One afternoon last week I just finished talking to my Dad on Skype and my squadmate Erica walked up to a few of us and said "Uh, guys you should come pray and see this, there is a girl we have been praying for with a demon." We walked over to the counseling building where she was and started to pray.
This is copied from my teammate Helena's blog, who was there for the whole thing.
"I walked into the counseling room today at 2 pm with my squadmate, Erica, and we were prepared for another day of counseling. We were met by the social worker, Emma, and she was ready to interpret for us. I was ready for tears, for sad stories, for nightmare stories, and then we would pray with the children, hug them, and send them back out to play.
Not today.
In walks Purity, a 10-year-old girl.
She begins to tell her a little bit of her story, and that she's been seeing people come at her, and that her dead sister comes to her in her dreams. So far this is normal. We hear this kind of stuff all the time. We tell her that when she's scared, she needs to pray in Jesus' name, and that we will pray for her. I asked her one last question before we prayed: Purity, do you love Jesus?
She answered 'yes.'
So we approach her, hold her hand, and begin to pray.
Prayer starts, and Purity shoves her chair back abruptly.
Erica describes my reaction as "lunging" toward Purity, screaming "In Jesus' Name!" (kind of funny, I was ready to pray this out)
And here starts the heavy stuff.
We are officially casting out demons.
Holy moly, this is my life?!
So Purity ends up coming off the chair, on the floor, thrashing. At this point I'm praying in tongues like nobody's business (yeah yeah yeah, I'm weird) we are holding her down, and she calms down a bit.
We got her back on the chair. Oh, and the rain starts POURING and the lights flickered and then the power went off. This is somewhat normal in Africa, but the timing was riiiiiidiculous.
'Purity? Purity talk to us.'
Her gaze is fixed at a point on the floor, I look where she's looking–nothing there– and then she points diagonally down, then she points over her shoulder. Lo and behold, there are shadows on the wall. I've seen that kind of stuff before, so my reaction was shaking my head and laughing. Erica goes "Is there someone in the office?! Can we check?" and the social worker, Emma, assured her that there is nobody in the office, and that what she saw was what she was thinking… yeah…
we saw demons fleeing in the name of Jesus.
So we keep praying, and we keep asking Purity to talk to us, but this time her response was different.
"This is not Purity."
Oh. My. God.
So we asked "who is it?" and it said it wouldn't tell us its name. It asked for the caretaker, Madam Beth, and said that if she came it'd tell us its name.
More thrashing on the floor, more prayer.
Come out! and she'd shake her head 'no'
Say the name of Jesus! and she'd shake her head 'no'
The demon couldn't say the name of Jesus.
"I'm not coming out. I won't come out. You're wasting your time."
I said "you're going back to hell where you came from!"
and the response I got was awful… "if I go back to hell, I'll come back when she's sleeping."
So we rebuked that, we did a lot of rebuking and commanding and casting out.
At one point, she started coughing — this is supposedly a sign of demons coming out.
But there was still something left.
About 2 hours into this deliverance, we got some backup aka most of the racers.
In comes the owner and director of Challenge Farm, Cheri, and she's praying with Purity, and Cheri says "Jesus loves you, Purity" and again, "this is not Purity" and Cheri said "Jesus loves Purity, and Purity loves Jesus" and she shakes her head 'no' and we sing "Jesus loves me" while the little girl is shaking her head and covering her ears. At one point, Cheri asked her about the sister, and she started crying.
It was heartbreaking to see.
Cheri had a really tender, loving way of speaking life into Purity. I learned a lot from watching her deal with it all. It was still authoritative, but really gentle.
We got Purity back, we got her talking again. She told us that she didn't remember anything after the "shadows on the wall" and that she went unconscious. She said she loved Jesus, she prayed, and we prayed that nothing could come against her again.
Her eyes were still not all the way back to normal, they still looked sideways a lot, and we could tell she wasn’t completely delivered. She was exhausted, and Cheri made the decision to go ahead and let her rest."
When I got there to pray, I was in the back, and after a few moments I felt God telling me to leave and go outside. My favorite little girl, Daisy, and another girl came over and we started singing simple children's praise songs. They didn't know it, but their beautiful child's faith was powerfully combating the schemes of the enemy. Soon the sunshine began to burst forth from the rain clouds.
Some of the girls prayed for Purity that next night. She still needs some healing, but at the end, Purity ended up praying for us. Sometimes deliverance is instant, sometimes it is a long process of forgiveness and healing. But in all things God is sovereign, and He is the great deliverer. Keep Purity and all the Children of Challenge Farm in your prayers as they heal and learn God's love.
I know a lot of people in the United States question the power or even the reality of demons and the spiritual realm. But I've seen it. I've heard countless stories of it. Our men in South Sudan last month cast out 10 demons from a woman. The devil and spiritual warfare are real. Only when we realize this, can we realize the importance of holiness. Of not letting the devil get a foothold. Of walking in intimacy with God, our protector. God only allows us to be aware of the spiritual realm, not to scare us or because the enemy has snuck past Him, but because we have been given the opportunity to pray, rebuke and see God's power.
And praise the Lord, because His power and sovereignty are so great that the enemy deserves nothing but to be rebuked and laughed at for his foolish schemes.
