I want to share a testimony about my husband and I. We were doing a year of missions in Italy, and we had been married for quite a while at that time, and we’d done a lot of work on our marriage. We had had a lot of marriage counseling. We had learned healthy patterns of working through differences. But there was a time in Italy when we could not work through a fight. We fought for three days and nothing we tried worked, and we just could not work through it.
So. we were leaving to go somewhere, we were pulling out of our parking lot, a parking space in our apartment complex, and in anger, I said to my husband, “Do you think this could be demonically inspired?” And he was angry and responded back, “Maybe.” And I said, “Do you think we need to pray?” And he said, “Okay.” So he puts the car in park and we stopped and we just said, “God, would you show us what’s coming at us?” And we named every spirit that was coming at us. And I remember some of them were contention, division, self-pity, victim. There were probably about eight of them. And we named them, we repented for partnering with them, and we broke agreement with them and commanded them to leave in the name of Jesus. And without exaggeration, in one half hour, after three days of fighting, we were holding hands, looking at each other and saying, “What was that about?”
So sometimes the enemy can interfere with our communications, and we really need to be aware of that. There’s a scripture in Matthew 16:19 that says, “I will give you the keys of the Kingdom, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” That’s our right to tie up, to bind or tie up the enemy when he interferes. So we repent for giving place to him. We break agreement with him and we send him away once we’ve identified where his harassment has created defilement in our communications.
One more interference of the enemy that I want to share specifically, and that my husband and I have experienced numerous times, is a spirit called Leviathan. And in the Old Testament, he’s a twisting, thrashing serpent, and whether it’s metaphorical, I don’t know, or whether it’s a real being in the Old Testament, in the spirit, there is a spirit of Leviathan that twists words. So when it has happened with my husband and I, I would say something and my husband would hear what I said in an entirely different context. And then he would say something to me and I would hear it completely differently than he spoke it. That is a spirit of Leviathan. When you recognize that there’s a not hearing what you’re saying in a relational communication, it could be Leviathan. You can take authority over that, break its power, send it away, and then work through the issues again. 99% of the time when my husband and I have stopped and prayed and taken authority and sent spirits away, we have been able to work through the issue that was at hand.
How do you recognize when the enemy could be involved? If there is a stronger emotional content, a stronger rising up of emotional response, it could be that there’s enemy interference. So just be aware of that and know you have the weapon of righteousness to deal with it.
God, thank you for this one. I thank you for the wisdom and the understanding. And I ask Lord, that the next time the enemy tries to trick them in a relational communication, you would bring this to mind and give them that weapon of righteousness to bind, break agreement, and send that spirit away so that they can continue working through any kind of discord with your grace. Thank you Jesus. Amen.