Have you ever felt like you were prisoner to some outside influence, afraid and uncertain?

Once as I was in a prayer meeting at the little hut our gang in Peru called the "Rat and Roach", I began to feel a pressure on my back. I'd been intensely preparing for these weekly gatherings of our mission youth group for a number of days, with our adult sponsors as we took up specific items of need from translators out at villages around the nation.

We received notices from the linguists via radio and spread them round via word of mouth and a few notes passed about, each morning beginning on our center with a radio check in so each missionary or couple, far from our gathering of buildings, houses and commissary, could connect with support people providing clothes, food to send, and their particular prayer cadre. We kids did the same.

We'd been singing our usual choruses, a sweet presence in the air of Jesus in our midst and stopped corporate singing to take up the requests of each other and our parents, "aunts" and "uncles", missionaries not related to our families but a close part of our group.

Suddenly, I felt a shove, sitting crossed legged on the rough hardwood floor, my fiance, Elizabeth holding one hand. Not thinking much of the touch, I continued in the group meditation as someone across the room began lifting one of the couples in a village. The pressure continued. Now it was getting hard to breathe. No sense of a hand, but increasingly, I felt discomfort on my back and something pushing me toward the floor, already my frame close enough to my legs that I had to move my elbows out.

Now the pressure felt like an actual shove and I couldn't fill my lungs! My girlfriend felt the hard squeeze from my grip on her hand, and leaned over, "Wayne, what's wrong?"

"I dont know!" I grated out in a whisper. "I can't hardly get a breath! Something shoving me into my feet! Pray, honey!"

The two of us began to agonize our thoughts in whispers while the group began to falter, noticing the awkward communication between us. Liz passed the word and I could see others mumbling prayers in my behalf as I suddenly realized "a demon is trying to suffocate me!"

Immediately I rebuked the spirit, not knowing why I was being crushed, but within seconds, the pressure was gone and I sat up! Praise swept through our little gang as we thanked the Lord for His power over evil! Not just with me, but for the entire mission group around the world! Our prayers were setting not just me free, but people all over the planet were finding Jesus, people who didn't have a word of the Bible in their tongue were finding Jesus!