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War in Order part 3

WAR IN ORDER PART 3
After 9 years as a youth and associate pastor, I had a bad snow-skiing accident that compound fractured my left lower leg bones. I tried to stay in the ministry but now I had a 3 year old son. The 55 kids had just disappeared from the youth group as quick as they had showed up. Physically I was bedfast and wheelchair bound.

I would like to say I was on a black diamond run (and maybe feel better about the accident) but the truth is, I was on the bunny slope in my first ski lesson! It was due to a ski that was too tight that didn’t pop off when I fell. I twisted the bottom of my leg off inside the boot. Two and a half months and 9 surgeries and surgical procedures later, I found myself sick, broken and out of the ministry. I was incapacitated and sick from all the chemicals. So much for what I had learned in warfare. Now it seemed as if what I knew wasn’t helping my current situation.

THINGS WENT FROM BAD TO WORSE!
During that same period of time my parents divorced. I was ten years old in my heart again. All I could do was cry…for two years! We also had rented out our duplex and had bought a house. Three hours after we closed, a Texas tornado landed in the back yard and blew the back end of the house off and messed up the house. We had to move into a motel.

I BEGAN TO HAVE TERRIBLE PANIC ATTACKS
They were so bad that I got to where I couldn’t bear to go out of the house. Something would trigger them. I never knew what it was. I would eat something and then have one so I virtually quit eating anything that didn’t feel safe. If I went out in public, something would trigger one and I would have to be taken home. It was a terrible misery. I was not sleeping. I couldn’t eat.

THEN I REMEMBERED WARFARE
I remember laying in the floor crying out to God to help me. Then it occurred to me that maybe an evil spirit might still be engaging me and taking advantage of my physical state. I bound all the strongmen and I said, “I break every satanic assignment over my life, in Jesus name!” I literally felt something leave my presence. I heard the Lord speak in my heart. He told me that He had also adjusted me in my chemical system. I never had another panic attack to this day!

I WISH I COULD SAY I WAS COMPLETELY FIXED!!!
The truth is, even though the panic attacks stopped, terrible headaches set in. I was with my head between my knees moaning day and night. I went to the doctors and had all kinds of scans. No one could find what was causing it. I was chemically unable to take pain medicine, so the misery was great. I took Tylenol but little to gain from it.

I was now two years out of the ministry (although I was in a church trying to teach and lead prayer but not on staff). I would help this church, then go home and lay on the couch for the rest of the week.

I FINALLY ENDED UP IN A HOLISTIC CLINIC IN NEVADA
I found out I had developed allergies to over 150 fruits, nuts, vegetables, seeds and meats. I took 5 shots a day to be able to eat, yet the massive headaches persisted.
IT WAS TIME TO MOVE BY FAITH
Not that I didn’t think I had faith. I was warring the way I knew how at the time and reading my Bible and praying while using what knowledge I had to try and do ministry with the little strength I had, but it was now over 3 years into this trial.

I TOOK A LITTLE CHURCH PASTORATE BY FAITH
I was still sick when I took a little church and became the senior pastor. I was appointed to the church by a district board. It was about to be closed for the third and final time. There were 12 people there and half of them left when they got a woman as a pastor.

I KNEW THE ONLY WAY I COULD DO THIS WAS TO PRAY AND WAR
I rallied a couple of women who didn’t work during the day and started praying with them every morning. It took determination to pull myself out of bed and try to do anything. We would bind those spirits every day asking God to heal the town we were in and save the lost.

THE HARDER WE PRAYED AND WARRED, THE MORE THINGS STIRRED UP IN THE CHURCH
Funny enough, the trouble for our warfare came from inside the church, not from the outside. Church relational issues became as troublesome as the sickness I dealt with on a daily basis. It was distracting, but yet, the church began to grow.

A MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH
It may not seem like much, but when I would get in the pulpit to preach, I would be without pain! The only time I had full relief. I thought to myself, “If this can happen while I preach, why shouldn’t I be healed all the way?” It was over a year into the pastorate when I began to teach on the “blood covenant”. That is about all the things that the blood of Jesus purchased for us. I started it as a 6 week series, but it turned into months. I laid in bed and studied and then preached it on Sundays. The following January we had prayer and fasting. I couldn’t fast, but I led the church to seek the Lord. In February we started revival services with an evangelist.

THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT BREAKS OUT
The power of God began to move among us. There were healing miracles, demons were cast out. The people were falling out under the power of God (have you ever seen it? It is real!) They were laughing, crying, being delivered and healed. I watched it week after week. I had been prayed for dozens of times. Others were being healed, but I left in the same pain night after night. Yet something was changing in me. I was beginning to believe that the blood Jesus shed was enough to buy the ability for my body to be healed.

I BEGAN TO THANK JESUS FOR HEALING ME
I was still sick. I wasn’t mad that I wasn’t healed, I believed the healing was done over two thousand years ago.

One night at our church service (it went on 16 weeks) about 8 weeks or so into the revival, I heard Jesus speak in my heart.

He said, “Lisa, tonight I have healed you.” I said, “I know Lord, You healed me two thousand years ago.”

About that time the evangelist came up to me and told me that he believed the Lord wanted to heal me and he wanted to pray for me again. I told him that I was healed two thousand years ago! He prayed for me and nothing changed.

I went home that night and was sicker than I had been in a long while. I was up almost all night. I finally fell into a fitful sleep in the wee hours of the morning. When I woke up midmorning, I was completely healed!!! I have never had the pain or allergies or anything related again. That has been almost 20 years ago!!!

I HOPE YOU WILL CONTINUE WITH ME FOR MORE LATER OF WAR IN ORDER

Blessings,
lisa

© Copyright Lisa Swayze 2017

War in Order part 1

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War in Order (part 2)

Welcome to War in Order (Part 2).

This is a record of my journey to understand how to war according to God’s Word. My goal is to give you what has taken me nearly 40 years to learn.

AS A YOUTH PASTOR EARLY IN MY MINISTRY

I had just learned about binding and loosing. As I said in part one, I had a dream that helped me to know what to do for my dad. Now I was sure binding and loosing was a missing part of my prayer life.

I began to bind and loose every day over my youth group and the little church where I worked. We saw so many supernatural things happen as a result.

THEN ONE NIGHT!!!

55 Satanist and Satanist want-to-be kids came walking into my youth group. I had about 40 kids in my youth group at the time when these lost souls descended upon us like dark clouds. They were dressed in Goth from head to foot. The leaders were two brothers who were belligerent and commanding. They were followed by young teenage girls who mimicked their dark attitudes. They were mockers, immoral and irreverent. The parents of church kids wanted these lovers of evil gone. I didn’t want to be perpetually cussed as I tried to preach, but I also didn’t want to take from these demon inspired kids the ability to have a life change. The fight was on for 9 months.

I WAS FORCED TO REINFORCE

I had 22 workers at the time. I divided them into two groups and put one group praying in another location and one group acting as bouncers. Week after week these kids manifest demon spirits. One kid slithered off the front seats curling and hissing like a snake. I found out later that they were going to a remote place before our services and sacrificing animals to bring demon power into the youth group. It showed. Drug deals, fighting, and disruption happened in the corners and in the open. The police began watching from across the street of the church. My pastor was not sure what to think of it all. I would go to youth pastors meetings and try to ask what to do if 55 Satanist infiltrate your youth group? Other youth pastors would look at me like I had lost my last brain cell!

BEFORE I KNEW HOW STRATEGIC THEY WERE…

I had planned a retreat at a lake camp. Quite a few of this new group signed up to go. I didn’t know they had fasted and prayed to their god for me to get sick at the retreat. I got deathly ill at the retreat and had to leave. At the time I didn’t understand what I was up against. Neither did my special speaker who from that time forward for three years would have his jaws lock in place when he would get in the pulpit to preach and he had to step down from ministry for that season until he figured out what to do.

DOES THE DEVIL HAVE MORE POWER THAN GOD?

No! A definite NO! The problem is that we haven’t always known what to do with the authority we have been given. For instance. I got so tired of this group of kids, cussing me as I tried to preach. We would take them out one at a time, but there would always be one to fill that place and finish what the other had started.

ONE NIGHT IT OCCURRED TO ME

What if I bound the devil to silence? So I did that! I said, “Satan, I bind you to silence while I preach!” All of a sudden, the cursers couldn’t speak. It was so bad, they picked up any paper they could find and wrote four letter words at me holding them up…which I promptly ignored!!! They didn’t know what to do and I had learned something!!

I HAD A WORD OF KNOWLEDGE

One night as I was giving the altar call, as usual, they all got up to walk out on me, letting me know all this “God stuff” was a farce! When they did, something came to me. I said…

“Wait!!!” They all stopped.

I said, “You don’t know but you may walk out this door and there will be a rival gang waiting on you. And they will attack your second in command. When they do, you will try to help him and they will stab you!”

They all listened. Then they all burst out laughing and walked out. Waiting outside the church was a rival gang. Just as the Holy Spirit told me, it happened. They attacked the second in command. The leader of the kids tried to help him and they stabbed him 7 times.

The police saw this happening from across the street where they had been parked. They turned on their light and the gang fled. One of my leaders pulled the stabbed kid into the church foyer. He was bleeding all over the floor. He started crying, “God, Help Me!!!” (A part of me wanted to say, “Which god would that be?”)

This kid asked my youth leader to pray the bleeding would stop. The leader prayed and the bleeding stopped. It turned out that every major organ was missed!!! God’s grace!!!!

KIDS BEGAN TO GET SAVED

One at a time, those kids began to get saved. As soon as they would get saved, their case workers would pull them out of church and even move them. (A number of them had been in trouble with the law) This happened several times. Then one day they were all gone and it was as if they had never been there.

I FOUND OUT THAT I HAD THE ABILITY TO EXERCISE AUTHORITY AGAINST THE ENEMY THAT WAS STRATEGIC TO ME AND THE WORK I DO

This was a tremendous lesson for me as a minister. I had never felt like I was important enough to be targeted in that manner. Truth is, anyone who will do the work of God is a threat to darkness and is targeted not only for their warfare but for their work.

MANY ARE AFRAID…

I say that because many are afraid to do spiritual warfare due to being targeted by the enemy. But the truth is, if you are going to work for God (and every Christian is supposed to) you are a target. In other words, you might as well learn to fight appropriately since you will be in the cross hairs if you are going to work for God.

Matthew 12:26-30 (NKJV) 26If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 27And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. 28But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. 29Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house. 30He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.

 

REMEMBER THE STRONG MAN?

The strong man is a demon power. He may be lower level devil but he is guarding something. It could be he is guarding a lost person, a lost tribe, nation, future work or a present work.

Jesus is very clear that he must bind (engage with authority) the strong man if we are going to take what has belonged to the devil.

PEOPLE ARE WORTH IT

It is worth it when you see a lost person found, a sick person healed, a demonized person set free. I would do it all again to see the results I have seen in the spirit in the fight for the lives of people.

I hope you will hang with me as we continue with “War in Order”.

Blessings,
lisa

© Copyright Lisa Swayze 2017