Spirits keep woman from lessons
The spiritual battle for the Mwinika people was very evident when one Mwinika woman who had been faithfully attending evangelistic Bible teaching suddenly quit coming.
When missionary Elin Henderson asked about her absence she was told that the woman had been sick and that the spirits weren’t allowing her to take the usual medicine to get better.
Then Elin met the woman one day on the trail. The woman looked tired and very downcast.
“I asked her how she was feeling and she said she wasn't doing well,” Elin wrote. “I told her I missed seeing her at the teaching and she told me that she isn't going to come anymore. Saddened, I asked her why.”
"The spirits have come to me and prohibited me to come,” the woman responded. “They told me that I can't go and look at those pictures. I sit at home now and cry because I really want to come and hear. I know this is important and I like hearing it. But if I go, the spirits make me sick.”
The woman “is a leader of one of the spirit possession cults so it is no surprise that she is facing this turmoil,” Elin wrote.
“Who is the biggest,” Elin asked the woman, “God or these spirits?”
“God!” the woman answered.
Elin told her that God, the Maker of those spirits, wanted her to come.
“I then suggested that since she is afraid to come and see the pictures, can she at least hear the Word being taught? And she replied, ‘Yes, I would like that very much.’ So we are arranging for her to receive a [MegaVoice player] each week so that she can keep up with the teaching.”
“I went on to share with her that the spirits only want to destroy and ruin her. They don't want her to hear God's Truth. They want her to stay in bondage. It is only through God that she will find hope and freedom. Only the Deliverer can set her free!”
“That is what I want,” the woman said. “I don't want to be tied up [in bondage] anymore!”
“We often don't think of pictures having this kind of an impact, but even the pictures are powerful when God is the focus,” Elin wrote. “This is the first we have heard of someone actually getting a message from the spirits prohibiting them from coming, but we know with the active spirit possession cults all around us others either have or will face these encounters.”
Please pray that God’s Word will penetrate the darkness of the Mwinika people and free them from their bondage.