Lately, because of a lot of things that have happened in my life, I have developed a bunch of questions and I wanted to find answers at ANY cost. I needed to hear from God! Over the last few weeks I have spent a LOT of time and energy trying to seek/hear from God, but to no avail. I had sought healing, guidance, encouragement, and frankly, just reassurance that I hadn't been forgotten. I had turned to the Bible, had conversations with friends, read books, listened to sermons, and they all only led me to more questions and uncertainty. I decided that it was time for me to find out from God Himself what to do and I knew that I needed to get away from everything and find some silence and solitude so that I could. Up to this point I had been having difficulty connecting with God and hearing from Him, so I knew that I needed to go someplace that I could be in a - for lack of a better word- sanctified environment. I knew that I needed to go someplace that got me away from everything that was burdening me so that I could see things as they really were and a place where God was at work because I needed to get as close to Him as I could. I soon found myself composing an email my old pastor/mentor and his wife and asked if I could come stay with them in Southeast Missouri for a few days. When they agreed, I just knew that God was going to do something amazing on this trip and boy was I right! I reached out to several of my friends and told them of my plans, requested prayers throughout the weekend, shut my phone off, left my laptop at home, and then began the journey southward to see what God had waiting for me in the town of Dexter, MO.
My weekend was split between three things: Spending time alone and in solitude, spending time with Steve and Cheryl (my gracious hosts), and helping out with the massive youth rally at their church called Disciple Now. At first I was kinda hoping that I would be able to lock myself away for the duration of the weekend and just be utterly alone, but I remembered what God had said about serving others so I agreed to help with the youth as well. I think God knew better than I did (as usual) what I needed because I got to meet some interesting people, I got to watch God work in the lives of dozens and dozens of students, and I was blessed with the outpouring of wisdom from a wonderful couple who have served in ministry for, well far longer than I have even been alive, and on top of that I STILL got to spend the quiet study and prayer time that I needed so desperately. That being said, within the first hour of my arrival God began working on me and taught me the first lesson of the MANY that would follow over the course of the weekend.
Now, I was originally going to attempt to write about everything I learned in a single entry on here, but then I realized that there would be NO WAY people would keep reading long enough to get through it all, nor could I come close to finishing in a reasonable amount of time. Instead I am going to begin sharing everything in a series of stories and lessons that I learned over the course of several posts. Please bear with me and keep an open mind.
LESSON 1: Spiritual Warfare is real, as are angels and demons. Don't ignore it.
For anyone who doesn't know me well enough yet, I absolutely LOVE stories. I love telling them... I love hearing them...stories are what motivate me to adventure, to risk, to live! I love stories so much I even wrote about it previously (check out: Telling Your Story) and lately I've been sharing a lot of stories with people about their encounters with angels and demons. The coolest, scariest, and most eye opening part of these stories is that they are all true! For example, in 2005, a mission team I was on in Alabama had an encounter with a demon who was trying to scare us into inactivity and distract us from our mission down there. More than a dozen people (myself included) were there to witness it and I got my first in depth lesson on this kind of spiritual warfare that is going on all around us. The year before, a mission team from our church, Steve included, were in Puerto Rico working with a partner church to get some construction done on a new building. Steve was asked to deliver the Sunday morning sermon for the church and he felt led to preach on the Fire of God. After the message a demon possessing a girl manifested itself. It became so violent that several large guys had to restrain this tiny little girl while Steve and some of the elders of the church prayed over her for an extended period to drive the demon out of her. Someone I know very well told me a story of how he felt a dark presence with him in his bedroom several nights in a row and one morning woke up to find scratch marks that looked like claw marks on his body in places he couldn't reach. This weekend, I got to meet a gentleman this weekend who shared a story of how he was on a mission trip in Haiti during the uprising in the early 90's and was saved, from a group of terrorists, by an angel who showed up in the middle of a war-torn rebel-occupied city as a Haitian-looking man dressed in a white suit, riding a white motorcycle with the word "Jesus" written on the gas tank. In perfect, unaccented English, he warned them that they were being led into a trap and then proceeded to lead them out of the city. Several of my friends have told me similar stories about their own encounters but were always hesitant to share with anyone because they don't think anyone would believe them. Those stories don't even include the many many stories and testimonies I have heard from people I didn't even know.
Call me crazy but at times, even without actually seeing demons in certain places, I have just felt a sense of the presence of darkness and evil in a place. I have felt spiritual oppression, as though the invisible demons were running wild and had control over certain people or places. Likewise, there are times I've been places and with people in which I have felt so full of goodness and at such peace that they must have had angels surrounding them. I decided that since demons are real and their presence can affect my life so substantially, it would be a great idea to spend some of this weekend investigating them. This is what I learned:
- Demons are not actually angels of light and beauty, they are quite frightening indeed.
- They cannot possess a believer because One greater than they already occupies your body (believers are filled with the Holy Spirit, and what demon can overpower God?) but they CAN attack, oppress, and suppress a believer through fear, distraction, temptation, making your believe lies, or other such methods...Sometimes if they are strong enough, can even physically manifest themselves and cause bodily harm (see below).
- They hate us because we were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and since they hate Him they want to take it out on us.
- They can enter a home or a life through anything that is not submitted to God (i.e. dishonesty, greed, sexual sin, anger, bitterness, resentment, anxiety/worry, control... you get the idea). Anything that is not submitted to God is an open door for a demon to use to get in.
- Occultic things supercharge demons and give them extra power/influence.
- They make it harder to hear God and sense His presence. (This is a reason I felt it necessary to go someplace I felt was completely sanctified and had no hint of a demonic presence)
- Praying in the name of Jesus is how you get a demon out of someone or someplace. We have been given authority over the demons because we have identified with Christ. They don't always respond right away because like a tree that has taken root, the longer a demon has been present the stronger the hold it has and harder it is to get it out. This is why it took these pastors and elders so long to get rid of the demon from the little girl in Puerto Rico even though they were praying in the name and with the authority of Jesus.
Oh, one last word on the topic. I found a verse to give you some hope when the devil tries to mess with you, tries to make you fall, tries to attack you, to tempt you, or to make you believe a lie: James 4:7-8 (NIV) says "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you." If you stand with God, you can then stand up to the devil and all his little minions and when you do, he's gonna see that you're not alone and he's gonna run like a scared little rabbit as fast and as far as he can.
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