This month, the LORD’s allowed my team to experience a ton of spiritual warfare. (If you haven’t read it yet, you should check out Kenra’s blog “The Battle”, which I posted last. She does a great job of summarizing what we’ve been going through.) The persistence of it has been—in a word—exhausting. More than once, I’ve found myself staggering to the chapel, curling up on my side and just crying until my eyes feel swollen. There’s a lot of reasons why that is, but I think ultimately, it’s because I let my mind be a slave to fear. I focused on the prince of darkness and all his underlings and all their dirty work, instead of on the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Lamb who was slain, the Holy One of Israel and His Son, Jesus Christ, through whose name I am already victorious.
Can I get an Amen?
And it would be really, really easy to go down the litany of everything that’s happened. Every scary three a.m. wake up call. Every nightmare shared between the five of us. Every… well, everything. But instead, I want you to know what’s come out of it, because it’s so, so good.
Lying on the chapel floor one morning, the LORD hit me with some serious truth: Worship is warfare. So I plugged speakers into my iPod and turned the volume all the way up. I put the music on shuffle and told the LORD to just lead. The first song that came on was Hillsong’s “With Everything”. “Let hope rise / and darkness tremble in Your holy light / That every eye will see Jesus our God/ Great and Mighty to be praised.”
I did something for the LORD that I’ve only done one other time in my life: I danced. Here in the chapel some long dormant ballerina / Step Up / dance movie dream came to life. I pirouetted and twirled. I popped-and-locked it. I dropped-it-like-it’s-hot. I salsa-ed, meringue-ed, and rumba-ed, a la our Guatemala contact, Ilse. I shook what my Mama gave me. I even Lindy-ed it, a throwback to my Sunday night swing dancing days. I danced for the LORD and with the LORD.
He gave me the words “RELENTLESS, RECKLESS, UNDIGNIFIED WORSHIP” and led me to 2nd Samuel 6, which talks about David dancing victoriously before the LORD. I realized the truth about spiritual warfare: that Jesus’ victory doesn’t negate the need to fight against the Enemy. But the only fighting we need to do is declare Jesus’ victory over the evil one, and then rejoice in that victory. The joy of the LORD is our strength. The victory over darkness was completed on the cross when Jesus said, “It is finished.” All I have to do is declare that truth in Jesus’ name and the Enemy is routed. Praise the LORD! Victory is ours through Christ!
As for me and my team, we will continue to fight the good fight beside Jesus. But we’re not going to do it in fear, we’re going to do it laughing, throwing up all praise and all honor and all glory to God. We’re going to remember everything He’s done and everything He’s promised us. We’re walking in the joy of the LORD. We’re singing at the tops of our voices until we’re hoarse. And yes, we’re dancing.
I hope you dance too.
