Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. — JAMES 4:7

Now about a year later, I was at a church for just one service on a Saturday night. As I was sitting on the platform and looking the crowd over, my eyes fastened on this young man who just a year before had been delivered from epilepsy.

The Spirit of God said to me, “After you cast that spirit out of him, he didn’t have one single epileptic seizure for a whole year. But in the last thirty days, he has had three attacks. And they have all come on him in the nighttime while he was asleep. The reason that he woke up in a seizure is that he went to bed afraid. Now cast that thing out of him again and teach him how to stand against the devil.”

Well, I got up to preach and told the young man to come down to the front. He came down, and I said, “When I was here last year, you were healed of epilepsy. That thing left you for a solid year. You did not have one epileptic seizure. But in the last thirty days, you’ve had three attacks. You woke up out of a deep sleep in a seizure.”

He said, “That’s right.”

I said, “I’m going to cast that thing out of you. And I’m going to tell you why it came back on you. You see, you went to bed afraid.”

He said, “Yes, I did. All three times, I did. Before I was able to get rid of that fear, I fell asleep.”

“You went to sleep and left the door open,” I said. “If you were to go to sleep in your house and leave the front door open, there’s no telling what would get in your house. A cat, a dog, or even a thief might get in. The devil is a thief and he is looking for doors. When you fear, you open the door. And when you go to sleep with the door open, that thief, the devil, will come running in.”

I cast the devil out of him the second time. Then I taught him about resisting the devil. I saw the young man years later and he told me, “I’ve never had another attack, Brother Hagin.” He learned how to keep the door shut.

Confession: I keep the door shut on the devil; I give him no place. I resist fear. God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.