Believers seldom realize that any time they accept the lies from evil spirits, they give place to evil spirits. If we misconstrue the efforts of evil spirits in us, in our environment, and in our work by considering them to be natural, obvious, spontaneous, or caused by ourselves, we have given ground to evil spirits and allowed them to continue their works in these matters. We have accepted the lies from evil spirits, and they are able to work through the lies that we have accepted. Because we have chosen to believe that these thoughts are not from evil spirits, choosing instead to believe that these things are caused by good reasons that originate from ourselves, subconsciously we have allowed these things to remain in us. Though this allowance is the result of our being deceived, it has nevertheless given sufficient ground to evil spirits to continue their work.
On the other hand, many believers misunderstand God's truth and are not clear about what it means to die with the Lord, to consecrate themselves to the Lord, to wait on the Holy Spirit, and to know God's move and other truths. As a result, prejudice develops in their heart, and they begin to have ideas about what spiritual teachings should be like. Evil spirits will seize this opportunity and give the believers what they misunderstand and what they think they know. In this way, evil spirits go along with the believers' misunderstanding and work accordingly. The believers think that these proceed from God. Actually, evil spirits have counterfeited God's work through their misunderstanding.
Evil spirits very frequently inject their thoughts into the believer's mind. They especially love to "prophesy" to the believer about his circumstances and future. They tell the believer what he will become and what he will encounter in the future. If a believer does not know that these are from evil spirits and accepts them or does not reject them, allowing them to remain in the mind, evil spirits will work in the environment at the right time and cause the believer to encounter the thing which was prophesied. In his ignorance, the believer may consider that he himself has long known about this. Actually, evil spirits have disguised their ideas into some kind of prophecy and injected them into the mind of the believer with the intention of testing the believer's will to see if he will accept or refuse it. If the believer's will does not oppose it or if it agrees with it, evil spirits will gain ground and work on the believer as much as they will. All of the words of fortune-tellers and palm readers are fulfilled according to this principle.
Sometimes evil spirits give similar prophecies concerning a believer's body. They tell him that he is weak or sick. If the believer accepts his thought, he will really become sick and weakened. When the believer is in his sickness, he only knows that he is sick. Those with scientific knowledge may say that it is psychological, but those with spiritual insight know that this is caused by the believer accepting the suggestion of evil spirits; he has given ground to them, and they are working according to the ground given to them. Countless cases of so-called natural illness and so-called psychological activity are the work of evil spirits who work through the ground given to them by man. If a believer does not resist all the thoughts that come from evil spirits, they will work according to the thoughts they have given to the believer because they have been afforded the ground.