The Lord will teach my hands to war. He says so in his Holy Book. Yet sometimes I waver. Sometimes the battle hits in the home and I start to question or wonder what I am doing wrong. Such a battle happened recently. My daughter repented and severed herself from a spirit of fear that had blocked her from God for months. We are also in intercession together for multiple people and our country. With the spiritual flood that came back to her, and the approach of the high holy days, and the heated battle that picked up for one friend in particular, we came under intense dream warfare for days on end. So we prayed it out. We listened to my favorite dream warfare podcast by Ivory Hopkins (listed here). We warred.
Then she began seeing evil spirits in the house later the same day. We prayed again. And again. These spirits were doing nothing but just standing there and smiling and instilling fear. I got angry and upset that my “Holiest of Holies” sanctuary was defiled by these things. I instructed her to focus on God and that those terrible spirits were surrounded by warring angels just waiting for them to make one move. She asked how they could be there right after we prayed so much. And I had to honestly answer that I didn’t know.
That night I dreamt a confusing dream where a storm in the far background let loose rain upon the earth. Right outside the window I noticed it was only raining on a small colorful circle in my backyard. A tiny rain cloud just like the one in the distance was raining on it. And I thought how odd this was. Then a low layer of lighter colored clouds came from the distance at a rapid rate and covered all the ground. They were impossibly quick and much lighter and smaller than the far storm. Though they rained, it was more of a drizzle. And though they shrouded the ground, they were only a foot or two high. A blue flash came and then I saw a figure like God walking around in the low clouds: much like a Gary Larson rendition of God from the Far Sides comics. I began shouting, crying out to this God that was so near and I was distraught to be completely ignored. He just milled around and never acknowledged my voice.
That morning I got a confirmation of the dream when @burgan76 on Instagram posted an image that looked almost exactly like my dream. The high and mighty dark clouds were formed just like it in the distance. A thin line of lighter clouds just below. I couldn’t have drawn it any more exact. Still, by the afternoon I felt heavier and heavier, upset to the point of tears as I felt the horrible emotions of that dream and how well they fit the spiritual battle in my home the day before. It was hard not to relate to being stuck in a dark home, walled from God and crying desperately…yet not getting an answer. I knew God would not send a dream to fill me with anxiety, but I knew the dream was not from the enemy. So I called a friend.
She immediately called out the false God and said the colorful patch was my daughter, fed by the rains. Then she began saying exactly what I had told my daughter that day before. It was time to shift our eyes off this false god and on the true one. She later said the small cloud was like the small cloud in the story of Elijah that brought the rains that ended the drought. A flood is coming.
The heaviness still wouldn’t leave so I retreated to my room and prayed in tongues. Praise God, He began filling me within minutes. The large storm was Him: high and mighty, watering the land with Living Water in unmatched power, directly feeding my daughter. I had built my house that separated me from His elements through almost 40 years of living apart from Him. But all I had to do was walk out. So I prayed for the spiritual walls and windows between me and Him to be destroyed. Then He revealed that the smaller false god was all smoke and mirrors. It could not match God. Yet it moved almost instantly. I was hit by the common phrase used in prayer “there’s no distance in the spirit”. It never occurred to me before that this is how the enemy can operate too.
As I’m explaining to my daughter after praying, I was drawn to my window and then the reflection it mirrored in a glass frame in my room. I was spiritually hit again. Smoke and mirrors. The silent god. The spirits in the home that just appeared in one place.
I said, “If there was something on that mountain out there, and that reflection traveled through the window and you saw it on the picture frame here, would it mean that thing is in the house?”
“No,” she replied, her eyes filling with understanding.
“And it the same way with those spirits, they aren’t really there,” I said, feeling my own flood of relief that my Holiest of Holies had not really been defiled in those tense moments after powerful spiritual warfare. I continued to encourage her to shift her focus to God and not even give those images the time of day. Give them attitude and a sharp dismissal and know that they are powerless reflections. We were both greatly encouraged.
Later that evening, I began pondering on this reflection of the spiritual realm and wondered if they had mirrors in certain places like we do. I got the final spiritual hit and began laughing. What surrounds us and is shiny? The ARMOR of the ANGELS. These imps are literally appearing so close because they are using the reflection of the angels standing guard around us. I told my daughter to ask the angels around her to move and disrupt the reflection next time. And watch what happens. Now we both giggle as we imagine the enemy making faces like a kid in the wavy glass of a carnival mirror, trying to appear much bigger and scarier than they are. And we imagine the look of God’s mighty warriors glancing down, hands resting on the hilt of their sword and a stern face just begging for that powerless entity to try anything.
Take your eyes off the evil and the false powerless gods. Focus on Jesus and He will show you His power.
