A powerful way for a family to influence a drug addict or an alcoholic family member to get help is by having an intervention where the family members call the addict into a meeting of members of the family where the individual members tell the addict what his or her addiction has done to ruin their lives. In that scenario, the addict is forced to view what the addiction has done to other people. Because of the sad and heartfelt testimonies of family members, most of the time the addict is influenced to get help for his or her addiction. There are many thousands of success stories of the power of intervention.
There are spiritual interventions that take place that are not visible to human eyes. I was privileged lately to hear the end results of the power of spiritual interventions. The story goes back several years for a complete understanding of the events leading to the freedom caused by spiritual interventions.
Several years ago a young woman from Mexico named Blanca came to our town and stopped by a local church, inquiring where she could find a woman's charismatic prayer meeting and Bible study. The secretary at that church knew about the one to which I belong. She gave to Blanca the name of Marcia, at whose house we met at the time. As a result, Blanca became a member of our weekly meeting to pray and study about God. She sent emails of our study material to her sister in Mexico named Dora and Dora began to send the material to other women in Mexico. Another group member, Dorothy, also sent to Dora a tape on how to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. She followed the teaching on the tape and was blessed with her prayer language, just like all of the women in our group have been. She would pray in Mexico while we prayed in the United States.
A situation began in Mexico where Dora's husband. Eduardo, a very prosperous businessman, was harassed by a drug cartel and was forced to pay monthly sums of money as protection for his businesses and for the privilege of continuing in his businesses. As the cartel began to require more and more money, Eduardo began to deduce what were the plans of the cartel, which might possibly be to kidnap him and ransom him for millions of dollars. Edwardo, in anticipation of that plan, began to spend nights at different locations in the city, only coming home once a month to see his family.
We prayed regularly for Dora, Eduardo and their family because of the threat of his being kidnapped by one of the drug cartels. During one of our times of intercessory prayers, Marcia, a member of the prayer group, said that while we were praying that the word "sopa" kept coming to her mind but she didn't know what it meant. Blanca and I immediately said it means soup in Spanish. We didn't know what real meaning that word had until months later.
The next day after that interesting word, "sopa", was given by God to Marcia in her mind, Blanca heard by phone from her sister Dora in Mexico who said that her husband Eduardo came home from his seclusion for one night and said that he had a craving for Dora's soup, which she happened to be making at the time. He gobbled up her soup while hearing her tell him about the incident at our prayer meeting in the US about "sopa," and the coincidence of that happening before his intense craving for soup. After leaving his house the next day, he resumed his habit of avoiding the cartel by sleeping in different places every night.
Eventually Eduardo was located by the cartel and kidnapped with instructions to his family to provide huge sums of money to insure his release. His son was able to come up with the money and delivered it to the location where he was told that his father would be released. The cartel took the money but did not release Eduardo. He was imprisoned someplace, stripped of all his personal clothing. His head was shaved and he was tortured. That same scenario went on for a year and a month, with the cartel demanding more and more money and promising that Eduardo would be released. That never happened. As time went on, more money and properties were demanded and were delivered to the cartel with the hope that he would be released. The family found out that some government officials were in cohorts with the cartel on the kidnapping.
The prayer partners here in Oklahoma were constantly praying for his release. As doubts would come into our minds, we would pray in God's prayer language more and more. On one of the occasions when we were together praying for Eduardo and his family it came to me that Dora, her family and the prayer group needed to bless the members of the drug cartel, like Jesus said to do when He told us to bless our enemies. God told me to pray for them and to do good to them, just like Jesus commanded us. That was hard for us to do, but we knew that God's ways are not always our ways, so we prayed for them with genuine love for the cartel, even during their evil deeds toward Eduardo.
Another member of our prayer group named Jane told us that she had a dream over and over one night about us cooking huge vats of soup to be shipped out. In the dream she wondered how in the world we were going to ship out all of that soup that we were making. We laughed over her dream without having an interpretation of it. Still, we continued to pray daily in the words of the Holy Spirit for Eduardo's release.
After a year and a month, Blanca received word from her sister Dora that the family had managed to contact another governmental official who had agreed to deal directly with the cartel in hopes of getting Eduardo released. This was the last hope of his being released alive. That official did negotiate with the head of the cartel and agreed to pay more money for Eduardo's release. The odds of his being released were only 10% because more than 90% of the people who are kidnapped by cartels are killed.
Eduardo's son had instructions from the government official to meet the cartel with a satchel full of money on a certain day with the promise of his release. When his son went to the appointed place, a van pulled up and he saw his dad pushed out of the van with a black hood over his head. The son walked slowly toward the gun carrying cartel leaders who were leading Eduardo to his son for the exchange. The son handed over the satchel of money and the leaders of the cartel pushed Eduardo toward his son. The son instructed his father to back up toward their car and do not turn his back for fear that both of them would be shot in the back. They made it to their car as the cartel leaders sped away in their van. The only item Eduardo had in his hands was a Bible.
Eduardo's son had made arrangements for a plane to be ready to fly Eduardo and his wife Dora to a distant country where they would be safe. They are in that country now, working with doctors to bring Eduardo back to normal from the beatings and starvation that he had endured while in captivity. He said he had only been provided one meager meal a day for over a year.
Our prayer partner Blanca could hardly wait to tell her prayer partners the good news. When she was finally cleared by her sister Dora to tell us, she came to Bible study/prayer meeting and announced the good news to us. We immediately started crying in awe of God and His perfect ways. We cried tears of joy like babies. It was a humbling experience, knowing that God performed a miracle in an evil situation which was meant to lead to death for our brother Eduardo, whom we had never met but whom we felt like we know because we had prayed so often and so long for him.
Dorothy's son, Doug, joined us for prayers that day and when we gathered our grateful emotions together we told him the story from beginning to end, about Blanca looking for a prayer group years ago, miraculously finding her way to us, and then our being dedicated to praying for Eduardo and his family because of the terror of the situation in Mexico. We told him about the "sopa" word that Marcia heard and the soup dream that Jane had. Then we all said we didn't know what that dream meant, but we were sure it had something to do with the situation.
Doug, as convinced as were Daniel and Joseph in the Bible when they interpreted dreams, said that he knew immediately what shipping out the soup meant. He said that our intercessory prayers in God's language during that year sent words of encouragement to Eduardo's mind while he was in captivity and, as a result, faith was infused into him for his release. Per God's orchestration, it came to pass eventually.
Needless to say, after hearing Doug's interpretation of the dream, again we all cried tears of joy at the reality of God's love and His perfect plans for the release of Eduardo. We are so in awe of God and His orchestration and his letting us know never to give up. Unbeknown to him, Doug came to pray with us that particular day just so that he could interpret Jane's dream, giving a huge boost to our faith and more praises to God.
Later it came to me that, because of our prayers in the Holy Spirit, that there are spiritual interventions happening all the time as a result of our prayers. Hearts are changed, situations are changed, circumstances are changed, all by the words of God who goes into troubling events and brings His perfect will into them. He uses His kingdom workers in heaven to intervene in dire and dangerous situations when we bring Him into them through our praying in the Holy Spirit. He provides His words -- in this instance identified to us as His sopa, His soup -- and sends them into the mind of a person in need. He also invades the minds of people who are operating in evil actions and changes their destructive plans.
We are in awe of this story and will be forever while we are in this earth, until we become in spirit a part of that family intervention group in heaven which carries out the will of the Father to rescue people from the works of evil.
This is a true story and worthy of being repeated in order to encourage others to never give up on their prayers. God can even overrule the plans of an evil drug cartel and change their minds which are set upon killing a man, changing the plans into releasing him to his family.
Sending forth God's words into the earth which change incidents, situations and circumstances in obedience to the instructions of God through His Holy Spirit is called praying in the Spirit. It is the most powerful intervention known to people because it brings God's perfect will into a matter.
All we did was sit here praying in Oklahoma, with agreement in Mexico from the prayers of Dora and her friends and family, doing what the Holy Spirit said to do by praying in the Spirit at all times. It's the least we can do, after what He had done for us.
Praying in the Spirit is giving God complete authority in a situation. His ways are so much higher and effective than our ways. What a wonderful plan He had, to get His spiritual words into the earth to change things according to His will.
His "sopa" words did the wonderful work they were meant to do in this story, and they always bring awe to us in the earth because all of the glory goes to God who wants all of His children to live the abundant life. Being rescued from a vicious drug cartel and being saved from certain death in order to live with his family again is worthy of praising God for His love.
Homemade soup always warms our bones and satisfies our taste buds. In this scenario, God's soup freed a desperate man who needed liberty.
