Chosen: You are Chosen For…
Josh Laughlin | March 15, 2026
Breaking Free: Understanding Your Spiritual Authority and Identity
The ancient words of Hosea echo through millennia with startling relevance: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." This isn't merely intellectual knowledge—it's the kind of deep, transformative understanding that changes how we see reality itself.
What if everything you thought you knew about the spiritual world was just the tip of the iceberg? What if the Bible contains layers of truth that most of us have never explored because they seemed too strange, too uncomfortable, or too far outside our theological comfort zones?
The Uncomfortable Truth About the Spiritual Realm
We've grown comfortable with sanitized Christianity—the kind that fits neatly into boxes we've constructed, that never challenges our worldview too dramatically. But Scripture repeatedly pushes us into uncomfortable territory, and perhaps it's time we stopped skipping over the weird parts.
Consider 1 Peter 3:18-20, where we read that Christ "went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison." This isn't a throwaway verse. It's a window into a cosmic reality that most of us have never seriously considered. These weren't human spirits—they were supernatural entities, fallen beings who had rebelled against God.
The term used here is pneuma, which in context refers to supernatural beings rather than people. When we trace this thread backward through Scripture, we find ourselves in Genesis 6, where "the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose."
Sons of God: A Paradigm Shift
Here's where things get interesting. Most of us have been taught that God has only one Son—and that's absolutely true when we're talking about Jesus, the monogamous (one-of-a-kind, unique) Son of God. John 3:16 doesn't lie: God gave His only begotten Son.
But the term "sons of God" appears throughout Scripture in ways that should make us pause and reconsider. In Job 1:6, we read: "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them." These weren't humans—they were supernatural beings in God's divine council.
Psalm 82:1 takes this even further: "God has taken his place in the divine council. In the midst of the gods he holds judgment."
Wait—gods? Plural?
Before anyone cries heresy, let's be clear: there is only one capital-G God. Yahweh is supreme, uncreated, and without equal. But Scripture acknowledges the existence of other spiritual beings—created entities that some ancient cultures worshiped as gods. These aren't equal to Yahweh; they're rebellious members of His divine council who sought worship that belongs to God alone.
This isn't polytheism—it's understanding the cosmic landscape as the biblical authors understood it.
Why This Matters for Your Daily Life
You might be thinking, "This is fascinating history, but what does it have to do with me?" Everything.
When we recognize that the spiritual realm is real and active, we stop white-knuckling our way through Christianity. We stop thinking that our struggles with the same sins over and over are simply because we're weak or undisciplined. Yes, we're sinners—but there's often something more at play.
The devil is real, and he wants your soul. He's not passively waiting for you to stumble into his trap. First Peter 5 describes him as a roaring lion, actively seeking whom he may devour. His army of darkness has an active plan to lure you away from the one true God.
The gods of old—the spiritual entities behind sex, money, power, and control—are still operating today. They're not wooden idols or stone statues. They're real spiritual forces working to steal worship from Yahweh and destroy God's people.
The Path to Freedom: Deliverance
Here's the good news: we serve the God who delivers.
Throughout Judges, we see a pattern: God's people forsake Him for other gods, they're oppressed by those gods, they cry out for a deliverer, and God raises one up. The cycle repeats over and over.
But we don't have to wait for a deliverer anymore. Our Deliverer was raised up on a cross two thousand years ago, and He is more powerful than any entity in the universe.
Deliverance isn't just a New Testament concept—it's woven throughout Scripture. A significant portion of Jesus and the apostles' ministry involved healing and casting out demons. Yet somehow, much of the modern church has relegated this to the past or dismissed it as too strange.
Deliverance is freedom from the bondage and oppression of unclean spirits. It's closing doorways that were opened through generational curses, unrepentant sin patterns, or other means. And every believer should consider going through a process of deliverance, because life is long and you may have things attached to your life that you don't even know about.
People have experienced freedom from generational patterns of anxiety and depression. Addictions to pornography and substances have been broken. The spirit of religion—that suffocating, performance-based relationship with God—has been cast out. These aren't dramatic exorcist-style encounters (though supernatural things do happen). Most often, they're peaceful truth encounters where the power of Jesus' name brings freedom.
Your Most Powerful Weapon: Your Testimony
First Peter 3:15 instructs us to "always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you." We often think this means we need to become expert apologists, armed with facts and arguments.
But one of the most powerful defenses of the faith is simply this: the changing of your person and the sanctifying of your soul.
Your testimony—the fruit of the Spirit evident in your life—has massive impact on those around you, especially people who knew you before. When people see genuine transformation, they can't help but ask, "What happened to you?"
Think about Paul—a fire-breathing persecutor of the church who encountered Jesus and became the author of half the New Testament. Or Peter—an ordinary, unschooled fisherman who became the rock upon which Christ built His church, a man so filled with the Holy Spirit that people laid the sick in the streets hoping his shadow would heal them.
Revelation 12:11 tells us: "They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony."
Your testimony proves who the most powerful God in the universe is. And that God wants you. He wants to keep sanctifying you, delivering you, and using your story to point others to His Son—the unique, one-of-a-kind Savior who conquered death, hell, and every spiritual force arrayed against us.
The question isn't whether you'll face spiritual opposition. The question is whether you'll fight with the full arsenal God has given you: His Word, His Spirit, His church, and the freedom that comes through deliverance in Jesus' name.