No Weapon

Well friends, my intent was to have several more posts written since I launched this blog. And here I am finally working on the second post. All I can say is the enemy is real. I don’t want to sound like one of those old cliches such as “the devil made me do it”, or in this case, not do it. However, knowledge of the schemes of the enemy in this world is one we Christians are aware of, but how much do we really understand how he works? Lately I’ve been challenged on what I really believe about it. I’ve heard this quote before, but actually looked it up so I could correctly quote it:

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”—Charles Baudelaire

 I think this is true, or at least the devil has convinced us to relegate him to benign roles such as dancing on the front of a canned ham label or being portrayed in all red as a silly Halloween costume.

Personally, I’ve felt the workings of the enemy lately in how my last computer got way too good at erasing my writings, and then causing delays in getting my new computer, which I am gratefully typing on now, did I mention she’s pink!? Beyond tech issues, I have felt a weird mix of motivated vs unmotivated to write. “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing“ Romans 7:19. It’s not necessarily an ‘evil’ to ignore my writing, but the issue for me here is obedience and I feel I am to use my gift of writing for the Lord thus, putting it off is disobedience.

 I have all these great ideas, but when it comes right down to putting pen to paper…ok fingers to keys, I haven’t. Why? I tell myself I’m just too busy, I’ve got to do X, Y, or Z first, or go to bed soon, so there’s no point, I’ll do it tomorrow etc. But truly we’re only busy as we make ourselves and yes some of our busy can’t be helped, we’ve got to work, we’ve got to feed the kids. Yet, when it comes to the time we do have, I’ve lately been sucked into a game on my phone rather than using that time immerse myself in the things of God or what he would have me do.

So back to this idea of the enemy. I am no expert in all the ways he tries to get at us, but I do know that as I’ve been drawing closer to the Lord, there’s no way Satan has just stood around letting it happen. He was much more content when I was a lukewarm spitball God was ready to expel (gross, sorry). Revelation 3:15-18.

  I am so grateful to God for this past year in which I have been experiencing a “personal revival” (shout out to my friend K for the use of that phrase) and how he has shown me the truth of this scripture: “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” James 4:8. (More on that in a moment).

So of course, in that last year things have not been perfect. I have fought with my kids, my husband, been crazy stressed out at work, have felt distant from God even as I sought to draw closer to him, not prayed enough, missed some bible reading days, basically all the things. And while some of these “failings” are so human of me, it would be naïve to think there is not a force wanting to draw me back from God as much as I want to draw close. Yet I think a lot of the time we don’t want to admit there are forces of darkness coming against us. Even as I write this, I realize that this topic is something I need to study more on myself.

 Want to know something really cool? When I looked up James 4:8, the verse just before it says this: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you”. James 4:7. Way to pull together a blog topic God! For better context here is the whole passage:

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.

So, this passage gives us two things to do, 1- resist the devil, and 2- draw close to God. Then he will do his part of drawing close to us. So how do we resist the devil? Good question, I will put a pin in that and maybe have another post on the topic. However, I think as we continue to draw near to God and learn his ways, he begins to open our spiritual eyes. These new eyes help us to see the difference between “it’s just bad luck” or “I’m having a bad day” and “maybe this is something that is being used to lure me away from the Lord”. Whether that something is the temptation to look at inappropriate things, or to play a dumb game on my phone instead of spending time with God, the enemy can and will use anything  to distract and divide our hearts.

The last point I wanted to make on that passage in James 4 is the very first part of verse 7 I hadn’t mentioned yet:

 “Submit yourselves, then, to God.”

 We could go down a rabbit hole on the word submit, because there are some, mostly those who don’t know Christ, who see it as a bad thing. To them submission seems like letting someone be dominant over you. However, this is one of those mysteries of the Christian life in which we say instead, we have freedom in Christ. Oh, so much freedom! Freedom to not be the one to worry anymore about what will happen, or what if I can’t do it? There is such relief in letting go of that huge wheel with which we’re trying to steer our own ships. Sure, there are days when I want to grab that wheel back and take the boat down a side stream because I’m sure that’s what God would want anyway, right? Yet, if I take the time to sit, breathe, and remember that the captain of my ship made this water, and those side streams and knows where to go, I’m free to lay back in a deck chair and sip my iced tea with a little paper umbrella in it, knowing we’ll get there in the best way and in the best time.

So nice try devil, but I’m posting this, there’s nothing you can do that God can’t do better because here is what God says about me, and about you too friend:

    “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me, declares the Lord”

Isaiah 54:17