My Banner of Freedom

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge Hosea 4:6

Dedicated to the ones whose faces were on the floor before the Lord and whose hands went up to heaven to fight for me in the spirit.

As you probably guessed, a lot of things happened over the course of 9 months. The Race was full of growing in my knowledge of the Lord, character development, hands on experience in the Kingdom. One thing I remember going into this Race was my fire. I was so on fire for the Lord and for people to know Him that I didn’t even stop to think what the Lord wanted to give me. I thought about what I would lose, the things that would fall away, but I didn’t think about what I would receive. The one thing that the Lord had been eager to give me was more freedom. More than I ever thought could happen. I learned that freedom never ends. There’s always more.

I was getting pretty nervous about writing this blog. It’s not something that people talk about in church but someone’s voice needs be stripped of cowardliness and be moved to sound. I feel the Lord’s call for my voice to be one of those.

Unblind the Minds

People come in on Sunday mornings to worship the Lord with community, and they sit down to hear the pastor preach a message and then they leave, going on about their day. There are many different types of people in that building. Some people in those congregations aren’t saved and the Lord is tending to their hearts, others are saved and their eyes aren’t open to the deep intimacy that’s available through the Blood, and others in that room have a relationship with the Lord and yet they don’t know they need deliverance. Yes. I’m talking about the Church. Deliverance isn’t just for the unsaved souls on the street, but for the Church. The Lord wants a clean and spotless bride. The Lord aches to bring freedom to the captives….and I was a captive for a very long time, and didn’t even know.

This is the story of how the Lord set this captive free.

I’m trusting the Lord will deliver this message with such divine timeliness. May my words be anointed over the ears that hear this and the eyes that see. “Whoever has ears let them hear and whoever has eyes let them see.”

The Beginning

A couple of months before the Race even started I had this dream of me in my room. My room has been painted a few times now but in this dream it was the first color I’ve ever painted it, as if we just moved in…. 14 years ago. Besides the color of the walls, nothing was in my room except for me and 7 demons disguised as humans. In this dream I knew they were demons, it was as if I were a spy. The first scene of the dream the demons were planning to kill. I remember it was night time, and through the window I saw snow on the ground. It was winter. While they went out to murder, the three other demons and I went to the closet and talked. I didn’t hear anything about what they said, all I know is that they talked a lot, and all their words were tainted with death and decay. They were liars. The four demons came back and opened my closet door  covered in blood. “Your turn” they said. The scene ends and the next starts with all of us standing in the middle of my room, they were paired up with one another bragging about which demon they were from. “Yeah I’m Son of _____, who are you from?” they would say. It got to me and I was paired up with one of them. They all stared and waited for my reply. “I am Jesus’ daughter.” Their faces shocked, scared. They didn’t move until they finally wanted to reveal what was underneath. Their human skin melted and revealed the pitch black skin underneath. They revealed their true selves, they were demons.

I woke up and my first thoughts were “the name Jesus is powerful and by me telling them my identity, they got scared! That’s pretty sick!” But that’s not all the Lord was telling me. He was telling me that I had 7 evil spirits attached to me.

Training Camp

In training camp I went through a few experiences where I was either leading our squad in worship, giving people words from the Lord or telling a group of people something that was in the Bible, something scriptural. After I obeyed the Lord in what I felt like He was telling me to say or do. I would get this rushing waves of thoughts “Shut up, Don’t ever say that again. Don’t do that. Just be quiet. You’re so stupid. No one cares what you have to say.” Before I met the Lord, my life was quiet. I didn’t have those voices in my head dragging me down because the devil didn’t need to pull me in his direction, I was already walking in it. As we follow the Lord, He pulls us into more sanctification, more refinement, so all the other things that aren’t of the Lord start to be revealed in the light. We need to be prepared to let them go and watch them fall away, allow the Lord to deliver us. This is when the enemy gets loud and comes in with lies so well twisted they sound like the truth.

But I’ve been dealing with that since right around the time of YWAM (2022), right when I was getting into ministry, finding the treasures of Christ.

It was revealed to me just how much it affected me then. My thoughts were “I guess it’s just the way I am, the way it will always be for me.” Overwhelming anxiety would come over me, I couldn’t control the thoughts, it was uncomfortable. I couldn’t escape. I felt so trapped and just sat and took it, trying to feed my soul truth. “God loves me, He’s proud of me, I obeyed what I think He was saying.” Any truth that I would search for in those chaotic moments I would say to myself. It happened so much all the time where I would just ball up and hold my head and cried as I prayed to the Lord. So as I was saying, it happened a few times in training camp. One time I couldn’t take it anymore and I went to one of the male leaders, Ethan Johnston. First thing you should know about it him is that he’s awesome. The rest of what you should know: the Lord has given him quite a bit of authority in the kingdom of Heaven!! And I knew I needed to go up to him for some reason and say something, unsure of what would come up out of my mouth, I walked up to him full of anxiety, crying, telling him what was going on in my head. He would calm me down with some breathing exercises, talk to me, and pray for me. He said “Lexi, I think you need deliverance.” Unsure of what that really looked like for me, I was in the mindset of like “okay I don’t really fully understand was that means, but if the Lord wants it for me then I want it.”In the bible it talks about demons being casted out and the spiritual realm, stuff like that. People talking about this stuff never bothered me, scared me or made me uncomfortable, I was so interested. I walked away and tried to get my mind off of the harsh emotions I just went through. I would say this happened about 3 more times. Each time Ethan would say “I keep hearing the word deliverance for you.” We talked about it some more. Went to one of my mentors, Ari. Things you need to know about her: she’s a beautiful strong woman of God who hears from the Lord!! One of the things I love about her is her holy anger towards the enemy. I talked with her about what I was experiencing and what Ethan had told me. I was a hot mess. She starts laughing at the enemy “He’s a little punk trying to hide himself!” And I kept telling her “what if it’s just me?”

That’s it.

That’s what got me.

“What if it’s just me?”

The lie of the century. “It’s just me.” The lie that held me in bondage for so long. I lived like this for so LONG that I didn’t even know what it was like to be without the things I was experiencing- without them.

Cambodia/ Thailand

A month later, I am in Cambodia. I end up talking to a few more leaders, getting wisdom and insight, and I don’t hear anything else about deliverance. 2 months go by and I’m in Thailand now, and the Lord is clearly speaking about “clean”. He used the book “Hind’s feet on High Places” by Hannah Hurnard to speak to me about how He’s taking me up to the first High Places of the mountains out of thousands. “‘It is quite true that the way up to the High Places is both difficult and dangerous,’ said the Shepherd. ‘It has to be, so that nothing which is an enemy of Love can make the ascent and invade the Kingdom. Nothing blemished or in any way imperfect is allowed there… perfect love casteth out fear and everything that torments’” (excerpt from Hinds' Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard). I wrote my own blog about the way He spoke to me during this season. I literally felt the intensity of the climb. In Thailand, we went 4 hours away to go to a village. Our hosts had warned us about the spiritual warfare there so as two teams (Israel and Yada), we did a prayer burn. We had set times for two people per hour praying for our time in this village for half of the day. The drive was long, windy, and cold, but beautiful. We were in the mountains of Thailand, looking at amazing views of the stars. As we arrived, we unloaded our stuff. It was around 10 PM. I had experienced some spiritual things that aren’t very crystal clear to this day, but I ended up manifesting. Now, the word manifesting might seem strange or scary to you, but it’s not. Manifesting in the context of deliverance can refer to the manifest presence of God or the manifest presence of demons. 3 1/2 hours later I had been delivered from 3 of them.

For a demon to have a stronghold on you, you can have many things like unforgiveness, anger/ bitterness towards someone, sin you need to repent for, generational curses that are passed down to you, ungodly beliefs, soul ties, pockets of trauma. Things like these make them stay. Scripture says “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” The spiritual realm is more real than the physical and the enemy wants to steal from you, kill you, and destroy you. He goes around looking for things to attach to, which is called a stronghold. AND JESUS CAN SAVE YOU FROM ALL OF THIS!!

Two days later, I end up manifesting again. Another 3 1/2 hours later I was delivered from another evil spirit. This was the moment that the Lord had brought to my memory of the dream of me and the 7 demons. The Lord gave me revelation of what the dream really meant.

The day after my deliverance, Ethan asked me if I knew how many were left. The Lord gave me this image of three bricks stacked as one. And so I said “one or three, but not two.”

Three bricks stacked as one

They were trying to exalt themselves before the Lord.

But it must be brought low.

Everything must be brought low before the Lord.

South Africa

I entered into South Africa with a prophetic word of healing from Ari and what the Lord wanted to do in my heart. But I knew now that I was waiting on another deliverance from the Lord. Will it happen here? I thought. This was a very different and challenging country. Very different from the rest. Ministry was awkward with how inconsistent it was, spiritual warfare was different, people, language.

In this country I felt like the Lord was silent. Had no idea what He was doing, but I knew I was hurting in my heart. The Lord had shown me wounds of my past He wanted to heal and the pain was on my mind most of the time. I was continuously pressing into the Lord and seeking His face. The Lord didn’t show up how I expected Him to, but He did. He showed me His faithfulness to heal the wound of abandonment. His unfailing love endured. It was a long and difficult two months of me trying to connect the dots myself, trying to quicken the healing process, figure out when He was going to come in as deliver again, and getting exhausted from doing so in my own strength and trying to take control. But let me tell you His timing was so divine!!! He’s so orderly. He knows what He’s doing! He had to heal more of my heart before He could give me the freedom. I had to be able to steward and hold that. My cup was not yet available to do so. He made room for the blessing of freedom.

Guatemala

I entered into Guatemala better off than when I arrived in South Africa. The Lord’s love had mended my heart a lot and was ready to take on what the Lord had for me next. At this point I had kinda let go of all the deliverance stuff and simply was trusting the Lord in His timing. He would be the one to bring it to my attention and I didn’t have to go and search for it.

About the third week of Guatemala, our squad hosted a House Church and Ethan Johnston was preaching. He gave a message about baptism of the Holy Spirit. Like I said before, the Lord has lead him in a lot of spiritual authority and every spirit I had hated what he was talking about. Everything he was saying was from scripture and the enemy hated it. The presence of the Lord was so strong in that room and I began to manifest again. “For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” The demons had to flee!! This time during my deliverance session, two more came out in an hour. After this I felt the heaviness in my chest go and this abundance of lightness came. I could literally physically breathe so much better. So much joy came, I WAS SO LIGHT IT FELT LIKE I COULD JUMP HIGHER!!

A week goes by and the Lord is speaking to some leaders, telling them to fast to prepare for the deliverance. They knew the Lord was about to present the next opportunity for the deliverance.

I had just recently lead my squad, alongside others, into worship one Sunday morning for House Church. The enemy HATED that. I began manifesting afterwards but had no idea. Two days pass and I still haven’t even realized it yet. Looking back on it now, yes I understood. All the signs were there. Hatred towards everyone walking in the Spirit, anger towards God, bitterness, irritability, no patience, basically everything opposite of the fruits of the Spirit.

One night, everyone who was around me at that time realized what was happening and told the leaders. While the leaders prayed and asked the Lord if it was time and how the Lord wanted them to go about it, the people who were around me that night started speaking scripture over me. As this was happening, the Lord slowly gathered the whole squad together little by little to stand out of the door of the room I was in. They all sang and worshipped the Lord for about 4 hours straight and against their will, they had to stop and go to bed in order to go to ministry the next day.

Let me tell you the demon that was manifesting hated that worship. It hated God and hated me and wanted to kill me, it wanted to kill everyone who was singing those praises and praying for me. Eight hours of leaders rebuking, communicating with the Lord, me repenting for my sins, and fighting for my life. The verse of that night was “The joy of the Lord is my strength.” They were able to stand in that room for eight hours because they relied on the joy of the Lord. I received a LOT of freedom that night, but not all of it. All the leaders including myself were confused. Why didn’t He finish it? So, they discussed what they were discerning from the Lord, what might be the hindrance to my freedom. Days later the Lord reveals to me why He didn’t finish it: the freedom that was coming was too much for me to handle. He was withholding a memory, but He would reveal it to me when it was time. He cared about me so much and wanted me to steward my freedom and not get tripped up on it and stumble. He wanted my feet placed on solid ground. A solid foundation. He was watching out for me! But not only was I receiving freedom, other people on my squad were, and people were receiving the gift of tongues and other gifts of the Holy Spirit!!

During this long night, the Lord stirred the heart of one of my teammates to write a poem of the things the Lord was doing around her.

WORDS OF FREEDOM

A poem by Maddie Lynch

the words of our lips

read the music sheets of heaven

spoken truth that spills colors into sinking deep seas that no man could ever touch if they wanted to

how could we ever fathom the depths yet talk to the one who holds them?

still yourself to take a listen

of the chains echoing inside heart’s prisons

of the battles being fought with words for swords, the most powerful weapon chosen

a seeking redeeming cry in the open

oh how quick the darkness runs at that sound

our syllables paint the floors of this house

with life, a holy color

among the ground with which we walk

lie the love letters to those who suffer

and look at the door!

it’ll tell you too

read plastered words of His holy truth

painted boldly through the doorstop and knobs

scripts from the mouth of a Holy God