steve.hemphill.20240217

The Faith Moving Forward podcast discusses the importance of spiritual warfare and how it is often overlooked in churches. The guest, Steve Hemphill, explains that spiritual warfare is a real thing and teaches how to expose and defeat Satan and his schemes. The podcast encourages listeners to share this information with others to achieve victory in their lives. The conversation then shifts to Steve's ministry and how it has gained popularity through social media platforms like TikTok. Steve shares how he left a successful business to pursue ministry after a life-changing event involving a letter from his late father. The host also asks Steve about his realization of the reality of spiritual warfare and how it impacted his faith. Steve recounts a personal experience with someone who was experiencing demonic oppression and how it challenged his beliefs. Hello, my name is Kevin, and I'm with my co-host Beth, and you are listening to the Faith Moving Forward podcast. Spiritual warfare is one of those topics you don't hear preached very often in churches and many ministries. And as far as Satan is concerned, he's just fine with that, because the less you and I know, and the less you and I believe in spiritual warfare, the more havoc he is free to wreak in your life, your family's life, and those around you. Yeah, so true. In Ephesians 611, it says, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. Steve Hemphill and his ministry, Active Faith, are working hard to show us first that spiritual warfare is absolutely a real thing, and secondly, teaching us how to expose and defeat Satan and his schemes. We encourage you to share this podcast with family and friends, because the more we all know about spiritual warfare, the more victory we all will have, even in our day-to-day lives. Right. And with that, I want to say hello, Steve, and welcome, and thank you so much for being on the podcast. Well, hello, guys. I'm honored to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we have been a follow of yours for some time now, and we keep hearing more and more, and you're a regular show in my YouTube feed. Oh, good. Well, I appreciate that. They kind of talked me into doing that a few years ago. I started in 2021 with that, and I just recently found out it's being downloaded in 155 countries, so that's been interesting. Isn't that wild? Yeah, and you do a lot of the shorts, too, which I really like, because they're just so easy to consume, and they're power-packed. Yes, we started, I guess we didn't start that until this last summer. My board said, why don't we get somebody to help us with social media a little bit, and they put me on TikTok for the first time, and of course, TikTok really wants you to do those shorts. And it's funny, in, I guess, 10 years or so, or 12 years, I had 3,000 or 4,000 people on a mailing list that wanted to keep up with the ministry and what we're doing, and all of a sudden, with TikTok, in a few months, you had 40,000 followers just on TikTok. Wow. The first full month, in July last summer, we had 900,000 views. I mean, I was just blown away. Only God can make that stuff happen. Oh, my word. Yeah, that is for sure. That's amazing. Well, your ministry is very unique in what God's revealed to you and everything, but before I get into all that... Today's episode is brought to you from The Russell, a historic East Nashville church transformed into a one-of-a-kind boutique hotel. The Russell's mission is to give back to the Nashville community through their Rooms for Rooms program by donating a portion of your stay to local organizations who provide a safe haven for those experiencing homelessness in the Nashville community. Visit russellnashville.com to book your stay today. I know you walked away from a successful business, and you were a businessman, and it was doing well, but there came a point when you left the secular world and your business and went into ministry. Can you tell us the story of how that all came about? Yes, that's a pretty wild story. You know, I had a marketing degree, even though I went to a Bible college, I got a marketing degree. My dad had been a minister much of his life, but also a coach and a teacher and even a missionary for a while, so I was around a very godly dad, a godly parent, and I started my own business. Me and my father-in-law started a business in 1982 as a technology company, and it had grown and done well, and my forte was marketing. I had kind of a marketing degree and an interest in sales and marketing, so it fit my interest in what I was doing. I felt like I could do that and then take off when I wanted and do church work or missionary trips or whatever, so it kind of fit my desire to honor God and also be a businessman and make money to donate back to the church and to ministries and missions and stuff. So I was very involved with that, and in the summer of, I guess I did that for 30 years, but the summer of 2000, my dad passed away very unexpectedly and suddenly with a heart attack. He was the mayor of a small town I grew up in, in Central Texas, and my little brother and I were looking for the will, and he had this huge, heavy-duty safe in the back of his office, this old building, and Mom gave us the combination to the safe, and we started digging, looking for the will. We opened that thing, and the first thing we found was a thick-sealed envelope from Dad addressed to me and my brother, and on the outside of the envelope, Dad wrote, If you boys find this after I'm dead, do not open this envelope. It is not important. Destroy this envelope without opening it, Dad, and it was signed and dated a few months before he died very unexpectedly. So I don't know what you would do with an envelope like that, but we struggled and had a hard time deciding, but finally came to the conclusion that since there's a resurrection and we're going to have to face Dad again, the next time we see him, we wanted him to be proud of us. We didn't want to have to hang our head and say, Sorry, Dad, we disobeyed you, so we burned it without reading it, and that envelope, which we don't know what it said, changed both our lives. My brother sold his business and went back to college, got a Bible degree, he's a minister now in Arkansas, and I walked away from my technology company and wrote a book on heaven first, and then I have five others on spiritual warfare, six books in all, and I think I'm right where God wants me to be, but it wasn't where I thought I would be, and obviously my wife thought I had kind of lost a few brain cells somehow in that process. I was going to ask you how you broke that news to her. Yeah, that wasn't as difficult as the day that somebody attacked me in my living room and tore up the house and did $42,000 damage in four minutes, and I had to call her at school and say, Honey, the house doesn't look exactly like it did when you left for school this morning. That was a little harder, but she took it well both times, and we've been married 44 years this summer. Wow. Good for you guys. That's awesome. When did you realize that spiritual warfare was a real thing and something the body Christ was lacking? That's a great question, because I was not just unaware, I was antagonistic toward that idea. I was trained to believe that that only happened in the first century. Of course, in Jesus' time, remember, he didn't do many miracles in certain places because they didn't have faith for it, but if you told them that, they would have argued and been upset. They would have said, We have faith, we're children of Abraham, but that stuff only happened in Moses' time. That doesn't happen today in Jesus' time. So we're, I think, making the same mistake today. God's not the great I used to be, he's the I am, because that's the continuing action form of the verb. So anyway, the moment for me was when I was writing my second book, Prayers Satan Hates, and I was going to share prayer success stories from all my years in business and the difficulties we faced and the prayers we prayed and how it turned out and verses that went along with it. I just wanted to share encouragement with people, but I prayed that God would give me something unique and special to put in the book that would really help people, and boy did he ever. And it wasn't what I expected, but he, right after I prayed that prayer, God had somebody call me. It was a Christian friend of mine I've known for years, and he said, Steve, is it true your next book is on prayer and spiritual warfare? And I said, Yes. Why? He said, I've got a buddy, he's not a Christian. I love this guy. We hunt together. Our kids are friends. But he's mad at God about some things that happened a long time ago, and I can't make any progress with him bringing him to Christ. But right now he has a spiritual warfare problem, and I'm thinking this might be our chance to convert him. Would you be willing to talk to him if I set up a meeting with you and him? And I said, Sure. I don't know if I can help. I don't know what the problem is, but I'll be glad to talk to him. So he sets this up, and I'll meet this guy, his real name is Bob. We called him Bill in the book. He wasn't really ready to come out with his real name at first, but he is now, and he's done a video. It's on our website. I'll tell him his side of this experience. But I met him, and I said, Bob, what's wrong? What's your spiritual warfare problem? And he looks at me dead serious and goes, I have demons on my property, and I'm getting ready to commit suicide. I just wanted to talk to you first. Oh, my goodness. And you know, I never heard that, and in fact, I'm not sure he's not just hallucinating, because I was trained to believe that doesn't happen today, and so the only thing that was such a struggle for me, not just the idea of that, but the fact that he's serious about it, he is going to kill himself, and so even if it's hallucination, you know, I've got to come up with something. I'm just, Lord, what do I say? I mean, he's talking. He's telling me all the reasons why he thinks he has demon problems. He's hearing voices. He's having nightmares. He's having betrayal. He's in financial problems. They're having problems with electricity in his building, in the business, but they can't find the source of it, and weird smells there. I mean, it's a long list of weird stuff, and I'm sitting here while he's telling me all this stuff, praying. I'm praying, God, what do I tell this guy? How do I help? He's going to kill himself, and when I prayed, a strange verse from Deuteronomy 6 popped in my head. You know, of course, I'd read it. I'd read the Bible through many times, but I couldn't have quoted it to you if you'd offered me big money, and all of a sudden, I could see the whole verse in my head just as plain as day. I think it's verses 6-8. It says, you're living in a land that's full of evil, so be sure and put my word on your gates and on your doorposts. Now, the Jews took that literally. They didn't say, oh, that's just symbolic. That'd be silly to do that literally. They didn't do that. They literally did it. It's called a mezuzah. They still do it today. It's Bible verses in a small box, and obviously, it's not a magic box. It's a symbol of a connection to God, a reminder that God is here. He cares. Right. And so, when that verse came to mind, as soon as I prayed, I thought, how does that help? And then it sort of clicked. So, I interrupted Bill. He's still talking. Bob. Go ahead, Bob. I said, Bob, don't kill yourself yet. Try something bizarre. I mean, the Bible's full of bizarre stories. There's falcon snakes walking on water, resurrection. Let's take some pen sticks and write Bible verses all over them and hammer them all the way in the ground on the four corners of your place where all this bad stuff is happening. Let's read the verses out loud together and pray that it'll stop and see what God does. Obviously, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm grasping at straws trying to help a guy who's about to kill himself. And he said, okay, I'll try anything. So, we did that together, and some strange things happened. I don't have time to tell you the whole story. He became a Christian the next week and wanted to be baptized, and he prays for me every day. Wow. Now, this was a life-changing moment for me because I struggled to believe that this was real. I mean, I argued with God about this. I kept going back to the Bible saying, this should not help. This should not happen. What's going on? And what I started to notice was all through the Bible, it never says you need to pray harder. But it does show prayer plus action all through the Bible. Prayer plus blood on the doorpost. Prayer plus piles of stones for altars. Prayer plus picking up the ark before you cross into the Jordan, and when our feet touched it, that's when the water parted. Prayer plus touching the hem of the garment of Jesus. Prayer plus marching around Jericho. Prayer plus oil. And I started to realize prayer plus action is the normal thing in Scripture, not the exception to the rule. That's why this is helping. And so I began to grapple with that. And then to further confirm it, a few days after that happened, my wife is a retired teacher now, but she was still teaching at the time when this happened, that a friend of hers called and said, is it true Steve's writing a book on spiritual warfare? She said, yeah, why? The lady goes, I've got to talk to him right now. Can I come over? It was a weekday evening. She came over. She was having nightmares every night. Now, let me tell you something. Nightmares don't come from God. They come from the enemy. He's Prince of Darkness. God gives dreams, but he doesn't give nightmares. So he came and told me the whole thing, and I asked her to describe it because I'd never heard of that. And you know what? She described it. I later found a Bible passage that was almost word for word what she said that day. It's Job 4, 13 to 16, which says in the NLT, it says, it came to me in a disturbing vision at night when people are in deep sleep. My ear gripped me and my bones trembled. A spirit swept past my face. My hair stood on end. That's what she was describing. And it was every night at 3 a.m. for six weeks since she had gotten back home from a mission trip overseas. She ended up staking her apartment by just standing in the corners and it stopped. And after it stopped, then she told her friends about it and they wanted me to stake the school, public school. And we did. And the guy causing all the problems there suddenly died of a heart attack when he was in his thirties. My goodness. And all the problems at that school went away. And then people started calling and saying, how much do you stake? And I go, I don't sell stakes. Go make your own stakes. And that's when the funny questions began pouring in. What do you make them out of? How long are they? How far apart do they go? What color? You know, it's not a formula. It's an act of faith. Right. Right. But I just would say, make your own stakes. You know, but the funny questions, you know, how deep in the ground do they go? Can I put them in my Ford F-150? Can I take them to a hotel room? You know, how many verses? Is there one verse on each stake? Or does it matter what verses you use? You know, I'm just laughing at all these questions, but I'm sharing them on my Thursday morning prayer group. And one Thursday, one of the guys said, Steve, you know, we think that maybe this is a God thing and you need to sell stakes and verses on them. You know, if it's from God, you can't stop it. And if it's not from God, you can't make it successful. Right. And so he talked me into selling stakes with verses on them. And next thing you know, I can hardly keep up. We put stickers on them and ordered them from a camping company in New Jersey. And I had volunteers putting stickers for me. I couldn't keep up with how many people. I would say, look, make your own stakes, but I have some here. And they just wanted to help me. So they'd buy them from me. And next thing you know, I'm getting a call from the camping company. And they said, is this Steve Hemphill? I said, yeah, why? They said, oh, we're the camping company you're buying the stakes from. We just called to tell you we're canceling that last order you just sent in for $700 more stakes. We don't have any more. We don't know what you're doing. How many stakes have you got? All the stakes you've been buying. But they said, you need to buy them somewhere else. I said, oh, OK. And a couple of days later, I get a call from a plastics manufacturer and he said, is this Steve Hemphill? I said, yeah. He said, I want to make them for you. He said, make the cups for the Cowboys games. And if you look on the bottom of those cups, there's words built into the plastic. We do that by putting engraving in the mold. We can have a mold made of plastic. We can have a mold made of plastic. We can have a mold made of plastic. And I said, well, that would be nice. I said, how would this have to work? And the guy goes, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And then we make it. I said, OK. Well, I'm in ministry now. My salary is $100,000. I'm going to make the cups for the Cowboys games. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, OK. Well, I'm in ministry now. My salary is $100,000. I'm going to make the cups for the Cowboys games. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, OK. Well, I'm in ministry now. My salary is $100,000. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, OK. Well, I'm in ministry now. My salary is $100,000. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, OK. Well, I'm in ministry now. My salary is $100,000. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, OK. Well, I'm in ministry now. My salary is $100,000. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, OK. Well, I'm in ministry now. My salary is $100,000. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. 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And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And he said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And I said, well, you've got to buy the mold and bring it to us. And so one of the things I came across somewhere, I can't even remember where, but I shared it in one of my newer books, Twelve Spiritual Weapons, is there's four ways to take captive every thought. The first way is we need to develop the fruits of the Spirit, Galatians 5, 22 and 23. Produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There's no logging. So develop the fruits of the Spirit. The second way is to focus on and look for the good in every situation. You see, when you're focused on the good and looking for the good, it makes it hard for demons to twist your perspective, Philippians 4, 8. Fill your minds with things that are good, things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, honorable. Third way is think about your thoughts. Now, that sounds weird, but let me explain that. Think about your thoughts. Why am I mad? Why am I sad? Why am I offended? It's because Satan wants you mad. Satan wants you sad, and Satan wants you offended. And then the fourth way is make everything part of your pursuit of God. Because a mind captured by the wonder of God doesn't have room for the voice of the enemy, Colossians 3, 16. Let the word of Christ have its home within you, permeating every aspect of your being, the Amplified Version. So I think those are, taking captive every thought, you know, that's a war term. You take captives in a war. But most people don't even know they're in a war. That's why Satan's been winning. If you don't even know you're in a war, you're sure not going to be competing or winning. And so he's convinced us he's not real, that he only did that in the first century. And church leaders are teaching that. Therefore, he's had a heyday. And if you look around, Satan has taken the land. So I'm just advocating taking it back. Right. One house at a time. Oh, I love that. That's so good. And like you were saying, I know, and I've seen a lot of videos, but I can't imagine all the testimonies you have. But one that me and Beth really enjoyed was we watched, I think it was on your podcast, you had a lady on there who worked at a grocery store. And it's kind of fun because these people, they think of creative ways to use these steaks. And could you just tell that story? Holly, you can probably tell it better than I can. Yes. This lady came up to me recently in Nashville, and she lives near Nashville. And she said that at first she wanted a picture with me because she said she had been a drug addict and had gotten clean because of my books, my teaching on spiritual warfare. She realized it was an unseeing enemy that was making her have these desires she shouldn't have for drugs, and she was succumbing to that. And so she wanted a picture and wanted to hold the book up, and she wanted me to sign a book for her. You know, I just feel weird doing that. But anyway, we met and took pictures. And then she said, well, I want you to hear this story. She said, I'm going to graduate from college, and meanwhile I'm working part-time to go to school and work at a grocery store. And she said that they were getting robbed up to 20 times a day. People would just come in, fill their cart, and roll for the cart. Wouldn't even go through the register. And the manager didn't know what to do. So she went to the manager and said, I've got these ten steaks with Bible verses on them, and this may sound weird, but it's kind of like it keeps the enemy out. You know, if it's okay with you, I'd like to put one over the entrance, over the door. You know, a glass door, glass transom above it and all that. Put that over the door and see what God does with it, see if it stops. And the manager said, well, that's fine. We've got to do something. Go ahead and try that. So she did. And immediately the thievery stopped. I mean, immediately it stopped. And so they had watched the video so they knew who was stealing. And after it stopped, one of the guys who had been coming and stealing, a great big strong kind of biker guy, came in the front door. And she recognized him from the video as one of the ones who had been coming and stealing groceries. So she felt emboldened and walked up to him. And, of course, he's a big guy, and she's not a very large lady. She's a small lady. And she said, sir, you need to leave. And he starts backing up and cussing and boxing empty air. Wow. Like he sees somebody she doesn't see. And she keeps walking forward, and he's still walking backward and keeps cussing and boxing the air, walking backward, until he gets all the way back out the door and turns around and runs off. Looks like he was pushed out the door. That's right. And then that night the cleaning crew was dusting and cleaning and they were cleaning around the front door entrance, and they said, what is this stake here with Bible verses on it? And they just threw it in the trash. And the next day seven guys came in and just ransacked the store. Wow. And it reminded us of the story when you got rid of one demon and you don't fill yourself with God, then you've got seven more, and you're way worse off than before. And so it was just a real testimony to, you know, it couldn't be more obvious. You put up God's Word, the thievery stops. You take down God's Word, the thievery comes in even stronger than before. You can't make this stuff up. No, no, that's what just blows me away. And we've seen several stories on your YouTube videos and stuff, and I'm sure there is probably a hundred you haven't even published. Oh, goodness. They come in every day, and I cannot keep up with them all anymore. I can't even write them all down anymore. I do try to throw emails in a folder and refer back to them. I think I have a story on that, and then I find it, and then I might share it in a podcast. I try to be faithful with that, but it's hard to keep up with all of them. Oh, I can't imagine. But if that isn't proof that this is an amazing God thing, then I don't know what is proof. Well, and we staked our city and crime dropped 45%. I mean, those kind of things just don't happen. Our city has heard that. Our city is 83,000. Our crime rate had gone up for 25 straight years until we staked it, and it went down 45% in 18 months. In fact, the police chief heard about that, and he said, can I give you eight addresses to stake out when we're still having daily calls for violence? And I said, yes, sir. So he gave me eight. It was basically eight city blocks just in various parts of the city, and about two months later we had everybody together and got a group and did stake those eight city blocks. And about four or five months later I called the gang detective because they were all gang-related problems. I called the gang detective, and I had met him during the process, and I said, hey, I just wondered how things were going with those eight city blocks that we staked. He said, it was like turning off a faucet. We hadn't had a single call in all eight locations since you staked it. He said, you're right. God's Word is powerful. Wow. I think Plano, Texas, heard about this. Irving, it was Irving, Texas, near Dallas, heard about this, and they had 62 entrances into their city limits, so they ordered 62 stakes, and they staked it. And about six months later they sent me the front page of the paper. It said lowest crime rate in 14 years. Wow. So this is a repeatable thing. It's the power of the Word. It's not a magic formula. It's a faith act. In fact, recently, and I think I made a podcast out of this, but I did not save the guy's name, I got a phone call from a retired general one day, and he was pretty gruff and demanding. But I got on the phone, and I said, hello, and I said, is this Stephen Peele? And I said, yes, sir. He said, this is retired Major General so-and-so, and I'm on your website, and I need a whole box of those stakes, and I can't find it. I see four. I can't find where I can buy a whole box. And I said, well, sir, there's an arrow to the right instead of drop-down menu, and it says 8 or 12 or 24. Oh, yeah, there it is. There it is. He said, I want 250. He said, let me tell you why I want so many stakes. And I said, okay, go ahead. He said, I went to the city council meeting in our town the other day, and the police chief got up and said, well, crime is way down, but we don't know why. And he sat down. And another city council member got up and said, well, we've got more good news. We've got these businesses coming into town bringing all this industry. Well, that's great. He sat down. And another guy stood up and said, well, the industry is bringing in people. We've got 62 house permits. We haven't had 62 house permits in 20 years. We've got 62 right now all at the same time. They're coming in to work in these new industries. And he sat down. And they said, well, that's great. That's great. And one guy stood up and said, well, I know why all these good things are happening. I stake this city with Bible verses on 10 stakes. You need to look up Steve Hemphill. He was calling to tell me that story. Oh, man, that is so exciting. Oh, such fun stuff. You know, with COVID and all that America and the world went through, you know, a new thing. God has breathed on the body of Christ. And he's like, it's almost like get in the flow of what I'm about to do. And I've begun. And it's like the body has to decide. Are they going to just – there's no more room for the lukewarm and the feel good. But it's time. I love the name of your ministry. That says it all. We are at a point in history where it's time to put action to our faith and not sit around and just live a nice Christian bless me club. It's time to go and claim back territory and the kingdom of God advance. And there's a ministry, a podcast, a young lady who had gotten saved out of witchcraft about 13 years ago. And just one year ago, she felt in her heart, God said, I want you to go public with what I've done. She's just a beautiful young lady now really out there for the Lord and so grateful. And, boy, she said Satan's kingdom is not shy about claiming territory. They speak it over whole regions. They're given regions in that whole realm, and they'll speak what they want to take place. And so now as a believer, she said, I'm not going to sit and have this nice Christian – she said, I didn't when I was doing witchcraft. I'm certainly not going to just have a nice Christian experience. I am going to claim territory just like I did for the Lord and be on the offense and see God start to redeem back. That's it. That's it. In fact, we found out that there's local witches in East Texas that were burying crystals around courthouses. Oh. No kidding. So, see, they understand the importance of putting their symbols around places of power. There's power in the courthouse. Right. There's power in the judge. There's power in the mayor. So they understand that. In fact, when we – two years ago, two or three years ago, when we staked the city – we stake the city every year, and we pick a new issue every year. One year we prayed against sexual immorality. One year we prayed just for children. One year we said no witchcraft. And the witches got mad that we were putting no witchcraft because that was violating their freedom of religion. And they vowed to pick it and disrupt our effort to stake the city with verses – with stickers on the stakes that said no witchcraft. And we actually had one church that refused to let us use their meeting place anymore just to meet in the parking lot. They said, you're being hateful to witches. Wow. If we can't unite against witchcraft, I'm not sure we're on the same team. You know what I mean? I mean, that's pretty clear in Scripture. But the enemy understands the power of symbols. I have a lesson on symbols in my Demons vs. Prayer seminar. And one night when I gave that on a Sunday night, I do a four-day seminar, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday night. Sunday night I show a list of demons named in the Bible and the territory that the Bible says each demon is in charge of. And then I also show how symbols matter. You need to clean up your house. And I talked about amulets. And one family heard that one night on a Sunday night and went home. They had a 12-year-old daughter. And they had just ordered an amulet off Amazon to give to their daughter that was supposed to bring good luck. And after they heard that lesson on symbols, they went home and talked about it on the way home. And they said, What do you think, Amanda? What should we do with that amulet? And the little girl said, I think we need to destroy it. It's not healthy for us. It's against God's will for us to have that. So they went home, and they threw it in the trash and took the trash out down the street and put it in a dumpster. The next morning, that amulet was laying on their doorstep. Really? It was the way the enemy was having a right to be there. Symbols give the enemy a right to be there. Symbols of God invite God's presence, but symbols of the enemy, Ouija boards, amulets, pornography, horoscopes, dream catchers, there's a long list of those kind of things, crystals. And it invites the enemy and gives them a right to be there. Yeah, I don't think people realize that, that some of these things they have in their homes are just inviting Satan's presence and demon activity in their home. They think it's just fun, just cute little things that are fun things that we picked up here or there. In Harry Potter, we watched Harry Potter, and we read the books, and then I met a Satanist, a former Satanist. He's now a Christian. And he said, Did you know that the curses they use in Harry Potter were word for word the same curses we use as the Satanists? Oh, wow. Is that right? And I said, No, I did not know that. And so now when I'm asked that question, I say, Look, it's your decision. You do what you think is best for your family, but let me tell you what a Satanist told me about those curses in Harry Potter. It's a little bit different. We grew up with Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but you've got an evil witch in the story. But in those stories, witchcraft was evil. Now witchcraft is good. He's a good witch. In fact, Tom Brady's wife, former wife, he just divorced her, she was a witch. It became public in an interview he gave. She's a white witch. And she would have him do an incantation chant before each ball game and do a little chicken blood sacrifice or something. He described this whole thing in the interview. And he said she would tell me if I was going to win or not, and she was always right. Oh, my word. Speaking of white witches, the lady that Beth had brought up a few minutes ago where we saw her on a podcast, she was talking about white witches, and she was saying that sometimes, because what happened in her instance is her dad died and they were already in witchcraft, so they consulted a white witch on how to get through this grieving and everything. And she said white witches will sometimes even use scripture to have you. They had the white witch they went to, she actually gave them a scripture to pray every night before they went to bed. So, I mean, there's so much deception. The best lies are mixed with truth. Right, right. Right. And so that's what they're doing. Yeah. I'd love to meet, I'd love to connect with that lady. Her name is, yeah. I don't believe she would mind because now she's public on her testimony. Her name is Julie Lopez, and she was born and raised in South America, but at five years old, they moved to Spain. Spain, yeah. And then most of her childhood years were in Spain, and then they had moved to the United Kingdom. And now that's where she got saved, met her husband, and now they have a couple children. And she, like a year ago, I don't remember when, she felt called back to her home country in South America. Central America or South America. And she felt like God was telling her it's time to go back. Take it back. Claim territory, take it back. Because so much of it goes on. Powerful young lady. Yeah, I'd love to meet her. Zoom call or something someday. That'd be fun. That'd be great, yeah. Well, yeah, there's so much to this. And, I mean, we could do several hours probably. Yeah, we could. But thanks for letting me come describe a little bit anyway. Oh, absolutely. Oh, my pleasure. And so if someone's listening, and this is all new to them, you have a lot of resources, I know, on your website and YouTube and everything. What's the best first step for them to take to begin learning and using spiritual warfare in their own life? Okay, that's a good question, and I'm going to give you multiple choice answers because some people don't do computer stuff, and they want a place to start. And some people do, you know, YouTube or something but don't do TikTok. And then, of course, the most common exciting way today to get the word out quicker is TikTok. That's why we finally went on TikTok and had 40,000 followers in a short time. But if you just want to just focus on just the Scripture first and just the place to start to say this stuff is real, just read Ephesians 6 and pray about it. If our enemy is not flesh and blood, it's principalities and powers and evil spirits in the heavenly realms, that means the person treating you bad in the physical realm is not the enemy. You need to pray for them. The enemy is influencing them to act that way towards you. Right. And learn to have a new perspective. That changes how you pray about things. Completely. You could pray and, Lord, please help them not to be mean to me anymore. You wouldn't do that. But, Lord, please gag the enemy that's influencing them to act in an unchristian way. It completely changes how you approach even your prayer life on issues like this. That's number one, just Scripture. Number two, if you do podcasts, I have a free podcast that is called Battle Plan with Steve Hemphill, and it's on all the podcast networks, Amazon, Audible, Google Play, Spotify. It's on the Charisma Podcast Network, and we also have it in video format on YouTube. If you do TikTok, most of our stuff is under ActiveFaithMovement. Our website is active-faith.org, active-faith.org. And then one of the things you could really start with if you do YouTube, and you can get to it just from YouTube or from our website in the shop in this little online store, there's a free seminar that's six hours long called Demons vs. Prayer. And I do it live at churches all over, and I now have 72 weapons, but when I recorded that, I had 36, I think, so I've doubled the number of weapons. But the same principles are all the same as what I teach now in this free online seminar, Demons vs. Prayer. You can just search Demons vs. Prayer, Lesson 1 through Lesson 6. All that is just on YouTube. Or you could go to our website at active-faith.org and go to the shop, and at the top of the page there near the top, it'll say free video download Demons vs. Prayer, and you click on Lesson 1 and watch it, Lesson 2, and so forth. And so those are some good ways to get started. The TikTok channel now has about, I don't know, 300 videos. The YouTube channel has over, probably over 400 videos. We also have a small group, a free small group study available on our Ask a Little Faith website under, I think it's under media, under the media tab, the small group. And there's five-minute videos and a little downloadable PDF with a couple of discussion questions designed for just small group, short study, you know, kind of bite-sized segments of the ideas of spiritual warfare. So there's some good places to start right there. If you have a question, you can email me at stevehenfield1atme.com, and I handle those questions. I've also got a free once-a-month Zoom, and it's on our calendar on the website. The Zoom is right now going over the 70-plus spiritual weapons. We do the first Thursday night of each month, and we're only on, I think, weapon number four. So we have a long way to go. I just started that last month, and I'm looking forward to continuing that through the year. And I do free questions and answers at the end of each of those sessions, too. So there's some good places to start. That's excellent. Okay, I have one quick question before we close off here. I'm just wanting to know, for 2024, what are you excited about? What do you see the direction for at the faith ministry? Well, that's a great question, and the answer I'm going to give really surprises me because it was something I never dreamed of. Then it must be God. That's right. It has to be God because it's bigger than I could do. I have been being pushed in a good way, pushed to do something I never would have been interested in. They want me to do a docu-movie on this, and we already had about $20,000 of donations toward a movie, and we've had some kind of big-name producers interested in it. I have signed an option agreement with a Christian studio, and they are working on the script right now. They're actually interviewing the guy that was going to commit suicide. We interviewed him last week, and I think he's going to be willing to go live on camera and be part of the documentary, and he'll tell what he experienced, and I'll tell my side. You've got to get a bigger picture because it gives it more credibility when you hear from the person who was about to kill himself when we did this, that staking thing. I guess I'd ask for a prayer about that. I don't want to do that unless God wants to, but apparently He does because He's putting people around me that want to do that. In fact, one of the guys who wants to play me in the reenactment is Dr. Ben Graham, Billy Graham's great-nephew. He does a lot of acting and directing and stuff, and he's a great guy. He lives in the Mount Juliet area near Nashville. We'll see if that happens, but that's the biggest thing on the drawing board that I can think of. That's a big one. Yep, that's a big one. So that's my answer on that. Thank you for asking, and thank you for praying about that. I'm excited for it to come out. Yeah. It will be fun. Oh, it will be, and it sounds like a God thing when it seems way beyond what you can calculate. Sounds like it's a God thing. Yeah, most definitely. That's cool. So just before we go here, one last time, can you give your website? Yes, it's active-faith.org, and my email is stevehempill1, the number one, at me.com. Love to hear from you, and I love questions because I can answer those questions in a way that shares it with others through the podcast. So I won't use your name, but I'd love to hear your story. Perfect. I love it. Yeah, you have so many good resources. This is just really exciting, but thanks so much again for being on our podcast. It's been really fun, and we will definitely stay in touch with you, and especially you doing this movie, possibly doing this movie and watching that turn into what God wants it to be. But thank you so much, Steve. We appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Love connecting with you. Y'all have a great day. Thank you so much. You as well. Okay, bye-bye. Thanks so much for listening to the Faith Moving Forward podcast. 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