I “saw” Satan standing in front of me with a large net. And he was laughing. And waiting, waiting for me to make a mistake. I had been baited to get out of love, to strike out in anger at that other person. And Satan knew that when I did, I was entering his territory, and he had me. I had almost taken the bait.

I had been asking God to let me see the spiritual world as clearly as I see the natural world, and I certainly got a clear picture that day. I knew what I had to do, and I did it immediately. I turned off that emotion called anger, and I responded with kindness and understanding toward that person.

That trap didn’t work. I’ll be on the lookout for the next one because as long as I live in this world, I know they’ll keep coming.

At last Kirk (of course) notices the pattern. He begins to suspect something is not as it appears to the natural eye. Spock does his tricorder readings, and they discover an unseen alien presence on board. This alien presence feeds on their negative emotions and grows stronger and stronger. Even though they realize the truth, they must now convince the cynical Klingons of the force at work against them. I won’t go into the entire plot but this is accomplished within the necessary one hour time period. The Enterprise crew and the Klingons join together in laughter and back slapping camaraderie, causing the unseen entity (until this crucial point in the story) to diminish in size and finally disappear, leaving their presence forever.

Where am I going with all of this? My brother and I have fought for years. I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered this nice little guy from my childhood days, but that memory seldom surfaced. The gulf between us widened and deepened. Then one day, after my dad died, I decided I was through fighting with him. I realized that just as in this Star Trek episode, there was an unseen entity at work in our relationship. As we fought, hated, disagreed, it grew stronger. So one day I stopped, I just stopped hating him, being mad at him, judging him. I made a quality decision that no matter what he did, I would not take offense or be angry with him.

I noticed a strange thing. Once that decision was made, we started getting along better. It’s taken some time, but our relationship is being rebuilt. He is responding to me now in the same manner I respond to him, positively. I no longer look at him through the eyes of the past, but toward the future and what I want our relationship to be.

There is an unseen entity at work in all our lives causing strife and division, causing us to hate those we should be closest to and those we hardly know, and I refuse to let him have his way.

Remember who the real enemy is.

The next morning I received a phone call from my stepfather. My mother had a severe reaction to a medication and was in ICU. She had also fallen and broken her ankle. However, within a few days she recovered fully from the reaction to the medicine. The ankle took a little longer. I believe God warned me about what was about to happen so I could pray for protection and deliverance. My prayer was certainly answered.

PS – I’ve heard people talk about places on earth where it is easier to hear from God, open heavens they’re called. Seems there were places like that in the Bible also. I realized there were two times something significant happened at exactly, or within five feet, of each other at my home. Once was this event and later, my husband told me to step under the carport before a tree branch fell on me. I stepped into the carport and within a minute a branch fell. The end of it brushed the back of my head. You can read the story here. The Tree Limb

When he was about five, I had an upsetting, very vivid dream. My son and I were going to the hospital. As we pulled into the space next to a red pickup truck, the man in the driver’s seat looked at us. His eyes were black and I got an awful, creepy feeling of danger from him. I rushed my kids away from him and toward the hospital. I noticed two elderly women come out of the door on the side of the building. We were heading for that door. Have you ever had the feeling deep inside that something isn’t right? Well, I did.

Right then I noticed something yellow moving in the massive oak tree next to that door we were headed toward. I followed the yellow to the top of the tree and over to the top of the building. It was a giant yellow snake. This hospital was at least three stories high and that yellow snake extended the entire height of the building. Maternal instinct kicked in but this monstrous snake was too fast. It swooped down and coiled around my son and began to sling him from side to side on the walkway. I wrestled with it to let him go and it dropped him and grabbed me. I didn’t care that it was beating me against the pavement as long as my son was free. I think it let go of me but about that time I woke up. To tell you the truth, I was a little scared!

I asked someone at church what it meant. The only answer they could come up with was the dream was a warning from God that Satan wanted to destroy my son. About a year later, I began going to a different church. One night we prayed for him and as we did, his Sunday School teacher said he was staring at her like a lion watching prey. It gave her a weird feeling.

About a week later, his Sunday School teacher approached me. She had talked to the pastor about my son. I began to tell her the dream, and she lit up. She too sensed that he was being held captive by a ‘python’ spirit. We prayed and commanded the spirit to leave my son. Since he was so young, I didn’t tell him any of this, but when he went to Sunday School, he told his teacher, “They prayed for me and the devil had to let me go. He kept trying to squeeze me but he couldn’t anymore. He had to go!”

Since then I’ve noticed change in my young son. For one, he doesn’t have that blank stare anymore. When he looks at me, there’s something there. He’s doing well in school and learning doesn’t seem to be the challenge it once was. He feels pain; he didn’t before. Before the prayer, I came outside one day to find him standing in a bed of fire ants, showing no sign of pain, even though they covered his body with their stings. And most of all, when I lay down at night, I’m not afraid of what he’ll do while I’m asleep. I’ve also learned that during the Roman Empire, the cult of Asklepios thrived. They worshiped a demon spirit that took the outward form of a large serpent. I don’t know how this relates to my son and I don’t pretend to understand it all, but I’m glad it’s over.

There are lots of stories here, that’s all for now.