You need a boyfriend to feel loved. Everything you say is stupid. You’re too sensitive. You’re not a good friend like you thought you were. You can’t remember anything. Your teammates don’t like you. You’ve been a mess the past three months. That’s why your teammates don’t like you, and they definitely don’t want to hangout with you. Your never going to get where you want to be. Your past defines you.
These have been the thoughts that have flooded my mind this month in Nepal. Negative thoughts and anxiety have been close companions of mine this month. Money has made me extremely anxious and exhaustion has hit me hard so many times this month, leaving me not wanting to go to ministry.
The past three months have been some of my hardest months on the race. Losing my grandfather in Myanmar, dealing with my past of rejection in India, and this month in Nepal fighting anxiety and negative thoughts. Besides it being month 8 of the race and being physically exhausted, these thoughts have exhausted me. I’m not surprised that during these times I’ve felt empty, alone, and sad.
When I was in Myanmar, I spoke two different times during chapel and each time I preached, I felt defeated. I shared my testimony and taught about how the Lord wants us to be His student and to seek His wisdom and knowledge. After preaching I asked myself, “What did I do wrong?” Feelings of inadequacy overwhelmed my mind. I broke the silence of my mind by speaking with my teammate Baileigh about how I had “bombed my sermon”. During our conversation I recognized that there was no reason I should be feeling defeated about sharing what God was doing in my life and encouraging others to seek His knowledge. This clearly was not from God. As I sat there with my teammate she said something that I still remember to this day: “It might help to pray the armor of God over yourself daily”.
Ever since then, I’ve been learning how to fight.
Every time a thought that isn’t from the Lord crosses my mind I start to pray. “Jesus, I know this thought is not from you, so I rebuke it in Jesus’ name. Please show me your truth”. This has been my prayer the past few months. I’m learning how to recognize the enemy and stopping him from having control on my life. It takes time, effort and patience to work on this.
My teammate Brittney has been talking about how the enemy isn’t creative. If we really think about it, he’s not clever in the ways he attacks. He attacks the areas of our life that we struggle with most, the areas that make us weak, and he makes us question our identity in God. Satan comes only to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). He wants to make us feel unloved. He wants us to struggle again with that struggle we’ve been delivered from. He wants to separate us from God. He wants to keep us from living in the fullness of God. God intended for us to live in freedom from the beginning, and Satan will do everything to try to take us away from that.
We have to be ready to fight.
One thing that I have loved about my month in Nepal is how our ministry hosts have what they call Ahmad. During this time we spend an hour every day with the Lord in whatever way we feel the Lord calling us to: through bible reading, listening to worship music, journaling, or spending time in prayer. At the end of this hour, one of our ministry hosts will come in and we declare the armor of the Lord over ourselves, speaking Ephesians 6 aloud as a group. In doing this, I am reminded of how important it is to put on the armor of God daily in our lives.
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in high mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes….Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all of this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Ephesians 6:10, 14-17
A few days ago at church, I heard a song that’s lyrics really stood out to me: “God is fighting for us, pushing back the darkness… In the name of Jesus’ the enemy’s defeated. He has overcome, overcome”.
I refuse to live in the dark thoughts that Satan wants me to live in. God is fighting for me. He is pushing back the darkness. He has overcome. He has won. He won on the cross. He fought for us then and he’s fighting for us now. In the name of Jesus, I will put on the armor of God and fight with him because in the name of Jesus, the enemy is DEFEATED. He has no stronghold on our minds. I want to be so in love with the Father, so deeply rooted in his presence and word that I can combat the spiritual attacks from Satan.
My encouragement to anyone reading this blog is to pray the armor of God over yourself daily like I’m learning to do. If you struggle with anxiety, negative thoughts, depression, and constant lies from the devil, it’s time to learn how to fight. It’s time to guard yourself with truth, the gospel of peace, and guard yourself with the shield. And while your fighting, remember that the Lord goes before you fighting the battle even before you have begun. May this be our war cry: GOD IS FIGHTING FOR US, PUSHING BACK THE DARKNESS & IN THE NAME OF JESUS THE ENEMIES PLANS ARE DEFEATED.
