Spiritual Mapping

An attempt to see our communities the way God sees them; that is the definition of spiritual mapping provided by the book Breaking Strongholds in Your City, the resource that has most influenced my view on the subject.

The technique seeks to reveal the spiritual forces at work in a community so that they can be accurately addressed in prayer. Ephesians 5:11 tells us to expose the deeds of darkness. Spiritual mapping uses spiritual discernment and the observation of historical and geographical factors (such as the location of centers of occult activity in an area) to reveal the invisible forces that are interacting with our visible world. Endemic sins, such as the communal practice of idolatry, can give demonic forces greater power to keep a people blind to the truth, thus challenging the spread of the Gospel. Spiritual mapping, seeks to discern these factors so that they can be confessed and repented of (see Daniel 9:16-21 for an example of one man interceding in this way for a whole people) and so that the powers behind them can be bound so that God’s work can advance unhindered.

2 Corinthians 4:4 tells us, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” The ultimate goal of this kind of work is that God would make “his light shine in (their) hearts to give (them) the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Why do we feel this will be helpful in our area? Nearly all of the villages around us have annual festivals in which they rededicate themselves and their land to the spiritual power which they perceive as being over their region. This, and similar practices, as mentioned above, darken the veil that Satan is using to deceive these people. By better understanding the working of such evil forces, we plan to cut their power at the root through intercessory prayer for our area and thus “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5).