Is Joelle taking this God-thing too far? you ask. Do her beliefs and her actions match with the outrageous owner of the camper trailer that waits with hundreds of pasted on words damning all those who voted for Obama to hell? My spiritual beliefs are not here to damn or pass judgment on anyone, unless it’s myself. Because I haven’t taken this “God thing” far enough.
Let me give you the scoop.
For the past six weeks I’ve been participating in a women’s Bible study at my church. It’s a Beth Moore study and the theme of it is “The Inheritance,” with the key verse being Psalm 15:5-6. “Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”
I am not going to get into the nitty gritty of it all, but I will tell you that I recommend it. The week that most affected my life was week four, wherein I realized somebody else was standing on my property and it was my job to give them a swift kick in the pants and take it all from them.
The verses for week four focused on Joshua’s role in the exodus out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. Beth Moore points out to us that God requires his children to exercise the will and action to deliberately take what he graciously gives. Joshua 1:11 says “Go through the camp and tell the people, ‘Get your supplies ready. Three days from now you will cross the Jordan here to go in and take possession of the land the Lord your God is giving you for your own.” Joshua and the Israelites had to go and fight for what God says was theirs.
Get this in your head: God says something will be ours. He is giving it to us. But he doesn’t just hand it over easily. We have to fight for it. Why? We have to fight for it so that we are strong enough to hold onto it when it does become ours, so that the enemy cannot steal it away from us.
There is a Hebrew word, which is a form of the lexical yarash which translates to both “to inherit” and “to possess.” Interestingly, it also means “to dispossess.” God is going to give us a beautiful inheritance, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to take it away from somebody else first. God makes us fight.
I could get more into it, but the actual lesson is not really where I want to focus this story. I want to tell you what happened four days later. The Bible study leader had a question for us at the end of the session, and her question was “what is your property right now at this time in your life? Is somebody standing on your property?”
I knew the answer immediately. Hell yes, is someone standing on my property. It’s the devil. Satan comes to my classroom everyday. He wears his back pack and has his own desk. He takes a seat and influences my students every minute. Yes, people make their own choices, but I could feel it that Satan was trying to ruin me in my job. He was taking over everything.
The question was, what was I going to do to fight for my property? How could I kick the devil out of room C6? That following Sunday after church, I went into school (sadly, as I often do every weekend). Usually there are other teachers there as well, though most come in on Saturdays. This time, I was alone. I got to my classroom, turned the lights on, sat on the rug at the front of the room, and prayed. I prayed out loud in a strong voice and with my eyes open. I was taking this place back.
In short, I asked God to fill my classroom with his presence. To send an army of angels to protect and guard my students. To fill me with enough love so that I could give it away to the 29 children I saw everyday. There I am, on my knees on the very rug where so many mean words have been said by children to other children, where so much disrespect has taken place. And there I am, asking the Lord God in heaven to infiltrate this classroom and touch every soul that walks into it.
And then I do something that I have never done before. I command in the name of God that all the demons and evil spirits leave this place, and that they do not enter into my classroom again. It seems weird to me, it really does. Commanding something in God’s name only happens in the Bible, or on really religious television movies, or maybe by your pastor. But I knew I had the power to command something in God’s name, because I am his and his spirit is within me, and this was for his glory. I commanded out loud for the demons to leave, and then I got up off my knees and I walked around the perimeter of the room and touched all of the walls and brushed my hands across the threshold of each door. Satan was no longer welcome in this place. I was telling him to take a hike.
It was weird, that day, because I went to school to talk to two entities: God and his arch nemesis. That week before someone was speaking about how the devil cannot access your thoughts, he only guesses at what you are thinking. So saying a Biblical verse out loud is very powerful, because it hurts the ears of the devil. So even though I had prayed silently in my class for peace, all Satan was seeing was me being defeated every day. He saw me crying and yelling and being frustrated at a bunch of kids.
So that’s why I had to say it out loud, there in my classroom, not at home. I had to be there, in that room with both God and Satan, and I had to tell Satan to take his shenanigans else where, because this room was going to be for God’s glory only.
You bet I wanted a miracle. I was claiming back this earthly property that was entrusted to me. Those kids are entrusted to me for three and a half more months. I would absolutely love to tell you that on Monday morning my kids came in and showed complete 180 degree behaviors. They didn’t. But I was different. I had love in me again. I had regained patience that I had lost. You wanna know what I did?
I pulled a desk in front of that doorway and I barricaded myself in between the demons and my classroom, so that evil spirits could not enter in with my children. I sat at that desk and greeted each and every one of my students that day, giving them a smile, a sticker, a goal to make today a good day. They were weirded out by it. My students were expecting me to be working on something at my desk or around the room as usual, not sitting like some bouncer at a club, checking people in.
I’ve been sitting in my doorway every morning for three weeks now. I tell students how great it is to see them, or I ask them a question, or I give them a compliment. Satan tries to sneak in everyday. He latches on to kids and wants to destroy them and me. He’s out to ruin us.
I know a handful of my students are believers, and I know that they have God’s protection in my classroom. Interestingly, yet this makes total sense, the students who I know are believers are also the students who are the kindest, the smartest, and try the hardest. I mean, they’re nine and ten years old, but the Holy Spirit makes a difference in them. Then there are the rest of my kids who don’t have the spirit living inside of them, and they are quite susceptible to attack. Satan does his best to pitchfork them everyday.
I have this urge when I am incredibly frustrated at a kid to put my hand on their shoulder and pray out loud for them, and for Satan to leave them alone. Because I’ve done everything else a teacher can do. Divine intervention is going to be the only thing that works. There is an element of fear still in me though, because praying out loud over a student in a public school classroom can very well be over the line. I don’t want to freak any students out. But I know that this is the devil taking hold of my fear.
This property is mine until June 17th, and I am fighting for it. I am showing God that I am a fighter, and that I will be strong enough to hold onto whatever it is that he wants to give me as an inheritance. But all my strength comes from the Lord.
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