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The month of March was a time of new revelations;

One revelation about my world race experience, a lot about the bible, issues of self image and creative thoughts to approach art.

God also taught me a lot about fasting.
And a lot about our enemy.
This is where my blog begins

God called me to a long fast back in Australia. I didn’t know when or where, but I trusted He’d make it evident to me. And He did just that.
At the end of debrief after NZ and OZ and just before the Philippines, God revealed to me some big lies satan was feeding me about some things in my life. Things I wasn’t too proud of. An issue I’d been having for a while, knowing the err of my ways and yet not finding any hope to do it differently, the way I should act as a good christian.

During this time I read proverbs 2 where it talks about crying out to God asking for wisdom and how knowledge and discretion will preserve you, keep you from evil. But I didn’t see this in my situation. I didn’t see a way out of the things I desired not to do and I was frustrated with God.
 
 
 
 
 
I was crying out to God daily.

Where was my hope?

Out of months frustrated and plagued by this topic, I talked with my squad leader and she brought an idea to light I had not considered before.

    The devil is toying with me.
 
In my past, struggles I’ve had in life or with God have usually been solved through brokenness. I see my fault, I see hope in God, I trust in Him and He makes me new again.

That is the general play by play of my growth with God.
But this is not the way my current situation is going down at all.

What ended up happening is that satan was not allowing me to feel the brokenness I longed for. Instead, he was feeding me lies and misdirection that what I’m doing has no remorse or guilt attached to it; and that was steering me away from hope in God. Although guilt is a tactic satan uses often and it cripples people; in my life, guilt is a moment of triumph because I know in that moment, I see God for who He is and what I’m not. Then He can come to my rescue.
 
 

When I realized this, it was the day I started my fast and the day I finally realized some of the wiles of the devil. As I prayed for a newness in God, a way for Him to make me whole and realize my worth in Him, I could feel the oppression start to come away from me.
I was on a new journey with my savior.

 
 

This is one thing He taught me about fasting:

–fasting gets the devil out.
Matthew 17 tells a story about how Jesus’ disciples were out one day and came across a man who was demon possessed. They tried to cast the demon out of the man but had no luck. So they went to Jesus in search of a reason why they had no power over the situation. What Jesus told them was that kind of demon only comes out through prayer and fasting.
Before I realized God would use fasting to start removing and revealing the lies satan spoke into my life about my sin, about how I viewed myself in God’s eyes, and how I thought God might view me because of it; He put fasting on my heart. All the way back in Australia weeks ago. I’m not generally the fasting type of person and I would have never foreseen my doing a fast longer than a few days – but He loves me that much that He would call me out to do something not in my realm of possibility.

A few things God taught me about satan:

–He’s tricky
Granted, I should know this – and for the most part it’s general knowledge. But when I dwelled on the thought for a bit, I realized my idea of the enemy is mostly derived from things I’ve seen in movies and on tv. All the scariest things you may have ever seen on a screen, the most twisted, evil and profane; that was the box I put on the devil. And for the most part, what I’ve seen really isn’t all that bad, plus the fact that it’s contained in a screen and can’t really be real. But our enemy roams around like a lion, seeking to kill and destroy. We can’t be fooled by masks He puts on (2 Cor. 11:13-15) to make himself appear friendlier and more fun than the cunning hell hole he is.

–We attribute falsely

The tricky attribute being said, I find that the devil weeds his way into situations where we incorrectly attribute what’s going on in reality. In times we figure satan must be at work in our lives when bad things happen, a lot of the time we may be the ones at fault and/or God is simply trying to refine us. And then there are times when we think we are failing and not right in God’s eyes when the devil is really at work tearing us apart on the inside. I think the enemy lives for moments like these and relishes the times we get caught up it all and start to see God less and less.
 

–Sometimes we just don’t understand
There is a spiritual realm out there that I won’t fully understand until I see God face to face in heaven. And the things God allows, the things satan does; I may never get it. Get into the book of Job in the Bible and you’ll get a real quick sense of this. The book is crazy hard to understand fully, but his much I get. Satan messes with Job, Job cries out, Job’s friends come over and try to tell him all the ways he’s sinned, Job stands his ground that he’s a righteous dude, there’s a lot of back and forth, this guy Elihu comes around and contradicts everyone but proclaims the righteousness of God, and then God speaks. God talks about His omnipotence and challenges Job on it. Read Job 40 to the end. It doesn’t take that long, but you’ll see how God and reference to Leviathan which is speaking of the devil clearly speaks about things bigger than us. And Job’s only response to the entire book, all the words that these chapters proceed from, was that he uttered things he didn’t understand. We won’t always get what goes on with the spiritual in the battle between God and satan. But the end is already written and God wins. He loves us dearly now, in every moment, and provides for us in ways we don’t always see or understand. The rest we can just chalk up to God is God.

In the end, God wanted to show me about my worth in Him instead of guilting my way out of doing things I cried for freedom from. And that’s where I most recently rediscovered Paul’s agony over a thorn in his side. In 2 Cor 12, he talks about this thing that hinders him and how he asked God to take it away from him. But then God revealed to Paul that His grace was sufficient for Paul and that in his weakness, God’s strength is made perfect. God didn’t take away the issue Paul had, He may not take away mine. But I know now that because I’m weak in it, I have to rely on God. And I now know the falseness of lies satan uses to try and surround the issue to take me away from God. It’s all a matter of learning how to let go and give it fully to God, not in my strength but His.