7-18-2010

CRAZY ministry today!
We went to a small city, and as we were walking through the city, I kept seeing images of Ganesh, the half elephant, half human god. I just felt such a heaviness throughout the entire city. Walking through the village, I smelled incense burning everywhere. Incense is usually one of my favorite smells, but just knowing that it was a sacrifice made it burn my lungs, and made me sick.
Everytime I see an idol or anything resembling an idol, it hurts my spirit. Seeing these things brings a new meaning to feeling the heart of God.

I felt like our ministry was set up for just another nominal night of ministry because the majority of our audience was children, and the rest were already Christians from the area.BUT during ministry time, there was so much that happened: A mute child spoke his first word, Jesus, a blind woman saw, a deaf person was healed and... We cast demons out of a woman.

A woman brought her sister into the courtyard and said, "We need prayer for our sister."
Here, it's important to note that the one woman was christian, thus referring to 'our sister' as the body of christ's sister (which happened to be her own sister). Because of this, we thought that they had another sister that wasn't there, so we proceeded to ask what was wrong with her, not knowing that the woman she had brought was the one we needed to pray for.
We asked the one sister what she needed prayer for, and she said that they thought she had a demon because she would disappear in the middle of the night, and when they awoke in the morning, someone would be dead.
So we started to pray, and Selvi, the woman that was brought, started manifesting demons.
The girls of the team circled her and started praying, and the battle was on. I took a place on the outside of the women, since it's not ok for men to touch women, even for prayer, in this culture. As we started praying, Selvi started convulsing and flailing, so the girls had to start holding her so no one got hurt. As we prayed, the demons would shriek & yell & try to get away.

After about an hour of praying fervently, being tossed back and forth by the attempts of the possessed woman to escape, losing my voice, and being directed by the Spirit of God, God finally set His daughter free. I feel as if there was at least 3 different demons in this woman. After it came to Selvi's point of deliverance, we lead Selvi into the church, where she fell to her knees at the altar & began praying to the One True God, Jesus Christ. Slowly, Selvi's hands folded & she said "Jesus". That's when we knew it was over.

I'm just SO in awe of the dramatic change that we saw in Selvi. Even her eyes brightened up after she was delivered and accepted the Lord.Her bindi was gone as well. The oppression of Hinduism was off of her life.

After talking to the Pastor afterwards, He said that this woman had been possessed for 3 years. He also said that the Hindu community said that if Selvi was delivered by the Christians, that they would start going to church & listening about Jesus. Guess what? She was delivered by the Almighty!!!!

God is so good & I am 100% in awe of what He can do!!!!