Truth Number Eight:

He Trains Our Hands for Battle

When we are dead to our flesh, we are better equipped to wage spiritual warfare. 

In 1997, two weeks after I received the revelation from God about why He allowed me to experience death so many times, I got extremely sick.  I found myself in the bathroom, standing in the dark with Abbey clinging to my leg.  I began to cry out to the Lord.  I said, “What on earth have I done?  I was on the mountain and I feel like I have fallen off a cliff! When did it happen?  How did it happen?  The Lord very clearly spoke to me and said, “You have taken Jericho.  I left giants in the land to teach my young men to make war.  Now face your giant and fight until you win” (Judges 3:1-2). I was not a happy camper, but I knew I had no choice.  God had lifted His hand and the same spirit of death that I had seen in my dreams was pursuing me again.

For six weeks, I cried out in prayer, standing on the Word of God.  I praised the Lord and I worshipped the Lord.  I barely had a voice, but I squeaked and cried day after day.  I would stay up all night long praying just knowing that with the dawn would come my victory only to find another day of battle.

The first week, I went to the Emergency Room at 2:00 a.m. with chest pains.  They couldn’t find anything wrong with me.  I went in days later and I had pneumonia.  Then before I could get over that I had the Asian flu and on and on it went.  I would sleep when I could and pray when I could not.  I would read my Bible and listen to the Word on tape.  During the day, I would put in worship tapes and just sing my heart out before the Lord.  I had to call friends over in the middle of the day and get David up in the middle of the night to speak the Word over me because I felt like I was going down and could not pick myself back up.

My sweet Abbey just played every day so well.  I know she has pondered all these things in her heart.  She knows what it is like to war, to pray through, to worship and to experience victory.  She has seen the hand of the enemy, and the mighty hand of God come and defeat the enemy over and over and over again.

Finally, the night before I was healed, a friend was praying for me.  The Lord opened her spiritual eyes and she saw the spirit of death.  But the Lord showed her that he was there by legal right and he was not budging yet.  About 2:00 a.m., the Lord awakened me and said, “Have you had enough?”  I was so glad to hear that.  I told Him, “YES!”  He told me what I had to do.  But what He said did not indicate that He was going to heal my problem.  He told me to do something that through obedience for the rest of my life would keep me free from the problem.  I asked Him why He would not just heal me.  His response was similar to what He told Paul when He said, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9).  He assured me that a complete healing would not benefit me as much.  He told me to contact a woman and to do whatever she said.  I had never met her or heard of her.  The next day I found out who she was through a friend and made an appointment to meet her.   She was a nutritionist and health educator. Her services were $125.00 (which I did not have) but I booked the appointment anyway, hung up the phone and said, “OK Lord, I need some money.”  Two hours later I received a phone call where my Emergency Room physician that I saw for my chest pain had decided not to charge me and was returning the check I had already sent for my bill.  The check was for $125.00.

After that appointment, my diet and my lifestyle changed drastically!  I lived a fasted lifestyle for the next seven years!  How ironic.  At the time I first wrote about this, I had just heard the message from Mike Bickle entitled, “Forerunners with a Holy Violent Love.”  I had no idea that what the Lord had me doing all that time was not only restoring my health but was also a strategic form of spiritual warfare.  The benefits of this obedience combined with an ongoing desire to know the Lord more kept me going for all those years.  Since then, I have seen some of the most incredible answers to prayer.

It was all in His master plan for me.  He is always doing something incredible and it usually takes me years to figure out just what He is doing.  Looking back, the picture always comes together - eventually.  That is about the same time span as when the Lord uses the word, "Soon...".  Many of you know exactly what I mean!  Isn't it always through our rear-view mirror that we see things most clearly?  It's a good reason to keep our mouth shut in the midst of what we're going through.

Selah.

Hidden in Christ, even when we do not see it, He is ever training our hands for battle so that we can defeat our enemies.  as we decrease, He increases (John 3:30).  As we humble ourselves, He lifts us up (James 4:10).  When He rises up in us, our enemies are scattered (Psalm 68:1) and we truly walk with His authority (Luke 10:19).  Never again have I battled that spirit since that time in 1998.  He put a sword in my hand and it was that season at the Gilgal of my life (Joshua 5:9) that He truly removed the reproach of the spirit of death.