I’ve been on a couple of mission trips, and on nearly every trip someone got sick, not just a quick cold or flu, though that happened too, but a mystery illness that couldn’t be shaken, serious exhaustion, leading to cancellation of some plans sort of sick.

It’s called Spiritual Warfare, and at times we were so busy ministering and teaching on that very topic, that we didn’t stop and all fight it together as a team, yeh, I know, bit thick.  Another thing we didn’t do as a team together was to take communion every day.  We would take it maybe once every couple of weeks in a church service.

We were declaring some pretty solid things each day together,

Claiming the victory and Lordship of Jesus Christ over the team and situation,

Claiming spiritual gifts and protection over our lives, journeys and families and homes back in Australia.

And binding every spiritual attack against us, but somehow there were still cracks and loopholes for the enemy to attack us.

Praying about it this morning, if I ever go on a mission trip again I will be leading the team or at least my family in communion; 3 reasons why:

1. During this whole blogging on communion, when I’ve been taking it every day, I have not had serious attacks on my health, computer or time like I normally do when I’m blogging on a spiritual topic. We’ve been drawing a blood and victory line that the enemy can’t cross, and this whole process hasn’t been as exhausting as I expected. I know this project is making an impact and will continue to make an impact as people find my blog as I am receiving testimonies from people who are following and reading every day and taking communion.   Their lives are changing, the atmospheres in their homes are changing.
2. Divine health is a must during a mission trip. It’s awful being seriously or even mildly sick away from home. We’ve been studying how communion is a key to divine health.
3. Team unity. If the team is stopping together, confessing anxiety and disunity before the Lord every day and praying for each other, there is going to become common union during your time of communion.   I know one mission trip I went on where because I was the youngest and nobody knew what else to ask me to do, I was asked to be prayer co-ordinator on the trip where I would get everyone together every day to pray.  Now believe it or not,  I was later told this hadn’t happened before on these trips and what a difference it made, even in people being able to have a place and time to share the struggles they were going through.  Now how much more powerful would it have been to quickly share communion together?

A quick comment from Geoff Ainsworth who has been sharing with us the past two days:  We were in the Loyalty islands for a five week mission. Their custom was to share communion with bread and coconut milk. For the first 4 weeks we thought this was quaint but when faced with two witch-doctors coming into ‘our’ village, I knew we needed to use real wine – The blood of the grapes – to stand against their spiritual attack.