“For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light!” - Ephesians 5:8 AMP

So there’s this netflix show that has a lot of people going crazy. Young people are in love with it, adults block out a whole day to watch the full season, and some parents pray over their children because they think it’s demonic. This show is called, Stranger Things. 

In the first season, there’s this little boy who’s riding home on his bike and sees this creature just standing there. He runs home to find the house empty and, of course, the creature catches up to him and then they both disappear. Weird, right?! So his mom starts freaking out because she can’t find her son and his friends do the same. There was also these scientists, but I call them group of weird people, who were doing all of these experiments on this little girl who could basically kill people with her mind and they also had some type of weird portal that would go to where the creatures stay. What makes it even more weird, the creatures’ dimension looked exactly like their dimension, but it was dark and scary with no life or light. They called it the Upside Down. Meanwhile, the mother keeps getting these strange feelings that her son is in the house still, which he was, and he was trying to communicate to her from the Upside Down. The scientist didn’t want anyone to know about the Upside Down or their experiments, so they faked the missing boy’s death. The mother knew it wasn’t her son though and so did one of his friends. They fought to find him and little did they know that he was with them, but he was just stuck in this dark place with no idea how to get out. They eventually find a way into the Upside Down and saved him, but he was never the same.

In the 2nd season this same little boy is trying to get back to his life, but he can never shake the nightmares or the feelings that he’s back in the Upside Down. He would be wide awake and then all of a sudden he would be back in the Upside Down and see this huge dark shadow coming after him. He thought it was just a dream so one day he faced it and told it to leave him alone, but some the darkness took over his entire body. He became the very thing that he was running away from. There were parts in the show where he would say what the darkness inside of him liked and didnt like and it would make the little boy sick when they would give him something that the monster inside couldn’t take. Heat was one of those things. At the end of the show they found out that they can’t hurt the darkness inside of him without hurting him. That made them realize that they had to treat it like a virus, which means they needed to give him things that would force the virus out of him instead of making the virus comfortable. They cut on all of the heaters and put it right one the little boy until it forced the darkness to come out and when it did, they had him back.

Now I know that seemed like a lot, but let me give you my take on it. Whoever created that storyline has experienced depression at its finest. When I’m battling the darkness, I can be in a room filled with people during the day but I just feel cold, lonely, and there’s no light around me. In this dark place, I see no way to get out and it seems as if all my demons are coming after me at once and I can never fight them or find a way back to the light. When I get this way, I feed the darkness so it can get comfortable because when it’s comfortable, I have no reason to fight. I feed it with sex, food, porn, mean words, alcohol, everything that I decided to remove from my life a long time ago. One would say, then don’t feed it, but once it consumes you, everything you do to hurt it, hurts you. You can’t shake it on your own and you don’t feel strong enough to even fight it, and that’s why what they did at the end of the show is what gave me hope. A group of people that loved that little boy fought to let him know that he wasn’t alone in this fight. Through this fight, I’ve had multiple people fighting with me and reminding me that even though it doesn’t feel like it, we already won. Victory belongs to the one who sacrificed his life for moments like this. Moments when I see no reason to live, moments when the enemy tells me that I’m alone, moments when everything around me looks lifeless and dead. God gave the enemy permission to try and defeat me because he still doesn’t realize that he lost a long time ago and the “L” was too great for him to get up and redeem himself. Pastor mentioned last Sunday how upset he was that he paid $50 to see Mike Tyson fight and he knocked the guy out within seconds of the first round. How I see it is that the guy could shake off that “L” and continue to fight others but what he doesn’t realize is that he got knocked out by the greatest! Once you got defeated by him, you lost the opportunity to walk around and scare the rest of us into thinking that you could ever defeat anybody else you step into the ring with. Jesus won it all just by dying on a cross and no matter how many times the enemy swings, he’ll never be strong enough to knock me out! Knowing this, is the first step to deliverance!

There are so many people struggling with depression, and at times the enemy can convince us that this is it. Im asking that if you know or have a loved one that struggles with this, be that light for them, be that reminder. It’s not easy to go at it alone, but when you have a team of believers fighting to get you out of that dark place, it reminds you of the love of Christ! Strange things happen when we get trapped in our minds, but it gets even more strange and unbelievable when the enemy attempts to come in like a flood BUT the Spirit of the Lord lifts up a standard against him! WE, as BELIEVERS are apart of that standard and we can’t continue to let him come for one of our own. It’s time to remind the devil of the “L” he took that day on calvary!

“Father God, right now i ask that you take over your children that might get lost in the darkness and that may feel that this battle is too difficult. Remind them that it’s only difficult when we face the enemy without the full armor of You so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes! Give them strength to stand firm with the belt of truth buckled around their waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, with their feet fitted with readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, and the courage to take up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is YOUR word, God. Love on us and remind us all that with you, nothing can stop us! Forgive us for anything that we have said, thought, or done that is not pleasing in your sight. In your son Jesus’ name we pray and ask, Amen!”

By: TaNia Moore