Faith In Crisis Mode

Who hasn’t had a crisis of faith? Has anyone rested completely in the Lord every.single.day of their lives? I know I haven’t. I regularly have bouts of insecurity, doubt and outright disbelief. I can totally relate to the prayer, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

Most recently, my unbelief crept into my mind on Sunday morning when I was trying to sing and focus on praising the Lord. And I was sitting IN CHURCH! At first, it was just a little nagging thought, something like, “I don’t really like this song. I’m not sure it’s Scriptural...” like I am the expert of every verse in the Bible. From there, the little voice in my head went on to ask creepy questions, like “Do you really believe what you’re singing?” And “I don’t even know if I need to be here today. I’m tired and I want a pizza.” From there, my musings took a darker turn...”Did Jesus really die on the cross? You know there’s no physical evidence of that.” To “why don’t you just give up? This is too hard. You need to just leave this Christianity  business to the experts and stop trying.” To even “maybe I’ll just become an atheist.”

To those of you who’ve never had such thoughts, well..bless your heart. I wouldn’t say I have them often, but I have them frequently enough that it disturbs me when I do. I wonder how on earth I allow myself to entertain such nonsense. I wonder how I let the insidious voice of the enemy speak to me in such a fashion, and what’s worse, why in the name of all that’s  holy do I agree with him? This is something that bothers me.

I am grateful for this: When these thoughts come (and they always do if you live in this world), we have the calm assurance of our freedom...freedom from doubt, from fear, from despair. We have the freedom that comes with honoring God, not because we are something, but because He is everything! Our freedom was purchased at an enormous cost. I can never live up to that. I can, however, try. I can attempt to walk in the Light of God’s Word. I can attempt to love others. I can attempt to silence the enemy when he comes whispering in my ears with his lies. I have power because I am a child of God. I don’t have to listen. Because when I do, I give up my power and relinquish it into the hands of the enemy of my soul.

I have a hand grenade. The pin is pulled. All I have to do is lob it in the general direction of the devil. The weapon does the rest. The weapon is God’s Word. If we know that, we know everything we need to know about how to live. Even as I write this, I am bombarded with an image from the movie, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”...the part where one of the knights said, “Bring out  the holy hand grenade.” See? Even why I try to write a metaphor...my twisted sense of humor gets the best of me.  I started to just delete the hand grenade part, but then, when I thought about it a little more, why should I? It’s a doggone good metaphor. Just because my mind has images of men galloping on imaginary horses clapping coconuts together, doesn’t make it any less meaningful. Or does it? I’ll let you decide...

So herein lies the rub...I know my mind does not attune itself to things like most people. I often think (and sometimes actually SAY) things that have me raising a mental eyebrow at myself. I am a firm believer, however, that God Himself places His laughter in each of His children. He doth haveth a sense of humor.  The point of this blog today is this: Thoughts are gonna come. Whether we think them ourselves, or whether they’re planted there by the devil is really irrelevant. The real question is what are we gonna do about it? Are we gonna let them conquer us or are we gonna conquer them? I refuse to be a slave to my thoughts or anyone else’s. Instead, I’m gonna take those thoughts and replace them with an image of Truth...and the power of that Truth will ambush and explode those evil thoughts with the power of a hand grenade, or even a bomb. I have realized it’s okay to think like Elaine. It’s okay to compare God’s power to a holy hand grenade. It’s relatable, and I understand it better. And I laugh at the devil in the process. I am NOT going crazy. I am merely Elaine. God bless, my friends!

If you’d like to take a look at my ebook, “Lord, Am I Going Crazy”, it’s available on the ‘Services’ page of this website.

This is the closest image I could find to a hand grenade. To me, it represents both the hand grenade and the confusion that tries to cloud our thinking.