Go to Hell! Not what you think....

I know it may not be nice, but I often tell someone to, "Go to hell!"  It isn't my ex-husband, believe it or not.  It is the scheming son of a gun who roams around and stole my marriage and so much more from my life. It is satan!
Battles aren't pretty.  War is ugly, yet for some reason many think spiritual warfare is unicorns and rainbows.  It isn't.  The devil is roaming around looking for someone, or something, to devour.  Oh, he doesn't get to take us completely out in one chomp that is for sure, but the slimy jerk nibbles at us bit by bit if we let him.
For breakfast, satan may send his flunkies to dine on our peace.  We say we trust God, but yet there is a turmoil in side of us because things aren't going as we want on our timetable.  Laugh out loud indeed!  If God had given me what I asked for on my timetable every time I would be one miserable woman if I were here at all.  Trusting Him means trusting in His goodness and His timing and knowing He has our back and not letting satan steal our peace.  While sometimes that inner turmoil is a nudging from the Holy Spirit that we are about to step off the narrow road, usually it is satan messing with our mind.  So, to him I say, "Go to hell satan, and take your flunkies with you!  Jesus is my prince of peace and I fit my feet with the peace that comes from God when I put on His armor."  Score- Jesus 1, satan 0.
Then comes 'lunch' time if I am lucky, more than likely the glutton will probably want to come chomping at me for a mid-morning snack.  He wants to take my joy.  If he gets that after all, then peace follows and so do some relationships.  He tries to overwhelm me with the things of the world... the endless to do list and not to do list.  He attempts to make me think that if I am not X,Y,Z.. .then I must be a failure and .... The scumsucker gets into the mind and plays all kinds of tricks, BUT... we are free to tell him, "Go to hell satan and take your flunkies with you!"  We get to choose to let those jerks into our mind or to protect our mind with the helmet of salvation.  Since Jesus is our salvation, that means clothing our mind in Christ.  I am (the name of God so I love using it as my declarations) chosen, adopted, beautiful, complete, forgiven, and enough in CHRIST!  Therein lies the key.
Satan will come after us all day long.  We often don't see him until he has our marriage, our jobs, our finances, our health, etc., but maybe that is not the front lines.  Those are battles he has won, but praise God, even if he gets those battles it is short lived.  Jesus won the war!  He has crushed the enemy under His feet and someday we will see that clear as day.
In the meantime, satan will deceive himself and think he can win.  When he comes to attack, may he meet you fully clothed in Christ and ready for the battle and whipping around the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.  In the case you lower your shield of faith and a flaming arrow gets through, may we be so filled with the Spirit that when he comes to take a bite of us, he is filled with the sweet nectar of the fruits of the spirit that I suspect are poison to him.  And if even then we feel the lying, stealing, murderous, imitator lurking around, tell him, "Go to hell satan, and take your flunkies with you!  After all, that is where he belongs and he calls home."

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!

When stripping, every piece must be removed!

I know what you are likely thinking and that depends on your relationship status.  I'm talking about stripping to build a relationship though.   Intrigued?  

The other day I was stripping WALLPAPER from my daughter's bedroom wall.  The first layer came off with ease.  I triumphed over the dreaded wallpaper.   Then, came the glue.   I rubbed and squirted hot water with fabric softener on the wall and scraped away the pieces.  Some pieces came off in huge strips, while other pieces clung to the wall as if they somehow felt the pain of being released from their formal address.   After my arm hurt and I had scraped away a lot, I switched to acidic vinegar and even more came off the wall.   For the most part, it was clear and ready for painting.  I scrubbed the wall profusely to attempt the remove the gummy residue that still clung to the porous drywall.  At last, I was ready to paint.  I got my materials and set off to coat that wall with regal purple fit for my princess.

During this excruciating process, God drew many parallels.  My first temptation was to just paint over the wallpaper and not even go through the work of removing it.  The problem is that doesn't work.  The paint will shimmy itself right off the wall over time! The same is true with relationships, and life in general. It is so tempting to just gloss over the old and give a facelift.  I think of the people I know, myself included, who tried to have a new relationship before doing the work of healing from the past.  Didn't work!   I think of how people try to spend their way to happiness and use credit cards to pay their bills because they don't want to do the work of getting out of debt.  It doesn't work!  We are being MADE a new creation and we are already a new creation in Christ.  The mystery just gives me goosebumps!  

My next temptation was to not remove the glue or to take other shortcuts.  Once again, that doesn't work.  Anything less than digging in and getting rid of all the pieces of the wallpaper will result in paint chipping off the wall little by little.  Even after the process of removal, it has taken multiple paint coats to get the desired effect.   The beauty is worth the result; just like the beauty of squirming around in a chrysalis by a caterpillar produces a breathtaking butterfly or a the beauty of a wildfire releases the seed trapped within and new life shoots out to form a new forest.  It isn't what it used to be, but it is so much healthier and gorgeous because the process was embraced.   

God is doing a good work in each of us.  Our role is to rest in faith in Him and allow Him to scrape, burn, squirt with vinegar, and apply the coats necessary to our lives.   The work will not be finished this side of heaven, but any attempts to shortcut it leaves undesired results.  Sure, some paint sticks to the wall, but I want all of the wall to be regal purple for the princess in my life; and so does He.  So as for me, I rest in His hands.  Do as you will Lord, I trust you!  How about you?