The Exorcist's Bestiary

“What does Jesus call you?” I asked. I felt the answer “worthy” rise up in my spirit as I asked the question. I patiently waited for a response.

“Loved,” the participant responded.

“That’s what I heard,” my sponsor remarked.

“And worthy,” the participant continued.

“And that’s what I heard,” I smiled.

I had another participant have a really powerful spiritual experience that revolved around the word “worthy” as well, but it was hard for them to accept. Indeed, the whole experience came to a grinding halt when they heard the word. “Only Jesus is worthy,” they responded in confusion, afraid they had stumbled into blasphemy.

But Scripture tells us otherwise, for Jesus calls his followers worthy. We may not be worthy enough to open the scroll in Revelation, but that is also true of every single angel in heaven as well. That does not mean we are therefore altogether unworthy.

We learn a lot of self-hate from religion. We call ourselves worms and dirty sinners. We talk about God as though he holds his nose around us—as though it is a chore for him to love us. We demean ourselves when we pray, hoping to gain a trophy for being the most self-debasing person in the room. We do this all thinking that it’s humility, when in reality it’s bondage.

When I went through my own exorcism, this was the view that I was called to repent of, for it’s hard to rise above a lowly view of self. God did not see me as a dirty worm, and this was not a pastoral view I would ever recommend others have of themselves. The Spirit asked me to renew my mind to the theology I teach—a theology of theosis, in which the Holy Spirit is perfecting me as I’m being metamorphosed into the image of Christ in the here and now. What good was that theology if I didn’t actually believe it or press into it?

In the Old Testament, repentance means to turn around and go the other way. In the New Testament, repentance means to radically change one’s mind. The Spirit was inviting me to do both: (1) “Stop walking with demons and their view of you and turn around and come to me;” and (2) “Stop hating yourself and start loving yourself like I do.”