This is How I Fight My Battle, by Janea Robling
Nash’s Note: We go through seasons of warfare, where it feels like the battle is absorbing us. Janea reveals her scars, and what it’s like to go through one of these seasons, in this powerful guest post. I appreciate her vulnerability.
How do you fight your battle when the enemy tries to steal your lunch? Sometimes life has a way of knocking you off your feet. It happens to all of us.
Matthew 5:45 “So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends the rain on the just and on the unjust.” (ESV)
I want to start this post with the simple statement: It’s okay to have bad days. Heck, it’s even okay to have bad seasons. But let us not stay there for 20 years.
I’m coming out of the hardest season of my life. Tension, death, heartbreak, betrayal, loss, and trauma back-to-back, has a way of bringing you to your knees—even your back. It’s the kind of stuff that brings out your weakness, and it exposes what you really believe to be true about God.
During this hard season of my life, I have struggled with extreme anxiety, depression, fear, hopelessness, crazy thoughts…you name it. I was not okay with any of this! I knew that this wasn’t me, and I refused to buy into the lies of the enemy. These were symptoms of my pain, but the enemy was having a field day. I knew I was in the midst of Spiritual warfare.
If you are struggling with these things, don’t believe the lie that this is who you are. The enemy would love for you to stay in that bondage your whole life. God speaks the opposite over you, and He tells the truth.
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO COME OUT!
Day after day, for the last 11 months, I would cry out to God in anguish, feeling like I wouldn’t make it through. I realized that, when you are down, the enemy definitely kicks you as hard as he can.
To be totally honest, sometimes I wouldn’t even hear God, but I would feel Him. And then other times, I would hear Him, but I wouldn’t feel Him. It came to a point where, I had to choose to remember how He had always come through for me before, and I’d just hold onto my mustard seed of faith that He was going to come through again. Sometimes, that’s enough.
God knows how we hurt. God understands. He knows loss and heartache better than any of us. Jesus knows how we hurt. Jesus understands. Jesus suffered more than any of us.
Luke 22:44 “And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground.” (ESV)
This passage has been super encouraging to me in this season. This might sound confusing and morbid to a lot of you, but I challenge you to really think about this.
Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (ESV)
Luke 22:44 states that even in Jesus’ darkest, weakest, hardest hour, “….he prayed more earnestly.” Matthew 4 also shows us how Jesus handled warfare in the midst of a weak time. Jesus fasting 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness combated lies from satan with the Word of God. What an example for us.
There were some days where I was so mentally and physically tired of fighting in warfare, that I had nothing left to say. That’s okay too, because God fights our battles while we rest IN HIM, while we hold onto the sword of the Spirit (the Word of God), and while we meditate on the truth that WE ARE HIS and HE HAS US.
Exodus 14:14 “The LORD will fight for you, you have only to be silent.” (ESV)
So which is it, you might ask? Do we fight in prayer, or rest and let God fight for us? The answer is both. God doesn’t cause pain or torment, but sometimes, He lets us sit in the pain or go through a healing process to teach us things.
For me, one of the biggest things I have learned through this season, is that we fight from a place of rest, knowing that we are on the winning side and God is bigger. Sometimes we will pray, sometimes we will scream, and sometimes we will be utterly silent. But in whatever we do, we must know that WE ARE NOT DEFEATED. Despite how we may feel or despite how everything might look, GOD IS FOR US AND WE ARE HIS.
Romans 8:31 “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”
I definitely don’t have all of this figured out, but I do know that God is good and He doesn’t leave us. He never has and He never will. So when the puny, ugly enemy tries to come and steal your lunch, you just STAND TALL, remember who you are as a Son or Daughter of Christ, tell him to SHUT UP, and fix your eyes on the truth, while Daddy God feeds him a knuckle sandwich.
Our prayers, our rest, our worship, and our battle cry: it’s all warfare, and that’s how I fight my battle.