the devil's in the distractions.
“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”
I want to take a moment to talk about spiritual warfare, because there is a real and sometimes overwhelming battle going on between darkness and light. If you don’t believe in the workings of the enemy, then you are probably hiding out in a bunker…because gosh, the world just seems to be filled with all sorts of darkness these days. The devil doesn’t seem so behind the scenes anymore. And although it’s tempting to point fingers and place blame on political parties or social agendas or your high school friend on facebook, we mustn’t become distracted by the chaos.
Because what would happen if we prayed for those people we disagree with more than we criticized them? What would happen if we recognized the sin in our own lives before casting stones? What would happen if we stopped allowing ourselves to be caught in the current of distractions but instead showed up in our battle gear? I think Satan would start running scared.
We must remember who the real enemy is.
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Honestly? It doesn’t thrill me to talk about the devil. Now that I think about it, it would be super weird if it did, actually. I’m just not all that eager to acknowledge that there is a battle going on for my thoughts and sins and words. But I think it’s important that we push through those fears and remember the fight.
When I imagine Satan, I don’t think of him as the red creature with a pitchfork and horns that we often see depicted. Nope, my imagination thinks of him as the kid catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang because this is clearly the most terrifying character in cinematic history. Go ahead and keep any arguments to yourself. Because yeah, Voldemort and the Joker are scary; the Trunchbull and Ursula are plain mean. But I have zero hesitations about the kid catcher’s supreme evil. Thank goodness for Dick Van Dyke’s flying car, because they really needed to get the heck away from that creepy kidnapper.
Back to my point: the father of lies is itching to dig up our roots and make us doubt our worth. And while he can’t separate us from the love of God, the devil can give us Job-like circumstances; he can attack our thoughts and halt our growth. He will do everything in his power to lead us deeper into fear and anxiety and depression, to immobilize us so severely that we no longer show up in our battle gear. He can wreak havoc and cause panic and distract our focus from the things that really matter.
The difficult truth is that we still have to show up to the fight, and we might get a few bruises along the way. We do not know how many scars we will get in the battle. We don’t know how many days we will want to bow out of the struggle, how many times we will cry out to God in desperation.
Whoever says that following Jesus will bring nothing but happiness is just plain wrong. I know I’m being less-than-gentle here, but this is a war we must take seriously. There is a lot of heartache involved, as most of us have learned from experience.
The good news? God wins the war. We know the final outcome; we don’t have to show up shaking in our boots every day. We can go into the battle with confidence that our God is bigger and better than anything that Satan and his demons can throw our way. The end of the story has already been revealed through the most horrible, beautiful cross. We know the scoreboard at the end of all this, and we can rest assured because we also don’t have to go into battle alone.
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We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, which is crazy-amazing when you think about all of the wonderful implications of this. God Himself is dwelling in us, which sounds more insane than the plot line of The Matrix. The Lord of the Universe wields a power deep in our souls! What in the actual world are we all running around like crazy for?
So we have this Spirit of God inside of us (which is incredibly reassuring), but we also possess the tools He has generously gifted us: the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of peace, the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. All of these are defenses against the enemy and necessities in this realm of warfare. I like to imagine all of these pieces coming together for a fight like my personal team of Avengers showing up to save the day.
If you happen to be a Hey-Now-All-Star Christian, then you’ll notice I left one piece of armor out of the list. That’s because this is arguably the most notable piece of armor, and I want to take a little extra time here. It’s the only item that is used more for attack than defense: the sword of the Spirit. In Ephesians 6, Paul even spells out what the sword is for those of us who need a little extra help. He calls it the “word of God.”
Are you sick of me talking about the necessity of Scripture yet? Cool, cool. Me neither.
In those good seasons where we are flourishing and growing, when we are walking down the road singing Zip-a-dee-doo-dah with the sunshine on our face, we should be storing up a reservoir of truth. We cannot stroll down Easy Street and have amnesia about God all of the sudden; our relationship with God and His Word should not be a genie in a bottle to us, because that is not a real relationship. We write the Word of God on our hearts because His unchanging Truth keeps us grounded and focused. We write the Word of God on our hearts in the good times so they will be our weapons of attack when the going gets tough.
And when we find ourselves deep in the throes of battle, when we are grieving or suffering or the panic attacks keep coming, there is so much power in opening up His Word. Even if we have more unbelief inside of us than belief at the time, when we turn to Scripture we are throwing a sucker punch to the enemy. We are holding tight to our roots while showing up and saying, “Not today, Satan. Not today.”
So let’s keep marching into battle with confidence, friends. Open eyes, sword of the Spirit, can’t lose.