Today's post is shared by a dear friend and sister in Christ.
Bernadette Groves-Wright is an amazing British women whom I met on a combined Grace Chapel Alpha weekend during lunch. Bernadette has been a Christ follower for five years now and her joy for life and love for Jesus are truly contagious. I am thrilled that she said yes to serving on the Alpha team at Grace Chapel several years ago and even more excited that she said yes to serving as a member of our upcoming Global Alpha Team trip to Haiti.
Various team members will be blogging through their experiences along the way, and this is the first GAT Team Haiti installment!
I
was so excited when I saw Pastor Richard Rhodes’ email about taking Alpha to
Haiti. Little did I know that my
excitement would so quickly turn into an intense spiritual battle!
After
spending a couple of days in prayer, I felt the call to go to Haiti. I emailed
Lisa and told her that I was interested. Lisa and I emailed back and forth for a
couple of days sharing our excitement for this upcoming mission trip. After a couple of days, Lisa asked if I would
be prepared to lead the prayer team sending out emails and recruiting prayer
warriors. I was delighted to be able to
help and sent many emails out over the course of the next few days.
On
Friday morning shortly after I started these emails; I woke up with a sense of
foreboding; my stomach was in knots and I was extremely irritated – my poor
little doggies couldn’t do a thing right.
My day at work did not go well; it ended with me feeling extremely
agitated and weepy. Decisions I make on
a day-to-day basis at work were absolutely overwhelming me – I chalked it up to
a bad day! On Saturday morning I woke up
feeling worse. I felt totally
overwhelmed with life; useless, unable to do anything; my mind was an absolute
whirlwind of emotions and I felt as though everything was caving in on me. I was drowning in apprehension and fear;
emotionally drained and totally exhausted. I started pacing around my apartment;
the walls were closing in on me. I had to
get out, so I got into my car and immediately sent text messages to a couple of
friends asking them to pray because I realized that I had been blindsided with
an intense spiritual attack. I had not
“suited” up and had left myself completely wide open.
One
friend called me while I was driving and prayed and I met and prayed with the
other friend over lunch. We agreed that
I would go through each room in my apartment and bind Satan in the name of
Jesus. I did this immediately and then I
got down on my knees and prayed to God to provide protection for everyone
involved.The
feeling of oppression continued to hover over me but I did feel stronger.
I met Lisa for supper on the Tuesday evening,
explained to her what had happened, and she said she had also been experiencing
intense spiritual warfare but her comment “I consider it all joy” completely
changed my thinking. I had never heard
anyone refer to a spiritual attack as “pure joy” before; but she is absolutely
right; we are stepping out in
faith and in obedience to God and the evil one is hopping mad WHAT A JOY!!
I
will look at spiritual warfare from a totally different perspective in future
and “consider it all joy” but I have also learned a sharp lesson, armor up every
day, we are in a battle.
So
ARMOR UP my fellow “Alphanians” and keep your sights on Jesus and His plan – TO
BRING ALPHA TO HAITI!!!
Eph 6:12-17 "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
2 Chronicles 20:15 This is what the LORD says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s.
James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
