A few days ago, I had a great conversation with friends about the difference between entertaining familiar spirits as opposed to something being a habit pattern in our lives. Sometimes, I think it’s a fine line. How CAN we tell there’s a familiar spirit whispering sweet nothings in our ears? Or, is it simply something in our life that needs changing? Hmmm…. enquiring minds want to know.
It’s fascinating that as soon as I have these discussions, I get the opportunity to experience it. Not long after this conversation, I was asking Jesus some questions. We often have deep discussions, especially when I’m learning new things. He instructed me to go look some things up. I know this to be scriptural because the Word tells us to go seek out a matter (Proverbs 25:2). As we mature, we aren’t always given direct answers and need to do a little of our own digging. I wrote down what I needed to do and the discussion continued onto something else.
The next day, I was about to step into the presence of Yahweh again and I heard “You need to do your assignment first.” The moment the thought came, I’m thinking, “Huh? Do I really need to?” I pondered it only a moment and then remembered that I can go into the Presence of Yahweh anytime. It was then that I realized a familiar spirit was speaking. Even though it was only a flash of a thought, it was still a thought. Entertaining it and believing it would lead to an intent. That Intent would lead to an action and I would not have entered into Yahweh’s presence. All I had to do was believe that I had to meet a condition first. And, that was the goal of the familiar spirit.
Read my article titled “Thoughts, Intents, Action!” on Healing Frequencies Music for the details of how thoughts lead to intents that then lead to actions. Since I go into in detail there, I won’t do it again here. What I can say is that it’s important to really pay attention to the first thoughts that come into our brains. The discussion with my friends was all about how we determine what’s a first thought. That’s when it led to discussing a couple of situations, as I introduce below.
In reality, we have many thoughts that go through our brains. In fact, there’s thousands of thoughts per day that we filter. Our brains throw out the stuff that’s not important… at least for that moment. The problem lies in our repetitive behaviors. Sometimes what we think are our first thoughts are really our fourth or fifth thoughts because the first three are so second nature to us that we don’t even realize it. This is what our discussion focused on. How can you tell when it’s a behavior that needs to be changed verses a familiar spirit talking? It was a good discussion that we all gained some amazing insight through.
One person (we’ll call Terry) brought up that in a very close relationship, the other person often comments on a certain behavior of Terry’s saying something like “you’re doing it again.” Terry gives a surprised look not even realizing it’s happening. Terry asked the group, “Is that a familiar spirit?” My answer was “I don’t think so.” Why? Because it involves a behavior and not a thought that flashes across the screen of the mind.
Think through this with me. Behaviors are generally a result of a thought and intent. A thought is a thought. It requires meditating on it before it becomes an intent which leads to an action. Because Terry was unaware of the behavior, that could mean a couple things. At one point, thoughts and intents led to the behavior. Now, it’s a cemented behavioral pattern. IF the recurring behavior was obvious to more than one person, it’s probably something that needs addressed. However, if ONLY the one person ever mentions it, the problem could lie in Terry’s friend. That’s a bit much to get into here because we could follow many rabbit trails on that subject. The bottom line is that it bothered Terry because there’s no awareness of the behavior while it’s happening.
Let’s say at one time, Terry did listen to a familiar spirit enough times that an intent was formed which led to the undersirable behavior we discussed. We’re no longer dealing with the familiar spirit itself. It’s moved onto the next victim because it got what it was after. We’re dealing with a whole new set of issues that involve changing a habit pattern. How do you change a habit pattern? It requires diligence! It’s where practice, patience, and perseverance come in.
In my situation, it was a simple thought that zipped through my mind. At first, it was a bit confusing. Then, I put on my Holy Spirit filter and realized “Uh-huh! We have a problem here!” I immediately thought something like “Excuse me, I can go into the presence of Yahweh anytime!” Now, the thought came back a couple more times but I got a bit snarky with it. What I often do is immediately do what a familiar tells me that I can’t do. It’s that “take this and shove it” bit that I enjoy most when dealing with familiar spirits.
Now, I must say that in the past, I had issues with thinking I was good enough to go into the presence of Yahweh. Honestly, I think that’s what the familiar spirit was after. If it could get me to believe once again to look at my self-worth, my thoughts could easily go down that road again. It’s a good thing I recognized it for what it was. When we’ve had unhealthy thought patterns for so long, it doesn’t take much to get us to go back there once we start entertaining the negative stuff again. Excuse me… that’s not a road I wish to go down! I had to do some butt kicking – ninja style.
In Terry’s situation, we didn’t identify the exact root/cause. What we did discuss was HOW to deal with knowing when the behavior pattern was in process or about to happen so it could be stopped. In my personal experience, this is how I deal with that. If I know the types of situations that an unwanted behavior COULD happen, I ask Holy Spirit to be with me and quicken me. Sometimes I catch myself and others, I don’t. As with all things, it takes practice. I don’t beat myself up when I miss it. I’m thankful that I had another opportunity to practice remembering to work on it.
For most of us, these situations take place with family, close relationships, or work. It’s those things that trigger a negative behavior. There are those people who frost your buttons. Sorry, you’ll be dealing with them your whole life so get used to it. What we can do is change our response. That’s what I work on – making sure my response comes out of love and not frustration. My most recent situation involved accusations coming at me from a certain group of people who were listening to what others were saying about me instead of checking with me themselves. When this used to happen, I’d immediately get defensive and try to explain myself. The problem? Nothing I said made any difference because their mind was already made up.
The familiar spirits engaging me? It was the thoughts of “Listen to what they’re saying about you! It’s all lies! What are you going to do about it?” And yes, those were familiar spirits talking. How do I know? The focus with a familiar spirit is always on the negative and to get our eyes off the redemptive side of anything. It wants us to stick up for ourselves because no one else will. Everything that comes out of listening to a familiar spirit leads down the road to negativity, sickness, dis-ease, bitterness, strife, anger, etc. Nothing good ever comes out of building intents out of what a familiar spirit says to us.
What I’ve learned to do is take any accusation to court. That immediately disarms it. Even if I didn’t do anything, I still go through repentance in the mobile court. I talk about that in my book “Accessing the Kingdom Realms.” I’ve found the best way to deal with most things is to go through a process of repentance. If I didn’t do it, someone in my family line probably did. I actually look forward to the repentance process now because it’s so freeing! In the situation with this group of people accusing me, it didn’t stop for quite some time. What did change was my desire to defend myself. After going to court and repenting, I felt compassion for the people involved. I’d sit and listen to their heart and release the love of Yahweh into them.
In a nutshell, listening to familiar spirits leads to an intent of some type. The intent then leads into an action. If we continue those actions, they become behaviors. The more we practice those behaviors, they become behavior patterns. Once we have a behavior pattern, we’re generally not aware of it any longer. Although there may be familiar spirits associated with these “practiced” behavior patterns, it would seem that because they are now cemented, they’ve simply become a part of our lives. This is where you hear people say things like “Oh, that’s just who I am!” OK, so the behavior is annoying to everyone around us and we still give excuses? I guess it’s only when we realize that behavior is causing us harm before we decide to change it.
Now, in the case of Terry, we didn’t come to a conclusion. It’s possible the behavior is only annoying to the one person. If that’s the case, there may be an issue with the other person. What I honor about Terry? There’s a genuine desire to see if the behavior needs to be changed. We discussed many ways that could be done. And, it really helped the whole group see if there are behaviors within each of us that still need attention.
Examples are amazing! My hope is that the examples I’ve provided in this article help you in indentifying familiar spirits. As we continue our journey into a closer relationship with Yahweh, it does require that we clean up the junk in our lives. Although it’s painful at times, the end result is always freedom!
May you walk in total freedom from pain of all types and into your true destiny!
Del
© 2018 by Del Hungerford