The Name of Jesus has Power over Occult
“I thought I was dying,” recalled Shanea Strachan. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. She hadn’t slept in three days and was experiencing overwhelming fear. “I was afraid to sleep. I was afraid to go to work. I was afraid to leave the house. I honestly didn't know what to do. I have never been a fearful person. I considered myself a free spirit.”
Shanea was in her junior year of college in New Mexico when she got her first taste of the occult. Looking for spiritual enlightenment and a place to belong, she began consulting psychics and exploring new age spirituality. “I dived deeper and deeper into astrology and my birth chart, it was like this system was telling me that this is my identity, that you are natural in the occult.”
She also considered herself a Christian. “I thought being a Christian meant I believed in Jesus and that's it. I was just so open-minded. I still believed in Jesus, but New Age was my life.”
The oldest child of a single mom, Shanea was born and raised in a Christian home in the Bahamas. Her father was in and out of her life for as long as she could remember. “He broke promises. He would say that, ‘I'm gonna come and get you,’ and never show up. It started to feel like rejection, you know? I didn't feel good about myself, so I struggled with depression. I struggled with low self-esteem and just feeling insecure. I always wanted to feel like I belonged. Not having that acceptance from him and his family as a child, it made me question like, well, where do I really belong?”
In her teens, Shanea moved to the States to continue her education. There, she met a Christian counselor who encouraged her to write a letter to her dad. “Just telling him that I forgave him, and I wanted this relationship with him. Like, really just pouring out my heart to my father.”
But before she could give it to him, he became ill and died. “I felt like I had done everything that I was supposed to do, I wanted to build this relationship, and he just passed away. So that really shattered my faith.”
Soon after, Shanea started getting into New Age. By then, she’d also connected with her father’s family and their spiritual beliefs. “My uncle told me that I was called to be a high priestess in African spirituality. It made me feel powerful. It made me believe that I was already on the right track. Now we finally have this closeness and this bond, but it's the spirituality that brought us that closeness.”
After college, Shanea got a job in Atlanta and began pursuing higher levels in the occult, reading tarot cards, and hanging out with practitioners-- including a girl who invited Shanea over one night.
"The room is lit with candles by her bed. There's the altar, Oya, which is a deity in African spirituality, and she asked me to stare into her eyes. And I literally felt a transfer between us. That night, I woke up in the middle of the night and I heard the most demonic voice say, ‘I'm gonna kill you.’ It definitely put fear in me.”
After Shanea left the next morning, she started having crippling anxiety attacks. “I literally felt like I was dying. It got so bad that I stopped working. I was afraid to leave the house. I was in a world of just darkness. Every conversation I heard was about death. Everything that I saw was about death after that night. I saw hallucinations. I heard demonic things. I was afraid to sleep because I thought I was gonna die in my sleep.”
Shanea didn’t sleep for three days and ended up in the hospital. Desperate, she called her mother, who brought her back home to the Bahamas. Her family there entered into intense prayer and spiritual warfare on her behalf. At first, Shanea resisted. “I believed that if people prayed for me, I would die. They came, prayed up. Just standing in their spiritual authority. I remember looking out and watching them pray. And that was the first night I slept in a long time.”
The bad dreams would return, but now she knew how to respond. “I started to call on Jesus and it would stop. I'm starting to like...to realize that there's something powerful about me saying, 'Jesus,' or calling on Jesus.”
Finally, Shanea connected the dots. All the while, she’d kept in touch with the girl from Atlanta, a self-professed witch. “And I believe that night she put a spell on me. I just let her know, like, I know who you are. I know what you did. I forgive you, but this is over. And that was it.”
That Sunday, Shanea went back to church and committed her life to Jesus. “When I completely surrendered my life to Christ, all these things started to fall away, because I got into His word. I got into His presence, worshiping Him, and knowing who Christ is and just building that relationship. I think it was through that relationship and the power of the Holy Spirit that really brought deliverance. That's when I really learned how to pray. How to pray with the word, what the full armor of God is, what spiritual warfare is.”
Since that time, Shanea has experienced complete peace. Now, her goal is to teach others about Christ and spiritual warfare. “No matter how deep you are in the New Age, in the occult, in witchcraft, Jesus is merciful, Jesus is a redeemer. And when we truly repent and turn, not repent and dabble, He is a restorer. Jesus restored my life from darkness to true light.”
