CHAPTER 19
Snake in the Grass
Sarah is an African woman and a fellow believer. One day, we invited her to a prayer meeting with us. What makes this significant is that God had specifically directed us to invite her. She was most hesitant, attempting to excuse herself lest she miss her taxi. Knowing God’s invitation had a purpose, we offered to drive her home afterwards. Lacking another excuse, she agreed to join our small group. She knew most of us really well, so, in our minds, there was no reason for her to feel uncomfortable.
God had instructed me in advance to wash Sarah’s feet with red wine, so I’d purchased some. Driving to meet her and the others, I praised God and gave the meeting to Him, declaring His sovereignty over all spirits.
At Dirk’s house, we gathered in an upper room built above his carport and used especially for prayer and worship. With Sarah seated on a couch, I asked if I could wash her feet, describing how God had directed all this for her benefit. Although unusually nervous and hesitant, she placed her feet into the bath of red wine. After washing and drying her feet, we invited her to a chair around which we stood to pray. During the prayer, she suddenly started breathing heavily. The rest of us were all quiet. I was inwardly alarmed, powerless, and wondered what to do.
All I could think was to speak to God. While she was still breathing heavily, I asked God what to do. I prayed this quietly without physically holding her hand. Instead, this vision of us before God appeared in my mind. I recall praying: “Father God, I hold Sarah’s hand in my hand and with my other hand I reach out to You, asking You on her behalf for victory. You are sovereign with power over all.”
God’s direct answer was: “There is a snake inside her that wants to come out. It wants to go into the grass. I give you full authority to command it to leave her. You will not see it leave her but it will go.”
We all stood there quietly waiting for God to intervene, with Sarah still heaving audibly. At some point, off the chair she went, crouching on hands and knees, breathing convulsions not subsiding. I’d received God’s Word and had to act.
Before making any bold declarations, I decided to tell the group what God had said. As I verbalized His words, Sarah’s body spontaneously flattened against the floor and started slithering like a snake, feet first, as if the invisible snake’s head was at her feet and its tail at her head. Her body slithered speedily past me toward the door. Since we were on the second floor, connected via a steel spiral staircase, her safety was suddenly a concern—I didn’t want this evil spirit harming Sarah’s body.
I leapt to the door before her, lest she get injured going down. With me in the way, she simply stood up and followed me downstairs. Others in the prayer group also followed. Once there, outside on the lawn, she again lay down flat on her stomach and started slithering toward the long grass; exactly what God said the snake wanted to do.
That’s when God told me to command the evil spirit to leave Sarah. I spoke simply but with authority, and her body straightaway stopped slithering. She promptly stood up, asking us how she’d gotten there—she had no idea. The others there started praising God, but He showed me there were still more evil spirits in her. As He spoke quietly to me, I repeated His words. As I spoke, evil spirits spoke through her, confirming their presence before I commanded them to also leave. A few minutes later, there was peace, and I saw this African woman’s face glow with a soft, warm light in the semi-darkness, a light that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. That was the first time I had ever seen a person’s face radiating God’s glory.
Sarah then revealed the reason for her nervous hesitation to join us. Usually at this exact time of day, after arriving home, she would drink muthi, which is a mixture prepared by a sangoma, an African witch doctor. Some of the muthi was also placed in a bucket under her bed, as an offering to an evil spirit that would otherwise physically molest her at night in her bed. That was the real reason she had tried to excuse herself from the prayer meeting. She was living in fear of what would happen if she didn’t follow the ritual and wanted to return home to appease that evil spirit. We knew nothing of all this but merely followed God’s instructions.
This made the washing of her feet with the red wine all the more significant. The red wine, signifying Christ’s blood shed for her, was in a container similar to the bucket of muthi. Her feet were washed exactly where the snake’s head was positioned.
The evil spirit didn’t listen to my word but to God’s Word. In this situation, God had granted me express authority for this woman’s freedom. The authority was not general but specifically for this woman and these particular evil spirits. God’s Word was the key for this situation, a key which I obtained in person from Him for her. In fact, the snake spirit had started leaving the room even before I directly addressed it—merely by hearing me retell God’s Word to my other friends in the room.
Take note that the evil spirit was not commanded to leave “in the name of Jesus.” It obeyed the Word of God, which is by its very nature the name and authority of Jesus Christ, since God’s Word is Jesus Christ, Yeshua, His Son to whom all power has been given.
This is God’s supreme authority which evil spirits must obey. This is the victorious authority Christians enjoy if they wait for and hear God’s Word in every situation.