(Continuing from Part 1)
I had never seen anything like it before…
The pastor took charge, and we were there praying for hours. At one point people started taking out their cellphones and recording, which really didn’t sit well with me. I never thought technology would be an issue in a remote village.
Honestly, at first I just stood there observing. Is this a show, is this medical, or is this for real?
But there was no doubt about what I was seeing with my own eyes. We went home that night, trying to process the days events. That’s when the obvious attacks started happening. That night there were huge spiders all over our walls, literally the size of my hand.
Then in the middle of the night one of my teammates woke up screaming that there was something “flapping” in her ear. I honestly thought she was imagining it until I looked at her face. I got my headlamp and a Q-tip and water, and made her lay on her side with the ear that had “flapping” facing up towards me.
I spread her ear wide open and looked down to literally see a good sized bug in there buzzing around… my stomach dropped. Luckily it followed the light, grabbed onto the Q-tip, and I flung it out and squished it. I felt so bad for not immediately believing her and gave her a big hug, and then we all put ear plugs in and the images of that bug in her ear replayed in my head all night.
Tired and sleep deprived, we traveled to another village the next day. After a long day of jeeping through mud, we returned home. Again, in the middle of the night my teammate awoke screaming that there was a snake in the room and it had crawled over her. I was fully zipped up in my sleeping bag liner, and barely opened it in time to see a snake crawling out under the door.
The attacks were so obvious, the enemy was not happy with what we were doing. We immediately prayed over our nights and over the room.
I’ll never forget the stories of how the people in these villages came to know Christ… the testimonies that they shared. They were so open and vulnerable… there was no shame in where they had been, there was only joy in how far the Lord had brought them.
The next city we traveled to He blessed us with a nice hostel with beds and running water. He gave us the opportunity to share with others the things He had done in our lives.
This month I saw God in a way I had never seen Him before. I saw a God that healed a woman’s leg, and she came back with a friend to have him prayed over. I saw people come before Him with faith in what He could do. I saw God become something more than someone I just read about in a book. I saw demons shake at the mention of His name, I saw them cast out.
I saw the power of Him in my own life, the power to take a girl who hates to publicly speak, especially without preparation and notes, and stand up and speak with only a bible in my hands… I saw Him take a girl who 8 months ago didn’t believe that people could be physically healed, and turn her into a believer. I saw Him take a girl who only weeks ago had never even seen demonic possession, fill her with the Holy Spirit and have her step in and cast it out by the power of Jesus’s name.
ALL of this was the Lord, and He shows up in the things we cannot do on our own and uses it for His glory, because with Him anything is possible… and this box we try and put Him in… well… He doesn’t belong there.
I’ll be the first to say I had put Him in a box my whole life. At points I had hated him, hell there was a time where I stopped even believing in Him. Then when He had found me again I was embarrassed to talk about Him because I was afraid of what people would think… of how they could take someone like me seriously… someone who had messed up so much.
But now… now I stand here, not the same Julia that I was five years ago, a year ago, 8 months ago, or even a few weeks ago… and that in itself is a miracle and shows the power of God. I can stand here and say that I believe with my whole heart, that I am blown away by His power, that I am amazed by His love… and He is NOT just a character in a book or that you hear people talk about… He gave us the word so that we could find Him, learn who He is, what He has done, and what He is still going to do!
He is real and He is alive and He wants a real relationship with us, to be a friend, a father, a lover, a refuge, a strength, a comfort, an encouragement… He wants to be all these things in our lives and so much more. All these things are given to us freely, and I cannot even begin to fathom His redeeming love for us.
I don’t know where you are on your journey, I don’t know what you believe or where you stand, I honestly don’t even know who reads these blogs, but what I do know is that no matter where you are… you are greatly loved, and you have a God that is in your reach, one that will never stop pursing your heart, one that wants to show you who He really is… so open the box… let Him show you what He can do.
