Author’s Note: Right now, I’m speaking to my brothers and sisters in Christ. But even if you are not a believer, you might find this post useful in helping you understand the bigger picture of circumstances around you.
On Sunday night, our builder’s mother-in-law died.
That might not sound terribly significant, more like a tragedy far removed from you and thus irrelevant. But let me see if I can explain what this might have to do with you.
Right now, we – Lisa, my husband Jeff, and my son Tristan – are building a house here in Scotland. It is a land we were called to in our twenties and waited another twenty-five years to finally move to.
We bought this exact plot of land and are building the exact house we’re building because that’s what God said to do. We have glimpses of the outcome. God has said to all three of us on separate occasions that it will be about community and a gathering place. A true ecclesia. It will be the house on the hill that will draw many to it. So we keep acting in good faith, though we are yet to see any of that come to pass.
We’ve been building for a year now, and we still don’t even have the roof on. It has been one setback after another. For months and months we have waited, just to even get the membrane on the roof.
Finally, this week, Jeff booked a week off work and the builder was to come. It was a week we booked back in early December. January in Scotland is bleak, very cold, usually snowing, and the days are very short and dark. But it was the only week we could get.
We have very few holidays for Jeff to work on this house, and we’d delayed as long as we could to use them up. The company Jeff works for was not impressed because our holiday quota was supposed to be used up last year, and we had originally booked them for September, and we kept putting them back and back. We couldn’t put them back one more time or we risked losing it altogether.
I prayed hard for miraculous weather, and after one of the coldest weeks on record in Scotland, miraculously we were looking at one of the warmest, driest winter weeks on record. We had thick snow for a week and a half leading up to it, including a thick layer on the roof. The roof had to be clear and completely dry. It wasn’t looking promising, but on Sunday morning, a warm wind came and cleared all the snow away.
It was all ready to start Monday morning. And then the phone call came very late Sunday night. The builder’s mother-in-law suddenly and mysteriously died. She was found dead in her flat. He was no longer able to come.
We were gutted. This week has seen the sunniest, stillest, warmest winter days we’ve ever had in the UK. The most perfect roofing days you could imagine. And no builder.
That is the level of warfare against this project that we’ve had since the beginning.
I could give you a thousand more examples of the warfare experienced on this project, but it would take too long. They are stories of serious onsite accidents, serious illnesses of family members, car crashes, emotional breakdowns, job-threatening injuries, depression, evictions, injured children and more. And that’s just the people involved. I also have stories upon stories of issues with supplies, suppliers, equipment, deliveries, the cost of things, and even just trying to get a loan (due to the astronomical rise in building costs since we started). And I’m not talking the usual things that go wrong on a building site. We constantly heard things like, “In all my years, I’ve never seen that happen.” Or “I’ve been in the industry for thirty years, and I’ve never experienced that before.” And that’s not even mentioning the supernatural, violent weather and natural disasters that get thrown our way over and over, the likes of which the people who’ve lived here all their lives have never seen before.
None of these people involved in this project, having so much “bad luck”, frustration and depression in their personal lives and onsite, have any idea that we are the centre of their storm. Whatever demonic strongholds exist on this mountain and this part of Scotland, Satan doesn’t want to relinquish it, and he fights us every step of the way. It is all we can do to stand our ground and push forward the only way we can. We have to keep going forward because there is no way back.
It occurs to me that we just have no idea whose battle we are in. To take out a project like ours, our enemy has to attack everyone around us as much as he can and everyone around them, just like he did Sunday night. Satan is not tormenting our builder just for kicks. He’s trying to take out a house on the hill that God has told us will be utterly used for his glory. Our builder just thinks a tragedy befell him on the weekend, not realising that we are the centre of the storm.
There have been many, many times in my life when attacks have felt random, just to wear me down. But we just never know whose fight we’re in. By wearing me down, it might be affecting the person I was meant to help that day, or it might be so I don’t pray against the darkness in my area of influence, and someone in that area of influence is on the periphery of the centre of another storm.
By standing my ground, by fighting the fight, by declaring the attack unlawful and thus binding it on this earth, I might be helping someone else’s fight. They might be the centre of the storm and I just can’t see it, or they might be a small part in the story of another project God is building. My little bit, though it feels like it’s just a personal unconnected attack, might actually be part of a much, much bigger picture.
No one who works on this project is a Christian. None of them know about spiritual warfare. But what if our builder’s mother-in-law had a Christian neighbour who prayed specifically for God’s will and peace in her street and if she bound any demonic activity in her street? Or what if she just did everything to the glory of God as she went about her day? What if that had unwittingly stopped the sudden death of the mother-in-law, which meant our builder and his wife didn’t have to suffer this crisis, which meant our builder turned up this week to do the roofing and the project didn’t derail?
I know that this kind of living makes a difference. I’ve experienced firsthand what going about my day to the glory of God does for others who are the centre of the storm. Like the story behind the scenes of Job in the Bible, there was a time in my life when God pulled back the curtain of my ordinary world and showed me the true reality behind the reality. It’s a story for another time, but the point is, we have no idea how much damage we are doing to the powers of darkness by doing our little bit, by standing our ground that day, by declaring, “Your will be done, Father God, this day on earth as it is in heaven.” Or even just by praying for the people around us and the people we happen to meet or have contact with in our week.
So let me encourage you: the next time you feel oppressed, attacked, discouraged, thwarted, endangered, or any other way the darkness is manifesting, consider that maybe you are on the periphery of someone else’s storm. By standing your ground and by binding (declaring unlawful) Satan’s attacks, and releasing instead God’s will and favour and blessings, it’s possible something much bigger is turning against the enemy in the supernatural realm.
And even if you are not being directly targeted, consider that in the territory God has entrusted to you, maybe your prayers and declarations are reducing the size of the storm for someone else. ■
Update: The builders came on Thursday, yesterday, and out of nowhere a violent wind came that made it impossible to lay the membrane down on the roof and made it extremely unsafe for anyone up there. The builders packed up an hour later and left. There was nothing else that could be done. Today, the winds are even stronger. This is very typical of what we have been facing since this project began.
About the Author: Lisa Saul
