I was unprepared. When the darkness crept in so thickly I could feel it to my bones. When I felt a presence in the room I can only describe as evil. When my neighbor volunteered to make a sacrifice so my baby would stop crying. When my house worker wanted to make an offering in my backyard because she had seen a snake. When my kids woke up screaming in the night seeing things in their bedroom. When my landlord showed me the elaborate “spirit house” in the yard of my newly rented house.
What do you do when the evil creeps in and interrupts your life in tangible ways? What do you do when your theology and faith are stretched to the limits of what you expected to even be possible?
One option is to explain it away. Surely that was not an evil spirit in my kids’ bedroom. They must have just had a bad dream or maybe they are just scared of the dark (aren’t all kids?). Surely that “curse” my neighbor told me about is just an outdated, meaningless superstition. Surely this rational, explainable world has a logical, scientific explanation– one that is devoid of a belief in the supernatural (or even God).
Another option is to ignore it. Refuse to think about it. Do nothing. Carry on. Don’t let those new experiences affect my long-held beliefs and acceptable religious tradition. Don’t talk about those weird “out-there” experiences to my supporters, family, fellow workers, or friends. They might think I’ve turned into an even more of an extreme spiritual wack-job. I’ll just put all those experiences in a box and forget about them — at least when I am on home assignment or writing newsletters.
My last option was to dig deep and acknowledge that maybe Scripture had been there all along warning me about the spiritual battle that would happen when I carried my light into the world’s darkness. My last option was to show humility and realize that alone I had no power over the darkness, but through the power of God, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit he had given to live within me, the darkness would indeed cower and flee.
My last option was to hold out my light, His Light, and walk bravely into the unknown of spiritual warfare.
Praise God for his timing. On a home assignment, the leader of our organization organized a short retreat on the very topic I needed: confronting the evil around us. I took notes furiously as he spoke. I opened myself up to learn something that a few years before I didn’t even think existed.
I studied Scripture again, reading it anew with the scales off my eyes. I got back home to Asia and began to study the armor of God along with my children. I researched ancient practices and learned more about church history. I actually listened to my local friends and what they had to say instead of explaining or ignoring what I couldn’t easily understand.
And then I moved beyond study and reflection and did the hardest step of all: I started to put it all into practice. I realized my strongest defense against the darkness was the Word of God, prayed in new ways.
I started praying the Jesus Prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. (Luke 18:38)
I started praying the Lord’s Prayer and actually meant the words I was saying. Deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:9-13)
I started praying against the darkness and evil around me in the holy name of Jesus. At the name of Jesus every knee should bow. (Philippians 2:10)
In my praying, I started actually having confidence that Christ’s victory on the cross meant spiritual victory over the forces of evil both within me and around me.
Some days, I still can feel hesitant to put on the armor of God and confront the darkness around me, especially when I know it will make the other people around me feel just as uncomfortable as I first felt when I made my first foray into spiritual warfare. And some days the power of darkness can seem stronger than the flicker of light I carry. But He is faithful, and I will hold tightly to His promises.
I know I am not alone, for He is living within me. I can carry my candle into the darkness in confidence knowing that, as St. Francis of Assisi said, “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
I know I am not alone, for there are many other faithful followers of Christ also shining brightly. Although at times my individual light may be dim, all of us together can join together to walk bravely into the darkness, into the unknown, into the uncomfortable, into the world, calling others also to walk in the Light.
May God indeed deliver us from evil and use us to lead others to the hope we have in Him.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” and “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
1 John 1:7; 1 John 5:19-20
