Beauty that overshadows the real War inside

I was thinking over the weekend how at times I find myself just crying over the suffering of mankind and I feel like there are moments where I can’t help but feel overly sensitive. This sometimes happens to me when I’m in my prayer closet talking to the Lord as I ask Him questions about the current world condition and how to proceed to be an effective intercessor. During this particular time, I  was reminded of when I once lived in Kenya for 3 years, how I saw the suffering of the people everyday as I was driven to and from school and I remember being a spiritually sensitive child that could sense evil and the presence of it in people and within my environment. Poverty is evil! It tears families apart, it breaks the human soul and it ravages the helpless. When I lived there as a kid, I remember feeling afraid  everyday because I used to have nightmares often about evil beings trying to get me. The place where we stayed was in Nairobi, the Capital City where violence was an everyday occurrence… Newspapers were always filled with bad news…no glimmer of hope

Slums in Nairobi

Let me state for a fact that Kenya is indeed  a beautiful country with a rift valley and skies that hover beautiful terrain but underneath this terrain, the beauty that one can witness is overshadowed by the reality of the suffering of the people that live in this beautiful land.

I remember reading a UN report on the current status of the country where I lived in the city of Nairobi and I remember seeing slums everywhere, and  from what I’ve read, the current situation is much worse than I remember it. Apparently, curfew is now recommended to be at 6pm in the slum areas because if you aren’t back in your homes before that time, the chances of a woman or child getting raped or killed is most likely 100%. Where I lived, we had guards at the gate with rifles…it was that dangerous. You cannot underestimate bandits, killers and soo on. My Grandma was robbed in broad daylight by men with machetes. Usually when you wear jewellery on your wrist, robbers would usually cut the hand off to obtain the item or even worse kill you to get the items.When I heard that my grandma was in that situation, I was at school at the time and cried because I thought she was dead. I prayed to God

via socialistworker.co.uk

praying that she was alive and safe. When I got home, she was fine. Her watch was stolen and her money taken but she was intact..nothing missing nothing broken…they just took the jewelry and ran off…they didn’t want to kill her or the driver. I PRAISE GOD for saving my grandma! God is indeed an awesome God.

However, in spite of this…I can’t help but feel emotional pain when I think of how my Indian friend’s father was murdered at his office in broad daylight. He was a well to do business man and yet…he was not immune to being attacked…he was murdered. Another family destroyed by evil. Evil knows no bounds…it doesn’t discriminate….

As a kid I began to learn that evil was everywhere and I was constantly living in fear….and yet my grandfather told me to be brave…I was 8 and yet I had to be brave….

I went to a boarding school in the outskirts in  the countryside (1hr drive from home) for Form 1 which is English standard for Grade 7 (I think), and I was a weekly boarder who came home on the weekend and let me tell you, I was terrified of living far from my grandparents. I used to suffer severe nightmares when I lived in Kenya…I saw things that were unexplainable and experienced the worst sicknesses when I was there. When I remember all those things, I feel convinced that at the time all I could sense was evil. During that time I wasn’t a strong Christian as I am now…I was born a Catholic but I didn’t really believe in praying to “saints” for help…I believed in praying directly to GOD for help. I think that belief was the only thing that would later anchor me to Christ in the future when I got saved at age 15 later on in China, which was yet another country that outlaws open worship and persecutes underground Chinese  Christians. However, that’s another story….

Hurricane Katrina

I remember that during my 3 years in Kenya, I prayed everyday for God to take us out of this country…My grandparents couldn’t leave until they were told to go to the next country and that is how long we had to stay there. I prayed like crazy crying to God to leave because I couldn’t handle the level of evil I felt in that place. I couldn’t handle seeing evil in my face. I remember seeing our neighbour punishing his worker with a wooden bat for stealing bread because his living conditions were so bad and he was poor. The master kept hitting him until I saw blood flow. I remember feeling traumatized after seeing that. I was upstairs peeking behind the curtain watching him hit the man over and over from across the road and for some reason….the man stopped hitting the man and for some reason….looked up at the window and saw me witnessing this atrocity. I remember feeling shaken with fear in that what I saw wasn’t a man…but something very very evil in that man. I don’t know how he sensed that I was watching him from across the street on the second floor with a small peeking crack from my bedroom curtain…but I believe…that something evil in him could sense me watching him hurt this weak but poor worker. I truly hoped I was not witnessing a murder. I didn’t return to watch the conclusion…but my spirit cannot forget the mans screaming… I told my Grandpa….but he told me that police would do much worse to him if we called them….It seems that money can silence the police and poverty increases victims to this perversity. As a kid hearing this reality, that literally disheartened me in so many ways more than one in that now I knew that not even police could be trusted in this land…Corruption cultivates and facilitate further evils.

I know that I should be writing an uplifting post but I can’t seem to shake these things that I have experienced.I feel like I have to let all these painful emotions out. So I apologize in advance to the reader reading this.

Hurricane Katrina Floods New Orleans

After Hurricane Katrina, The Tsunami and the Typhoon that has just ravaged the Philippines just recently that is being covered by Joyce’s post called National State of Calamity: 2011’s last SCREAM, I keep thinking that God gave us the Earth as a gift and yet no matter how many pictures we see in our world atlas to see the beautiful globe in its majestic glow, underneath the surface, there are worldwide atrocities, worldwide evils that are continuing to afflict the innocent and remain hidden under the surface of things because we have cultivated an “Out of sight, out of mind” mentality. God, I believe has broken my heart many times to feel so sensitive to world issues. I know that my grandfather was a major influence on my life in that he used to tell me that you should be careful how you treat people, “You don’t who will help you or kill you if you treat them badly”. He said this to me in Kenya…and with good reason in that you don’t want people to conspire to murder your entire family knowing full well the dangers that exist behind some peoples smiles.

In Kenya…it isn’t a place where you just treat people anyhow…if anything…that place humbled me to the point of being terrified. I was about 8 years old having these thoughts and lived there until I was 10 or 11 years old. No kid should have to feel terrified the way I was, and yet each day I praise God for saving me. I suffered spiritual attacks there too but I won’t go into too much depth with that here all I want to say is that living there changed my perspective on life and living as usual in that when I see Westerners acting like

View of the Rift Valley via Trip Advisor

spoiled people who have the luxury of having a roof over their heads, and can live while grumbling about their 9 to 5’s that they have to get up in the morning, I think…if only people knew what life was really like in the world where fear is your everyday battle ground, where food is as precious as finding gold in the ground, where clean water is as rare as mining for a diamond, where safety and security isn’t marked by a curfew of 6pm…would we change the way we treat people? Would we change how we treat what we have differently? Would our hearts stop being hardened or will our senses that are numbed by commercialized violence be softened so that we are no longer desensitized to the realities of the ever present evil that exists in this life???? When my sister and I got a call to pack our bags at our boarding school because we were leaving the country…you have no idea how relieved and excited I was to hear this Good news. I felt like “At last…my God has heard my prayers!!!!!”…

I remember crying for a very very long time…I could not really feel true relief until I was on that plane officially. When I was on the plane heading back home to Zimbabwe, I was praising my God and still crying. My Grandma and Grandpa began to realize how truly terrified I was living there with my tears constantly flowing. I really was a terrified child. My twin was stronger than me but I suffered a lot in that place that I can’t even begin to tell you how much I still Thank God to this day for getting me out of there. Despite all that…my heart is permanently broken for the people that still live in that place constantly living in that fear that I have escaped. I believe that the Gospel needs to reach these parts of the world that need to see the light shine in all that darkness. Kenya isn’t the only ravaged country because there are many such as Rawanda, DRCongo, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, parts of Russia, Mexico, Cuba, etc.

The Devil is real and he enjoys us ignoring this truth by distracting our attention and focus off of Him and making us focus on our daily troubles and affairs while blinding us to His works to bring pain in our lives. We can get overly absorbed in ourselves that we cannot see what is really happening underneath our noses.  All I’m saying is that we should seriously seek God’s face to make us more aware that the battle in this beautiful Earth that He gave us to live is truly not against Flesh and Blood….it’s against the evils that exist in this world.

Ephesians 6:12
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

via countercorruptionnetwork.com

Corruption, Greed, Blood lust, War, Poverty, Violence, Death, Famine, Destruction, Natural Disasters….we have soo much to pray for. I know that as we head into 2012…we must not forget to pray against these evils because God is Lord over all but we silence that truth by our apathy, our indifference, lack of concern to world news until it hits us right at home…. Must we wait until evil reaches our soil to start praying?????? Remember Hurricane Katrina….there was so much lawlessness that ensued after that un-natural disaster hit. Whereever you are in the world…pray and seek God’s face to heal your countries land so that the Devil has no room to continue petitioning to rob the people of peace and security. We have to remain secure in Christ because the days are evil but we can pray in unity and consecrate ourselves before God so that He will hear from heaven the cry of our hearts for DIVINE INTERVENTION. Evil rulers are being dethroned and it is time for us to fight in the Spirit through prayer to continue battling and seeing God to triumph over EVIL. We can only overcome Evil with GOOD and with GOD!!!!

Colossians 2:15
Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Right now this is the cry that is in my heart…tears flow as I write this. Many churches are heading into the 21 Day Daniel Fast and my Church is participating. I am going to seek God in these areas that have been overwhelming me and I hope that you will participate where ever you are in the world. Let us Seek Gods Face for the Year 2012 and seek Change in countries that need God’s grace and mercy to Heal the Land and Heal it’s inhabitants. Let us stand in the gap, people shouldn’t have to live in fear like I once did…everyone has the right to live secure in Christ and in His Peace. Let us Intercede for those that need it most and pray fervently to see a supernatural move of God in the lives that struggle to see His face in this Love-starved World.

2 Chronicles 7:14-15

¹⁴ if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. ¹⁵ Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place.

I have a song that has been ministering to me and it’s from Deitrick Haddon’s new CD CHURCH ON THE MOON. The song is called “Gravity”. I hope you like it.