As I have already mentioned in previous blogs, the month of May was a very pivotal and life changing month for a variety of reasons. In the previous blog, I wrote about how my Host affected both My team and me. I wrote about the anointing and blessing God put on both him and his father and if you haven’t read it, I would encourage you to go read it, it’s titled lessons from a 22 year old pastor. In that blog post I mentioned some events that transpired that completely shifted how I view the spiritual realm.
The contents of this blog are not going to be easy to believe. I could barely believe it and it happened right in front of me. I suppose for me this all began during our ministry in Gorkha. During this time, we ran a bible school for new believers and even a couple of nonbelievers teaching the basics of Christianity. The beautiful part of this school was how practical it was and was not simply teaching about God, but also it was application of that teaching. So about midway through the week, we went as a group to go have church at someone’s house. The pastor and his son brought their instruments and led worship and then someone from our team shared a quick word of encouragement from the Bible and then one of the people in the discipleship school would share something God taught them. It was really cool to get the opportunity to bring church to wherever we went really showing that church is not a building but it is the gathering of God’s people in worship and praise of the name of Jesus. However, after our first home visit, one of the girls from our bible school was not feeling well. Her head hurt and she was feeling lightheaded. We still had one more house to visit so we advised that she stay at this house with another girl from the school and drink water.
We continued with having church at the next house and as soon as we were finished we returned to the first house to the shocker no realization that the girl who wasn’t feeling well had begun to manifest a demon and began shaking uncontrollably, even scratching herself and causing herself harm while we were gone. By the time we arrived, she had stopped. This was a strange event and I was a bit taken aback by it, however, I believed it was over. It turns out the girl’s friend had prayed for her deliverance almost as soon as she began manifesting and everything calmed down for a little while.
A few hours later, my friend Caleb and I had just gone for a walk and when we came back everyone was gathered inside the hut around the girl. Our host told us to come in and pray for deliverance for this girl. She was in a clearly altered state in which she did not seem conscious however, she was still moving and sitting up. The Pastor or “Papa”� tapped on my shoulder and told me to go touch her in the forehead and pray for deliverance. Almost immediately after touching her in the forehead she lunged at both Caleb and me screaming and trying to harm
me. Quickly, we all come around and pin her down and it takes about six of us to hold her as she is much stronger than a 19 year old girl of her size should be. I will not go into much more details about the next 16-24 hours, but I will say that we gathered around her for about that amount of time praying for her and singing praises to our God.
During this time period, I as well as many of my teammates were filled with lots of questions such as why is this taking so long? Why doesn’t it seem like God is showing up? And questions concerning some of the events that happened, such as at one point the demon started speaking through her and wondering whether or not we should even be talking to a demon. At this point you may have a lot of questions and doubts about what happened. I would encourage you if you have any other questions about what happened to read my teammates’ ( Colby, Jake )blogs who have also talked about this.
After almost a full day of praying for deliverance and singing praises well into the night, as well as one person on our team fasting, the girl was finally delivered and a lot of things were learned that night.
One of the biggest takeaways I took from this, was that God’s timing is always perfect. God was trying to show my team, my host, the Bible school students and the whole village something about himself through everything that happened. One of the things our team wanted to improve just the day before was in team unity and after that night we all realized how the Lord used something evil like a demon to bring us together to fight against it. We spent hours together in prayer and worship that we wouldn’t have done if this never happened or if God answered our prayers when we wanted him to. Another awesome thing that happened that night was the fact that she was possessed for so long and causing so much commotion drew lots of attention from the neighboring community and the villagers and many villagers showed up where we were at that evening. This opened the door for evangelism and for people to see the power and glory of Christ in new ways. One of my team members actually talked to someone about the gospel who was a Hindu and he was initially upset by what my friend shared but he ended up coming back to listen to my friend share even more with him and he even added him on social media to continue talking to him more about God and Jesus. Finally, the longer we spent praying for this girl and experiencing everything we experienced that night, the more real and obvious the spiritual realm really was to all of us and in a weird way it helped strengthen our faith.
Ultimately, my team and I experienced the verse from Romans 8 that God works everything together for the good of those who loves him and that not angels nor demons, nor anything in all creation can separate us from the love of Christ. God used awful circumstances (aka a girl being tortured by a demon) to bring about awesome results. The following morning I went to go speak to some of the people who had witnessed what happened the previous night. My host Gresom told me that many of the people in the mountains were afraid to give their lives to Jesus for fear of being tormented by the demon on that mountain. I finally believe the Lord was not only wanting to demonstrate his power to the bible students, my team, and my host, but also to the people of the village. I was able to share with them that following Jesus doesn’t mean that we won’t suffer, it just means that God will work it for our good and that we have overcome death through Christ. In Christ we are more than conquerors and nothing can overcome us as followers of Jesus. As it is written in Romans 8, “Not death nor life, nor angels, Nor demons, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from Christ Jesus our Lord”. (If you have never read Romans 8, I highly recommend it, I feel like I quote it at least once every blog and sermon I write) I think this showdown between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light served not only to save the girls life but also demonstrate God’s power over all of the demons and gods in the area. The girl was finally delivered. After her deliverance, she had lots of questions and after speaking to our host for ours about all her questions, she surrendered her life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Several of the girls from the bible program also gave their lives to the Lord that week and I believe the glory of the Lord was clearly demonstrated that week in the jungle of Gorkha.
Keep in tune for more updates of my time in Nepal and Rwanda in following blogs and don’t forget to check out my teammates blogs that I linked above. They give more details that are not included here.
