This morning I had to battle overwhelming discouragement, sadness and hopelessness! It is so NOT like me that I was able to see it for what it was. The enemy’s plot. Watching my little birdie boy decline is breaking my heart and at the same time so is the provoked racial division, the hurricanes, fires and floods, the immaturity of rioters, looters and murderers (in the name of some cause) and all the other negative things jamming our social media and news outlets!
BUT GOD!
I have a good friend who has been through 2 near death experiences…a bout with cerebral malaria and recently another disguised as a cancer threat. One of the things she heard God tell her during this last ‘scare’ was “We get to do This”. It’s become a mantra for me (and many others) as we go through things. I’m so sad to lose my little friend of 36 years, but we get to do this. I’m sorry to see our country being torn apart by a small percentage of people that want to cause division, but we get to do this. I’m hurting for those devastated by the storms, but we get to do this. We get to come together. We get to praise God in it all. We get to thwart the devil’s plans by rebuking him and gather together in truth. We get to rise up as a church, a body of Christ, and claim what we have been given authority and dominion over.
It is time to take it all back. It is our decision to sit back and watch it all happen around us or stand up and fight! We can raise our voices against racial divide as we are all one in Christ. Together we can command the storms to stop, terrorism to cease, rioters to stand down. For this reason He says, “Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine (as dawn) upon you and give you light.” (Ephesians 5:14). Paul was not talking to sinners but to one of the best churches in the NT. Tozer writes, “Some of the Ephesians were in a somnolent condition, that is, they were morally god but unenlightened. They were religious but unanointed. It is perfectly possible for a good, faithful, loyal church member to be spiritually asleep – being in a spiritual state that parallels natural sleep. When your husband, your wife, your child, your relative, your friend or you go to sleep tonight, the fact that you are unconscious and out of the running for a while is not bothering you. You know that normally you will wake up again. You are not dead, but you are cut off from your environment, all but that which is reflex-breathing and a few other things. Likewise it is possible to be a Christian, to be in the church and yet be asleep spiritually.”
I am proof that everything going on around us, personally, physically and/or spiritually, can be overwhelming and cause us to want to bury our heads for a bit. But I encouraged myself this morning with this reminder and pray it encourages you as well. We get to love, undergird, encourage, embolden and keep each other in the fight.
WE GET TO DO THIS. Together with our Triune Godhead and each other.