A Burst Bubble and a Ray of Promise
I stepped outside the bubble of my little secluded Himalayan
world last week when I moved. I had been
in a remote part of the mountain, and though I had moments and days with
encounters with the real India, I wasn’t living IN it.
My bubble has burst.
The constant honking of horns, the beating of drums, the
prayer calls, the masked women in their burkas, the men bowing on their mats,
the hum of the chants during pooja offerings, the heaviness that wages in this
place is felt and heard and seen daily, moment by moment now. It’s rare I feel
that I escape it. I have felt the
heaviness. It’s like I knew it was here
and I had felt it before, but now living in this new apt, it is my reality
again.
I have been having some weird spiritual attacks in the last
week. Unable to sleep well, unable to focus for my quiet time and studying of
Hindi. Unable to stay awake and feeling complete exhaustion. Waking up with intense unexplained abdominal
pain and then having it be gone within a few hours. Falling and cutting my arm
to the point of needing a hospital visit and almost needing stitches. Getting stung by a bee and having a bad
reaction. I could sense the heaviness, but as I could barely awake from such a
deep slumber, I realized what was really happening. It’s not coincidence, it’s
warfare.
Today, I pr8ed with friends and together we walked my
property and home. The warfare is all around me; it’s not going away anytime
soon. It’s a daily onslaught of the enemy, but the G*d in me is stronger than
the g*ds around me. I felt the Father
identified fear as the main thing coming against this area and me. It is out of fear that the people seek their
g*ds and offer their poojas. It is fear
of not being accepted, or good enough, or right that people seek to make themselves
righteous through works and offerings.
It is fear of death that they seek a way to a better life. These people
don’t know love. “Perfect love casts out all fear.”
Today as the Father spoke to me about fear and love, I felt
he took me a step deeper in my own understanding. “A man who fears has not been
perfected in love”. Wow, I don’t want to
fear, I want to be perfected in His love.
His love is not a promise of perfection on this earth, or happiness, or
an easy life. His love offers us Eternal
life. The hope of a life outside this fallen world. Today, as I sense and felt
this fallen world around me, I was even more excited about the Eternal Life
that is offered to me. He alone is my
hope. There is no offering, no words, and
no ritual that can ever guarantee me life.
The Son paid the price for me, so that I can be found righteous and have
Eternal life. What a promise! This is
love. Love laid down his life for me. Now, there is no fear in death. I have a
promise of Eternal life.
As I recognize this hope, THIS LOVE, more and more, my
pr*yer is that it would be perfected in me, and that in the midst of hardship,
and warfare, and culture shock, that THIS Promise would prevail in me, through
me, and to those who still sit in darkness.
As I recognized the fear, called it out for what it was, and
rebuked it, I can tell you today, the heaviness has lifted from my home. The
same power that conquered the grave LIVES in me and has defeated death and the
grave.
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