Whenever one particular demon manifested, all I had to do was touch the person’s forehead, and it would be in such great pain that it could be knocked out cold if I kept my hand there long enough. After being mocked by a different demon for a while, I picked up a guitar and began to sing a worship song, causing it intense pain.

Other demons have been caused significant pain or discomfort by looking into my eyes, by hearing good things declared over my participants, by having the participant be told to take back control of their body, or by being forced to say the name of Jesus. I’ve also had participants undergo demonic interference in their lives during deep worship sessions and while I’m preaching on the Holy Spirit—themes that seem to make them angry. Other standard techniques also bother them, like holy water, anointing oil, communion, etc.

If a demon starts creating resistance, I most often speak in tongues, causing it anything from annoyance to pain. I have found this to be the most constant technique I’ve used in exorcism because it seems to do an effective job of getting them to back off, even when they’re not manifested. Different kinds of demons have different kinds of weaknesses, but I don’t address weaknesses too often anymore.

When I first started doing exorcism, I greatly struggled to get a particular demon out of a participant. After I had tried everything I could think of, I resorted to the method that bothered it most, thinking that it would give up and leave if I did that long enough. But it held on, blurting out, “This is what I trained for!” I had been taught that there’s no such thing as demon abuse, so I kept with the tactic, even though I’m a pacifist. But then a few things happened that made me stop:

(1) Though I don’t make a habit of listening to demons, the worn-down demon said, “If you follow him, you shouldn’t do this.” As I began to think about the way that Jesus removed demons, I realized that he never did what I was doing. I wasn’t growing the fruit of the Spirit in me or my participant through these tactics.

(2) I realized that anger was swelling up in me. I drastically wanted this thing to leave and stop torturing my participant. I felt like I was resorting to demonic violence and anger in an attempt to remove a demon, and that felt wrong. Also, when I had sponsors help me with exorcisms, I sometimes saw their anger render them completely ineffective and unhelpful in assisting me. The demons were appeased by their angry reactions.

(3) After a long time of making demons manifest so I could address them, one day this command suddenly stopped working. As I sought the Holy Spirit for insight, I felt him say, “What you’re doing isn’t working, is it?” It was then that he helped me build the dreamscaping method of deliverance that I use, which helped me get to the root of the demon’s attachment and finally remove it for good. I’ve used this method ever since.

All of this being said, I’d suggest that resistance techniques should be used with reason. I generally use such techniques to simply keep demons out of the way. When a person finally breaks ties with a demon, the Holy Spirit will generally force it to leave immediately. Until that moment, little will happen. And even if you could get one to leave due to pain, you will have likely done your participant a disservice by not working with the Holy Spirit to figure out why it was there in the first place and taking them through the inner healing they need to keep it out.