Last night we wrapped up a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, full of laughter, sweet family-time, fellowship, good food, games, etc. It was just plain GOOD. Then I got ready for bed around 10:00 p.m. and as soon as I laid my head on my pillow, I literally felt my mind trying to turn to some dark places. (It was like my brain had a mind of its own! Weird, I know!) It felt like a train, loaded up with Negativity, Fear, and Doubt, left a station nearby and came railroading into my thoughts, unsolicited!
First there was fear. Y’all I am not a fearful person and rarely struggle with that issue. But suddenly I was worrying about everything all at once. How my kids are turning out, my teen daughters’ safety and well-being, my grand babies, my marriage being attacked, our finances, the health of our church… no area of my life was untouched by this dark, creeping fear. Because I’ve been a Christian since I was 9 years old, and I’ve been in church all those years and paid attention (!), I knew what to do. I recognized where this crap was coming from, and I began to pray. I said the name of Jesus out loud, and I began to quote a lot of Bible verses that I’ve committed to memory over the years for occasions JUST such as this one! Guess what? It didn’t work this time.
Having faced this particular “not working” thing before, I knew what to do next: WORSHIP HIM. (By ‘Him’ I do mean the One and Only, the Lamb slain before the founding of this world, our Jesus.) Now my favorite way to worship Him is to sing to Him. It’s what I’ve always done, since early childhood. So lying there in the darkness of my bedroom I tried to softly sing my worship to my God. But it wouldn’t come out of my throat. And that’s when this dark nasty force took it PERSONAL. I heard a foul whisper, “If he hadn’t taken your voice away you could win this thing.”
🎯
There it was. Bullseye. Arrow straight to the heart. My heart hurts already every single day over the fact that I lost my voice seven years ago and never got it back. My heart grieves over the fact that I can no longer sing. Lying there in my bed last night, tired and wanting to be asleep, I’d temporarily forgotten that I can’t sing anymore. For a SPLIT SECOND, I felt my spirit, my heart, my core self trying to slide down into the location this foul demonic spirit had chosen to take me… despondency and bitterness, anger at God, spewing at Him “Yeah, God I WOULD worship You if You hadn’t made it freeking IMPOSSIBLE!” It felt good to my hurting flesh to be angry.
But. Somehow (praise God) I knew this was a trick. It was an invitation to somewhere that looks/feels good at first, but turns ugly once you’re there. I knew not to go.
I’d already tried prayer, quoting Bible verses, saying the name of Jesus… I now caught myself wondering what other tools I might have in my tool belt. (Mike had just preached the day before on our spiritual armor, from Ephesians 6, so I was mentally scanning through whatever options I may have left.)
And that’s when Jesus showed up. Like, inside my mind, where I could see him, His manifested Presence came walking into my thoughts. (That’s the best way I can explain it.) Y’all, the look on His FACE. It was so… human. And recognizable. Like, “Hey there I’ve seen this nasty thing you’re up against tonight while you’re just in your bed minding your own business trying to go to sleep. Want some help?”
[This is the kind of Savior we have!😭]
So this is how it went down after that: He asked me, “If all of those things that you were fearing actually happened, and every other worse-case-scenario you could imagine also happened to you, where would you be?” I said, “With You.” And suddenly ALLLL this PEACE flooded my mind/heart/soul. Then He invited me somewhere. He said, “Come float on a cloud with me.” Now this is funny right here… like an inside joke between me and Jesus, because he knows I hate it when people think that Heaven is just formerly-alive humans floating on clouds. So I saw this delightful twinkle in His eyes when He invited me to do that. In my mind, my imagination if that’s what you want to call it, I pictured Jesus and me lying down and relaxing, adrift on a white puffy cloud. Nothing was said… we were just TOGETHER. The next thing I knew, it was 6:00 this morning and I was waking up from a refreshing sleep. Still feeling close to Jesus.
**WHO WON THAT, Satan??** hahaha
I know that God wants me to write this episode down and share it with others, because we all have a nasty enemy who is real, and can try things against us. The devil hates us because we bear the image of God, and he really never tires of trying to trip us up. It’s important that we know how to fight him and take our stand against him.
One final note: the thing I was doing right before Jesus Himself showed up and basically shut the enemy’s assault down, was that I was scanning (frantically, I’ll admit!) through the list of weapons/armor in Ephesians 6. I realize now that what “worked” in this case was Truth. The very first piece of armor Paul lists is the Belt of Truth. The fact that he calls it a belt shows that it protects your gut, your CORE. Remember how I said that the enemy took it to a place that was PERSONAL? When he brought up my voice condition, it felt like a gut-punch to my soul. But last night, I didn’t have to “find Ephesians 6 in my Bible” or intellectually remember the verse about the Belt of Truth. My frantic mental scanning got interrupted because TRUTH walked in. Truth is a person, and His name is Jesus. He helped me so much last night! ❤️
His Straight Arrow 