Have you cleaned up the root?
Perhaps one of the most common mistakes I’ve seen in this type of ministry, is failing to find out and clean up the root of the problem before attempting to cast out the demons. For example, a young girl makes a vow (bound her soul) never to let anybody get close to her again, and then years later a deliverance pastor attempts to cast out a spirit out of her which continually puts up a wall between her and others to prevent meaningful relationships from forming. There’s a good chance that the pastor won’t even get the spirit out because the legal grounds were never broken up, and even if he did get it out, there’s a very real chance that it will return because it has a right to be there.
Another example is when a person has a bondage to addiction of some kind. The root of many addictions in either an unmet need or an indulgence in escapism in effort to escape reality (or projected reality). Let’s say a woman has been divorced and was hurt in the process, and she turns to excessive eating in effort to ease the pain, thus turning to escapism to suppress the pain and wound. In a moral sense, she is harming her body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and a spirit of addiction will gladly take her up on this opportunity to destroy the body which God has given her. Years later, she seeks deliverance from this spirit, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to budge (even after persistently commanding the spirit to come out in Jesus’ name), or the minister is able to get the spirit(s) out, but they keep returning. My first question is, were those wounds from the divorce ever truly healed? Or were they suppressed? Could it be that those wounds simply remained her the darkness of her soul, and are still infected? It would be a good idea in such a case, to make sure that the wound has been opened up (bringing it out into the open and before the Lord) and healed (stop trying to hold on to or justify the wound and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to them). Once that root (that which has brought on this bondage in the first place) is cleaned up, then it is time to move forward and begin casting out the demons.
When you clean up the root of the problem in a deliverance, you are giving the enemy no excuse to return. You are enabling that person to come into complete freedom in that area of their life, and maintain that freedom for the rest of their life.