Overcoming the Familiar Spirit

We have noticed an uptick in the workings of the entity referred to as the familiar spirit recently. This may be related to the season we are in (which is quite likely) or just simply an uptick in a particular kind of assault.

A familiar spirit is one who is familiar with you. A familiar spirit was what the medium and Endor was expecting when she sought to summon Samuel on behalf of Saul. She did not get what she was expecting but had enough understanding that a Man in White stood before her—a son of God—a benai elohim.

Familiar spirits know your comings and goings, and they know well your triggers. They know your patterns and they know how to get you to react in certain situations. They will orchestrate situations to bring about defeat, despair, hopelessness, and a sense of surrender to whatever their voice is saying at the time. They follow patterns. They desire to get you to possess a thought as your own thought when it is contrary to who you are. They will motivate you to do act contrary to what you know is Heaven’s best for you and get you self-focused. The self-focusing is a clue to the fact that they are at work.

They are not terribly bright and therefore do not have a large bag of tricks from which to pull from. Their operations are rather simple and predictable once you notice the pattern. The pattern for one person will likely be the same pattern used for another person.

In this season you will see an uptick in the operation of the familiar spirit.

The familiar spirit wants you to focus on yourself and your failures rather than on the Risen King who lives inside you.

They will seek to say you are not good enough and you don’t do well enough to do the things you do. They want to pull you down.

Just as the mark of a religious spirit is a sense of powerlessness, the mark of a familiar spirit is a sense of failure.

The sense of failure is accusation driven and will be incessant unless you take a firm stand, deal with the accusations, and dismantle them, and repossess the mind of Christ that the familiar spirit has sought to take from you.

         You are a possessor of the mind of Christ.

His way of thinking is contrary to your old way of thinking when you were bound in religion and tradition. The new way of thinking requires a constant embrace of the truth the Father says about you.

The scripture you know of from Paul’s writing in Philippians will help you.

Philippians 4:4-9:

Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness (your peace-driven way of life) be known to all me:n.  The Lord is at hand.

6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

9 The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

Now read this from The Mirror:

4:4 Joy is not a luxury option; joy is your constant! Your union in the Lord is your permanent source of delight; so, I might as well say it again, rejoice in the Lord always! 4:5 Show perfect 1courtesy towards all people! The Lord is not nearer to some than what he is to others! 4:6 Let no anxiety about anything 1distract you! Rather translate moments into prayerful worship, and soak your requests in gratitude before God!

4:7 And in this place of worship and gratitude you will witness how the peace of God within you echoes the awareness of your oneness in Christ Jesus beyond the reach of any thought that could possibly unsettle you. Just like the 1sentry guard secures a city, watching out in advance for the first signs of any possible threat, your hearts deepest feelings and the tranquility of your thoughts are fully guarded there. (This peace is not measured by external circumstances; it is residing deeply in the innermost parts of your being.  We are not talking about a fragile sense of peace that can easily be disturbed; one that we must fabricate ourselves; this is God’s peace; the peace that God himself enjoys!)

4:8 Now let this be your conclusive reasoning:

• Consider that which is true about everyone as evidenced in Christ.

• Live overwhelmed by God’s opinion of you!

• Acquaint yourselves with the revelation of righteousness;

• Realize God’s likeness in you.

• Make it your business to declare mankind’s redeemed innocence.

• Think friendship.

• Discover how famous everyone is in the light of the gospel; mankind is in God’s limelight!

• Ponder how elevated you are in Christ.

• Study stories that celebrate life. (See Col 3:3, “Engage your thoughts with throne room realities where we are co-seated together with Christ!”*

Your enemy says that if he can steal your joy, he can keep your goods!

Don’t let him steal your joy by falling into his trap.

Anxiety is proof you have dropped your guard.

You have allowed joy to be removed from the equation that is your life.

An atmosphere of anxiety invites defeat.

Anxiety is undefined fear, and you are not to cooperate with fear on any level at any time in any fashion.

Anxiety will paralyze faith and cause a cessation of victory in your realms.

Anxiety comes from the soul realm, will manifest in the body realm, and will override the spirit realm of a person.

Remember Isaiah 26:3 – You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.

Perfected peace is a result of focus on the Father’s thoughts of you.

Verse 8 instructs you to live overwhelmed by God’s opinion of you. You do this by acquainting yourself more fully of the revelation of righteousness—which is realize God’s likeness in you.

The writer says to make it your business to declare mankind’s redeemed innocence. Declare that to yourself.

The voice of the familiar spirit must be identified and then made to surrender to the voice of the redeemed son.

The writer says, think friendship—you are in partnership with the Father and are automatically fulfilling His will just by being you.

You don’t have to find God’s will; you are already IN God’s will.

Wherever you find yourself you find yourself in God and He in you.

Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:21)

It is not in a faraway elusive place. The realm of God and His dominion is closer than you have been made to believe. By surrendering this understanding, you surrender the strength of that understanding.

The writer is giving you a step-by-step approach to full mind renewal. The thoughts of the familiar spirit are contrary thoughts to the thoughts of the redeemed son. It matters not what you have done in your past or any past failures as you would define them. The fact that you are considering these truths will help you unveil the Christ in you. Where you allow your thoughts to take you is where you will remain.

You are famously fashioned in the likeness of God! You are NOT fashioned in the likeness of a fallen creature.

The thoughts of fallenness do not derive from the presence of God.

They are the outworkings of religion and the horrendous concepts fallenness produces in you are designed to keep you from become the light you are. You are to shine—famously and you do as you walk in the peace provided by your Father. (Isaiah 60:1)

A familiar spirit will seek to drive you from the peace that is your possession.

When you sense your peace being absent from you take note of where your mind has gone.

Corral the thoughts that have made no room for the perfect and perfected peace of God in your life.

Ponder how elevated you are in Jesus. You are taken to a whole new place that you could not have take yourself to. You are instructed to engage your thoughts in heavenly realities. Ponder what God thinks of you–not on your perceived defeats and failures.

Are you doing everything perfectly at this point in your life? Of course not. You are learning and relearning the Father’s ways of thinking.

The Father sees you as righteous because Jesus made that provision for you on the cross. He sealed it by the utter defeat of sin and its power over your life via the resurrection.

Righteousness is two parties finding likeness in each other where there is no sense of inferiority, suspicion, blame, regret, or pressure to perform.

All these thoughts are contrary to thinking on things of good report. They are all but a good report.

A familiar spirit rejoices in your defeat.

He will make you feel as if what you are doing is not good enough to please the Father and instead of getting better at what you are doing for the Father, he invites you to completely give up on what you are doing and concede surrender.

He will cause you to be suspicious and begin comparing yourself to another who is doing things “better” than you in an area. At that point he does not magnify the other persons struggles, he magnifies your inferiority in relation to what they do.

He will cause you to blame your self and your circumstances, your position in life, your neighborhood, the darkness over your city…anything but the true enemy which is Satan. He is always deflecting blame.

The familiar spirit drives you to regret

…regret that you can’t see as well as so and so, or hear as well as that other person, or know what Dr. Ron or Donna know. Of course, you don’t! That is their journey, not your journey.

The Father is not measuring one’s journey to another’s.

For you, He is only focused on your journey, and He is working to see that all that is needed for the successful completion of your journey is that you remain on that journey.

If the familiar spirit is unable to stop you at feelings of inferiority, or suspicion, or getting you to play the blame game, he will proceed to get you to move from where you are to a place of regret. The place of regret is a lonely place, and you have no business living in it.

The next step in the progression of defeat and surrender to the familiar spirit is the place of “pressure to perform”. You are always measuring what you do against an imaginary checklist of duties to perform.

• Did you pray long enough this morning?

• Did you read the Bible like you committed to on January 1st?

• Did you go through all your rituals of prayer this morning?

• Are you praying constantly?

The list can be endless. The Father is not nearly as concerned about your lists as you are. He wants you.

The more you are enveloped in Him the more He is enveloped in you.

The gospel is the revelation of the righteousness of God; it declares how God succeeded to put mankind right with him. It is about what God did right, not what Adam did wrong…nor about what YOU have done wrong.

Evil spirits will always focus you on real, perceived, or imagined failures.

They want you to focus on your prior estate and not on what Father has been doing successfully in your life.

Are you stronger in your walk today than you were 3 months ago? If you can say, “yes,” then you have made progress.

Recognizing who you are dealing with is simple:

• Ask the question of Heaven, “Am I dealing with a familiar spirit?” If the answer is yes,

• Then ask, “Who sent you?” You are looking for the boss.

• Ask Holy Spirit to help you identify who the boss is, then deal with it by repentance. Often, we have fallen into traps that we have learned from our family, our friends, co-workers, workplace, or church.

• Repent for cooperation on any level that gave access to these patterns in your life.

• Repent for allowing it entrance in your life and giving it more than two seconds of your thoughts to begin to destroy things in your life.

• Once the repentance is complete, simply speak to boss declaring to it that his assignment is over, and he must go. Ask angels to ensure that he is removed from the scene. Then address the familiar spirits informing them that their assignment is over and request angels to take them to the feet of Jesus. They are not too thrilled to be in His presence.

• Then, step into freedom from the place of regret or inferiority, or wherever you have been standing. Each of these words: inferiority, suspicion, blame, regret, or pressure to perform, is a place you step into. See it as a place that you are choosing to move out of. You will no longer live in Inferiority. You will no longer live in Suspicion. You will no longer live in Blame, Regret, or Pressure to Perform. You are moving out! It is moving day!

During this season you will have to monitor your thoughts diligently and continuously capture thoughts of ill toward others, defeat, despair, or other thoughts not borne of Holy Spirit or of Heaven in your life. Elevate your thoughts to new places this season. Just as the angels told the shepherds that they brought good news that would cause great joy in the coming of a Savior. So, the Savior has come. Rejoice!

*(du Toit, Francois. Mirror Study Bible (p. 730-731). Kindle Edition.)