What do you fight for?
Have you ever held onto something so tight you felt it slipping away?
Have you ever fought for something so hard and lost it anyway?
Something, that leaves a heaviness within you, brings about darkness.
It wages a war within your soul. Wears you down…
What if I told you Faith fights for you?
The world will tell you to fight for yourself.
Fight for your rights.
Fight, and keep fighting.
Faith tells you to set it all down, lay it at the cross, and let it go.
It takes the war that’s been waged within your soul and starts to calm that storm.
I’ve been there.
Fighting Faith
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
James 4:1-4
We’ve all got battles.
What follows is a small view into a time in my life.
I refer to it as the Dark Decade of Emily.
It was a time when I wasn’t getting the answers I wanted from the Lord.
So I sought to find them within the world around me.
I did the opposite of sit still.
I just kept going, digging deeper and deeper, searching for the answers on my own.
The further I turned from God and into the world the harder the fight.
The sins of the world seemed attractive and shiny, yet were wrong for my heart.
I started to feel defeated, depressed, and devastated.
Too weak to keep fighting and so alone because I’d strayed too far from the comforting light of home.
Faith Fights for YOU
Yet, the Lord knew the path I’d take. He is a Father who lets his child learn from right and wrong.
Patiently, waiting, intervening, and placing people in my path to steer me home.
He didn’t leave my side once. While I was fighting my faith He continued to fight for me.
Waiting for me to decide.
To realize what I was seeking in the world, was the very thing I left behind.
It wasn’t too late, the only way I’d become an enemy of God was if I moved to the world permanently by denying Jesus. If I’d believed I was doing nothing wrong that would be where the danger lay.
In my own time, after many people were placed in my life to steer me back home.
I cried, Lord, please forgive me.
You have been fighting for me all along and I’ve been too stubborn and prideful to see it.
Lord, I lay down my life before you.
You died on the cross to save me from the sin that I am living in.
Lord bring me back to you.
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
James 4:7-8
Do you have a story like this? Or are you currently wrestling with your faith?
I’m here for you, reach out anytime. You can leave a comment with your email, I’ll keep it private and send you a message.
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