November 19, 2010

• Discouraging Few Days

  The enemy had been discouraging me the past few days through a person that I had attempted to pray for and encourage in the subway.  Most of the time, my experiences encouraging people had been positive - there were times when some people were not receptive, but they never really got to me.  The man I wrote about yesterday told me to bug off in an intimate and personally way.  Not only did he know that Jesus gave me the word of knowledge, but he also knew that Jesus is my Messiah without me having told him anything.  I just told him that God gave me the word that he needed a job and that I should be praying for that.  This person spoke to me like I had been praying for him for a long time - "He can reach out all He wants.  It is annoying.  Tell Him to stop."  I cannot help but to sense that there is something about about the spirit speaking to me that gave me the impression that it knows me and what I had been doing all this time - I just have that feeling.  You can call it paranoia or whatever, but it does feel that way to me not only because it is the first I ever met this man, but also because he seems to know too much details about me, details that an ordinary person should not know.  Not only did the man look at me like he knew me when I had never seen him before, but he spoke to me like he knew I had been praying for people in the streets.  And, he told me to stop doing it.  To me, it was a show down between the spiritual forces.

  That got me really guessing only because the other man stopped the man and told me that the man was "crazy."  However, whatever doubts I had were erased yesterday - totally erased.  I was at Qdoba with my friends, church planters, and we were just chatting.  I have many divine appointments with the homeless or the less fortunate and they always have words for me.  And, yesterday was no different.  So, when dinner was over and we were about to leave, the man asked us for money.  Now, it is my policy to never give out cash, but the man asked for 75 cents.  What is unique about this is that I rarely carry change in my wallet and how he knew I had change in my wallet today is beyond me, but the fact that he knew how many quarters I had was enough for me to pull my wallet out to give him my change.  After I gave me my change, 80 cents worth, my friend asked him if he wanted prayer.  He said, "sure."

  We prayed for him.  And, I had a picture, but that's not important here.  What is important is that we connected to him and spoke about his struggles and helped him feel that we cared for him - we reached out and showed him the love of Jesus.  He then told us, "There are a lot of people out there who will not accept prayer, but I believe in Jesus and I accept prayer."

  That was when any iota of doubt whether the encounter with the man in the subway was demonic was erased.  Encouragement came back.  And, I felt like I could go out and pray again - that I was not a failure because I did not deliver that man from the demon, that I was not a failure because I walked away and let that man continue to suffer - the very thing that I sometimes slam my old church for, letting me suffer under demonic oppression for years after I had told them that a demon was attacking me.  I was beating myself up for letting that man suffer longer than he should have had to when I had the chance to deliver, the chance to free that man.  Perhaps, I was too hard on myself for missing the chance or perhaps, that was what the enemy wanted.  Whatever it was, the Spirit of God in this man we prayed for lifted it and in an instant it was gone.  Talk about spiritual warfare!

  Christenstein

  • 5:00 pm
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