Use Your Power

“If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done good to you.” Joshua 24:20, NASB.

He is a follower of Jesus now, but connections to the occult practices of his Javanese family still pulled at Josh*. As a 12-year-old Josh’s grandparents gave him special powers in an occult ceremony. Josh was given the power to foresee the future. Since the occult ceremony he started seeing spirits, and the spirits did tell him things.

Josh desperately wanted to just follow Jesus, but his family keeps pressuring him to use his power to consult the spirits for them on different matters. Josh’s mother was from a Roman Catholic background, and his father left them when Josh was 3-years-old. She later remarried a Muslim man and had other children with him.

When Josh talked to her about wanting to follow Jesus she told him, “If you shame your father (meaning the man she is currently married to) I’ll never forgive you.”

Josh knows that as a follower of Jesus he needs to forsake idols such as the amulet, but the pressure from his family is hard to ignore. For a young believer like Josh these pressures are intense. While Josh has not turned from following Jesus, many other young people in his situation have fallen away. Everything in their culture pulls them back into the darkness.

*Names changed for security reasons

Pray that:

Josh will stand firm in his commitment to follow Jesus, and will forsake his ties to former occult involvements.

God will use Josh’s testimony and courage to convict and save his entire family.

Pacific Rim is a region of the International Mission Board, SBC.