Even More Wrecked For The Kingdom
Sometimes it is hard for me to process what is happening in my life until I write a blog, so I'm going to vomit some words onto my iPad and pray that they make sense. Nepal is the most beautiful and the darkest place I have ever been. The spiritual warfare here is so prevalent that I can literally feel it all around me all day every day. I'm not saying that everyone here is evil, because they definitely aren't. The small group of believers here are fervent in their faith and most of the non believers are obviously good people who have been beat down and oppressed by the caste system. Buddhism and Hinduism are not the hippie yoga instructor "peace loving" religions we see in the states. Here they are oppressive and hateful. They systematically keep most of the population in poverty taking their last rupees as offerings to gods who will never love them or show them even an ounce of comfort, while a small few absorb all of the money and power for themselves. If there was ever a place that actually needed the Occupy Movement, it's Nepal. God told me early on that He was going to ask me to stand in some very dark places for the kingdom. He said that he will send me to places where others either can't or won't go. He said that He carried me through darkness so that one day I can walk back into the darkness for Him. He has definitely lived up to that promise early on in this journey.
I will start with some of the politics that I never knew went on until I got here and met some of the people who fight the good fight on a daily basis. Nepal has had a secular government since 2006. That means that it has been legal to preach the gospel here for eight years. Essentially that is a good thing, right? In a sense it is. Of course we love that believers are legally allowed to tell the people about Jesus, but some believers (mostly white missionaries) took that new freedom and tried to go wild with it. With less than 1% of the population following Jesus, they made a push to raise Christian power in the government right off the bat. They raised money from the west and filled the internet with propaganda without having the numbers to back it up. As you can imagine, the high caste Hindus and Buddhists who actually run this place were far from impressed and fought back in very dirty ways. Enter the extremists. I know, when you hear the word extremist, you go right to that Muslim place (I certainly did). Apparently the Muslims aren't the only game in town. I haven't heard much about bombings in Nepal, but I have heard a lot about beatings, false imprisonment, and Gestapo police techniques. The gospel is a legitimate threat to the caste system if it spreads, so the folks holding the power want to squash it as fast as they can. Because of this, the believers here have to be hyper-vigilant or they take a chance at being beat or worse. Pray for them to stand strong in adversity and for the hearts of the people to be softened.
Now let's get to the spiritual side of things. When I speak of Buddhists and Hindus, you would think of them as two completely separate religions right? Nope. As best as I can tell, there are thousands of religions mixing teachings from Buddhism and Hinduism while worshipping over a million different violent vengeful gods. It's all a bit confusing to be honest. All I know is that everywhere we go there are shrines which are stained red, possibly from crushed flowers and possibly from blood. There are temples we have gone to pray over where animal sacrifices, ritual drug abuse, and other unknown forms of idolatry happen at yearly festivals. All of the temples have an obscene amount of pigeons, which I'm not sure is relivant, but my theory is that those dirty little buggers carry demons. Bells ring constantly in worship. Horns blow for who knows which god depending on the day. There are real deal witch doctors in most of the villages. Most places we go I can feel the darkness and it wrecks me when I think of the people who live in it daily. While discernment of spirits is a spiritual gift, it doesn't always feel like much of a gift at all.
The encouraging thing is how passionately the believers here worship our Lord. Most of them have been disowned by their families or worse just because they gave their lives to Christ. All odds are against them, but they cry out to God in prayer and praise Him for what He is doing in their lives. The things that we only briefly talk about in most of our churches in America, they see happen regularly. People are healed of all forms of disease, demons manifest and are cast out, and legit miracles happen as a normal part of their lives. I was even blessed to hear the testimony of a boy who died when he was a toddler. His parents took him to the hospital where he was declared dead. They then took him to a witch doctor who said there was nothing he could do. His parents were shattered. They took his body home and his father left his mother. While his mother sat in their home distraught and unwilling to give up on her son, as a last resort, she called over a Christian neighbor who came and prayed before he had to leave for work. Two hours after the Christian left, the boy jumped up and started running around the room asking his mom to give him a glass of milk. Needless to say, the mother was terrified. The next day she had the Christian neighbor come back over and pray for her left arm and left leg which were paralyzed and she was healed. The whole family follows Jesus now. God is so cool! He is moving in the midst of this darkness.
That now brings me to the events that happened at church this morning. In Nepal they go to church on Saturday. About 20 new believers were baptized in a river near the church before the service, which I didn't get to witness (because too many white folks draw way too much attention). The service afterward was a celebration. The worship was rad, even though I couldn't understand a word of it. My team was in charge of kids ministry this week, so three of my teammates and I had to leave after the first hour to go into the kids room to play games and teach. From what I hear, the worship in the service got even wilder, the Holy Spirit came in a major way, and the crap hit the fan. A young girl in the service manifested a demon right there in the middle of the church. She was taken to a side room for prayer and one of my teammates came to get me. I was literally doing the Hokie Pokie with small children one minute, and the next I was in a different room in a full on prayer battle with pure evil. Crap! God really wasn't lying about that whole dark places thing was He? If you read my Wrecked For The Kingdom blog, you know that God gave me a glimpse of this while I was still safe at home in the States. This was way crazier than that. I mean WAY CRAZIER! For three hours my friend Nate, some folks from the church, and I were praying over this beautiful teenage girl while her body bent, her eyes turned black, and vile hatred spewed from her mouth. We combatted hatred with love. We commanded the spirit to leave in the name of Jesus. We told the girl that she was a beautiful daughter of the King and that that King loved her more than she could ever know. Bible verses were read. Worship songs were sung in Nepali and in English. All the while this girl fought to be free of this spirit. Sometimes she would have moments of clarity where she would start talking to her friends from the church, but almost immediately, the demon would take back over and the violent outbursts would start back up. Three hours felt like only fifteen minutes. Finally the girl became calm. She slipped into some kind of half awake, half passed out trance and went limp on the floor. I prayed over her a few minutes longer and we were called away to go eat. Nate and I left the girl in the capable, experienced hands of the folks from the Nepali church. We were told that sometimes it takes up to a week for people to be released from demonic possession. Praise Jesus! It didn't take that long for this sweet girl. I just found out that she was completely freed sometime after we left. I pray now that she is filled with the Holy Spirit so that no demon can ever reside in her again. Please join me in these prayers for this beautiful girl and for this beautiful nation. Thank you for taking the time to read this (super long) blog. I pray that God is showing up in huge ways back home. Love Y'all!!!
