I haven’t been in Thailand for a week and I’ve already felt the power of spiritual oppression. Let me give some background.
Thursday was orientation and sightseeing. We learned a little bit of Thai, the cultural norms, and had a crash course on Buddhism. That took up most of the morning and early afternoon. We later took a tour of a Buddhist temple and talked with a couple of the monks. When I walked onto the grounds outside of the temple, I couldn’t help but admire the beauty and splendor of the temple from the outside. However, I didn’t realize how truly deceiving beauty can be when you see the truth behind it. Immediately when I crossed the threshold of the main temple and looked at the giant Buddha statue, I felt this heaviness and oppression in my spirit. I knew I would probably feel some kind of spiritual warfare happening while being here in Thailand, but I didn’t know I would feel it so strongly or quickly. Apparently, on the other side of the world, my mom woke up around the same time I entered the temple and experienced that heaviness. She felt like she was being choked and she actually gasped when she awoke. She immediately started praying because she didn’t know what was going on, and she prayed against oppression. She literally had no idea what was happening on my side of the world, but she woke up because that spirit of oppression was so strong in the temple, and the Holy Spirit told her to start praying against oppression. Several of my teammates felt that same heaviness when we were in the temple.
Sometimes I can’t help but admire the ornate designs of the temple and see how beautiful it is, but I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near such beauty if there wasn’t peace. When I stepped into that temple, I finally understood the reality behind false beauty. You can make something look so beautiful and spectacular, but if it’s to mask the true brokenness and chaos behind it, then all that beauty is no longer relevant and disappears when facing the truth head-on.
A tourist group came in soon after I walked in, and they did their ritualistic bowing and praying before leaving the temple. They paid their respects to a god that brings oppression instead of freedom. Thailand means “land of free,” but I felt no freedom in this house of worship. It breaks my heart because these people pray to a god and ask for blessings, but they don’t have a relationship with their god because it is dead. Only the Lord is real, and through Him only is there true freedom.
