Under way

I’m sitting in the Detroit Airport waiting to board flight number two, the long one across the pond to Frankfurt where we’ll connect onward to Minsk. The first flight was uneventful—just a quick hop in the wrong direction away from Europe toward Detroit. Isn’t the airline hub and spoke system interesting? As we have a three hour layover here in Detroit, we made our way to the chapel—excuse me, “Religious Reflection Room,”—to take the opportunity to pray together as a team for the first time today. It was tremendous. Very interesting, also, I might add. Since the room is in the middle of an airport and the airport lies in the middle of the largest concentration of Muslims in the United States, we had several Muslims keeping us company while we prayed. Prayer rugs and the whole bit. When we first got into the room, there was a married couple on their prayer rugs. She was not in a burkha, per se, but had a full head covering and long robe. He was dressed like any other urban black man in sweats. The four sides of the room was clearly marked with compass points, and there was an inlay in the rug pointing eastward (Mecca).

All of that was very intriguing to see, but I was amazed at the spiritual atmosphere in the room. The Muslim couple was in the room when we arrived, and it was extremely difficult for me to focus on the Lord and pray until they left. Wow! I haven’t felt anything like that before. I intended to pray for them, pray that their spiritual chains would be broken and that the bondage of Islam would fall off of them, but I struggled mightily to do so. It left me feeling a bit inadequate, but it was such a good reminder that I am indeed inadequate without Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, now and especially on these trips. The spiritual warfare is intense, but we have been given the power to pierce the clouds of darkness and deliver the word of the Lord. I guess I should have expected that the warfare would start before we even left the U.S.! More to come…