by Jeanni Ritchie
Christians are supposed to be the hands and feet of God. We sometimes mess up, but most genuinely seek to do right.
But what happens when you encounter those who are doing Satan’s dirty work? When you recognize the spiritual warfare but it is being performed by flesh and blood in front of you?
Worse yet, how do you keep from picking up an offense when they hurt the ones you love?
When someone hurts me, I often cry. I pour out my thoughts on paper, pray for the hurt to subside, and have a little pity party before acknowledging that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. (Ephesians 6:12)
But when they hurt the ones I love, I get angry.
For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. James 1:20
I’ve had to pray earnestly this past month as the anger threatened to consume me. I’d decided I would keep a lid on my simmering anger until the Lord avenged me.
The Lord will fight for you and you will keep your peace. Exodus 14:14
That wasn’t even remotely keeping my peace. My watched pot ALWAYS boiled.
I decided I needed to let it go. My hurt, my anger, my need for revenge, my impatient toe-tapping as the Lord didn’t expose the evil I could so clearly see…
I just didn’t know how.
I began praying in earnest. I asked Him to show me how to lay it down because I was speaking the words of submission with my mouth but not with my heart.
Once I acknowledged that the wickedness of me harboring hate was as sinful as the evil of those plotting destruction, He removed it from me.
Then He showed me this barbell. Every time a situation came up that sparked outrage in me, I had to decide if I wanted to walk around carrying those weights. It would do the same to me spiritually as if I were physically toting the barbell around all day. I mentally have to make the conscious decision to step around it instead.
Some days I do a lot of jumping over this obstacle but I don’t pick it up. I can’t. It’s too heavy to carry and still run the race ahead.
I have my eyes on the prize and it’s the only true goal I have left in life. I will reach the end, unencumbered by the stress of this world, and I will receive my own version of a gold medal.
Instead of a medallion draped around my neck it will be these words draped over my soul that show my victory:
Well done, thou good and faithful servant…Matthew 25:21
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