The Spirit that Preys

This week I was assuaged by a spirit of Fear. Fear to speak, mostly. God has been confirming from one person to another that I have something to offer while I’m here. The relationships I’m forming have sunk their roots deep, and for a while, I was amazed at how much everyone seemed to like me. The majority of them are trying to convince me to stay here permanently. I hadn’t “done” anything to get them to like me, so I guess it’s a testament to the freedom the Father has moved me into. It’s like his aroma is following me around, or his Spirit is hovering around me.

Teri told me she saw me across the volleyball court and thought, “I would like to know her.”

Lauren and I have gone to the deep places in a week’s time. She prophesied that I would be a place of rest and safety for people, that I am needed in the community.

Jordan prayed prophecy over me without knowing me.

Michael shook my hand, saying, “You seem to me to be a pillar.”

They perceive the Spirit in me and are responding to him in relationship.

Satan’s vendetta is against me speaking power, life, and freedom into hearts of those I have come to love. Every time I was in a group of more than two or three with things to say, my spirit tripped up somewhere around my tongue—like it was curling up on itself. Accompanied were whispers of, “Don’t say that, it’s not loving,” or “You don’t know if that’s the right answer, so don’t give it,” or “You are young in this life, how can you offer that?”

I was afraid to rebuke, afraid to disagree, afraid to give answers unless it was assuredly safe to do so.

I caved again and again, until I saw the pattern and rebuked the spirit, which left.

I was speaking again with courage and honesty, and moved on.

 

But the spirit didn’t. The night before last, my host Nate was awakened at 1:30 after a demonic dream in which he cast a spirit out. (For a little context, I had been having bad dreams all week, accompanied by two episodes of sleep walking.) He felt the presence of the spirit in the house, but wherever he went, he heard it flitting in another room. He thought about waking me up to see if I had been sleep walking again. He prayed against it and went back to bed, telling us about it in the morning. I was sobered by the reality of a demonic presence, but felt Nate’s handling of it adequate.  

Last night, the spirit entered me. I can’t remember what I was dreaming, but it was something power-related, because when the spirit swooped down on me, I thought I was receiving spiritual gifting. It went into my feet and traveled up my legs in to my chest, which expanded as it filled. My body was cold and tingled all over, felt light and heady.

I sat up and got out of bed.

I was existing in another dimension, between dream sleep and consciousness.

I was aware, but I wasn’t in control.

I couldn’t see the room, was looking at something else which I can’t remember. The closest thing I can think of to describe it is looking through an infra-red camera lens. Shifting shadows, some sepia color.

I realized the spirit inside me wasn’t from God when I felt its malicious intent. I felt evil and bent on destruction.  

Then I came to consciousness. The room materialized around me, coming into focus. I remembered I was sleeping in the guest room in the Petty’s house in Conroe, Texas.

Then I realized a demon had just left me.

It was Fear preying on me, and my whole body was trembling in a cold sweat. I used the light of my phone and went upstairs. The house felt dark and contaminated. I could sense the spirit flitting around the perimeter of the room. So paralyzed, I couldn’t even think straight to pray against it. I tapped on Nate and Emily’s door. Sent a text to Nate—Are you up?

The time was 1:45am.

Fear was telling me not to wake the men—let them sleep, it whispered, they are so tired.

My spirit’s countering whisper came faintly—don’t be stupid! This is serious. You need to wake them up.

I shook Elijah awake, on the verge of tears.

“Is it morning?”

“No.” My voice sounded thin and strained. “Elijah, I think I encountered that spirit Nate heard last night.”

He got up and guided me back to my room where I had barely finished telling him what I experienced when Nate came in. “Are you alright?”

“That spirit you heard attempted to take possession of me.”

I told it all over again.

And then they prayed. Back and forth, rebuking the spirit, rebuking sin and agreements and footholds and interactions and anything that opened doors for Satan, countering curses set against the household, the rooms and the people. They prayed a blood covering over each of us and Jesus’ resurrection power to cast out demons from the premises.

As they prayed, the fear ebbed and my courage mounted, and soon I was able to pray for myself, sealing off places where Satan had gained access, renouncing the fear, declaring that I have things to give.

We offered up our hearts to God, repenting of sin, and surrendering all the areas of our hearts we were withholding—consciously or not—from him.

Nearly an hour later, God told me it was safe to rest.

I sang hymns until I fell asleep, deeply and unencumbered.

My friend Lauren believes that the places you are most assaulted are the places where you are most gifted. She has encouraged me to take my ever-present, memorable dream life to God to find out if it is a gifting he would use to speak to me and speak to others. Satan has succeeded the last fifteen years in tricking me into thinking my dreams are all physiological/psychological, and it has always been a place of vulnerability to him.

But the power I have in Christ over his dominion is real and actively battling.

I have consecrated this post to the Lord—from glory to glory I and my words move, invisible to the forces of darkness. I pray you will be sobered and awakened to the reality of warfare, and will rejoice with me that we have been given authority over the power of the enemy (Lk. 10:19).

His reign in my sleep has come to an end.

 

Surprise Beginnings

If I had to pick one attribute of God that I love most, I would pick his love for surprise. He is lavish in it, especially when I let him. The past eight months have been riddled with surprise, as if every week is my birthday. He pops out with a gift, and—to use my friend’s simile—a chocolate cake, and then he ices the cake, and then he tops it with a candle. Such is my life.

I’m writing from Texas, by the way. Surprise! I was supposed to be here for six days, having hitch-hiked with a friend on his way down to a reunion, to visit another friend and his sister’s family. Three days before I’m scheduled to leave, my friend’s brother calls and asks,

“What are you doing the next two months? Want to stay and nanny the kids?”

Six days turned into a possible sixty. Surprise, indeed.

Though not at all to God, who had been orchestrating all the details into line long before the decision was made. Suddenly I was not working, was freed from church responsibilities, and had the remainder of the summer wide open to his plans.

“Go,” he told me.

There is much about Texan culture that is easy to love—the southern hospitality, the “ya’ll”s and “bless your heart”s, Texas BBQ, even the heat. (Less so the constant perspiring, cockroaches, and generally gargantuan insects.) What has been harder to adjust to is the Texas church culture, which seems to tip a scale from strait-jacket Southern Baptist to spirit-hopping charismatics. I have more experience with the latter, and it has been a struggle to discern who is acting/speaking in truth and who is not. Signs and wonders, healings, prophecy, speaking in tongues—it’s the new normal.

I met a guy the other day who speaks in tongues. He gave me the rundown of his own experience, and what the Bible has to say about it, and I believe he is genuinely walking with God and operating from the Holy Spirit. But he took me slightly off guard when he said,

“We can talk about this all day, or we could pray.”

I realized he meant praying for me to speak in tongues. Two things collided in me: a hope that I would speak the language of the angels, and a fear that I would try and it would not happen. I felt like I was being vacuum-packed. Pressure to give into the spiritual culture, and living proof that God does answer that prayer (my friend sitting next to me comes from a similar background and experience, and God answered his prayer to speak in tongues a few weeks earlier).

Should I do it? Could I do it? Did I need to do it?

“I don’t know,” I said. And that was the truth.

Later, this young man observed that I was looking very contemplative. “What are you thinking?”

I had come to my decision. “I don’t want to do it. I know who God is and I know who I am, and I am learning to walk in the Spirit, but I don’t think I need to speak in tongues to experience intimacy. I asked God if I should, and he says, ‘Not right now.’”

It felt huge, claiming to know God, be intimate with him, and hear from him. But it was the most truthful part of my heart. Later I was told this guy appreciated my response.

 

God came to confirm all my claims in the evening. I went to Young Adults, a sort of church small group. During worship, a new acquaintance came to me with a word from God, which I was all too happy to receive. I will paraphrase what she said and insert what the Spirit said to mine in brackets, because every word was dead-on.

“God wants to tell you that you are full of purity and mercy [your desires are pure and your attitude is merciful to the people here who walk in falseness]. You are willing to go anywhere and do anything in following him, willing to give up your life in service, willing to be taught [you follow me out west and follow me down south and follow me in relationship and follow me in the everyday details of life].

“Though you might not have any schooling, he doesn’t care, because your desire is for him [I don’t care if you don’t know how to speak in tongues or can’t prophesy—you only care about knowing me, and I will reveal myself to you]. You are at peace in your heart, peace about who God is and who he has made you to be, and you are a place of safety for others to come and rest [be assured that you know who I am, rest in the identity I have stamped upon your forehead, and remember that I am sending my children to you because you are a safe place for them to find me].”

I was blown away. I started laughing and crying the minute she spoke. I sat down when she had finished and laughed and cried and thanked God, and he said, “I love you.” I saw me sitting in his lap with his arms around me, the way I might hold the little ones I nanny.

Then Jordan came up to me. I’d never met her before.

“I just had an image of Jesus coming up to you and kneeling before you,” she said. “He gives you a Valentine that says ‘be mine.’ I know it’s not Valentine’s Day, but he wants to romance you in ways you’ve never experienced.”

I grinned. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Jordan prayed, asking that I would hold Jesus’ hand when I walk down the street, and when I sit down, that I would sit in his lap.

I laughed even more. We’d seen the same image.

Surprise!

Oh Jesus, I love you. I was wondering why you wanted me to come to Texas. Now I see a confirmation of all the things I have come into, and a prediction of the future things you hold, which, I imagine, will come in varying degree of surprise.