Noe with his family at their casa (house) that also doubles as a church
Our last service was powerful- there was a lot of spiritual warfare going on! The enemy is not happy that this territory is being taken back! We have seen strongholds broken, drunks have their lives transformed – now sober and saved, demonic possession cast out & people who were once hopeless not full of the hope of Jesus Christ! Tuesday night we could feel and see the warfare going on around us! The street was so busy with people who were being drawn in (or who would not come in past the fence but could still hear and see the service), and many distractions we had to combat (we needed & had intercessors praying constantly before and during the whole service).
One man (he would never tell us his name) was greeted at the fence by teammate Jake. The first words out of this mans mouth were “the devil is inside me.” Jakes immediate response was “then you have come to the right place b/c Jesus is inside me and will get that devil out!” The man wanted us to prove where the Bible says this, so we started speaking Scriptures over him. All this was going on while Noe was leading worship. The man starts making signs of the devil at us and trying to leave. 3 of us were with him and laid our hands on him and began praying in the name of Jesus Christ and commanding the demons to leave him and for the man to be still and sit down. He sat down and started crying, he got scared and said he could see the demons all around our feet swarming. We told him that they could not harm us because we are covered by the blood of Christ and that we were trampling them! We told him not to let the demons back in, but he said he could not stop them. It was like the “door” to his spirit kept opening and closing…because the devil has absolutely no power against the name of Jesus & the Holy Spirits presence, but the man kept giving the devil the authority to come back in. Jake and I needed to go up and give the message, so we had Noe come back and keep praying over the man. The man stayed for most of the message, but did end up leaving. Noe said he knows the man and will follow up with him because he is not yet free and ready to give his life to Christ! It breaks my heart to see how people resist the Holy Spirit (life, joy, peace, freedom) and are weighed down by the enemy (who steals life, kills and destroys)!! The message that God had laid on my heart (and Jake translated to Spanish) was about the power of God (light) over the enemy (darkness), & the gospel of Jesus Christ and the freedom that He brings!! How appropriate for this night! The Holy Spirit speaks to us and directs us when we ask! The Bible says “things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are unseen are eternal!” There is so much more to life than meets the eye, there is a battle raging & we have got to have our spiritual eyes open to see and fight! “We do not fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities, darkness, and spiritual forces of evil.”
Hard to believe the month has flown by so fast and we are moving on this Friday! We will be debriefing with the whole group (51 of us) in Jerusalem (short bus ride away) for 2 days. The next leg of the race starts Sunday morning (we have to be out of Mexico on the 4th b/c our Visas expire then). We will be heading down to Guatemala. We will be doing ministry there for about a week in a hospital, before heading to Nicaragua on the 10th to dive in to our ministries there for the month. The B teams will have to split at this point into areas 2-4 hours apart! It will be tough to part for those few weeks as we have become a close family!
