ESCAPING A DEMONIC CURSE
November 26, 2019
God gave one woman and her family freedom from a curse that was consuming them with fear and conflict.
Lately, you’ve been having terrible headaches. You schedule a doctor’s appointment; she asks a lot of questions, examines your head and then suggests that they run a few more tests.
Finally, all the results filter in, and the doctor calls. “I’m afraid that we’ve found several glioblastoma in your brain. We can try some different types of radiation, but I have to tell you that only about one of every four patients with this type of tumor survives more than two years.”
What do you say? What do you do?
For many in the Western world, a doctor’s word is absolute. If one tells a person that their health is in serious danger, it can shatter than individual’s world.
Living in a Cursed House
For many people living in Africa and Asia, spiritual attacks and demonic influence are far more apparent, closer to the surface of physical reality.
So when a witchdoctor came to Aapti and told her, “The reason there is no peace in your house is that some of your neighbors have used witchcraft to curse you”, she believed him.
Aapti and her husband had been struggling with discontent and conflict. Their home was a tumultuous place with little to no peace, so she asked the witchdoctor what they should do to save themselves.
“The only way to get peace in your home is to leave from the village,” the man told her after some thought. “Go live somewhere else for eight or nine months. Meanwhile, we will do some black magic against your neighbors, and then you can have peaceful life again.”
Wearily clinging to this promise, Aapti and her husband uprooted and moved to her mother’s house.
Leaving friends and taking their three daughters so far away from home and everything they knew was hard, though. Aapti’s husband grew frustrated and bitter. Which neighbor had cursed them? What had they ever done that these people would hate them so badly? Hopefully that witchdoctor would stick the neighbors with curses ten times worse than what the fools laid on their household.
One of their neighbors was his older brother. Surely he wouldn’t have been the one who paid for a curse to be laid on them…would he?
Worse yet, Aapti’s mother was starting to get uneasy with them living in her house. The neighbors had started to ask her why her daughter and son-in-law were suddenly living with her.
What could she say? They’d been cursed and were trying to escape?
She ignored the neighbors for a while, giving excuses; but eventually, she asked her daughter to leave and go back home.
Finding the Power of Forgiveness
Aapti and her husband warily returned to their town. One day, some volunteers who had been trained by World Challenge partners in the area came by her house and asked if she would like to learn some health and disease prevention techniques.
Of course, Aapti agreed. Malaria is a serious issue in the area, and she was worried for her daughters’ safety.
As the volunteers and she came to know each other better, they learned about her situation with the neighbor and witchdoctor. A lot of the evidence pointed to her husband’s brother being the one who had cursed them, and the thought of family hating them weighed heavily on Aapti.
The volunteers began a discussion with her about sin, God’s love and forgiveness.
Aapti listened to their stories and joined in the conversation, then she asked for them to tell her more about this Bible and God. They invited her and her husband to come to their house church.
Aapti came to the service, and the prayer washed over her.
This summer, she accepted Christ as her God and Savior. With the forgiveness given to her, she chose to forgive her husband’s brother. The witchdoctor, however, she chased off when he tried to come back to their house.
No more curses, no more spells. Now God was watching over them.
The Promise of Peace
What was a seemingly terminal prognosis turned out to be a simple matter with God.
Today, Aapti’s home is a place of peace. As her husband has witnessed the transformation happening in Aapti, he has begun joining her at church. Her friends and World Challenge trainers are praying for him to come to know God too.
In the most dire situations, all we can do is reach out to our heavenly Father who already knows our cares and longs to gather us up in his arms.
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