When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation(Mt.12:43-46).
This well-known teaching of Jesus has served as a warning for those who have experienced deliverance from a demonic spirit for centuries. We sight it at the end of our Freedom Weekends as a warning not to return to the things that opened the door to demonization in the first place. If you do, you may not just end up where you started, but will be in much deeper anguish because the returning spirit will bring others with him you did not have to contend with before.
The thrust of the passage is not a warning against deliverance, but against creating a spiritual vacancy through deliverance that is left uninhabited. If the vacancy left by an unclean spirit is not filled with the Holy Spirit, you are subject to the return of the demon…and his friends. I suspect that many believers walk around with a vacancy within them, because they do little to be filled with the things of God.
Paul called the Ephesians to eliminate any spiritual vacancy within them. “Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled withthe Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Eph. 5:17-20).
We may have the Holy Spirit living within us, but that does not mean we are automatically “filled with the Spirit.” Often, God gives us the basics for being a child of God or for operating in a spiritual gift, but then leaves it to us to pursue more of him and more of the gift if we want to maximize what he has made available. We can walk around with the minimum and still be saved, but as we do so, we leave room for the enemy to enter our house with torment and oppression. If being “filled with the Spirit” wasn’t dependent on us to some degree, he would not have instructed the church to pursue that state of spiritual being. When we prioritize the spiritual above the natural, we will be begin to be filled with the Spirit and there will be no room for the enemy.
Being in the word, in prayer, in obedience, in fellowship with other believers, in praise, etc. on a daily basis and inviting God’s Spirit to fill us is the process for being filled. When we fail to do so, we begin to create empty places within us that invite the enemy…either invite him back or invite him in the for the first time. In the arena of spiritual warfare, being casual invites disaster because the enemy is always seeking entrance to our lives. Because of that, we need to take inventory of what we are filling our hearts and our minds with.
In addition to applying Christ’s warning to individuals, he applies it to an entire generation. His words seem to suggest that entire cultures can be demonized when they have once enjoyed the presence of God but have since pushed God out of their culture leaving a huge vacancy for the enemy. In Jonathan Cahn’s book, The Return of the Gods, he makes the case that this very thing has happened to America and that our culture has been demonized so that the “insanity” we see all around us is because Satan has been given the reins to our nation.
Our situation is not hopeless but individuals or nations must begin to push out the enemy and his influence by displacement. When we once again begin to earnestly seek to be filled with the Spirit, that filling will push out the presence of the enemy. However, it is better to never allow the enemy in than to have to push him out later. So the question once again is, “With what are we filling our lives?”.
