By John Green
Tulsa—Mary Jo Haglin knew that something was wrong—she just didn’t know what it was.
“Every year, starting after Thanksgiving, I would begin to get more and more depressed. January was the worst. I felt like I was walking through a dark night, with howling wolves, and the incessant drumming of the Energizer Bunny. On the outside, I seemed all happy and cheerful. I served croissants to my family, and not the microwave kind. Inside, I was thinking about ways to kill myself with an electric carving knife.”
It wasn’t until she attended a deliverance service, led by demon-buster Bob Larson, that the source of her troubles became clear.
“Bob was naming demons—you know, Lust, Drug Addiction, Nail-Biting, Soap Opera spirits, the Internet, stuff like that. He got to Mammon, which he said was a prince, ruling over lesser demons, and then he said ‘Christmas Spirit’ and bam! I knew. That was it! Most of my life I had been suffering from the Christmas Spirit. Bob described some of the symptoms of this kind of possession—compulsive shopping, parking lot rage, excessive credit card use, overeating of desserts, the slaughter of helpless fir trees—and I thought 'That's me! He’s talking about me!’”
Mary Jo joined the prayer line of several hundred spiritually tormented people all waiting to have their demons confronted.
“I had to wait for five hours, but it was totally worth it,” she says, a smile slowly spreading across her face like Judy Garland coming down off a three-day painkiller binge. “I needed to go to the bathroom, but I didn’t want to lose my spot in line. Bob personally prayed over me, even though by then I had my legs crossed, I needed to go so bad. But Bob stemmed the floodtide. He had a Word of Knowledge that the Christmas Spirit had first taken hold of me as a young child. My parents forced me to have my picture taken with Santa at a department store. It gave me nightmares for years afterward. I see now that Santa is an acronym for Satan.
A stronghold was established, and I was in deep bondage. Every year, when I went back to the stores, especially the Wal-Mart electronics department, I was reliving the abuse that I had suffered as a child.”
Bob Larson laid hands on her, cast out the demon, and told her how to stay free.
“He had me go home and bring back all the presents I had bought. The Nintendo Wii and iPods I had gotten for the kids. The 62-inch plasma TV for my husband. I had to make a complete break to ensure my freedom. I turned it all over to Bob, as I renounced the Christmas Spirit. I cut up my Best Buy card and my Costco ID, and an incredible feeling of total peace and freedom settled over me. I haven’t told my husband or the kids yet. I’m going to wait until Christmas morning and surprise them. From now on, Christmas is going to be different in the Haglin household. Bob gave me some special envelopes. All I have to do is fill in the credit card amount that I would normally have spent on presents, and drop the letter in the mail. It’s so easy! God bless you, Bob Larson!”
