by Del Hungerford

I've had 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.

The next day, I was about to step into the presence of God 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 then realized that there are NEVER conditions put on us before we can have discussions with the Trinity! I pondered it only a moment and then remembered that I can go into the Presence of God 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 God's presence FIRST. All I had to do was believe that I had to meet a condition first. And, that was the goal of the familiar spirit.

The discussion with my friends in that conversation 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.

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.

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 when 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.

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.

Conclusion

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!

Here are a couple key points to help determine if a familiar spirit is harrassing you:

• Familiar spirits always put a condition on something before you can get another thing. God never does that.
• Familiar spirits always focus on the negative side of any situation, request, or "whispering." It's the "what if this happens?" type of comment - as an example.
• Familiar spirits lie. It's a matter of stopping, taking a breath, assessing the comment, and taking it before the Father if you don't know for sure.
• If anything is presented that's contrary to God's character, it's a familiar spirit. 
• If something feels off, press the pause button. Wait until you have peace before entertaining a thought. However, if a thought comes from left field that you would not have of yourself, write it down and take it before the Father.

May you walk in total freedom from pain of all types and into your true destiny!

Del