Today began as one of the bad days. Some of you may recall that a few weeks ago, I wrote a post called "Tell me who I am..". I explained why I was giving such a transparent view of myself.. and then I wrote this paragraph...
"Each day I will battle with myself over finding my self worth in Christ, the way I should. Some days I wake up and immediately praise Him for my life, for who He has created me to be, and what He's going to do on that day. Other days I wake up and think... "What are you doing God, what's the point of all of this? Who I am? Why do you care?"... that's a hard and terrible way to start your day. Now, let me add here that this has greatly improved over the last 3 years. These days are fewer than they use to be, and the feelings of self-doubt are not as serious... but they are still present. The enemy is always there, waiting to attack me on those days. he tries to tell me I'm worthless, that there's no need for God because a God that perfect couldn't love someone so wretched..."
That's what happened this morning. I hadn't even made it to the "roll over and turn on the lamp" part of my day, yet the enemy was already working hard to destroy me. I had no hope, no motivation, no will. I sulked to the bathroom, stood under the running water and tried to pray... but I couldn't. All I could do was think about how terribly some situations I have been facing could end up. I started to doubt myself, doubt what I thought I knew to be true... I started playing out these terrible scenarios in my head. I got dressed, got in my car with the radio tuned to The Bridge... and yet, even the music on this Christian radio station couldn't lift my spirits. I again attempted to pray... but my mind kept running, Satan kept interrupting my attempts. he was making me feel as though God didn't want to hear my prayers anyway. I felt worthless in that moment. I almost turned around and went home...
In the midst of all this I knew what I needed to do. Since I couldn't pray myself, I needed to ask others to pray. So I sent out 12 text messages... I didn't realize how ironic that was until just now while writing these words. At first I thought I would just ask for a blanket prayer, but then I realized in order for this to really combat what the enemy was doing, I needed to be specific. The core of the messages I sent was this "If you would say a prayer for me today, it would be appreciated. I woke up feeling very burdened and I can tell the enemy is attacking me. Just pray for peace, respite from these burdens, and the strength and the will to fight back". I'll be honest, I was to the point where I just wanted to crawl into a hole. Then I started to get some responses from the 12. Some of the Truths that were breathed into me this morning are these:
"Romans 8:38-39.. nothing can separate you from the love of Christ... not even death!!"
"Let the Holy Spirit fight for you today. Lean on Him. You don't have to do anything out of your own strength... I know what it's like to not even have the strength to pray... thank goodness for friends to stand in the gap for us. Praying for you today"
A phone call, that was made just because a conversation was left hanging last night, and this friend could tell I was off. They just called to say hi, and at the end of the conversation to tell me "I love you and I'm praying".
"All I can think about is Job. God just allowing Satan to test you because He knows you're strong enough...I think the only way to fix these things is just lots of prayer and awareness of what God is doing around us.. separate that from the stunts Satan tries to pull and believe whats truth.. truth is we don't know what tomorrow holds... I think that's what has torn me up inside before-- is the worry that for some reason I'm not getting it, or wasting my time. when really if I'm not doing what God has planned for me, and taking things one step at a time, I'm really just wasting His time.... I'd turn worry into hope and continue to look for God in the situation"
Each of these conversations were placed in such a specific manner. God used them to slowly put me back together this morning. That last one, it led to me reading the first 3 chapters of the book of Job this morning. Reminding me that God allows Satan to test us because He knows we are strong enough to withstand the enemies tactics. Right as I finished reading that... the song at the bottom of this post came playing through my headphones. It reminded me that God would brighten my skies during the darkest night. I just needed to sing a song of Hope and ask God of Heaven to come down. It was what lifted me this morning. I am thankful for the redeeming grace of Christ...
I realize this is just one battle of many to come over the rest of my lifetime. The war will continue, and as I have said before... the closer I grow to God, the fewer these days will become. I am thankful this morning though. Because if it hadn't been for the utter brokenness I was feeling this morning, I wouldn't have remembered how important it is to have hope in Christ, and to be surrounded by a community of believers. I can walk tall today... the enemy is still present and fighting like hell to destroy me. My God is bigger than the enemy. My God is bigger than my failures. My God conquered death so that I could have life... and it's not a life that I'm willing to let the enemy steal away.
Grace and Peace
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