A Battle Worth Fighting

Last week my team in Nicaragua split up again and my half went to the other side of Ometepe to a town called Balgüe. While I knew that Nicaragua was a developing nation, I don’t know if what that meant really registered until this past week. Pretty much every house has dirt floors and a tin roof, pigs stumble into soccer games, and…there’s no ATM. I know, right?

But Balgüe is also a place where everyone knows each other and the community pulls together for the common good. The men in the town have been working to dig a trench to stop the houses from flooding, women pass off their babies to people who are seated on the bus, and a few local kids even stopped to help us pick up trash by the river.

Still, there is a huge need for God in Balgüe. The few churches in the area struggle for members, an opposing “church” has sprung up spouting false teachings, and drug and alcohol problems run rampant. You can feel the difference in the atmosphere here; this is a place where the devil has some serious strongholds.

This was most blatantly exercised against one of our team members, Anita, and for good reason. A fearless and strong Christian with a wealth of biblical knowledge and musical talent, who also happens to be nearly fluent in Spanish and has a knack for connecting with the locals, Anita has a huge target on her back. Already she has been struck with a parasite that landed her in the hospital for three days. That was nothing compared to the scare we had on Wednesday night.

We all awoke around 1:00am to the sound of her coughing and gasping for air. A quick touch to her forehead was enough to determine she had a screamingly high fever. A few moments later her extremities started going numb. Soon after, she could no longer move her hands.

What followed was nearly 6 hours of constant prayer, massaging of her limbs, and frantic calls trying to get her medical attention. Being in an area as secluded as we were, with no vehicle available for transportation and no doctor nearby, the best we could do was wait until the public buses began to run again at 5:30am.

When we figured that out, it was only 2:30am and the time until the buses began seemed to stretch out into infinity before us. As I looked around, I could tell none of us knew how she (or we) was going to make it till then. The only thing left to do was pray.

And that is exactly when something shifted. The fear and doubt in the room lifted. No longer was this a time of darkness, but a time of light. Laughter reemerged slowly at first, and then flooded the room. Even Anita was smiling and laughing again. More miraculously, she started regaining feeling in her limbs. Where before she needed help to even sit up, now she was walking on her own.

By the time she was whisked off to the doctor, a sense of security had replaced the fear and doubt of hours before. We all knew Anita still had a long way to go, but we were also certain that God was going with her.

As it stands, Anita is back to her lively self, threatening forces of evil everywhere. When people are living as fully for God as she is, and are making the kind of difference she is, they make the devil stand up and take notice of them. But that only means they are doing something right. Anita herself said that her experience was encouraging; a sign she was headed somewhere the devil didn’t want her, which is exactly where she is needed.

My hope is that we all learn to live like Anita, making our presence known and feared by the enemy of God. For if “whoever is not against [us] is for [us],” then we should seek to make certain that Satan is indeed against us (Luke 9:50 NIV). More, we should not fear opposition, because “if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31 ESV).

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37-39 NIV).

The Lord does not promise his children easy lives; in fact, he promises trouble for those who follow Him (see 1 Peter 12-19, John 16:33, 2 Timothy 3:12, John 15:18, and a whole lot more if you don’t believe me).  But if I’ve learned anything from Anita it’s that He meant business when he said he’d never leave us. Even in a dimly-lit room in a secluded town in Nicaragua, God came to the rescue, bringing with him joy and peace not possible by human standards.

As I see it, this world is a battleground. Good versus evil, light versus dark, heaven versus hell; whatever you want to call it, the sides are clear. You can either be with God, or you can be against Him. God’s side promises hardship here and now, but the other side promises it forever. I would rather walk through darkness with the Lord as my lamp now than spend the rest of eternity in darkness, for this is a war we already know the outcome of:

No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever (Revelation 22:3-5 ESV).