Addiction and Evil Spirits

When we talk about addiction, we need to cover all aspects of it as well as the spiritual side concerning how evil spirits may influence our addiction. Now I want to be careful and to just give you the facts because you have probably heard the expression "The devil made me do it", well the devil cannot make anyone do anything, and the most he can do is tempt us and then take advantage of us should we take the bait. When we practice an addiction long or often enough an evil spirit may get power and control over us simply because we are feeding its lusts through us, and it then receives spiritual rights to be involved in our life due to our actions. When we practice an addiction it is always progressive so the more we feed it, the stronger it will get.

I want to make sure that you understand that we are not talking about the Exorcist here, and you will most likely not be fully taken over by a spirit where you have no control over what you do. But spirits can oppress you and push you to gratify their lusts through you to the point that it can be almost maddening. A spirit gets attached to you and just wants to feel the addiction it craves flowing through your body. Plus demons get more power and authority with the more humans it destroys, so for them it is a win-win situation. For you, it just becomes an obsession and slavery to an addiction that seems impossible to get rid of. Each spirit has it's own character like the spirit of addiction, or the spirit of pornography, or smoking. Its name is its nature.

Now, before you freak out I just want you to know that you can be free from the power of evil spirits of addiction. One way is to take away it's landing strip by healing the old emotional pain and eliminating the need for the pain relievers, another way is to starve the spirit out by simply refusing to practice the addiction. The third way is by having someone pray for you to be set free from these spirits or by praying for yourself. It may help to fast a little before you clean your spiritual house so to speak, but it is not a requirement. If the spirit has gotten a strong hold on you it may take a few strong believers to lay hands on you and drive the thing out. This can be quite an experience, but the spirit is just a spiritual infestation that needs to be evicted.

MK 16:17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues;

The way that evil spirits are driven out and away from a human is by the power of the name of Jesus Christ and faith. Demons are like spiritual cockroaches and they are attracted to the garbage of our sin. God gave Jesus full authority over all evil spirits, so when we use His name to drive them out then we have the legal right to evict them. But you must do this in faith and believe that God will help you. After I had been involved with heavy addiction for so long the Lord led me to go through a deliverance from demons. It wasn't pretty or fun to undergo, but it was necessary. You wouldn't leave cancer in your body, so neither should you leave the spiritual cancer of evil spirits in your life pushing you to return to your sin. Just pray for God to show you the right time for a deliverance session and He will help you. God will set you free.


LK 11:24 (Jesus speaking) "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, `I will return to the house I left.' 25 When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26 Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first."



Also, be sure that you really want to be free from your addiction before you try to evict anything that may be driving your obsession. Otherwise you may be in even a worse situation with evil spirits than before. Remember, you have the ability to say no to anything. If you went to church and someone told you to take off your clothes would you? No you wouldn't, because you would just refuse. Nobody can force you to do anything, the choice has been yours all along. Likewise, nobody can force you to practice addiction, it has been your choice as well, but usually there does need to be some healing to get rid of the old unhealed pain, and there may need to be some deliverance from evil spirits for you to truly get free from the inside out. God will help you with everything at the right time, so trust Him to deliver you from evil spirits.



Here is a prayer you can pray for yourself or others to get rid of all evil spirits;


"Lord God, I repent of my sin that has allowed any evil spirit to have power over me in any way, and I renounce any and all sin that I have ever committed that has attracted any demonic activity in my life. Now in the name of Jesus Christ, I command any and all evil spirits to be bound and to be banished from my life forever. I apply the blood of Jesus Christ upon my body, spirit, soul, and mind, and also upon my home and everything in it. I thank you Lord Jesus for setting me free from the power of evil spirits, and I ask that you would now fill me afresh with your Holy Spirit. In Jesus name I pray, amen".



* NOTE; It also may help to get extra assistance from a fellow Christian that you know deals with deliverance ministry. Also it will help to get rid of anything in the house that has been connected to your addiction, because it is a landing strip (a volition of will) for them the spirits to return. Below is a guide that lists the different stages of spiritual bondage.



A person can deliver self from the following:

Regression . . . going backward in spiritual growth and power.Repression . . . fear, ignorance, or indifference keep knowledge of demons hidden. Satan steals your joy. (Within).Suppression . . . listless, inactive, disinterested. Suppression of feelings. (Without).Depression . . . broken spirit . . . inactivity.Oppression . . . weigh you down with something you are not able to carry. Disease is a weapon of oppression.


At this stage the person will need help from another with deliverance:



Obsession . . . changes the mind (black is white, straight is crooked). Comes through believing a lie, jealousy, hatred. No will power.Possession . . . no mind of your own. Seen often as insanity.

More scriptures to help you;


LK 4:33 In the synagogue (This was someone who went to church) there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, 34 "Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God!"

LK 4:35 "Be quiet!" Jesus said sternly. "Come out of him!" Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him.

LK 4:36 All the people were amazed and said to each other, "What is this teaching? With authority and power he gives orders to evil spirits and they come out!" 37 And the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area.


MK 9:23 " `If you can'?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes."

MK 9:24 Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

MK 9:25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit. "You deaf and mute spirit," he said, "I command you, come out of him and never enter him again."

MK 9:26 The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, "He's dead." 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.

How Does Satan Attack Churches?

To set the foundation, in answer to our question, we must define who the enemy really is and his tactics. First of all, the enemy is Satan, the fallen angel who wanted to take away God’s Glory. Secondly, after Satan was punished and cast to the earth, he set out to destroy God’s glory through Adam and Eve. Satan deceived Eve, and Adam fell into sin. Satan is described in John 8:44, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

Likewise, the book of Revelation 12:9 says, "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." From these two verses, we find the essence of who Satan is, and also his tactics, that he deceives, distracts and divides the church. This is the way Satan attacked churches in the New Testament and still today.

The first tactic that Satan uses is deception. This plan of Satan goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. The word means to "T

take aside, to ensnare" (American Dictionary of the English Language Noah Webster, 1828.) John writes in Revelation 20:3, "And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season." The deception spoken of here continues up to the Thousand Year Reign of Christ.

Satan’s deception is a primary goal. Satan deceived the church as illustrated in Romans 1:25, "Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator..." Satan got the Church of the New Testament to get away from truth, as Jesus said, that devil was the father of lies.

We see this deception illustrated in Peter’s life. Peter got mixed up over circumcision and salvation, and meats sacrificed to idols. Much of all the epistles in the Bible are correcting bad doctrine that derived from deception. Today we see the church deceived from the truth of the effectiveness of the Bible in society, the clarity of the Gospel, the worship of entertainment verses the love of the Truth.

The second tactic that Satan uses is that he distracts the churches. After Satan deceives, then he distracts the church. We see this in the book of Corinthians. The people got wrapped up in who they were to follow, as see in 1 Corinthians 1:12-13, "Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?" Both I and II Corinthians deals with one distraction after another, whether it was tongues, or the seats at church, or the Lord’s Supper which all seemly distracted the church of Jesus Christ.

When Satan effectively deceives and distracts he renders God’s army ineffective. As he did in the books of Corinthians, and in 2 Timothy 2:26 the Word of God states, "And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will." I have observed over the years that Christians are backsliding from the Lord at alarming rates. When only about 40 percent of those who are born again go to church, and of those 40 percent, only about 10-20 percent of those actually gives of their Time, Talents, and Treasure in the ministry or the battle for the Lord to win the lost. It is evident that Satan is having a hay day with Christians.

Don’t get me wrong. Satan surely is deceiving the unsaved, but honestly, he really already has them. Christians belong to the Heavenly Father. Satan’s attack on God’s people is his priority because he renders good Christian soldiers ineffective in the battle, which is waged against God. S

Satan roams this earth laughing at his victory over us as Christians, not really seeking to kill us, but just to wound us. You may ask like I did, "Is this really true?" Let me illustrate. A captain of an army once said, "that he would much rather wound an enemy than kill them." That puzzled me, but his explanation made a lot of sense. He said, "If you wound a solider, then three soldiers are actually taken out of the battle because there is the one that is wounded, and then there are the two other soldiers who have to carry and care for the wounded." Satan is working hard on God’s few soldiers that he has to render us unfit for battle, wounding us and getting us out of the real battle, which is reaching the lost and glorifying our Heavenly Father. Much of ministry is caring for the wounded in the church who has been deceived and distracted from the real battle.

Lastly and consequently, Satan’s tactic is to divide. Everyone knows that the strong army must unite. As we saw illustrated in the Corinthian church, the divisions were rampant. "For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it" (1 Corinthians 11:18). Likewise, in Galatians 1:6-7: "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ."

Satan’s tactic of dividing the church in the New Testament over issues that were non-essentials was effective in side tracking the church. Divisions get us fighting ourselves, rather than focusing on Satan and his powers. He divided the church over communion, widows, meats, and over anything he could, so the attention was not given to him. Satan still does this same tactic today. The church today is distracted by numbers in pews, rather than lives for Christ, doctrinal polity, worship wars, generational differences, and scores of other things.

In conclusion, Satan has no new tricks; he deceives, distracts, and divides God’s people. We need to be aware and see these tactics from Satan in our churches, and make sure that they are not evident. We need to get in the real battle, to win souls and glorifying the great Saviour.

Jerry W. Beaver