Fighting the Evil One


One of our teens, Franceline, has been coming to our mission base often in this past month. She has a lot of things going on spiritually (presumably because of some kind of past experience with voodoo) and we have prayed with her over and over and over. Sometimes she has even slept in our chapel. It has been hard and sometimes exhausting. Some nights it has felt like it will never get better. I have never in my life prayed so hard and so long and so consistently for another person – sometimes we have been with her for hours at a time, missing meals or sleep. Sometimes it feels like her problem will never be fixed or that God is just not listening to our prayers. At times it has been discouraging and overwhelming.

As we have spent so much time in the chapel with her, my perseverance in prayer has definitely been tested. My hope has been tested. My faith has been tested. But I have also learned a lot from our time with her.

For example, often I have felt like I don’t know how to fight satan for someone else, but what I do know is how to love. The evil one cannot love, so I know that if all I have is love to fight him with, then that is actually a really powerful weapon. I’ve been remembering how important that is for every person that I meet who is struggling. Sometimes the people in our lives who struggle are people who also hurt us, and it is hard to put ourselves aside and love them. However, no matter how difficult it is, if we can put aside our own feelings, then we can fight the evil one in our own lives and in other people’s lives simply by loving. Love tells us to talk with a person. Love tells us to pray for a person. Love tells us that the other person comes first. Those simple, small things can really fight evil.

I also have been thinking a lot about the ways that satan attacks me. Lately that has been mostly through doubt and insecurity. Often times, in my own life, I get discouraged because I feel like I struggle with the same doubts, the same fears, the same insecurities, over and over and over. These repetitive struggles make me feel like I am a child spiritually, or that my feelings will never end, or that God will never really come to help me. I can get discouraged as I fight the same battles in my life and in my heart, over and over and over, the same way that we have been fighting for and with Franceline. As our whole community has persevered in praying with her, I have been reminded of the need to persevere against the evil one testing me in my own heart. Like we have experienced with Franceline, sometimes the battle has to happen over and over and over. But I know that both with her and with myself, God WILL have the victory in the end. Sometimes it just takes a lot of prayer. Sometimes it really does take God speaking to a wound in our hearts, time and time again. In the meantime, while He is healing us, I must remember then when He touches my heart over and over again to heal it, He is close to me, and closer to me, and even closer to me. Healing can be hard, but it is also intimate and beautiful. I know that I can be thankful that I have a God who wants to heal me, who wants to set me free, who wants to spend eternity with me.

Please pray for us as we continue to encounter spiritual warfare here in Haiti – pray that God will have the victory, just as He had the victory over the cross!

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