Exposure

Satan loves to disguise himself, and the Spirit loves to expose him. The Great Deceiver, as Christians often call him, looooves to take seemingly innocent, 'it happens every day' sorts of things and use them to his advantage. I've known this for a long time, but knowledge isn't the same thing as wisdom; therefore, I often look right past Satan and his schemes, seeing only my own faults and blaming myself for his dirty work.

Nathan and I recently decided to change the nature of our relationship to where God is the center of it, rather than ourselves. We had each been ignoring our faith for months, and as a result had not grown spiritually as individuals, much less as a couple. And so we agreed to take one step at a time until the Lord became the glue between us, as He should be.

This is where Satan stepped in. He promptly put fear in my heart for the first week, making me unsure as to what to do first in order to bring God into my life with Nate. The next week, Nate's grandpa died, and he was gone all week attending to funeral arrangements and family. While home, he contracted a cold from his sister and has been sick for the week and a half since.

A little fear, a family death, a common cold--innocent, everyday things, right? I no longer think it is that simple--for two weeks, I have barely seen my Nathan, and for three weeks, nothing about our shared spiritual life has changed.

It finally dawned on me, after spending days on end muttering angry comments directed mainly at myself, that it isn't entirely our fault that nothing has changed yet. Satan had our hearts for the past few months, but when we finally decided to give those same hearts back into the loving arms of our God, the evil one took every effort to keep us from taking any action towards affirming that decision. He knows that our hearts are now in the right place, and that our desire is to love the Lord. He also knows that if we spend any real time together, we'll start to share that love--the holy and pure love of the Lord--with one another. It is Satan's worst nightmare, Christians sharing Christ, and apparently he will do anything to stop us from accomplishing it.

I'm a bit frustrated, especially since I realized all of this a few days ago and have been praying against it since, to no avail. In church today, Tim said something that caught my attention immediately: "heading in the right direction does us no good without the power of God." A decision like the one Nate and I made is useless until we begin to rely on the power of our Almighty God, rather than relying on ourselves. Such a statement would make almost no sense to a non-Christian, but to me it is "the very aroma of Christ."

It is a simple truth that we who belong to the Lord must rely on Him, must trust Him, in order for our prayers to be heard and our enemies defeated before our eyes. Yes, I have turned my heart back towards the Lord after months of apathy. Yes, I have been reading in His word and learning about Him, talking about Him...But, I have not leaned on Him. I have not been witness to His power. In fact, I have not even asked Him to show it. I have not believed that He is truly in control...and for that, it is I who suffer at the hands of sin and the one who brings it.

Lord, let me be filled with belief in You, trust in You, and reliance on the power of Your Holy Spirit!