Freedom From a Controlling Spirit

By Watchman Media

Please I am writing this out of a true sense of deep compassion and love and not from any other motive. God alone is the author and finisher of our faith. The whole work of sanctification and every good word, work, or thought found in me, is the effect of His power and abundant grace.

Without Him, I can do nothing. In the strictest sense, ‘He works in us to will and to do according to His own good pleasure and satisfaction’ (Philippians 2:12). How amazing it is that we can talk so much about men’s power and goodness or even their sins when, if God did not hold us back every moment, we should be devils incarnate!

Most people are unaware of the controlling spirit because they are ignorant of spiritual warfare. The Bible tells us we are not fighting against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12). Therefore, a controlling spirit is not a person but a spirit living in a person. It is a high-level intelligent spirit that uses human beings to accomplish its purpose.

When you have this spirit operating on you, you will have feelings of revenge, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, malice, fear, jealousy, envy, pride, and self-condemnation. You will control, manipulate, slander, falsely accuse, gossip, and use character assassination tactics to destroy others.

Here are the following suggested steps for being delivered from this spirit.

1. Know the Lord intimately

People who have a controlling spirit tend to be emotionally dependent. They have a great inner drive to be connected with someone or to have a special relationship with a particular person in order to heal their wounded self-esteem.

While it is normal to need other people, God has placed deep within every human spirit a heart cry. He made us for Himself, and our heart is restless until it finds its place of rest in Him. He also designed us to be relational people with a longing for fellowship. But unless we allow our heavenly Father to fill that core need, our identity will become like that of an orphan.

We will drift along, desperately looking to others to meet our needs and adopt us. For such wounded souls, God is the healing balm. God gently woos and draws us to the only place where our deep hunger can be satisfied. Our misplaced longings can only find true rest in God the Father. As the Holy Spirit bears witness that God is our Father, He will also attest that we are His children (Romans 8:16).

We will be given a spirit of adoption, by which we are enabled to cry “Abba, Daddy!” To know Him as Father is to love and accept His authority over us. Our dependency then falls on Him, rather than on another person. You are His child and no longer a slave to fear. Sing along and worship Jesus before you continue reading.

2. Reject the Spirit of Fear

A spirit of fear is a sign of spiritual enslavement. It leads someone into being subservient to the control of others. They will be tempted to view authority as being tyrannical. Those with a Jezebel spirit have a history of enslaving fears of neglect, of rejection, of being punished, of loneliness, and perhaps of missing the will of God.

All fears of being dominated or controlled must be brought to the Cross. Recent fears, as well as those rooted in childhood, must be reckoned as dead on the Cross (Romans 6:11) in order for new life to begin (2 Corinthians 5:17). To begin our healing, we must ask God to show us the circumstances that led to opening our soul to fear. We must—through faith—cast down what the Bible calls “vain imaginations.” By faith, we need to cleanse ourselves of fear and ask other Christians who are free from fear to stand with us in agreement.

We also need to ask God to fill us with love, power, and sound reasoning because His perfect love casts out our fear (1 John 4:18). When our mind is ruled by our spirit, we will focus on the virtues that spring forth from the Lord. We will be able to concentrate on that which is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of a good report, virtuous and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8).

3. Overcome the Fear of Failure

When we avoid making decisions, our motive may lie rooted in self-condemnation and a sense of incompetence. We may never have been taught how to make responsible decisions. Or, we may feel incapable of making good decisions. If that’s the case, we may have been raised in a harsh and critical home were punishments for making mistakes outweighed the actual offenses. Hence, it seemed as if we could never do anything good enough! So, we avoid making decisions due to the fear of being penalized for making bad ones. To compensate, we acquire a mindset that anticipates failure.

We become afraid to take risks. Instead, we listen to the whispers in our head that predict eventual failure. Shying away from responsibility, we then grow up unable, indifferent, unmotivated, or disinterested in making decisions. To overcome a fear of failure, we will need to change how we think.

We will need to learn how to envision success, not failure. The healthier we become, the more we will be able to practice making good decisions. Remember, God is faithful to show His will to any who humbly seek Him and are willing to obey His will.

4. Reject The Pitfall of Shame

Shame is the sense of feeling fundamentally bad, inadequate, defective, unworthy, or not measuring up to standards. Many need healing from a deep sense of shame. At some point in our life, all of us feel shame. But for those who have been damaged by a Jezebel spirit, shame will be a constant painful memory. They will doubt their ability to hear from God, as though they are eternally flawed or blemished.

They may believe that God is disgusted with them. Therefore, it may be helpful to remind them that all is not lost. Instead, a great lesson has been learned. It’s often at our lowest point that we discover the wonder of God’s amazing and profound grace.

Grace is contrary to shame. While shame brings depression, grace brings hope and light-heartedness. Grace refers to God’s undeserved kindness directed toward us. It is unearned and unrepayable. Through God’s grace, we are able to bond with our loving heavenly Father who longs to lavish His great love upon us. As we embrace His Son Jesus, who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, He calls us His “sons and daughters.”

When we journey through the “dark night of the soul,” we may be able to hear God whisper to us, “I love and accept you. The plans I have for you are for good and not for evil” (Jeremiah 29:11). The love of Jesus found your soul worth dying for! Worship Jesus.

5. Reconcile with Family and Friends

Forgiveness does not mean excusing someone’s behavior. Rather it acknowledges the actual offense and then chooses not to hold that offense against the person. When Jesus Christ died on the Cross, His blood was the payment for our sins so that we could be truly forgiven.

Likewise, by extending forgiveness to someone, we mirror the depth of God’s forgiveness to us. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:31-32).

Those with a Jezebel controlling spirit will need to ask forgiveness of individuals they have wronged or hurt, and leaders whose church or ministry they have maligned. They may want to ask God to help in making their confession. They may want to communicate that they realize their actions were intolerable.

As they feel some of the pain they inflicted on someone, they will be able to ask sorrowfully for the person’s forgiveness. They may feel compelled to make amends with their loved ones. Such reconciliation will bring about restoration and greater spiritual release.

As a result, curses spoken by the spirit of Jezebel are rendered void and powerless. The process of forgiveness will take time. They will need time to recuperate and re-enter old routines. Family chores that have been left undone will need to be resumed, not begrudgingly but in an attitude of gratefulness. This kindness will help restore healthy relationships. Godly counselors can also be beneficial in the healing process.

I have been asked several times by people who have been terribly hurt and wounded by this spirit what to do especially if those that hurt them are family members or close relatives? If you’ve been cursed and abused by people being used by the spirit, give your wounded soul enough time to heal. It can take months or even years for your soul to fully heal. You will have deep hurts. The fact that people around you cannot see what you are seeing, adds to these hurts.

If it is a family member, seek God…He will show you what to do. Spend a lot of time in the presence of God alone. This creates growth in your personal relationship with your creator and gives the Holy Spirit a chance to heal you and comfort your wounded soul. This is one single action that really helps me personally to recover from my past wounds.

It is the Holy Spirit who revealed this to you because you humbled yourself therefore you must let the Holy Spirit create in you a new nature full of His grace, love, and forgiveness towards those that have hurt you. Eat a humble pie or a bitter pill and forgive.

Forgiveness is the only way to healing. If you justify yourself and say you were wronged and you will not forgive, you will instead entertain resentment, hate, bitterness, and unforgiveness and legally invite unclean spirits to torture you until the day you forgive.

Remember forgiveness is unconditional, reconciliation is conditional-it depends largely on the other person. Our choice to forgive is a matter of our will. We must decide that we will walk the way of forgiveness. Once we make the choice. God inhabits our decision and empowers us to fulfill our commitment. If we do not make that choice, then God will not force us.

But once we make that commitment, he enters in–and He helps us. On our own, we cannot create a lasting powerful forgiveness. Only, as God activates our choice, as He enables us in this choice, can we effectively forgive. The choice to forgive opens a door, inviting God to do the work in our hearts. It is not our work; it is God’s work in us.

6. Abstain From Praying Witchcraft and Soulish Prayers

When we do not submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit and seek His direction, our prayers are motivated by envy and self-seeking (mentioned in James 3:14) or by other fleshly attitudes, such as resentment, anger, hatred, criticism, or self-righteousness. The Holy Spirit will NOT and will NEVER endorse prayers that proceed from such demonic attitudes, nor will He present them before God the Father.

How (Not) to Stay Lukewarm

Inevitably, therefore, our praying degenerates into the James 3:15 “syndrome”: earthly-soulish-demonic. When we pray for our fellow believers, there are two soulish attitudes we must guard against: We must not accuse, and we must not seek to control. When we begin to play the role of accusers, we are following the pattern of satan, not of Christ. Satan’s main title-devil means slanderer or accuser.

In revelation 12:10 he is described as the one who accuses Christians day and night before God. He has been engaged in this task from time immemorial and he is an expert at it. He needs no help from Christians.

A person with a controlling spirit prays well-intentioned but misguided, accusatory, and condemnatory prayers. They are confused, have unrest, disharmony, rebellion and all sorts of evil and vile practices (James 3:15-16). Please whoever is reading this…go to chapters 3 and 4 of the book of James and study those two chapters prayerfully and let those words read your heart. James insists that genuine faith must produce fruits that are deserving and consistent with your repentance as a Christian, otherwise, you are deceiving yourself.

Our intercession for our fellow believers should follow the example based on the pattern of Jesus as described in Romans 8:33-34:

Who will bring any charge against God’s elect (His chosen ones)? It is God who justifies us declaring us blameless and putting us in a right relationship with Himself. Who is the one who condemns us? Christ Jesus is the One who died to pay our penalty, and more than that, who was raised from the dead, and who is at the right hand of God interceding with the Father for us.

Christ certainly sees our faults as believers more clearly than we see each other’s. Yet His intercession on our behalf does not result in condemnation, but in our justification. He does not establish our guilt, but our righteousness. Shall we dare to bring a charge against those whom God has chosen? Or to condemn those whom God has chosen? Or to condemn those whom God has justified.

It is so sad that those who are closest to us can wound us the most, and it can also be deeply painful to love someone so powerfully with whom you disagree so profoundly. I know a person who told me a close relative boasts that she literally went to the Lord after they had a disagreement over their mum and prayed that his son would die.

The problem with that story is the person who claims to have been praying for the baby to die didn’t know whether the wife of her brother was pregnant. She only knew when her brother told her that they had a stillbirth and then she confirmed and was delighted God had answered her witchcraft prayers. These are siblings-same dad and mum! How do you respond to such a person? They were deluded and grossly deceived by this controlling spirit.

Deception is to believe a lie and not realizing you have done so. That’s why if this spirit is in a family, it will end up destroying and poisoning the entire family to gain acceptance, love, power, and control. The Psalmist declares, ‘Poison under the lips will sharpen the tongue like serpents adders’ (Psalm 140:3).

Regardless of how a person has offended you, don’t ever pray accusatory, witchcraft, or demonic prayers for them. God doesn’t answer such prayers. That’s from the devil or another god –an idiot of your imagination. You will instead curse yourself because you cannot curse what God has blessed.

7. Don’t Fear the Supernatural

Supernatural gifts are actually tools by which we attack the enemy’s camp. But a person with Jezebel spirit unknowingly disdains such supernatural gifts, and they inadvertently play into the enemy’s plans and they revert back to the old adage, “What we don’t know can’t harm us.”

Sadly, this overreaction will hinder a person under the influence of a Jezebel spirit from appreciating the endless variety of God’s supernatural gifts such as dreams and visions, deliverance from evil spirits, etc. They may regard anything beyond their five senses as being suspicious. They may feel uncomfortable during a deliverance process or worship service when God’s presence is powerfully manifested.

However, this reaction will only cause them to hold God at arm’s length. If you have an aversion to deliverance, ask God to remove any stronghold that you may have, and which blinds you to see the answer to your healing.

Our ability to embrace supernatural gifts is founded on knowing God as our loving heavenly Father. As a Father, God yearns to give good gifts to His children. When God manifests His presence supernaturally, we see His awesome glory and majestic splendor. He is a living God who dwells among an innumerable company of supernatural beings (Hebrews 12:22-24).

8. Stop Controlling Your Situation and Others

Science tells that many people cannot see pictures in their minds like others can so don’t feel bad that you cannot see my dream. As an architect, I look at a blueprint and see a completed building; you see lines on a paper.

I am a driven man with a dream and a burden to build a Christian polytechnic. But sometimes I have to believe that it might not be God’s will for me. Why? Because I am not in control of my life. By the grace of God, I have, therefore, the comfortable assurance that He will direct my paths concerning this part of my service, as to whether I shall be occupied in it or not.

If you have a controlling Jezebel spirit, you might have an inborn personality trait that makes you demand to be in control and that means you will need to ask God to help you turn control to Him. Actually, you are not in control. Your temperament is controlling you to do the opposite of what anyone tells you to do, making you in reality not to be in control.

You need to work on your anger and temper, which you use to control other people and ask God to help you surrender your will to Him. In time, as your relationship with the Lord deepens, your spontaneity and childlike innocence will be restored. As you let go of trying to control others, you will stop trying to predict what others will do, and thereby, rediscover a childlike wonder, innocence, and peace when you lose control. Let’s worship Jesus now.

9. Trust Jesus Daily

When our needs for love go unmet, co-dependency and the impulse to “bend into” another person is bred. Instead of looking to another person who is limited and unreliable, we need to develop our spiritual well-being. Each day, we need to look to Jesus, who is sufficient to supply all our needs—emotional, physical, spiritual, and relational. He is the all-sufficient One! In Him resides the fullness of abundant life (John 1:4). Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths (Proverbs 3:5-6).

If you have this spirit operating in your life, your life and future are in your hands. If you will endeavour to humble yourself and ask the Lord to forgive you, you will be at peace with yourself and with others, and you will understand and be able to deal with your toxic emotions with God’s help. But the question is when will you stop running from God? Before you crush, I hope.

10. Let’s Pray!

Those who have this menacing and very dangerous spirit may want to pray these words of repentance and deliverance along the journey toward wholeness:

Heavenly Father, I need Your Holy Spirit to help me not think and live according to my old ways. I place my childhood fears and bloodline curses behind me and ask You to cancel them. By faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I choose not to be enslaved to them any longer!

Today, I lay aside my fear of facing the pain from past friendships, romances, lovers, and relatives. I renounce the spirits of pride, bitterness, lying, self-exaltation, rebellion, witchcraft, and the occult. I choose to not walk in these any longer.

When I am tested by these deceiving spirits, I want to respond in godliness. God, please remove any mental strongholds and to help me think and see clearly. “I choose not to listen to other spiritual voices. Instead, I choose to listen to Your voice.

From this time forth, I will not trust in lying spirits nor the spirits who claim to offer me protection from evil. I close every door to Satan. I will not seek a false defence to shield myself from wrong, exploitation, or harm. I look to You, Lord Jesus and place my trust in You to protect me from the harm of well-meaning people and from demonic spirits. Jesus, I choose You to be my Saviour and Holy Spirit, I choose You to be my defender.

Lord Jesus Christ, please forgive my sins. I confess that I have not loved rightly. I have resented others. I now recognize this as sin and confess this to you now. I choose to forgive those who have hurt me. By Your blood, I forgive myself as You have forgiven me. I am sorry for my sins. I confess and renounce them, known and unknown.

I believe you died on the Cross for my sins, and that you rose from the dead and ascended to God the Father. You now sit at His right hand. With repentance in my heart, I ask You, Lord, to deliver me from the snare of the fowler and to set me free. Your truth is a shield to me. Under Your wings, I seek refuge.

Jesus, I claim Your promise in Psalm 91:14-15: Because I have set my love upon You, You will deliver me. You will set me on high because I have known Your Name. I will call upon You, and You will answer me. You will be with me in trouble. You will deliver me and honor me. In Jesus Name I pray Amen.

Reading and studying do not come naturally but anyone interested in a comprehensive study and insight of this subject is referred to the following teaching where some of these lessons were adapted.