by AJ Elliott | Aug 8, 2026 | Podcast Blog
Is it just ordinary daily stress? Or could it be an spirit of oppression?
This post is all about oppressive spirits and how to identify whether you’re dealing with one. Any kind of activity from an evil spirit is going to be oppressive, but the particular kind of oppression we’re talking about is the type caused by spirits that bring fear, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and similar kinds of mental and emotional heaviness.
I’ll caveat that I am not a counselor. I’m not any kind of professional mental health practitioner. This is just a non-professional conversation about how spiritual things affect our mental and emotional state, because they certainly do. First, let’s talk about what spiritual oppression is not.
What Spiritual Oppression is Not
When we say oppression, we’re not talking about ordinary daily stressors. We can distinguish ordinary stress in a couple of ways. For one, it’s usually tied to a specific time frame and/or event. For example, you have a test coming up or a presentation or a speech you have to give, or some kind of activity you have to do that causes some stress.
Maybe you’re planning an event and there’s that low level of stress that has to do with taking care of all of those details. But once the event is passed, things go back to normal. Even if you didn’t do as well on the test as you wanted, or even if everything didn’t go quite perfectly, the tension drops off and we start processing everything that happened.
Of course, daily stress can be continuous if you have something that you are doing all the time that has a level of stress associated with it—like if you care for a lot of small children, that will have a certain level of stress all the time. Being very busy all the time can have the same effect, but you can still connect it to something that is real and tangible and currently happening. One major difference when dealing with an oppressive spirit is that the source of the stress or the anxiety is hypothetical. It’s an imagined future event that may not ever happen, and in all probability won’t happen. Yet it’s a constant presence on the mind.
It may link to a past event. PTSD is often described that way, where it’s a past event that is constantly in someone’s mind. But fear is always about the future. In this case, it’s a past traumatic event that is causing fear about the future, even though that fear may be undefined. It may just be an overall feeling of dread that isn’t tied to anything you can put your finger on. But you can feel the physical effects of that anxiety in your body. There’s no doubt in my mind that people who deal with panic attacks are dealing with an oppressive spirit, because evil spirits will work that way. They’re not active every second of every day. They come and they attack and they draw back, and it can happen quickly without warning. What I also believe is true is that the past traumatic event was the thing that allowed an evil spirit to attach itself to that person in the first place. Not that it was that person’s fault, but through observation and reading a lot of different deliverance stories, there’s something about the trauma that makes an opening.
Other Signs of Oppression
There’s a few other indicators that an oppressive spirit may be present. One is if you’re going through life and everything’s fine and normal, and then you wake up one morning and there is this anxiety on your mind that wasn’t there the night before. You went to bed, you weren’t even thinking about this thing, and then you wake up and suddenly you are super stressed about it. That is a huge giveaway, because evil spirits will be active when our minds are inactive, which means while we’re sleeping at night. And so you wake up, and suddenly this worry is there in front of you—again, with no tangible reason. You didn’t get a message on your phone, nobody called you, nothing happened. It’s just suddenly you’re thinking about this thing and you’re worried about it. That’s a huge sign that there’s something spiritual going on.
Sources of Oppression
Trauma isn’t the only way that spiritual oppression can happen. Spirits get attached to people in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it’s connected to something the person did that maybe caused them to feel shame or guilt—they compromised their moral code or their values. And maybe they shrug it off and keep going through life, and it seems like nothing in particular happens until one day they wake up and there’s this oppression on them.Sometimes a spirit will attach itself to a person and lie low for a while—for weeks, months, even years before it starts to do something active.
The Possession-Oppression Debate
Let’s pause here and just address something for the sake of clarity. I say a spirit “gets attached” to a person because I find that the most useful way to describe what’s happening. There are some Christians who believe that if you are born again, you can’t be possessed by an evil spirit because the Holy Spirit is there, which is true. And they’ll usually also say that you can be oppressed. I don’t have a problem with that description per se, but I don’t see much point in differentiating between possession and oppression—they’re both really bad experiences. I do believe that a Christian cannot have their spirit possessed by an evil spirit, but their spirit is the only part of them that’s been born again. Their body and mind, which is the soul, are not born again in the same way. The body has to be retrained, and the mind has to be renewed.
I believe it’s possible that an evil spirit can be in the mind or body of even a born-again person. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter—if there’s an evil spirit that is oppressing someone, regardless of the degree of the oppression, it should be gotten rid of. I think the only danger here is that Christians may assume, “Well, I can’t be possessed because I’m born again, therefore I don’t have to worry about evil spirits”—like they’re immune.
We’re definitely not immune to evil spirits. But if you think you are immune to something, you won’t guard against it, and that’s my only concern with the whole argument.
Oppressed to the Point of Action
To go back to our main topic, there’s one more characteristic that is common with oppressive spirits. When someone is being affected by such a spirit, it will usually compel them to take fear-based actions. This is especially true when the action is repetitive.
I think the strategy behind this has to do with that verse that says, “Faith without works is dead.” Well, in the opposite direction, fear without works is dead, in a sense. At least, it does seem true that if you don’t act on a fear, it is harder for that fear to remain a significant force in your life.
But on the flip side, if you act on the compelling pressure of an oppressive spirit, it’s like it gives them more fuel to keep bringing that oppression and those same fearful thoughts—like it strengthens their hold on a person. The kind of action I’m talking about is usually something small, but something the person wouldn’t normally do or doesn’t really want to do. It’s that feeling of being compelled, like they just have to do it. I believe OCD is related to this. I’ve heard that OCD is like a way for a person to feel like they’re in control of their environment, but it’s all fear connected.
There’s an example of this in the Bible, in the Book of Job. This is a paraphrase, but in Job Chapter 1, it says that Job was worried that maybe his children had sinned. They were adult children and they would have banquets, and he was thinking maybe they’d sinned while they were celebrating, so he would offer sacrifices for them just in case. He didn’t know that they’d done anything wrong, but he was under this fear that they had sinned, and so he kept offering these sacrifices.
It says that he would do this continually, and that Job said, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” (Job 1:5) This is interesting, because later in the Book of Job, after some of the bad things have happened to them, his wife says, “Why don’t you curse God and die?”
There’s a link there, in their belief that if they cursed God, they would die. I think what Job was really afraid of, his root fear, was the death of his children. Not just that they had sinned, but really he was afraid they would die, and that was the root fear behind everything he was doing.
The action he was compelled to was a natural way to deal with the fear. He was afraid that they’d cursed God, but he did the sacrifices to make everything okay. He could relax until the next time he was afraid about the same thing. And that’s very much how it is with a spirit of oppression.
It’s the fear coming again and again. We develop ways to cope with this, and it comes out as these actions that we feel compelled to take in order to manage the fear. But it also perpetuates the hold that the spirit has on someone’s mind.
Getting Free from Oppression
Now we need to talk about the most important part of this whole thing, which is: if there is a spirit of oppression present, how do you get rid of it? Thankfully, it’s pretty simple to do. All it takes is the Word, and specifically, enforcing the Word with authority. What I like to use is a book by John Eckhardt, Prayers That Rout Demons and Break Curses. But he has a section in there titled “Prayers That Destroy Oppression.” It’s not a very long section, but it’s just a list of verses written as declarations. It takes less than five minutes to go through, and any time I’ve used it, it has never failed to remove whatever feeling of oppression I was under at the time
I use it regularly. If I feel even a little bit bothered and I suspect that it’s something spiritual going on, I’ll use those prayers because it’s so easy and quick to do, and it has been so effective.
I used it sometime last year because one day, I had this worrisome thought, and it hadn’t been there a few days prior. And by my body’s physiological response to it, I figured it must be a spiritual thing. So I used those prayers and the whole thing went away.
I will say it’s easier if you nip it in the bud. The longer that a spirit of oppression has been carrying out an active attack, it’s like the deeper a tree’s roots are, the harder it is to uproot it. Point being, if you use these particular verses and feel like you’re still under the same oppression, don’t give up. Just keep at it. There’s too many Christians dealing with anxiety. We have to become more capable and more knowledgeable about who we are and what that means when we’re dealing with spiritual things.
It is true that we have the Holy Spirit—our spirits can’t be taken over. So if we strengthen our spirit enough, it will straighten out whatever’s going on in our body or in our mind. It’s just taking that step of keeping the spirit strong. And as you become more adept at paying attention to your emotions and what might be influencing them, it’ll become easier to pick up on those clues that there’s something spiritual going on as opposed to just a natural circumstance.
Also, don’t assume that every thought you have is yours. Probably two-thirds of the thoughts you have came from somewhere else. Some come from the Holy Spirit, some come from another spirit, and the rest comprise our own thoughts. But they all feel like they’re ours, like they all came out of our own brain. So we have to get used to recognizing a certain kind of voice. The Holy Spirit will bring correction, but His correction is not oppressive. Instead, it brings relief when we yield to it. And the Holy Spirit will not beat you over the head about something. He doesn’t behave that way, but oppressive spirits certainly do.
Eye and Ear Gates
I said earlier that trauma isn’t the only way that oppressive spirits get involved in someone’s life. Sometimes it’s something kind of trivial, like a song or a movie. Once I was listening to a song mix, one of those YouTube compilations, and there was a song at the very end. I listened to it for the first time, and it had this dark, creepy feel to it, like, depressing creepy—like if Edgar Allan Poe wrote a song and also composed the music, that’s what this song sounded like. Afterwards, I noticed the way that I felt, and it was that same sort of mental heaviness. It wasn’t severe, but if you’re used to looking for it, it’s a lot easier to pick up on it when it happens. I just knew that somehow that song had connected me to something spiritual that wasn’t good. So, I just used the scriptures from that book and had no more issues.
But I haven’t listened to that song again. It’s good to be discerning about music and movies, and sometimes the problem comes from a place you wouldn’t expect. It’s almost a childhood joke that kids have nightmares if they watch a scary movie. But if you’re a parent and your children are having nightmares, don’t brush it off.
Nightmares, especially if they are continuous, are a sign that there’s something spiritual going on. The daughter of one of my colleagues was having nightmares because she had watched one of the Anakin Skywalker Star Wars movies. It was the scene where he goes to rescue his mom from the sand people, and then he doesn’t make it in time. You don’t see this happen in the movie, but he talks about it later that he killed all of the sand people in the village, even the women and the children. For her, it was the fact that he’d also killed the women and children that was giving her nightmares.
That movie is probably PG or PG-13. Most people wouldn’t consider it a scary movie, but it depends on the personality of the individual and how it connects emotionally to them. So if nightmares are happening, take it seriously. Pray with your kids, and if they say there are monsters under the bed, take that seriously. Kat Kerr talked about this once—children are very spiritually aware, and the younger they are, the more spiritually aware they are, because their minds are not built up. Their intellect isn’t built up like ours is as adults, so their spirits have more room to have a greater level of control.
When I was about 12, I saw a particular movie. It wasn’t considered a horror movie, but I’m sure it was rated R. It was bloody and was about lions attacking people. I couldn’t even finish it because I was already feeling bothered by part of the way through, so I left. But afterwards, I had this feeling of darkness that came over my whole world. I had nightmares about the movie, I had daymares about a lion walking around on the top of our house, and the psychological and emotional and even physical feeling of that was just so heavy. It was like this suffocating blanket had come down over me, and I hadn’t experienced anything like that. I didn’t really know what was going on, except I knew that obviously seeing the movie had bothered me.
This went on for weeks, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I was 12, I was just a kid. Eventually, my dad had me read through the four Gospels four times in 30 days, so it worked out to about 25 pages of Bible reading a day, which was a lot for me at that time. But I did that, and I remember going on this camping trip—there’s a picture another kid took of me, and I have my Bible open in my lap because I’m doing my reading. Even on that camping trip, we were staying in tents, and I would imagine a lion’s head tearing through the tent fabric above my head. I grew up in Pennsylvania. There are no lions in Pennsylvania. Maybe there’s some mountain lions, but again, the fear was not anything rational, but it was continuously present.
I go into all these details in case there’s someone else who has experienced something like this, to help you identify what’s going on. It was complete spiritual oppression, and if I’d known how to get out of it at that time, I would have saved myself a whole lot of suffering. Now, especially when it’s a childhood experience, eventually you mature and your mind changes so that things that used to bother you don’t anymore, because you’re older.
Eventually, I came out of that, and it didn’t take years. I believe the Bible reading helped me, but I didn’t know at that time how to pray with authority and use the Word to deliver myself. The crazy thing to me was my brother watched the same movie, and he liked it. He thought it was cool. It didn’t bother him at all.
The attacks of oppressive spirits or any evil spirit are very individually focused. They study humans and watch us from the time we’re born, and they figure out what buttons they need to push. The attack that works against one person won’t work against another person in the same way.
The worst part of it was, I didn’t have to watch that movie. I could have avoided the whole thing. But at least now I can look back and see what I can learn from that experience. I certainly remember how it felt, like being cold on the inside all the time. It was very strange, but that’s how spiritual things sometimes are.
Conclusion
I hope this gives you tools to use to deliver yourself or family members or friends, or whoever might need it. Check below for those references I mentioned from the John Eckhardt book.
Don’t give up, and stay dangerous!
Prayers that Rout Demons and Break Curses, by John Eckhardt — Prayers that Destroy Oppression
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/prayers-that-rout-demons-and-break-curses-john-eckhardt/1024256141
Job, Chapter 1
Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash
by AJ Elliott | Jul 2, 2026 | Uncategorized
It’s a new year, and that always means there’s something new happening in the Spirit. So what has the Lord said about 2026? Let’s talk about it.
What is Teach Me to Kill Monsters?
Teach Me to Kill Monsters is a spiritual warfare training podcast. It’s also an author podcast. I write young adult science fiction and fantasy, so this is an atypical author podcast. Most podcasts done by authors are about books or maybe about writing, and it might seem like a mismatch. But I write books with powerful Christian characters because I’m tired of reading books with Christian characters who are weak and who don’t have any faith, or don’t know what they believe, or don’t know how to call on God for help when they’re in trouble.
So I write books where the strongest characters in the book are the ones who know God. The books demonstrate what a powerful Christian could look like, and the podcast teaches how to be a powerful Christian. The books provide the vision, and the podcast is the application. I’m not saying I’ve figured out everything there is to know about being a powerful Christian, but I’m working on it.
Frankly, there’s not a whole lot of people out there who are teaching Christians how to be powerful, so here I am. And since it’s January for, like, one more day, I want to talk about the prophecies that have been given about 2026. I’m gonna do this a little bit like a news roll-up, where they go over different news articles, and comment on them.
I have a compilation of prophecies from a few different prophets, and I’ll go over what they’ve said about this year. This is important for us to know because if you’re aware of what the Lord has spoken about the coming year, then on the one hand you know what to be watching out for, and on the other hand, you know what to believe for.
Year of the Big Fix
This first prophecy is from Kenneth Copeland, and this was given right around the New Year. The interesting thing to me is that these various prophets, they don’t get together and decide by committee what the title or the theme for the new year is going to be. They’re each getting their own download from the Lord, and a lot of prophets won’t even listen to what other prophets are saying, because they want to make sure that what they are hearing is their specific download. And yet, these two different prophets have the same theme for 2026, where the Lord has called this year the Year of the Fix.
Or in Copeland’s words, it’s the Year of the Big Fix. And this is what he says about it: “It will be the fix of nations, the big fix of time, and the big fix of ordinary things turning into extraordinary things.” Now, that’s not very specific. When you’re listening to prophecy, you have to listen to it and interpret it with spiritual thinking.
If you try to think about it in natural terms and using natural thinking, you’ll end up in the wrong spot. The first one, the fix of nations, that could be a whole lot of things. But if you look at it from God’s perspective, He has a plan for every nation on the Earth. He has a plan and a desire to prosper every nation.
If you look around the world right now, there’s a lot of nations that need fixed. But I believe we’ve already seen this fix of nations starting to happen, even with the things that have occurred in the first month of this year. And if you look at the news, there’s all kinds of upheaval happening in various places around the world.
And when you see upheaval like that, it’s often a sign of a spiritual shift that’s occurring. Sometimes on the surface, it can look like a bad thing. It can just look like chaos. But if you’ve ever had to clean your house or your room, especially if there was a lot of cleaning and organizing to be done, there’s a point at which it looks worse before it looks better.
That definitely happens when there’s a spiritual change taking place in a nation. It might look like a mess on the surface, but there are things being uprooted that have to be gotten rid of before that spiritual change can take place. So that’s what I see when he’s talking about the fix of nations.
And then he says the big fix of time. This one is difficult. What does it mean, the big fix of time? Well, it makes me think of Daniel chapter seven. It’s where they’re talking about the Antichrist in 7:25. I like the King James for this one. It says, “he shall speak great words against the Most High and shall wear out the saints of the Most High and think to change times and laws.”
Some have said with all that happened in the early part of this decade, that it’s like the world ended up on this alternate timeline. You know that scene in Back to the Future? I don’t even remember which movie it is, but Doc is explaining to Marty how Biff, the bad guy, went back in time and changed something and it skewed their future into this alternate timeline that wasn’t supposed to happen.
And some people felt that with COVID and everything that occurred, that it was like the world went on to this alternate timeline, because God had a plan for the first part of this decade and it didn’t involve everything that happened with COVID. So if it’s the big fix of time, what if you could redeem the time? Everybody lost something during COVID. I don’t care who you are or where you were in life. Everybody lost something. What if you could redeem those years? What would it look like in your life? Think about that.
Then the third item he listed, the big fix of ordinary things turning into extraordinary things. What does that one mean? Well, God did this a lot in the Bible. He was always turning ordinary things into something extraordinary. David wasn’t really an ordinary shepherd, but he killed Goliath with a handful of ordinary stones. People probably walked on those stones. They weren’t anything special until that day, and then they became very special.
But I feel like this is one of those things where you don’t really know what it means until you see it, and then you’re like, “Oh, that’s what it means.” So watch out for that this year, ordinary things becoming extraordinary things. And then he goes on to say the spirit of peace will hit the United States during the month of September.
He said it might take a while for it to rise up, but it will be like when the man of Galilee spoke to the storm and said, “Peace.” And then after that it says there was a great calm. So he says there will be a great calm in September, particularly for the US and Israel. And then he talked a little bit about New Year’s resolutions, which he says are not resolutions, they’re New Year’s quality decisions.
And he said, “Search your life, even the little things. See what little things you might need to fix in your life to be able to go further with God and not be stopped by the kind of things that maybe held you back in the past.” And then he goes to Psalm 112, and he goes through Psalm 112:1-7, but in verse seven it’s talking about the man who honors the Lord, and it says, “He’ll have no fear of bad news. His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.” Or some translations say, “His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.” Those are instructions for the coming year, having our hearts firmly fixed to trust in the Lord and what He is doing.
Fixing Impossibilities
Now we’re going to go to Robin Bullock’s prophecy, and this one is quite a bit longer, but it’s also more specific. And what’s interesting about these two prophecies is that they are complementary but not duplicative. They’re not a copy of each other. And this one wasn’t given at New Year’s, it was given at the Jewish New Year in September, Rosh Hashanah, also known as the Feast of Trumpets.
Robin says, “2026 is the Year of the Fix.” And then he goes into a lot of detail on what that means. He starts by saying, “This is our year to walk with God and learn from Him,” and he also calls it the year of the great fix. He says things that looked impossible to fix can be fixed in 2026. It’s the year that the power of God is flooded through the earth for his people to fix impossibilities.
Then he goes into a couple different ways that you can look at this word “fix”. It could mean to fasten securely. So it’s the year to secure things such as a position, a station, a year for new positions in your workplace, or it could mean to situate or to lodge. So it could be the year for a new home.
If you’ve been believing for a new home, this is the year for it. And I have a quote from him here. He says, “You must take your place working with God to create, or you will, with your words, use his government to destroy your destiny.” And I remember him saying that in 2026, the words that we say would have great creative power.
It’s always been true that the words we speak over our own lives have creative power in our lives. We’ve been spiritually created to speak and to create the world around us, but it’s limited in authority to our own lives, typically. But he said this year our words would be very important.
So pay attention to what you’re saying this year, especially what you’re saying about your own future, and make sure that the things you are speaking are the things that you want to happen. He says to fix could also mean to direct one’s eyes or attention. So this year, eyesight and attention spans are to improve. He’s expecting a science miracle in eyes and hearing. Then he says “to fix” could mean to set a date for decisions. And here he said if there’s a decision you’ve been trying to make and you haven’t been able to decide on it, that this year you would be able to make that decision.
He also says “to fix” could mean to set a specific price, the price you want to sell or buy for. Are you trying to buy something? What price do you wanna pay for it? Now, be careful here. You can’t just say you want everything for free. God is fair, but maybe there’s something you’ve been wanting to buy, especially if it’s something that you feel like God is leading you to buy, like maybe a property or, you know, or a vehicle or an airplane or, or whatever it might be, and maybe it’s overpriced. Well, you can get with God and figure out what that price should be. What’s the price that is the fair price that you want to pay for it? And you can believe for that. Or what’s the price you want to sell for? There’ve been lots of examples of people—particularly people who know how to tithe and know how to believe God for financial increase, and they know how to increase the righteous way and how to use their finances in a righteous way—but there’s been lots of stories of people like that selling for a very good price, and it’s because of the blessing working on them because they have put themselves into God’s economy. That’s included in this year.
Robin also said, “2026 is a year to advance and expand your world.” And he referenced Isaiah 54. Isaiah 54:2-3 is where it says, “Enlarge the place of your tent. Stretch your tent curtains wide. Do not hold back. Lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes, for you will spread out to the right and to the left. Your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.”
So Robin says it’s the year to advance and expand your world and to destroy worlds that the enemy has built for you. I guarantee there are some worlds that the enemy has built for you. Don’t live in them. Live in the world that God wants to build for you. If you advance and expand your world, it’s going to look a little different for every person.
For one person, it might mean a business advancing and expanding, or it could mean a family if you want your family to grow, or it could mean just your relationships and your friendships or your network or whatever it is that you are doing and involved in that God has set for you to go do. Advance and expand that this year.
Look for growth in positive areas. To fix could also mean dates set for your good. He said this could be legal matters settled. “The date for the hearing is fixed.” To fix could mean to mend or repair and improve, especially when referring to hair, clothes, or appearance. Do you need a new wardrobe? This could be the year for you.
But, you know, I feel like it can also mean your overall appearance because the first half of this decade had so much pressure in it and so much negativity. And if you look back to pictures of yourself from five years ago, how different do you look? Do you look better or worse now than you did then? There’s nothing to stop us from believing God for rejuvenation in our appearance. His life is in our spirit, and it can rejuvenate even our physical appearance and our face and our skin. Would you like a facelift this year? You can have a spiritually ordained facelift.
Robin says to fix could also mean to arrange, to furnish, supply, or accommodate.
Whatever you need furnished, whatever needs supplied, whatever you need accommodated, if you yourself need accommodation, believe for it this year. It could mean to arrange to meet. So this is the year for romantic relationships, if you’ve been looking for one of those, or if you’ve been looking for a husband or a wife.
To fix could mean to arrange provision for food and drink, which spiritually translates to having plenty to eat. I feel like that’s not just having plentiful food, but having actual nourishing food. We’ve seen the start of change going through in our food supply, and there’s been so much done to our food supply, not just in the US, but in different parts of the world.
Because of industrialization, there’s a lot of our food that doesn’t have near the amount of nutrition that it used to, and a lot of stuff added to it that takes away health from people. When I read this, I see the restoration of our food supply, not just in the amount of food, but in the value and the nutrition of food, and the cleanliness of our food.
To fix could also mean to preserve and stabilize. In other words, preserve and stabilize everything in your life that needs preserved or stabilized. I didn’t write this in my notes, but I remember him also saying that this is a year for fertility. If you’ve been believing for a child, this is a year for new babies. That’s already happened for at least one person I know.
Then he goes into a couple of things to be aware of. He says the enemy will try to fix things against you, meaning he will try to influence things, especially a race, a contest, or an election. All of these are things to watch for and to come against.
He said a fix could also refer to a drug addiction. 2026 will be the year of addiction and the year to get off of addiction. It doesn’t just have to mean addiction to illicit drugs. It could be any kind of addiction. If you look at your life, is there anything that you are addicted to, whether it’s a particular kind of food or drink or even a cell phone? Are you addicted to the internet? Well, 2026 is the year to get free of addiction.
Finally Robin said, “Give God the year.” And he said, “2026 is a year that commemorates the cross.” And I forget the specific reasons why he said that it did this. And if you wanna know the details, you can find the service on YouTube, the Rosh Hashanah service from September 2025. But he said, “Everything that Jesus did on the cross is available to you this year.” Now, it’s available to us every year, but especially this year. Remember he said at the beginning, things that looked impossible to fix can be fixed in 2026.
This could apply to so many things. So what needs fixed in your life? It could be a disease that is impossible to cure. It can be cured in 2026. It could be a family or job or financial situation that seems impossible to fix. It can be fixed in 2026. What do you need fixed this year?
What do you need redeemed? And remember he also said that our words would have great effect this year. Speak the things that you want to see fixed and the things that you want to see redeemed, and do it now at the beginning of the year before the year is half over. Something else that I remember him saying is that in 2026, judgment would be swift, meaning that the consequences for things would come quickly and not be delayed.
Most people are familiar with the verse that says, “The wages of sin is death.” All that’s really saying is that sin carries judgment with it. There’s often a period of mercy that holds off judgment in certain cases. Robin was saying that this year judgment would follow quickly after sin or after evil things being done, and it might be a small evil.
If it’s a small evil, it has a smaller consequence than a large evil. So watch your life, watch what you’re doing, walk with God, engage with Him this year. Pray about these things. Determine what you need from God, what you are looking for, what you’ve been believing for, and actively stand for those things.
Find the scriptures to stand on, and also the words of this prophecy. There’s blessing for us when we believe prophecy, when we listen to prophets and believe them. There’s an inherent blessing in that.
One last thing Robin said was that when you add up the numerical value for Yahweh, it equals 26. And Yahweh stands for the breath of God. So 2026 is also connected to the breath of God. It might be interesting to do a study on the meanings behind the breath of God, and that could probably be a whole other episode.
But you know, the COVID illness worked by taking away breath. And whenever the enemy does something, God always answers in an opposite direction, but not an equal direction. He answers in the way that is opposite but greater than what the enemy did. So COVID stole away breath, but this is the year of God’s breath.
And that’s the breath that he breathed into Adam when he created him and gave him life. The breath of God is life for us.
Not all things are as they seem
I’d encourage you to be intentional about what you’re believing for and what you want to see out of this year. The enemy may try to paint things in a certain way and make it look like things are going downhill, but there’s an intense amount of deception going on right now. So it’s important that we stay close to God and listen to the Spirit so that we can see through what’s going on, what appears to be going on, and understand what God is doing and where he’s headed.
If you’re new to the podcast and you want to learn more about me and my writing, you can find me at authorajelliott.com. I like to end every episode with 1 Thessalonians 5.23 because it’s the benediction for a powerful Christian: “May God himself, the God of peace or wholeness, sanctify you or make you perfect through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless or be kept without a breach until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. It’s a benediction for the Christians who are willing to fight. Thanks for listening. Learn how to become dangerous in the Spirit this year.
And if you’re already dangerous in the Spirit, walk in love and stay dangerous.
by AJ Elliott | Dec 8, 2025 | Uncategorized
A friend whose blog I follow recently posted a review of Veronica Roth’s book Divergent. I’d seen all the movies, but never felt motivated to read the book. Maybe it was because I once ate dinner with someone who talked at length about the series, but not in a way that made it compelling. My friend even admitted in her post that the plot of Divergent was not that unique, but there was one thing that caught her attention—the character Tobias Eaton (“Four”).
She specifically said that Tobias was the “best-written male character in literature.” That caught my attention, because this friend is also one of my readers. Now I had to read the book—one of my fans was raving about another author’s character! So, like a jealous teenager, I had to check out the competition.
Subtle Strength
I read Divergent and found it enjoyable enough, but mostly I came to some conclusions about what makes Four’s character compelling. First of all, he’s very male. He’s a decent example of a Sigma male, which is all the rage these days—a guy who’s strong enough to be an alpha, but unlike an alpha he doesn’t assert dominance or flaunt his strength. The alpha to Four’s sigma would be Eric, the up-and-coming but brutal Dauntless leader who proves to be a villain. Four could have a higher position within the Dauntless faction, but he turned it down, possibly in order to avoid his abusive father, who runs the faction that Four came from.
This is a second layer to Four’s character which rounds him out: he has fears, and yet, not that many. His nickname draws from the fears that gained him notoriety within Dauntless—the fact that he has only four, a record low number. One of those fears is heights, a fear which Tris does not share. When Tris climbs the ferris wheel near the book’s midpoint, Four is uncomfortable. But he still follows her up there. It’s the first scene in the book where he shows any kind of weakness, but within that same scene he shows the ability to overcome his weakness. This not only makes him more relatable, but more likable. He’s not just a cold shadow who fears nothing. But he’s not paralyzed by the fear either, proving that his strength is real.
Flirtation Skill: 0
A third layer to Four’s character is how he relates to Tris. He falls in love with her over the course of the book, but never treats her like some dainty thing. In Tris’s words, “He is not sweet or gentle or particularly kind. But he is smart and brave, and even though he saved me, he treated me like I was strong” (p. 289). That’s a pretty good description of Four’s masculinity. He saves the girl, but doesn’t treat her like a damsel in distress. And even though he has feelings for Tris, he doesn’t profess those feelings in lots of words. Instead, his feelings comes through in various actions, some more subtle than others. This is pretty typical, especially for a guy of Four’s age—and considering that he grew up in Abnegation, where flirting isn’t a cultivated skill. I should point out, a male character like this isn’t often seen from a female writer. We’d rather just have things spelled out to us—“Yes, tell me I’m beautiful…”)
There’s a fourth layer, which isn’t exactly tied to Four’s character, but the way he’s physically portrayed. He’s tall, slim and strong. He might not be body-builder strong, but he has the right amount of muscle for his frame. Roth does a good job of describing Four’s physique without sounding awkwardly steamy. She gives just enough details to make the picture come together, like the shape of a jawline, or how the muscles in his back move (though I have to say I’ve never thought to draw a comparison between a character’s upper and lower lip. Tris notices odd things.) All of this helps add to Four’s unique but very male image.
The Would-be Protagonist
Interestingly, the earlier draft of Divergent had Four as the main character. It eventually changed to Tris, but this could be one reason that Four’s character is well-rounded. If you didn’t know, there’s a short story collection called Four. It contains the full character backstory, beginning with Four’s Choosing Ceremony. I found it more compelling than Tris’s early story, probably because Four’s situation was so much worse. I already knew what faction he would choose, but I was still sweating until the moment was over because I was so desperate for him to get out of Abnegation. And yet, Four isn’t defined by trauma. This can be an easy cop-out to try to add depth to a character. Sure, Four’s background influences his decisions, but it’s obvious he becomes who he is because it’s who he decides to be. As a reader, that’s an interesting character path to follow.
Is Four the best-written male character in literature? It’s a hard competition. I do think he could be the best-written male character for this generation, which isn’t looking for 80’s bravado but for someone who’s intrinsically strong despite what he’s gone through. If you’re a fan of Four, I highly recommend the short story collection.
Inspiration for this blog post came from the blog of Sarah Hamilton: https://contemplationsofachristiancreator.wordpress.com/
Photo by Alan Labisch on Unsplash
by AJ Elliott | Oct 26, 2025 | Uncategorized
What is it about ‘military’ and ‘sci fi’ that goes so well together?
I’m not sure I know the answer, though I have a theory: since science fiction involves futuristic technology, what better way to showcase that technology than to put it in the hands of some futuristic soldiers and send them to fight monsters?
I believe it goes deeper than this, though. There’s something about the uniqueness of military culture that lends well to good storytelling. Also, military or not, putting characters in harrowing situations is a great way to achieve strong character exposition and development. On the other hand, all military-oriented stories carry a particular danger: the risk of stereotype.
“Not like a military”
When I arrived at the airport for a recent trip and checked in, the airline agent was an older Asian woman. She looked at my ID and said something to the effect of, “Oh, you don’t look like a military, you look like a lady!”
I had to ask myself, what, in her mind, would “a military” look like? Somebody with cold steely eyes and harsh cheekbones? I honestly don’t know, but I can only assume they wouldn’t look “like a lady.”
I believe this is a key factor in what makes for good military sci fi. Let’s look at a classic: Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (good book, horrible movie…) The book has a distinctive, authentic voice which makes the story seem believable—no small feat for a tale about shooting giant alien insects. Except the book wasn’t actually about killing giant insects (the movie, on the other hand…) The book was about the transformation of joining an elite military unit. The voice was authentic because Heinlein himself had been a military officer.
That’s not to say that the only people who can successfully write military characters are those with personal experience. It only takes someone who understands that military people are just that—people. Not robots. In many ways, they’re ordinary individuals doing a job they trained for, and they come in all types.
Martial artists, gamers, and disposal workers
One military sci fi story that gets it right is Kaiju Number 8. This anime series follows Hibino Kafka, a Kaiju disposal worker who dreams of joining Japan’s Kaiju Defense Force—a special military force that uses advanced technology to fight monsters (Kaiju) that emerge from underground. At the story’s beginning, the closest Kafka can get to his dream is cleaning up the remains of defeated Kaiju. That is, until a strange experience grants him the ability to transform into a Kaiju himself—and a very powerful one.
Kafka eventually manages to make it into the Defense Force, but has to keep his alternate Kaiju identity a secret. Still, whenever his teammates get into tight spots, he can’t help using his secret identity to save them.
While Kafka is the central character, the story has some of the best supporting characters I’ve ever seen. The writers take the time to include backstory on certain secondary characters that makes them three-dimensional. For instance, take Vice Captain Hoshina (one of my favorites.) At first he just comes across as elite and powerful, like all the captains. But in his backstory, you discover that he thought he’d never make it to where he is. Despite his strength, the only advanced weapons he’s able to use are swords, not guns. He is steeped in his family’s tradition of elite Japanese swordsmanship. But swords are only useful against smaller kaiju, not the big ones. He might’ve stayed in the lower ranks if another captain hadn’t recognized the value of his unique skill and brought him on as a vice.
The other characters are just as unique—a female prodigy with blond pigtails, a young recruit who excels because he has an overactive sense of responsibility, and the son of the billionaire CEO who manufactures kaiju-fighting technology. There’s even the elite captain of the first division, who deals with the stress of monster-fighting by ignoring military protocol and spending all his free time as a cheeto-munching gamer addict. As Captain Hoshina tells him, “Your only redeeming quality is your ability to kill kaiju.”
It’s fun to watch these individual personalities come together and help each other in some seriously bad situations. Even Kafka’s first-hand knowledge of kaiju anatomy comes in handy now and then.
These characters are endearing because they try their hardest despite obstacles, they use what they’ve got, and they’re all different. Just like real people.
If you enjoy military sci fi and you’re looking for a new series to check out, I highly recommend Kaiju No. 8. The bad guys are intimidating and it’s got plenty of action and suspense, but also some humor to take the edge off.
As with Solo Leveling, this is an adult series and can be a little bloody, though it’s mostly monster gore. I would rate it PG-13.
Blog Photo by Alejandro Hikari on Unsplash
by AJ Elliott | Apr 11, 2025 | Uncategorized
Ben Wilder has spent two decades in Myanmar, finding ways to share Jesus in a place that is predominantly Buddhist. His book, Jesus in the Buddha Belt, releases on April 22. It tells the story of four people from Myanmar who encounter Jesus—and the tumultuous journeys that follow.
In my interview with Ben, he gave some insights into his life in Myanmar, and what led him to such a fascinating place.
How did you make the decision to go into missions?
Great question. That could be a book in itself 😃. The short of it is that God flipped my life upside down in college. I grew up in the church, but had a very self-centered view of Christianity that revolved around yours truly: Obey God and get blessings; disobey and get disciplined. That was the gist of it. My best friends growing up were actually the pastor’s sons. We were the biggest troublemakers in the church. In college, I sat under some Atheist professors and wrestled with God about it. I asked God to answer some very specific questions, and he emphatically did. After that, God flipped things upside down by showing me through the Bible that his plan is MUCH BIGGER than just me—it includes me, but reaches much much further. God’s plan is to bring hope and healing to the whole world—every tribe, language, and nation—40% of which are still considered unreached by the Gospel. WOW! That blew me away, and still does.
What led you to Myanmar? Did you do missions in other places before that?
I had an experience where I sensed God telling me to go and tell people about him who had never heard. But there are lots of places like that. He led me to Myanmar specifically through a series of events and relationships (isn’t this how he often works with us?). I took a few short-term trips to Myanmar to help a new missionary family, and they later invited me to join their team. I did missions in several other places before that, including other parts of the US, Mexico, and Kenya. “Jambo!” to any Swahili speakers out there.
What’s the most striking thing about doing evangelism in a Buddhist country?
Another great question! Reflecting on my experience, I think I was shocked by three concentric rings, each getting closer to the heart of my Buddhist friends. The outer ring was language. I had to learn a new language before doing anything else, and in the beginning it was so shocking how differently Myanmar people communicated—not just with different sounds, but with different ways of viewing and describing the world. As I grew in my understanding of the Burmese language, I encountered another ring—culture. Words weren’t enough to get to the heart of people. They just gave me more ways to offend them until I understood their ways better. Haha! I have by no means mastered these first two rings, but I have gotten familiar enough with both of them to get to the third and final ring between the gospel and people’s hearts—spiritual power. I didn’t really think about this beforehand, but this one probably fits really well with your blog theme.
Inside the rings of language and culture, people’s hearts are bound by invisible forces. After seeing this in people’s lives, I saw it more clearly in the Bible. For example: “…the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ…” (2 Cor 4:4), and “…our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens” (Eph 6:12).
Behind language and culture—which I do believe we have to communicate the gospel through—demons are the real power holding people captive, keeping them from Christ. Where I grew up, demons seemed like something from Bible times that didn’t interact with our lives today—so this has been a shocking discovery. Buddhist people (like anyone else who doesn’t follow Jesus) are bound by spiritual powers—and those powers must be overcome for them to experience new life in Jesus.
Tell us about the spiritual atmosphere in Myanmar. Aside from the obvious difference in religion, how does it differ from the West?
Across Southeast Asia, most people seem to be more in tune with the spiritual world than people in the West. I know there are exceptions to this, but I think many Westerners in my sphere (except for missionaries) tend to approach angels, demons, ghosts, etc. with skepticism. In the past I remember a friend telling me he saw a ghost. I was skeptical too. Myanmar people and others across Southeast Asia, on the other hand, approach things like this with inherent belief. They see spiritual powers (most often evil ones) interact with their lives on a daily basis and they practice rituals to placate them, avoid offending them, or to gain their assistance in times of need. For those who don’t know Christ, this is driven by fear. When these spiritually attuned people come to know Christ, however, they often immediately experience a deep relationship with him that I find less often in the more skeptical West. I’m not throwing stones here; I include myself. I am still trying to learn how to be more spiritual.
Can you tell us an interesting story from everyday life there?
My first Christmas in Myanmar was super interesting. I took a 24-hour bus ride with local friends to their hometown. Our overnight bus departed on December 24th, and—I kid you not—I didn’t realize it was Christmas until late afternoon on the 25th. The people I was traveling with were Buddhist, and I did not see a single evidence of Christmas anywhere along the way. No Christmas trees, no Christmas lights, no Christmas carols—not even Santa Claus! 20 years later, the commercial side of Christmas has reached further into rural Myanmar, but back then Christmas looked like every other day.
As our group took a break for the afternoon on Christmas, I reflected on my friends’ lack of interest in Jesus (I had been telling them about him along the way), and it hit me: “These people are so uninterested in Jesus.” I paused for thought. “And today is Jesus’s birthday!” The next day I took the stage at a concert and sang a song about Jesus to all the Buddhist people in my friends’ village. That ended up being a super cool way to celebrate the birth of Christ, but I will never forget that first Christmas in Myanmar when I forgot it was Christmas. It made me think about what made Christmas special and what it really meant.
Tell us about the writing side of things. When did you start to write?
I loved writing from elementary school on and was encouraged by my teachers and parents along the way. A creative writing class in high school fanned the flame, and I always thought, “Someday, I’d like to write a book.” But I mostly just wrote journal entries and emails to prayer supporters, until COVID struck and I found myself locked out of Myanmar. That’s when I started writing Jesus in the Buddha Belt: Untold True Stories of a Mighty God and Messy Mission. It’s funny how God works. I’m thinking about Paul Bunyan writing one of the bestselling Christian classics of all time because he was locked in jail for preaching the gospel. I’m not comparing Jesus in the Buddha Belt to Pilgrim’s Progress, but they both started because the authors were locked down 😃.
How would you say your experiences in Myanmar have changed or developed you as a person?
Profoundly! Myanmar (the epicenter of the Buddha Belt) has so many contrasts from where I grew up (the Bible Belt). Learning about Buddhism—not just from books, but from seeing how it plays out in people’s lives and society as a whole—has sharpened my understanding of Jesus and made me love him more. Seeing materially poor Myanmar people experience God in powerful ways has enlarged my view of God and challenged me to know Jesus more deeply. It has made me more spiritually minded, more appreciative of elders, and more convinced that while we all differ in many ways—we are all very similar at a basic level, and there’s a hole inside all of us that can only be properly filled by Jesus.
The positive ways God has changed my life through my experience in Myanmar is one of the reasons I wrote Jesus in the Buddha Belt. I am so thankful for these experiences and want to share them with others. Most people can’t move to the other side of the world, but I think they will enjoy meeting real people from there and hearing the good, bad, and ugly of their lives and the powerful ways they experience Jesus in the scary face of all kinds of hostility. I would love to introduce you to four of these amazing people through the book. In fact, I wrote their stories in first person so that it feels like you are sitting across the table from them.
How can people connect with you and get the book?
I would love that! The best way to connect with me is through jesusinthebuddhabelt.com. You can email me from there, check out the blog, and get get prayer resources and book updates.
The book will be released by William Carey Publishing on April 22. It will be available at missionbooks.org and, of course, Amazon. I would love to give you a free sample right now at jesusinthebuddhabelt.com/freechapter, before it’s available anywhere else. You can also pre-order the book at a 25% discount if you order before April 22. Here’s the link for that: https://missionbooks.org/products/jesus-in-the-buddha-belt.
Thanks so much for interviewing me. Tons of grace and peace to all of your readers and many many blessings on all that you are doing.
