None of us like feeling powerless. We want to be strong and stand against anything that comes our way, but so often we end up feeling helpless. I’m talking about both a physical attack, but a mental attack or another way to put it, a spiritual attack. We have an enemy who lurks in the shadows trying to tear us down and make us question whether God is truly there. Now before I continue, this isn’t a post about how “the devil made me do it,” stop that, you did it and you have to own the mistake (rant over). Today I want to write about how to combat spiritual attack, because each of us fight on a daily basis. There are words spoken over us (see last week’s post), there are temptations that arise, and there are hardships that don’t make sense to us. Each of these things are a form of spiritual attack, designed to make us lose sight of the one who loves us, the one who gave his life for us. You see, we aren’t hopeless in the midst of these things, we actually have the tool we need to fight back. It’s so easy for church culture to just say, “hang in there,” or my personal favorite, “I’ll pray for you,” (then never pray when you could do it in that moment with them). This tool is powerful and we all have experienced it, but we often don’t consciously see it as a weapon, then it hit me while reading a book.
Faith
Faith in a Modern Age
“He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
‘You have answered correctly,’ Jesus replied. ‘Do this and you will live.’
-Luke 10:27-28
What does it look like to truly follow Christ? I think so many times for us we wonder if what we are doing is the right thing, if we are allowed to do or say different types of things, or if we can associate with certain people. We need to stop. We need to break free of the mindset that faith is a set of rules. Faith with Christ is a relationship, an authentic relationship shared with the creator of all things. It’s so easy in the church world mindset that we have to follow a certain list of rules in order to be allowed in the club. Following Christ is not about earning enough gold stars to go to heaven, it’s about a relationship of love with the king of kings. This can be difficult. We live in a modern age where following Christ can be pushed to the side. We have endless entertainment and can post pictures of our bible on Instagram without ever actually reading it. The crazy thing is, this has been a struggle since Jesus came onto the scene. No they didn’t have hours of shows to stream on Netflix or some Jesus and coffee aesthetic to keep up with on Instagram. What they had was the core of the struggle, what does it look like to truly follow Christ?
Faith for the Real World
One of my favorite things to do is watch campy b-movies (in case you couldn’t already tell with the title of this blog already!). It always makes me laugh, especially while watching with friends. While having dinner with a few of my old roommates we were joking around about this movie that we had kept seeing clips from, some direct to video stuff. The movie’s premise was showing the dangers of playing dungeons and dragons, and in it you see a comical caricature of Christians. The movie looks ridiculous, but that got me thinking (not about the danger of D&D, because it’s just a game, silly), but it got me thinking about what a real world faith truly looks like. You see, there are so many misconceptions of what having a relationship with God is truly like, and many people are turned off by some of the types of people that claim to have a relationship. A relationship with Christ is one of the most incredible and real things. What that means is that you have acknowledged that you’re a sinner, which creates a disconnect from God, but God sent his son to bridge that gap. His death and resurrection allows us to enter into a relationship with him, it is a relationship that is real and raw. A relationship with Christ isn’t some legalistic or holier-than-thou type of thing, it is an authentic walk with Christ.
Entering into Unknown Territory
Well, the summer is finally coming to a close. Not going to lie, I’m ready for this heat to go away. What this also means is that we are all entering into new seasons of our lives. The summer vacations come to a close, college students head back to having their time filled with work, and kids start a new grade while having to wake up early in the mornings (but moooooom, I don’t want to wake up!). It’s funny how fast time seems to fly by, we finish one season of our lives in a blur and jump towards the next. It can be pretty scary if we’re honest. New things always make us unsure of what we know. I’ve been thinking a lot about this because today in fact, I start my senior year at UNCG, which makes me nervecited. What’s that? You have no idea what my made up word means? It’s a combination of nervous and excited. I’m nervous because after this year is when I start looking for jobs and enter into the “real world.” At the same time I’m excited because I will begin a new chapter in the story of my life. We all have transitions and new chapters, all of which have us entering into unknown territory.
Joshua Writes 