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.

Today, I sat with many non-believers.  Today, I had the opportunity to fight in the spirit realm the gloom of death and fear that hovers close over them too. Pr* with me for Mata Ji, Mr. I, Mr. M, Mr. N, Ms. C, Mrs. K, B, R, and A. They all need the Father.