There were so many cool things that happened this month that the Lord used to show us his provision and power. However, with all of those good things there were also some really hard things that I had to deal with. This was a month of stretching and learning more about the value of community and dealing with some really heavy spiritual attacks.
Everyday felt like a struggle to me. I felt like I wasn’t pouring into the people around me, but instead spending all of my time with my teammates. Literally all of my time. Our days looked like getting up, sitting around for a little while, maybe going into town an hour away to find wifi to get some leads on contacts, meetings with potential contacts, eating every meal together, and spending every single moment together. Idk if you’ve ever lived with someone and never had a single moment to yourself for a month, but it’s so hard, especially when there’s 5 of you in one house haha! I learned things about myself that I didn’t realize before I lived in community. I found out I have to have time to myself or I completely shut down, I don’t love to share my things with people all of the time, not having water to shower everyday frustrated me, living in a house with no air conditioning in 100° weather made me really cranky, and I also realized just how quick I am to look at the negative things going on around me when I’m uncomfortable than focusing on the positives like I typically do. There were many days I was at the end of my rope and wanted so badly to come home but I knew that if I made a decision based solely on emotions that I would regret that for the rest of my life.
Along with the struggles of learning about myself in community and living in the hot hot heat of Botswana with limited water supply for showers, my teammates and I dealt with a lot of spiritual attacks during the night. Most nights there would be people roaming around in our compound shining lights in our windows and digging through our garbage for food. Things like that were a little sketchy at first but we were safe in our house. Bars on every window and on the doors kept people from doing anything crazy while we were sleeping or away. Those bars didn’t keep out the spiritual forces around us though. I talked a little about the spiritual heaviness I can feel around me in a previous blog, but I have never experienced anything like I did the last week we were in Botswana. The last Tuesday in the village we came home to a neighborhood with zero power and no idea when it would come back on. That’s a pretty normal thing in Africa to have no electricity from time to time so we didn’t think anything about it. We all went to sleep and as usual I watched a movie on my computer to wind down for the night. My movie went off and I was almost asleep around 12:30 am and I heard a loud sound at our door like someone had jerked the gate. It was locked so obviously no one could get in but I started listening and hearing all sorts of weird noises. I saw lights pass by my window outside like normal but I then felt this heaviness enter my room. That probably sounds weird to people who have never experienced it but I have truly never been so scared in my life. It honestly felt like someone was in the room with me. It looked like a figure was standing in the corner of my room but I couldn’t make out anything because it was so dark, but there was just enough light shining in the window from the moon to see the outline of the room. It even sounded like someone else besides me was breathing and let’s be real, I was freaking out! I kept thinking, “Ok Britt if something came in this room you would have heard it come in” but I knew in my spirit that there was something in that room with me. At that point I felt something really heavy standing over me and it got even darker than it was before. I kept blinking my eyes to try to adjust to the overwhelming darkness but it was doing me no good. My heart started pounding so hard and I could barely breathe. It had gotten so bad I thought I was about to pass out. All I could think was I needed to start praying out loud instead of just in my head and demand whatever was in this place with me to leave immediately in the name of Jesus. After a few minutes whatever was hovering over me finally left when I prayed out loud because I immediately felt the tension leave the room. I laid in my bed scared and physically unable to move a single muscle for two hours wondering what in the world was going on and praying the blood of Jesus and rebuking anything in our home and in my room that was not of the Lord the entire time. I was so sore after lying there and completely exhausted from the tension I was feeling in that room. I remembered begging God to turn the power back on so I could have some light in the darkness of my room so I could relax and get some sleep. Funny how much symbolism I was praying in that moment of the light entering the darkness. When I finally got brave enough to start moving around I turned the light on my phone on and scanned the room and sat there completely shocked at what I had experienced. Thankfully God did answer the scaredy cat’s pleas and turned the power back on for me and I slept with the light on the remainder of the night haha. I have never experienced anything like that before in my life but always heard about people who had experienced those things and thought it sounded so wild. I’m typically not someone who gets scared easily, so for me to have been so scared, almost to the point of tears, really made me realize just how serious spiritual warfare can be and that the places where we are living have a completely different spiritual atmosphere and different principalities than I have experienced at home.
In a weird way, I’m thankful that God allowed me to go through that because it showed me the authority I had over those things when I began speaking out loud against those spiritual forces. I don’t wish to go through it again so let’s be clear about that lol! I spoke to a friend we made in Botswana who was a spiritual powerhouse and he had some really awesome insight into these kinds of things. He said the Lord gives us all authority but that I needed to ask the Lord and see what my authority was. Whether it’s speaking out loud, screaming at the top of my lungs, standing up and declaring my authority, or slamming my hands down to show my power and tell these spiritual forces they have no dominion. We all have different ways to combat those things but God gives us power over our fear and authority to speak against those spiritual attacks. I knew those things, but it actually took me experiencing them and walking through that to see my authority! Yes, that was so hard and one of the scariest things I’ve ever experienced but I learned a lot about myself through that spiritual warfare and I also learned a lot about myself through the difficult things about living in community and all the different ways the Lord stretched me throughout the month. There’s so many things that the Lord is teaching me and showing me through this journey and a lot of times it’s really hard to see the value, but I know the Lord has brought me here for a season of growth and showing me the purpose He has for me so I’m excited to walk out these next several months ahead!
