On the Frontline of the Battle

So it seems that their is never a dull moment when you give up ALL to live a life of abandonment for Christ.  Many of my prayers this year have been that God would take our squad higher and deeper and further…basically that He would continue to reveal Himself to us, while using us more and more.  Looking back at the past 7 months, I would say that this has definitely been the case.  I believe God has been easing us into the lifestyle that He wants us to live, month by month.  It has been an adventure, it has been challenging, and as of lately it has been extremely real.  During much of our time in Uganda many on our our squad have been exposed to some very intense spiritual warfare.  Stories that we had only heard of are becoming our normal daily lifestyle.  Below is a blog one of my teammates wrote, regarding a recent spiritual battle that took place.  I realize this may be difficult for some to comprehend, but this is the reality that we are facing over here and we need your prayers!

The crazy life never seems
to cease for Team Undignified here in Uganda. I wrote in my last blog
about our demon encounter on my birthday last week and I figured I
should give you guys the latest update.

A few days after we left the school, which is called Central View High
School, our pastor reported that the demons had not returned so we
praised the Lord for that. Before we had left, Samara and I gave the
ones delivered some of the bracelets we had been wearing just as a
gift. We found out a few days after the initial report that some of the
girls thought it was the bracelets that were keeping them safe so we
scheduled another visit to the school to talk to them. We went Tuesday
morning but were only able to stay for about 15 minutes and never
really got a chance to talk to the girls so we agreed that a few of us
would go back that night to run the campus Bible study.

Four of us were scheduled to speak at an open-air crusade in the
community and Katie and Sarah went to Central View to share with the
students. About 20 minutes after Katie and Sarah had gotten there, the
demons started manifesting again. The rest of us came quickly. I said
in my last blog, I had never seen anything like that before, but last
night blew anything I had ever seen out of the water.

We pulled up, saw the crowd, and could hear the screams coming from the
classroom. We ran inside to at least seven girls writhing, kicking,
undulating and screaming on the floor.

 

 

God has been so faithful with my team. We have been
having encounters with demons since Kenya (granted, on a much smaller
scale) and it’s like He has been easing us into all of this. Before the
four girls on my birthday, we had just watched Furious Love,
a documentary on the power of the love of Christ all around the world.
It shows a lot of the crazy supernatural stuff going on in the world
that we don’t see everyday in America. It is a great eye-opener for the
American church. So we had had that fresh in our minds for our first
go-round. After that, one of our contacts gave us a book called Setting the Captives Free
which is about the immense Satanic activity going on in the US and how
to effecively fight in spiritual warfare. It was banned in America
because of its explicitness but if you can find it, I would highly
recommend it. The majority of us had just finished reading this book
and had gained so much more knowledge about fighting in the spiritual
realm. And then Tuesday night hit us.

Like I said before, we know who we are and do not have a spirit of fear
so we ran in and took our pick of demon-possessed girls. It was
heartbreaking because many of the girls possessed were girls who had
been delivered the first time. When the one left, seven more entered.
So we weren’t dealing with seven girls and seven demons, it was seven
girls and 49 demons.

I don’t even know how to go about explaining that night. We got there
at 6:00 pm and didn’t leave until 11:00 pm. It was so much harder this
time. I stayed with one girl the whole time so I can tell you my
experience with her. Her name was Merab and she seemed to be the one
who was screaming the loudest and flailing the hardest. When asked, the
demon said its name was Lucifer and later it said through her, that she
was the daughter of Satan. It confessed that it came to the school for
blood (and had already been successful in taking it) and it had been in
her for 10 years. I believe that Lucifer was the strongest demon who
was talking the whole time but there were six lesser demons under it
also living in her. Merab would come to every so often as one would
leave so you you could tell she was lucid, but as soon as she got up
she would immediately start manifesting another one. The demons would
argue and lie in an effort to escape. They would tell us they hated us
and to leave them alone. At one point it looked at me and said, “Lets
make a deal,” which was just kind of funny. Whenever a Bible would be
brought back to her, the demons would start screaming and saying, “You
get that Bible away from me!”. I was kicked, clawed, slapped and
grabbed and I think every girl on my team would say the same thing.

After about three hours into this, the demons in Merab arched her back
towards the door and screamed, “I hate those people!” and when I looked
up to see who she was pointing at, I saw angels: angels in the form of
team Surge 12:9 :). I have never been so happy to see white people in
my life! They were able to provide bodies to help keep the girls down
and pray/rebuke alongside of us. They were awesome and gave us the
energy we needed to push through until the end. Their contact was also
a demon expert so she helped us a lot as well.

When Merab was finally free of all of the demons she was so weak from
the night’s events she couldn’t even stand up. It was really cool
because they asked her if she wanted to go straight back to her dorm to
sleep after she had fully professed Jesus. She said no and that she
wanted to go back inside and pray with everyone else. She was too weak
to really be involved but she laid there in my lap and I got to
continue to pray over her. After fighting for her for five hours, I
felt like she was mine to take care of.

My teammates have their own crazy stories but this blog would get way
too long if I tried to share them all. I know everytime I looked up to
see if anyone was available to come help me, I saw all of those girls
fighting hard over their own student in the name of Jesus. We all left
completely worn out from literally wrestling demons all night.

I will tell you a little about the very last demon to go because we
were all there for it. The girl’s name was Barbara and she had a
handful of demons in her that had been there for a year. The demons
told us their whole plan to kill Barabara that night. They had taken
her spirit to the Indian Ocean to drown her. Of course, the power of
Jesus is much greater than their power so they did not succeed and she
was delivered. When Barbara was free she had no idea where she was. She
had to ask what year it was and when she saw her sister she started
bawling. She had no recollection of her or any of her family for the
past year nor did she remember going through an entire year in school.
It is so sad; a year of her life had been stolen.

The power and blood of Jesus speak for themselves and again it was such
a blessing to see those girls freed. Demons and spiritual warfare are
so real and not just in Africa (read the book). It’s everywhere but our
God reigns and demons squirm and writhe at just the mention of Jesus. I
do think people need to realize what is going on and be ready. Samara
and I have been learning that we have to build a reputation in the
spirit world as being people who stand. That we won’t leave until the
job is done. So hopefully as we do this more and more it will become
easier because we won’t be backing down. It has been an honor for me to
be a part of all this and I hope God continues to teach me about how to
be more effective for Him.