The evil that I pray to be delivered from does not always come from the devils that lurk around me. There are times that the devil is within me already. Like, I harbor the bitterness and regrets from my broken dreams and unfulfilled hopes. I nurture the hurts and sometimes wallow in them with perverse glee. I have come face to face with my pride, my selfishness, my greed and have tried to rationalize these as looking out for myself. And in looking out myself, I have allowed my own needs to crowd God out of life and let my needs become the little gods that ruled my life. And in the end, I am left with nothing but the nothingness and emptiness of it all. And lo and behold, it was in that emptiness that I found the Presence that I have been longing for. And I keep coming back to that realization that it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to life. For such is the way of Grace.
They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching–with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. Mark 1:21-28