Battle in the Bedroom
My bedroom has been a battlefield for the last year in more ways than one. I have felt the strongest attacks of my life from the enemy in this room. Someone once described the bedroom to me as a room of potential -- that’s valid on so many levels.
I’m not just talking about the marriage bed and the things that married people do when I refer to the battle in the bedroom. The enemy has attacked my marriage in this room, but he has attacked my sleep and my dreams even harder.
I am a dreamer and always have been. I have vivid, meaningful dreams almost every single night. I don’t know many people who dream like me except my best friend. But instead of just being “write-that-down” kind of dreams, mine also tend to be terrifying and demonic. I have had demonic dreams about people that served as a red flag for me to check on them and I have had dreams about strange creatures that I later found out are described in Revelations.
My dreams mean something.
I have also had vibrant dreams about my future daughter and dreams where God has spoken directly to me then woke me up saying, “Write down what you remember.” He has revealed things to me about my heart and about the people around me. He gets me still and starts talking when my guard is down and I am resting.
“When you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.” Proverbs 3:24 (NIV)
And since God cares about our sleep and uses it to show us new things, the enemy tries to attack us in that sweet spot. I have personally felt him try his hardest to weasel his way into my dreams and flood my resting thoughts with terror and trauma.
Some dreams make no sense or they are strange because you ate pizza at midnight -- those aren’t the dreams I’m talking about. I am talking about night terrors that cause you to wake up out of breath, crying, and fearing for your life. Those dreams are not from God. That fear is not from God. He is a God of sweet sleep and peaceful dreams.
God can certainly give you a wake-up call in your dreams, but He will never use fear as a tactic.
I almost never have bad dreams when I sleep away from home. Any time I travel and sleep in a hotel bed, at a friend’s house, or at my parents’ house, I either don’t dream or have a peaceful dream. The enemy has his target on my bed at home because that’s where the most potential is.
My husband and I have felt the attacks in our bed as well. The enemy tried everything in his power to convince us to be intimate before we shared a bed, and now he gives it all he’s got to convince us not to be intimate. We have to pray and fight for that intimacy because God blessed our marriage bed when we said, “I do.”
We were at dinner with friends one night when I mentioned that I felt a very dark spirit in our bedroom. My husband usually brushes it off or says it’s fine, but this time he said, “There is definitely something in there.”
A friend suggested praying over the bedroom and anointing it with oils. I had thought about it before and honestly blew it off. I procrastinate with everything… even my prayers sometimes. I have a feeling I’m not alone on that one.
Prayer is available to me 24/7, yet I far too often treat it as a “do-that-later” task on the to-do list.
My friend and mentor was over one night when I asked her to anoint the bedroom for us. She is a prayer warrior like no other, and she took some Young Living essential oils (Joy oil to be exact) and prayed the paint off the walls. Touching doorways and bedposts, she spoke words of life over every area of our room. She bound up any plans of the enemy and loosed truths from God. She always says, “Whenever you bind something up, you have to loosen something else to replace it.” We have the holy power of God living in us -- we have to start using it.
“Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Matthew 18:18 (ESV)
Since she prayed over our bedroom, I have noticed a supernatural difference in everything that goes on in that room. My dreams have been different and my reality with my husband has been different.
The key is to pray without ceasing. (1 Thessalonians. 5:17) Seriously. The Bible doesn’t say it just for fun -- God breathed the command because it works. I noticed the enemy trying to crawl back into my bedroom when I stop asking God to protect it.
Not tonight Satan. You can’t have my sleep. You can’t have my sex. You can’t have my serenity.
God cares about our rest. He cares about our intimacy. He cares out our peace.
I’ll continue to fight the battle in my bedroom and I encourage you to do the same. Kingdom things take place in the bedrooms of God’s people, so let’s put on our armor, sealed in prayer, and go to war.