While Anna was still very young, her parents took her with them as they ministered to the sick and demonically oppressed. For Anna, praying for healing and deliverance was a normal part of Christian life. However, in this story she shares an experience that ended in a disappointment.

Anna says…

From the ages of 12 to 18, I attended a boarding school in India. When I was 13, a new girl came to our school, and she became one of my dorm roommates. She was from a wealthy Hindu family. This girl was socially awkward and didn’t fit in with the rest of the girls. I am ashamed to say that I, along with the other girls, bullied her in school. I was downright awful to her. 

There were five of us girls in a single dorm room. She would talk in her sleep at night, and she kept the whole room awake at night because of her sleep talking. One night she was sleep talking in different voices. I realized evil spirits were speaking through her, so I started rebuking them and commanding them to leave in the name of Jesus.

Rebuking demons was normal behavior for me because I had seen it all the time. I didn’t really think twice about it. If you encounter a demon, you rebuke it. It was the middle of the night, an evil voice was speaking, and I just went at it, commanding it to leave in Jesus’s name.

I had what I thought was success. Multiple demons were expelled. But the last demon was hatred and since I had been acting in hatred toward the girl, there was no way it would obey. The demon confronted me. It said, “You can’t cast me out because you don’t love her.” That was true, I had not been nice to her at all. 

The confrontation ended. We stayed in our beds, and she didn’t wake up. Well, maybe she did a little bit. She started whimpering. I prayed a prayer of protection and peace over the room and asked God to protect us. However, the encounter ended negatively because she was not set free.

The other girls in the room were terrified. They will probably never forget that event as long as they lived. They could hardly look at me in the morning, and they went and told our dorm parents.

The school authorities didn’t know how to handle the situation either. Rather than rejoicing in the attempt, although flawed, they sent me to a local pastor. I don’t think he knew what to do with me either. 

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Although it may have been normal for Anna, rebuking a demon when you are only 13 years old wasn’t normal for the school authorities, and they didn’t know how to handle it. 

What they could have done is sat with Anna, praised her for her courage, asked her what she learned, and asked her to think about what she would do differently in the future. In addition, if the relationship was trusting enough, they could have helped her to work through her own issues of shame that led to the bullying behavior.

What do we learn?

That’s the story, what can we learn? I see three lessons, maybe there are more.

1. Even children can drive out demons! Anna was barely a teenager, yet she successfully commanded demons to leave. And at least some of them obeyed. Deliverance does not depend on our age, theological education, or whether we have been ordained by the church.
2. The church needs to know how to deal with demons. It is unfortunate that the adults in this story didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t minister effectively to Anna, nor could they help the girl who was demonically oppressed, nor were they able to assist Anna’s roommates to process their experience.
3. If we are not living according to the principles of the kingdom of God, we lose access to the power of God. Anna didn’t love this girl and so she couldn’t drive out the spirit of hatred. Perhaps the same kind of thing was going on when the seven sons of Sceva couldn’t deliver a heavily oppressed man (Acts 19:11-16). Let’s live as a member of the kingdom of God ought to live!

Post your comments at the very bottom of the page if you have any thoughts on this story.

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