Satan’s good. Real good. He gets ya where it hurts. But he will not win. He is a liar. He is a cheat. And he is DEFEATED. Still, he is the prince of this world, and (for lack of a non-cliche “Christian-ese” phrase, he’s lost the war, so he wants to win as many battles and take down as many people in the meantime as he can. He’s a jerk.
Things here in Albania aren’t getting easier (YET), they’re getting harder. More of us aren’t sleeping. In our room of 7 girls, there are nightmares every single night. For some reason, at least one of us always wakes with a start at 3:30am (9:30pm your time.) We are sick. We are in physical pain. We are tempted with things we are not normally tempted with. We are on edge. Some of the other girls are overwhelmed by fear. Girls want to give up. We begin to believe lies about ourselves, about our pasts, and about who we are. We hear things in our hearts like “you’re not good enough. you should be silenced. God is mad at you. you may be redeemed, but you disappoint God.” We speak those things outloud, and our teammates rebuke them and speak truth to us. We don’t sleep, so we feel almost too tired for ministry.
BUT SATAN WILL NOT WIN.
Personally? I think we threaten him. He’s scared because he knows that we have the power of the living God inside of us. We are His daughters. We have authority. And we will not stop fighting. We will not relent. Period.
In our team’s manifesto, we stated the following:
We REFUSE to let Satan blow out this flame. Any attempt by him to do so will only provide the wind to fan our flame into a more passionate flame, shining the light of the Lord to the nations.
He hates that. He hates us.
Because of this, we need your FERVENT PRAYER. Especially at 9:30pm (3:30am our time.)
I am going to DECLARE TRUTH on here. On the internet. For you all to see.
SATAN HAS NO PLACE HERE. I
HAVE AUTHORITY THROUGH THE
BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST AND
HE IS TO BE GONE IN THE
NAME OF JESUS CHRIST. WE
REFUSE TO PLAY HIS GAME
. WE REFUSE TO FALL PREY TO
HIS SCHEMES. WE ARE FED
UP. WE DECLARE PEACE AND
REST OVER THIS PLACE. GOD
IS AT WORK. HE WILL ALWAYS
BE AT WORK. AND HE WILL
WIN. HE HAS WON. AND HIS
VICTORY WILL BE REALIZED
AS HIS PEOPLE LIVE OUT
TRUTH AND LIGHT IN THIS
DARK PLACE.WE WILL NOT
RELENT. WE WILL NOT GIVE
UP. WE WILL FIGHT.
And you wanna know what? God IS at work. He IS winning the battle here in Albania. We have countless coffee dates with the girls and guys here each day and week. The gospel has been presented more times than we can count. Truth has been spoken into so many lives. The CRU meetings have been filled to capacity. Jesus is being lived out each and every day. Countless Bibles have been passed out. The students here have received hope! The GOSPEL! The light is being brought to dark places. The lies are being spoken against and brought to truth. The students here think that education, jobs, and looking nice are all there is to life. We come here having given up all that (and this will sound silly, but wearing sweatpants shocks them, and they are slowly seeing what true beauty is.) God is transforming this place. Bringing hope to the Christians that live here. Satan is SCARED. He thought he ruled Albania. But he doesnt.
OUR GOD REIGNS.
