"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (NIV)
Do you have a loss in your life or have some other painful situation that seems to be holding you captive? You can’t move forward the pain is so horrible. You can’t forget because it is something that happened to you. You can’t find the peace that God has promised. You are simply mired in the loss.
I think this happens to most, if not all, of us. Life on earth is excruciatingly painful and death, loss, and agony are waiting for us at every corner. We try, with various techniques, to lessen the emotional affects, but frankly I think most of the things we try are simply band-aids that attempt to hide our pain from others. When the darkness comes, we have to honestly admit that the pain is still overwhelming and ever-present.
Our Father did not intend for us to live with these kinds of paralyzing memories. I believe that we have been given the tools in scripture which, while not mitigating the fact that we have experienced terrible loss, will allow us to move on boldly as believers, facing life as we need to in this moment and clinging tightly to His hand as He leads us eventually Home.
(1) Our enemy isn’t a person. Our pain is a direct attack by Satan.
And, to be honest, that makes me (as my Southern relatives might say) "fightin’ mad!" Our pain, our loss, isn’t just some random act that happened because we live in this earth and "things happen." Our loss is a direct result of the anguish that Satan deliberately wants to cause; it’s a direct result of sin on this earth, sin brought initially by Satan because of his hatred of our Father:
"Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings." 1 Peter 5:8-9 NIV.
Satan wants to destroy us. And if he can’t destroy us, physically or spiritually, the next best thing he wants is to make us ineffective as children of the Living God. He wants to destroy our ministry and make us impotent as instruments of the Holy Spirit. He wants to steal our joy, to destroy our peace, and to rise up within us a paralyzing sense that we simply can’t go on because of what’s happened.
My question to myself (and to you): Am I going to let that happen? Or am I going to find a way in scripture to overcome?
(2) We can decide that Satan will not win this battle.
I refuse—refuse—to let what Satan intended as evil to become evil in my life.
In the story of Joseph, his brothers sold him into slavery, an experience which even ended with him being thrown into prison. But when Joseph confronted his horrible brothers, this was his response: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring about as it is this day, to save many people" (Genesis 50:20 NKJ).
What happened to Joseph was horrible and his life was never the same again. He lost many years of his life, the opportunity to marry as he had dreamed, his culture, his language, even his own name! God led Joseph from the life of a nomad, the favored son of a rather wealthy shepherd, into the culture of the Egyptian court. Joseph was given a new name, had to use another language (other than his native tongue), was forced to adapt to a new culture, and even had to agree to marry an Egyptian woman. He lost everything that defined him as who he was and none of it was restored to him in this life!
But Joseph understood something that would do us well. The battle that we fight isn’t fought on physical terms, but on spiritual terms. If Joseph had used his new found power in the Egyptian court to take vengeance on his brothers, all would have been lost. (It was from one of the those "evil" brothers that the line producing the Lord Jesus would come.) Joseph was willing to see the bigger picture and to trust that God would use all this for His purposes and for our good! We can do the same thing if we force ourselves to see the larger picture, to see the truth of God’s plan.
(3) We can win against the pain of our memories.
Joseph was able to put all of his losses behind him and move forward. How do we do that?
Scripture has already given us the tools necessary.
• We take every thought captive.
"We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV).
The pain that we feel is a direct result of the thoughts we think. We think back to what it was like before our loss or we think back to what happened that caused the loss or we think about what this moment would be like if the loss hadn’t occurred (or something similar) and our pain overwhelms us. We have suffered loss and our lives will never again be the same!
We can overcome this pain by taking every thought captive. This word is aichmalotizo (Strong’s G163) and means to "subjugate our thoughts to the obedience of Christ." To subjugate. To overpower, to subdue, to compel, to force. Our thoughts are obviously not something that control us; we have the ability to control our thoughts! And when we control them and place them in submission to Christ, we have the ability to live lives that are pleasing to our Lord and Savior. We have the ability to bring our lives back into victory over Satan. We have the ability to Win. This. Battle.
I can’t say that strongly enough. We have the ability and wherewithal to get our lives back again and to forge ahead in ministry by first taking these thoughts captive and subjecting them to Christ.
But why should we? Our loss is very real and thinking about it isn’t a sin. Or is it? Is there something else that we are supposed to think on?
• Think instead on these things
"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. . . . And the God of peace will be with you." (Philippians 4:8, 9b NIV).
I will ask you bluntly: Is Satan’s attack on your life noble or right or pure or lovely or praiseworthy? No! It is, instead, intended to cause you spiritual harm. Then why think on it? We already know, because we have experienced the tremendous sorrow of our loss, that thinking about our tragedy paralyzes us in our tracks! And if it stops us from doing that which the Lord has called us to do, then it is excellent or true? No! It isn’t.
The Lord calls us, then, instead to think on the things that are from the Father, the things which He has intended for our good. And the promise is that when we think on those things, the God of PEACE will be with us! Do we want peace? Then we need to think on the things of God and His purposes.
• Refuse to allow the thoughts that paralyze us to return, but rather praise God for His ultimately victorious plan.
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who has been called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28 NIV).
Our loss, while not God’s intent for our lives, is being used by Him, through His power, to produce good for us. It can also result in good through us if we are willing to be obedient to His call on our lives: The apostle Peter wrote: "Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called." (1 Peter 3:9 NIV).
When we sit in our misery, we are repaying evil with evil because we are doing that to which we were not called! We are surrendering to Satan and agreeing that he has won, that he has conquered us because what has happened has overcome us. We can no longer minister to the extent that we did before because we are overcome with sorrow over what has happened. While we may not be repaying a person with evil, we are repaying Satan with evil (which is what he wants) because we have stopped being the person we were prior to our loss. We are allowing our thoughts to control who we are becoming.
How do we overcome Satan? By taking our thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, by thinking on the things of the Lord Jesus and, in obedience, trusting that He will make good from the evil that Satan intended We overcome Satan by embracing the peace that God will soon send once we are obedient.
"Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I rejoice because of you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." (Romans 16:19-20a NIV).
If we have any hope of overcoming the crushing losses that Satan has placed in our path, we must learn to take our thoughts captive and turn our hearts to praising the Lord. Every time we think of what was, what happened, or what might have been, we need to turn from those thoughts and instead turn to praising the Lord. At first we may wrestle with our own minds because we have developed habit patterns that turn our thoughts to our losses. But we can find victory in thinking on the things that are pure, noble, and praiseworthy. We will find victory in thinking about and praising the Lord whom we serve. And through that victory, we will find the peace that need to move ahead strongly for His purposes and His glory!
The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
and I have been saved from my enemies.
In my distress I called to the Lord;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears.
He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the Lord was my support.
He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.
You, Lord, keep my lamp burning;
my God turns my darkness into light.
As for God, his way is perfect:
The Lord’s word is flawless;
he shields all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 18:2-3, 6, 16-19, 28, 30 NIV)
© 2015 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.
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