[ authority ]

    A lady waves a flier in my face, speaking quickly in Mandarin Chinese. Several others are holding newspapers and fliers in their hands and, as we walk by, take turns waving them in our faces. The sidewalk is lined with beggars, nearly all of them handicapped. Some severely so. Each of them looks into my eyes, hopeful for a chance at money. Probably even more hopeful seeing the color of my skin, since all white people are rich to them.

   I do my best to just keep smiling at each of them, acknowledging them as humans and not as sidewalk ornaments as many people do.

   People are milling by in every direction, creating confusion to a sense of common destination. Everyone gives us a curious glance as they walk past. White people are scarce here. Vendors in their stalls are furiously bargaining for their best price. Stalls line the sidewalk, directly across from the beggars.


   We step through the gates and I immediately felt more acutely the heaviness of the weight that had been growing with each step towards the temple.

   My eyes skitter around, taking everything in. From the swastika symbol on a pillar to my left, to the statues of the turtles, to the beautiful ponds with floating lilies on my right, to the masses of people lounging and strolling around.

   Everything I'd expected to see and experience faded away.

   We walked further into the temple grounds toward the heart of it all.

   With each step, the heaviness thickened in the air. And in response, I could feel my spirit becoming more and more alive and alert with what was going on around me.

   Like I was preparing for a fight.

   I stood in front of the actual temple entrance. Chinese from all over China had come to give their offerings to the gods and statues in this place -- one of the larges temples in all of China. People were buying and lighting incense sticks, and bowing down with a very specific style.

   The air was so thick with the smell of incense, it was sickening to me. More because of what it symbolized than the smell itself.

   The whole thing was unreal. It's one thing to know and hear about things like this going on -- and an entirely different thing to experience it. I felt like I was walking through the Old Testament.

   I stepped through the entrance of the temple and began walking slowly around looking at each of the statues of the gods each standing behind the glass on their thrones. Their angry, black metal eyes gleamed back at me, their smiles and snarls gloating as they towered over those who looked upon them.

   I glanced over to see a father with his little 4 or 5 year old son, moving from statue to statue. My heart instantly cringes and I have to stifle the emotion that quickly arises. The little boy pauses in front of each one to kneel on a cushion and bow to the snarling metal god.

     Does he even know what he's doing? Does he care? Does he believe these gods are real and have some kind of power over him and his life? Does he think bowing to them would make a difference? What effect would this have on his life?

   What were the thoughts going through the heads of any of these people?

  
  

   My head was reeling with everything I was taking in. My heart was crying out in such despair, and all I could feel was deep, deep grief.

  The Oreo cookie and ice tea offerings brought a slight sense of wry humor in the situation.

   Thoughts were racing through my mind at a ridiculous pace. How much of a difference were our prayers and His presence with us making in this place of pagan worship? Especially when put up against the vast numbers of people coming everyday to recharge and energize this evil power?

   My mind kept these thoughts on repeat the rest of the day after we left the place.

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   A few days later, we returned -- but this time with an agenda rather than for site-seeing. The rest of our team had decided to trek up the mountain behind the temple and pray over the city from above. A couple of other girls and I decided to stay below and do some praying and warfare of our own.

   This time I was determined to go with an attitude of war. To use, with full knowledge, the authority I know I had in Christ. And to step forward fearlessly.

    Again we passed the Beggar Street, as we'd named it, passed the vendors, and moved into the temple grounds. This time, the amount of people had seemingly doubled in comparison to the last time.

   The other group had already begun their trek to the top before we'd arrived, so we made our way around inside the temple again.

   We were praying in tongues constantly the entire time. We took a little break, sitting down outside of the largest shrine at the top of the temple area, and just talked about what was going on and other random topics that came up about prayer and warfare. Eventually we decided to head back.

   Before we left the temple area though, one of the girls said she felt like we should stand in the center of a big square area and just pray. And so we did, with our eyes open, calmly yet firmly, as if we were merely holding a conversation with one another. We just stated clearly and with authority that satan had no authority or power and prayed against the strongholds in the place and over the people.

   And with that, we walked out of the place, leaving me with the feeling of a fight won.

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   We met as a team later to debrief the day and talk about our experiences with the hike and the temple.

   One of the women remarked that as they had walked through the temple grounds in the beginning on the way up the mountain, the atmosphere had felt so thick that it was oppressive and felt she had to swim through it. This was before we came.

   But, she continued, when they came back down again from the mountain and through the grounds, the atmosphere had cleared up. This was after we'd prayed and left.

   And it hit me then that, oh my goodness, we had made a difference. Our prayer and us being there and God's presence with us made an impact. We changed something. We caused a shift.

   By prayer and by the things we spoke.

   I used to have doubts about prayer and about the power, or rather, the lack of power behind it.

   Not anymore. Since then, I've seen and experienced far too much to still believe that. I know it to be true that the things we pray and speak have such a strength to change the way things are into the way things should be.

   That being said, it's so, so imperative that we know the fullness of the authority we hold in Him. A kind of authority that has already won every battle, every skirmish; the kind that already knows the ending to the story.

   With this, what do we have to fear?

   "If God is for us, who can be against us?" -- Romans 8.31.