What’s inside you.

Back in October or November I started getting these spider bites in the middle of the night.  I would get bit just once or twice every week or 2 and they would be incredibly itchy to the point where I scratched until I bled quite often (I have no self control).  I sprayed raid all under my bed which cleared me for about a month, and then the little bugger came back.

I live with 11 other people and none of them have gotten any spider bites.  I had a roommate the entire time I was getting bit, only sleeping a mere 5 feet from me, yet she never got a single bite.  Other housemates have said they have seen spiders in their rooms but have never been bitten.  So suddenly I had a thought, “What if this thing biting me, is targeting me specifically?  What if whatever this is, is bigger than just a bug bite?  What if this is spiritual?”

I moved my bed, cleaned my room, sprayed raid again, and prayed that if this thing biting me is something spiritual attacking me, that God would get rid of it.  Well, it’s been over a month I haven’t been bitten again yet, but who knows, maybe he’s just being dormant for a while.

After the spider bites stopped I started getting really weird dreams.  I mean like crazy, evil dreams.

The weirdness all began about a month and a half ago.  I kept having these dreams that I was deaf.  People kept trying to talk to me and they would yell in my ear and I still couldn’t hear them.  Normally, having this dream wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I had this dream 4 times in various contexts.

And for the last month I have had a very vivid, evil, scary dream every single night.  Some of them include me or other people being attacked, some are of people as slaves, some have murders, some have rapists, some have demons.  But whatever the dream’s context, I am always in danger of whatever is going on around me.

I knew something was going on and I was sick of being scared to fall asleep so I prayed that God would protect my dreams and keep any evil spirits out of my head.  But all of these dreams didn’t really scare me into any sort of action.  See, before today I hadn’t been to church in probably 2 months.  I really hadn’t spent any significant time with God, just random time when I have nothing else to do.  I was watching tv shows that I really shouldn’t have been watching (I attribute most of the violence in my dreams to these shows).  I had someone tell me that I should question what I was watching but I was intrigued, I didn’t want to stop watching my shows.

I actually lied in bed, praying about how I didn’t want to stop watching my shows, I didn’t want to wake up on Sunday, I didn’t want to exert any energy for the sake of obedience.  I wanted to be nominal.  And I was mad because literal billions of people in this world are nominal and none of them see demons and get bit by spiders.  Why am I not allowed to be nominal?

Finally, I had my scariest dream.  I was trying to get to this thing called Missions Fest, and I was walking up and down the highway trying to get there, but there kept being road blocks or detours or whatever.  And then I heard that there was this room that you could step in and it would teleport you to Missions Fest.  The only catch was, the room was possessed by a demon.  Well, I went to the room and I was standing outside the door watching all of these other people take one step in and disappear as they swooshed to Missions Fest.  So I thought, “Hey, I’m a Christian.  I’m not in any danger of a demon, I’ll be fine.”

I took one step into the room and was lifted off the ground.  The demon lifted my body off of the floor, spun me around in the air a couple times and then slowly laid me on the bed in the room, holding me down so that I couldn’t move at all.  I felt it push me into the mattress and cover me with a blanket to smother me there.  I lied there in my dream, terrified, unable to move at all, praying that God would save me and just let me get to Missions Fest.  And suddenly I was demon possessed.  Then I woke up.

That finally scared me enough.  I text my mentor and asked if we could meet, I text one other friend and asked them to pray for me without giving any details.  The next morning I made myself some coffee, sat by a fire, and pulled out my journal and Bible and started talking to him again.  I pointed out to God, again, that I’m not like the worst or anything, it’s not like I’ve turned my back on him or doubt him in any way, I’m just being apathetic.

This was now last week.  I’ve stopped watching most of my shows, I’ve been praying every night that God would protect my dreams, I’ve been spending time with him every day and I feel better.  I feel closer to him.  But I’m still having dreams.  Some nights aren’t so bad, but some are really bad.  A lot of the dreams have actual characters from tv shows, but they don’t make sense.  Like, last night the trainer from biggest loser was being attacked.  And one night there were child soldiers practicing their shooting in a library in the states.

When I met with my mentor she prayed for me and I mentioned this frustration to her.  Like, billions of people are being nominal all the time, why is it such a big deal that I’m being nominal?

But those billions of people aren’t me.  And I know better.

Today at church we had communion and as I sat there holding the chex and the juice in my hand I thought about the Holy Spirit.  I am filled with the Spirit.  I have been baptized in the Spirit, it flows through me, it resides in every inch of me, in every skin cell, in every micro-organism-thinger-ma-bobber, in every brain cell.  And a body that is entirely consumed in the Holy Spirit can not be wasted by apathy.  God won’t allow it.

I am not permitted to be nominal because the Spirit actively resides in me.  And because I am open to the spiritual world, when I slack on one area here or there, they pounce.  They are constantly looking for a weakness, and when they find one they are not going to wait around for me to notice.  And so they attack me full force, in every area of my life, and even in my dreams.

Suddenly I got this inspiration to start a Bible study and I started day dreaming about it for an actual hour.  I just sat there thinking, staring out the window.  And I thought, “no, me and God are just getting back on track.  I can’t start anything now.”  But then I thought, “Why would I wait until I am perfect to learn and grow with other people who are just as broken as me?”  So if you think of it, pray for me and for this study that God would lead me in the direction he would like it to go.

As I stared at communion this morning and prayed I got a picture of Jesus and the Spirit, and as I ate it I got a picture of the Spirit filling me.  The Spirit is inside me, screaming to reach out, to touch lives around me, to praise God and bring glory to him.  And the Spirit inside me is bigger than everything else.  It fills me, it strengthens me, it protects me, it saves me, and it uses me.  It doesn’t go dormant, it doesn’t leave, it doesn’t abandon me, it doesn’t get nominal.  It just continues to work and I’m not allowed to ignore it.

Reach for the stars and you might grab a giant ball of fire.

Sometimes I feel like I live in fear of a lot of stuff.  I credit that partially to being american, and the fact that in America people are crazy and generally out to get you.  My first year at school I was on the highway and someone kept passing me and then slowing down.  The people in the car told me to pass them and I said I wouldn’t because the guy would pull out a gun and shoot us.  And my friend said, “This is Canada, no one is going to shoot you.”

But there is evil everywhere, even in Canada, believe it or not.  Evil is all around us, all the time, because it resides in a majority of our hearts.  When we have Jesus in our lives it is easier to defeat that evil but Satan is always working at getting something else in our minds.  I mean, I go from one idol to another.  I’m all like, “facebook takes up a lot of time and distracts me from God, I should delete it.” and then I just go and join the twitter world.

I have a friend who gets visions quite often and tells me about them.  I get pictures too sometimes, but mine are mostly nice pictures which I think God does for me because I would be absolutely petrified all the time if I got pictures of demons or war.  Instead I get pictures of metaphorical war, like chess, no bloodshed just chipped plastic and wounded egos.

But when my friend tells me about his visions I can usually picture them.  He told me one the other day that had a lot of demons in it, and I guess I know that demons are all over the place but I forget sometimes.  But when I’m reminded I get really scared, cause, dude, those things are scary looking.

But I know angels are everywhere too and that makes me feel a little bit better.  And God gives us armor for all that kind of stuff.

He gives us the belt of truth buckled around our waist, the breastplate of righteousness, feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (The word of God) – Eph 6:14-17

But probably the most important armor is prayer.  Paul says, “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests.  With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” – Eph 6:18

So God gives us armor and prepares us for the evil we will face in the world, but still sometimes I think about all the evil that exists and I get really discouraged.  I mean, it’s like surfing and when you’re trying to get out into the waves and you are fighting wave after wave trying to get deep enough to catch something significant when you realize you are a mile down the beach and only 20 feet from shore.  It gets overwhelming, it gets discouraging.

But then I think about the stars.  I mean we’ve got galaxies and lightyears of blackness and yet God filled the whole thing with a quadrogajillion balls of fire.  Which when we look at them seem tiny, but they’re actually massive.  And if God made sure to fill the colossally empty universe with giant balls of fire to light up the sky (spoiler alert: I don’t believe in aliens), then how much more has he set ablaze giant fire balls here on earth, by putting his Spirit in our hearts and lighting up the world?