I had planned to have part 2 of my last blog written and published within a week, but it’s been nearly 4 months to the day.

This writing warranted more care than I had anticipated & was something I knew I could not publish until each part of it rang true in my heart & spirit beyond a shadow of doubt. Though the text content happened 42 years ago, I can still see it in my minds’ eye like it was yesterday. 

 

Spiritual Warfare is not something that I have ever taken lightly. Though its realm is invisible most of the time, its presence can be felt.

In this unseen realm, there is good and there is evil; it is black, or it is white– 

no gray areas exit. It’s a place where the angels of God and the fallen angels and demons of Satan war for the souls of mankind. It is talked about throughout the entire Word of God.

 

Like war in the physical realm, where there is a hierarchical organization of units, from small squads to larger formations like brigades and divisions, there is the same structure in the spiritual realm.

There are ground forces, space and heavenly forces, even the sea and the waters are encompassed in this war. Sound crazy? Read your Bible– it’s all there.

 

Part 2…

It’s presence, even during the day, was unavoidable. The conscious state of our home was under siege and someone or something was being allowed to seep through the invisible curtain that separates the physical and spiritual worlds.

 

The nights were, by far, the worst, and so for the next 3 months I slept little and always with my Bible clutched tightly to my chest.

 

I was only 25, Garth 30, and for the last 3 years we’d been enjoying the transforming power of Christ in our lives. We both knew He was our ‘today, tomorrow and forever’ and had sensed a calling on our lives, but had no idea the affect it was making in the unseen world or why.

I had had bad dreams before, but that’s all they were– dreams. I can only describe what took place as a sphere existing between 2 parallel planes, a spiritual war zone that only I could see, but whose evil fury would soon break into the physical and be seen by more eyes than just my own.

 

I found myself awake between the hours of midnight and 3AM, but not awake in the flesh, I was awake in the spirit.

In my inner man, I knew God was with me and that being in this place was a window looking into the reality of what a believer faces every day, but cannot see. Though I knew where I was, I didn’t want to be there. It was foreboding and very difficult to stand against. Looking back, now I can see that God had deemed it time for me to put to use all He’d be teaching me in the body of Christ.

 

My Bible and I were inseparable. Prayer was now my first language and I understood that to survive this, I must choose to face it, but in God’s strength and not my own.

 

My husband lay sound asleep next to me when I was awakened in my spirit, and immediately sensed that outside the threshold of our bedroom was an entourage of darkness about to enter in. Sitting straight up in my bed, I watched as they filed in, one behind the other, and began to surround my bed. They looked harmless, like little children, and then I noticed as my eyes traveled from child to child, that one looked exactly like my five-year-old son. Instantly I knew what was happening, and with a loud voice, I spoke out the name of Jesus and commanded them to leave. At His name, the disguises fell to the floor, revealing small hideous creatures, who each turned and filed out of my room and back into the darkness from whence they came.

 

It was then that my body woke up. Throwing off my blankets, I ran into the boys’ room. They were both sleeping soundly and there was no evidence anywhere of what I had just seen. The next day, I called my Pastor.

 

Concern etched his facial expressions as I shared the midnight and early morning happenings taking place in my home. ‘First Baptist’ was his first pastoral post, and at forty years old, he admitted he hadn’t come across a spiritual manifestation like this before. So, he prayed– asked God for guidance, protection for my family and I, and I left with an assignment to prayerfully go through my entire home and remove anything with ties to the occult, known and unknown.

 

Because I had dabbled with this darkness in my younger years, I did know some of what to look for. Ouija boards and seances were something I had participated in early on, but I knew as a believer they were evil and I did not possess any known occult objects. So, I reached out to a trusted friend from our church, told her what was happening, and she agreed to come alongside me and journey through these happenings together. We knelt, we prayed, we worshiped. Hearts were laid bare, sins confessed, and the Holy Spirit invited to enter in. All darkness had to be flushed out, internally and externally, if this formidable presence were to leave my home.

 

There were no cell phones back then, no instant connection to the land of endless information. Our prayers for godly discernment, as we sorted through my belongings, was our one and only source, and this is what laid in the pile of things to discard; magazines and/or catalogues with questionable articles or scantily dressed people, vinyl records with lyrics leading to emptiness, letters and pictures of former high school relationships that belonged in my old life that had passed away, and not in my new life with Christ. And on the top of this pile lay a deck of playing cards, for I had been told by an older believer, that the origin of playing cards was linked to divination. I had no resources at that time to verify what I was told, I only knew that I was led to remove them. So after ‘the sorting’, my husband delivered all these items to the dumpster. Surely this spiritual house-cleaning would make a difference, and it did, just not in the direction I was expecting.

 

At midnight I woke to the sound of the doorbell ringing. I nudged Garth, and waking him I asked,

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” he replied.

And then it rang again.

“The doorbell. Can’t you hear it?”

“No.”

It was hard to believe that he couldn’t when I heard it so clearly. But regardless, someone was at our front door demanding our attention.

 

With his hand on the doorknob, we stood side by side. I didn’t feel fear, but had a sense that this wave of darkness upon our home wasn’t going to recede quite yet.

On the doormat outside, at the threshold of our apartment, lay the deck of playing cards that Garth had thrown into the dumpster just a few hours earlier. 

Without thought, he simply picked them up, and put them back into the garbage bin outside. We then prayed and went back to bed.

 

There was no escaping this spiritual battle. It had now manifested beyond what only I could hear and see– within limits. And what lay ahead could definitely be felt. Would I survive this?

 

Outside of my daily tasks as a young wife and mother, every spare second I had was filled with searching the Scriptures and prayer. I memorized Ephesians 

6:10-18 in a day, and cross-referenced those verses until my arsenal was full and anchored. My comrades in arms; Garth, our Pastor, and my trusted friend, never left my side in prayer, purpose, or cause.

 

Whether I felt like it or not, I knew I was as ready as I could be, for my armor was the armor of God and not my own, and in it I would be able to stand in the strength of His power and not cower against the wiles of the devil and his cohorts of darkness.

 

Every soul in our home was asleep, when the portal that divides the physical and spiritual arrived. But before it could land, God had awakened me. With Bible in hand, I ran as fast as I could into our boys’ room. Both were sleeping; Dusty on the top bunk, and three-year-old Mike on the bottom. I knew instantly that Dusty was safe, but my youngest was not. I slipped into the lower bed, put my arms tightly around my son, with my Bible covering his chest area, and then the portal opened, literally two-feet in front of me, revealing the focus and intent of its’ presence.

 

It was a black force covered by a literal mask, that I can only describe as pure evil. It hovered in mid-air and directed its’ strength, a vacuum-like power with the potency of a hurricane born in hell, at the little boy sandwiched between my chest and Bible.

 

I realized very quickly that my baby’s protection rested solely on the Word of God, and that this was definitely the ‘evil day’ talked about in the verses I had memorized.

With strength, not my own, I cried out the Name of Jesus, and the Bible shook within my grasp as a page was ripped from the binding and flew towards this wicked being…  and that was the last thing I remembered before waking up

 hours later, still holding my child.

 

There on the floor, 2 feet in front of me, my eyes locked on the page, torn but intact. It was the first page of the Book stating the content and version; 

 ‘The Holy Bible KJV.’

It was real, this did happen. And still wrapped in my arms was my sleeping 

3-year-old with this precious Book still covering his heart. He had slept soundly through the whole thing.

 

Though I knew this hellacious siege on our home was now over, the waves in its wake left an impression upon my soul that would never be forgotten. 

We were called to serve as missionaries in Rwanda, Africa six months later. Could that have been the reason for such a vicious and open attack from the under-world? I’m not so sure it was, at least not entirely. Or could the reason lie more upon God’s purpose and calling for my children? Hind sight says, ‘yes – BUT’

The LORD’S ways & thoughts are higher than ours & His love for His own literally reaches into eternity, & because of that He will allow in each individual life of His child, that which will bring the spiritual awareness needed to invite the sanctification that simply says, ‘Your will not mine. I lay down my life.’

 

In my future blogs, I will share, as God leads, more true stories and testimonies from my life, and in them I pray you will find encouragement and a solid sense that God is real, He does love you, and that His Son, Jesus Christ, died not only to deliver you from your sin and take you to heaven when you die, but to deliver you now while you live and give you a peace that no one or no-thing can ever steal or take away.

 

Love, Belinda

 

 

 

 

Trust in Me, with all your heart

When the fog of doubt

From Satan’s darts

Invade your mind & blur the way

Trust in Me.

 

Lean on Me, I’ll answer your whys

When you are confused

Weary and tried

I hear your cry

Lean on Me.

 

Acknowledge Me, I’ll direct the way

When the path seems to narrow

And your mind starts to sway

I am near

Acknowledge Me

 

by Belinda Rylands (1983)

                                                       ~Proverbs 3:5-6~