Showing up here is starting to feel comfortable. I used to wake up, and come in early in the morning, and sit at my keyboard and stare at a blank screen with a blinking cursor. I would wonder what to write, if I was writing about the right stuff, if I should have just stayed in bed.
I still wonder those things. I still struggle to get out of bed and show up here, not knowing what to write.
Sometimes I struggle because I have a great idea for what to write, and the Lord says, “that’s not what I asked you to say”.
Sometimes I still have to come to the end of myself, mess up big time, and start over.
But it’s getting more comfortable, this practice of coming out here in the dark, when no one else is awake, and it’s just me and Him. I’m learning to look for Him in a way I’ve never known before. It’s getting easier to hear His whisper, because I’ve been training myself to listen for the last year.
It’s also getting harder. It’s getting harder to wake up, harder to show up, harder to turn to Him when I need to.
I believe that’s because I have an enemy. And so do you. Satan doesn’t just sit back and watch us grow closer to God and think, “oh that’s great, good for them”. He’s been actively trying to keep me from showing up here. I’ve been more tired in the last few weeks than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve been struggling to find words for my sentences when I’m talking to people, I feel like I’ve been swimming in a fog. I’ve been unmotivated at work, unable to pull myself together to do small tasks, and unable to stay awake some parts of the day. It’s been rough.
I have been wrestling with the guilt Satan’s been bringing down on me – guilt that we’ve been too busy, that I haven’t been a good mom. I’ve been over on one side of town trying to pick up one kid and at the same time missing out on another kid’s last ball game. I’ve been feeling like a failure, feeling run down, feeling like a fraud. I started an Instagram account, and I’m trying so hard to just be authentic, to be me. It’s a hard space – there is so much of the perfect IG look, and I’m trying so hard to not get sucked in, while also feeling like if I don’t I’ll never succeed there.
If you are here too, and you are feeling alone, discouraged, not enough, frail, or too prideful, consider this your invitation.
Come, and rest. Lay your burdens down at the feet of the One who “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3).
Just because Satan is coming at you doesn’t mean you have to roll over and play dead. This week I’m fighting back. I’m here, bringing all the junk in my heart (all the negative thoughts, all of the comparisons I make between myself and others, all of the nastiness, all of my ugly sin) and I’m giving it back to Jesus. He’s the only One who can handle it anyway. He died for it. He’s already seen it, and He still loves me anyway. I’m putting on the helmet of salvation, trying to guard my mind and replace those thoughts I’m giving to Jesus with truth from His word.
If you’ve never tried it before, it looks like this:
“Father God, I shouldn’t have said that. It didn’t honor You. Help me God. These thoughts are not what You desire from me, I don’t want them anyway. Walk through the walls of my heart and clean house. Show me what I don’t need, show me what I need to give you back. Show me what I need forgiveness from. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, so I know if it’s coming out of my mouth and it’s unkind, or it doesn’t honor You, that my heart probably looks worse. Give me your truth to replace Satan’s lies that I’m getting rid of. Give me words of kindness to replace the criticisms. Give me words of praise instead of curse words. Give me scripture to carry with me, to remind myself that I need you, and that you are the only one that satisfies anyway.”
He’s always faithful. When I come to Him like this, and I’m honest about my needs and what I lack, He always gives me what I need. He always brings scriptures to my mind for exactly the situation I’m facing. He brings songs to the radio that talk about exactly what I’m going through. He sends friends to check on me and ask what they can pray for.
This isn’t a one time thing. This isn’t something I do today and then I’m good for the next few years or days, or even the next few moments. This is a moment by moment thing. Sometimes my prayer above just looks like “crap, God I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry, that didn’t honor You. Forgive me Lord.” Sometimes I have to say it fifteen times a day.
Other times, the attack of negative thoughts from the enemy come out of nowhere, assaulting me so hard and fast that I don’t know what’s even happening. I’ll talk about this more in another post, because there is so so so much there to dive into. But this can look like a dark mood that just comes over me out of nowhere, dark thoughts (you aren’t worth it, no one likes you, just don’t bother it won’t do any good anyway) that just hit me out of the blue when I’ve been in a reasonably good mood for a while.
When this happens, I usually have to address my enemy head on before I am able to do anything else.
Satan looks for those he can destroy. He’s not a guy with a pitchfork in a red suit trying to get you to make bad decisions. He’s crafty and smart (smarter than we are). He waits, he listens and watches. Anyone else ever been looking at your phone and see an ad for something that you just thought about buying the other day? I’ve wondered before if my phone can read my mind. The algorithms and data mining process are so good that it’s like they can read my thoughts. Or like they are showing me ads that lead my thoughts in the directions they want me to go.
That’s how Satan works. He’s been there watching, listening, and leading your thoughts where he wants them to go for a long time. Sometimes he’s been there for a long time before you even realize it’s him. Sometimes the onslaught of temptation or negativity is so strong though, that you can’t do much about it.
If you are a Christian, if the Holy Spirit lives within you, you don’t have to listen. You don’t have to roll over and play dead and medicate the side effects of what he’s doing to you. You can fight back. Because the power of the God who raises the dead lives inside of you. And if you have already been washed clean, he doesn’t have any real power over you anyway. I don’t know who needs to read this right now, but this is for someone.
When these moments come, and it’s hard to stand, I remember something I read in the book “Breaking Free” by Beth Moore over ten years ago.
Our enemy is powerful. But he doesn’t hold a candle to the power of Almighty God. Satan doesn’t have the power to hear your thoughts, he’s not omniscient like God is. You can’t fight Satan in your mind because he can’t hear it there. Just thinking “Satan, go away” isn’t going to du much good. You have to talk to him out loud. But if you speak the name of Jesus, and remind him that the battle has already been won, he will leave you alone. I usually say something like this:
“Satan, you have no power here. In the name of Jesus Christ, the risen King, and by the power of His blood, I command you to leave me alone. I send you to the cross, where you were defeated and I was redeemed.”
I follow that with a prayer of thankfulness – “thank you Father, that because of the sacrifice of your Son, I have your power living in me, and I can tell Satan to leave me alone and he has to listen. Thank you Lord, that because of the blood of Jesus, I can stand here as a daughter and not as a sinner. Thank you that what Satan tried to say about me isn’t true. Remind me of what is true.”
You don’t have to live with the lies, with the negative thoughts, with addiction or sexual sins that have you trapped. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)