The Shadowy Woman
She was not alone. Lakshmi lifted her head from her prayers and saw the black, shadowy form of a woman standing by the door just as it had for the last few weeks. She stood up and the woman was gone.
Lakshmi tried to go on with her day, but the shadowy figure would not leave her thoughts. Her hands trembled as she did her household chores, and she often found herself looking toward the door, only to find nothing there. It was only when she knelt to pray, it seemed, that the figure appeared.
When her Sunday church pastor and his wife came to visit her, she told them the problems she had been having.
“Demons are here in this house,” the pastor said. “You need to leave this house immediately and go live somewhere else.”
She tried to tell him that she could not leave; she had nowhere else to go. The pastor, however, was unsympathetic.
“You need to leave this house immediately and go live somewhere else”
“We will not come to this house hereafter, because it is the house of devils,” he told her.
Lakshmi's friends and fellow church members stopped coming to her house to pray, and as time went on, she became more discouraged and more afraid.
One day, however, she heard a knock on the door. Nalini, a JFA Bible Worker in the Erode-Neelagiri Section, had come to pray for Lakshmi and her family. She asked Lakshmi if she had any prayer requests, and Lakshmi told her all that had occurred over the last few weeks.
Instead of cowering in fear, like others had done, Nalini pulled out her Bible and read to her a portion of Psalms 91 and Isaiah 41:10: “Fear not for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”
Immediately Lakshmi’s fear was gone.
Nalini gave Lakshmi a Bible study about the fall of Lucifer and the Great Controversy between God and Satan. She told Lakshmi to resist the devil and he would flee from her. Lakshmi was so grateful that Nalini cared about her and showed her how to trust in God.
“Now I fear no more,” Lakshmi said. “I am so happy. The Lord has made a hedge about me and my house. I can boldly say Psalms 23:4, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”