Darkness Festers...And Fails

What does it mean to wrestle with your demons?
Is it just a phrase or does it have a deeper, more literal meaning?

I've been in Egypt a week now, and met some great people, some new friends and formed bonds I know will last for many years to come.
Through my encounters with new people I've learned more and more about myself and God is showing me my stregthens and weaknesses.

I've met a man who has wrestled with his demons in a very literal way, he's not only wrestled with them but he's walked with them. He used to call them, use them and abuse their powers. He was a dark man and he lived in the darkness.

But it seems that no matter how dark the room is, no matter how tightly the door is closed, God's light finds a way in.

He told me once, "I used to fight Jesus off with a stick, a stick with a nail in the end of it. I used to yell at Him to stay back, but He just kept coming. I kept swinging, but He just kept coming and finally He grabbed me and wrapped His arms around me."

He's never been the same since. He'll live with what he's done for the rest of his life, but he can take comfort in the fact that when he finally did ask for forgiveness of his sins, it was given to him.

He still sees the demons, but he doesn't bow.

In another conversation with me he turned to me and said, "It's very easy for me to believe in God because I've seen, I've seen both sides, I've been in the darkness, and yet God still found me, I don't have to believe, I know!"

So what does it look like to truely know God?

Many of us walk through life believing in God, trusting in Him, reading His word, seeing all that He created and living in the flesh that he knit together, but still many of us never hear the voice of God, we never see his angels, we live our lifes through faith.

We can take comfort in His word, we can take comfort in the historical facts that Jesus lived, but it takes more then that to walk through life.

It takes faith.

We can't even begin to understand the will of God, we can't begin to phathom is being and if we were to stand in His presense we would tremble and fall to our knees.

Yet what we do know is that God loves us, He loves us so much that He sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins. He bore the wait of all our sins, past, present and future on His shoulders.

With that understanding, with that comfort, we can come to the cross, bow, acknowledge, pleed and find forgiveness.

Even a man so deeply rooted in sin that we walked and talked with demons and find salvation through the Son.

There is a war going on, we don't all see it, we can't all feel it, but it's there. It's a fight for our salvations, it's a fight for our lives. It goes on all around us and there are many casualities.

We need to pick up our arms and fight.

In the end God will win, there is no doubt about that.

However, where will you be when the dust settles?

The war is being fought for you, it rages on constantly.

We need to pick up our arms and fight for God.

Grace, Peace and Blessings,
Brent