The occult: a gradual descent into darkness

United States (MNN) – Today we’ll finish telling you about *Emily and her journey with Set Free Ministries after life in the occult.

If you’ve missed her story up to this point, read part one and part two.

After being bed-ridden by a severe demonic attack, Emily knew she needed help defining truth in her life.

At her first appointment with Set Free, Emily thought she was alone in her story. “I was embarrassed to even say these things because, I’m sure nobody will understand, and I’m sure I must just seem like this crazy person who’s completely lost her head.”

Being able to talk to Christians who knew about the occult about was affirming of her sanity.

“This is a real thing, and the enemy does work this way,” she says. Emily realized if other people had gotten out of the occult, she could, too. She’s been meeting with two women from Set Free once a week and has been reconnected with the Christian community.

“I know the help that I’m getting is coming directly from God through his family and it’s so different than what I was involved in.”

She’s been able to learn more about the life she was involved in for the last decade, and how the enemy had taken advantage of her.

“It’s a long process, and I’m still going through it now. All of this unweaving of everything that I wove into myself,” she explains.

Emily is still healing, but she is grateful to be on the path to recovery. She’s also taken the courageous step to share her story in the hopes that it could help somebody else.

“Once you get in just a little bit, it’s a downward spiral and it’s very hard to get out and I know that I am very blessed and fortunate to be sitting on this side of it.”

Emily’s story points out a lot of things about our enemy.

• He offers false promises of excitement, purpose, and wholeness. Emily started on this path because she was looking for an answer to the pain she felt. She found the works of the shaman alluring at first.
• He uses isolation to trap people. Emily was already feeling alone because of strained relationships with people at her church. Satan used Emily’s new friends to enclose her in a world of lies while driving wedges from the very people who could remind her of the truth.
•  He twists God’s good gifts. Emily was called to be a missionary. If you remember, the shaman who drug Emily deeper into the darkness tried to use that gift to bring more people into false teachings.
• He’s a copycat. Satan promises things he can’t go through with. Emily says she witnessed healings in these groups that would result in the person healed getting sicker or having some other misfortune befall them.
• He’s a liar. Remember the vision of the angel Emily and her friends saw in the final meditation circle? Satan presented himself as someone worthy to be praised and worshipped—but he is the enemy of God and offers no salvation to his followers.

Words of caution

Knowing how our enemy operates is extremely helpful. And while we know God preserves us in our faith, it’s important that we don’t let down our guard.

Demonic activity with the willing aid of humans can take many forms—voodoo, witchcraft, Neopaganism, Wicca, witchcraft, magic, the occult, new ageism. These are all displeasing to God because it is serving his enemy.

Despite this truth, these things have become prominent themes in our culture—as entertainment, recreation, and even outright religion. Magic in particular has become a hot topic for Christians. Should we allow it in our entertainment? Strong arguments come from either side.

But Emily points out as with anything we take in, it’s at your own risk. She does not believe entertainment based on supernatural themes is healthy. She says if it’s not something pleasing to God, it can’t be good for us. Nor is it going to help us live a life of righteousness.
Emily says, “I mean, I don’t think that everyone who watches Harry Potter is going to end up deep into the occult, but those things are a part of their subconscious and it’s constantly reinforcing: those sort of practices are good, enticing, exciting.”

Constantly associating these themes with goodness gradually erodes the subconscious understanding that magic is actually the activity of demons. This erosion, the slow process of letting your walls down, describes Emily’s own experience with the occult.

“It happens very gradually. I don’t think anyone ever consciously wakes up and says, ‘I’m going to enter the occult now,’ I don’t think it ever works that way,” she says.

For anyone who is entertaining curiosity about any of the things mentioned in this story series, Emily says, “Know that dabbling will lead you down that path, and to understand where that path leads, and this path always leads to death and destruction. And then I would talk to someone—talk to someone in the family of God who understand the occult and get affirmation from them that that road leads to death.”

Equally as important as resisting that curiosity is replacing it with something else.

“Instead of just saying, ‘I’m not going to be entertained by witchcraft,’ you ask God to show you how he is so much better than that and focus on that and walking in the light and joy of Christ.”

A life’s purpose redeemed

As Set Free helps Emily untangle what has happened to her the last several years, she knows one lie was the cause of her accepting a bunch of other lies.

She started this journey by thinking there had to be another way besides Jesus. “That’s a lie. The blood of Jesus is the only way to salvation. And anything that veers off the path is a path of destruction.”

Emily’s desire to tell others about Jesus was twisted when she was in the occult. But now that she is once more living for Him, God is using her to once again spread truth. Right after her first appointment, Emily called a friend who was also in the occult. When she mentioned Jesus, he was astonished. It was the third time someone had brought up his name.

“He ended up driving three hours up to Set Free with his girlfriend and we spent six hours going through Scripture and they both accepted Christ, so praise the Lord for that,” Emily says. “I’m already starting to see how God is going to use me even in my brokenness to point the way to him and his Kingdom.”

You can pray for Emily during this time of healing, and that God would use her testimony to convict others dabbling in demonic activities and draw others back to Him.

If you would like to set up an appointment with Set Free, contact them here.

*Name changed for privacy