My name is Lady. Jesus has been showing me his immense power over the spiritual forces of darkness in this world. This is my story.
I met Jesus because of my math teacher. I was one of those kids that needed a lot of help—and I mean a lot—just to make a grade. For three years, my teacher would meet with me every morning so that I could make B minuses. When I was a senior, he invited me to a Young Life camp.
It was at the Young Life camp that I gave my life to the Father. My teacher wanted to help disciple me, but due to complicated legalities surrounding religion and school, so he couldn’t do much. He was honest with me about that, and I understood.
Luckily I started dating a Pastor’s kid—this was back before I really knew enough to understand what that meant—and for a year and a half he called me every Sunday to invite me to church. Finally I told him, “I’ll go if you promise to never invite me again.”
Turns out, he didn’t need to—I went once and never stopped going.
After that, I went to university. As soon as I graduated I was ready to travel. My parents saw the reality: I was in debt, and needed a job… all I saw was the six months before my loans came due. So I packed up my life and went to Australia for further schooling, where I met my husband. Once we were married we traveled around South Asia with the goal of trying to discern where God was calling us.
We visited this part of South Asia during a communist uprising. We weren’t allowed to leave our hotel, and when we slept we would hear trashcan bombs going off on the streets. Afterward, my husband looked at me and said: “I think this is where we are being led to live.”
“Did we go to the same place?” I said, flabbergasted. There was no way I was going back.
We settled in another part of South Asia, sandwiched between two countries. I suddenly found myself—and I have never been a stalker—following Tibetan people back to their homes. I was fascinated by them. The more I learned about Tibet, the more my heart broke. I would pass a Tibetan person on the street and prayers would erupt from my lips, as if something was pulling them from deep within my stomach. (This still happens—you can ask my kids!)
Then I found out that most Tibetan refugees had settled in the foothills of the Himalayas, which are —you guessed it—exactly where I swore I would never return.
There’s a specific Tibetan group in the Himalayan foothills with no believers. It takes eight hours by jeep or a small puddle jumper to get to this people group, and the jeeps only run twice in the year because monsoons make it too dangerous to get in and out any other time. We took our family went up into the mountains to minister to this people group. (The people thought my kids were gods and started worshipping them—we put a stop to that immediately.) Pretty quickly, however, we realized we would not be able to live there for safety reasons. So we made plans to return to Kathmandu.
At this point, I had seen God work powerfully in many ways, but this particular instance sticks in my memory. We were waiting at the only airstrip for our plane to land. This was our last chance to get out of the tribe for six months and a storm was rolling in—in short, we needed to be on that plane. My 3-year-old prayed: “Jesus, please open up the sky and let the plane land!”
“What is he saying?” The people wanted to know. (Plane landings are a big deal. Almost the whole village had showed up to watch.)
“He is talking to our God,” I said. “ He is asking Jesus to open the skies.”
“We do not think this will work,” the people said. “The sky god and the cloud god are very rarely in agreement, and often fighting.”
Unlike most religions, Tibetan Buddhism does not have a creation story. Knowing this, I saw an opportunity. “My son is praying to the Creator God,” I said. “He made the sky and the clouds. He is the God over all gods, and because he created them, he has power to change the weather.”
“The God over all gods?” the people said, intrigued.
“Let’s all pray to Jesus and ask him to open the sky,” I suggested.
The people were skeptical, but I could hear their murmured prayers behind me. Within seconds, the clouds opened up in a perfect circle, the pilot landed, and we were able to board. We took off, and the clouds closed behind us like someone had rolled as screen back.
I have not been able to go back to that people group since. But they witnessed the power of the Creator God that day. I pray it sticks in their memories and turns their ears to hear.
As I mentioned, we found out we couldn’t live with the people group, so we chose the next best thing: the Tibetan neighborhood in Kathmandu. If any of these people ever came down from the mountains, they would come to this neighborhood.
Two more things you should know: first, I see demons, and experience their presence physically. Most people call this a spiritual gift: I am tempted to call it a curse. Second, Tibetan Buddhism has roots in a religion that is essentially spirit worship, and in this neighborhood, I saw demons on every street corner. They would often come into our house and try to frighten me.
The constant spiritual warfare took its toll on our family. We were exhausted—mentally, physically, and spiritually. I was nursing an 8-month-old. My marriage was struggling. Our family was struggling. One night, I woke up to a massive demon waltzing into our room. He was at least eight feet tall and smelled terrible.
“Get out in the name of Jesus,” I said.
He stared right back at me. “I don’t have to go anywhere.”
I don’t know about you, but this blew all my theology out of the water. Well s***, I thought, what do I do now?
“I’m protected by the blood of Jesus,” I said finally. “And so is my husband. So you can stand there at the foot of my bed all you like, but you can’t touch us.” Then I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I woke up, he was gone. I had slept well, but the encounter bothered me deeply.
A few months later, our family moved to Southeast Asia, where we lived for a year to seek counseling and allow our marriage time to recover. I asked over 70 different workers about the encounter with the demon, but none could explain what had happened. Finally, the 72nd person suggested that we ask Jesus. I remember feeling relieved and a little bit silly—I hadn’t even thought to do that, I was so exhausted.
While praying with this woman and meeting with her over a few days, I heard God answer my question. The name of a king has immense power,He said, but nobody will listen to a messenger who does not claim a royal connection. The degree to which you know your identity in me is the degree to which you will have authority in the spiritual realm.
Since then, God has been taking me on a journey of discovering my identity. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. I’ve found the book of Ephesians to be especially helpful. Not because of the armor of God passage, but because it spends five chapters addressing identity before it ever gets to warfare.
Getting back to my story… after our year in counseling and restoring our family, we felt that God was telling us to go back to the States and work on getting out of debt before moving back overseas. (Remember those student loans? Yep, so did I.) Neither my husband nor I fit into American culture, not to mention that the second you come home, everyone wants you to speak and visit and chat, completely forgetting that you’ve spent years pouring out with no return. There aren’t American worship sets and English-speaking pastors overseas. Often times our community looks like people trying to sprinkle us with a few drops out of their equally-empty cup.
We started attending a different church than our home church. For months we snuck in and out the back. We felt guilty at first, but it was what we needed. When the church figured out who we were, they very graciously did not announce our presence. When our debt was paid and we were ready to go back to South Asia, they prayed over us. We were spiritually, physically, and emotionally rested and ready to go back, this time in a different city.
I still see demons, but as I grow in my identity, I find myself with ever increasing authority. October is an especially dark time due to the back-to-back festivals. Every night between the hours of 3 and 4 am, a Hindu priest walks our street blowing a horn to welcome the goddess Durga. The horn sets all the dogs to barking. If we don’t wake up to the clamor, we all have similar dreams of snakes, leering faces, or other evil things. A few nights ago, I heard the man coming. I was so tired, I begged God to stop our ears—then repented because that was probably the most selfish prayer I had ever prayed. My neighbors don’t need that spiritual darkness any more than we do!
All right, Lord. What do you want me to pray?
Pray that he would be eradicated.
I prayed those words, exactly. I could hear him coming, and he was still blowing the horn. I was getting ready to be disappointed when a raindrop hit the tin roof. Seconds later, we were in a fierce downpour that lasted until 6am. He was unable to continue blowing the horn.
Even our presence has the power to break strongholds. People ask all the time what we do, and when I tell them about our company they often ask “Okay, but what are you really doing?” They are shocked when I explain that we are not sharing with people. We are loving them well, not hiding who we are, and we are seeing it bear fruit. One of our employees recently asked for a Book and has been meeting with a friend to ask questions about what he is reading. Praise God!
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. ~2 Cor 10:4
The spiritual world is real. It is all around us. Not everyone can see it like I can, but we all experience attacks. It is our identity in Christ that gives us authority and power in his name. I stand firm by the blood of Christ and by my identity as his daughter, and I pray you will, too!
Pray with me:
– That our employees would come to know the Truth
– For our business to continue to flourish and that more people would see Jesus’ light through us.
– That my entire family would come to know and walk in their identity as Christians.
– That God would refresh us, and send people to South Asia to minister to those of us on the field (it is sorely needed!).
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*names have been changed*
