I had been asking God for further clarification on how to tell what thoughts are demonic, and how they are different from my own thoughts? Oddly enough it was around 4 AM, after a demonic dream, that God answered this prayer.¹ I have had many demonic dreams over the last several years. They are generally more vivid than other dreams, and when I wake up, I often see a dark cloud, which moves around my room until it fades or goes through a wall.

In this dream a man who is often cruel to me in real life, kept doing one thing after another to make me angry. Each time he would offend me, I would get a little angrier. This demonic temptation to lash out in rage ended when I spoke the truth in love and exposed his sin.² I told him he was not right to yell at me, because what he was asking was unreasonable, and I could not help the circumstances. I can’t remember any demonic dreams ending until I have either sinned, or resisted sin in a way that pleases God. For example, throwing my cell phone when I am tempted sexually, or in this case speaking the truth instead of yelling or getting violent. This ended the demonic temptation to give full vent to my anger, but I was immediately put into a new temptation about fear.³ I was in an end time scene, with a huge storm coming in, which was dropping milky white rain. I was trying to enter my house from the back door, when my aunt yelled from inside, that there were bear tracks around the house. This was odd to me even in the dream; I was literally thinking what a random thing to say. I have noticed that demonic thoughts are often so random that I will ask myself, how did I even start thinking about this? The next demonically inspired thought was that the bear was going to appear and attack me, so I should anxiously look around the yard and find it. But immediately after this thought, I remembered that in past demonic dreams, I needed to resist these fearful thoughts, and call for God’s help or bad things really would happen.⁴ I believe this thought came from the Holy Spirit.⁵ I began praying in the dream for God to help me and wake me up. I also resisted the devil by restraining myself from looking around the yard for a bear. As impulsive thoughts kept hitting me to look around the yard, I kept forcing myself to focus on prayer, frantically calling on God to help me. This calling on God and refusing to look around went on for about 15-30 seconds and then I woke up. I knew it was a demonic dream, so I looked around my room to see if I could see a dark cloud. Sure enough it was there, and after about 15 seconds it moved down a wall and vanished.

This dream reminded me of the impulsive thoughts I had been struggling with earlier that night, as I walked around a swamp praying. I knew God said not to fear, but I had that same impulsive type thought, where all the sudden it occurred to me that most people would avoid walking here, on this unusually dark night.⁶ I knew that this was not the time to think of how scary the swamp looked and how far I was from ear shot, but I had such a strong urge to envision and fantasize about scary things. Like, what if a man jumped out of the tall dark reeds on my right, etc. I actively started praying, and I quoted scriptures like, ‘I will be with you always; and I forced myself to visualize what it would look like if God was really there with me.⁷ Within 2-5 minutes of off and on temptations to fear, I was able to focus completely on prayer for other things, and not even consider fearful fantasies.

I believe God showed me the connection between resisting the devil and submitting to him in my dream, and doing this on my prayer walk, because I had asked for clarification earlier.⁸ It was much easier to tell which thoughts were demonically inspired in my dream, and this helped me see what types of thoughts to look for when I’m awake.¹

I used to wonder why Jesus said to the scribes, “why do you think evil in your hearts?”⁹ I didn’t have much success controlling my thoughts, so I wondered how can you just stop thinking about something. Through this experience it has become clearer to me what a demonic thought looks like, and what God meant by taking our thoughts captive, resisting the devil and submitting to him.¹⁰ Over the years I have also learned that the battle over our minds isn’t just fought during a temptation, but also before the temptation, by learning, practicing and hiding God’s word in our heart, so we know how to resist sin.¹¹ I have also learned the power of persistent and earnest prayer, which God promised to answer, just like we would answer someone who pleaded with us for help.¹²

①Romans 8:28 / Genesis 50:20 ② Ephesians 4:15 / Ephesians 5:11 ③Proverbs 29:11 / Isaiah 41:10 ④James 4:7 / 1 Thessalonians 5:17 ⑤John 14:26 ⑥ Isaiah 41:10 ⑦ Matthew 28:20 / Matthew 4:3-4 / Philippians 4:8 ⑧ James 4:2 ⑨ Matthew 9:4 ⑩ James 4:7 / 2 Corinthians 10:5 ⑪ Psalm 119:11 / Deuteronomy 31:21 ⑫ Luke 11:5-10 / Luke 18:1–8 / Matthew 7:9-10 / James 5:17