How do I even begin to summarize all that the Lord had done this month? It has been a crash course for me in spiritual warfare. For those who don’t know what that is, let me explain a little.
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 6:12
We can probably all acknowledge that there is evil in this world, although in the spiritual sense, most of us in America have not had to fight many of those types of battles. I don’t know if it was the simple fact that we are in Haiti, or because there was a nationwide carnival going on where certainly more than the normal amount of voodoo was being practiced, but this month, we had some major spiritual battles. I believed that demons existed, and that curses could be placed, and even that we could be physically affected by evil spirits. I believed those things…but only in principle. This month I SAW those things manifest with my own eyes. I saw a demon cast out of someone; I saw some of my teammates physically attacked by something very evil; many on our team were affected by night terrors as they slept, when they never struggled with that previously. It was most certainly an intense few weeks to say the least.
Although it is very very good for our team to now have a tangible understanding of the realities of the spiritual warfare we will inevitably face this year, we all learned an even greater reality this month. “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” James 5:16 We saw the power of Jesus break curses and set people free; we saw many divine appointments orchestrated by God to share the Gospel to those ready to hear and ready to receive; we saw our teammates begin to walk boldly in the ways they have been gifted by God in order to see supernatural power flow through each of us in different ways.
Today was our last ministry day, and it provided a great example of everything I just described. We went to the area where we spent our first week of ministry…the same area with the family I described in my last blog. The last time we were there, I remember that the prayer time at the end of our meeting was very intense. It was just after seeing God remove the tape from the wall, and I was pumped about what God was doing, so our prayers had an extra level of confidence. As we began to talk to them today, the brother began to share a story that unfolded after we left the first time. He said that night his sister had a dream. In this dream, he saw me go into a voodoo house and smash and destroy everything in it that had the man’s name on it. Our team then gathered around this man to protect him and then began to walk with him down the right path. Praise God!! What an amazing prophetic picture of what happened only hours before! How humbling and amazing that God can use our simple prayers to lead people to a place of freedom. His presence shatters darkness, and the mention of His name breaks any attack of the enemy! It’s reality…praise God I got to experience a taste of that truth this month!
March 4th we will be leaving for Cambodia, and after a 21 hour flight out of LA, a 12 hour or so bus ride, we’ll arrive at our next ministry site. Please be praying for us. The spiritual warfare we faced this month was only practice…there will be much more we will face in Cambodia. Check out this link for more information about the ministry we will be doing at a place called Rubbish Mountain.
