Who is the ‘Satanic Strong Man’ Over Your Situation?

Now, this is a spiritual principle. If you want to be successful in any given situation, you’ve got to discover who is the satanic strong man over the situation. Then you’ve got to bind the strong man. Then you can do what needs to be done in the situation.

Now, as I said, Satan’s kingdom descends from area from level to level with persons, angelic beings, with various responsibilities. And they come down. The lowest ones are pretty small areas. And generally speaking, you don’t start at the top. You start where you are. You learn the principles of warfare, and then you can move on until you’re dealing with the strong man over a city or even over a nation. But you don’t normally begin there.

So, if you have problems in succeeding, in doing the will of God, in breaking through spiritually, maybe in your family, maybe in a business, maybe in a church, and somehow things are not going the way you feel they ought to go, but you don’t understand the problem, my suggestion is, in all probability, there is a strong man over that situation. And you will not be really successful until you deal with the strong man.

Now, I will speak from experience. I told the other evening that I had I’m the head of a large family, which now has about 120 members. And our family is made up of adopted children. Basically, it’s a good family. We love one another. We’ve stuck together in all sorts of difficult situations. We’re still in contact and relationship right across the world. It’s a tradition in our family that we meet as a family on Christmas Eve and celebrate. And we meet, of course, in our home normally. At that time, I had a big house. So, then the day before Christmas Eve, I was pondering over the family coming together. And although we love one another and have basically good relationships, when a lot of the family come together, I always felt a certain tension, certain pressure. Partly, I think it was various daughters hoping that I’d take more interest in their children than some other daughter’s children. And I thought to myself, “There must be something behind this.”

And I was lying on my back in bed about 11:00 at night, and I said, “God, what is really behind this?” And it was like a kind of gray mist appeared in my room, just below the level of the ceiling. And I understood that God was showing me, “This is the power that makes relationships difficult in your family.” So I asked God, “What is it?” And He said, “Self-righteousness.”

Now, I pondered a little bit. I thought about my first wife. She was a wonderful Christian, but like many wonderful Christians, she was very concerned to do the right thing and very occupied with doing the right thing. And that’s a step towards self-righteousness. Then I thought about myself, and I said it certainly fits me. So I saw that our family was, to some degree, under the influence of a spirit of self-righteousness because both my first wife and I were open to it. You see, the parents in a family should be the spiritual umbrella, protecting the family. But if there’s a hole in the umbrella, then things get through that shouldn’t come in, see? So I thought the first thing I do is repent, renounce self-righteousness for myself, because you can’t do much for other people if you have the problem yourself. And I did. And then I said, “God, let that power of self-righteousness over our family be broken in the name of Jesus.” When we came together the next day, it was quite different. Something that had pressured us just wasn’t there. So that’s just one example.

You may have it in a business. You may be a Christian businessman. It may be that you really want to use your finance and your talents for the Lord, but somehow your business never really prospers the way it should. And just when you’re on the point of breakthrough, you get frustrated. I want to suggest to you there’s probably a strong man over your business. I don’t know exactly what it could be. It’s not my job to know. It’s your job to find out, see? I don’t go round solving everybody’s problems, but I try to tell people how to solve their own.