God works in mysterious ways. That phrase has always been said to me but I didn’t start to truly understand it what it meant until I started this journey. God uses certain experiences in our lives to shape us and grow us and these experiences take place when we least expect them.
For the past 5 days my squad and I all met in Montericco, Guatemala for debrief of these past 6 weeks of ministry. I didn’t really have any expectations for this trip other than to relax and spend time with my squamates and that exactly what happen for the most part. The whole trip was very calm, other than a hotel change, pretty much everything was very smooth. Everything was going to plan up until the last night. God had a different plan for us than what we all expected.
As our last session came to a close and the leaders were saying their goodbyes, my squamate Alissa announced that she had met a women on the street and she wanted us to come pray over her and her husband. Alissa proceeded to tell us that the women’s name is Martha and she had bad shoulder and back pain, and her husband was disabled from a stroke and couldn’t move from all the pain. We all agreed as a squad to walk to their house just down the street to pray healing of them. I personally didn’t think much of this, I thought we were just gong to pray for a few minutes and leave, no big deal. Well I couldn’t be any more wrong.
When we all walked in to the house I notice the disabled man laying in a bed and his wife sitting in a chair across the room from him. But that wasn’t the only thing I noticed. I could feel the presence of the enemy in that house. I first pushed the feeling aside and just started to join in prayer with the rest of the squad for healing but I could feel the Lord telling me to get out of the house. So I stepped outside and immediately I started asking God what was in that house and what was causing the man to be sick. He replied a spirit, not a spirit from me but a spirit from my enemy. He also said that we were praying for the all the wrong things. My first reaction was to start singing praise songs but in the mist of this He was telling me to go back in the house and lay my hands on this man. As I kneeled next to this man, along with 10 of my squamates, the only prayer that was going through my mind was “Lord, cast out this spirit”. After about 15 minutes of praying I stepped away as couple of my squamates urged this man to sit up in bed. To our surprise he was able to, his wife said he hasn’t been able to do this for a long time. As I stepped away thinking our job was done here, I felt God tell me that the spirit was still here and I needed to go and touch his shoulder. Obediently I walked over and placed my hand on his shoulder. The minute I touched this man the breath was taken out of me, I felt my stomach drop and I thought I was going to get sick. I tried to keep praying but I couldn’t touch this man any longer so I ran out of the house as fast as I could trying to calm myself down and catch my breath. As I was hyperventilating, my teammate Nanie knew exactly what was happening and started praying over this man with me. A couple other squad members joined us in prayer. After about 45 minutes in deep prayer, I felt the evil spirit leave. A strong breeze past over our group and I felt God say the word peace over and over again. I also felt God say go back inside and lay hands on this man again. I was very hesitant to do this considering of what happened last time but after a few minutes of resistants I decided to obey. As I reentered the house, the feeling that was once there was gone, and when I touched the man’s arm I didn’t have that darkness come over me like it did before. I said one last prayer of protection over this man, and got up and left the house.
I don’t know if this man was healed or not, I wish I could tell you that he was instantly healed and got up and walked in freedom, but I don’t know what God has in store for him. But what I do know for sure is that God allowed me and my squad to be apart of a miracle. This man had something dark haunting him, you could see it when you looked in to his eyes, it was in the air around him, and it was causing him physical pain, but God took that away that night. God replaced that evil spirit with the Holy Spirit and that in itself is a miracle.
God didn’t just use this experience to change this man. God used this experience to change me as well. I have never in my life have been so confident in what the lord was telling me, and I have never prayed with that much faith and passion before. God does work in mysterious ways and he used this unexpected experience to show me what is it like to truly believe and to truly have faith in the Lord.
