But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. ~Heb. 11:6
I'm realizing the deeper I delve into my senior year that I have entered a time of testing, a trial of my faith. Since this year began, I've felt a burden on my heart, a burden for my peers and friends outside of Christ, but also a burden of oppression.
Satan has been launching a campaign against me, weighing me down with whispering lies so subtle that, at times, they feel like my own thoughts. He torments me with the lie that I am solely responsible for the salvation of every lost soul in my life. He upbraids me with the knowledge of my own unworthiness and my failure to convert the ones I care about the most. He needles me with philosophies and the loudest worldly voices, with hypotheses that seem so sound and cannot be reconciled with what I believe—until I step back far enough to see that every one is full of holes.
It's exciting to know that my faith is real enough to pose a threat to Satan's dark agenda. Maybe you feel the same, your weaknesses bound up in self-deprecation, obsession, disproportionate doubt. Maybe you're facing a firefight as well, and if so, congratulations! Satan thinks you have something worth stealing.
That means you also have something worth protecting.
I chose this verse because it came to my heart as the the first line of defence against self-deprecation, guilt and doubt. We need faith to know our standing in Christ, to know who we serve, to know who God is. That He is not a God of myth. He is not a God who punishes us when we stumble. He is not a God who places the world on our shoulders and sends us on our way. He is not a God who waits to pull blessing out from under us the second we don't meet his Higher standard.
He is the God who has made us joint-heirs with Christ. He is the God who loves us, who has ransomed us by Jesus' blood. He is the God who is, the God stronger than the bleakest doubts, and He is the God who joys in rewarding those who cling to faith and follow Him through the fight.
Komen