I just recently returned from a Mission Trip with “Mission Floresco” in Guatemala. We helped them with their crops in the morning and then did a retreat in the afternoon. While we were there, the team took periodic prayer walks through this little village called San Nicholas. It is a town located on a little parcel of land along the bank of a large stream that the plantation owners allow their workers to live on. These men make about $3 (American Dollars) a day for working in the pineapple and coffee fields. This past year the land owners gave about 70 acres of land to their workers to grow their own crops, corn and tomatoes. Their simple homes consisted of cinder block walls (if they were lucky), tin roofs, and dirt or concrete floors. They had no fresh running water and did all their bathing and clothes washing in the stream. Most collected wood for cooking their meals.

Our team sensed a demonic stronghold in this town that was oppressing them. While on our prayer walk on the second day, we were asking the Lord to reveal to us this stronghold. After further sensing and discussion with each other, it became acutely clear that there was a spirit of slavery in control of the town.

I prayed and asked the Holy Spirit to reveal to me the modes of slavery that held them bound. It was not what you or I might think of as slavery, like within our country’s history of slave workers. It was much more inconspicuous and hidden. Certainly, they were enslaved by lack of money and poverty, but there was more. We could see all the strife within the town and their families. There were battles between “churches”, or rather the village people and squatters living downstream who don’t have to pay rent.

One afternoon as I was cleaning up after working in the fields, I was sitting in our van and happened to look across the street into a house where the front door was left open. I saw this small un-natural glow shining in a dark corner. As I looked closer, I saw this little television set showing some program in Spanish.  I was surprised and wondered how they managed that. Then I looked above the rooftops along the street and saw this vast web of electric and cable TV lines snaking their way from house to house. I was glad to see that the homes had electricity, but was stunned that many of the homes had cable and TV.

I spent the rest of my trip praying through that discovery and wondering why it captivated me so. I began to see something I could never see here in the states, but was made clear to me here in this town. It had to do with the priority of evil to enslave us and hold us bound. I found it quite revealing that, in Satan’s priority for promotion slavery, cable TV was one of his top priorities.

They didn’t even have clean running water, but they had cable TV. Seventy-five percent of their medical issues have to do with their polluted water and a lack of nourishment. What percentage, do you think, is cable TV as the cause of their spiritual ailments?

What percentage, do you think, is cable TV the cause of OUR spiritual ailments?

I also noticed that they love to eat junk food and lack good nourishing food. Spiritually they don’t have access to the Word of God, but they will soon. We have access to the word of God, but we probably spend more time with cable TV than the Bible. This trip has left me with serious questions that are worth meditating on. What am I enslaved to in my life? If I was forced to give up everything, which would be the most difficult thing to give up?

Slavery comes in many forms today as evil continues to gain more free rein and access to our lives. Where is the spirit of slavery operating in my life?  What disordered attachments do I have to things in this world that God doesn’t want me to have?

Come Holy Spirit, reveal the truth of my life to me that I may see what has an important place in my life.