It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to write anything. Life has been challenging. Correction, it’s been down right hard and I feel like I’ve been in a 10 round fight with Mike Tyson. The old saying “When it rains, it pours” is so true. Difficult events never seem to happen as a solo issue, there’s always several issues coming at you from every direction.
And it’s easy to be distracted, knocked down and defeated. So what can we do, aside from getting our butts kicked? The answer is easy, but actually doing it is incredibly hard. All you have to do is…..Keep your eyes upon Jesus, just like the old hymn.
I’m going to use this forum to vent a bit about the last few weeks. My son has had some very serious mental health troubles. They’ve been going on for a while, but really have come to quite the head and we needed to get him more help than we were able to provide. My wife has been struggling while dealing with these issues, and more. My health has been giving me trouble, lots of it. My heart has been acting up and I’ve been dealing with chest pain and waiting for a heart cath to see what’s going on. Possible, pending vehicle repairs, home repairs, mounting medical bills on top of the mountain that we already had, etc.
I have tried to keep myself positive and ready to be there for my family to the best of my ability, but there have been those moments, and some days even, where I have felt completely lost and defeated. Almost like there was no point in me getting up and working hard all day and fighting to keep my mental health in a good place. There have been those moments where it would have been so much easier to say “Screw it” and just give up and accept that life sucks.
I have cried. I have wanted to cry when I wasn’t crying. I have wanted to lash out in anger towards God. I have wanted to avoid praying and doing devotions. I have wanted to give up and just accept defeat. But I’m a fighter (at least in spirit) and knew that I couldn’t just give up, I needed to fight on. I needed to pray, especially when I didn’t want to. I needed to trust that I had the best corner man available on my side to go to between rounds.
The enemy uses these struggles to try and steal, kill and destroy. He waits until it starts to rain and then he leaps in for the attack and hits you with anything that he can. He uses mental health, emotional health, physical health as well as doubt, fear and anxiety. He wants to distract us. But what is it that he’s trying to distract us from? Our relationship with Jesus and our faith. Plain and simple.
He doesn’t care if you go to church. He only cares if you have a relationship with Jesus, faith that He is our Messiah, and the life of faith in action that is a result of those things and that leads to our salvation. The enemy knows that you can go to church every week and not be saved, so he doesn’t care about that. He cares about taking you away from God and if he can do it in this life, it will be done in the next as well. All he has to do is throw everything he can at you when you’re down so that you can’t keep your head lifted up to look to Jesus. That’s all it takes, just simply keeping you away from the peace, strength and healing that relationship brings. He can’t do anything to you if you rely on Jesus and call to Him in your darkest hours.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)
“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” (1 Peter 5:10)
“He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless.” (Isaiah 40:29)
There are a few verses that I’ve been looking at recently. We know that Jesus is our friend https://journey-through-faith.com/2022/03/13/j-c-is-my-b-f-f/. That means that He is there with us through it all. When we struggle, He is there for us and we just need to look to Him for our strength and peace when we are weak and lost. He will lift us up and provide us with what we need for our battles. He will help us put on our Armor of God that Paul talks about in Ephesians 6 so that we can fight the enemy and defeat him time and time again. He will be there for us to cry to. He will listen when when it feels that your heart is broken and no one could understand.
But like any friend, He can’t do anything for us in our time of need if we don’t open the door. If we ignore the phone call and pretend that we didn’t see the text asking if He can help us carry our burden, then He can’t be there by our side. We have to keep our eyes on Jesus and rely on Him as our friend first and foremost and as our Savior whose name makes the enemy have to flee! King Jesus has already defeated the enemy and will do so every time, but we have to call out to Him and let Him bear our burdens. I don’t care how strong you are, you aren’t meant to bear the weight of life on your shoulders all by yourself. He will take that burden from you, but only if you let Him do it!
Jesus wants us to go to Him when we have nothing left. He wants us to go to Him when life is great too. He wants us to have a strong and healthy relationship with Him in this life to make sure that we can embrace like best friends after a long time apart in the next life. It’s all too easy to want to be alone when you’re hurting, but that’s when you need someone with you the most. And who better to to turn to and embrace than the Creator of the universe, the One who knew everything about you before you were even born, the One who loves you so much that He died to save you from yourself?
This has been a difficult few weeks, but as I have allowed Jesus to help me and guide me through them, I feel somewhat stronger than I had believed myself to be. I have moments of doubt that things will get better, but then He reminds me that this is only a season and seasons change. I have been lucky to have Jesus help me fight through this and be able to stand up, ready for the next round after taking some heavy punches.
Journey Through Faith 