The Night We Canceled the Devil’s Meeting

 

Nervously placing my hands on the microphone, I pray that God will give me the harmony to “Graves into Gardens” without a crack in my voice. “Make me confident, Lord. I want to lead people to worship.” Self focused, I do my best to follow along with the music and sing out. It’s just been so long since I’ve been on a church worship stage and I know I’m not the best candidate and on and on with the excuses. It’s Sunday. Aaron is next to me playing the guitar giving me the eyes when it’s my turn to come in. We are doing what we do. Even if I can’t see the why, the Lord has me here. And then – breaking through my litany of self-deprecation and insecurity – I see him. Arms spread out, eyes closed, his translator in his ears.

 

“He came back, again. Praise God.”

 

But all that came after the night we cancelled the Devil’s meeting and frankly, I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Along the main drag there is a long string of telephone lines bordering each side of the street. Black birds perching in an ominous front are squawking and screaming above the bustle of the city. It’s dark – about 9 PM and we aren’t usually out this late.

 

Sweat beads on my forehead and my ears ring at the loud music coming from the clubs I’m passing. My eyes, attacked and saddened by each passerby, are safe nowhere.

 

 

I feel like I’m walking through water – heavy, heated, sludge like. My legs are weighted and my body begs to stop. My spirit softly says – “They need Him.” And that’s really all it takes to keep my feet moving.

 

I’m reminded that I once frequented these places, that I danced in sin many times and wandered in and out of curiosity and indulgent chasing of my own fleshly calls to something that would fill me up for the night.

 

“Thank You Jesus for rescuing me. Please Jesus, rescue them.”

 

It’s in these moments that I swear I can see Him. He’s usually walking behind me, asking me to trust Him with whatever comes my way knowing He’s got my vulnerable places, the ones I can’t see. He whispers in my ear guiding me, prompting me and asking me to be brave and bold. He never leaves my side. He armors me up. And He’s still with me when I need a quiet place to break down from all the pain He asked me to walk through.

 

“Feed my sheep, Lindsey.” “Shine the light.” “You’re mine. I called you to this.” “I’m right here. Will you go with me?”

 

A close friend got a vision from the Lord about me before we came to Costa Rica. It was me, in a large tower, high above the city dancing with Jesus. My head was on His chest and I’m listening to the beat of His heart. I’m as close as I can get – as hungry for His presence as I know to be. My team stands all around in a circle, listening to me as I listen to Him.

 

It’s Semana Santa, Holy Week, and we have been granted permission to roam the streets during a time known for epic partying and nefarious activity. Absolutely defiant to the Devil’s schemes, we have fasted and prayed standing in agreement with each other and with our Lord and savior against any demonic activity we see or discern is being planned.

 

We are at war. And we know it.

 

And I’ve prepped. The Lord told me to pray on a rooftop over the city before going out on foot so the night before I simply prayed for a few hours straight. I worshipped. I got on my knees. I begged for the repentance of the city.

 

So here we are, walking the streets, waiting for a prompting from the Holy Spirit. I’ve got two of my teammates with me with the same heavy feeling, the same broken hearts for the people and the same fire lit within them to watch God move.

 

And I’ll be honest, every time I do this. Every time I enter the war zone, I come in fighting off a small snicker from the enemy that sounds something like this, “What are you doing out here? Do you even hear from the Lord? No one wants to talk to you? People are going to think you’re some annoying evangelist. Nothing is going to happen.”

 

Which is typically followed by a far better voice that sounds like “I am the Lord your Guide and I’ve called you to light up dark places. Go.”

 

And so we go.

 

We slink our way through the city with alert ears and eyes. Scottie, my teammate, always a bit behind Alli and I, alert to protect us when/if needed and always watching and always in prayer. Alli, my little fire cracker prophet, listening intently, waiting to get a word for anyone the Lord is trying to talk to.

 

We come upon a busy intersection and see two men sitting on a bench. Scowled. Tattooed. HUGE muscles. Tanks. A spooky cloud of smoke drifting from their mouths and a cackle escapes from one of them.

 

We keep walking.

 

“Hold on,” I said. “Did you see those guys on the bench?”

 

“The ones with the big muscles?” Alli says.

 

“Yea……I think I’m supposed to pray for those guys,” I say.

 

Alli smiles and says, “Me too.”

 

Man oh man. These are the moments that my good friend, Lisa, called “Here I am Lord” moments where we simply show up because He says to.

 

We approach and quickly realize that they don’t speak English. Thankfully, their scowls disappear and I can see a kindness behind their eyes that feels familiar. We whip out our phones and start translating making some quick introductory talk so we don’t look like psychos. But quickly, before I’m ever ready, there is that quiet moment where it’s time to tell them why we came.

 

I swallow.

 

One of the men has to leave. Now there is just the one.

 

I type the message, “God told me to come over and pray for you.”

 

I wait as He reads it, furrows his brow in confusion and then presents a look of enlightenment and a spark of joy I wasn’t expecting.

 

He starts saying over and over again, “This is no coincidence, this is no coincidence.”

 

He asks a few questions about why we came over and we tell Him we love Jesus and follow His promptings and God loves Him and wanted to meet Him tonight.

 

What He said next would leave us chilled.

 

“In ten minutes I have a meeting to do a deal with the devil. I can’t believe this. God is obviously sending me a sign.”

 

Stunned, we immediately told Him that there are no coincidences and that God definitely wanted to speak to Him tonight and cancel that meeting.

 

Alli got a word for Him and spoke that there was a stamp on His heart and that God is saying that that stamp is still there and hasn’t come off. He still belongs to God.

 

He told us that he had been following the Lord a few years ago but had fallen away.

 

At this point, He is in utter disbelief. So are we.

 

We sit with Him a bit longer and I hand Him a flier for the Good Friday and Easter services. He snatches it and says “I’ll come. I’ll be there.”

 

As we walked away, I was stunned at the Lord. “Lord, you just shut down a meeting with the Devil and you let ME help!”

 

The rest of the night was met with about four more interactions with people on the street. Holding a drunk mans hand while we prayed, buying beans and rice for a mother on the street, prophesying joy over a woman waiting for her son outside of a store, connecting someone in need of a job with our ministry in San Jose, etc.

 

Little light bulbs illuminating through the city.

 

As we roamed, we texted the names of those we interacted with to the group on the rooftop praying so they could pray for them by name. I like to think we were Holy Spirit paint spread out over the city like art.

 

A few days later, we made our way to the Good Friday service a bit stunned and distracted because we had received some hard news as a squad and there was a lot of emotional waves tossing us back and forth. I was excited because I just wanted to sit with Jesus. I had honestly forgotten about the fliers and those we had invited to church.

 

Sitting, smiling in reverence admiring the garden at the church and thinking about the cross, Alli runs up to me and says, “He’s here.”

 

There across the crowd gathered at the entrance was an earnestly smiling man muscled and tatted in a beach tank and surfer shorts saying “I’ve been looking for you.”

 

“He came!” I thought.

 

Excitedly we ushered Him to where we were sitting and I sat next to Him smiling, exchanging a few words letting Him know this would be a special service, a moving one.

 

As we began to worship, I felt the weight of His presence and His wondering and heard God say, “Let me, now.” Surrendering my need to rescue Him, I shifted my focus to the message and started singing and worshipping alongside Him, unashamed that He might think my worship was weird or off putting.

 

After the music stopped, he put this very message into my translator: “Thank you, I like this. I feel good and I feel like I am at home regardless of what has happened to me. I feel something different here. Thank You.”

 

I held back tears. There it was. The Holy Spirit. I didn’t need to do a thing.

 

After the service, my friend Tito, fluent in Spanish, came over and spoke with Him, connected Him to the men in the church and prayed a blessing over Him saying, “The Lord has marked you and is coming for you, take it. Don’t delay.”

 

Our friend came to Easter Sunday too. This time I encouraged Him to sit with a new group of people exposing Him to as much of the body as I could. I marveled at God. I marveled at new life. That Easter the sermon was about Paul’s conversion. How perfect.

 

“Two for two,” I thought. “I wonder if we will keep seeing Him.”

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Today, I sit here in pure astonishment. My friend has joined us for three services in a row now. Last Sunday after I saw Him raise His hands in worship, He gathered a group from the church to ask about communion. He wasn’t sure if He deserved to take it.

 

They learned a lot of things about Him last Sunday. My friend will have to turn away from some things that will not be easy to get out of. My friend will have to trust God maybe more than any of us reading have ever had to in order to turn to Christ. My friend will, like Saul, have to flee into the arms of the most High and trust in the shadow of His wings.

 

But if he does. The Kingdom will rejoice. If he does, the depths of hell will shake in anger and fury over their loss. If he does, many lives will be restored and the Kingdom of God will have claimed territory and won a battle. If he does, we will have gained a brother.

 

I’m asking that every person that reads this stops what they are doing right now and prays for my friend. If you want to pray for Him by name, please message me. In doing so you will be lighting Holy Spirit fires all over the spiritual realm and joining in kingdom work that never dies.

 

Right now.

 

Pray that one life restored restores the lives of many and cancels even more of Satan’s meetings.

 

Pray with me.