Every Knee Will Bow

My dear readers, 

Before I get into this letter to you, I must admit, I have been slacking on my updates for you in this journey. With the Race slowly but surely creeping up on all of the Gap Year racers, it brings before it responsibilities and deadlines; thank you letters, fundraising, going away parties for friends going off to college, keeping up with other racers, and every bit of family time we can squish into these remaining eight days before launch, consume every bit of our time. So, thank you for being patient with me.

If I’m being honest, this blog post has been in the making since June. For the Lord, I’m sure it’s been in the making since the beginning. On June 16th, all of the Gap Year racers headed out to Gainesville, Georgia for World Race “Boot Camp,” four days of meeting and getting acclimated to one another in a “pressure-cooker” environment of constant worship. Laughter and joy were ever potent but so was discomfort. I have never had to rely on the Lord more in my life. We started out with 31 racers on our squad and now there are 28. While the Lord was preparing most of us to go, He was also preparing some of us not to. We had to sleep in tents. We also gave up our phones, along with any outside contact to our parents unless there were to be an absolute emergency. Needless to say, I think we were much more comfortable with the aspect of no phones than our parents were. To be in an environment where the answer to these situations is always prayer, is something we all need greatly. 

Gap G. My warriors of prayer. 

On June 20th, my squad and I were closer than I’ve ever really been to anyone in my life. Don’t get me wrong, my family and my people at home here are amazing, and I have wonderfully close relationships that I wouldn’t trade for the world. But man. Christian to christian, do you ever feel like everyone in your life is playing a different game than you? I cannot even begin to explain the depth of this feeling when I got back. I have so many strong christians in my family, and each of them helped me through the process of coming back to the mundane and I am forever grateful. But after saying ‘yes’ to giving EVERYTHING to God (trying my very best to) in such an environment as this one, it was difficult to come back to such a maximalistic culture. One which I am just as guilty of contributing to at times as the next person. 

When my squad and I got to ATL, we each brought with us the intention of seeing as many of each other off as we could. And I mean intention with a capital ‘I.’ My girl Kori Jane and I literally ran across the airport in order to get to Jack, another person on our squad, before he had to board his plane. Then we met up with a group of girls from our squad and sort of debriefed a little bit while waiting for our flights. A huge topic of conversation during this hour was spiritual warfare. This is where things begin to loop back around.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with spiritual warfare, intervarsity.org defines it as: “The leveraging of everything that God promises against everything that opposes God’s purposes.”

In my own words, spiritual warfare is essentially the battle between pure and impure spirits. It affects every single one of us every day of our lives. Temptation is the most common example that I know of. Seeing demons or “monsters” of some sort during sleep paralysis is another. We also see in the Bible, that Mary Magdalene had seven different demons inside of her. In just one encounter with Jesus, He brought them out of her. She was redeemed. Saved. Have you ever felt unusually scared for seemingly no reason at all? Ever gotten an awful feeling, especially when you’re doing something Spiritual and stepping out of your comfort zone with it? 

The enemy tries, with everything he has, to sever our relationship with the Lord. He does this by encouraging sin, fear, and especially pride. The fundamentality of the notion that he ever could separate us from the Father, is a lie. We see proof of this in Romans chapter eight, verses 38 and 39 (NIV): “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That is the Truth.

Something my squad and I are experiencing is the devil’s frustration. Multiple girls within that group at the airport, mentioned unexplained turmoil, fear, doubts, and thoughts at a deafening decibel in their heads that couldn’t have possibly belonged to them. These thoughts came to them after they began to feel the Spirit of the Lord during worship and devotionals and even during prayer. It happened to myself as well. It was as if we couldn’t completely focus on anything we were doing, as if something were constantly trying to divert our attention. 

This portion of the conversation is when the lovely Sarah Piepenburg told us her heart had been drawn to Ephesians. Man. What a book Ephesians is. 

The apostle Paul teaches us in Ephesians 6, what it means to “Put on the full armor of God.” 

Ephesians 6:10-18 (NIV) says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.”

This passage is quite literally a life saver. Like every bit of the Word, it is refreshing and wise and perfect and peaceful. It has me quite literally sleeping with my Bible some nights because I get so scared at times. But man, it makes my fear disappear. I don’t think anyone but the Lord can fully express how lost we all are without the Bible.

Around the beginning of June, I began waking up almost every single night at about 3:30 am from nightmares. Not the same nightmare every single time, but always a nightmare. Even if the dream isn’t particularly scary, there will be a debilitating sort of fear that sinks in throughout the dream that follows me into my consciousness. Some nights I wake up on the edge of sleep paralysis, others I wake up simply feeling paralyzed with fear. A fear I can neither name nor can I seem to discover the source of in the moment. A strategy I have had to learn and put into practice is simply speaking the name of Jesus. Even just thinking of the name ‘Jesus.’ It sends the enemy literally fleeing. The demons cannot bear to hear it, for they know their place. They can’t even touch you, because guess Who they answer to? 

Every knee will bow before the name of the Lord.

Philippians chapter 2, verses 9 through 11 (KJV) state:

“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 

And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Don’t mind me just switching up versions of scripture on you, sometimes it just sounds cooler in the King James Version. 

Back to the point. Every knee will bow before the name of our Messiah. Jesus. His name is all that needs to be said. Keep in mind it may not always have the immediate effect of taking away all anxiety, but if you keep your faith in that name, it will. It takes fear out of dreams for me, and out of waking life. Don’t be afraid to pray bold and dangerous prayers. Dangerous meaning boldly faithful. Ask Him to do something immediately, and pair it with the faith that He can. He has His own unique and perfect will. But the Lord also answers His people always, even in time of need. And if He doesn’t perform a miracle before your eyes in an instant, He is still irrevocably good. 

There is another reality going on that we cannot see. Wars waging that we cannot fathom and a Kingdom we have yet to experience the fullness of. He calls for obedience with this knowledge. 

Even your own knee will bow.

With love, 

Landry