Julie Lopez’s unique testimony is shedding light on the ways Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy, and how we can navigate against these attacks.
Growing up in a family where witchcraft was a generational practice, Lopez had terrifying up-close-and-personal encounters with entities at a very young age.
“…I was really young, I was like around four and I remember this demon enter[ed] my room,” Lopez says. I was trying to sleep. I wasn’t dream[ing]; I was literally awake. And this demon entered the room and the first thing that I remember is that this demon started to speak in tongues as he was singing, and he was entering the room.”
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“I was in my bed, shaking, sleeping next to my mother,” she continues. “This demon came next to me and he started to touch my feet, and by the time he was touching my feet I could literally feel his hands were really hot, like boiling hot, and I remember from that moment something was placed on my legs because I grew up having a lot of leg issues. I was doing sports, I was doing basketball, ballet, running, I was always quite active. And I remember at age 13 I had to quit because I had knee issues.”
Lopez says she learned later on after becoming a Christian that this was a way the enemy was placing a curse on her so she couldn’t use the gifts and talents the Lord had given her.
“The enemy always tries to bring the opposite of what the Lord has called you to do,” Lopez says. “For example, if you have been called to be a mother of nations or father of nations the enemy is going to try to release an orphan spirit so you don’t fulfill the mission the Lord has placed in your life.”
After seeing her great-grandmother act as a medium and witchcraft run rampant in her family through generations, Lopez says this kind of activity was part of the family DNA. After becoming a Christian, Lopez says she didn’t share her story for years afterward because she felt ashamed of her past. However, God placed it on her heart to expose the darkness so the light of Christ could flourish.
“I realized, ‘wow, there’s so many people, there’s so many Christians doing witchcraft,” Lopez says. “The church is sleeping and there’s not enough people talking about the spiritual darkness and how we as the body of Christ…needs to be trained, needs to be prepared, and the body of Christ needs to be aware that there is a spiritual realm that we have to come against.”
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One of the ways that the enemy has been playing, counterfeiting against God’s people is in the area of spiritual gifts. This attack, especially on the gift of speaking in tongues, is not talked about, yet Lopez has seen the evidence of Satan trying to ruin this beautiful gift God has given us to communicate directly with Him.
“I didn’t realize they were demonic tongues until I became Christian. But also, me growing up, as we were doing rituals and witchcraft, we were also speaking in tongues,” Lopez says. “That’s why for me, when I became a Christian I struggled so much with accepting and speaking in tongues.”
“That’s when the Holy Spirit brought repentance to my heart and He told me, ‘The enemy doesn’t create. The enemy copies everything,'” she says.
She learned that the demonic tongues were a counterfeit to the heavenly tongues of the Lord. With all spiritual gifts, God has given us something beautiful that was made to glorify Him. Nothing from the enemy is original, and it is less than the very best.
During this time, let’s pray for wisdom and discernment to see the difference between the real and the counterfeit in our lives.
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Abby Trivett is content development editor for Charisma Media.
James Lasher