The Veil: An Invitation to the Unseen Realm

by Blake K. Healy

Think:

Look for good:

Talk to God: Everything we think and do should be done while in conversation with God. Anything we do outside the context of relationship with Him is a complete waste of time.

It is impossible to get anything beneficial from this book (or any other, quite frankly) without an intimate relationship with your Maker.

The presence of God attracts the hungry as well as the hurt. Tormented by demonic voices, some people would cry out and writhe on the floor while others would shout in unnatural tones.

This is a protection angel, here to guard my home.

It was as though I was viewing the spirit world through a thick layer of bulletproof glass. Any demon I saw was no more threatening than a caged lion at the zoo. But that all changed when I turned nine.

I started playing worship music at bedtime—Amy Grant tapes, if I remember correctly. It helped numb the sting of dread that left me paralyzed nightly, but it did little else.

The truth is that demons are more attracted by what you think than what you do. The deeper truth is that knowing who you are in Christ determines how you think. The only way to know who you are in Christ is to know what He thinks about you. That is to say, if you know what God has to say about you, then the lies of the enemy seem silly. This is the majority of what you need to know about dealing with demons.

Whatever the reason, the demon was attracted to her distress not because he wanted to tempt her to commit some sin but because he wanted to use that moment as an opportunity for accusation.

The demonic tries to hold our mistakes in the air as proof that we have failed as children of God. It’s ironic since Jesus came and died so that our inadequacies would no longer be capable of keeping us apart from Him. I think that’s why He tells us in 1 Corinthians 14:1 to pursue prophecy. If you know what God has to say about you, then it doesn’t matter what anyone or anything else has to say.

No one at the church saw things the same way I did, but being around people who were actively pursuing a deeper understanding of the voice of God made it plain that the prophetic they were describing was intrinsically linked with the things I saw.

Much to my surprise, this new openness marked an almost complete halt to my evening attacks.

After I made this discovery, it took a mere week for the demonic visions to end completely, and in that final week they lost their sting.

I believe that praying and speaking the name of Jesus, as I had done before this revelation, was ineffective against my demonic assailants because I was speaking out of ritual rather than authority. I only said, “Leave me alone in the name of Jesus,” and I sang, “God has not given me a spirit of fear,” because it was what my Sunday school teachers and parents told me to do.

Knowing who God says you are is just as important as knowing who God is.

I had attended church my whole life. I had heard that God loved me and had been told I was His child a thousand and one times in a thousand and one ways. But I didn’t connect with what that actually meant until I realized that God wanted to talk with me daily.

Jesus died so that you could be a coheir with Him. If you don’t believe me, read Galatians 4—the first seven verses lay it out nicely. Our Christian life is designed to be an expression of how good that truth is.

If you don’t know the truth of who you are in Christ and if you don’t know that you are seated in heavenly places (Eph. 2:1–7), then you are just a little boy shivering under his covers at night. But if you know what Jesus’s sacrifice has won you, if you know even a piece of what God thinks about you, then you have the answer to every problem that crosses your path.

For the most part, your spirit is quite adept at repelling attacks without your notice.

Now if you’re going to use your immune system as an excuse to eat raw meat out of a back-alley garbage can, you may be missing the point. However, if you’re living a life connected to God and making decisions that protect that connection, the demonic should rarely factor into your life.

I was never as bothered by Chuck after that. I felt as if I should say something to him, like there was a way to break the words that his father had thumped into his chest, but I never did. I was only thirteen, but even then it made me sad to see what one man’s words could do.

we hurt each other.

How these wounds affect you is, fortunately and unfortunately, entirely up to you.

I’ve met people who have let one idle word drag them into a dark pit of unforgiveness, bitterness, and self-pity, while others turn a past full of abuse and shame into a crown of glory by giving it over to the One who died to heal every hurt.

I was perplexed until I noticed that the demon was floating directly between my friend and the person she was prophesying to, causing her to see through the demon as if it were a filter. Seconds after I noticed the odd staging of the scene, the demon hovered into my line of sight, in front of the man.

This seems to be what happened to me in Malawi with David and Daniel translating.

Through the demon the man’s features were subtly exaggerated and twisted in sinister fashion. Even I began to feel a measure of contempt rise in my stomach.

I had to actively choose to connect with what God was saying about the man to keep the religious beast that was churning ...

It made me sad that even though she got remarried to a great man and had three wonderful children with him, that abusive relationship still left its mark on her life. Wounds that go untended skew our view, not only of those around us but also ourselves.

He sent His Son to die and erase our sins from the record.

Demons have no authority over you unless you give it to them. A demonic entity has no right to act in your life without expressed agreement from you.

Our fears, grudges, and wounds let demons in; and our fears, grudges, and wounds make it impossible for them to leave.

These pains and attitudes may seem insurmountable at times, and that is because they are. I’ve seen enough moldy bandages and porcelain masks attempting to hide deep-seated wounds to know that our own efforts at repairing the damages of life are tragically inadequate.

We need a love that is perfect to cast all fear from our lives. It is impossible to forgive the trespasses against us without the wisdom and comfort of the One ...

I’ve seen it happen. A blueprint has been drawn in your spirit, and you are in the process of building that perfect temple. You are the exact person God designed you to be, and you are also a work in progress at the same time.

I think some people believe we are in a process that leads to our eventual perfection, which most of us assume can’t happen until we die. The more time I spend talking to God about His people, the more I’ve come to believe that the process itself is perfection.

Your inner healing and spiritual growth are secondary to your relationship with God. It’s easy to get so caught up with trying to heal your internal wounds that you forget to build your relationship with the Healer. It is also easy to get so ambitious in the pursuit of gifts and anointing that you forget that your Father is the Giver. More often than not,...

Lies are the only real power demons have, and lies are only powerful if you believe them.

When you look for the good in every situation,

it’s hard for the devil to twist your perspective.

Think about your thoughts. Think about why you feel the way you do. Why are you offended? Why are you sad? Why are you mad? This gives God a chance to speak to you about what you’re thinking.

This is exactly what happens to me in many situations i find myself in.

Most importantly, make everything in your life part of your pursuit of God. A mind that is captured by the wonder of God has no room for anything else.

This woman wasn’t listening to demons, as some Christians believe of psychics; she was merely operating out of an irrevocable God-given gift.

Prophetic words and psychic readings are the same thing, if we’re operating solely from the gift and not using that gift from a place of relationship with God.

The light restored the woman’s gift, but it was her choices, wounds, or ignorance that had made it a tattered shadow of its original design.

This didn’t happen because my youth group was special. It didn’t happen because we earned it through hours of intense prayer or biblical study. It happened because we asked.

But the light that followed us wasn’t just something special that one time on that one day. When you’re a child of God, you change everything you touch.

This hole is an “access point,” a spot where the enemy can get in.

I have been stressed about money lately because that’s what happens when you’re the male half of a young married couple with a new baby.

That’s the interesting thing about demonic influence; it feels so real when you’re in the middle of it, but the moment you see it clearly it’s no more threatening than a papier-mâché bunny.