The following testimony of God’s existence is a story of real-life events which confirmed my belief beyond a shadow of a doubt
that God in the name of Jesus Christ exists and responds to prayer, lightly adapted for context from The Gospel of Joy.
The events occurred during a emotionally tumultuous and chaotic period of my early 20’s
when I was anti-church and had no desire to participate in anything religious
because of all the negative baggage I was still carrying from childhood
(not that I realized that was the reason why I was dead set against it all at the time).
March 2001, in the Portland Oregon Area
Cold spots.
Tony’s new church friends called him after leaving our housewarming party and warned that they felt multiple cold spots in our rental home. They told him that they wanted to come back with more people from the church to pray throughout the house and cleanse the rooms of the unholy spirits and evil that were present.
Spirits? Ghosts? Evil? In the house?
Spirits? Ghosts? Evil? In the house?
I panicked and told my boyfriend of more than 3 years, Tony, that his church friends could come rid the house of whatever was in it, but I did not want to be there while it was done. Not only was I uncomfortable with the charismatic and Pentecostal church he was attending, at that time in my life I was against anything to do with church and religion and definitely anti-“spiritual warfare.” Growing up in a traditional Lutheran church, there was never any talk of “speaking in tongues,” “visions,” and certainly not of “cold spots.” This was all entirely new, and I wanted nothing to do with any of it.
Each day over three days, a group of people from the church he attended spent hours praying in each room of the house. My head spun when Tony and his church friends shared the stories after completing the spiritual warfare. There were angels, demons, visions, and revelations. There was even a march of the entire group around the property seven times like in the Bible story about the Jericho walls in the Old Testament.
But, as they recounted their stories about the final room they prayed over my jaw dropped in disbelief of what I was hearing. It was the coat closet in the living room, the location of where the crawlspace was for under the house.
The vision that came upon one of the elders was that there was a huge-headed snake through the crawlspace and underneath the home. In the vision, he saw God as the Lion of Judah slay the huge-headed snake and was victorious. When the elder received this vision, they had all agreed the house was clean.
Reeling from all I heard, I was incredulous.
How was it even possible? It could not be real.
I did not see any of it, did not feel any of it.
After they’d all left on the third day, Tony and I walked out of the house, and he stopped and smiled. While gazing towards the end of the driveway, his smile turned into a large grin, and he exclaimed, “That’s too cool. Look!”
Squinting towards the end of the driveway, I did not see anything. I raised my eyebrow and turned to him, asking, “What?”
“The Lion of Judah,” Tony pointed, “He’s sitting there at the end of the driveway protecting our house now.”
I gazed at the end of the driveway again. I blinked, then blinked again.
Nope, still did not see anything as inner apprehension and turmoil grew within me.
Was this real? Was this the God that I’d believed in since I was a little girl?
Later that day, troubled with everything they’d “seen” and told me about, I cried out to God in prayer—for the first time I could ever remember in my life. I begged God to show me that this was real and He was still the God I’d always believed in.
I cried out to God in prayer—for the first time I could ever remember in my life.
I begged God to show me that this was real
and He was still the God I’d always believed in.
A few days later cable company technicians arrived at the rental house to do an installation and asked where the access to under the house was located. I showed him to the coat closet.
Starting to work, one of the men went around to the outside of the house and the other tech came inside and opened the access cover and went down into the crawlspace to run the cable.
Moments later, he scrambled back up into the living room and shut the access cover. I looked over at him from where I was sitting and noticed that his face looked drained of all color.
His voice shaking, he asked me, “Have you guys ever had an exterminator out here?”
I told him no, that we had just recently moved in.
He nodded and continued, “There’s… there’s a really big snake head down there and… and lots of snakeskin.”
He did not wait for an answer, turned, and rushed out the front door. I heard him meet up with his partner out front where he relayed the story again, “Dude, I’m not going back down there. There’s a HUGE dead snake down there.”
As soon as I heard him say it a second time the dots connected in my mind. In amazement, I put everything together.
A huge-headed snake? Under the house? That was exactly what Tony and the group from the church said! The Lion of Judah was victorious and slay a huge-headed snake just a few days ago!
Later in the day, Tony came back home and with excitement, I shared the story. He grabbed a flashlight and crawled under the house to see what he could find.
There was nothing under the house. No snakeskin, no snake head, absolutely nothing.
Whatever the cable guy saw was supernatural.
God answered my prayer, God was real. And I believed from that moment onward.
God answered my prayer, God was real.
“The events reminded me of who created the world and whose Word I should place my trust in. It was a turning point for me. As a child, Christianity was drilled into me, and as an adult, I had not yet been able to decide for myself what I believed in.”
(Shannon Marie, Age 23)
For more about The Gospel of Joy, click here, for more about Shannon, click here, to connect, click here, to return to the home page, click here.
