Journal Revelations (Part IV)

The following post is the fourth and last excerpt from my journal when I went on my two-month outreach to Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan with my DTS team.  The date is included when it was written.

26/1/2011

Outreach has been…well, its been outreach. Easy in some ways, but hard in others. Easy in the sense of what we’ve been going. We’ve visited the girls in Hope Haven and spent time with them. We visited a place where there are elderly people, children, and “mental” patients. I say “mental,” because of how corrupt this country is, probably half of them are actually sane. We’ve gone to the ILC (International Learning Center) for conversation café from 3-8:00 p.m. Some have visited an orphanage. Others went and prayed for healing and encouragement over the Hope Haven staff. Yesterday, Lanae and Marissa went with Tammy to pray for the sick. Today we’re going treasure hunting. Basically, the things we’re doing aren’t that difficult or trying.

On the spiritual side, however, things have been hard. It seems as if the enemy is attacking the team in some of the most easy, simply ways. So easy, in fact, that they don’t even recognize it – most believers don’t, but it is the downfall of so may. Sickness is one of the attacks.

So many Christians are so comfortable with dealing with sickness – whether it be a cold, cough, sore throat, fever, flu, etc. To most, the mindset is “oh, this is so common. I’ll be well in a few days, and then I can get back to doing what needs to be done.” What so many don’t realize, and never realize, I believe, is that we arechildren of God – sickness should not be allowed to harbor in our bodies. Of course, we live in a fallen world, and sickness is par of it, but we “are not of the world, just as [Jesus is] not of the world.” (John 17.16) So having sickness in our bodies, and becoming sick shouldn’t even be a possibility.

I believe it is the desire of many Christians to pray for the healing of others and see major miracles happen. I don’t doubt that it’s in God’s will for all to be healed – but the basis for that to happen is determined by numerous factors. Of course there’s the obvious ones, like if the person being prayed for has enough faith, or if the person praying has enough faith. I think there’s more to it though.

As I mentioned before, everyone is born with a certain amount of faith (but that’s not to say it can’t be increased). And because we’re children of God, we should never be sick. I believe we all have enough faith to pray and believe for our own healing – but so many are willing to deal with it, that they don’t. I think God wants us to live a constant lifestyle of health and wholeness and to prove that what we believe is true, before He would allow us to see major miracles happen by the laying on of our hands. In a more simply put way, we need to pray for our own healing and live a life with no sickness before God will work though us to heal others. It could even go as far as when we conquer one sickness (ex. a cold), and no longer struggle with it, we have the authority to pray that over others and see them get healed.

So aside from that little rabbit trail, there is another way besides sickness that the enemy has been attacking our group with – disunity. Of course, as in every group, this group has a couple of odd people, the “strange” and “socially awkward” ones. For those who aren’t as focused on God as they should be, they get easily irritated with these people, and aren’t as loving towards them as they should be. But it isn’t just with those who are the odd-ones-out. It can be pretty easy to become irritated with anyone. Especially those who are quite opinionated and think things should be done a certain way. At any rate, it’s definitely an easy way to get attacked.

I, myself, have been under attack as well. There’s been the sickness, of course. But other things have happened as well. The first week we were in Baku, I was totally not myself. I was complaining a lot, getting extremely irritated with people, and even felt depression returning at times (and with that, going so far as to find myself restoring back to old thought patterns and excuses).

It was really hard to kick. I put my armour on every morning, and would rebuke the enemy, and thank God for my victory and freedom, but it still didn’t seems as though anything was changing. I know that I didn’t fight as much as I should have though. Things are better now though; and what God has been showing me has helped. A thought that I had that sparked me writing about being attacked though, was: ‘I’m on outreach, so of course I’m being attacked more than usual!’ But then I realized that whenever I’m in God’s perfect will, I’ll always be attacked. Which made me remember that I’m always in a battle – and it’s imperative to put on my armour every morning without fail.