I almost forgot to tell you a story about my son’s inner city mission trip. Before he left I blogged about the struggles of his soul, being crotch casted and all.
The emotional suckiness of his injury finally crashed in on him and he broke down crying, releasing a torrent of dark words in the process. Words that went something like,
“I’m totally useless. I can’t do anything.”
Well guess what? There was an honest to goodness bully on the mission trip (from another church) who was doing his best to ruin a dodge ball game my son was trying to participate in. The ball only came his way from time to time, and then he could only hop a little bit to avoid it.
At one point the other kid approached Noah and sneered something like, “Why are you even playing? You’re totally useless. You can’t do anything.”
I’m serious. It was almost a carbon copy of what had tumbled out of Noah’s tears the day before.
Meaning, Satan had been whispering those pernicious thoughts to Noah. Meaning, Satan picked that nasty kid to give voice to those very same lies in hopes of convincing Noah to believe them. He does that often, you know.
The difference was, Noah and I had talked in between. Prayed. Cleared the air. So how did Noah respond to the daggers? I was so proud of him:
“No I’m not.”
“Sure you are. You’re totally useless. If you play I’m just going to hurt you.”
“Try it.” I can almost feel his chest swelling with godly strength at this point. And then… the bully backed down, drooling out his pubescent verbal sludge, and slunk away.
Interesting, huh? I think that was Noah’s defining moment for the weekend. No, our struggle is not against flesh and blood. I’m not saying that. But flesh and blood people are often the devil’s errand boys (and girls) and we would do well to watch not only our own words, but theirs.