Halloween night. We don costumes, go trick-or-treating and line up at haunted houses. We temporarily buy into a belief of spirits for the sake of celebration, when in truth, these spirits we make light of have always existed and they’ve always been at war. Fighting for a claim on the souls in this world.
World Racer, Lydia Hart, who launched in January on E squad, first awoke to this reality while serving abroad.
“I know a lot of people in the United States question the power or even the reality of demons and the spiritual realm, “but I’ve seen it,” explains, Hart.
While counseling a young girl in Africa named Purity things take a turn for the unexpected. Hart and a teammate begin to pray as usual, but after they say Jesus’ name “Purity comes off the chair, and onto the floor, thrashing.” After a moment the young girl straightens up and a different voice emanates from within “I’m not coming out. I wont come out. You’re wasting your time… If I go back to hell, I’ll come back when she [Purity] is sleeping.”
The girls from Hart’s team didn’t know what to do; they didn’t come as experts on spiritual warfare or casting out demons, but they know what they were experiencing was real.
They continue to pray for Purity and after a while they begin to see “shadows on the wall…demons fleeing in the name of Jesus.” These are the real spirits to acknowledge. No night of fun, no white sheets with painted ghost faces hanging as decoration, no children dressed as super heroes – this is the real battlefield of good versus evil fought by real soldiers like Hart.
What’s left then is to embrace the reality of the war. Despite upbringing, church history, or theological background, we are brought to this battlefield together as a collective body of believers. We are all equipped for this battle that rages around us everyday. People like Hart’s squadmate, Bethany Stanbrough, understands that certainty now. Based on her background, Stanbrough didn’t come on the race believing in the full power of the spiritual realm until she experienced the reality of it. “Healings and demons and raising people from the dead, weren’t things I was ever taught, and they certainly weren’t things I’d ever seen.” But after three months in countries notorious for spiritual warfare Stanbrough says “now I can tell you that I have seen them with my own two eyes.”
Acknowledgment is the first step to victory.
Once we have awoken to the war, can we really go back to believing in spirits for the sake of decoration? The warfare Hart and Stanbrough experienced is brutal and unrelenting, and we have a responsibility to take a side. So at the end of the night, when the costumes come off and the decorations come down, there is a decision to be made, a side to be chosen, and a battle to be won. How will you fight?