Spiritual Battles

by Andrea Renee Cox

Asking for patience (as I talked about last week) or to better see what God is doing in my life might be easy prayers to say, but the living out of the answers that come is hardly ever easy or comfortable. I knew that going into those prayers, but it didn’t dissuade me. The answers are coming now, and boy, are they ever hard. But still I am not discouraged.

Even when the lessons are hard and break me, I refuse to give up the fight for God’s will. He is always worth it. My prayer through those toughest moments is usually, “God, help me.” But I’m finding out that I may add a little something else to that prayer. My prayer is becoming, “God, help me. I cannot do this without You. I need You. More than that. I want You. More than anything or anyone, I want You.”

When the answers God sends aren’t what I thought or were harder than the “hard” I imagined, the choice is mine. Will I decide to give up and settle for less than the best God has in store for me? Or will I choose to step out in faith, no matter how difficult things get, in order to walk in the will of God?

Through recent days and more than a few hard knocks, I’m learning that being willing to ask the difficult questions is only the first step of many required in this faith walk. The trek that follows is proving to be more excruciating than I ever could have imagined. But the conclusion I’m coming to is that the true liberty that comes from going through this pain is worth the battle.

Laying down a burden might sound simple. But when we’re talking spiritual battles, that is so far from the reality. There’s a particular weight I’ve been carrying around for years, almost as if it was some prize I’d won. It’s something I’ve tried to lay down many times over the years, yet for some reason or another, I’ve always later picked it back up. Why? Because I thought I knew best. I thought I knew the right time. I thought I could hurry things along.

Wrong. Wrong. So, so wrong.

All that picking-it-back-up stuff did was make the burden heavier. It deepened the injuries I was getting from the weight of it, though I didn’t realize that until recently. It compounded my problems, because it proved that I have trust issues that I didn’t know I had. The damage from that is tough to take. It’s damage I’ve caused myself in my stubbornness and lack of obedience. It’s because I was a rebel.

Now I’m wishing I hadn’t rebelled. I’m regretting the choice to cling to something that I cannot depend upon. My choices have failed me.

But God has not failed me. He has opened my eyes to my mistake. He has led me to turn from that mistake and ask His forgiveness for straying from His path. He has used my mistake to draw me closer to Him. He is using my pain to create something beautiful. He is shaping me into the obedient daughter I’ve always been destined to become.

He is creating in me the desire to truly and wholeheartedly follow Him.

So I’m laying down the burden again, for good this time. Only I’ve asked for His help to do so instead of trying in my own strength. I pray that I will trust Him fully this time, that I will trust what I know about Him. Because He is for me and not against me. He has a plan worked out for me, one that is not set to hurt me, but rather to give me a hope and a future.

Above all of that, He is my future. He is my home.

Today I choose to trust Him. Today I choose to be obedient. I choose to follow Him.

What will you choose?

Have you ever tried something in your own strength only to realize later that you weren’t strong enough for the task?

What have you learned from your mistakes?


The winner of the giveaway I hosted two weeks ago was Sylvia. Congratulations!
I'm so sorry I forgot to announce it.
Thank you, JJ, for reminding me!

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