DEALING WITH EVIL PATTERNS
An evil pattern is one of the most stubborn problems to deal with. To be frank, it is difficult to break the circle of an evil pattern. Once it starts it goes on until it has affected and ruined succeeding generations.
The scourge of an evil pattern plagues many people in Africa as well as in the western countries. Sometimes, it can span two hundred years or more.
An evil pattern is anything that is opposed to good patterns. Satan is the architect and the executor of evil patterns. Evil patterns are stubborn. They cannot be stopped by high-sounding doctrines. They can run through an entire family or community like an evil thread. The devil desires to keep an evil pattern intact. An evil pattern is introduced to make you turn back on God’s pattern. You will continue to suffer as long as you allow evil patterns to thrive.
For example, when someone is under the spell of an evil pattern of failure, every effort made will end up with the verdict of failure. Many hard-working people have been baffled by the problem of non-achievement. Spiritually speaking an evil pattern is very difficult to put an end to.
Generally, evil patterns are established in the spiritual realm. Many of the evil patterns that people grapple with today were put in place even before they were born. Unfortunately, many sufferers do not even know that an evil pattern is hovering above their heads. Many people have died and carried such evil patterns to their graves. Those problems can thrive until the victims get to a place where such issues are addressed and tackled through the power of aggressive prayers.
Is there an evil pattern in your life? This chapter will change your life and assist you to break stubborn yokes that are disturbing your peace, joy and well-being.
I wonder whether there is any African that is not battling with the problem of an evil pattern. For many of us, various patterns were established even before
our fathers were born. These evil patterns were put in place and sealed through very powerful covenants. Any pattern established through a covenant is a tough one. Unless something is done, generations yet unborn will continue to suffer and many mysterious things will continue to happen.
While solution-defying problems will be on the increase, mysterious mishaps will occur periodically. Evil attitudes and problems will trail one another. In Africa, when people say, “Like father like son,” they are making reference to the existence of an evil pattern. When men and women battle vigorously with problems like violent anger, compulsive stealing, an uncontrollable sexual urge, addiction to gossips, quitting at the point of achieving outstanding success, hatred for no just cause, denial of rights which others receive effortlessly, and other difficult problems, all these are clear indications that an evil pattern is working against the people.
Ignorance is no excuse. Sad enough, the ignorant suffer most. Ignorance will only prolong what you are going through. It is good to seek knowledge and freedom from the chain that has held you and Jour progenitors down for a very long time. Your freedom and deliverance begin with the knowledge of the fact that an evil pattern has been responsible for most of your attacks and battles. The issue of evil patterns is one that should concern every one of us. Even if there is no such thing in your life at present, you need to pray against it.
II Samuel 3:28 says:
And afterward when David heard it, he said, I and my kingdom are guiltless before the LORD for ever from the blood of Abner the son of Ner:
This statement was made because a captain in David’s army called Joab cleverly killed Abner who had come to favour David. David’s statement can be seen as a lamentation. Verse 29 says,
Let it rest on the head of Joab, and on all his father’s house; and let there not fail from the house of Joab one that hath an issue, or that is a leper, or that leaneth on a staff, or that falleth on the sword, or that lacketh bread.
This means that in the family of Joab, someone must be suffering from an issue of blood; there will always be a leper; deformity or poverty will also abound These are terrible words, which we shall return to later.
A pattern is an order, an arrangement, or a design. Therefore, a divine pattern is a divine order, a divine arrangement, or a divine design.
There is a big rule in the spiritual world, which does not change: All lives are patterned after something. Your life must be patterned after something; everybody must be patterned after a particular thing.
In I Timothy 1:16, we read this interesting Scripture:
Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.
Jesus is called a patterned Son. God Himself is a God of pattern. There are many instances in the Bible where God gives clear patterns.
It was God that gave the entire pattern for Noah’s ark. It was a strange ship, both in height, length and breadth. For God to give this pattern, He went into carpentry, construction, civil engineering, shipbuilding, and mathematics. He took Noah to a place of skill that man had never experienced. Noah spent 120 years building this ark after a pattern. It was part of the pattern that the window should not be by the sides but at the top so that whenever it was opened, it opened to heaven.
Also for the release of the children of Israel from bondage, God gave Moses the pattern for the Passover. They and their fathers had never heard of the Passover before, but the Lord introduced it. This means that if you were in Israel on that day, and God said, this is the pattern of the Passover,” and you said, “No, I have a better idea, I’d do it a different way,” you would certainly die. Or, if you left your house that night and said, “I have an Egyptian friend next door whom I’d love to see,” you were sure to die. Likewise, when God gave the order for a lamb to be killed, if you killed a cow, you were sure to suffer instant death, because that was not the pattern to be followed.
Also, God told Moses the pattern for the tabernacle. In Hebrew 8:5, God delivered the pattern to Moses with a severe warning:
Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was
admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.
If Moses built it in a different way, failure was sure to follow and he may end up killing himself.
The taking of the city of Jericho followed a pattern from the Lord, it was not subject to military analysis. “Go forth,” it said, “don’t talk, go round the place seven times, for seven days, and then shout.” This has never been written in any military book as a method of attack. It was a pattern from God. But if anyone thought this was a form of madness, and refused to do as God had directed, the city would not have fallen. God gave the pattern for the house of God where we worship, and from which we have never deviated. This is why some worldly habits can never fit in with the church.
YOUR DIVINE PATTERN
Is your life following the divine pattern for it? Is your divine destiny still intact or has there been an alteration? This is a serious question. What pattern is your life following? There are two ways to find out one’s divine pattern.
THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT. When you ask the Holy Spirit for an idea about your life, He will impart the knowledge of the divine pattern of your life.
BY UNDERSTANDING THE WORD OF GOD. When you begin to study the word intensively, your divine pattern will manifest itself.
Failure usually starts when there is no balance between what is revealed about your life by God and your experience When God says you are this, but you live your life some other way, failure sets in.
Disaster occurs when a person follows other patterns apart from the divine one meant for his life. If a person has departed from the divine pattern for his life, and keeps praying for breakthroughs, there will be no answer until he says, “O Lord, if I’ve been wrongly scheduled, rescheduled me,”
God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh but he decided that it was best for him to head for Tashish. As long as the boat of Jonah was heading for Tashish, there
was no peace in his life. In deliverance sessions, ministers try to help by probing to see whether there is a trend of a problem in a family lineage. For example, occurrence of the same problem in a person’s lineage is usually taken as the root of a problem.
EVIL PATTERNS
In some families, it may be that all first borns rarely live beyond 40 years. There may be families where people do not get married, or where at one point or the other in their lives, there is a problem of insanity. So, one way or the other, there is a pattern that some families follow. Sometimes a recurrence of the same problem, when closely observed reveals at its root a spiritual curse issued by somebody. Such was the case of Joab who was cursed by David.
That curse introduced a strange dimension of evil patterns. When first-borns in a particular family die below the age of 40, this is an evil pattern. Where there are ten mature but unmarried ladies in a family, this is an evil pattern. When grandfather, father, and brother died as paupers, this is an evil pattern. Likewise, a family in which all the men are alcoholic represents an evil pattern.
The occurrence of a particular evil pattern anywhere may wear a mask to confuse us. It may appear as if there was no pattern in place, or like a mere case of different unrelated problems happening without any pattern.
Upon careful observation, a confusing pattern emanating from the same source emerges. It was this kind of confusing pattern that David pronounced on the lineage of Joab. It was the same root of a curse, the same tree of a curse, but with different branches. For example, if all of a sudden during some military exercise on the parade ground, somebody falls down and dies, that person may be from the lineage of Joab. If a stray bullet suddenly hits somebody, that person may be from the lineage of Joab. Also, somebody may have just a small wound in the leg, which could have healed with a minor treatment, but if the person is from the lineage of Joab, because a curse is in place, he or she is sure to die of the wound.
A person from Joab may go for a simple operation like tooth extraction only for it to lead to complication and death, because there is already a curse on his lineage. The children of Joab may be constant victims of armed robbers, even
when they have nothing to be desired by any thief, because of the curse on the lineage of Joab. They may be victims of accidental bullets discharged from the gun of an unknown soldier. If suddenly somebody develops cancer and shortly is dead, he or she may be from the lineage of Joab. With time, the pattern may become so obvious that people start to ask questions about it. But when it is not so obvious, the pattern exists all the same.
Wherever such a pattern exists and all we do is cut the individual branches, this avails nothing, until we deal with the root. The enemy may establish an evil pattern that will be operating at different times and in different ways. The problems may not look the same. It may be a state of siege from different kinds of problems, but the purpose of the evil pattern is the destruction of the divine pattern in a person’s life.
The Bible says, “The Son of man goeth as it is written.” There is something in the Bible about your life. The book of Hebrew tells us that there is a book of records in which the pattern for everyone’s life is written. We must aspire to live up to what is written in that book.
When a person’s life continually follows an evil pattern then the person might as well say, “The son of man goeth as it is NOT written.” This means it is following another pattern totally different from what is written in the book of records for him. The purpose of such an evil pattern is to arrest, slow down, render inactive, or keep the victim under evil custody and stagnates his destiny.
If God opens your eyes to see witches and familiar spirits in their meeting, you will observe that they are always rejoicing because they always have an easy run in so many peoples’ lives. They have taken over the administration of many churches. They are doing extremely well while Christians are busy preaching to one another about elementary doctrines. No wonder we have not been making much impact these days. God’s generals a few these days. We only have a lot of noise makers these day sand those who are interested only in appearing on television. God is not looking for entertainers; He is looking for people to arrest the devil.
There is a wide witchcraft network seeking to terminate divine patterns and install evil patterns. Them is a department in the demonic kingdom called ‘The Affairs of Men’. Demons in that department are concerned with destroying divine patterns. Man is a spirit, living inside a body and has a soul. So, the
enemy realises that if he can destroy any of these three components he can make a mm’s life stagnant and destroy his divine pattern.
You definitely need to pray some serious prayers. Take a look at your life and try to set whether it is patterned after your mummy who married three husbands and, from the way things are going in your own life, your husband is about kicking you out, This means you are following a pattern that needs to be broken. Or, do you observe any evil pattern in your family that call for urgent action on your part? As already indicated an evil pattern exists in various forms.
Irresponsibility is a trend in some families. A self-will is another evil pattern common in some families, while in others it may be skin disorder.
Marital turbulence as an evil pattern manifests itself in family members below 20 who have children while still in the secondary school. Such a family, a 12 year old trying on her mother’s bra, and you are rebuking her, is certainly a waste of time as such a child is merely following the pattern already established for that family.
In some families, a lot of sexual immorality takes place, while in others the polygamous or the Jezebellian spirit rules the family. The husband hardly prospers and the wife ends up taking over the headship of that family, feeding and clothing both the husband and the children.
In some other families, it is depression, bad habits, unforgiving and argumentative spirit. In others, it is bitterness, making one member hold grudges against the other, even till death.
Careless indifference is the evil pattern ruling in some families; they do not bother about the Scripture or their prayer life.
Members of some families are a pack of gossips, always gossiping about one another and about their neighbours and friends. In some families we see a trend of confusion, while in others the people find themselves being abandoned by friends at their hours of need. They may always sweat and labour for their friends, but when they need help there would be nobody to assist them.
Some families’ are candidates for curses. If they visit their villages, someone gets annoyed and places a curse on them. They always collect curse that were not originally intended for them. In some other families, financial failure is the evil
pattern. Everyone, including the unborn baby, is poor.
Hard times, poverty, or farming with drudgery is the order of the day in some families. While other families practise mechanised farming, they are perpetually engaged in energy-sapping, soul- searing manual labour from dawn to dusk, often with nothing to show for it.
Laziness runs through some families. It flows through the veins of the members who simply refuse to work. This is an evil pattern.
This may also be the case in some parts of the country where men, addicted to alcohol, loathe any form of work, and the womenfolk work for them.
In some families, the pattern is idol worship, bad dreams and worry, while in others the members have a common history of wasted childhood. They spend the first 20 years messing up. Then, at the age of 40, they become serious and by this time, the female members are likely to have had about five different children for different irresponsible men.
In some families, the members go through what can be called satanic discipline which stems from lack of loyalty or faithfulness to satan who is their master.
EXAMPLES OF DISPATTERNED PEOPLE IN THE SCRIPTURES
Adam was a patterned son but the enemy dispatterned his life.
This made it necessary for a second Adam to come into the world. If the first Adam had not been dispatterned, there would be no need for the second one (Jesus) to come.
Eve was a patterned daughter who was dispatterened.
Cain was a patterned first son but was dispatterned by the enemy.
Esau, another patterned twin son, was dispatterened by the enemy.
The enemy dispatterned Reuben, another first son.
The enemy dispatterned Aaron, the first priest in Israel.
Balaam was one of the most serious prophets in the Bible but the enemy
Saul was a patterned king; the enemy dispatterned him.
The enemy dispatterned Solomon, another patterned king.
The enemy dispatterned Judas Iscariot, a very clever and brilliant patterned disciple.
The enemy dispatterned Annanais and Saphira, a patterned couple.
Demas would have been one of the apostles, but the enemy dispatterned him.
In all these cases, the enemy allowed sin to enter into the hearts of the individuals. When sin enters into a heart, it becomes rebellious. When a person conceives rebellion, it becomes witchcraft, and the spiritual power of witchcraft takes over and the victim thereafter follows an evil pattern which enters into the gene for transmission to the offspring, thus becoming a generational problem.
ENTRY POINTS FOR EVIL PATTERNS
The three major entry points of evil WITCHCRAFT MANIPULATION. Allwhen the enemy wants to dispattern a strategies.
patterns are SIN, CURSES, and these dispattern a person’s life. And person’s life, he employs various
FAILURE TO LOCATE ORIGINAL PATTERN. He makes a person ignorant of whom he should be and he can hardly become whom God wants him to be.
THE ENEMY CAN RELOCATE THE PERSON FROM THE PLACE OF THE ORIGINAL PATTERN. For example, many people have this funny belief that unless they travel out of their country, they can never prosper. God may be telling them to proceed to Abakaliki where His blessings await them but they would be struggling to travel to America.
Likewise, there are some people who should be prayer warriors in a living church but whom the devil has lured into some big but empty church post elsewhere. There they are busy taking minutes, carrying files while the minutes of their own lives are steadily wasting away.
THE ENEMY CAN INTRODUCE A FOREIGN BODY INTO THE
PATTERN OF A PERSON’S LIFE. For example, by divine pattern some
people are not meant to smoke cigarettes at all. The day they smoke cigarette their life gets dispatterned. Also, some people are not meant to consult any herbalist in their life. From the day they do so, their life becomes dispatterned. This means that there are certain things allowed for others but which a particular person must not venture into.
By the pattern the enemy has given to some, they are prostitution incarnate and no matter how much prostitution they engage in, even without the use of contraceptives, they would never become pregnant. Others, at first attempts, get pregnant no matter how careful they are. It is because prostitution is not meant for them, and once they try it, and get pregnant, the devil kills the child, thereby altering their pattern by smearing the blood of an innocent child.
So, when something is not in your pattern and you engage in it, you will easily get into trouble.
LACK OF INTEREST IN YOUR DIVINE PATTERN. Sometimes the enemy makes a man’s divine pattern unattractive to him so that he seeks after a pattern not meant for him. The devil uses this to disrupt the person’s life.
WRONG MARRIAGE. When a person gets married to the wrong partner, his life becomes dispatterned, unless God puts it together for him again.
This reminds me of a brother who wanted to work for God. He was a healthy, strong young man and highly anointed. When he was about starting his ministry, he prayed. It was also his desire to marry before he started the ministry, so he chose a beautiful singer in his choir and put this into prayer. God’s response to this threw him off balance. God told him that if he really wanted to know whom his real wife was, he should think of that lady with tuberculosis who was always sitting and coughing by the door and had the habit of occasionally fainting in the church – that was his wife!
It was a hard decision for the brother. He argued with God for some time but being a fellow who loved listening to God, he went ahead and proposed to the second girl and asked her to go and pray about it. To his surprise, the lady said this was not necessary. Somehow, they got married. It was as if the marriage was the medicine the lady needed for her problem. Soon after the marriage, the tuberculosis disappeared! She rapidly regained her weight and became an aggressive evangelist. Meanwhile, the lady the brother intended to marry
originally got married to another man but, two months after, she died.
THE ENEMY COULD DISRUPT THE EXISTING PATTERN.
THE ENEMY COULD REPLACE THE DIVINE PATTERN WITH A FAKE ONE THROUGH THE POWER OF WITCHCRAFT.
A lot of people are endlessly battling with evil patterns without knowing it. Others know that the pattern that their lives follow is not the one divinely ordained for them and they are busy analysing how they got into it, and the way out of it, but with no real power to break out of it.
I ministered to a prostitute some years back. She came to me in tears to narrate how she was married to a man who had died, and after which his relatives came an carted away all his belongings. Left penniless and hungry, she had nowhere to go hence she went into prostitution. I advised her to go through deliverance after which she could get help. She got a breakthrough and carried on smoothly for a while. Soon after, however, she disappeared from the church. Later, we found her once again – but under a bridge!
Then, we were not as spiritually knowledgeable as we are today. So we took the trouble of asking her about her mother. “My mother?” she replied, hissed and said, “Well, she’s somewhere at Ajegunle, running a brothel there.”
From this it can be seen that all that happened to her, including the death of her husband, was meant to make her follow an evil pattern.
It may be that you had a weird father whose pattern your life has not followed. This, however, should not lure you into complacency for the Bible says, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed, lest he falls.” Taking heed saves you from sliding into your weird father’s life pattern. I have seen people, even ministers of God, who stood firmly for 50 years after which they backslide into sin. An evil pattern had existed for them to follow knowing it.
Peer groups inform some evil patterns while their level of comfort guides others so that the moment they reach a certain level of comfort, an evil pattern comes into play in their lives. If you observe that your life has been full of incessant torments that deny you of your divine benefits, then know that you are under the control of an evil pattern. And if no matter how you pray, unrepentant and stubborn household enemies remain unrepentant, there is an evil pattern in
Or if you are a victim of intensive marital turbulence, and bedevilled with ‘almost there’ anointing, or the spirit of Pizgar; or you’ve noticed that your life has been converted into a material for testing the weapons of the enemy there is an evil pattern in place. Or if you’ve noticed that for the 20 years that you have been living in a particular house, you have made no significant progress and you have no money to get out; or you find that you have been fighting terrible wars in your dreams, there is an evil pattern in place.
Or if you have financial embarrassments or spiritual stagnation, and hidden and clever devourers eat away your divine benefits, or that your talents have been buried and those who wished to help you have disappeared an evil pattern is in place. Or if before you get anything done, you have to struggle and struggle endlessly and you are always enmeshed in a chain of problems, then you are under the control of some evil patterns.
Perhaps you have children working abroad but you are hungry. You always occupy the wrong positions so that whenever it is time for promotion somebody upsets your chance by issuing you a query. Perhaps untimely death, desert business, lame breakthroughs have been your lot?
Or, as a man with signs of God’s calling on your life, you notice that your vision darkens with time and you are unable to see or hear anything. Or there is ‘prayer paralysis’ at work or an evil diversion, with marks of hatred upon, and good things are fizzling out of your life; or that your pockets are leaking, people turn their back on you everywhere you go. You may have also backslided as a believer. All these call for a thorough self-analysis to enable you to determine if you are actually following your divine pattern or have been dispatterned.
SOLUTIONS
If you have been dispatterned, you have to go back to your original pattern so that God can bless you. If you are not in that original pattern, you are a ‘photocopy’, but God does not work on ‘photocopies’. He works on originals.
Many people are in the wrong jobs, doing the wrong things, going to the wrong places, and yet keep claiming the blessings of Abraham. But the question remains: Are they in the divine pattern? Are they going as ordained by God or as
household wickedness has patterned?
A troubled man was taken to a place noted for strong witchcraft in Nigeria. The place was taken to be the last bus-stop for his problem. However, there, the witches looked at him and said, “Well, the person in charge of your case is your grandmother. Unfortunately, we can’t help you because whenever we have any problem and take it to your grandmother, she solves it. So we are incapable of helping you.” The man ran back to Jesus.
But what should we do?
REPENT FROM ALL KNOWN SINS. The issue of repentance is a serious matter. Perhaps we should do so every day.
ASK THE LORD TO SHOW YOU YOUR DIVINE PATTERN TO ENABLE YOU TO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. For example, if you are
meant to excel as an air hostess but you engage in hair-care, you are following the wrong pattern.
PRAY TO VOMIT ANY WITCHCRAFT PLANTATION IN YOUR LIFE. For as long as the seed of witchcraft dwells in you, your life will remain dispatterned.
PRAY TO LOCATE YOURSELF IN THE DIVINE PATTERN.
This is not an issue to belabour. The truth is that if each and every one of us follows his or her divine pattern, nobody will be poor or lacking, or without power and fire. But when we are out of our divine pattern, their will always be problems.
This is why the greatest disaster that has ever befallen the blackman is polygamy. When a man gathers together up to 21wives, it means he has got under his roof the wives of other men, whereas God ordained just one for him. When he has packed so many women together the one that God has given him may even have been displaced. As he keeps jumping from one bed to the other, the enemy rejoices.
We also need to pray evil pattern that may exist in our individual lives out. We need to ponder these points:
This problem you must pray against, are you the only one having it in your family? Where is your father? Is he dead or alive, and your mother, too?
What sort of life are they living? What patterns have you noticed in their lives?
If they are dead, how did they die?
Think about all these so that you can say the appropriate prayers against any evil pattern you may have noticed in your family.
By doing this self-analysis, you may discover that in the past your family was very rich but suddenly became poor, and all the prosperous ones have been killed.
Perhaps you come from a set-up where immediately they build a house, the structure starts coming down.
How many husbands did your mother marry?
A curse was placed upon the head of Joab, that in his family, there must always be a poor person, somebody who is paralysed, a leper, somebody who must have an issue of blood and somebody who must die violently.
The enemy seeks to make all of us ignorant because he works better when we don’t know what he is doing in our lives. He has seen the original divine pattern for your life and has purposed to dispattern it. This is no time to negotiate with him.
PRAYER POINTS
- O God, re-arrange my life by fire, in the name of Jesus.
- Every inherited evil pattern in my life, be dismantled in the name of Jesus.
- Every pattern of darkness in my life, break in the name of Jesus.
- Every evil family pattern, break, in the name of Jesus.
- Every inherited evil pattern, break, in the name of Jesus.
- Every witchcraft pattern for my life, break, in the name of Jesus.
- O God arise and position me in my divine pattern, in the name of Jesus.
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