Does Manifesting Positivity Open Doors to Demons? What the Bible Says
Jesus didn’t teach that positivity attracts positivity, or that negativity attracts negativity, to determine our fate. He taught the exact opposite!
I wish I had known that, but I was blinded to this truth for years. I believed I had the power within me to fashion my destiny. If there was any place for God in my life, it was me tapping into the power of the “god consciousness” in the universe to manipulate and control according to my will. Nowhere was there the humble perspective of “Not my will, but Your will be done, God.” I was at the center. I was in control. But I was so very blind, and I was ripe for Satan to sift.
Once I opened myself to the demonic world lurking behind everything New Age, I welcomed the devil and his minions into my life. I didn’t know that, of course. But they were there, and they came to me in various forms—the touching, the visions, the dreams, the manifestations. Some were more frightening than others. Some were intriguing. Some were terrifying. None was good, and none had my best interests at heart. That is because the only source of good in this world is through Jesus Christ. Only through Him do we have access to God the Father. Only through Him do we have forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. Only through Him do we have protection from the enemy. And the enemy is real. When you start playing games with divination, you aren’t playing with something false or pretend. Nor are you playing with something good. You are messing around with wicked things that promise you sweet nothings. You think you’re in control, but you aren’t. You believe what you’re doing is harmless, but it’s not. It’s evil. And not only that, your sin, your own wicked heart, is growing more hardened as you turn to wickedness for support, for so-called blessings, and ultimately for hope. As Paul describes in Romans 1, you have turned to created things instead of the Creator.
The more we look to created things—whether it’s the stars, “universal energies,” or spirits and apparitions—the more futile we become in our thinking and the more our foolish hearts are darkened. We think we are wise—and so many in the New Age set themselves up as paragons of wisdom—but we are fools, exchanging “the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:23 ESV). We exchange the glory of God for empty things like manifesting positivity to ensure good outcomes, channeling energies for purposes we have no control over, and interpreting signs that speak nothing at all.
Please do not be deceived. The devil is alive and active, and when we open ourselves to him, he is ready and willing to do us harm. He is not our friend. That’s why in Ephesians 6, God tells his people to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:10–12 ESV).
There is a real spiritual battle going on in this world, and if we’re ignorant of it, we will fall in the battle. We are already battling against sin in our hearts, and out-side of Christ, we’re not even cognizant of the battle—we’re enslaved to sin, and we even love it. As Jesus said in John 8:34 (ESV), “Truly, truly, I say to you, anyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” The Bible makes this enslavement abundantly clear, and it applies to every per-son: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 ESV); “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 ESV); “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8 ESV); and “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20 ESV).
At the root, we have our sin to contend with; how-ever, as Paul said in Ephesians, we also face the world and the devil. If we’re not on guard against his machinations and evil devices, we will fall prey to them. We will open ourselves to be sifted by Satan—and that’s precisely what was happening to me. If we are not “of God,” then we are under the influence and “power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19 NIV). At Paul’s conversion, Jesus told him he had been saved to preach the gospel to the world: “I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:17–18 ESV). That’s everyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus, everyone who dismisses God as false, or believes God is in themselves or in the things of this world. They are deceived. That’s because the power of Satan binds them. The results of this can be devastating, causing people to become consumed by wickedness.
Just think of the many examples in Scripture of people who turned their backs on God’s ways and, instead, followed their own. What was the result? Cain murdered his brother. Herod the Great massacred innocent children—an unprecedented death toll of babies sur-passed only by the millions killed through abortion in our present day. The senseless, horrifying rape of a woman in Gibeah by worthless men who defiled her all night long, only to leave her dead on the threshold of a house. Jezebel, a worshiper of Baal (and often celebrated by witches and New Age feminists in our present day), who sacrificed babies, butchered prophets, and met her demise by being thrown from a window to the street below, where she was trampled to death by horses and eaten by dogs. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose wickedness ended in their destruction by fire and brimstone. Herod Antipas, who allowed his lust for his stepdaughter to drive him to behead John the Baptist. There are many other examples in Scripture and the whole history of the human race, but suffice it to say, walking in darkness and following this wayward world can lead to devastating ruin.
The Wicked Will Perish
Of course, you might think, “Well, nothing like that compares to people who do New Age practices. I’m certainly not like that. We are good people, nothing like those examples at all.” You might not be full-blown evil like those cited above, but you have opened yourself to the murderous minions of Satan, who are even worse. Your rejection of God for the power of the stars, magic, universal energies, or whatever is your particular “gift” leads to a rebellion that is influenced and driven by wickedness—within yourself and without. In the end, it will only lead to death and destruction.
Jesus said, “You will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins,” (John 8:24 NKJV) and “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12 NKJV). In Psalm 37:20 (ESV), God says, “The wicked will perish; the enemies of the LORD are like the glory of the pastures; they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.” Think of that phrase: “glory of the pastures.” Pastures are beautiful. I can just picture a glorious Monet painting with dancing sunlight off poppies in a field and shining lakes in the distance. It’s so lovely. And people in the New Age think what they’re doing is beautiful. They think they’re full of love and light, helping others find healing and purpose. But it’s all a lie. It doesn’t last. Its glory is the same as that of a pasture. It vanishes like smoke.
Only God is eternal, and only faith in Christ sustains us and gives us a glory that never fades. The empty promises of human endeavors and New Age beliefs are just like flowers in a field—temporary with no depth, no true meaning, and no lasting value. The glory of the pasture perishes, but the glory of Christ remains forever! Outside of Christ, we are nothing but brokenness, emptiness, and sin—and our end is death. We will vanish in the blink of an eye, the wisp of a flame snuffed out with the pinch of fingers. Jesus warned, “But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3 ESV).
The bottom line is this: no matter how good you think you are, and no matter how innocent you believe dabbling in New Age practices to be, you are in rebellion against God. Scripture is clear: “When you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping the things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven” (Deuteronomy 4:19 NIV). Do not worship creation instead of the Creator! Instead, worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only (Luke 4:8).
When we don’t worship God alone, we are in rebellion against the King of the Universe, against our Creator in heaven who made us to be in a reverential, loving relationship with Him. When we do this, we expose our-selves to the enemy by saying, “God, I don’t need You. I can rely on my own power and seek my own way. I don’t need to follow You or obey Your laws. I don’t need Your protection. I can do what I want. I’m good, after all. I’m wise. I’m responsible enough to do what I think is best. So go Your way, and I’ll go mine.” When we do that, we are walking straight into Satan’s snares. We are stepping directly into this present darkness that keeps us from all that is good and true. We think we’re seeing what is positive and good, but we’re really blind. We think we’re hearing the truth, but we’re really deaf.
The best protection we have from Satan and the dark-ness that threatens us is to follow God alone, trust in Jesus for the salvation of our souls, and put on the whole armor of God. Then and only then are we “able to withstand in the evil day, and have done all, to stand firm” (Ephesians 6:13 ESV). And how do we stand firm? First, we need to be followers of Jesus Christ, who alone can wear God’s armor. The rest of Ephesians 6 explains exactly what the armor of God looks like. We are to put on the belt of truth, which is God’s Word and not the foolish notions of New Age gurus, psychics, and philosophers. Only God’s
Word is the lamp we follow in the darkness. We are to put on the breastplate of righteousness, which is repenting of our sins and following God’s law, putting on His goodness as He defines it, not as the world does with its false notions about what is right and just and true. We are to find peace only in the gospel, because it is the gospel—Jesus Christ’s death on the cross to save us from our sins—that gives us the peace we long for. We are to take up the shield of faith “with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Ephesians 6:16 ESV).
If we keep our eyes fixed on Christ and have our faith in Him alone, we can overcome the temptations, accusations, and traps Satan throws onto our path. I know I fail when I put faith in myself or others. I lose my peace, hope, and joy. I lose the comfort that can only come through faith in God. Without that faith, I’m lost. I’m open to specters haunting me and frightening me in many different ways. Only by clinging to Him is there any hope to overcome the darkness. His light is the only way. Everything else leads to futility.
Faith in Christ strengthens us in the fight against sin and empowers us to withstand the enemy. Trusting in Him, relying on the finished work of salvation on the cross, resting in the Word of God, and praying in the Spirit provide the necessary protection to fight the enemy that seeks to destroy us. When you’re in the New Age, you look to your own abilities to “tap” into God’s power, but it’s only in humble submission to God that we have any power at all. It’s all Him and nothing in us. It’s the Spirit of God who intercedes for us and protects us, not anything we do or have within ourselves. Vision boards, seances, aligning chakras, delving into the deception of “past lives” for meaning and identity, reading the zodiac signs—all of it, as I’ve said repeatedly—do nothing but lead us away from the source of love and light. They lead to hatred and darkness. They lead to death and away from eternal life. Only by following Jesus Christ are we saved.
But, as was often the case in my life, I didn’t know that. I thought the New Age path was the right path, so I kept moving forward, joining others who were walking the same path. These sojourners became my friends and counselors—fellow fools walking arm-in-arm off a cliff I neither saw nor anticipated. Such was my folly and my pride.
