Experiencing Evil: an Analogy

Working for God is an interesting thing. Through one may think they have specialty, one finds that when you offer your service to God, He uses you in extraordinary ways that can be totally unexpected.

As of late, we have been going through an intense kind of spiritual development and growth at Project Exodus. The root of this growth came from the discovery about two months ago that many of our leaders were going through spiritual attacks related to their involvement in our ministry. Now the goal of this writing is not to inform you as to what spiritual warfare is or even the way in which it has been affecting our organization. If you want to learn more about spiritual warfare, there are some great books out there, the most instructive of which of course is the Bible. Instead, the point of this writing is simply to observe a commonality in the type of warfare we have been witnessing, mainly the way in which Satan works.

After an initial case, the executive staff at Project Exodus began screening our leaders for areas of spiritual conflict in their lives (spiritual conflict simply being an area where the individual had experienced some sort of injustice or evil and had not yet given it to Christ for healing). While I do not care to go into the details of what we discovered, what I do want to discuss is, as I mentioned, the commonalities of the cases resulting in clear evidence of the way in which Satan operates within the lives of humans.

Distilling all the stories of the last two months to their essence, we discovered that many of our leaders had indeed gone through some sort of experience with injustice and evil and, due to the fact that they had never received true healing for these wounds, were now experiencing attacks that targeted their past wounds. In essence, experiences that had taken places years prior were now points of weakness as they sought to fight injustice directly. Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit we have been overcoming these wounds but have also learned something critical to the work we do: ie how Satan's attacks work.

The best way to illustrate the method of which I am speaking is simply to use an analogy of something we are all familiar with: a dagger. Simply put, when someone experiences an injustice or evil (any encounter with Satan and his means), they suffer from a wound much like a human who is struck with a dagger suffers from a wound. Now in a traditional sense, we recognize that when someone suffers from a wound, they need to undergo healing. Sometimes the wound is superficial, and can quickly be recovered from. Other times, such as in the case of serious stabbings and attacks, the wound can result in serious mutilation that can take often months or even years to heal from. For the sake of our analogy, we can assume that minor experiences of evil may result in what we may call a "scratch" where as serious encounters with evil (ie a victim of human trafficking or of rape) result in full on gashes and deep wounds.

Now, for the most part, these flesh wounds can often be healed. Sometimes it just requires a band-aid, other times for more severe wounds, intensive surgery must first take place. Indeed there may be scarring, but for the most part we are able to fully close these wounds. Once a wound is closed, the victim then begins of process of moving past the wounds, remembering the scars but not letting these scars define them. Normalcy then pursues and the individual begins living life as well as they can. And thus ends the way that we traditionally understand wounds and victims.

The truth of the matter however is that such a story only covers half of what is actually going on with the victim. Indeed everything above is quite true and accurate, but is only half of the picture. From our experiences, studies, and revelations from the Holy Spirit, we have discovered while the above is true, there is an additional dimension to the wound that, up until this point, we ourselves and in fact many others, have all together overlooked. In our case, we found that though many of the individuals within our organization had experienced some kind of evil and had gone through the traditional "healing" process, they were still being affected by their old wounds, to the point that these wounds were seemingly as fresh as they were the moment they received them. Thankfully after much prayer and examination, we discovered an answer.

As it turns out, when an individual has an experience with evil, they are not simply receiving just a physical type wound but also a type of infection or poison as a result of contact with cette evil. Using the analogy of the dagger, not only is the dagger capable of leaving a wound, but it also has a poison on the blade that upon contact with the individual, immediately infects them. Now whereas we traditionally seek to heal the physical wound we see, we sometimes altogether are not even aware that an infection or poison may have taken place as well. Thus the poison is ignored, and left to freely dwell within the occupant. And though we do not detect this poison or infection, if left unhealed, it will slowly work its way into other facets of the occupants life, poisoning those facets and causing pain and suffering all the time.

I hope by this point I am not being too vague in my description. If however I am, let me attempt to summarize. When someone has an encounter with evil, they receive both a metaphorical physical wound and an infection or poison. Traditionally we are trained to deal with the physical wound but often over look the infection or poison and thus allow it to remain. However, if left unhealed, this poison finds its way into different facets of the occupant's life and poisons them as well, causing pain and suffering. To give an example: a girl suffers from abandonment early in life and thus seeks out destructive relationships later on.

So why mention all of this? Simple...because there is a cure: CHRIST! At the end of the day, while we as humans can do as much counseling and advising as possible to reduce the physical wounds, the only way in which the poison or infection can be healed is through the blood of Christ! And thus we realize the total picture! There are two sides to every scenario: a worldly side and a spiritual side. Due to our lack of faith, we (humans I mean) tend to deal with everything mainly from a worldly point of view, regardless of our religious affiliation. Christian or not, we have more reliance on the way of the world than we do of the Way of God. Thus while we may achieve notable progress on our own (I truly believe that counseling is a gift God has given us to deal with these issues), if we continue to ignore the true dynamics of this world, we will continue to overlook spiritual dynamics of every wound and thus never truly receive healing. It is not until we give these things over to Christ and allow HIM to touch these issues that one will ever receive true healing. So, at the end of the day, we learn the same lesson we always learn: that it is all about Christ. Christ alone is enough. Victory is only with Him.