Chronicles of the Mind

Do you ever have things like this or am I the only one? One day you're up and full of faith, the next you feel deflated and ready to give up. What looked bright and sunny yesterday, appears dark and gloomy today. The result is often a mood where you just feel like crawling into bed and go to sleep, hoping that reality looks better when you wake up.

My weekend was like that. Thursday and Friday, I could tell my faith was being tested. God had recently spoken to me to raise my shield of faith, so I tried as best as I could to keep my shield up. Then something happened on Friday that caught me off-guard and seemed to shatter my shield. The fiery darts began to penetrate my armor and I could feel the lies of the enemy taking a hold of my mind - well, I didn't realize it then...but I do now!

From there, it was all downhill. My Saturday was dull and dreary, my Sunday downright depressing. Until God spoke to my heart while doing the dishes. An old Keith Green song came to mind called "Lies". In this song, Keith sings about the lies of the enemy that make us weak and deflate our faith. Suddenly, I realized that all these gloomy thoughts, this dark perspective of reality came from the enemy and the lies he was whispering in my ear. Because I was listening, all ability to fight had just left me completely.

Interestingly enough, that revelation in itself was all I needed to raise my shield again. God had been speaking James 1:2-4 to my heart throughout the weekend, but I hadn't been willing to listen: "Count it all joy, brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full result, so that you will be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

Many times, God brings difficult circumstances to cause our faith to grow. Those circumstances bring our weaknesses to the surface, but that is a good thing - that way, we can give them to God and He can grow our faith. And it produces endurance, the ability to outlast the devil and his temptations, the stick-to-it-iveness we all need in this life.

I thank God for trials. I thank God for this weekend.