I used to live on a street that had many extreme problems with anti-social behaviour. Shortly after I moved in, a shotgun was discharged twice in a family feud; fortunately, no one was injured. However, it did leave a cloud of fear and negativity in the atmosphere that just would not lift.
Two separate houses were being used to sell drugs.
One dealer used to sell to secondary school children during their afternoon lunch break. He approached me two different times in the street, when he was intoxicated and looking for a fight, and threatened me with violence.
The second house was used for distribution of drugs to a group of local dealers. There was a male neighbour physically abusing his girlfriend, sometimes even publicly. And an adulterous couple was using the street as a meeting point every Sunday afternoon.
I had only been a Christian for four years. I lived there on my own, felt well and truly out of my depth, and contemplated moving out. However, God had different ideas and used the situation to introduce me to my first lesson in the power of Jesus through spiritual warfare.
I was given a vision displaying the root cause of the problems. It was the spirit of lawlessness that was influencing the extreme levels of bad behaviour among the residents. For seven nights, I was inspired to pray in tongues throughout the night. The first night, I prayed for seven hours. As each night passed, the length of time spent praying was reduced. The seventh night lasted only one hour, and I actually felt the breakthrough in the atmosphere from fear and negativity.
What then happened over the course of a couple of weeks was also miraculous.
The adulterous couple was not seen in the street again. The girl in the physically abusive relationship left him. The drug dealers were arrested. And the house formerly used for distribution was occupied by new people, an older couple, who entertained primary school children and their mothers with rabbits in the front garden.
The Lord gave us beauty for ashes on the back of my prayers.