let that evil spirit succeed:
Discernment
You need to use your discernment. God has given us all discernment, we just need to remember to always use it. Discernment is the ability given to us from God to be able to spot the differences between truth and lies, right from wrong and good from evil.
When you use your discernment, you will be able to quickly spot when the current person in your life is operating with the same evil spirit as the last problematic person you dealt with. Then you can act accordingly, you can remove them from your life, or if you can’t do that at the moment because for example, you share children with them, or you work with them, then you have to ask God to give you the wisdom to be able to have a boundary with them. This is so they don’t affect your walk with Christ, affect your ability to complete God’s assignments and affect your emotional wellbeing.
“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” - Romans 12:2
Armour of God
You need to protect yourself. This is a spiritual battle between God and Satan and you are in the middle of it. The Good news is that the Bible says that Jesus has been given ultimate authority, from the Father, over demons and the demonic realm. Evil spirits have to flee at a single command from Jesus and you know what? Satan and his demons hate this!
"And they were all amazed and said to one another, 'What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!'" - Luke 4:36
As a woman in Christ, you are on the right side of the battle, we are going to win. However, as with any war, we have to protect ourselves while the battle is happening, so we get to the finish line with all the other committed and obedient believers.
You win the battle by putting on the Armour of God which is described in Ephesians 6:11. So visualise putting on your belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of peace and helmet of salvation. Visualise holding the shield of faith, in one hand, which is used to bat away the fiery arrows from Satan. Visualise holding the sword of the Spirit in your other hand. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God, so if Satan or his evil spirits get too close to you, you can jab them with the truth about you and God from the Bible.
God’s truth
Remember God’s truth, that no matter what plan someone thinks they can do to distract you and derail your plans, ultimately it is God that is omnipotent. Omnipotent means that God is all powerful. He has unlimited power and authority over everything. So people can plan to hurt and upset you, through the evil spirits, within them but regardless of their plans it’s God who decides what steps you take to achieve the goals He has set you in life.
[Job speaking to God] “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted” - Job 42:2
“We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps” - Proverbs 16:9
Look for God's signs
When it all feels too much, the discouragement you get from people when you find the courage to walk in God's purpose for your life, or the random drama people bring to you, just at the moment you decide to finally start that assignment God told you to start. Remember it's all a distraction from Satan, so make sure that you look for the signs out there from God reminding you that He is with you. Focus on Him only, instead of those people, and God the Father, through Jesus Christ, will get you through it.
I know this because I went through it recently and God showed me He was there. There was a day last week that was really tough. I was fed up and sad because some people are just mean and it's not fair, plus I encountered yet again “different person, same spirit”. Later that day, when I stepped out of my house feeling sad, not only was it raining on only one side of my car but not the other side! I also saw this lovely rainbow (in the photo above). It reminded me of God's binding agreement between Him and us in Genesis. That then reminded me of two verses in the scripture, Isaiah 43:1-5, that I was mediating on during my prayer time that morning:
"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze" [...] "Do not be afraid, for I am with you"
God keeps to his agreements, so I think the rainbow was God's little reminder that He's going to keep His promise of being with me, through this hard time and through dealing with this spirit that keeps popping up in people, to try and discourage me and distract me from my God given assessments. So at that moment I thought with God's strength I'm going to be sad for a bit... but I'm going to be ok.
So ladies, if you are dealing with “different people, same spirit” then lean in to Jesus Christ to access God the Father and the Holy Spirit and you are going to be ok too. ❤️🙏🏾
P.S.- In case you were wondering, I no longer focus on that spirit that kept popping up to tell me to stop speaking, I can and do talk the ear off someone (especially when talking about God!) and I didn’t speak less in my talks. If the Holy Spirit had a message for the audience, they were going to hear His full message through me. If you have got to this part of the blog, then you can tell I haven’t limited my writing and word count either. I guess it's a good job that I haven’t read War and Peace! 🤭
