Do you ever have "one of those weeks"? When you don't want to wake up and face the known? Or, worse yet, the unknown? When you want to leave your phone off so you don't get any more bad news? When you want to stop living because it's just. too. hard?
This is exactly what the enemy wants to happen. He has tried his dead-level best in my 30 short years to make sure I know that I am not valuable, not loveable, not funny enough, not skinny enough, not capable enough, not good enough, not enough.
And just when I think I've replaced his lies with God's truth, a different circumstance with a very familiar underpinning comes back to haunt me and I find myself once again in the labarynth of confusion and poor self-talk. And once you start believing something? You start living it.
As a man thinks in his heart, so is he (Proverbs 23:7).
If he can get us to question our value to God, or to begin to wonder if He really loves us, or ask why He would do such things to us, he knows we will eventually start interpreting life with the burnt-orange colored glasses of hell's fire. We will actually start seeing circumstances as reinforcements of the truth we have begun to believe.
I can't believe they won't return my phone call. They never loved me more than everyone else in their lives.
I knew he wouldn't stick around forever. People always leave. Why do I insist on getting attached?
I could turn my phone off for an entire week and no one would notice that I'm gone. The impression I'm leaving on the world holds so much magnitude I could measure it with a teaspoon.
It starts with one statement and escalades to several mini-statements and thoughts, and just that quick he's got us.
Because then we are cynnical and bitter and it eventually leads to an egotistical attitude or one of severe depression.
Or worse, both.
And the enemy has us right where he wants us.
Hey, you? We have a choice in the part we play in this story. We can choose to sit aside idly letting bitterness soak into our veins. Or we can choose victory. Joy in the face of despair. Gratitude in the brink of untimely affairs. Peace in the midst of the war for our soul.
We get to choose whether we believe the lie. Whether we let down the guard to our soul and believe the untruth that we are not valuable, not loveable, not beautiful.
What we say to ourselves matters. There is death and life in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21).
But Jesus didn't fight for a meaningless, unloveable, ugly bride. And He will one day present us without blemish and fault before all of heaven. And the accuser will be no more.
The accuser can accuse only as long as we allow him to. He may have more than enough evidence of our malignment to pronounce us guilty, but it is overcome by the blood of the Lamb. Satan's accusations count for nothing at the foot of the cross.
Are the accusations coming at you like a ton of bricks? Are you believing the lies that your heart, your deceitful heart, are telling you? Then perhaps you may have relocated.
Don't let the enemy evict you. Get back to the foot of the cross.
Get your body, mind, spirit, soul, and attitudes back to the cross. The accuser cannot and will not reside there.
God hasn't moved.
Me? I'll be picking up some change of address forms.
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Cara Cobble Trantham is a freelance writer whose passion is to encourage women of all ages to draw closer to the Lord. She is also a staff writer for The Daily Grace Co. She lives in Greeneville, Tennessee, with her husband and one-year-old daughter. She loves to send cards in magazine envelopes, counsel ladies over sugar and cream (with a little bit of coffee), and read a good book at the beach. Her bucket list includes eating pizza in Chicago, staying at a bed and breakfast in Savannah, and following a recipe without leaving out an ingredient.
