Spiritual Warfare: The Rock Won't Move

This is a blog that I have been itching to write all day long. I've been at college now for nearly three weeks, and I'm not sure how updated everyone is with everything. So I figured it was time for me to yet again open up my soul and share with you what is going on in my heart and mind.

I know there are some people reading this that cannot relate to my Christian beliefs. To some, this may make no sense, and to others, I might just sound crazy. But this is what is going on in my life right now.

In my last update (The Hurt and the Healer), I shared with you my struggles upon arriving, but also talked about the great silver lining that there was. That silver lining is that while a lot of things in my life are changing, God never changes. And while a lot of things may be exceptionally tough, there is joy in God's name. People keep telling me that it will all be better in a few weeks, or however long. Once I settle in, it will all be good. But you shouldn't have to wait for joy. Joy is attainable in the Lord, and God can give you joy in your times of trial.

Since I've gotten here, I've felt closer to Jesus than I ever have before. This college stuff is very hard. It's not easy, and it isn't always fun. But God has been carrying me through it all. I have been able to feel God's presence in me, and it is greater than any other feeling I have ever felt before.

God has been using my trials for his own good. Since I've gotten here, God has given me a multitude of opportunities to share the gospel with others, and he has opened up a lot of neat conversations I have had with people. I have been praying for him to change the hearts of the people around me, so that they can experience this unspeakable joy too. Seeing hearts change and lives renewed is what makes me happy.

As I was saying, I feel like God is using me the most he ever has. He's using me in ways that I never imagined. I won't go in to specifics on this blog. If you are interested, please feel free to ask and I would love to talk about it. But I feel that I shouldn't share specifics on the internet. But God is doing incredible things and he's using me, and it's awesome to be able to see and to feel that.

Someone asked me about a month ago, "If you can feel God's presence, is it possible that you can also feel Satan's presence?" Good question. I believe that all sinful and selfish desires come from the devil. He tries to tempt everyone. Negativity also comes from the devil.

Satan wants the kingdom of Hell to be greater than the kingdom of Heaven. He tries to drown out the Lord's truths. 1 Peter 5: 8-9 reads, "Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings." While Satan is attacking everyone, he also has his goals. His goal is to make the kingdom of Hell bigger than the kingdom of Heaven. And that my friends, is a scary thought.

How can Satan be the most effective? While he tempts everyone, he specifically targets people who God is using. He goes after those people, and amplifies their weaknesses. He knows that those people are having a big impact, and he wants that impact to be a negative one rather than a positive one.

Where am I going with all of this? I can honestly say that this week, I feel like the devil has been coming at me hard. I don't want to sound prideful and make it sound like I'm great and mighty, because I'm not. I'm doing nothing. It's all God. I am doing my best to give him control and to let him use me, and when I am giving him control, he is freeing me from the sin that I was so easily enslaved to. If you can't give it up, it owns you.

But I feel like the devil is targeting me. He's trying to go after my weakness. He knows that I miss my friends, my family and my home. He knows that I have had some worries about things socially here. So he attacks that, and it brings deep pain.

13 years ago, when I was just a little five year-old in the summer of 2000, my mom and I started watching the show Survivor together. It's my favorite show on TV. But to me it's almost more than a show. It's a bond that I've shared with my mother and other members of our family. We've been watching Survivor together every Wednesday or Thursday night for the past 13 years. Wednesday night, the new season of the show started. It's theme? Returning players and their loved ones. Ten people that have played the game before are playing again. Each player has a loved one out on the island with them, however each loved one is on the other tribe. Watching this, I knew that if I was on the show, my loved one would be my mom. As we watched the show in separate parts of the Midwest, we texted each other talking about the show. I enjoyed hearing from my mom, and I enjoyed having someone to talk about the show with. But at this time, I started feeling really, really down. I missed my mom. I got so homesick. For some reason, Survivor didn't have me as glued to the television as it normally does. Nope, I was homesick and I kind of couldn't wait until the show as over. Satan was coming at me hard and exploiting my weakness.

I started to breakdown and cry. I started to pray. I prayed that God would comfort me and make it so I didn't feel lonely. Not long after that, I realized that I had left my duffle bag in my friends' dorm room when I was there earlier. They came over not long after to drop it off, but they also stayed for a bit and watched TV. God gave me someone to talk to when I was feeling super lonely. This boosted my spirits.

After they left, Satan kept coming after me. I knew there was spiritual warfare going on here. And I knew the only way to beat it was to flush it out with truth. As I was texting a couple of good friends about what was happening, they listened to me, showed love to me, and comforted me. I was reminded that while it may feel lonely here, God has blessed me with so many amazing friendships, friendships that aren't going away anytime soon. While Satan kept coming after me, I was reminded of a story I had heard.

Last summer I read the book Beyond Belief by Josh Hamilton. Hamilton is one of my all-time favorite athletes, and he is currently my favorite baseball player. A few days before, a friend of mine that is still in high school told me he was writing a blog article about Hamilton and his amazing story. Perhaps this was another way of God working, with him reminding me of this story from my friend. Either way, allow me to briefly share Josh's story with you. Hamilton was a young prodigy when it came to baseball. As a high schooler, he was drafted with the first overall pick in the 1999 MLB Amateur Draft by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Scouts calling him a 5-tool, once in a lifetime kind of player, who's potential was Mickey Mantle-like. Hamilton showed good promise in the Devil Rays' farm system, but after injuries started to frustrate him and he couldn't play baseball, one bad decision led to another. Before he knew it, he was addicted to crack. He thought his life was over and he was going to die. He ended up surrendering his life to Jesus Christ, and asked God to take the drugs from him. God did just that. He gave him new life, and he was freed from his addiction. He eventually got back to baseball, and he's one of the best players on the planet. Watch this.

In the midst of his drug addiction, he had a bad dream that changed his life. And this is a great image of spiritual warfare. This is from an article on CBN.com

"I had the most haunting dream. I was fighting the devil, an awful-looking thing. I had a stick or a bat or something, and every time I hit the devil, he'd fall and get back up. Over and over I hit him, until I was exhausted and he was still standing.' Josh awoke in a sweat; the terror he felt from his dream made the dream feel real.

Seven months later, Josh had the same dream; but this time, there was an important difference.

'I would hit him [the devil], and he would bounce back up, the ugliest most hideous creature you could imagine,' he said. 'This devil seemed unbeatable; I couldn't knock him out. But just when I felt like giving up, I felt a presence by my side. I turned my head and saw Jesus battling alongside me. We kept fighting, and I was filled with strength.'

Josh believed that the lesson he learned through his dream was obvious, 'Alone, I couldn't win this battle. With Jesus, I couldn't lose.'

James 4:7 became the Bible verse Josh would memorize and stand on, 'Humble yourself before God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.'

'I read that over and over, committing it to memory. I vowed to change, to make every move from here on a positive one. I battled vicious physical cravings – the devil came at me hard – and as soon as I felt one coming on I would repeat the verse,' he said."

This has been popping in to my head all week. Hamilton had an ongoing fight with the devil. It wasn't easy. But he had to keep fighting. The last thing he could do was listen to the devil, let him win. No, he had to go on the offensive and let the Lord take out the devil. 

As I was reminded of this story, I started to feel pretty good once again. The next morning, I was sick. This was Satan's next attempt at slowing me down. He wanted me to be sick so that I would stay in my dorm and feel isolated from everyone. As I was walking to my class, I started getting dizzy. I stopped myself for a second and sat on a bench, and started praying that God would bring somebody by my side to help me. Not long after, my friends John and Sal showed up, and one of them was able to walk me over to the nurse's office. Once again, God immediately answered my prayer. I went to the nurse, and after spending the next few hours in bed, I started to feel better; well enough to once again go out of my room. God won't let Satan win.

I could keep going on and on about how Satan is coming after me, but I think it's more important to highlight the positive of this story. And that is that God is omnipotent and omnipresent. He won't let Satan win.

I have to keep reminding myself why I am here. In a previous blog called "College = Redemption Island", I talked about why I was coming to school. I wasn't coming to Carthage College for my own good. It wasn't about getting here so that I can get a job in journalism when I'm done with college. That's not to say that that isn't something I want very bad. I would love to be able to become a writer, and I hope that college prepares me for that. But again, that isn't why I came here. I came here to do the will of God and to allow him to use me in every situation I get. Coming in I thought it would be more about classes. But I guess that's not the situation God has me in right now. God has me here so that I can grow spiritually, and also help others grow spiritually. He keeps giving me opportunity after opportunity every single day. I'm not entirely sure why he has me here, but I know that he has me here for some reason. And that reason is for him to be glorified. How that is being done? I'm not entirely sure. But I take comfort in knowing that as much as Satan tries to attack, the rock won't move. God's not going anywhere, as long as I let him stay in control. And when it comes to spiritual warfare, Jesus ALWAYS wins.