I’ll never forget a story I heard from two older veterans of D-Day describing the invasion at Normandy. One was a foot soldier who was landing and attempting to take the beach. He was under intense fire and saw his comrades falling all around him. He said that, from his perspective, there was no way the allies could win.
The other was a pilot providing air support. From above, he could see how many allied troops there were and how the Germans would soon be overwhelmed by their sheer force. He said that from his vantage point, there was no way they could lose.
I wonder how often people give up right before their victory would have come. I wonder how many times people fail to hold on, don’t make that necessary push, aren’t willing to pay the price to get to the other side, and never know that the thing they’ve been fighting for was within their grasp.
I don’t know if it really is darkest just before dawn, but I do know that many times, the hardest resistance comes right at the very end. It’s like a defense in football who is backed up against their own goal line. They know that if they don’t hold the line here, they’ll give up a score. How sad it would be if the offense didn’t know that they only needed to gain one or two more yards and they would have a touchdown. Unfortunately, I think that’s exactly what happens to us sometimes, when we fail to break through.
I know that some of you reading this don’t believe in God, much less angels and demons, but I can assure you they are all real, and as much as I want to be able to give you good advice and inspire you in your own relationships, I have to tell you the truth. The truth is that God saved our marriage, and there was a spiritual war that went on throughout this entire ordeal that had to be won in order for us to be where we are today.
My wife had fallen under the power of darkness and couldn’t break free. Because of the evil forces that had overtaken her (I’m talking about spirits here, for those of you unfamiliar with these things), she had allowed herself to begin to live in a way that was contrary to who she really was. Her thoughts had become confused, her reasoning flawed, and her actions contradictory to what she really wanted. What she wanted was for us to be in love again and things to be right. What she was doing was trying to close the door on that and drive me away for good. It’s a form of self-destruction that people often fall into when they don’t believe they can actually get the thing they truly want.
God began to speak to me very specifically in prayer around the time that my wife told me she had begged Him to make things work between us and that they weren’t. He began to give me exact words to say to her. It was literally that clear and specific. He would dictate to me exactly what I was to go to her and say. He also told me that she would respond badly, but to say it anyway – that she needed to hear the words, and that me saying them would have an effect on her that I would only see later.
I was afraid of being hurt more than I already had been, but I was well beyond the point of no return by then. I also knew that she was like a prisoner of war that had been taken captive by the enemy, and even though she was blind to it, she needed me to come and rescue her. In the spirit realm, I led a mission to free her from her captors. In the physical realm, I went to her apartment and delivered the message. As God had told me she would, she rejected my words and told me she didn’t love me.
I didn’t know what she would do from there, or how long it would be before the work was done. I just knew that I wouldn’t give up while there was still hope, and that hope came from God, not from any signs from her that she was returning to me. I resolved that whatever she did from that point, I would continue to fight the spiritual war on her behalf and show her love when I had the opportunity. Even though I was the foot soldier in this story, God had the view from the air, and he knew it would soon be over.
The Restoration Tour 