Dark Spirits - A black hole trying to take your light

We decided to meet at a coffee shop.  Two strangers brought together by a flyer I posted around town.  A week prior, I had made a flyer inviting people who have questions about God to phone me.  It also invited those suffering from depression to seek me out.  I try things, and if they don’t work, I try other things.  Occasionally, by God’s grace, He elects to use me for some small task.  This was one of those days.

I met a guy who was down on his luck, both spiritually and worldly, and he had been in this hole for many, many years.  He had just moved to town from the coast, because his sister lived here.  He was previously married and had 2 children.  After the divorce he fell into drugs and homelessness.  He had no faith, his mother, an apparent believer, had died when he was younger.  His dad had raised him irreligiously.

Floating around in a drug induced fog, he suffered silently.  Invisible to the world around him.  From this world’s vantage point, he was insignificant.  He had no worldly standing and no influence.  Yet God saw him, and God watched him.  You see, God knew him and God loved him.  Small promptings, small lessons, small nudges … God worked silently until … a partial awakening.  Something prompted my friend, after a dozen years of street living, to travel to his sister and try to rebuild his life.

His sister lived in a trailer in town.  My friend now moved in to occupy the spare room.  His mind was a fuzzy mess, and he was suicidal.  I’m unsure how, but he found my flyer and phoned me.

We met and talked a lot.  And we worked on various practical aspects of life:  he found a decent job and started building his self esteem again.  His relationship with his sister became more mutualistic than charitable, as he now contributed to the expenses.  He started paying off a back log of child support and had re-established contact with his children again.  He had many questions and was eager for answers.  And he was beginning to sway to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  And that’s where things started to get weird.

You see, my friend was living in darkness.  And now he was moving into light.  Unbeknownst to me, this grabs darkness’ attention.  And a spiritual battle ensues.

We talked over coffee.  Many conversations dealt with evolutionary sciences.  That day, he queried me on big bang theory.  I talked at length about the subject matter.  Eventually, we discussed Stephen Hawking and his book, "A Brief History of Time".  I gently ravaged the big bang theory exposing its short comings, and the work by this famous physicist.  This contented my friend, and we adjourned our meeting.

After seeing me, he went to the public library.  It’s a small town and it was completely empty:  not including the librarian.  As my friend was walking down a well kept aisle, a book shot out at him from the book shelf, striking him and falling to the ground.  The library was empty, and you can see through the bookshelves, because they have an open inside.  My friend bent over and picked up the book, “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking.  What an odd thing.  I am still in amazement of this impossible happenstance that occurred to him.  Supernatural, spiritual forces were afoot.  He walked around and confirmed there was no one there!

This was only the beginning.  Eventually, I succeeded in having my friend begin evening Bible readings.  And the spiritual tempest persisted.  He told me someone would sit on the side of his bed at night.  He could feel it, yet, there was no one there.  He could feel something evil.  He thought he saw things in his mirror, briefly.  And a feeling of something watching him at night, would continue to bother him.  A presence was in his room at night, intermittently.

We persisted.  I explained what was happening, that the darkness wanted him back.  I instructed him to pray for it to leave.  We enjoyed fellowship.  He read his Bible.  I prayed for him.  He prayed for himself.  And eventually, it all subsided and the presence was gone.  He believed in Jesus and the dark force had left.

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