Tug of War...

June 14, 2009

Danielle Joyner Kelley

“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:7-10.

This past year I began to grow in my faith, and finally, after a lifetime, I can say that I have completely given my life over to God. During this process though, I realized that the other side of the fence was not at all what I expected.

For years I thought to myself that if I ever started doing this correctly everything would be wonderful. All of a sudden I realized that it was and it wasn’t, and I became extremely confused. I didn’t need to be. God had already provided all the answers I needed and told me what this other side of the fence would be like. I didn’t bother to listen at that time.

Once I came to the other side and strengthened my walk with God I found myself wondering why things were getting harder and harder. For some reason this time, unlike all the others that were not half this bad but I quit and ran away from, I did not give up. It almost became a challenge. I wanted to see what would lie ahead. I remember thinking that things were so bad that I had no choice but to go forward, so I did.

People around me noticed what was going on as well. My husband, working on his relationship with God as well, saw what I was going through but how faithful I remained, and asked me why things were getting harder when I was working to hard to do the right thing. As a new Christian, his questions are extremely valid not only because he is trying to understand the way things are now, but also the things that are yet to come in his own walk as well.

This time around I understood the Holy Spirit, and, as God tells me to in the Bible, I was asking Him to guide me and teach me. No doubt He was or I would have given up. I had read the Bible and tried this walk so many times before and never understood it. I asked everyone around me to help me understand, but I didn’t bother to ask the One that God told me would help me. This time I did, and learned answers and gained understanding that I never came close to before, no matter how much I went to church or read my Bible. A jigsaw puzzle is not complete even if there are 199 pieces you have put together but one is still missing.

Also, this time I understood the true meaning of “good versus evil”. Both exist, but the problem is the evil side tries to convince you that it does not exist and if anything bad happens you are to blame the good side for allowing it to. Put simply, Satan does not want you to believe he exists, so if something goes wrong guess who you blame? God.

So this time, I started to study what my enemy was up to. God tells us to. I know from the Book of Job that God asks Satan “Where have you come from?” and Satan answers, “From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.” Job 1:6-7. The Book of James tells me to “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” James 4:7. In 1 Peter I am told that my “enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” and that I am to “Resist him, standing firm in the faith…”. 1 Peter 5:8-9. The Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians that we must “Put on the full armor of God so that we can take our stand “against the devil’s schemes”. Ephesians 6:11.

How did I miss that? God could not have made it any plainer. In the scripture at the beginning of this note, Paul also tells us that through his sacrifice to spread Christianity and through revealing the revelations and visions that God gave to him, Satan also came after him.

Meanwhile, this time I am in step with the Holy Spirit, learning what my enemy is capable of, and things are getting worse and worse. The extremes became overwhelming. Either I was so happy and in love with God, or I was beaten and torn down. The gray started to disappear and I was stuck on one side or the other.

I was upset understandably, but ironically enough able to explain it this time around. When my husband asked me about it I told him what I was going through was like a tug of war. If I pull a little on the rope the enemy will pull a little also. He won’t have to pull much more than me to get me to fall. However, if I align myself with the Holy Spirit and ask Him to pull with me, my enemy will start to fall in the water. What is my enemy’s only option at that moment? To pull even harder. So he does just that, and I find myself in a tug of war for my own soul. The harder I pull, the harder he does and meanwhile I am growing exhausted and weak.

God has watched me in this tug of war my entire life. As a human, created by Him, He knows my strength will run out eventually whether or not I am coming to Him for help. But when my strength is almost gone, I have no choice but to ask for help. That is the very moment when the very hands that created my own body reach in and grab the rope.

My explanation of that made sense to my husband, but then he looks at me and asks if I will have to go through this for the rest of my life because I decided to walk right with God. Good question, and one I had not really thought about. I got so bogged down in yanking the rope I never asked if the war would eventually end.

Again, God had already told me the answer and I did not bother to understand it before. Like everyone else I was thinking that God is all powerful and could take away all the negative if He wanted to, and if He wasn’t taking it away from me then He was either punishing me or just not interested. That is exactly what my enemy wanted to me to think, just as in the Book of Job when he tried to get Job to turn against God. He wants us to blame God and that is why he does it. However, we know God cannot sin and that point is made in the Book of Job as well. “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing”. Job 1:22. That is right, it is a sin to charge God with wrongdoing. That is because God cannot sin, and God is not in the “doing wrong” business, and He wants you to understand who really is up to harming you.

Still we know that God has the power to stop him. This is true. However, we have to remember that God is the author of justice and the author of everything good. Asking him to save us from bearing the consequences of traps we have made for ourselves, including traps that we formed while we were taking the world on by storm and not trusting Him, is like asking us to allow child molesters to walk around in society and play on playgrounds with no regard for what they have done. We are not willing to give up the demand for justice and accountability, so why do we ask it of Him? I don’t get to keep doing myself in when I know it is wrong and then expect Him to jump in and tell me there are no consequences for my actions.

There will be consequences for my actions, and there already have been before my feet ever walked on the Earth. No matter who I study was responsible for the crucifixion of my Savior, Jesus Christ, I know the truth. It was my sins, and those of everyone past, present, and future, that pounded those nails into that Cross. I am not afraid to admit that. Someone already had to suffer a horrific consequence for my sin beyond what I could even imagine. Who am I to complain now that something that I did to myself, not done by someone else to me, but by me, is making me slightly uncomfortable?

Armed with this new knowledge, I seek the answer of whether or not the war will end. God has told us all that it will. In Job, after all the horrific things he suffered that tested his faith in God, the war finally ended, and God repaid him in full. “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first.” Job 42:12.

As a child and teenager I remember asking God why He was allowing something bad to happen to me. This time I know the truth. God never allows anything bad to happen to us. In Job it may seem that is what He is doing, but it is not. Remember Satan’s reply to God, "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face." Job 1:9-11.

Then God tells Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger." Job 1:12. When you read that you can see clearly that God did not do anything to Job, Satan did.

And the rest of the Bible tells what God is not willing to do. “When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” James 1:13-18.

God is the author of love, justice, mercy, grace, and everything good. He is not a God of evil and bad, and if we truly believe that He is and that He is doing bad things to us then not only are we putting Him on the other side of our own rope and saying that He is fighting us into doing evil just as Satan is, but we are saying that we are willing to worship and believe in a God who is for us and against us at the same time. To me, common sense is a good thing, and because good things come from God then common sense would say that there is no way God is cheering against us or setting trip wires in front of us. Also, God cannot sin and to believe that He is guiding us and setting us up at the same time is to believe that He is practicing hypocrisy. I know He is not. I would rather accuse someone evil of doing evil things and that would fall on Satan, not a loving God willing to sacrifice His own Son to save me.

If you encounter someone who believes that God is out to do us all in then all I can say is stand by. Satan is about to pull them into the water. He is the only one who could convince half of society that God is against us. Remember, God told us thousands of years ago in the Book of Job that Satan was roaming the Earth? Did you ever see a verse that said he stopped? I didn’t, and this time I am actually looking.

God created me, and He knows that I will come to Him when my arms are weak. I am going through bad times so I will seek Him more, and the Bible is full of those stories. It was never God causing me harm. He tells us through His word who it was all along. He also tells us that His word will not return to Him “empty” but will accomplish what He desires and achieve “the purpose” for which He sent it. Isaiah 55:11.

The Apostle Paul told us in the main scripture in this note that it is Satan harming us. God is showing us how to strengthen our muscles to pull that rope by asking for His help. As the Author of everything good, He knows that He is the perfect and ultimate source of strength you will need to win your battle. That is why this scripture makes so much sense to me now. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9. I would not have known that if I had not been weak enough to become humble and ask for help.

When you are about to fall in the water and you reach back and ask for God, the One who has more power than everything on Earth and all enemies here and beyond that you have or will have, He has the strongest pull and is the One we know has the victorious grasp. No matter how many times you have fallen in the water before, know that His Son’s sacrifice allows you to get back up, learn from your mistake, dry off, and grab the rope again. Know that your enemy will try to pull harder than you do, and commit yourself to keeping your feet on the ground and using God’s strength all the way to victory. When you walk by others and you see them pulling remember your struggle. When you look down on the person in poverty, suffering an addiction, or something else you think is bad remember God is not doing anything bad to them, but apparently Satan is pulling on their rope pretty hard. Must be that they knew how to pull hard at first. Before you cast a judgment ask yourself what side you are helping to pull for.

No matter what we suffer, even the death of a loved one, to which most of us have suffered, and many will, we have to remember that God sent His Son here and He conquered the grave. Satan’s worst fear is that you don’t fear death. The fear of death is profound in society. If you lose a loved one and know you will be with them in Heaven again one day, trust me on this one, Satan is mad enough to throw down his rope.

I didn’t understand until I finally was weak enough to ask for help. Now not only do I have help with my struggle, but its purpose is being explained to me. I would love to say “finally” and “it is about time” but I cannot because apparently I never bothered to ask as the answers were already written thousands of years ago.

Like those answers tell us that were written so long ago, my war will end. And I will be restored to twice what I was. Of course I would, I am no longer just me. Now I have a team.

If you should encounter anyone who doubts that then stand by…

They are about to fall in the water.