Like most people, I’ve had my share of ups and downs in life. And like most, I presume, I try, not always successfully, to make the best of all situations. There has been death, job loss, alcoholism, mental illness, and depression, to name a handful. If it wasn’t me dealing with these situations directly, it was someone close to me. For most of these, I relied on my faith to help me trudge on. Like I said, I tried to make the best of it. One circumstance that I often found myself in was spiritual warfare.
Wait; I still deal with it.
It started around when I was 13 years old or so. We did the Ouija board, and thought nothing of it. I have heard people talk about it as a toy. I have heard, conversely, people speak of it as the gateway to Satan’s schemes. Whatever it is, it is something that I will never touch again unless to throw in the trash. There could be no truth to it being the “gateway” to all things evil, but I don’t care. I’m not taking my chances. I believe this is what opened my eyes to spiritual warfare.
Let me give you an example. There was one night, out of nowhere, I started feeling weird, paralyzing dread and oppression. I was in my top bunk, (I shared a room with my younger sister,) and I was lying facing away from the closet. I woke up with an oppressive weight on me. I know we all feel something akin to this. There is pressure to do well and excel at work or school. There may be the stress of being a single parent and just figuring out how to make it through the day. Talk about stress and feeling like you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders!
This was different.
This was truly paralyzing.
I. Could. Not. Move.
I was around 14 years old at this time and normally if I woke up scared, I’d get out of bed, turn on the light and go to the bathroom or something. I tried that this time, but I couldn’t, as I was petrified. So I did the only thing I could think of: I prayed and prayed and prayed. I let go of myself and the situation and without any physical effort on my part, I got up and - boom! - I went and turned on my light. Call me weird, or wacky, but that was my introduction to spiritual warfare fight which brought me closer to Christ. The key was, as I learned,
"Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
James 4:7
Subsequent years saw my faith wax and wane; I wouldn’t think much of it at times, while at other times, it was a large part of my life (I'm sure others can relate). I think that generally it steadily became stronger. I went to a school where Christians were relatively scarce. College can be a hard time for a person in their faith walk, whatever their faith may be. I kept mostly to my own faith and made it through.
At one point post college, I was taking a nice bike ride through the woods on the trail and I heard weird voices - I know! Just hear me out! I promise I was not suffering from a mental illness at the time! - they were words I had never heard before. I looked around for someone, but saw no one. I rounded the corner on my bike and I saw two figures disappear into the earth, right underneath a set of train tracks. The rocks that buttressed the train tracks were where they vanished. I couldn’t believe it, so I got off my bike and inspected the site, but saw nothing awry or amiss. They just disappeared. One had a bright blue bottom, and the other had bright red. This “unveiling” that I witnessed weirded me out, to say the least.
As an older adult, I have had problems as well. I had always thought mythical creatures were interesting and thought the faerie fad was cute. I had heard a suggestion that faeries like ginger, so you can leave some outside for them. I embarrassingly and naively did. I just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Not that what followed was a causation or correlation, for that matter. Perhaps it was just a coincidence. Within days of that stupidity (what was I thinking?) I was sitting in a chair on my porch; my husband was 20 feet in front of me, weeding the garden. I was taking dried seed pods from one of my flowers in order to save them for replanting, when something hit me in my back. I looked behind me and saw no one. My yard is small and fenced in so no one could have done it and ran off. My husband was in front of me. I didn’t know what it was that hit my back until I stood up from my chair. There, on the seat, was a red lily flower head that was the same exact kind that grew three feet next to me.
The dénoument came a year or two later. I was not going to put up with this crazy garbage anymore of feeling attacked and bullied by the darkness. I was having a horrible time at a job with a boss who kind of just hated me - I therefore, kind of hated my job and fell into a mild depression. I had a bad feeling about this situation; my boss, my job, my well-being, my integrity. Again, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling scared (who said this stuff goes away after childhood anyway?). I saw, in my ‘just waking up stage’, across my room, a large, let’s say, gargantuan, black spider doing a sort of clicking with its long creepy legs. I felt as though I was under attack, like this was my job and my boss, who I don’t think was a kind person to me at all and used me detestably, was the spider. I prayed, "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith." What happened next will always be with me, so vividly. I saw to left of me, as bright as the light of lightning, a horse with a tall human-shaped figure on it with a sword drawn, dash to the other side of my room where the spider was and slash it. It was over. God won. How could I not join him to fight? How can I not want him to be my Lord, my Savior? I feel as though he sent an angel to fight on my behalf because he really loves me that much. Wow.
I still struggle at times, as I still see “things,” if you will. I do not want to see them. I never willed for this to be my situation. I pray to make them go away and for the Lord to protect us. My husband joins my fight as well. I still feel like this is a curse. However, maybe it’s God’s way of telling me that he wants to use me as a soldier. I know that I need to always put on the armor of God. I feel embarrassed writing this, as I don’t really tell too many people about this struggle, for reasons that I am sure many of you will consider. I am made fun of, considered weird, crazy, you know, it’s typical, I guess. I remember someone making fun of me for what I have witnessed, yet this person could fully embrace learning of a person having a two-week long “high” off of a spiritual leader’s hug. I did not discriminate against this person for their spirituality, yet they discriminated against mine. It was hurtful. It was especially so as I struggle with spiritual warfare.
The big idea I want to illustrate is that without the Lord, my fight against spiritual warfare and many other areas of my life for that matter, is futile without God’s help. I mentioned only a handful of the big, bad, and ugly things I have seen. There have been other events. Yet, there is good that I have seen and heard as well, which is more proof to me that the Lord is truly amazing and SO powerful. Yet, that’s a story for another time.
So I’ll leave you with words from Ephesians 6:10-12 - our "battle cry" in spiritual warfare:
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his great power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can fight against the devil’s evil tricks. Our fight is not against people on earth but against the rulers and authorities and the powers of this world’s darkness, against the spiritual powers of evil in the heavenly world.”
No comments:
Post a Comment