May 03 2008
Spiritual Attack?
Do you believe that satan tries to attack believers and churches? I do. This past week my wife and I went to an awesome marriage seminar. Then last night and today our students (including my teenage son) are in a Grace Life Supernatural Flight Conference. My wife and I went through the Grace Life adult conference a few months ago. The premise of the Grace message is discovering our true identity. For those of us who are followers of Jesus, our identity is in Jesus. Unfortunately, very few believers have discovered that truth. We try to find our identity in Sports, work, relationships, money, drugs, achievement, etc…. You get the picture.
Well, there were attacks on several couples last week to try to keep them from the retreat. In fact, for various reasons a few couples at the last minute were unable to attend. I learned a lot at the retreat and enjoyed getting to know the couples at our church. It was great to be alone with Cassandra too. But this week has been unbelievably stressful. More than I have had in the last few months.
Yesterday, probably topped it off. I was at a loss to what to do. I finally gave up and just prayed. I knew that satan was attacking and didn’t want my son to be exposed to the Grace Message. Some of our families were under stress too. We had two families from other churches that brought their teenagers to the conference and they shared how stressful it was bringing their teens.
Ken the conference leader is doing a great job. He is gifted at dealing with students. Our students are interacting and realizing their identity is in Christ. Last night I couldn’t go to sleep right away. Part of it had to do with looking up security systems for our home after some other events that occurred in our community. (I have a post about that for Monday) Cassandra got up this morning and said that she was unable to sleep. She got up at 3:00AM and felt an overwhelming need to pray over the home. She prayed for both of our children at their door. She went through every room praying. She also prayed for Ken our speaker. Then she went to sleep at 6:00 AM.
Ken said he was unable to sleep too. He was awakened at 3:00 AM and didn’t fall back asleep until–yes–6:00 AM. I know my atheist friends will say that is a coincidence. I think not. I have seen too many of these kind of experiences my entire life. God is up to something big in our family and at our church. Our pastor is doing something really life changing tomorrow in the service. Lives are being transformed by the Grace message that God has for all of us.
So my question is do you believe in Spiritual attacks?
15 responses so far
Yes, and in almost every case in my experience, it’s been immediately after someone has taken steps to become more dangerous to the devil. I’m guessing our enemy wants to stop believers before they do it (finish a study, go to a seminar, etc) and actually become more dangerous to him. They’ll be harder to defeat, then.
Bob Cleveland’s last blog post..Grandparents’ Pride. And Grandparents’ Fear.
Being subject to spiritual attack is part of the mystical reality of leading a spiritual life. The battleground is inevitably in the mind, will, and emotions of individuals attempting to commit themselves to Christ. The context is most often relationship oriented.
How do I deal with spiritual attacks? To sum up and completely colloquialize my priest’s advice “Get down low where the devil won’t go!” which means: Humble thyself…get humble…get down low. You will not find the opposition waiting for you there!
i am the person least likely to be sucked into some weird supernatural “i had a vision” or dream kind of thing. i know there is a supernatural reality but I dont find myself thinking much about a “screwtape” “this present darkness” kind of existence much.
that said…
about 20 years ago i was touring with a band and we were in florida. long story short, it was halloween night and i was staying in a host home with a family from a church. i did not know them. turns out one of the sons was a satanist. he got up and went to work about the time i got there. i just felt mildly creeped out and went to sleep. he had dark hair, a gotee (before they were popular) and a german shepherd.
a month later i was in tulsa and my parents came to visit. i was telling them about this weird family i stayed with on halloween night. without telling them anything else, my mom described the guy and his dog down to the letter. she dreamed about him that night and said God woke her up and told her I was in danger. She prayed for several hours until she felt a release. When she told me all that I got major goosebumps.
True story. So yeah, I believe.
davidbmc’s last blog post..FINALLY! The DC Talk Reunion
Without a shadow of a doubt I believe in spiritual attacks. I see them mainly just before or after God has done something magnificent in our midst. The Small Church Leadership Conference is an example. I told my wife the week before the conference that I was surprised we had not had spiritual attacks prior to the conference and so I was expecting a doozy either during the conference or after it. Satan waited until after the conference and hit us with both barrels. Not just me and my wife but our church as well. Thank God that He is getting us through this time of demonic activity.
Les
I just finished working our second night of “Secret Church” at my home church here in Bham and you better believe we’ve felt the spiritual warfare this week. Staff have felt it as we prepared and church members felt it this week too. BUT, we serve an awesome God and you could tell the two nights had been prayed over. Sometimes I wonder if God allows spiritual warfare to remind us to hit our knees in prayer.
Most definitely! Have experienced a good amount of it as of lately. Especially the last few days… Weird…..
Camey’s last blog post..Prayer Request List via Email…
Absolutely! Since we have been married (4 years now), we’ve been attacked multiple times. I always find that every time that we rededicate this family to God, we get attacked in major ways. But God is gracious and loving and sees us through every time.
Christine’s last blog post..Finding God in Life’s Storms
I am an agnostic rather than an atheist, but just so you are not disappointed, I’ll say it: It’s a coincidence.
Vinny’s last blog post..My Thoughts on “Expelled”
Vinny,
I am usually in your camp on this type of thing even though I’m a believer.
But you are saying that it was a coincidence that 1000 miles away on 10/31/1988 my mom was having a dream about a guy with long black hair and a black gotee wearing all black with a black german shepherd who wanted to do me harm while i was spending the night at the home of a guy with a black gotee wearing all black with a black german shepherd (remember, this was pre-gotee popularity)?
She had never had such a dream before and never has sense.
davidbmc’s last blog post..Baptist BS
oops!
since…not sense.
davidbmc’s last blog post..Baptist BS
David,
I’ll give you another example. My roommate from while I was working on my MA at UAB was my good friend Dr. Rob Jackson who is the pastor of a dynamic church, Central Baptist in Decatur, AL. One night I woke up in the middle of the night. I heard someone calling my name and all of a sudden it was like I was standing over myself. I heard screaming and I felt like I had chains on.
Then next morning I was talking to Rob and he had the same experience in the bedroom next to me. My dad who is an expert in the Occult thinks there may have been some Satanic activity in the apartment complex or even that apartment before we moved in. Rob was studying to be a Pharmacist and I was in Education. Now we are both in the ministry.
Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Kevin Bussey’s last blog post..Read at your own risk with a tissue!
Back when I was still a theist, I attended a retreat where a man claimed that God had once fixed his vacuum cleaner. He was unable to explain the exact nature of the mechanical problem, but he assured us that there was no other explanation for the fact the vacuum suddenly started working. I have since become an agnostic and I have never felt particularly troubled by the fact that I am unable to explain what happened to that man’s Electro-Lux.
I freely admit that I would be unable to provide a convincing explanation for the dream or feeling that someone’s mother had twenty years ago, but I nonetheless suspect that it was not a supernatural manifestation of a divine being.
Vinny’s last blog post..A Double Standard
I was watching Discovery Channel, and it was talking about scientific explanations of the Book of Genesis, and it was somewhat fascinating. It suggested that God (and perhaps spirits too, by implication) do not work by suspending nature, but rather manipulating it.
I am going out on a limb here, but supposing that is true of Satan and human nature as well, could we put the concept of spiritual attacks in a more secular terminology, and still have it make sense, without losing an awareness of what is truly going on spiritually, morally and theistically?
For example, might a spiritual attack manifest itself as an extreme instance of cognitive dissonance between Satanic messages programmed into our subconscious by the world, advertising, peer-pressure, etc. from an early age with the extremely good and spiritual path we are attempting to walk?
Even if that example I just made up falls a bit short, does the possibility I suggested earlier ring true with you, that understanding this phenomenon in secular terms in addition to theistic and spiritual terms may not only be possible, but also instructive?
Eep slight correction I meant to say the Book of Exodus, I don’t know how that slipped out of my typing fingers.
My wife and I have to differing opinions about spiritual attacks.
My school of thought is a bit like the Empire Strikes Back– — When there was a part of the Degobah Swamp which was strong in the Dark Side of the Force, Luke asked Yoda “What’s in there?” and Yoda replied “Only what you take with you.”
I feel that if there is a spirit, ie Satan, who would attach to you and try to disrupt your relationship with God, it’s better to confront that evil, get your own weakness out in the open, and deal with it/get past it. Because, like in Empire Strikes Back, that weakness or evil is already a part of you, and it is better to get it exposed and fixed sooner rather than later.
My wife feels, like the story of Jonah and the Whale, that if God is telling you to stay away from evil spirits, or an evil place or situation, He is giving you grace and maybe you shouldn’t be dealing with that particular problem just then. Maybe you have enough going on in your life and God is granting you mercy for now, and maybe you will deal with it later in an easier way.
She has more practical experience with this sort of thing and she is confident that she knows the difference between a situation when God is telling you to confront evil and put yourself in bad situations and Jonah and the Whale type situations, where God is calling you to a place and you can go there the easy way or the Whale way. Corinthians 1 talks about not keeping the company of sexually immoral peeps and drunkards and stuff so there is definitely scriptural backing towards a sort of isolationist approach to spiritual maintenance, but perhaps it can be taken too far if we do not recognize our own weaknesses and sins and feel that we can fix everything merely by living a sheltered existence.
p.s. sorry if this is a two-parter it’s just I have been thinking about this one for quite a while…