Responding to a Controlling Spirit

total word count: 291

Original Art by Altair4444

A person under the influence of a controlling spirit will love you only to the extent that you’re willing to be controlled by them. If a person will only love you when you are like them, when you agree with them, or when you’re willing to follow after and praise them, this person is under the influence of controlling spirit and if you continue in this relationship, this spirit is likely to gain control over you.

You can see these spirits at work in the way they try to control the behavior of others. Their agenda is to create uniform behavior and they meet non-compliance with punishment or shame. They discredit and slander in an attempt to create fear so people will conform to their expectations. A controlling spirit will gather others against you. By spreading gossip it polarizes and splits people into groups that hold enmity toward each other. It is destructive in all that it does and it will stop at nothing to get its way.

The shield that guards our hearts against the work of the all such spirits is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Our defense is cultivating love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness, and long suffering.

Since the goal of a controlling spirit is to manipulate people into following rigid patterns of behavior, the best way to defeat them is to demonstrate  freedom as it is expressed through love. We need not come under the influence of any other kind of spirit. For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and controlling spirits are disempowered by freedom.

(I first found this message posted by an unknown author. I’ve modified it from the original version.)