Remember!

I’m not one to constantly point fingers at the devil, but this week has been a spiritual warfare doozy!
This past Sunday was AMAZING! It was the first official week that I served our church as co pastor. We had an incredible worship gathering! We changed up the order of our service to make it flow much smoother and to eliminate so many awkward moments. The new order of service allowed adequate time for reflecting on God’s Word in worship after the message. The message that God gave me was INTENSE and cut straight to the heart. And as a result, we saw 5 people turn to Jesus for salvation- one of which had literally NEVER heard the Gospel before!
But then came Sunday afternoon- and a deep, dark cloud of depression hovered over me. It was horrible. To make it much worse, and after one of the longest and hardest working weeks of my life, i received the smallest paycheck I have ever earned.
Quickly my heart began to race and to sink as I began to think of the nearly $1000 mortgage payment that was due in a little over a week and my bank account that was on the verge of being overdrawn, even after I deposited this week’s check.
I started to ask myself and God questions like,” I worked my butt off for God this week, and this is how He repays me?!” As if God has to repay me! Selfish, arrogant, and evil thoughts began to flood my mind.
The next day was Monday my day off and I wanted so badly to take my family to do something fun and exciting, but we literally had NO money to do anything with.
That day I had to deal with a family crisis; was literally punched, kicked in the face, scratched pinched, bit, and cussed at (that’s a long story); had to counsel a a paranoid person on the phone, and once we got away from the house to try to do something a little fun- our car battery died and we had to have someone come jump it for us. Things were not looking up.
As the days progresses I had to deal with annoying people and circumstances, and was ogled by a very disturbingly mean old woman (that’s a long story too).
But as I read through the book of Deuteronomy, something stood out- REMEMBER.
Throughout the book Moses keeps telling the Israelites to remember all of the awesome things that God has done to deliver them, protect them and provide for them. He tells them that when the y enter the Promise Land that they will need to remember these things or else they will become self-reliant, forget about God, and serve idols which will lead them to bad days ahead, including exile.
That put things into perspective. I have an amazingly beautiful and healthy family. We have not gone hungry. We have the privileged of ministering the Gospel of Christ. Things could be MUCH worse; and all things considered things are going very well and we are very blessed- not because of anything we’ve done, but because of the unmerited favor of God!
And I believe that since things went so well this last Sunday, and because I know God has good things in store for my ministry in the days ahead; that I have just become a bigger target for the devil and his forces of darkness. And you know what? I’mm going to let God fight that battle for me!