Attacked

> I am 19 years old and was brought up as a Christian. I’ve sort of back
> slidden away from my faith since I’ve started university and working,
> and I think this has resulted in spiritual attacks. Between one and four
> nights a week, I have bad nightmares and night terrors, sometimes they
> feel like I am physically fighting with a presence. It’s really
> starting to effect me now more frustration than fear as I’m not getting
> good quality sleep. When I wake up from these nightmares I often sense
> a weird feeling in the room and have thoughts in my head such as ‘tell
> someone you are being attacked.’  I believe this is spiritual. Is there
> anything I can do to stop this and get back into my faith?

 

It does sound like you have done something that has painted a target on your
back and that Satan is happily throwing darts at it. One caution, though,
two things in general can draw us into spiritual warfare. One is sin. The
other is serving the Lord and threatening Satan’s kingdom.

In the first case, the recipe is to repent: confess your sin to God, ask him
to forgive you, and stop doing it, trusting God to graciously give you the
strength. Sometimes that’s enough, but sometimes you have to go into the
mode of the second case thereafter. The second case requries putting on the
full armor of God, grabbing your sword (standing firm on God’s word), and
fighting back. Resist in the name of the Lord, while in right relationship
with God and confident of who you are in Christ, and the devil will flee.
The more sin has weakened you, the stronger the enemy’s stronghold in your
life, and the more difficult the fight will be. Keep at it, and you will
eventually get the victory. Only complication would be if the enemy has done
physical damage and God opts not to heal it miraculously. I suspect that
won’t be the case for you, however.

The enemy has attacked me in dreams and while I was at rest on multiple
occassions. Every time I sensed a monster or person attacking me in a dream
was actually a demon, and I rebuked it to its face, telling it to leave in
the name of Jesus, I woke up at once, often with the words on my lips.

“‘Tell someone you are being attacked” sounds like the Holy Spirit. This
means a couple things. One, attacked strongly implies you are still God’s
possession, not the enemy’s possession, though the enemy will try to deceive
you into thinking otherwise to gain power over you. Two, God is fighting to
hold onto you, which is promised in God’s word. God won’t ever leave you or
forsake you, Mia. This is happening because you do have the freedom to leave
God and forsake God. He loves you and doesn’t want to lose you, however. God
will do and allow whatever is necessary to draw you back into relationship
with Him, with one huge exception. He won’t change who He is simply to
please you. A side effect of that is that God never budges one nanometer on
His stances on right and wrong.

God’s stances aren’t popular with the world. In fact, the world condemns God
as hateful. This is ignorant at best. At worst, it is the extreme arrogance
of the pot telling the potter how the potter’s creation should function. Do
you know what it does to the Lord when we are Christ’s and we don’t live
according to what Christ has taught us? Every sin we commit contributes to
the extreme pain of a member of the Trinity bearing our sins and being
alienated from God so that we can be reconciled to God. That is why love for
Christ should instill a desire to obey Christ in us. Love God first, even
when you don’t understand why God said “no” to something. It hurts our
precious Lord and Savior. If we love God, what more of a reason why do we
need?

In Christ,

Andrea Graham