YOU WON'T DEAL WITH THE SAME SNAKES AGAIN…

(To watch this word, go HERE.)

In this next season, you won't have to deal with the snakes that you've dealt with in this past season.

You won't have to deal with those same tests, those same battles, those same obstacles that came against you in your past season, if you learn the lesson.

If you rise up above the snake line, if you come up above the place that the enemy has been attacking you with the constant witchcraft and ground warfare tactics. If you allow the Lord to bring you higher, you won't have to keep dealing with them again, which is why I believe we've been in a level up season.

This has been a season God has wanted to retrain us in the weapons of our warfare. He's bringing us up higher in our intel. We've been foolish about warfare in the past, brushing it under the carpet, but God wants us to have a military mindset, discernment eyes on, and our gaze fixed on Jesus.

You won't deal with the same snakes that you dealt with in the past season.

"Yet if he is caught, he must pay sevenfold, though it costs him all the wealth of his house." – Proverbs 6:31

The enemy is a liar and a thief, and this has been a season that HE HAS BEEN CAUGHT... so many are realizing the source of so much pain and misery and wising up to the tactics and patterns.

Right now God is shifting the tide for the body of Christ who've been feeling like they are underneath the circumstances instead of on top of them, feeling like the dog under the table, and that is why God is bringing you up higher, showing you that you are seated in Christ in heavenly places.

God is realigning you to the truth that you are the head, not the tail, above only and not beneath, because the finished work of the cross and the blood of Jesus has brought you out of that place where you are underneath the enemy. You are over him. He is under your feet.

Make this your declaration today: The enemy is under my feet!

I want to highlight three different snakes that have been trying to come after your garden this season, what they represent, and how God is bringing you up higher above them.

Firstly, your garden represents your intimate life with God. It's your relationship with Him, your formation in Christ, your sanctification, the walking out of your calling, and the Holy Spirit comes alongside you as a comforter, a guide, and a gardener, and His job is to rid your garden of anything that shouldn't be there.

I want to invite you into this word rather than only reading it. You ready?

Pray with me right now: Holy Spirit, I give You permission to go into the garden of my life, my soul, and my mind, and remove anything that shouldn't be there that has been robbing me. I want freedom. I want wholeness. Guide me into truth. Finish what You started in my life, in Jesus' mighty name.

SNAKE 1 – THE FAMILIAR SPIRITS

The first snake is the familiar spirit. They're the ones in close quarters.

They're demonic spirits that attach themselves to people who are familiar to you, family, friends, because those people have given them access. That's why they're called “familiar spirits.” They get into close quarters with you and begin to manage, control, and manipulate your life.

They're the ones actually inside your garden, because they're the ones who are sometimes too close to see or discern and they hide in the places closest to you, because a familiar spirit can't hide out in a person who hasn't got access to you.

This is the snake that comes with betrayal. It's realizing you've been like a marionette on strings to people around you and you never realized it. It came in the guise of safety, protection, and love, but it was poison wrapped up in all of that, and it was robbing you.

"There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open." – Luke 8:17

Pray this: Lord, I don't know if there's any familiar access, but if there is, show me.

SNAKE 2 – THE MONITORING SPIRITS

The second one is the monitoring spirit. People ask me all the time, where are monitoring spirits in the Bible? To be honest with you, every single demon is a monitoring spirit. The enemy roams around like a lion, looking, watching to see who he can devour.

They're studying you, looking for your weak spot, watching for the right day, moment, and access point.

You wonder, “How did the enemy get in there?” He's been studying you.

Imagine your garden has big stone walls like the Secret Garden. These are the spirits sitting on the wall, or peering over it. They haven't quite got the access, but they're watching, and they don't want to be seen. They just want to get information from you and get it back to where it goes. They're assigned to watch, gather, report, and track your patterns in order to set traps for you.

These are sometimes operating in people who text you in certain moments and you're thinking, “why did they text me right then?” Have you ever had ten people you haven't heard from in a while all text you in one day?

People with past history, and your alarm bells go off, and in the past you've been foolish and told them all your business. Cut off access to this spirit.

"My enemies say of me in malice, 'When will he die and his name perish?' Whenever one comes to see me, he speaks falsely, while his heart gathers slander." – Psalm 41:5-6

They are the vultures on the side of your life, waiting for your demise. Be wary of them.

SNAKE 3 – WITCHCRAFT FROM A DISTANCE

The third snake… I'm just going to say it how it is for your benefit. They're Christians operating in witchcraft. They don't have access to you, they don't have your number, but they're still watching you, scrolling over your feed, harboring frustration.

Be careful of wounded people. I have a heart for wounded people, but when someone has given themselves over to it and doesn't want to be delivered, bye bye. Come back when you're ready to be delivered because I'm not going to allow that toxicity around me.

So the enemy will stir up the witches, the warlocks, the people in the church who use curses against you, even through religious prayers. It's the occult dressed up as Christianity, or sometimes just people straight up in the occult. They're coming at you from a distance, outside your garden, sitting there with their nasty, toxic words, releasing curses, warring against you.

"There is no divination against Jacob, no evil omens against Israel." – Numbers 23:23

"No weapon formed against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you." – Isaiah 54:17

A curse without cause has no place to land. You can refute it. You can wake up and feel the swirl and break it before it ever touches you.

And if you've been bitten by these snakes, you'd better deal with the snake bite. Because if you don't deal with the poison, you'll end up inflicting those same wounds on somebody else. That's why you keep coming before the Lord and releasing the pain, the woundedness, and the warfare you've been through to Him.

HOW GOD WANTS YOU TO DEAL WITH THEM

So how does God want you to deal with the snakes?

"Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom." – Song of Songs 2:15

Don't run and hide. Too many people run and hide from spiritual assignments when you need to be chasing them down, saying “no longer on my watch!”

1- The first thing is this: you're going to have to redefine access and proximity. This is a season God is wanting you to ask, who has access to your life? Who's got your phone number, and who shouldn't have it? You think, “well, I'm an unloving, terrible Christian if I don't respond to all these people.” Really? Or are you protecting yourself, protecting your anointing, protecting your family? What's more important: appeasing that person, or staying in the will of God and not being robbed? Ask the Lord: who are my people, and who aren't my people?

2- The next thing is, don't listen to them. Think about the serpent in the Garden of Eden. If Eve hadn't listened, none of it would have happened. But a lot of the time we want to listen to the serpent because we want to know.

Here's an example: Somebody has a problem with you. You know they've got a lot of stuff going on, but they send you a long message and you can't help it, you need to know what they're spewing at you. So you open it, and instantly you regret it, and you're in torment for days with those words resounding over and over. I've had the same thing happen to me, and the Lord said, “stop opening those messages. You know what they're going to have in them.”

Witchcraft is empowered by words. Information and words are the vehicle of witchcraft. That's why the monitoring spirits want your information– because it becomes a weapon against you. Don't sit down to a meal with the devil.

"Do not give the devil a foothold." – Ephesians 4:27

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." – Proverbs 4:23

Access and proximity is everything.

3- The last thing is in Acts 28. Paul was shipwrecked on the island of Malta, and while they were warming themselves around the fire, a snake bit him on the arm, and he shook it off into the fire.

"Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects." – Acts 28:5

The word there is apotinasso, which means to brush off. He didn't make a big song and dance about it. The snake was on his arm, and he just shook it off it into the fire. And the people saw that he suffered no injury. That word injury means inner malice, inwardly foul, rotten, poisoned. That's what witchcraft wants to do to you, but it had no power on him. They expected him to swell up, and he didn't.

You have that same authority. That's what God is doing, bringing you into a higher level of authority in this season.

"I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you." – Luke 10:19

ASCEND ABOVE THE SNAKE LINE

There's an altitude snakes don't want to climb to. There's no food for them up there, it's just a certain height they won't go beyond, and when there's a snake line in your life, the higher you go, where God levels you up and brings you to a higher altitude, the old warfare can't follow you there.

It comes out of a lifestyle. During the warfare, during the pressing and the crushing and all of it coming against you, you decided you were going to worship your way through it. And right now, God is releasing that same fight and fire back onto you.

The Lord is saying, “it's time to shake off the snakes.”

So many of you are feeling foggy-headed, confused, with witchcraft around you. I break it now in the name of Jesus. I break the witchcraft. Headaches, leave right now, in Jesus' name. I pray for a complete realignment, body, soul, spirit, and mind.

Lord, expose every one of those snakes. Expose the familiar spirits, the monitoring spirits, and the witchcraft around them. Every snake that's been trying to attack their intimacy, their destiny, their purpose, restore their gardens, in the mighty name of Jesus.

And to the one reading right now, that spirit of torment and lies that comes to you every morning and every late night, sometimes in the middle of the night, where you wake up in anxiety and crippling fear, cold sweats, in panic- that assignment is breaking right now.

Decree this with me: This assignment is over. Get off my life now in Jesus' mighty name. I take back my mind. I take back my nights. I take back my sleep and my rest. I renounce access and agreement with that spirit. I'm covered in the blood of the Lamb. I'm an heir through the blood of Jesus. I'm royalty, and I will no longer bow to that spirit that I have authority over, in Jesus' mighty name.

You're not going to deal with these same snakes in the next season. You've gone from swirly and foggy one day to clear the next day… never finding consistency because there was always another snake, another fox, always something trying to rob your vineyard, your voice, your family, your peace. And the Lord says, “enough is enough right now.”

You're coming up higher. You're coming up out of that place of constant bombardment and into a place of peace and authority over the very things that were once over you.

So say it: I'm leveling up. I'm coming up higher. The enemy is under my feet. I'm shaking off the snakes, in Jesus' mighty name.