Fighting Satan

Over the past couple of years something disheartening as occurred in my life-- I lost myself.  I floundered around, desperately trying to fight my way back into existence and it's the biggest uphill battled I've faced.

I'm really not sure how, or when I lost myself.  It wasn't just one event or one [thing] that became the catalyst for me to forget who I am, it was a combination of things.  Some of those events are still raw and painful for me to talk about, still.

Things that shake us to our core are often too hard to share with others.  I feel certain that there's a lot of fear spun all around our reticence to open ourselves up to revealing to others the things that hurt us most.  Fear is a tenacious and demanding taskmaster.  Fear paralyses us, lies to us, and makes us forget what we read in Psalm 139.  We forget that the scripture says we are, each of us, unique individuals, made by a God. He loves us tremendously and wants us to live in the victory of that love.

Dare I say this?  Fear is Satan, the great deceiver.  He deceives us into believing we will never measure up.  We believe his lies when he tells us our worst fears have been made manifest, and that we are, indeed, as worthless as we suspected.  He does this cunningly, chipping away at our hearts piece by piece, until all that remains is doubt.

It can be unimaginably difficult to shake Satan off our tail.  It takes great power and strength to meet our fears head on and disavow the lies we've come to believe.  Luckily, for us Christians, we have the greatest weapons at our disposal.  We have the word of God to bathe ourselves in.  Even more than that, we have Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who lives inside us, to fight right on our behalf.

Now, make no mistake, I am a pacifist.  I don't like fighting; I get anxious and sad.  However, in this case, I make an exception-- Satan has to be fought.  I have to screw up my courage and spit in his face.  I have to get right up in Satan's personal space and tell him to go to hell!  It's not been easy for me to fight.  As a matter of fact, more than once I have felt completely defeated, dejected and dismissed.  Over time, I have allowed myself to believe I'm not worth fighting for.

Enter Jesus.  The healer.  The savior whose gentle, yet abundant strength can bring reconciliation to my spirit.  He alone is able to lift me up, brush me off, and send me out to fight another day.  So many times it would have been easier for me to lay down and stop the fighting; the pain was too great to bear, surely.  Blessedly, I am still here today.  Still standing.  Still fighting.  Still in awe that Jesus loves me enough to fight right beside me in the trenches.

How can I not keep pushing forward when Jesus Christ himself is in my corner?

That's a rhetorical question, because, obviously, I can't.  I can't give up.  I can't allow my soul to be pierced and broken.  Jesus was pierced and broken so that I can stand here this day and praise him for his strength.  I have to grab hold of his promise never to leave me or abandon me.  I have to honor Jesus' sacrifice by not allowing myself to be destroyed.  Anything less would be a travesty.

As time goes on, and I heal my broken heart, it gets less difficult to acknowledge the good person I am.  I still struggle, and battle the darkness, but I know this isn't the end because in the end, Jesus and I win the war.  I stand on that promise.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” ~John 16:33

PS:  I obviously own no rights to Mercyme's music.  I just think it's a beautiful song that brings a special message to my heart.