Discerning Internal Voices - Demonic or a Fractured Soul

I receive a lot of emails requesting help from people who believe they're  oppressed by demonic spirits because they hear internal voices. The current state of deliverance ministry in the church today needs to receive correction in how they handle people who are suffering from hearing internal voices. When people ask me for help and tell they are under attack by demonic voices, I ask them how they know the source is demonic. One common response from these people seeking help is, "well, I went to see this big deliverance minister, and they told me that I have demons."

This assumption is based on the notion that the "BIG" deliverance minister can actually discern spirits. Sad fact. Many can't! If you are hearing internal voices and have gone to numerous ministers who can't cast these spirits out, I have a recommendation for you. Stop going to deliverance ministers. What you need is a break from this and a reboot. The ministry of deliverance as it exists in the Western Church today is full of flaws. We ignored our rich church history, and as they say, threw the baby out with the bath water. 

Locutions

Much of what we know today about hearing voices, both external, internal, and hearing God and spirits, comes from the early Christian church. God designed us to be able to hear His still and quiet voice. We can hear the voice of God both externally and internally. The early Christian church referred to listening to the Holy Spirit as hearing locutions (pronounced low-coo-shuns). Locution is  Latin word meaning speaking an utterance. Who is doing the speaking? Desirably, God!

Examples in the Bible of God speaking externally and audibly,

1 Samual 3:4 - that the Lord called Samual: and he said, "here I am"

John 12:28-30 - Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”  The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 

Internal locutions can be a bit more tricky because we can't see the source of who or what is speaking. The 16th Century Spanish mystic, Saint Teresa of Avila, pointed out that the soul can receive internal voices from three sources, the soul itself, God, and from demons. We are created in God's imge to have a relationship with Him. God is relational, we can talk to each other. We can hear God.

John 10:27-28 - My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.

The problem here, as Saint Teresa points out, is that the human soul is fallible, and we must really understand and discern if the one speaking is God. Sometimes our own soul, when it is not mature in listening to God, will literally make stuff up and convince us that it is hearing from God. The soul is one probable candidate when determining if someone is oppressed by demons or having a dissociated part of the soul is chattering internally. 

Lastly, we can hear from demonic spirits. A person that is oppressed by demonic spirits can be tuned into maddening non-stop conversations. But so can a dissociated fractured mind that is stuck in a cycle of trauma and anger. Herein lies the big problem. 99% of the ministers in deliverance don't take the time to test the spirit. Just because you see what appears to be a manifestation doesn't mean it is a manifestation. Live by faith and not by what you see. 

2 Corinthians 5:7 - For we live by faith, not by sight.

I don't see true discernment used at all in these settings. And it is the deliverance minister's responsibility to discern spirits.Our job in ministry is to help the person in front of us -and not to build a big name for ourselves! I don't know how many counseling sessions I have sat through with my colleagues, and we discerned there were no demons present in the individual. Yet some big three-ring circus show deliverance ministry said there were demons present.

For clarification and disclosure, I am involved with a demonic possession case at the time of this writing. Not a deliverance ministry oppression case they call possession. I am talking about the true definition of possession of someone breaking off from the occult. This is type is usually beyond the paygrade of deliverance ministry. It's Mark 9:29 ministry. So yes, I know what a demonic presence looks like and spiritually feels like.My goal isn't to sound like the Mayor of Amity and tell you there is no great white shark in the water (reference movie- Jaws). But rather sound like police Chief Brody and tell you that I know what a great white shark looks like - up close! I want to establish that I have enough battlefield experience in ministry and counseling to discern between a demon and a fractured human soul.

How do you discern between the two? You need to know what a demonic presence feels like and what alarms go off in your body when these spirits manifest. Just because it looks like a demon and acts like a demon doesn't mean it is one. Fractured souls are usually very angry internal children "parts" who hate deliverance ministers and love to mess with them. The fractured soul may look demonic, but it is not activating any of your spiritual discernment. The room is spiritually calm except for the nonsense babbling from a child identity, inside an adult body, trying to present itself as a demon.

The Mind Fractures By God's Design

 Enough on demonic possession, let's take a look at dissociative identity disorder (DID). Children who experience trauma, from inside the womb (we know this from ministry in ritual abuse) up to about eight years old, a child's mind will fracture to handle trauma. This fracturing is by God's design to protect the child's mind. Fracturing can occur under situations where the pain and trauma are consistent. These consistent sources include child neglect during critical baby development stages, emotional, physical, sexual, and ritual abuse. If someone had grown up in a household where the father was drunk and yelled horrible obscenities at his children, it's a good chance these children grew up dissociated. They have little children parts trapped in cycles of reliving their trauma inside the fractured adult mind. In my counseling session, and working with colleagues, we can accurately discern if the source of the internal voices are fractured parts (identities) or they are in fact demonic. In my work, I feel about 80-90% of the people I worked with who thought they had a demon turned out they had fractured "parts" from childhood trauma. These voices can be extremely angry and sound demonic, calling the primary presenter(s), stupid, or that they're going to hell, or that the internal voices are demons. Remember, these little parts are caught in trauma. That's they're reality. It takes a counselor who knows how to work with these parts to get them out of their trauma. Sometimes a demon is present, and when the part surrenders to Jesus, the demon is immediately evicted in a much gentler deliverance. 

If you are an individual, who hears voices,  has gone through a lot of deliverance and can't get rid of the demons, the sadness, self-hatred, or are stuck in moving forward, you may be dealing with dissociated parts. Again, I recommend to stop the deliverance ministry. Fractured parts is an inner healing issue which is why deliverance doesn't work at all. The Holy Spirit will protect you. Amnesia and denial can also be a big piece of this. When you're stuck, and some of this resonates, stop the deliverance ministry and seek out a Christian counselor who works with DID (and also has practical experience in evicting unwanted spiritual critters).

For more information on advance warfare topics, checkout my books. A Field Guide to Advance Spiritual Warfare is that covers most of what I covered here. Both books are required reading by anyone involved in spiritual warfare.

I hope this helps.

God Bless

Rev. Mike

If you have any questions on how to deal with occult battles, please drop me a comment, and I will answer the question in blog posts.

If you have questions on curse breaking, or curse breaking prayers, I cover these in my book, A Field Guide to Spiritual Warfare.

If you have questions on dealing with manifestations, I cover these in my book, A Field Guide to Advanced Spiritual Warfare.

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