“Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” -2 Timothy 2:3
Imagine waking up every day at 6:30am and feeling semi-optimistic about the day ahead. You’re awake and you are grateful for that blessing. You sit up on your bed, which is actually a couch, and look around and see at least 7 other women strewn across the floor sleeping. You close your eyes and try to pray to God, your good good Abba, but you can find no words… None. Determined, you open your Oswald Chambers devotional called My Utmost for His Highest to the passage for the day. As you read, you think “Man, he is always on it with the perfect word for the day! Thank You, Lord.” And then you open your bible to read a chapter of Proverbs because you’re reading “along with” your friends back in the States, and for about another 30 minutes your spirit and mind are in a good place.
But then everyone else, including the 3 men that slept in the bedroom, begin to wake up. As they wake up there is a shift in the atmosphere. You no longer feel semi-optimistic and the good place you were in has been swept away. You feel agitated and frustrated, which has become the norm for you. A norm that is completely and utterly exhausting. You see and hear yourself being less courteous and Christ-like toward certain people. You are complaining more than you ever have – the heat, the walk, the trash on the ground outside, the hair all over the floor, the rash tone of voice used toward others, the lack of variety in your diet. Literally EVERYTHING is getting under your skin and no matter how much you try to pray about it nothing seems to work. And then you wind up with severe, horrible chafing (caused by the local attire) that prevents you from being able to go to ministry, on walks, or to the beach for almost two weeks. You feel like you’re missing out on being able to embrace and enjoy the culture. And some people think that you’re just “skipping ministry” because they can’t physically see what’s going on with you. There’s a lack of compassion and understanding that makes you feel even worse. Overall you just feel miserable about life in general, and you can’t figure it out.
What do you do? You complain and try to find solutions via Skype with a friend. You ask your girlfriends that are reading Proverbs to pray with and for you. You send your prayer team an exhaustive email asking them to pray and celebrate with you. You struggle to have a positive outlook so you talk with your squad leaders and squad mentor. Again, you try to hear from God through prayer, His Word, journaling, sitting in silence… Yet nothing changes.
So then one day it’s time to leave India, a place that you intellectually know to be full of spiritual unrest, oppression, poverty, hatred, and a lack of expression of love. You get on a bus and travel overnight to a city called Hyderabad where you spend the day with other teams and you begin to feel slightly better. Then you get on another bus at 1am and head to the airport so you can begin the journey to Nepal. During your 4 hour layover in Delhi you get to spend some time with your good friend that’s on another team and you begin to laugh and smile and feel understood. And you can sense a shift inside of you but you’re not sure what it is. And then you board another plane, fall asleep, and wake up just as the plane lands in Kathmandu, Nepal. From your aisle seat you look across two people and see the mountains off in the distance. Immediately you begin smiling on the inside and outside. But it’s a smile you haven’t experienced in quite some time. You step off of the plane and feel nice cool air, see rain clouds moving toward you, hear wind blowing past your ears, and you know… you’re safe again. You make a 360* circle and see nothing but mountains and you know… there is peace again. As the rain begins to fall and you walk back outside to find a bathroom you know… you’ve been released. You sit in a van with 14 squad mates and watch the people of this new country walk and talk and ride and do life together as you pass them by and you know… community is a good thing. Later that night, you and your teammates go out in search of food and you stumble across a place called the Namaste Café and Bar that promises live music and good food so you go inside. And for the 1st time in more than a month you’re able to let your hair down, literally and figuratively. You are alive and well. You are FREE!!! The next morning you wake up and you know… it was spiritual warfare the whole time.
This is part of my story. If I felt and behaved this awfully after being in India for just 30 days, how much worse do the Christians that live there feel? What great heaviness resides in the people that have no real concept of the God of the Bible? Are they even aware that the things they deal with are not “normal?” The vast majority of the people of India have been imprisoned unjustly by the devil. Please, I beg of you… PLEASE BE PRAYING FOR THE SOULS OF INDIA!!! Please pray for the Christians that are trying to help bring their fellow countrymen into fellowship with Christ as their Lord and Savior, and not just another god to place on the wall of their home. Please pray for unrest and revival. Please pray that the foothold the enemy has will be destroyed. Pray as if your life depends upon it. Because it does. Spiritual warfare takes up all different shapes and sizes, and is irrespective of persons.
“Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.” –Ephesians 4:13
