CHAPTER 5

Part 2

“Conservative Christians” can be very evangelistic about “looking successful”.  They swear that Jesus would have worn a suit and tie, and His mother wouldn’t have gone to church without being impeccably made up and wearing a powder blue tailored suit with heels. Legalistic conservatives promote their own tastes as God’s law.  They freeze out those who differ from them and won’t conform to THEIR tastes.

Bambi resented my rejection of Babylon’s shallow, oppressive glamor culture, and my colorful  long skirts in particular. She just couldn’t stand the way I felt comfortable just being me. She was into all kinds of makeup, worldly glamor, and sparkly jewelry, which was fine with me.  In my opinion, she had a right to be her and I had a right to be me.  I just never suspected that her subtle little digs were really thinly veiled hostility. I honestly didn’t want to end our friendship, so I turned a blind eye to all the warning signs that her attitudes clashed with God’s standards of Christian conduct. Seldom mentioned today are these politically incorrect verses addressed to Christian wives:

I Peter 3:3: Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;

VERSE 4: But let it be that hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, EVEN THE ADORNMENT OF A MEEK AND QUIET SPIRIT, which is in the sight of God of great price.

Paul echoes the same thought in I Timothy 2:9: In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;

Verse 10: But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.

I looked up that word “shamefacedness” in Strong’s.  It comes from the Greek word aidos, which means “bashfulness” or “with downcast eyes”.  This word connotes having a sense of shame about sin, and feeling uncomfortable about it.  Flirting with another woman’s husband, even in jest,  and making snide comments about other women’s hair, clothes and figure isn’t my definition of having a meek and quiet spirit, or having a sense of shame toward sin!

In my “hear no evil, see no evil” days, I lacked the discernment to distinguish personality differences from outright wickedness. I found it fascinating that God could have such a vast variety of personality types in His Kingdom.

One day my  daughter was home from kindergarten, watching one of her favorite educational programs.  The friendly, happy  face on the screen provoked a scornful comment from Bambi about how it’s abnormal for a man to love children.  I hope Bambi didn’t have the same opinion of Jesus, who embraced and blessed little children!

Eventually we moved away. God warned me not to go visit Bambi, after it became clear what sort of scary spirit was operating in her life. But I did go see her.  At first everything was fine.  But when it took a few extra days to receive my (very expensive) bus fare to return home, she wasn’t so friendly anymore.  She gave me the cold silent treatment.  Then she began to make pointed digs and insult me, to the point that I broke out in hives.

In Bambi’s book, I wasn’t fit for Christian fellowship because I “looked like a flower child”.  She was so incredibly mean, that I sensed the presence of satan  driving her. Bambi pontificated about how divorce was ALWAYS the woman’s fault and how divorce was inevitable for any woman who didn’t “try to look her best” like she did.  But the only way I’ve been able to remain true to Christ is to divorce un-Christlike Christians from My concept of what He’s all about!

Later there I got an awkward apology over the phone, but not for a surprise gift I’d promised not to  open till Christmas time. It was a book on “Christian” modeling and “self-improvement” (i.e. dieting, makeup, and the “classic” fashions which supposedly glorify  God), Who many believe  inspired Western beauty culture and three-piece suits.  My husband told me to just toss it into the trash.  I detest the way worldly glamour is “Christianized” by christendom. The Establishment has always dominated this world with its dogma, and would even start a cultural revolution in heaven if it could!  And who do  religious upper-crusters think they are, portraying the poor Carpenter of Nazareth as a rich snob with a private jet and Rolex watch?  Can you picture women in heaven  having to starve on diets,  or wear  high heels  and butch haircuts to climb the social ladder?

I say to self-improvement preachers:  Hands off my civil rights! You’ve got no right to impose your sexist  propaganda on me, or any other woman who’s tired of being pushed around by Babylon! We’ve got  a right to our own real hair, our own natural  figures, and our own comfy clothes!  Even if every skinny-bones actress in Hollywood has limp, shiny hair, I’ll blow the trumpet of liberty for every gal on earth who wants to break free of male chauvinistic, mass media domination!

The moneyed Establishment even has its own religious  “right” wing and political machine which tries to hog Jesus  all to itself.  If you don’t dress like them, make bushels of money like them, push their  prosperity imperialism, and support their war machine, you won’t make it into their heaven!  Bulltwinkles!

There is something seriously wrong with a “Christian” friendship where Jesus and His wonderful love are never mentioned, and if you did mention it, it would create awkwardness in that person’s home. How odd, a “Christian” home,  where the joy of the Lord and His praises are utterly absent, and cutting sarcasm fills the air.  Whenever you try to bring up edifying subjects with such people, ice water gets thrown on the effort and you are looked at like a stuffy, old-fashioned bore.

If you are hurt by a fellow believer and you are sure their repentance was from the heart and they are reconciling with you in the love of Jesus, by all means give them another chance.  But if you are sure their apology was a half-hearted attempt to save face, steer clear of them.  Wicked spirits are behind such bad behavior, and unless those people have actively sought deliverance from satan’s power, it can bring extra spiritual battles into your life if you continue to hang out with them. Just commit that one into God’s hands without any bad feelings.  I have learned from hard experience that no one, myself included, can ever overcome a bad habit or trait by making a resolution never to do it again.  Either we depend on the Lord to overcome and grow in the love of Jesus, or progress just won’t happen.  It isn’t mean to say that, it’s just the truth.  Human nature ALWAYS reverts to type in the end.  Only by the power of the living Christ within you can you live like the New Creature God wants you to be (2 Cor.5:17).

We are commanded to love one another and forgive one another, but we do NOT  owe unconditional trust to those who abuse it again and again and again!  Even Jesus was wary of untrustworthy people, for He knew full well what they were like (John 2:23-25).  Jesus won the admiration and (temporary) devotion of many who had witnessed His miracles.  But Jesus knew it was the miracles they wanted, not Him.  Confidence in an unfaithful person is like a broken tooth, and a foot knocked out of joint (Proverbs 25:19). The very same nation  healed and fed by Christ’s hands clamored for His crucifixion.

Nominal “Christians” still crucify Christ afresh as people are rejected over petty differences,  failure to “tithe” (another subject I address),  or not belonging to the right clubs, etc. Many so-called Christians pay lip service to Jesus  as “Savior”, but reject His Lordship to the degree of refusing to be conformed to His loving nature (Matthew 7:21).  God wants you to know:  Anyone, whatever his religious handle, who rejects the character traits of Christ REJECTS CHRIST HIMSELF!!!

Christian hypocrisy has always been the greatest obstacle whenever I tried to share my faith with others.  I remember one hard-boiled cynic I talked with.  Evidently, he’d been turned off by what he’d seen of  professing believers. Therefore, to him, Christ wasn’t real, so why should he believe in Him?  I was a young Christian, shocked but not derailed. My reply was this: The problem arises whenever Christians fail to abide in Christ, the Living Vine (John 15:1-10).  Those who fail (or refuse) to abide in His love will not reflect His pure nature.

The Repercussions: An Ongoing War With Satan

I wish with all my heart that I had listened to that Still Small Voice warning me to stay away from Bambi. The Holy Spirit knows what He’s doing when He whispers strong warnings to your heart! Satan used that bad visit to oppress me for years afterward with bad memories of that woman. Just remembering her face was a torment to me. In unguarded moments, the enemy would remind me of her, just to try to rob me of God’s peace. I had left that acid-tongued briar patch behind, but her stickers stayed stuck in my hide for a long time.

Satan, as the Prince of the Power of the Air,  loves to vex the children of God in their thought life.  Not content with having bullied you in the past, he’ll rub it in repeatedly, often for years or decades.  When an act of disobedience to God has opened a door for satan to vex you, it is much harder to recover from your bad experience.  In spite of my efforts not to think about Bambi, I had my weaker moments when I’d go back in time to her home  and chew her out and tell her what a sorry excuse for a Christian she was. I would say, with a feeling of satisfaction:  “Ha!  Remember how, back in the 70’s,  you gave me grief for my hair style and colorful skirts?  Well, Bambi, I just came back from the future and guess what women are wearing all over the world now?  Anything they FEEL like wearing, and if you see a woman on the street wearing a skirt, it’s likely to be a long one! I was just ahead of my time, that’s all!”

How easy it is to reflect on the past and wish you’d known then what you know now.  But now I actually feel sorry for Bambi.  She impressed me as a wife who never felt secure in her husband’s love, somebody forever on probation who had to bury her real face in makeup and starve on diets  to prove herself worthy of love. How one-sided her recipe for marital bliss was:  When divorce happens it’s ALWAYS the wife’s fault, contrary to Scripture which assigns greater responsibilities to the husband, as head of his wife. Her “self-improvement” program was  her security blanket.  She must have known that dieting doesn’t prevent aging or wrinkles, and lifelong hunger doesn’t make for an adorable disposition.  Many a crabby, self-obsessed size zero looks older than a larger woman who’s made peace with her looks and with her  life.

When the enemy reminded me of Bambi and her husband, I’d remember that Sammy had talked about me behind my back.  In my reverie I would remind Bambi, in so many words, that Sammy was a backstabber.  As for self-improvement, neither of them had  room to talk. The Love of Jesus was conspicuous by its absence in their lives. Bambi, in particular, had repaid our kindness with barbed insults, and trampled on our friendship.   Beware of “Christians” who do not cherish the   Christ in you, and resent the fact that you are not a reflection of themselves!

Perhaps Bambi’s fears of marital failure were well-founded.  If a  man cannot  control his tongue, chances are he can’t control his hormones either, and he just might turn into a cheating rat who trades  his sweetheart for a sweet tart.  Many Christian men, even ministers, have forsaken the straight and narrow Road of Righteousness and ditched their wives, banking on easy forgiveness from God. 

Mental time travel.   What  a futile way to fight against  satan’s fiery darts, spoken of in Ephesians 6:16.  At the time I was unaware that those stray thoughts were actually just that. I really was reluctant to share that reverie, because it seems so unloving to have any painful emotional memories of somebody else. But now I know that frequently recurring bad memories don’t just happen by chance.  By their very nature, thoughts just come to us, and we don’t plan  them in advance. Once the enemy has gained a foothold in our lives (in my case through ignoring the voice of the Spirit), satan brings those thoughts. 2  Corinthians 10:3-5 and Ephesians 6:12  speak of the fierce war satan wages against us in our thought life.  I wasn’t at war with flesh and blood, but with the devil,  who does his worst to demoralize a believer and cut him down.   I wasn’t trying to conjure up Bambi’s memory to torture myself. I was trying to bury her memory in the sweet sea of forgetfulness.

God’s highest will is tender love even toward enemies.  But if you’re too emotionally battered to have sweet feelings toward such people, I believe it is far better to just pray for them from a great distance (both emotional and geographical, if possible), even if you feel completely detached from them emotionally. Sometimes God has had to completely deaden my feelings toward the worst people I have known, so at least I wouldn’t feel bad about them. Just commit your adversaries to the Lord.  He alone can love the unlovely. Refrain from provoking your enemies, and stay well away from them unless God specifically directs you to approach them with the Good News of Salvation.  While life remains, there is always a possibility that sinners might be saved from damnation, and un-Christlike believers restored. Proverbs 21 says:  Whoever keeps (watches) his mouth and his tongue keeps his soul from troubles.

I had violated a key principle of God’s Kingdom (obedience to divine guidance), and hadn’t made much of an effort to repent of that disobedience.  I’d just taken for granted that because it happened so long ago, God didn’t care, and it would fade into the distant mists of history. I was embarrassed that I’d ignored God’s clear guidance, and hated to even mention it to Him. But satan sure doesn’t forget our stumblings! He seizes upon anything he can to use as a weapon against God’s people. Thirty, forty years ago is NOTHING to the devil!  Like a pebble tossed into a pond, our bad decisions can cause  repercussions far-reaching in both time and space.  Even if you are many years and thousands of miles away from your big booboo, you (and perhaps others) are affected by it.  Adam and Eve’s little snack sentenced us all to life on a problematic planet.

Spiritual Defenses Against Emotional Abuse

As I said before, people are users and manipulators.  All your life long, you’re expected to sword fight with them as they play their perverse little power games. Bambi knew I was a people-shy individual who didn’t make friends easily, especially not in the upper-crust church I temporarily attended. Bambi took advantage of that. She magnified all my deepest fears and insecurities, as if she could read my mind. Whenever Bambi felt like freezing me out to try to control me, she would  alternate the silent treatment with bouts of verbal abuse.  It was satan’s way of putting a spirit of oppression on my soul, just as he had done in high school. Same old devil.

Some Christian! Conveniently forgotten is  Jesus’ exhortation: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy (Matt.5:7). The other side of the coin is this: If you treat your brothers and sisters like garbage, don’t expect God to throw out the red carpet for you!

Every last one of us have done stupid things in our lifetimes and lived to regret it. Sometimes our mistakes irritate others and we end up with egg all over our face. But nothing hurts more than having someone else ridicule you for your miscalculation or mistake, or kick you when you’re down.  Bambi took advantage of the fact I didn’t have enough money to get away from her. I did chores to help out, but she took my “room and board” out of my hide through verbal abuse.

People love to gain a chokehold on others. For example, I have known even Christians to gloat over the fact Brother so-and-so owes them money, or they are in no position to repay a huge favor done on their behalf. Beware of bullying somebody who is in any way indebted to you and can can’t immediately pay you back.  Don’t ever oppress a fellow human being who is beholden to you for any reason and can’t easily escape your abuse. Poverty-stricken employees who can’t easily throw down their tools and quit would also fall into this category.  By refusing to be gracious toward vulnerable people and beating their debt out of their emotional hide,   you’re storing up trouble, not treasures, for yourself in God’s account book! If you ever fall from your own high horse and need mercy yourself, then you may discover it won’t be there for you and you’ll reap the same shabby treatment you dished out to somebody else! 

In Matthew 18: 23-35 we read a tragic tale of a servant who owed  his king a debt worth millions of dollars.  Faced with the prospect of having everything he owned sold to pay the debt, including his family, the debtor begged the king for mercy.  The heart of the king was so touched he forgave his servant the gigantic debt. Verse 28 relates that this same servant then went out and found a fellow servant who owed him a debt which amounted to chicken feed.  He grabs this guy around the throat and says: Pay up or else!  The poor debtor begged him for time to settle the debt, but he received no mercy. The unmerciful debtor, who had been forgiven a debt he couldn’t have paid back in a lifetime, inflicted upon his fellow servant the fate he himself had escaped: He had the poor fellow cast into prison until he finished paying off his tiny debt.  When the king was told about this cruelty, he called the cruel man into his presence and said: “You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt just because you asked me to do it.” Verse 34 says he   delivered him to the tormentors, till the debt was satisfied.   A professing believer who refuses to show grace toward  another Christian delivers his brother to the tormentors to collect on a tiny debt.  Long forgotten is the joyful gratitude that believer once felt toward His own Redeemer for forgiving him or her the vast debt of sin and releasing them from the penalty of sin, which is eternal hell.  Instead, the ungrateful “Christian”  repays his own king’s kindness by bringing his own fellow-servant  into captivity to the torments of satan.

Especially when the offender claims to be a believer in Christ.  A graceless, mean-spirited hypocrite who names the name of Christ but collaborates with satan does far worse damage to Christ’s Kingdom than any unbeliever.   Such a reprobate opens the door for satan to attack  a fellow Christian with depression and self-loathing.

Don’t kick others when they are down, or the day will probably come when you yourself are  stuck in a similar messy situation.  Then you’ll pray your heart out to God, only to find that the heavens are shut up like a brass shield against your prayers, and God doesn’t seem to be listening.  The cruelty you sow, you’ll surely reap.

I have reached the point where I feel  more compassionate toward Bambi than I once did. I recall some things she’d said about  the sordid home she’d grown up in, and the immorality of those who raised her. We can get so angry about how others treat us that we forget to wonder what made them the way they are.

Now I know that the greatest tragedy is not the way she treated me, but the fact that following her conversion to Christ, she’d never received the ministry she needed to cast out the demons of her own past. Believe me, it takes effort and godly wisdom to uproot weeds the devil has planted in your soul.  Coming to Christ is only the beginning of a lifelong war against the devil and his  influence in this wicked world.  I have dedicated the rest of my life to doing whatever I can to help spread the great glad news that Christ came to destroy  the works of the devil, especially in the lives of believers (I John 3:8).

Bullying Others With the Silent Treatment

Bambi gave me the silent treatment when she got tired of having me around. That’s a tactic of satan to put a spirit of heaviness on others. I  believe evil spirits are responsible for many  bouts of severe depression, although some  definitely have medical causes.  I Samuel 16:14-16 relates  how King Saul was troubled by a spirit of depression.  When someone gives you gives you an icy rebuke for some real or imagined wrong and then  does the silent treatment, they’re giving the devil a stronghold in your life to oppress you, and that’s tantamount to witchcraft.  I’ve been the victim of the silent treatment more than once, and invariably it creates a heaviness in me which I have had to drive away with Prayer in the Spirit.

At work, the silent treatment is considered much more “civilized” than screaming at somebody and throwing a plate at them.  The silent treatment might be inflicted by a friend or associate who feels you’ve wronged or shortchanged them in some way, although you may not have meant to.  Nothing is more frustrating than to know someone is freezing you out, either to manipulate you to get something out of you, or  to punish you psychologically.  You smile your cheeriest smile and try to build bridges, but you are rebuffed.  You do your best to made amends for any  mistakes you’ve made, only to be informed that your efforts are unneeded.  Your inquiries about the welfare of the other person are rewarded with an icy sniff, and you feel like a whipped puppy.  And the devil laughs.  Satan savors every cold war going on in the world almost as much as those hot wars that are ripping the planet apart.  It is time for warfare in the Spirit to fend off the ugly attacks of his spirits of darkness.  Pray the Word of God as you come across portions of it that apply to your situation. You will feel strengthened inside as the Holy Spirit breathes life into that liberating Scripture and sets you free by His power.

A Prayer for Victory Over the Silent Treatment

Dear Heavenly Father, the attitude of...(name the person) has brought heaviness upon my soul, a feeling of alienation and grief.  This is the work of the devil, the author of all the sick People Games being played in the world today.  Satan has found an open door to harass me and make me feel lousy.  I haven’t been able to laugh it off or ignore it, either.

The Bible says we war not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of wickedness at work in this world.  Your ministry is one of reconciliation; first to reconcile people with You, and then with each other.  Deliberately putting heaviness on another soul is a bullying tactic of satan, not a ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Please, dear Father. I pray that Your powerful Holy Spirit will assign warring angels to do battle against those spirits of wickedness which are weighing my soul down with grief, and attacking my life.  I pray that those angels will encamp round about me, and deliver me from all trouble. I pray that even if loneliness is a consequence of this silent treatment by one person or by many, that this vicious weapon they’re using against me will lose its sting.  I pray I will no longer feel lonely, but will be wrapped up in the warmth of Your loving arms.  I pray that You will set a cheerful spiritual feast before me in the midst of this wilderness I find myself in.  Make all  the blessings of Psalms Chapter 23 mine.

I pray that You will be very near and dear to me.  Even to the extent that where my antagonists expect to see me looking miserable, instead there will be a glow of transparent joy on my countenance, and a spring in my step.  Those who oppress me feel insecure unless they are surrounded by an army of mean-spirited comrades   But even if all I have is You in this world, I am far more blessed than they are.  I pray that whether those inflicting the psychological attack are unconverted or born again, that you will somehow show them that by playing the devil’s games, they have been taken captive by him and need Your deliverance.

Give me the power to love and not to hate.  Help my enemy to come to repentance through Christ. Help me to send out an olive branch of friendship while having the good sense not to hang around where I’m clearly not welcome.  And though I might be eager to normalize relations with an estranged person, give me the strength never to compromise what is right in order to win back their approval.  In the Name of Jesus, through Whom we ever triumph.  Amen .

Nucular Hatred: Aim it Against satan and Injustice, Not People

The Bible teaches you to love even your enemies, but Scripture also declares God hates "all workers of iniquity" (Ps. 5:5). "The Lord abhors (deeply hates) the bloodthirsty and deceitful man" (Psalms 5:6). There are 6 things "the Lord hates," including "a heart that devises wicked plans...a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren" (Prov. 6:16-19). God also hates the wicked and the one who loves violence (Psalms 11:5).  Bullies adore violence, so it follows that God hates the hardened bully who refuses to repent of his sins. Pray for God’s help to overcome the raw resentment that inevitably comes from being abused, and steer clear of satan’s traps.  It is our prerogative to join God in hating  the devil and his evil works, and hating the wicked deeds of the wicked.  But only God has the  right to hate people if He so wills. Hatred is the hottest and most explosive of all emotions, and when handled irresponsibly, it’s like a monkey having his  finger on the “nucular trigger”, and the monkey can’t even spell the word correctly, much less understand that this particular weapon shouldn’t even be detonated against fellow human beings.

At least in this imperfect mortal lifetime, hatred should never be aimed at people by other people. Pray for God to protect you from the temptation to feel H-Bomb hatred toward other mortal humans which is bound to come from being badly abused. Instead of hating nasty people, channel your strong hatred of your bad experience into something constructive, like lifting up others whom the devil has ground underfoot. If hating people is ever necessary, only God should do it, because He alone is without sin and wise enough to act rightly and justly. Surrender all bad feelings to God and pray for His love, while being cautious and wary toward those who aren’t worthy of your trust. Remember that your battle is not with flesh and blood, but with the devil (Eph. 6:12).  If you feel any compassion or tenderness  at all toward your enemy, that is the power of Christ at work within you, and not any virtue inherent in your own fallen human nature.

Historical Examples Cited

One reason I have always found witnessing for Christ a daunting task is this: People who knew some perverse historical facts would dredge them up to argue with me.  Throughout the centuries, the Holy Name of Christ has been besmirched by vain hypocrites and charlatans who have waged imperial wars in His Name. The Crusaders sallied forth in the Name of Christ, brandishing bloody   swords, determined to butcher as many Jews and Arabs as necessary to “rescue” the Holy Land from “infidels”. Plundering and looting their way through Europe on the way to Palestine, they  left  a trail of blood in their wake. “God’s” honor had to be defended at all costs.  Gold and treasure for their rulers was  just icing on the cake. They were worse than sea pirates, for they dared to dedicate their deeds to Christ.

Christopher Columbus discovered (and looted) America  for God (or was it gold?).  Chapter One of A People’s History of the United States shatters the saintly myth of Columbus taught to millions of American school children.   It  relates how vast numbers of Indians on the island of Hispanolia were tortured and enslaved by Columbus’ men.  They toiled under brutal conditions, digging scarce gold out of the hillsides.  Most of those poor Indians  died of exhaustion, torture, hunger or sickness.   So why do we honor that genocidal imperialist every October? Why not go a step further, and canonize Adolf Hitler? Why don’t we eulogize other brutal dictators?

I can’t deny that millions of villains have pinned the label of Christ on themselves to justify their evil deeds. Oppressors in high places would, if they were able, be the ones to parcel out the eternal riches, even as they have cornered all  the treasures of earth.  They would even consign the poor to subsisting off the crumbs beneath the  Table of the Lord. If they could, they  would even  bar heaven to those who are humble in heart.  They forget that Christ said:  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matt.5:4). Christ does not belong to the cruel, the proud and the arrogant. It takes  God-given   discernment to disassociate Jesus from heartless hypocrites.  Considering I’m so thoroughly disgusted with the world as it  is now, my faith in Christ is a miracle. Had I never before known happier times with genuine  Christians, Bambi’s cruelty might have alienated me from the Christ she claimed to know.

How to Get the Victory Over satanic  Oppression

1. Repent of all known sin.  In John 14:30 Jesus declared: the  prince of this world (satan) cometh, and hath nothing in hath nothing in me.  Satan could not accuse Christ before the Father, for He was innocent of sin.  Therefore satan could not claim any squatter’s rights in Jesus’ soul or in His life.  Where it concerns examining your own heart and repenting of sin keep short accounts with God.

2. Submit to God and resist the devil, armed with the assurance that if God has forgiven your sins and you are in Christ, the evil one has no squatter’s rights in your life either.

3. Plead the Blood of Jesus over yourself and everything which affects you (Rev. 12:11).  As a Blood-washed believer in Christ you are no longer a citizen of satan’s filthy kingdom.  You belong to Christ and satan has no legal right to wreak havoc with your nerves or touch anything you have. The devil hates the Blood of Jesus.  Why? Jesus shed His precious Blood to strip satan  of his power to enforce death in the lives of God’s people (Heb. 2:14).  Declare yourself under the protection of the Blood  of Christ.  Resist satan’s every effort to inject the poison of death into your soul, either through ugly memories, ugly circumstances or ugly people.

4. Pray in the Spirit.  Bullying is a mighty stronghold of satan, the primary oppressor in your life. It is   a structure he built which needs to be torn down in your life if you’re affected by it.  Just as people try to build up a network of friends to be there for them in time of need, satan oversees a hierarchy of evil spirits  who orchestrate situations to harm you even as he directs his human slaves to do his dirty work.   Gross wickedness of any kind is primarily a spiritual struggle against unseen powers of darkness (Eph. 6: 12).  Depend not on your own limited human understanding as you pray for God’s intervention, but on the perfect understanding of the Spirit of God within you (Rom. 8:26-27) Who makes intercession for the saints according to the perfect will of God.  In the case of a Spirit-baptized believer this involves use of the prayer language (I Cor. 14:2), where the Spirit speaks mysteries beyond the grasp of the human intellect.  Far better to enlist the help of the Spirit of God against a spiritual enemy than to try to war against satan on your own.

5. Pray for God to dispatch warrior angels into your situation.  In 2 Kings chapter 19 King Hezekiah of Judah finds himself surrounded by fierce foes.

6.  Commit your enemies into God’s Hands, and see it as His responsibility to deal with them, not yours.  If there is no repentance and continued animosity on their part, so that divine vengeance is called for, He will repay (Rom. 12:19).

7.   If experience has taught you that a sarcastic, acid-tongued “friend” will never change his or her bullying ways, it might be best for you to  put that friendship on ice, at least until the offender has been transformed by the Holy Spirit into a more Christlike individual.  If this seems to be too harsh, remember that by hanging around them you are opening yourself up to their bad influence, and you are continually being tempted to hurt them back in some way, and you are constantly being pressured to conform to their way of thinking. Scripture exhorts us not to be conformed to this world (Rom.12:2).  The only trend setter God wants us to conform to is His precious Son (Rom.8:29). Sinners set today’s trends for fashion and life philosophy,  But Christ is setting the trend for the glorious world to come.  Sinner celebrities set the trend for a lost, doomed, and damned world culture on its way to hell. Whenever professing Christians act more like satan than Jesus in their relationships with one another, don’t hang around to breathe in their spiritual germs. Even the early church was admonished to disfellowship other believers who persisted in unrepented-of sin (I Cor. 5:11).  They weren’t even to eat with them.  There is a time to embrace, but there is also a time to go your separate ways (Eccl. 3:5).

How I Got the Victory

Time means nothing to God, because He lives in eternity.  If there is some sin in your past which the devil has been using in some way to torment you, and you can’t recall ever having repented of it,  now is a good time to ask God’s forgiveness.  In this way you take ammunition out of satan’s hands.  He is called in Scripture “the accuser of the brethren” (Rev. 12:10).  I know he took full advantage of my disobedience many years ago as an excuse to needle me about Bambi’s put-downs.

I repented of not listening to God, which had given satan and open door.  Now I have every  right to rebuke satan when he comes round to remind me of Bambi.  I declare that my mind is under the protection of the Blood of Christ and satan has no right to remind me of Bambi’s barbs.  The Father of Lies, not Christ, was the one who inspired them.

Healing of the inner man (or woman) is often debunked as being occultic, because the very concept has led some to stray from sound Biblical truth into New Age philosophies and practices. For example, the practice of seeing God’s un-manifested answers by faith (Hebrews 11:13) can easily degenerate into occultic meditation and visualization. Confessing the promises of God as Biblical heroes of faith did can easily lapse into endless chanting, a form of brainwashing.  But our soul does need healing sometimes.  It is just as real as our arm or our leg. The soul is just as vulnerable to injury as the body. Our soul is the part of us which survives death. The Lord restores our soul (Psalms 23: 3.  Souls, not just bodies, get damaged by bullying, sometimes for years, often for life.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalms 139:14). We are a much higher form of life than a dog or a cat.  We are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27; James 3:9). When a bully calls a girl a gorilla, he is insulting the image of God within her and will not be held blameless by the Righteous Judge of all the earth. 

Christ within me is my greatest Treasure.  My perishable body is God’s Treasure Box. (I Cor.3:16; 2 Cor.6:16; 4:7).  My spirit is made on spirit with Christ by faith (I Cor.6:17).  As I reflect upon how God has exalted me in making me one of His dear children and sending his own Holy Spirit to dwell in my heart by faith, that is excellent medicine to soothe away those bad memories of verbal abuse.