As a born-again Christian of nearly 40 years,
I’m well aware how hard the enemy tries at times to pull me away from God, to
distract, to frustrate. From small annoyances to major blindsides.
But yesterday was interesting!
A bit of a back story though. I am one of three volunteers who assist a pastor with her online Facebook page, acknowledging or responding to comments concerning her posts. She is quite active, as a singer, writer, and inspirational speaker, and posts minimum four to 6 items a day. I believe her to be spirit-filled and her posts usually align with my understanding of God and His Word, the Bible. As well, I have a handful of online pastors whom I follow. Two especially after the Asbury Revival began and I became aware of their love of God and passion for true Christianity, its cost, and its rewards. (I'm not using her name her purposefully because of the health issue of one of her volunteers, to respect her privacy).
So back to yesterday – well actually nearly
48 hours ago. I saw a post about how effective and powerful prayer is. I agreed
with the rest of the post and made my own comment about how prayer is so much
more meaningful than the empty platitudes of “sending good vibes”, or “hugs” or
“healing thoughts”. Prayer is an action, and it connects with the Creator of
the Universe! It gets results!
That was the first post of note. Early the following morning (yesterday) Pastor Scott Silverii posted a clip about recognizing
the enemy and what he is, and is not, capable of. One of the best and most
clear “sermonettes” I have ever heard and I commented as such.
I guess by this point I now had the
attention of the enemy. In short order, an issue arose within my family over an
unintended slight, and could have easily mushroomed into a cancerous
bitterness, but my son, wise in his own self, knew enough that it needed to be
addressed and was. It was an emotional hour or so with him, my husband, and
myself.
Then I received a message from the above
mentioned pastor, whom I assist, to say one of our group of volunteers had been
taken to hospital and was awaiting an MRI, and that another member of the team
was having phone issues and couldn’t connect with the account properly and so was unable to help with monitoring posts. At this
point, I’d been having my own computer issues and had to work through updates
and reboots to get it to function properly.
Individually, all pretty minor things,
other than the health issue of course. And then I was told by the pastor that
one of her ministry assistants was in a large department store that day, and
went to pay for purchases and found the hundreds of dollars he had on hand –
gone!
When I related some of my experiences,
combined with what she already knew, she recognized we were all encountering
opposition – not the least because she had had issues with an anonymous commenter
on one of her posts, who then blocked her so she couldn’t respond.
By the time I finally called it a night it
was nearly midnight, but instead of feeling tired, or discouraged, I felt the
opposite! Energized and encouraged, because once I put the pieces together and
realized the probable source of all these annoyances, I put Satan in his place.
Wise, because of experience, to his tactics, whatever he had tried to
accomplish with me disappeared like dust in the wind.
I just felt I needed to share this while it’s
still fresh in my mind. Because if you have been a Christian for any length of
time, and your walk with the Lord is strong, I’m sure you’ve encountered your
own situations where you didn’t recognize at first the source of problems that
could distract, or even pull you away, from your calling.
And if you’re not a Christian, or don't have an
understanding of how the enemy works, I understand your skepticism. You
probably think I’m connecting dots that don’t connect. Believe me, I’ve been
there, and am so grateful now to have discernment that the Holy Spirit gives
me, in order to see through a deceptive camouflage.
God is the All-Powerful One, He is the one
I follow, worship, and every day learn more about. Satan is the liar, the counterfeiter,
and has already lost. But he doesn’t want to meet his fate alone, the more he
can take with him, the better.
Please don’t join him.
In His name, and with love,
Liz
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