We’ve made it safely to El Salvador as of Wednesday 10/25, and my team and I are living in a small office building. Our ministry this month focuses on reaching out to children and youth through sports, English classes, and medical care. It is an empowerment program for locals and is referred to as Five Stones, based on the story of David, and represents: sports, education, health, feeding, and training. We are in Nuevo Cuscatlán which is near the capital, San Salvador.
I wanted to address a topic that the Bible talks a lot about: spiritual warfare.
It’s real.
It’s easy to become uncomfortable with how real it is, and shy away from it but God certainly doesn’t conceal the truth from us. Scripture doesn’t sugar coat it when says we have an enemy who prowls like a lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).
I never want to give Satan more credit than he deserves, on the contrary, my purpose for writing this is to reiterate that he is defeated already by Christ. However, I believe it’s vital to recognize that we do not struggle against flesh and blood and that we are in the middle of spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:12).
We need to know both our identity as children of God, and also that our weapon against the enemy is prayer. This blog is inspired by an experience I had during our last week in Nicaragua.
Five of us (myself included) went to San Rafael Del Norte with the hopes of planting trees for the high school and telling Bible stories/spending time with the local children. Our week in San Rafael was productive, we not only were able to plant trees and spend time with the children, but we also were able to paint the school, speak on a radio show about missions, and two of us shared our testimonies with the local churches.
That being said, I believe that God used this time to remind me of the power of prayer and that spiritual warfare is real.
Our first day of ministry everything we tried to do was cancelled: it rained so much that we were only able to plant 50 of the 200 trees, we went to the radio station only to find out they were working on it and we were unable to record anything that day, and on top of that there was a bar located near our hotel that blared music into the wee hours of the morning preventing us from getting sleep. The atmosphere was challenging being an all-female team in a male dominated society, and we had to get thick skin quick, as every time we would go outside we were met with whistles and inappropriate comments thrown our way in Spanish.
Our host explained to us going into the town, that the spiritual heaviness was different in this place: the town was Catholic, however the people hold a now deceased priest in such high esteem that his casket is placed in one of the churches for people to go pay homage to him. His face is featured all over the town, whether he be painted on walls or framed inside shops and homes. In that town, it was more common to see this man’s portrait than the virgin Mary’s, and Jesus’ portrait was even more rare.
One day, our team partnered with our translator in praying over the hotel room and anointing all of the doors as well as praying over our time in San Rafael. Immediately after praying, I felt like God wanted me to go outside because there was something we needed to know about. My teammate, Amy, also went outside and said she felt the same way.
Both of us felt like it had something to do with the Catholic priest, so in my broken Spanish I began asking hotel staff,
“Donde esta la foto del padre?”� (Where is the picture of the father?).
They led us to another guest’s bedroom, an older white man who has been living at the hotel for three years. His entire room was decorated with artwork from his classes that he teaches the local children, and above his bed was a picture of the catholic priest. This was the beginning of our friendship with this man. Throughout the remainder of the week Amy and I spent time intentionally praying and speaking to him. On our last day we wrote him a letter of encouragement.
Despite the fact that we were tired from lack of sleep, each evening a few of us would take the time each to pray. We would buy hot chocolate from a girl at a local coffee shop and we would pray as we drank our chocolate. It’s funny how God uses everything. By the end of the week, we were able to pray with this girl and share the gospel with her, and tell her why we were in San Rafael.
In the midst of the spiritual warfare, God shined His light in everything, and I truly believe that a lot of the reason why we were seeing Him move so much was because we were committed to prayer and asking Him to open our eyes and ears. I also, believe that this is why what happened on our last night in San Rafael occurred.
Our last night in San Rafael, I had a dream about dark figures trying to attack the team. In my dream I was praying because I knew they were demonic spirits, suddenly I was woken up by my teammate.
She asked me if I felt like there was something in the room with us, and I told her about my dream. She had had a similar dream which led her to wake up and begin to pray.
It was exactly 3:00am.
We prayed together, and as she began to pray for any spirits in our room to leave, the roosters outside began to become belligerent–they sounded insane.
She stopped praying and both of us looked at each other, we were both thinking it but neither one was saying it until she broke the silence.
“I’m thinking of the story in the Bible when Jesus cast out the demons and they went into the pigs,” she said.
We prayed again, this time we commanded that the spirits inside of the roosters be silenced so they wouldn’t prevent anyone from sleeping.
Immediately it grew silent, and peace flooded the atmosphere.
I want to end by saying do not allow yourself to fear–yes, there is the fear of God, but that’s not the fear I’m talking about. The fear I’m addressing is the kind that paralyzes you from doing what you know you’re supposed to do, it’s the kind that prevents you from being obedient, and it can consume your thoughts; it is the opposite of courage. Don’t fear Satan, but be aware of his schemes, and walk in knowledge knowing that we have victory over him because of Jesus Christ inside of us.
“You dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” 1 John 4:4
