If you clicked this blog prepared to read a crazy story about demons, you've come to the right place.
This is not a tease title.
I walked into the counseling room today at 2 pm with my squadmate, Erica, and we were prepared for another day of counseling. We were met by the social worker, Emma, and she was ready to interpret for us. I was ready for tears, for sad stories, for nightmare stories, and then we would pray with the children, hug them, and send them back out to play.
Not today.
In walks Purity, a 10-year-old girl.
She begins to tell her a little bit of her story, and that she's been seeing people come at her, and that her dead sister comes to her in her dreams. So far this is normal. We hear this kind of stuff all the time. We tell her that when she's scared, she needs to pray in Jesus' name, and that we will pray for her. I asked her one last question before we prayed: Purity, do you love Jesus?
She answered 'yes.'
So we approach her, hold her hand, and begin to pray.
Prayer starts, and Purity shoves her chair back abruptly.
Erica describes my reaction as "lunging" toward Purity, screaming "In Jesus' Name!" (kind of funny, I was ready to pray this out)
And here starts the heavy stuff.
We are officially casting out demons.
Holy moly, this is my life?!
So Purity ends up coming off the chair, on the floor, thrashing. At this point I'm praying in tongues like nobody's business (yeah yeah yeah, I'm weird) we are holding her down, and she calms down a bit.
We got her back on the chair. Oh, and the rain starts POURING and the lights flickered and then the power went off. This is somewhat normal in Africa, but the timing was riiiiiidiculous.
'Purity? Purity talk to us.'
Her gaze is fixed at a point on the floor, I look where she's looking–nothing there– and then she points diagonally down, then she points over her shoulder. Lo and behold, there are shadows on the wall. I've seen that kind of stuff before, so my reaction was shaking my head and laughing. Erica goes "Is there someone in the office?! Can we check?" and the social worker, Emma, assured her that there is nobody in the office, and that what she saw was what she was thinking… yeah…
we saw demons fleeing in the name of Jesus.
So we keep praying, and we keep asking Purity to talk to us, but this time her response was different.
"This is not Purity."
Oh. My. God.
So we asked "who is it?" and it said it wouldn't tell us its name. It asked for the caretaker, Madam Beth, and said that if she came it'd tell us its name.
More thrashing on the floor, more prayer.
Come out! and she'd shake her head 'no'
Say the name of Jesus! and she'd shake her head 'no'
The demon couldn't say the name of Jesus.
"I'm not coming out. I won't come out. You're wasting your time."
I said "you're going back to hell where you came from!"
and the response I got was awful… "if I go back to hell, I'll come back when she's sleeping."
So we rebuked that, we did a lot of rebuking and commanding and casting out.
At one point, she started coughing — this is supposedly a sign of demons coming out.
But there was still something left.
About 2 hours into this deliverance, we got some backup aka most of the racers.
In comes the owner and director of Challenge Farm, Cheri, and she's praying with Purity, and Cheri says "Jesus loves you, Purity" and again, "this is not Purity" and Cheri said "Jesus loves Purity, and Purity loves Jesus" and she shakes her head 'no' and we sing "Jesus loves me" while the little girl is shaking her head and covering her ears. At one point, Cheri asked her about the sister, and she started crying.
It was heartbreaking to see.
Cheri had a really tender, loving way of speaking life into Purity. I learned a lot from watching her deal with it all. It was still authoritative, but really gentle.
We got Purity back, we got her talking again. She told us that she didn't remember anything after the "shadows on the wall" and that she went unconscious. She said she loved Jesus, she prayed, and we prayed that nothing could come against her again.
Her eyes were still not all the way back to normal, they still looked sideways a lot, and we could tell she wasn’t completely delivered. She was exhausted, and Cheri made the decision to go ahead and let her rest.
Tomorrow they will pray with her again, and make sure she’s completely okay. I won’t be there because I’m leaving in the morning to go to another city, Nakuru, to visit one of my best friends from another squad.
This was the first time I’ve ever encountered somebody who was demon possessed, much less pray it out. There were over 15 people who witnessed it when it was all said and done. This isn’t silly stuff you read about in the Bible from way back in the day. It’s still happening today. I hope this testimony encourages your faith and reinforces the importance of walking in our God-given authority.
Heal the sick,
raise the dead,
cleanse those who have leprosy,
drive out demons.
Freely you have received, freely give. –Matthew 10:8
