FAITH: Enemy Attacks - Our chance to Exercise our Faith
November 29, 2007 by azdean
I ran into a man recently in the parking lot of a Walgreens drug store. I often find people at this store who ask for money, so I gave him a couple dollars. He was thankful and explained why he needed the money. He said he had just arrived in Tucson from Las Vegas where he had a ministry caring for 130 people in a Christian shelter. But he felt God had called him to leave Las Vegas and start a shelter here, which he would do by leveraging his carpentry skills to get two months free rent while fixing up a building he could use, while at the same time putting together how he would be able to support the shelter. In other words, he was winging this and following God with no resources to speak of.
More challenging, when he got here, his suitcase was stolen and the little money he had to tide him over (for food) was now gone.
I felt that while he was a bit “different” than normal pastors who set up shelters, that God was still using him, so I gave him what cash I had — maybe $30. He said he just knew this was why God had told him to come over to this Walgreens parking lot.
Now let’s assume he was on the level and that this is indeed a case of a Christian who sets out to do what God has told him to do and then WHAM, the enemy hits him by taking away his food money. Is this not EXACTLY the time his faith gets exercised? Is this not a chance for him to see if God will come through for him? Is this not a chance to build a testimony of God’s goodness and faithfulness in his life?
And that’s my point here. We often don’t like the enemy’s attacks. But an attack is when we get to exercise our faith and live the life God designed us for. An attack is when we get to mature and learn how to really relate and trust in our God. An attack is when we get to see how God will see us through what looks impossible by normal means.
Doesn’t that give us a clue to why God put us here on Earth in the first place? Doesn’t that put the enemy’s retaliations in perspective?
Faith and relationship with God is everything. Attacks forge our faith and bond our relationship to Him. And that makes them very much worth the trouble they cause us.
This reminds me of Paul in 2 Corinthians 12. When God will not heal his thorn in the flesh, he says, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Certainly, I can remember the times when I was most broken as the times when I could do nothing more than rely on God.