I’ve never been one to entertain thoughts and validate the
existence of the supernatural. Novels and TV specials about ghosts and witches
do not appeal (ok, repulse) me. I just do not get into Halloween (the ghouls
and goblins part, free candy and cute kids in costumes I can totally handle!) I
don’t understand the vampire movie craze. Period.
But I do acknowledge and fear the existence and power of
Satan on this earth. The Bible makes it clear that he is living and active in
the world. In the first chapter of Job, God asks Satan what he has been up to.
His reply, “ ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down
on it.’ “ Oh wow. You get this picture of Satan lurking around,” looking for a
soul to steal”, to quote Charlie Daniels. And then obviously he shows up in the
New Testament as well, trying his best to temp Jesus himself in the wilderness,
and in Luke 22:3, “Satan entered into Judas” – seriously? Can he do that?? The
book The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis fictitiously portrays the demon
‘Screwtape’ writing letters of instruction to his nephew demon’ Wormwood’,
telling him exactly how to control the thoughts and actions of his human
‘patient’ to keep him from becoming a strong supporter of the ‘Enemy’ (God).
Although not scripture, it sure does make you think.
Recently, I have seen Satan at work in my family’s life. No,
we haven’t experienced and catastrophic losses or turned our back on our faith,
but let me show you how he has attacked us with a timeline of the past two
months.
Early in September, Scott and I committed to start reading
and studying a chapter of the New Testament together every night (excluding the
gospels and revelation, we would have studied the entire NT by the end of the
year). All is well and good for a few weeks, and then my work schedule got
crazy. I was gone a lot, slammed every day at work, emotionally and physically
spent, on call two weekends in a row and scheduled to go to a conference the
next weekend. We kept reading, but our relationship felt cold and distant. My
‘love language’ (read The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman) has always
been quality time, but we never could pinpoint Scott’s, he’s so laid back and
even keel that nothing seems to phase him. Well, during that time, because I
hadn’t been around or able to spend many quiet moments together, he figured out
that his was quality time, too, and that he hadn’t felt at all loved in a long
time. Epic. Wife. Fail. See what happened there? Scott and I attempted to grow
together spiritually and Satan found a way to use my job to drive us apart.
So, the last weekend of September, he came to Fort Worth to
go on a date with me while I was at my conference and we were able to
reconnect. That night, we made some exciting plans for our future regarding decisions
we’d been wrestling with for 6 months or more. This must have made the Devil
really mad, because 2 days later he found a way to destroy our plans. Our last
milk-hand at the dairy quit. If you aren’t in the dairy industry, you can’t
fully grasp the impact this has, so I’ll run down the list of badness and
uncertainty it has caused:
- Scott or Kenton would always have to milk either day or night (longer, harder hours to work).
- A decision had to be made to keep milking cows, to milk less cows, or to sell the entire milk herd.
- If they keep the cows, the guys work themselves to exhaustion and I never see my husband.
- If they sell the cows, they no longer have jobs, and a proud 3 generations of dairy farming comes to a close.
- All of the decisions and plans we’d made two nights earlier got put on hold, again.
- Milk hands are hard to find, harder to train, and even harder to keep, so hiring another one was pretty much out of the question.
While my head was reeling with this news, I found comfort in
two verses of scripture and posted them on Facebook, thinking maybe someone
else might find encouragement as well. Apparently, the devil thinks scripture
is a powerful thing, because the next day, a troublesome ex-church member
passive-aggressively attacked me in the comments section under the scriptures
(which opened a whole other can of worms, insert eye roll here). We somehow got
through the rest of the week, and I had a few days off to spend together as a
family before the hand was gone and life got harder.
That was Monday. Friday, I got to go to an amazing ladies
retreat (see Turning Over a New Leaf) with my sister in law and found just what
I needed to recharge my batteries, to recommit to studying and praying. Sunday,
I had a major breakdown about putting Coleman back in daycare full time. He’s
been spending Thursdays and Fridays with Scott, but would no longer be able to
as Scott’s work schedule had changed. Scott and I read our Bible passage that
night and God gave me some amazing scriptures to reaffirm the lessons from the
retreat and encourage me that all was well.
I guess Satan decided to fight fire with fire, because the
next afternoon, I was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy (all the gory details
can be found here). You see, he had to resort to an attack on my physical
health to distract me from attending to my spiritual health. And it worked. We
quit reading. I was sick. Scott was gone to the dairy. Coleman could sense that
we were upset about something. He used the emotional roller-coaster of female
hormones to guide misgivings about God’s plan for our family. He used Scott’s
absence to let insecurities and worry creep in. It took almost the entire month
of October to recover.
Do you see his strategy? Do you see how subtle, yet
infiltrative his methods are? It was well thought out, carefully planned on a
timeline, an offense for every defense. Every time we tried to rally, he came
back with something even harder, kicked us while we were down. No, we didn’t
suffer a major loss, praise God, but now we’ve lost something even more
precious: time spent with God. And you’d better believe that is a huge victory
to Satan.
But let me share something else with you. During this whole
battle over our spiritual walk, God fought back:
-The Holy Spirit gave me scripture memory to lift me up just
when I needed it most.
-God guided my studying to gird me up before the assault
even started.
-He gave me the desire to attend the ladies retreat (I had
to rearrange my on call schedule) where I learned some invaluable resources to dive
into God’s word and reap the benefits.
- He used family to minister to our needs while I was sick
and unable to do so.
-He provided friends that were concerned for us and look out
for me.
- He delivered a sermon through a great friend about finding
my faith to snap me back to reality and realize what was going on.
- He gave my husband unbelievable strength and patience, he
reassured me that I mean the world to him, he was scared with me, and he took
great care of me.
See that! GOD. FOUGHT. BACK. For me, for little ol’ me! Even
when I didn’t know what was going on! And he does every single day for all of
us-isn’t that just amazing?!? So the next time you think you’re being kicked
while you are down, “count it all joy” just as Paul did. Take it as a compliment:
you wouldn’t be a target if you weren’t doing something that made Satan mad and
threatened his mission. But at the same time, be aware, be on guard, and allow
God to fight back!
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