When Demons Tell Our Story: Why Wounds Are Their Favorite Language

The battle for souls is fundamentally about who gets to write our story.

From Eden to every exorcism in history, demons have wielded only one real weapon: suggestion. They can't create anything new, and they can't force the human will. What they can do—and do with surgical precision—is whisper a distortion so plausible that we begin to narrate our lives through it.

That's how they work: not by overpowering us, but by persuading us. Not by raw strength, but by story. Not by force, but by the slow erosion of truth until lies feel like reality.

Suggestion: The Oldest Strategy

Genesis 3 remains the prototype for every demonic scheme. The serpent doesn't tempt Eve to worship him or even to hate God outright. Instead, he does something far more insidious—he reframes God's heart:

"Did God really say…?" "God knows that when you eat of it... you will be like God."

Notice the genius: it's a suggestion wrapped in partial truth. It presents God as withholding, Eve as incomplete, and disobedience as the path to wholeness and enlightenment.

From that pivotal moment forward, every demonic scheme operates on the same engine: manipulation through distortion. The playbook is devastatingly consistent:

• Identify a wound, insecurity, or unmet longing

• Offer an interpretation that feels protective, logical, or even virtuous

• Repeat it until it becomes the lens through which all reality is perceived

The devil has no creative capacity—only the ability to bend truth until we forget what it originally looked like. His suggestions don't sound evil; they sound reasonable, even necessary for our survival and protection.

When Wounds Become Worldviews

Wounds aren't merely moments of pain—they're the places where a story gets written about us, often without our conscious participation.

Abuse whispers: "You are worthless."

Abandonment declares: "You are truly alone."

Betrayal concludes: "No one can be trusted."

Rejection insists: "You are fundamentally unlovable."

Over time, these interpretations stop feeling like interpretations—they crystallize into what feels like reality itself. They reshape our self-image until we can no longer see the image of God in which we were created. The wound becomes a lens, and the lens becomes a prison.

This is precisely why the demonic attaches so readily to wounds: wounds already carry a narrative. If that false narrative can be preserved and reinforced, the enemy doesn't have to actively fight us—he only has to keep us convinced of the lie.

But here's where God's redemptive strategy reveals itself: He doesn't always remove these arenas of suggestion immediately. Like a master surgeon, He allows them to surface, to provoke, to sting again—not to condemn us, but to create opportunities for exposure and healing.

Think of it as divine exposure therapy. The lie is brought to the surface so that truth can meet it directly. The very place where the enemy attempts to manipulate us becomes the stage where God reclaims us.

What defines you determines what you can receive. If my core identity is "unwanted," then authentic love will feel suspicious. If my identity is "unsafe," then intimacy with God will feel threatening rather than healing. The very thing I need most becomes the thing I resist most.

The Gospel as Counter-Narrative

This is why the Gospel is not merely information—it's transformation. The Gospel is a story, but it's not just His story unfolding in history; it's the story that actively rewrites ours in real time.

Our wounds came from being devalued.

His wounds are the eternal revelation of our value.

When divine truth encounters our lives, it doesn't argue with lies—it displaces them, just as light displaces darkness. You don't negotiate with darkness or convince it to leave; you simply turn on the light, and darkness has no choice but to flee.

Deliverance, then, transcends mere extraction—it's restoration. It's not just getting something demonic out; it's restoring the image of God in the person so that the lie no longer has a place to attach. The enemy's foothold crumbles when the wound's false narrative is replaced by God's true narrative.

This illuminates Jesus's promise in John 8:32: "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." The "knowing" He describes isn't merely intellectual—it's relational, experiential. It's encountering Him in such a way that His truth becomes more believable, more compelling than the lie we've been living under.

Authority flows from authorship. When God reclaims authorship of our story, the enemy's suggestions lose their power to define us.

A Ministry Moment: When God Uses Pain to Heal Pain

I once worked with a woman who had endured profound betrayal—the kind that carves scars on the soul. She understood forgiveness intellectually and had been taught it was the "right thing to do," but every time we approached the subject, something inside her recoiled with fierce resistance.

It wasn't a demon clinging to her as much as a wound protecting her: "If I forgive, it means justice will never come. If I let go of this anger, I'm saying what happened to me doesn't matter."

But here's where God's redemptive strategy revealed itself: He allowed the pain of that lie to surface again and again, until she couldn't avoid it anymore. That wasn't cruelty—it was divine love creating an opportunity for breakthrough. The wound was being exposed so the truth could finally penetrate and heal.

We didn't begin by commanding anything to leave or demanding immediate forgiveness. Instead, we started by reframing the story: forgiveness doesn't erase the need for justice—it places justice into the hands of the only One who can execute it perfectly. Forgiveness doesn't minimize the wound; it prevents the wound from writing the rest of her story.

When that truth penetrated her heart—when she experienced it rather than just understood it—something shifted. The "protective" wall of anger came down, and the oppression it had been unknowingly harboring had nowhere left to hide.

This is deliverance through revelation rather than confrontation. The enemy's power was broken not by louder prayers or more aggressive spiritual warfare, but by the simple, profound truth of the Gospel displacing the lie.

How to Let the Gospel Rewrite Your Story

1. Name the wound and its narrativeBe ruthlessly honest before God about the story you've been living under. What happened to you, and more importantly, what did it teach you about yourself, God, and others?

2. Discern the voice behind the narrativeAsk yourself: Does this voice reflect the Good Shepherd who calls His sheep by name, or does it sound more like the accuser? The enemy's voice always carries shame, hopelessness, and condemnation. God's voice carries conviction that leads to hope.

3. Find the Gospel counter-narrativeSearch Scripture for what God says about your specific wound. For every lie the enemy has suggested, there is a truth of God that directly counters it.

4. Invite Jesus into the memoryAsk Jesus to show you where He was during your moment of deepest pain and what He wants to say to you now. Often, He'll reveal perspectives that completely reframe the experience.

5. Replace the agreementConsciously renounce the lie you've been believing and declare the truth you're choosing to embrace. This isn't positive thinking—it's aligning with reality as God sees it.

6. Live as if the truth is trueBegin making choices that align with your new story rather than your old wounds. Let your new identity shape your actions, relationships, and decisions.

The Story That Sets You Free

In the end, this is not a story about our power to overcome the enemy—it's about the enemy's utter powerlessness in the face of Truth. The war was decided at Calvary. The devil was disarmed at the resurrection. But if we continue living inside a story that says otherwise, we'll experience bondage in the midst of our victory.

Deliverance is not about engaging in wrestling matches with demons—it's about replacing the devil's story with God's. Sometimes, God even allows the lie to rise to the surface, pressing on the wound until it becomes undeniable—so that His truth can meet it directly and heal it completely.

That's not cruelty. That's love refusing to let you stay bound.

It's the divine strategy of exposure, not to shame us, but to free us.It's God's relentless pursuit of every part of our hearts that still believes the enemy's lies.

Your history—no matter how painful, how shame-filled, how devastating—does not get the last word. His story does.

And when His story becomes your story, when His truth displaces the enemy's lies, when His love rewrites the narrative of your wounds, the enemy loses his only real weapon: the power of suggestion.

The truth has already set you free. The question is: which story will you believe?

Your wounds do not define you. His wounds do.And by His wounds, you are healed.

About & Connect

This post is adapted from concepts explored in my book "Big God, Little Devil: A Radical Shift in the Approach to Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance," available now. If this perspective on deliverance and spiritual warfare resonates with you, the book dives much deeper into these themes with additional stories, biblical foundations, and practical frameworks for living in freedom.

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