“How are you getting away with all of these ridiculous attacks on my participant?” I asked the manifested demon.
After much resistance, it finally responded with a smirk. “If they believe us even a little bit, we can work with it.”
I’ve come to find this statement to be true over and over again—not only in my participant’s lives, but in my own as well. Lies are everything to demons. It is the fuel that keeps their machine running and their grip strong. Jesus recognized this, too, and made a non-apologetic mega-statement about it. He said that the devil “does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
We are all good at calling out the lies in each other, but we really struggle to see the lies in ourselves. This is because we back up our lies with real-life experience. Some of these experiences are, unarguably, exactly what they look like. For example, let’s say that we have a participant who feels like their parents hated them because, in all actuality, they had bad parents who did hate them. The participant’s demons will certainly champion this story as a real-life example of why the participant should hate themselves.
Truth is a Person
As a theologian, I’ve been trying to sort through these thoughts on truth and reality, and here’s what I would currently articulate: Truth is, first and foremost, a person (John 14:6). If your parents made you feel worthless and filled you with self-hate, then they have partnered with the devil and the father of lies to create an unreality for you. The Truth, who made the world and everything in it, designed the world to work in love, not hate. The pieces of evidence that fuel demonic untruth may have actually happened, but they are untruth nonetheless.
All humans are made in the image of God, not the image of lesser beings like demons. Demons tell us ungodly narratives in attempts to conform us to a lesser image. We must break from their thoughts, regardless of the evidence they give us for their untruths. When we place our identity in Jesus alone and his truth, sometimes the irregular manifestations of demons will weaken (though our thoughts will often rage more than usual in those times).
Leaving the untruth behind and coming to the Truth takes more effort than you might think because it requires you to relearn your identity. But letting go of lies and untruths is one of the most central principles of exorcism ministry. When demons were first cast out of me, it was because I finally decided to let go of my lies and ground myself in what Jesus says. I can tell you it’s much better on the other side. Come join us?
The Exorcist's Bestiary 
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