Galatians 6:9, “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

As you grow in your walk with God and the more you pursue Him the more the enemy is going to come against you.  The last thing satan wants is for you to serve God on any level!  He would prefer to make you so weary of the battle that you throw in the towel and give up.  Think about this for a second: as you grow, satan’s attacks become worse because even he knows he can’t keep using the same little storms that worked in the past if you are growing in your faith and trust in God.  In the same way, God can’t keep doing the same things in your life to make you feel “comfortable” for you to continue to grow.  Like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things..”  It’s the same concept here.  In order to grow we must exercise our faith and trust.  The best way to fight off satan’s attacks is to guard your heart and mind and reject what he has to say, don’t allow that doubt to even get a toe in the door of your mind!  As we mature in our walk with God it is vital that when the heat in that fire gets turned up we choose to remember that whether or not we can see what He is doing we can know that He is working and we can trust His heart!  He is working in you to grow your trust.  When you are waiting for Him to vindicate you as well, don’t take things into your own hands, trust God and His plan. His timing is perfect and the last thing you want to do is get in His way and cause a bigger mess.

When Abby was little, she is now 18, she would burst into tears if she didn’t know where I was in the house and now that she is older she really doesn’t even think about it unless she needs me for something, but she doesn’t panic because I am out of sight!  There would be something seriously wrong if she did!  God doesn’t want you to panic because you don’t “feel” His presence or because you can’t see Him working on it.  Maturity says, “Of course, He is working on it and I know I can trust Him so ‘not today satan’ ~ leave me alone! I know that just like it says in Romans 8:28, He is working all things out for good, and may He get all the glory for it!”  Is that easy to do all of the time?  Of course not because satan likes to sneak in when you are at your weakest moment and throw in some doubt with his lies.  It’s time for us to stand and believe what God has said and all that He has done and realize that if we can’t “feel” or hear Him today it just means He is working on it and He has our backs and we know that we know that we can always trust Him because He is so incredibly awesome and good!  He didn’t bring you this far to just bring you this far!  Maturity means not needing all of those little things to reassure us, it means we trust Him no matter what we see, feel, hear, or think!  Now does that mean He will never give us those reassurances again or never give us a little sign to renew our hope?  NO!  There are times for both and He knows what you need!  Believe me, I have been going through the fire with attacks I would never have imagined and I have had days when I would have loved for God to have just given me something, anything, a word here or there or some small sign to say, “It’s going to be ok” and yet …. Silence!  But as it says in Job 23:9-11, “When He works on the left hand, I cannot behold Him; When He turns to the right hand, I cannot see Him.  But He knows the way that I take When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.  My foot has held fast to His steps; I have kept His way and not turned aside.”  I want to know Him more every single day and I want to grow in my faith and trust in Him and that is just not usually a comfortable place all the time.  We have to choose whether we will let satan’s attacks make us weaker or stronger!  I want to be a warrior and warriors cannot curl up and hide, we must learn to stand strong and trust that God is our defender!  

Don’t take things into your own hands.  It’s time to trust Him and give everything to Him and leave it there! Strength can be found when you give Him your burdens and you pick up that sword and you choose to walk in confidence with the courage to know that He has you in the palm of His hand.  C.S. Lewis wrote, “Courage is not simply just one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”(1)  And Rabbi Jason Sobel wrote (when writing about Esther), “Courage does not compromise.  Courage dispels doubt, just like Mordecai talked Esther out of doubt into her destiny.”  And “Every one of us has a for such a time as this moment when our destiny is within reach.  We can decide if we are going to walk into it or walk away from it.  Each of us is designed for our God-ordained purpose, and if we say yes to His plan, there is joy.”  (2)

So we can all be encouraged today, whether God’s presence and what He is doing is evident, or if we feel the silence is deafening and nothing appears to be happening, that He hasn’t moved, He hasn’t changed, and He is always working on it.  John Piper once said, “God is up to a million things in your life and you are aware of three of them.”  He’s got you!  Trust Him!

Quote:  “Courage doesn’t always roar, sometimes it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day saying,’I will try again tomorrow.”  ~ Mac Anderson

1  C.S. Lewis, A Year with C.S. Lewis:  Daily Readings from His Classic Works (New 

York:  Harper Collins, 2003), 343.

2. Rabbi Jason Sobel, Alignng With God’s Appointed Times (North Hollywood, CA:  RJS Publishing, 2020)  192,193