Two weeks ago I wrote on how the occult and witchcraft have permeated secular society and taken ground in the church. This week I’ll share my personal experience in this arena.
Growing up, my Christian family had a Ouija board game in our home. In sixth grade, the public school I attended had a Ouija game in the classroom the students could play, which I did along with several other kids. One question we asked the “game” was how long we would live.
In my teens I walked away from God and the church and threw myself into sex, drugs, and rock n roll. My music collection included albums by Led Zeppelin, Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, Judas Priest, and other rock groups with varying levels of evil present in their music. When Van Halen came on the scene I bought their debut album, the first song of which was “Runnin’ with the Devil.” The lyrics didn’t mean anything to me at the time; just another rock band having fun, so I thought.
I attended quite a few rock concerts. At one concert (perhaps AC/DC or Judas Priest, both who I saw in concert) I remember seeing a room in the venue with a bunch of kids standing around several long tables with the illegal drugs they’d been caught with a spread out on them. In the hall I encountered a teenage girl with vomit all over her shirt who was being carried (actually, dragged) by two men.
I used plenty of illegal substances such as marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and Angel Dust (PCP) in my teens and early twenties. I now know that those substances open doors to the demonic realm.
As a teen I remember stumbling on an article in a newspaper or magazine (these were pre-internet days) about how youth were being destroyed with the free-for-all in rock music, drugs, and sex, and thinking “Ahh, what’s the big deal, we’re just having fun.” How wrong I was.
I read widely (and still do…) including a novel based on a plot of good witches fighting again bad witches. I also got involved in Scientology for a brief period of time.
Binging on porn and masturbation was constant—at least once a day. Today I know that porn is a demonic product that destroys those who create it and those who consume it. Covens are known to cast spells during porn shoots.
Witchcraft has infiltrated the music industry. I wrote two weeks ago how Jimmy Page, the lead guitarist of Led Zepelin, bought Aleister Crowley’s manor (Crowley was a Satanist) and how today’s entertainment heroes, including Taylor Swift and Jonathan Roumie are into it as well. This is all out in the open.
I came dangerously close to committing suicide in my late teens, to the point of holding a .357 magnum in my hand while trying to get the courage to pull the trigger. Our enemy, whose mission is to deceive, steal, kill and destroy was working overtime trying to do everything he could to take me down.
He begins with a lie: “This will be fun! It won’t hurt anyone… try it.” If we buy in, indulge repeatedly, and are ensnared, he takes ground in our lives. Give him enough territory in the soul, and he builds a stronghold from which he can influence, torment and afflict us. Or merely put us to sleep spiritually. Between the illicit drugs, sexual sin, and music I was into, I was opening the door wide for the enemy to do a lot of damage.
In my mid-twenties, God started calling me away from the self-inflicted mess I was in. I walked away from the drugs and alcohol, dumped the dark music, started going to church, reading the Bible, and praying… but didn’t make a clean break. The enemy still had ground in my life.
In the early years of my marriage, my wife and I watched movies a lot, at theaters, and at home with VHS rentals—including horror movies. Minutes after a horror movie had started in one theater we visited, I sensed a thick, evil presence filling the auditorium. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
I continued binging on porn for the first decade of my marriage. In the early nineties I binged on a porn magazine that mentioned Satan in one of the articles. It shook me up, but not enough to stop. Here I am, a professing, church-going, Bible-reading Christian, playing games with the demonic realm. While Jesus was the owner of my heart, I was still giving the enemy a foothold by my choices in entertainment. Pornography is the logical extension of a culture that has gone mad from entertainment and always out for the next new thing.
We are a nation of pleasure-seekers. Entertainment is the wide-open doorway that Satan is using to entice many into a life of compromise, spiritual apathy, and varying levels of bondage. Today I see many Christians who are just as clueless, entertainment-driven and addicted as I was. I listened to the culture way too much and allowed it to influence my decisions. I wasted hundreds if not thousands of hours on that stuff.
Many churches won’t touch spiritual warfare, the occult, porn, or how so many are choked with pleasure and entertainment. The message that comes through is “You can spend as much time in entertainment you like as long as it’s not sin, and you can have as much of God as you want. We’re under grace, and God loves you. Life is about having as much fun as you can.”
And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
Matthew 13:22
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.
1 John 2:15-17
We can’t go all-out for God and be all-in with pleasure and entertainment, and we surely can’t open doorways to the enemy without consequences. Many of the enemy’s intrusions are subtle; a tiny compromise here and there. There are many modern believers who will cross the threshold of eternity with very little to show for it, other than watching Christian programming or attending church.
As the years went by and I started throwing myself into prayer and my relationship with God with the same intensity I had pursued lust and entertainment, my eyes were opened to the abundant life He promised in John 10:10 and the upper realms of Heaven. Consistent, extended time alone with God exposed me to the wonders and blessings of knowing Him. There are secrets and treasures to be discovered in prayer, for those who are willing to immerse themselves in it. In prayer, the Holy Spirit of power, love, and sound mind lights our soul on fire, opens the doors to wisdom, exposes our sin that we might be freed and healed from it, equips us to be overcomers in spiritual warfare, and sparks the hunger to live our life in a way that counts for eternity.
How’s your prayer life?
Are you choked with the pleasures of this world, or is God your first love?
Is there anything you need to jettison from your life to cut off the enemy’s influence? Or to make room for God?
