Daily Warfare

I am a sensitive person, and this makes it difficult for me not to take certian criticisms very personally. This character flaw of mine presents a big challenge in my chosen career since the nature of public education exposes me to regular attacks, something I never anticipated when I first chose this path because I didn't have parents who would attack educators as freely as a lot of other parents do. Now that graduation is over, my goal for the remaining days at my current school has simply been to transition out of here as smoothly as possible. But any hope of leaving here without incident was shattered this morning when I came in to an angry email from a parent threatening to go to the school board over an incident that her child had with a teacher. As the counselor, I thought that I had handled the situation professionally, but the parent felt that I could have done more and this is what she is angry about. Her email bashed the teacher, an assistant principal, and myself over the handling of the incident. Of the three parties, I was actually the most innocent and the least criticized, but because of my personality, I took the email the hardest.

Speaking from much experience, if we don't consciously put on our spiritual armor (Ephesians 6:10-18) every morning, it's easy to feel beaten down by the attacks we face. It's also easy to forget that our enemy is not the hurt, frustrated, fallen person who is executing the attack. Daily putting on our armor reminds us that our enemy is not our neighbor, our enemy is Satan who treads all over the world wreaking havoc on tender hearts and sensitive spirits, leaving many of us hardened out of a feeling of self-preservation necessity. Yet all we really need for self-preservation is to daily ready ourselves for the battle. The enemy would have us believe that there is no battle beacuse if we aren't alert and ready to fight, then we aren't really a threat to him at all. Don't fall into his trap. Even though we can't see everything that is happening in the spiritual realm, we are living in war torn world and we have the carnage all around us to prove it. We are spiritually hurting people who are hurting others out of our own hurt. We are also people who serve a God who sees the battle from a different vantage point and has empowered us to victory through His son.

In Isaiah 54:17, we are promised, "'No weapon that is formed against you will prosper; and every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their vindication is from Me,' declares the LORD." We have to stand firm in our armor, but God has already won the battle. Through Christ, we have the power to walk through every attack waged against us in the war for our souls and come out unscathed. In fact, in Luke 10:19, Jesus says to His disciples, "Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you." Satan knows of our power and the more aware we are of our power, the larger our threat to Satan and therefore the harsher his attacks will be against us. Instead of being beaten into a position of self-pity by Satan's attacks, we need to quickly and confidently face our attacker with the power and authority of Christ's name. No enemy can harm us when we take Christ into the battle with us.

Posted by Kim at June 12, 2007 11:49 AM