Living in a Horror Flick

For those of you who don't believe in the supernatural, don't even continue reading. You live a blissfully ignorant life and will probably just think I'm crazy. For those of you who do, I have just one question. Have you ever had a supernatural experience?

When I ask this question, I typically get a story about an experience with God or His angels from people who believe in such things. What about a demonic supernatural experience? I find it odd that most people never experience this. I, unfortunately, have had a lot of experience with evil. Maybe it's because I am working in the church and am under more direct attack than the average joe? Yet that sounds and feels rather egotistical. Who knows why I'm "lucky" enough to be chosen.

Throughout the years, Satan has always targeted me in my dreams. Most of the time it's just a week of continual dreams pushing me on an issue I'm weak in, erroding my self-confidence or my sense of security. People have asked whether these dreams could just be my subconcious or from watching a scary movie the night before. Somehow, I just knew that it wasn't quite that simple. They were very attacking in nature and always involved topics that were not on my mind or subconcious. That was the horror of them. They would pull things out of the blue and hound me with them for an entire week, leaving me an emotional basketcase.

Since I started working at my church in August, Satan has stepped things up. At first my dreams only started getting more intense and frequent. Then around November, things changed. I started having horrifying dreams seeing demon faces and being attacked my demonic beings. Pure terror is the only way I can describe my month under attack. After only a week of this treatment, I was in a constant state of terror. I felt like demons were dogging my footsteps. It is very hard to describe, but every moment of every day I felt horror and terror about what I had seen and dread for the next night's demonic installment. It was downright debilitating. I know that God is stronger and that He will always win, but it is really hard to see Him when you're rivated by the horror all around you.

The most terrifying part was not the dreams, but the deep realization that my dreams were real. Christians know that the demonic realms exist in theory. In theory, I knew that Satan messed with me in my dreams. These dreams made me realize deep down that it is not just theory, that I am really at war against principalities of darkness. It's not just a motivational statement in the Bible, it's really true! That awareness is where most of my horror came from. It's like waking up one day to find out you've been deceived by your fairytale, inside-the-Matrix life and in all reality you are living in the middle of a horror film.

After having several people pray for freedom from my dreams and fears (they eventually got so bad that my own prayers were doing nothing), I had one final dream where I fought Satan. I have since been dream free for about two months. That's not the end of the story. Since that time, two other people (that I know of) on the church staff have started being attacked in their dreams. Each one is attacked at their weakest point. One of them is a counselor and has taken classes on spiritual warfare. In one of her classes, she was told that when demonic groups meet they start late at night and end around 2:30-3:00 a.m. At the end of their meetings they pray and send out demons to Christians. I have no idea how much stock to actually put in that, but I did find it interesting that all of us tend to wake up with these dreams about 2:30-3:00 every night. In fact, the last two nights I have woken up filled with anxiety right at 2:30. I spent last night praying for anyone at our church that might be being attacked. I know of several demonic cults in the area and one that has had conflict with our church. It almost makes me wonder if some group has our number. That is fanciful thinking, but what is not fanciful thinking is that Satan does has our number, is attacking us, and will ultimately lose.

Out of my entire internship, I think this experience has been the most helpful. It has given me a realistic idea of what a job in the ministry will entail. I wasn't expecting to lose my rose-colored glasses quite like this. I must admit that I am still gripped by fear that those dreams will come back. After a particularly productive day at church, I still go home dreading Satan's revenge. On Monday, I will be having a job interview with a small church plant. My career path is based on working in the church. This is not going to go away. I somehow must learn not to live in dread or fear and let Satan win.

I wonder what would happen if we Americans stopped living life blissfully ignorant of the supernatural around us? In most other countries, the supernatural is revered and a part of daily life. We Americans have put on blinders to anything outside of the scientific realm. I wonder what we would experience or discover if we looked the supernatural side of life in the face? However, do I want to go back to living with those blinders? Right now, desperately.