My hubby and I just watched War
Room. (Yes I would endorse it fully. 5 stars all the way. Please watch it!)
It was inspiring and encouraging
for us for two reasons.
1. We
have already learned some of the principles shared
2. It
inspired us to fight in prayer more, and to not give up
Probably the most inspiring scene
in the movie for me was, when Elizabeth finds
out that her husband is seeing another woman, and in tears, Elizabeth surrenders everything to God and
then with boldness walks through her house and commands the enemy in “Jesus
Christ” name to get out!
The verse Elizabeth read in that scene was James 4:7
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from
you.”
When we are faced with problems,
weather they are relationships within marriage or family, extended family, or
boyfriend girlfriend etc… we usually see the other person as the enemy and we know we are right and they are wrong and
we want to fight them and fix the problem. But we forget they are not the
enemy. Satan is!
As Ms. Clare told Elizabeth, (in
my own words) we need to submit to God, get self off the throne, repent if
we’ve messed up, get self totally out of the way, do our fighting in prayer,
and let God do our fixing/fighting for us.
(Does it ever occur to us that
the Lord brings people into our lives for a reason? That maybe we were meant to
help one another in prayer? Not fight or walk away from them?)
When Mr. J and I were going
together before we were even engaged, Mr. J lived with a headache for 2 ½
years! Doctors didn’t know what the matter was, they would only give pain meds.
He sought help from many different medical people, and none had any answers for
him. He had a chronic headache and he had to live with it, period. But God
wasn’t finished with him.
One day we were sitting on the
couch in the basement of our friend’s home, when Mr. J turned to me and with
tears asked, “are you sure you want to marry a sick man?” My response was,
“yes,” because God had brought us together, so why would I walk away from him
when he needed someone to go through all this with him? I knew it might not be
easy, I even worried that I may be a young widow, but I knew God had put us
together and I was going to trust Him to see us through this. Shortly after that, Mr. J sought the elders
of the church to pray for him. They did what is written in James 5:14 prayed
for him and anointed him with oil. Soon after this we were led to a spiritual
counselor who began to teach us spiritual warfare like in the War Room movie.
It took several sessions with this counselor before we had the breakthrough.
With tears streaming down his face, Mr. J renounced the areas in his life where
Satan had ground, and commanded them (the oppressing spirits) in Jesus Christ name
to get out, and when he did this, the headache lifted for the first time in 2 ½
years!! *
Thank you Jesus! Hallelujah!
So you can imagine my excitement
over the scene in the movie. The tools they are giving people; showing them how
they can have freedom in their own lives and how to spiritually fight!
The movie has also inspired me to
pray harder… or should I say, create a battle plan for the areas I feel led to
pray in. It’s so easy to just give up on things, especially people we feel a
need to pray for. We can’t see God working so we give up praying. But we can’t
see what God sees; we can’t see what is happening under the surface.
I do not have a War Room closet,
our house is too small for that, but I do have a prayer journal in which I have
names and prayer requests and areas in our home that need prayer. I also feel a
burden to intercede on others behalf’s and I think the movie touched on that
too.
There are some people who I pray
for that I would love to shack some sense into, and yet that is not what we are
to do, we are only to pray for them, and let God to the shaking. I was
challenged by the movie to pray for their walk with God, not so much the
`problem’ they have or are causing. Because if they’re walk with God is right,
the Holy Spirit will do the convicting and they will get their problems
straightened out.
So here are a few things I pray
for individually.
-That they
would know Christ as their personal saviour.
-That their relationship with God
would grow.
-That they
would submit to God and take self off the throne
-That the
Lord would teach them how to resist the devil
-That they
would have a hunger for God’s Word.
-That their
eyes would be open to the truth.
-That they would
be free from bondage from the enemy in Jesus Christ name
-That they
would walk in the Spirit and put on the Fruits of the Spirit in their lives.
No, I do not have it all
together! Some days I forget to pray. But I hope and pray that as I share
things, and am open about what the Lord has led us through or taught us, that
it will help someone who reads this.
*It is important to note that not all sickness is cause of
spiritual oppression. Like Job some can be for testing or to build our faith.
We must always examine ourselves and ask for the Lord to show us.
S.L. Kliever
