The room is ice cold.

A teenage girl writhes in bed: eyes yellowed, voice guttural, speaking languages she never learned. Her mother sobs in the hallway. A priest stands in the shadow of the door, clutching a cross with shaking hands.

The walls start creaking and groaning under strain as the girl’s head spins in an impossible circle and piercing screams rip through the room.

The priest shouts prayers into the chaos, only to be mocked and battered by the demon in the little girl.

This was 1973’s The Exorcist. People passed out in theaters. Some fled.
Others swore they could feel something dark in the room with them.

By Hollywood horror movie standards, the Exorcist is tame now.
Cliché even.

Yet to this day, those images have defined what possession is for most people. Everything else feels mundane by comparison.

If you’re not levitating, growling, or projectile vomiting pea soup, you’re fine.

You’re normal.
You’re safe.

Here’s the truth:

If you’ve ever truly believed you were…

ugly
broken
unlovable
unwanted
irredeemable
unworthy
a lost cause

…then friend, you’ve been possessed.

Not the kind of possession that twists your limbs, but the kind that twists your soul while whispering:

“You’re disgusting.”
“No one could ever love you.”
“You’ll never be free.”

We’ve been trained to measure demonic influence by volume.
If it screams? Possessed.
If it whispers? Probably just a bad day.

Possessions can happen any day — not just to others, but to you too.

Let’s get this right straight out of the gate.

Modern Christians use two key terms when it comes to demonic attack:

Possession and oppression.

In Christian lingo, one sounds "crawl-on-the-ceiling" extreme.
The other is short hand for spiritual harassment.

In Scripture? We don’t really see that split:

The word for “oppressed” here in Acts and in many instances throughout the gospels is ”katadynasteuō”, meaning “to exercise harsh control over, to exploit, to use someone’s own power against them.”

That’s not merely harassment.
That’s domination.
It’s being overpowered and controlled by something, in this case, the devil and his demonic forces.

And when the Gospels talk about people being “possessed with a demon” directly? The Greek word usually used is “daimonizomai”, literally meaning “under the influence of a demon.”

This is why the same words are used for the man foaming at the mouth in Luke (8:36), for a fortune-telling slave girl in Acts (16:16), and in many more places throughout the New Testament.

Different words.
Same meaning.
Same goal: to twist your thoughts and turn you against yourself.

How does it happen?

Last week we talked about the tactics demons use spiritually — little goblin lawyers accusing believers under the Law. That might have made them sound formidable, but the reality is more mundane.

Demons aren’t creative.
Most are lazy.
Why waste effort when people hand them openings?

All they need is a whisper: an ember.

A lie here. An offense there. A bad reaction in a weak moment.
At first it smolders, hardly noticeable.
But leave it unchecked, and it begins to glow hotter.

Soon those embers spark into flame. A single thought hardens into a mood. A mood settles into a habit. A habit, left to itself, begins to take over the whole house.

What started as a whisper becomes a fire you can’t ignore.

Ridding yourself of demonic influence is far simpler than Hollywood would have you believe.

It’s not with theatrics.
Not with hype.
Not by pretending deliverance always has to look like a movie scene.

Rather it’s simple confession and repentance.

James writes it plainly:

And John adds:

To confess (homo logos) literally means “to agree with.” Confession then is the practice of dragging the influence, those embers, out into the light and calling them what they really are.

Once confession exposes the demonic influence, removal is in order. 

This means repentance: turning, reorienting, and then walking away from the lie and toward the truth of what God says.

Every time you confess and repent in Christ, you are stripping demons of any claimed right against you. You are walking out of darkness and back into light, letting the Light fill you up where the enemy once claimed ground.

That’s putting out the fire.
That’s cleansing the house.

That’s exorcism.

Possession isn’t rare or dramatic, it’s tucked into the quiet lies we overlook.

Every lie believed is a seed of demonic influence.
And every unchecked thought is an ember waiting to burn.
But every confession is a spark snuffed out.
Every repentance an exorcism.

You don’t need spinning heads or screaming priests to prove it.
You only need the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Confess.
Repent.
Rest.

Until next time,
Addison

PS: We’ve talked about how possession creeps in and how confession & repentance drives it out, but what about when it’s not just you?
What about when the influence is in someone else?
Next time, we’ll talk about the authority you carry in Christ to cast out those demons plaguing others too.
See you then!