Honestly, I had full conversations, and I felt like he was talking back to me, not in an audible voice. Nobody panic. There were moments I could feel Him just sitting there, and sometimes it felt like He was laughing and giggling with me. It just created this intimacy between Christ and me.

Jesus was my best friend. There’s nothing I couldn’t tell Him. I knew he knew everything, but I’d tell him everything anyway. He was always there for me. I didn’t know I was doing this until many years later, but I learned how to hear His voice because I was constantly talking to Him and practicing listening to Him.

So now, I have this really strong listening muscle, and I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing as a kid, because I was just trying to create a safe space, but it served me in so many ways. I went through, gosh, I was 17 years old, and I had just been assaulted, and I drove home freaking out, into my bed and curled into the fetal position. I was crying hysterically. I will never forget this day ever.

I remember just saying, “Jesus. I don’t even know what to ask for, I hurt in so many ways. I just need somebody to be there for me and to love me, and I just want a hug.” I kid you not, this bright, almost like fairy light came from the woods through my window into my room, and it landed on the bed next to me. As soon as it landed on the bed next to me, I literally felt arms wrapped around me. When I was so angry and so pissed off and hurting and scared, the second those arms wrapped around me, all of that was gone. All I felt was complete peace and safety, and I fell asleep in that.

Jesus is very, very real to me. He has always been there, even through the worst of the worst, and to this day, He is still the number one person that I trust above everybody else.

So fast forward, as I was saying earlier, I spent a lot of time working with women helping them find their identity in Christ and then stepping into their role as a biblical wife. And so I was at a conference recently, and one of the ladies there was supposed to get up and share something hard from her story. She started having a panic attack. She was having headaches, and she said she felt a weight on her chest and something on her back, kind of like gripping her shoulders. She was really struggling.

She said, “I’ve never felt anything like this. I feel sick. I feel miserable like I don’t understand what’s going on.” The leader of the conference said, “Can I pray over you?” She walked over to pray over her, went behind her put her hands on her back, and started praying over this lady. As she was praying, the Lord said to me, “Pray in the Spirit.” And I said, “Okay.” I started praying in the Spirit. I mean, what’s it going to hurt, right? God knows what’s going on. I don’t.

All of a sudden I have this vision, like vivid visual, where there is this swirling cloud above this woman’s head, and the Lord says, “There is spiritual warfare going on here, and it is turbulent, and nobody else can see it. You need to do something.” I’m like, “What am I supposed to do?” Like, how do you handle a cloud?”

So He said, “Look at her back.” So I look at this woman’s back, and I can see what almost looks like a reptile it’s got spines on its back, and it has claws, like a falcon, and it is on this woman’s back, and it is digging into her back. And He was like, “Yes, that is a demon.”

He said, “She is a believer, so it’s not possessing her, it’s on her.” He said there’s a difference, and he said but it’s from her past, and the work that she’s doing in this conference is breaking the soul tie with it. It’s freaking out, and so it’s trying to dig its claws in deeper because it doesn’t want to let go.

And He said, and you know what to do. I said, okay and started praying over it. I started taking authority over it. Luke 10:19 says we’ve been given all authority over every snake, over every scorpion, and over all powers of evil, and no harm shall come near us. I truly believe we have authority over those things. As Christians, we spend a lot of time afraid of them, but we were never meant to be afraid of them.

I was like, okay I’m not afraid because, Lord, we’ve been through this over my lifetime and I don’t have to be afraid of these things and I haven’t been for years. So in Jesus’ name, you need to go. It was not the demon that giggled, it was God that giggled. He was like, good, now you’re going to go talk to her about it.

I’m like, No, God, I am not talking to this woman. I will not tell her what I’m seeing. And He’s like, you need to. I started rationalizing it. I was like, God, Most Christians don’t talk about the demonic realm. They don’t want to acknowledge that it’s there. They don’t want to acknowledge that it’s real, most of them freak out when you talk to them.

He goes, I know, but if my people do not start understanding how serious the demonic realm is, I’m not saying they’re going to win. They don’t have power over us, or the things that I do for you, but if we don’t start acknowledging their existence and dealing with them, then my people are going to perish for a lack of knowledge. They are real and they are doing things, and they are influencing us. Christians think they’re untouchable, but they can still attach, and they can still influence your life. They cannot possess you, but they can still influence your life. And this woman needs deliverance, so you’re going to tell me you’re not going to go talk to her? And I was like, Well, God, when you put it like that, like, what am I supposed to do?

So I went to talk to this woman, and I was very polite. This was about 10 minutes later when everybody was on a 15-minute break. I went up to this lady and was like, “Hey, when she was praying for you, I saw something, and I would like to share it with you, but I just have to preface it does involve the spirit realm and demonic, and that makes some people uncomfortable, and so if you’re not willing to hear this, or you know, it’s too much, it’s okay, you have permission to say no.” She actually got really excited. She said, “Oh, I love demonic stuff. Tell me.” And I’m like, “I was not expecting that answer.”

So I shared with her, “Okay when this when the leader started praying over you this is what I saw swirling above your head, and this is what I saw on your back.” Her face went white. She leaned back, her jaw dropped to the ground, and she was like, “Wow.” I said, “Are you okay?” I’m thinking she’s freaking out about the demonic. But she said, “Literally two days before I came to this conference, something that I have struggled with and fought with, almost oppressive since I was a child resurfaced. I have fought it on and off for most of my life. I am telling you, I can feel it in my bones that it is that demonic spirit on my back and that it has been there, on and off, influencing me and disrupting my life for years. And you are the first person I’ve ever met who’s actually been willing to tell me what’s actually going on. I had no idea.”

I said, “It’s not possessing you, so it doesn’t own you. It can only influence you. And I said, so don’t panic, because you have authority. She said, “Well do you think God might be willing to set me free?” and the Holy Spirit came over me, and I can’t begin to tell you the intensity that came out at that moment. I looked at her and said, “It’s not a might or maybe sweetheart, God’s word is clear, not by might nor by power, but by His Spirit, that you have authority.”

“You can right now, in Jesus’ name, tell it to get off, go and never return. And guess what, it has to go. And unlike human beings who are fickle and sometimes bow their knee to God and sometimes don’t, the demonic realm bows its knee to God because it has no choice. It knows the authority, it knows the boundaries. So you can literally tell it to go now in Jesus’ name.” And I told her how to quote Luke 10:19 so she quoted Luke 10:19.

I’m telling you, she instantly…I had met her on day one, and she was one of those women that walked around kind of cloudy and murky and looked like, kind of like Eeyore. This cloud of rain just followed her wherever she went. As soon as she took authority and told it to get off in Jesus’ name, it was almost like the sun came out, and hit her, and she started radiating. She said, “So do you think it’ll work?” And I was like, “Honey, it did work. It’s gone. There’s not much else to say it is gone.”

Then the next day, it was cool, because the leaders were doing an exercise on anger, and working on releasing anger, because when you store emotions in you, it turns into sickness and disease and all kinds of issues. The root and the open door that that spirit was allowed to come through and attached to her was related to an emotional trauma that she had from her childhood that she hadn’t dealt with. The leaders took her through healing that emotional trauma so it closed the door, so that spirit cannot come back.

I got to talk to her at the end of the conference, and we’re talking night and day. She came up to me with tears in her eyes she said, “Leticia, you have no idea how your obedience to sharing that one word completely transformed my life. I not only feel different. I feel 1000 pounds lighter. I can physically feel a difference.”

But to me, it was so amazing. Because of God’s order, you have to get rid of it first. You close the open door that it was allowed to come through, so it cannot come back, just like the Scripture says, Once you sweep the house clean, keep it clean so they don’t come back, then watch the restoration take place. This was a couple months ago, and I talked to her a couple days ago, and she says it’s transformed her entire family. It’s transformed the way she sees things. It’s transformed her walk with the Lord, and it was all because I was willing to be obedient and say, “Hey, there is something physically, and spiritually on your back.”

My heart in coming on to share is just wanting to encourage believers that we spend so much time afraid of the demonic because, well, let’s be honest, Hollywood has made it out to be a scary thing. What if that was never God’s heart? What if God wanted us to be able to see and know our enemy, so that we know how to fight and how to stand, so that it can’t touch our families, and it can’t come into our homes, and it can’t affect our atmosphere, because we were given that authority to stand in strength and to stand in righteousness, to be his warriors. That’s what Ephesians 6 is all about, putting on the full armor of God, and when you’ve done everything to stand, you stand.

We were never meant to cower. I know the cowering like comes from a lack of knowledge, and that’s okay, there’s grace for that. But what if we were people who chose to actually understand that we don’t have to be afraid, we don’t have to fear that we can say, He’s given me all authority over every snake and every scorpion and over all powers of evil and no harm shall come near me in Jesus’ name.

There’s a verse, I wish I remembered where it was in Psalms, where it talks about how the angels are literally waiting for us to decree His Word. As soon as we speak His word, they go into action. How often are we missing out on that because we don’t understand? And so I don’t know, it’s just an incredible moment that floored me, because I was so scared to talk to this woman because it’s demon-related.

I’m used to it. I’ve been seeing demons since I was three, even though I didn’t know that’s what it was back then. Still, I was scared to talk to her because so many people treat it as taboo, and yet my obedience of okay, even if it scares her, I’m going to be obedient to God, transformed her entire life and her entire family and I got to play a role in that. It’s so humbling to me.

There’s another similar story. So my husband and I, he’s not used to the supernatural and the spiritual and God bless him, he got stuck with me, so he doesn’t get much choice. Back in May, we had an f3 tornado coming straight for the back of our house, and it was half a mile away. My husband is a daredevil, so he’s standing at the back door with the back door open, watching it come, because he thinks it’s cool, and God bless him for it. He’s got the news channel going, and the news literally just said, Yep, the storm is amping up. It’s getting stronger. We believe it’s actually going to move to an f4 it is increasing in power. You need to take shelter now.

Well, I am standing 100 feet away from my husband, and I’m standing there praying, “Yeah, no, not today, Satan, because I’m not doing this. You do not get my house, you do not get my property, you do not get my garden, you don’t get my trees. You don’t get any of this. I cancel this assignment over this land and over this neighborhood, and in Jesus’ name you have to go.”

I started speaking to the elements in the atmosphere and just saying, “Okay, I cancel intensification. I cancel streamline, winds. I cancel all of the elements needed to have a severe storm and in Jesus’ name, I speak grace, grace and peace, peace to the atmosphere.” Because for me, super destructive things are typically demonic. And I know that’s weird, but that is just how I view them.

Well, no sooner than the words came out of my mouth, the news guy came back on and said, “Oh, I don’t know how to explain it. It was literally just intensifying, and now the storm is dissipating. And I don’t know how to explain there is no rhyme or reason for this, folks, it is dissipating.” My husband got to watch the tornado lift up and go over the top of our heads. He saw it swirling above our heads and it went over our house and came down several miles past our house. He ran through the house saying, “Oh my gosh, did you just see what God did!” And I’m like, “Yep, sure did.”

What’s super cool about it was, that not only did it witness to my husband and grow his faith…Both of our neighbors are agnostic and atheist. Well, our agnostic neighbors texted and said their 13-year-old daughter was in the hallway crying and freaking out, and they told her, “Don’t worry, Leticia and her God has got this. It’s not coming.” And so for them to know that, like we have such a strong faith, that they were like, we’re not worried the storm is not going to touch us, and then for them to hear that the storm skipped over us. It witnessed to them as well. They now know in times of trouble, they can come to us and that our God will save us.

And so again, I’m just so passionate about the church, realizing how much authority we have when we know who we are in Christ. He’s given us that authority and placed us here on Earth intentionally. He could do it by Himself if He wanted to, but He loves us, and He created us in his image as His daughters and His sons, and He is asking us to partner with Him and stand in for stand for Him.

How much different would this world, our culture in America look right now, if we were willing to say, “No not today Satan!” Whether it’s a demon on someone’s back or demonic flurries in the sky, I mean, we have that authority, and Christ desires for us to partner with Him and speak truth and righteousness into the atmosphere and speak life into the atmosphere. People are watching, could you imagine the harvest we would have in America, for all of these people who are lost or have identity confusion, if we were all standing and speaking truth and righteousness and life into the atmosphere.

That is my heart, and that is my story.