Spiritual Warfare: Sword of the Spirit 2 (the bedrock)

It was hard to watch my friend struggle through her deep emotional pain (see previous post), and I couldn't really do anything to stop her difficult trial or make it all better for her, especially since the battle was mostly in her head.  And I know what that's like: Anxiety is a bully who doesn't play by the rules.  Unfair, unruly, and aggressive.  Running roughshod over you, your mind, your life.

I couldn't fix it for her because she was in a battle she was forced to fight herself.  But I could at least try to encourage her by letting her know that I understood, that I got through something similar and that I know she can too... but that she has to want to get through it, to fight it and not give in.  She has to refuse to succumb to the Enemy's lies and destructive tactics.

And to help her do this, I shared with her one of the things that helped me get through my hardest times: My "sword of the Spirit," my own personal list of favorite verses that I would read over and over again, either first thing in the morning, or when anxiety was nearly crippling me, or right before bed so that I could set my mind on God and His Truth before I slept.  

Anxiety is a spiritual battle (for the most part).  And to fight a spiritual battle, we have to use spiritual weapons - the spiritual weapons God provides and sanctions.  

[So nothing like witchcraft, divination, spells, chants, dunking people in "holy" water, waving around crucifixes, or things like that.  There's no power in these earthly methods, rituals, and substances.  There's only power in the spiritual tools God gives us: His Word, His name, and prayer.  (Besides, how scary can a crucifix be to demons when it's got a dead Jesus on it.  Jesus defeated evil, sin, and death when He rose again.)]  

God has not left us alone and helpless, to fight our battles ourselves.  He is with us in the battle.  He not only gave us His Holy Spirit in us to guide and comfort us, but He also gave us prayer, Jesus's name, and His Word - the bedrock of spiritual warfare (and I would add that praise, thanksgiving, and obedience are critical too) - to help us in our temptations and struggles, to help us fight our battles, stay in His Will, stand our ground, and win.

John 16:13: "But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth."

Eph. 6:17-18: "Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the [spoken] word of God.  And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests..."  

Luke 10:17: "The seventy-two returned with joy and said, ‘Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.’"  

1 Cor. 10:13: "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."  

James 4:7-8: "Submit yourself, then, to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Come near to God and He will come near to you."  

Ephesians 6:13: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”

During my most desperate times when nothing else was holding me up, I learned that I desperately needed to cling to God's Word and Jesus's name (and to praise Him and count all my blessings) just to help me keep my head above water, to keep me from going under all the way.  

When His Word is all we've got left - when we're so broken that we have no strength, wisdom, confidence, hope, or even words of our own left anymore - that's what we do: We hold onto God and His Word for dear life!  

And it gets us through and keeps us afloat.  

[I'll share my verses in another post soon.  And keep in mind that, of course, anxiety could also have some physical or hormonal factors too, and so it would be wise to get that checked out too, and to treat it, if need be, with counseling or medication.  See "Help for anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts" for more ideas to get through times like these.]

  

You know what?  After having gone through what I did - and after seeing my friend go through what she's going through (it happened so fast, after just several nights of almost no sleep at all; and don't kid yourself, any one of us could find ourselves in the same position very quickly after that amount of intense stress and no sleep) - I now shake my head when I hear overly-confident Christians say things like "Even if I lost it all, I would still sing God's praises.  Bring me pain, Lord, if it brings You glory.  Jesus is my everything.  He's all I need."

I don't doubt that their hearts are in the right place.  But, to me, this isn't a sign of strong, unshakeable faith in God.  It's a faith in ourselves, in our abilities (or at least in what we think we're capable of).  It's self-confidence, not God-confidence.  It's overestimating ourselves and our ability to handle the pain, to weather the storms, to not crack under the trials and pressures.  

And the thing is, people usually say this when life is going well, when they haven't yet learned what it's like to be severely tested or crushed by trials, when they've haven't yet been brought to their knees in pain, helplessness, and hopelessness.  

Well-meaning, but naïve and untested.  

Because we can’t really know what’s in our hearts, or how weak and unprepared we are, or what we're really capable of or not capable of, until we face the painful trials that shatter our illusions - exposing the fears, doubts, deficiencies, weaknesses, and overly-confident self-reliance that we didn’t know we had.

It’s so easy to smile and say “Even if it was all taken away, I would still praise God”… until it’s all taken away.

It's easy to boast "Jesus is all I need"... until Jesus is all you have left.

It’s easy to claim “I want God to do whatever He wants in my life to bring Him glory, even if it means bringing me pain”… until He does whatever He wants and brings the pain and hides in the background and doesn’t answer your prayers... and you're brought to your knees in despair and exhaustion, lying helpless and hopeless on the floor, realizing that you grossly overestimated yourself when you said, “Whatever You want, Lord, as long as it brings You glory.”

It’s easy to make naïve, untested, well-meaning, overly-confident assumptions about how well we'll handle the pain... until the pain comes and we realize that we had no clue what we were talking about, no clue how clueless and weak we are.

May we never ask for the trials or the pain... because we might just get what we ask for... and we'll wish we never did.  (I didn't ask for it, but I sure got it anyway.)

May we never overestimate ourselves... because someday we'll face a trial that will smash our self-confidence to smithereens, strip us of all feelings of self-sufficiency, and leave us hurt, afraid, and confused, grasping for any scrap of help or hope we can find.

May we never rely on ourselves or think that our wisdom and strength is enough... but may we learn to rely on the Lord now - before the painful trials come - to know, love, trust, and cling to His Word so that we're prepared when the battle hits us, spiritual battles we were never meant to fight in our own tiny human wisdom and strength anyway.  Waiting until we're in the battle to prepare for the battle, to equip ourselves to fight the battle, is too late.

[And may we never condemn, judge, or abandon others who struggle badly, who fall badly... but may we come alongside them in compassion and empathy, truth and love, to help hold them up when they can't hold themselves up anymore... because it might be us someday needing someone to come alongside us and hold us up.]  

Having been at the point of extreme terror, despair, and exhaustion, I don't have any confidence in myself anymore.  I know how fragile and weak I am.  I know what it's like to get to the point where instead of optimistically saying "Bring me pain for Your glory, Lord," I was desperately pleading "No more!  No more!  Please, make it stop!"  Because I knew that even one more teeny-tiny trial would be my undoing.  I was deathly fragile, and I didn't trust myself to be able to handle even one more little-bitty straw placed on the camel's back.

This is what pain does to us.  Anxiety.  Fear.  Despair.  Helplessness.  Hopelessness.  It destroys all our illusions of how strong and capable and smart we are.  It crushes our confidence in ourselves.  

But it's also the perfect way - and sometimes the only way - to grow our confidence in the Lord.

Sometimes we have to lose all confidence in ourselves before we truly place our confidence in the Lord.

Sometimes we have to exhaust all of our resources before we learn to rely on, use, and trust His resources.  (It's such a shame that it often takes crippling pain and trials to teach us this lesson.  We're so human!) 

So don't let your painful trial be merely a devastation.  Don't let Satan have the last laugh.  Instead, turn your painful trial into a stepping-stone to a greater, purer, stronger faith in God and His Word. 

When the pain is too deep and the trials are too severe, when you don't trust your own thoughts or feelings anymore, when you can't hold yourself up anymore, when you have no words to even pray anymore... throw yourself on the Lord and His Word.  

We can't trust ourselves, but we can trust Him.  So cling to Him with every bit of strength you've got left and let Him carry you through.

[Sidenote: For more encouragement for my friend, I also shared with her the "Footprints in the Sand" poem (originally written by Mary Stevenson) which is all about God carrying us through our hardest times.  It's an oldie but a goodie:

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.  Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.  In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.  Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there were one set of footprints.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow, or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Lord, "You promised me, Lord, that if I followed You, You would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there have only been one set of footprints in the sand.  Why, when I needed You most, have You not been there for me?"

The Lord replied, "The times when you have seen only one set of footprints is when I carried you."]

The bedrock of my faith:

As I said, when the anxiety or despair was so bad that I didn't think I could get through my day, I would read my list of verses over and over again, or recite The Lord's Prayer, or I would write out Psalms, or turn verses into prayers (I'll share those in another post).  And of course, I would speak out loud the verses that I needed most at the moment.

And for me, the two I kept coming back to most were these:

1 John 4:4: “… the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world."

2 Timothy 1:7: "For God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."  [When I felt like I was losing my mind, it was a great reminder that God gives us a "sound mind" and that fear is not from Him.  So my confusing, despairing, terrified thoughts were not from God, but from the Enemy.]

These two are still very near and dear to my heart.  They're still ones I say out loud when I need them.

God's Word has become so precious to me - not in spite of the pain, but because of it.

Especially the Psalms.  

I never much cared for the Psalms before.  They were too poetic, flowery, and ... okay, I'll just say it ... whiny.  But when I was forced to cling to God's Word, to hold onto it for dear life, to mine its depth for every bit of hope it has to offer, to let its words be my prayers because I had no more words of my own left... that is when the Psalms became my lifeblood, my heart's cry.  And now they are so, so precious to me.  Never underestimate the Psalms.  Or any part of God's Word. 

And while I love - and use - those two verse, and while I cherish the Psalms immensely, there are a couple other verses that I cling to as my bottom-line verses, the ones at the bedrock of my faith, the ones I think it all boils down to, especially after all the many crushing trials and tests of faith I've gone through.

Of course, everyone will have their own, but these are the two that best sum up my whole life's faith-journey:  

John 6:68-69: "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God."  

Mark 9:24: "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!" (My all-time favorite "prayer" in the whole Bible!  I totally get it!)

(And I'd add Job 1:21: "…The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." and Matthew 26:39: “… My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.”)

At the end of the day, even when I still struggle with doubts and fears and pain and unbelief and feel like giving up, to whom else would I go anyway!?!  He alone has the words of eternal life, the truth that matters and lasts and that makes everything else worth it!  

I've walked long enough with the Lord in my 39 years of faith to see Him work in many ways, through many ups and downs, many highs and lows.

I've researched the validity and reliability of the Bible and the evidence for Jesus's life, death, and resurrection, learning how very reliable the Word of God is.

I understand why it all makes sense and why faith matters.

I've learned how very real the spirit world is (and so any worldview I have must include the unseen spirit world, good and evil, God and Satan).

I know why atheism doesn't make sense to me and why it offers no hope.

I know why I believe that evolution is nonsense, even theistic evolution, and why I think it undermines God's Word and truth (see "Is Evolution True?" and "... Creation vs. Evolution" and "More Creation videos we watched").

I've looked into what other religions have to offer (actually, what they don't have to offer, how they can't compare to Christianity).

And at the end of it all, I have to conclude above all - even if life is still full of pain and struggle and fear, even if faith is still full of messy questions and doubts - that God is real, that God's Word is truth, that Jesus is who He says He is (God the Son, our Lord and Savior, the sacrifice for our sin and the only way to heaven), that God is good and trustworthy (not the Calvinist god who's so popular in evangelical churches nowadays, but the God of the Bible), that a relationship with Him is worth it and matters more than anything, and that what we do for Him, His kingdom, and His righteousness will be what lasts in the end.  That all this struggle will be worth it someday when we hear "Well done, good and faithful servant."

And so even when I hurt and doubt and don't understand, I'll keep clinging to Jesus to the end, to God's Truth, because nothing else matters.

When we can't trust in anything else in this crazy, upside-down world or even in our own chaotic lives or minds... We can trust His Word!  

And if we can trust His Word, then we need to believe Him when He says that it's the sword of the Spirit, that it can defeat the enemy.

God's Word is not just a "good book," a history book, or a boost of encouragement.  It's spiritual warfare, a weapon for spiritual and emotional battles.  And if we don't value it and use it as such, then we're engaging in a battle while we're fully exposed, vulnerable, and naked, lacking the spiritual armor that God knows we need to help give us the victory over the demonic forces that seek to kill, steal, and destroy.  

So trust that God says what He means and means what He says, that He knows how the spirit world works, and that He understands and advises us about how we should engage in spiritual warfare to defeat the Enemy... and then pick up your sword and start swinging!