TRANSCRIPT Become A True Child Of God To Defeat The orphan spirit (Psalm 77) A Sermon Testimony By Elise Beatrice - Sunday 22 June 2025 Lord, thank You so much for this. Thank You for You, Father God Almighty, thank You for Your Son, Jesus. Thank You, Lord, For Your Holy Spirit. Please, let Your Holy Spirit guide us. There is this beautiful passage, Psalm 77, please help us to understand it and know what You’re telling us, Lord. For Your words, every word spoken by You, and Your servants, is in this Book because You allowed it; You wanted it to be in this Book. So we take everything in this Book seriously, for You always use every situation and every passage in this Book to teach us. So, thank You for Your teaching of today, for Your inspiration and sermon. Thank You, Lord Jesus. Thank You, Holy Father, in the name of Your Son, Jesus. Amen. Let’s read Psalm 77: “1 I cry out to God; yes, I shout. Oh, that God would listen to me! 2 When I was in deep trouble, I searched for the Lord. All night long I prayed, with hands lifted toward heaven, but my soul was not comforted. 3 I think of God, and I moan, overwhelmed with longing for His help. Interlude 4 You don’t let me sleep. I am too distressed even to pray! 5 I think of the good old days, long since ended, 6 when my nights were filled with joyful songs. I search my soul and ponder the difference now. 7 Has the Lord rejected me forever? Will He never again be kind to me? 8 Is His unfailing love gone forever? Have His promises permanently failed? 9 Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He slammed the door on His compassion? Interlude 10 And I said, “This is my fate; the Most High has turned His hand against me.” 11 But then I recall all You have done, O Lord; I remember Your wonderful deeds of long ago. 12 They are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about Your mighty works. 13 O God, Your ways are holy. Is there any god as mighty as You? 14 You are the God of great wonders! You demonstrate Your awesome power among the nations. 15 By Your strong arm, you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. Interlude 16 When the Red Sea saw You, O God, its waters looked and trembled! The sea quaked to its very depths. 17 The clouds poured down rain; the thunder rumbled in the sky. Your arrows of lightning flashed. 18 Your thunder roared from the whirlwind; the lightning lit up the world! The earth trembled and shook. 19 Your road led through the sea, Your pathway through the mighty waters—a pathway no one knew was there! 20 You led Your people along that road like a flock of sheep, with Moses and Aaron as their shepherds.” Wow! On Tuesday, 17 June 2025, I shared my testimony with a small congregation, and this morning, just a week later, on Sunday, 22 June 2025, the Lord led me to Psalm 77 and gave me a new sermon still about the orphan spirit. How great the Lord is. Psalm 77 is a great example of satan oppressing, especially the servants of God. This is a Psalm of Asaph; it is an experience of the servants of God. Just because we are servants of the Lord and devoted to Him does not mean that we’re always sleeping in a bed of roses and that our days are filled with peace and joy. There are times when things are unbearable. There are times we go through things we do not comprehend. And that is because of the nature of the world we live in, filled with good and evil. Good things don’t hurt us, good things don’t damage us, good things don’t depress us. But every other thing from the evil side oppresses us and causes us to, sometimes, feel like God isn’t there. So, let’s analyse this passage and understand that we, even today, go through the same thing. It was because I experienced similar things that I understood the meaning of this Psalm. He begins the first verse by crying, “I cry out to God; yes, I shout. Oh, that God would listen to me!” So, what do we hear here? We hear someone who is desperate, someone who is anxious, someone who is fearful; like he has continuously asked and his prayer was not heard. So we can feel it in this verse. “I cry out to God; yes, I shout. Oh, that God would listen to me! 2 When I was in deep trouble, I searched for the Lord. All night long I prayed, with hands lifted toward heaven, but my soul was not comforted.” Yes, this person, why wasn’t his soul comforted? Because he came to God with desperation: he had surrendered to despair. He was anxious, he was fearful. It is exactly what the Lord tells us not to do. The Bible tells us not to be anxious about anything, not to fear. So, we should come to the Lord in full confidence and faith, knowing that He is going to hear us. When you come before God in prayer with a sense of hopelessness, anxiety and fear, you are not thinking clearly. So this servant of the Lord was not thinking clearly, just as many of us today do. And he said, “I think of God, and I moan, overwhelmed with longing for His help.” These are very powerful words. He moans because he convinced himself that God no longer hears him, yet he’s a servant of the Lord. Asaph was a prominent Levite, a skilled musician, and a seer who served in King David’s court and was appointed by King David as the choirmaster of the temple musicians. As we can see in Psalm 77, he is the author. Asaph is not one of those who rebel against God to the point that God turns His face away from him. But he was oppressed by the same satan who oppresses the devoted servants of God today, making them, in their distress, unable to think clearly. I did the same before the Lord began to teach me many things. This is the mood he’s in, his state of mind. So he thinks of God and he moans, overwhelmed with longing for His help. He had convinced himself somehow that God had left him, and for this reason he could not perceive that help he was praying for. And then he says on verse 4, “You don’t let me sleep.” He is talking to God, and this comes across as a false accusation. He is convinced that God is the One keeping him awake. But we all know ourselves that when we’re going through trouble, when our mind is not in the right place, we go to sleep, and we’re kept awake. It seems like he was suffering from insomnia also, and insomnia is never from God; it is always because we have filled up our minds with certain things; we have concerns, we have anxiety, we’re not feeling any peace because the anxiety is coming to take the place of the peace of God. And for this, we’re feeling only anxiety and desperation and fear. Some people may even suffer panic attacks because they’re worried. At one point in our lives, we all go through this. “I’m too distressed even to pray.” Yes, he is too distressed. “I think of good all days long since ended.” He’s convinced also that the good days have gone. Every time we’re thinking of the good all days, that means in that moment, we are convinced that there are no more good days to come, and that in our present, we are not seeing any good days. And often, these are not true, because if we live in the past, that means we’re convinced that our present is not good, and we’re also even convinced that our future is not good. “I think of good all days long since ended.” This sounds like somebody who no longer has hope ahead of him, and is just living in the past, and thinking of the good times of the past, but is not seeing anything happening in the present where he is, or in the future where he is heading. So, he thinks of those good times when His nights were filled with joyful songs. Then he must remember why His nights were filled with joyful songs, and now, they’re not. Because if his mind is filled continuously with desperation, anxiety, fearfulness, then there is no place for peace. It is only when we experience the peace of the Lord that even the beautiful songs come into our hearts in our sleep. “I think of the good all days long since ended.” When we’re moving forward in the future, and we don’t have a way of telling what the future will bring, and we are the servants of the Lord, what makes us convinced that the days of having our nights filled with joyful songs have ended? Unless we are living in sin and no longer listen to the Lord Jesus, and, in fact, are correct in saying that God has abandoned us, which is the fate of everyone who stops listening to the Lord, it is always negative thoughts to think that God has abandoned us. If, as the Lord’s servants, living in Him and by His words, we sound like this, it is always negative thoughts. There is someone there putting lies in our heads. And then, he said, “When my nights were filled with joyful songs, I searched my soul and pondered the difference now. Has the Lord rejected me forever? Will He never again be kind to me? Is His unfailing love gone forever? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He slammed the door on His compassion?” Wow! These are false accusations. He began with false accusations, and everything was, all along, a false accusation. So, often many ask these sorts of questions even without realising what they’re saying, because they are not thinking clearly in those situations, but are just voicing everything that comes to mind at that moment. Thinking this way or falling into the devil’s traps when he strikes with such wrong thoughts is due to the inability to know God’s beautiful character or to forgetting God’s wonders and beauty. Asaph was a servant of the Lord, but in that moment, he seemed hopeless and anxious and fearful. He wrote this Psalm, and just like all the other Psalmists, he was not writing fiction but his experience and what the Holy Spirit revealed to them. “Will He never again be kind to me?” First of all, there is not a single moment when God isn’t kind. God is kind forever. He is Kindness forever. God is not being rude today and then being kind tomorrow like humans. Rudeness is not from God, but Kindness is from God, and gentleness is from God, for they are some of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Let’s not misunderstand God’s righteous wrath with rudeness. “Will He never again be kind to me? Is His unfailing love gone forever?” Never. God’s unfailing love goes nowhere. God’s unfailing love is always there. But sometimes, we may be oppressed or have our minds filled up with lies, anxiety and fear, to the point that we’re not seeing the Lord, we’re not feeling His great presence. God’s unfailing love is still there. “Has His promises permanently failed?” Obviously, God’s Promise never fails. These are obviously just the false accusations the enemy is putting in his mind right now to keep him away from God, to fill up his mind with the things that are even God’s Character. God is faithful. He always keeps His promises. He is a God of His word. His words never return void. God won’t make a promise and not keep it. But in this moment, this person is not thinking. “Has God forgotten to be gracious?” God is graciousness. Can graciousness forget to be gracious? That will mean that the graciousness has left God. But that is not possible, because grace cannot leave grace. Love cannot leave love. Love is within itself. Goodness cannot leave Goodness. Joy cannot leave Joy. God is good, and Good does not leave Good. God does not leave Himself. “Has He slammed the door on His compassion?” God’s compassion never expired nor ceased. In Verse 10, he said, “This is my fate. The Most High has turned His hands against me.” And I just wrote here, “lies.” From this situation, we can obviously understand what he’s suffering from. In his ears, right there, is the enemy, the devil, satan. The problem we’re encountering today has not just begun today. The battle between good and evil has begun even before the world began. When the Lord began to create the world, there was the one who had already corrupted himself into evil, and that was satan. The same way that demons pollute our minds and people’s minds today with lies to attack God directly, this servant of the Lord was being victimised by demons, oppressed by evil spirits of lies and a spirit called ‘orphan spirit.’ The fear of not having God causes us to not see God and to not feel His presence; it incites false accusations against God. That is exactly what it is. This servant of the Lord has this fear, he is anxious, he can’t stand living without God, he can’t stand the thought that God might have abandoned him. And this is the orphan spirit who so often even pollutes the minds of those who are faithful to the Lord by convincing them somehow that God has abandoned them. And God means a lot to humans, especially those who are in the Lord. Once they know God and truly know Him, they can’t live without Him, and the thought that God might have left them is an unbearable thought, and that is enough to give them insomnia; it’s enough to give them sleepless nights. And it is not God causing him not to sleep; it is all the lies that the enemy is putting in his mind, surrounding him with darkness. He can’t feel peace because peace is now being obstructed by the worries, by anxiety. So yes, remember this: The fear of not having God causes us to not see God and to not feel His presence; it incites false accusations against God. The other day, I was sharing my testimony of 2007, which I did not know at that time what it was, but now, in 2025, the Lord revealed to me it was the orphan spirit. I myself, for a glimpse, thought that God had abandoned me. And that had caused me to also falsely accuse God, because thinking that God has abandoned us when He did not, that is a false accusation. And at that moment, we seem convinced that it is the case. Some people stay in this state of mind for a long time because they’re not welcoming the help that has been given to them. But some stay less. The sooner they convince themselves back to the truth, and realise that the Lord did not abandon them, and everything is a lie, the sooner they have their lives back. Of course, suppose you have indeed been a rebellious one, living in sin, disobeying the Lord Jesus. In that case, the Lord would have indeed abandoned you if He saw that you would not listen to Him, nor let Him save you, for He has abandoned many, given them up to their sinful desires, as in Romans 1:21-24, “21 Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship Him as God or even give Him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. 23 And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. 25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator Himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.” So, if you have not been living in such a way, practising any type of sin, then the Lord did not abandon you, but the enemy’s lies are preventing you from feeling the Lord’s presence. In Psalm 77, Asaph is telling this story because he has overcome the devil’s lies. I have understood this because the Lord used my experience to reveal the truth to me. If I had never experienced the lies of the orphan spirit in 2007, I would not have understood the deep meaning behind Psalm 77, which the Lord Jesus led me to read today. I myself have overcome the devil’s lies, I have understood, and that’s why I shared my testimony in my previous sermon, entitled, “The Lord Jesus Delivered Me From The Orphan Spirit.” And I did this so that you can also learn from it. So, after he thought like that, he was down, thinking all these worst things about the Lord, failing in that moment to realise the beautiful Character of God, that God is the same yesterday, and today and forever; He never changes. And he could not see that because his thoughts were not really his thoughts at that moment, but were coming from the evil one who oppressed him, who wanted so much to pull him away from God. So while he was convinced, “Has He done this, has He done that? Has He left me? Has He slammed the door on His compassion? Has He forgotten to be gracious?” All these. God was there, but He could not see God because these are all the things that come in the way and hide God from us when we put ourselves in this state of mind. But then, in Verse 10, he says, “And I said, ‘This is my fate; the Most High has turned His hand against me.’” So, obviously, he is thinking, ‘Before, God was for me, but now, He has turned His hand against me, He’s hunting me down, He is there to catch me, ‘You don’t let me sleep...’ All these thoughts. And the enemy, that is his field, the devil, demons, that is what they do. And they’re doing the same here today in this 21st-century generation and will do it until Christ comes again to seize them. The biggest fear for that one who has the Lord is that they can lose the Lord. And the devil uses exactly that to make them feel like they’re orphans; they have no father in Heaven. And if you believe that you have no Father in Heaven, you just live a miserable life in the darkness. And even if you manage to fill your life with material riches, none of it can give you true love, fulfilment, true happiness, joy, peace and the salvation of your soul, for without the One True God, everything on this earth is meaningless. Knowing the truth that God, who is above everything, who is all-powerful: the Power above all powers and the Kingdom above all kingdoms, the Authority above all authorities, knowing for certain that He is there and that He is on our side, and we are His children, that is what chases the fear away. For if we have a Father, who is so BIG, who’s so HUGE, and can destroy demons with a click of His finger, what do we have to fear? But in order for a demon to seize someone, they must first convince them that God has abandoned them, and they feel helpless, desperate, anxious, fearful, and that is the key for the devil to seize them, if they have let the Lord Jesus rapidly rescue them with His truth. He realises now that he has forgotten the greatness of the Lord, as he said from verse 11, ‘from verse 11,’ “11 I recall all You have done, O Lord; I remember Your wonderful deeds of long ago. 12 They are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about Your mighty works. 13 O God, Your ways are holy. Is there any god as mighty as You? 14 You are the God of great wonders! You demonstrate Your awesome power among the nations. 15 By Your strong arm, you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. Interlude 16 When the Red Sea saw You, O God, its waters looked and trembled! The sea quaked to its very depths. 17 The clouds poured down rain; the thunder rumbled in the sky. Your arrows of lightning flashed. 18 Your thunder roared from the whirlwind; the lightning lit up the world! The earth trembled and shook. 19 Your road led through the sea, Your pathway through the mighty waters—a pathway no one knew was there! 20 You led Your people along that road like a flock of sheep, with Moses and Aaron as their shepherds.” As we can see, when we turn our gaze from the Lord, the devil rapidly fills our minds with darkness and lies. When we then remember the wonders of the Lord, and put our gaze on the Lord, and “Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, put your mind on such things.” (Philippians 4:8). He remembered then the wonders of the Lord put His mind on those things, and began to meditate on the beauty of God, on His wonders and miracles. That’s why I’m always advising people, ‘Get to know God, know His beauty, and once you know God’s beauty, once you know Him, hold on to that beauty, even in your pain, even in your suffering, because the devil is just waiting for a gap to jump in and to fill up our minds with lies. But by putting our minds back on God, and remembering His wonders, and understanding that it is not just in the past, just as He did them in the past, He will also do it in the future, just as He is doing it in our everyday life in the present.’ When we’re thinking of the Beauty of the Lord, we’re delighting ourselves in the Lord.’ So he was now delighting himself in the beauty of the Lord, and that kept him going. And by doing that, he had defeated the anxiety, he had defeated the desperation, he had defeated the fear, and he had defeated the lies. And now that his mind was on God’s Beauty, he would be filled with joy; the peace would suddenly come; the smile would be filling up his face as he’s pondering upon the beauty of God. At least that was how I felt in 2007, after I spent a few days in my room alone to examine myself on a deeper level, feeling broken, in genuine repentance, to have said to someone in the church that I was mad at God, when He did nothing wrong. I thought He abandoned me and left me to suffer. And I was amazed and in awe of the Lord who revealed His many wonders and miracles in my life and led me to a new life, the life He had prepared for me, which He revealed to me in 2015 when He called me to serve in His Kingdom of Heaven. Gracious Lord. Amen. Fear is one of the tools the devil uses to trap people. To avoid that fear, we have to remember God, who is the beauty, who is the Faithful One, who is the Promise, the Hope. Today, we are even more blessed because of Christ, who came and died on the Cross, because of this Holy Bible that we have, all written for us, while these people at that time did not have this ability or even the complete Old Testament that we have today. They had Moses’ books written in Scrolls, but today we have more: The Old and New Testaments. So, we have this great advantage, yet you’re seeing people, even more deceived today than in the past, because they’re turning their gaze from the Lord to put it on the wrong things in the world. So God is the Solution to our problems. God is the One who adopts us because His Son, Jesus, died on the Cross. God is never the first One to leave people. As I demonstrated the other day, God is here with us, in this very spot with us, when His Spirit is in us. But then, from this very spot here, you begin to depart from God, and the further you go, God is still in that spot where you left Him. The further we go, the further, further, further, we’re lost in the world, far away from Him. He’s still in that spot where we left Him. We would need now to stop, for it is we who have left; it is we who have abandoned God; He’s still where we left Him. We would need now to stop and to go back, to draw near to Him again and find Him exactly where we left Him. This also applies to everyone who is practising any sin, and their sins are keeping the Lord Jesus away from them. They need to stop, turn from their wrong ways, and return to God, and find Him exactly where they left Him. We must understand that if we don’t come back, God turns His face away, and from far away, when people are praying to Him, He does not even listen to their prayers, until they acknowledge their sins and repent, then He will hear that prayer of true repentance. 1 Peter 5:6-9, “6 So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time He will lift you up in honor. 7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you. 8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. 9 Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering you are.” The Lord Jesus says in John 14:16-18, “If you love Me, obey My commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper —the Spirit of truth, to be with you forever. The world cannot receive Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you do know Him, for He abides with you and will be in you. I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you.” May the Lord’s peace be with you. Thank You so much, Lord, Father God Almighty. Thank You for Your love and Your peace and Your joy. Thank You for Your Sermon and inspiration. Thank You for Your deliverance from evil, from the orphan spirit. Thank You for guarding our minds and hearts with Your peace so great beyond human comprehension in Christ Jesus. Thank You for Your perfect love, Lord, that cast out fear. Thank You for Your mighty Hands that are for us. If God is for us, who can be against us? No demon, no satan, for You are the Power above all powers, The Kingdom above all kingdoms, the Authority above all authorities. You are the One who watches from above. You have Your eyes that search the earth and watch over us. You are with us. Thank You, God, for teaching us, for helping us to not let what keeps us close to You depart. Help us to separate ourselves from every lie of the devil, for that is what he uses to bring his presence, and his presence only replaces Your beauty and the Hope, joy, and love. We love You, God, and we thank You for being in our lives forever. We want to be with You, Father; we want to be with You, Lord Jesus; we want to be with Your Holy Spirit forever. So, please, help us to be alert, Lord, show us whenever we are being led astray, expose the enemy for us to see, correct us and discipline us, as long as we are with You in Your light, in Your love, and doing Your will, Lord, not ours. We thank You, Lord, for Your healing. Holy Father, please hear our prayer in the name of Your Son, Jesus. Amen.