GOD REMOVES THEM - PRICKS
AND THORNS
When we face challenges
and battles, we must remember what Ephesians 6:12 tells us:
“We wrestle not against flesh and
blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
places.” Every negative thing that happens to us is, in some way, connected to
negative spiritual forces. They either live inside of people or hang out around
them to influence them to act in adversarial ways towards other human beings. Only
God can remove some of the demons that like to plague us.
My friend Janelle
became a leader within a weight-loss group. Members started going to her for
counsel and encouragement. She grew to a
position of respect and notoriety because she had an anointing of the Lord to
help these people. Cherise envied Janelle’s popularity and began to mutter
remarks under her breath whenever Anne offered up a suggestion. Cherise managed
to turn even the smallest conversations into a competition between them.
Janelle was getting
badgered by constant verbal stabs, and she was tempted to fight back. But by
the grace of God, she realized this battle was not worth fighting by the five
senses. The situation needed a touch from the supernatural.
As we grow spiritually, we
learn to recognize how particular devil spirits present themselves and operate.
Then we find a similar situation in the Word of God and find out what God says
to do about it. Each kind of demon exhibits unique characteristics. But God
tells us: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9). Once we see the
operation of a certain kind of demon and we’ve read about it in the Bible, we
will recognize it much more quickly.
The Bible calls the ones
that attacked Janelle, “thorns,” and “pricks.” Numbers 33:55 says: “Then it
shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in
your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye
dwell.” The Hebrew word for “vex” is “tsarar,”
which means to besiege, shut up, afflict and oppress.
Where it says they attack
you in the place you dwell, it means that you are in a good place. Biblically,
in this verse, the word “dwell” means that a person is settled nicely, at ease,
and prospering where God has led them. Satan gets so angry and jealous that he sends
prick and thorn demons to wrestle us out of God’s blessing places. The demons
poke at us, stab at us, and try to get us distracted or, even better, into a
fight.
Joshua
23:13 says the following about this kind of demon: “They shall be snares and
traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes until ye
perish from off this good land which the Lord your God hath given you.”
Judges 2:3 says: “They
shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.”
We find a great example of
these spiritual thorns and God’s solution to getting rid of them in Second
Chronicles 20. King Jehoshaphat was a good king. He and all his people were
prospering and enjoying God’s blessing. They had come up out of Egypt and
didn’t bother the kings or people of Ammon, Moab, or Mount Seir. But now that
Jehoshaphat was doing so well and had such a good reputation, these three
armies were jealous, and they gathered a great multitude to come and destroy
Jehoshaphat and his people and take over the wealth.
Jehoshaphat was challenged
to a fight, but he didn’t know what to do. He recognized the enemy and, though
he won many battles in the past, in this case (as in any situation with
spiritual thorns and pricks) God’s solution was not to fight.
If we try to fight these
pricks and thorns, we will lose. This kind of spirit can only be taken out by
the Lord Himself. God spoke to Jehoshaphat and the people through Jahaziel:
“Thus
saith the Lord unto you, ‘Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great
multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s. Ye shall not need to fight
in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the
Lord’” (2 Chron. 20:14-17).
The people prayed and
praised God and the next morning when they came to the watchtower to see what
was going on: all they saw were dead bodies. The three armies had attacked and
killed each other so that not one enemy was left alive. Not only had God
allowed the armies to wipe out each other, but all the stuff they’d brought
with them became rich spoil for Jehoshaphat and his people.
In both Joshua 23:13 and
Judges 2:3 where spiritual thorns are described, God’s solution was that if the
people looked to Him, He would be the one to drive those people out who had
been operating under the influence of thorn demons.
In New Testament times,
the Apostle Paul also encountered these spirits, and God showed him how to
handle them—in the very same way as Jehoshaphat. Second Corinthians 12 has that
record.
Paul was on the high road.
He was getting surprising spiritual revelations and was able to help so many
people, but then came “a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet
me” (2 Cor. 12:7). The dictionary defines “buffet:” “to hit with the fist, to
beat back like waves hitting a boat, to punch, slap, or force its way by
struggling or hitting.” A buffing wheel is used for polishing. We have the
phrase “polish him off,” meaning to kill him.
The ultimate goal of the
thorn and prick spirits is to kill the believer’s anointing, his talent, his
notoriety, his joy of dwelling in a good place. And they often do it by constant stabbing,
“thorns in your eyes” (repeatedly being annoyed by what you see), or being continuously
pestered by voice, choice of music, physical or emotional constant attacks to
your soul.
At the time of Paul’s
attack, he was being exalted because of the way God was working in him to
minister, just like God works in each of us to bring us into positions of honor
in areas where we spiritually excel. Paul prayed three times to get rid of it.
Paul was no slacker when it came to praying, but somehow, he wasn’t getting
God’s answer. I wonder if he maybe thought he could fight it like we sometimes
think.
But
the Lord told him, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made
perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). “Weakness” in the Greek means a lack of
spiritual power, which is what we saw with Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat realized he
didn’t have enough energy to go against such a spirit as the one he was facing
with those three armies. He needed God Himself to do it. The Lord Jesus was
giving Paul the same answer when He said, “My
grace is sufficient for thee.” In other words, let Me do this job.
The Lord wants “to shew
himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him” (2
Chron. 16:9). And with thorn spirits, all we do is look to Him to take care of
the situation. “Set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the
Lord” (2 Chron. 20:17).
Jealousy and ambition make
people susceptible to carrying these thorn and prick demons. They try to
provoke us to fight back. If we give it to the Lord instead and don’t fight
back with our five senses, the demons can’t get to us and the Lord gets rid of
them instead.
When Janelle was attacked,
her flesh wanted to fight, but she soon recognized what kind of spirit it was,
and we took the situation to God in prayer. We were inspired to tell the spirit
it couldn’t touch her, and it wasn’t going to get a fight from us but from the
Lord Himself.
Soon after that, we were
invited to go to breakfast with some of the people from the group, including
the girl being used by the thorn spirit. The Lord said, go, so we went. When we
got there, we could tell that the thorn spirit was gone entirely. The girl was
free from any devil spirit and acted normal. God removed the prick and thorn
spirit, and it never came back.
Love, Carolyn
QUESTIONS AND EASY
CHALLENGES
1. Describe a situation
you couldn’t handle at all without supernatural help.
2. Have you ever had
someone pester you like a thorn and keep poking at your nerves? Talk about it.
3. What kind of demons
have you learned to recognize? What do you use from your arsenal to make them
leave?
4. In Numbers 33:55, what
does the Hebrew word for “vex” mean?
5. Who in particular do
the “thorn” and “prick” spirits go after? HINT: the word “dwell” in Numbers
33:25.
6. What was God’s answer
to dealing with the “pricks” working in the armies that came against
Jehoshaphat?
7. Where in the New
Testament do we see another example of these thorn spirits and the weapon used
against them?
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