Why Are Things Suddenly So Hard
“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)
You’ve probably heard this verse before. We have an enemy, as every bit real as the very real God we serve. As much as the Lord is ever working to give us life upon life upon more abundant life, the enemy is working to “steal, kill, and destroy.” OK, so… steal what? My lunch money? My favorite shirt? What could the enemy possibly “steal” from me? And “kill”--that’s such a strong word. Like not physically kill, right? Kill the lights? Kill my house plants? And destroy… Destroy… my penmanship… my reputation? We can accept that there is an “enemy” out there, but how he actually intersects with my actual life and actually steals and kills and destroys from me can feel a little more nebulous. Not something we’re used to conversing about in our everyday life. How was work? Oh great, the enemy tried to kill me today. Oh well, glad you made it home intact…
We can’t go into ALL the ways the enemy can come after us, but sufficed to say it is a Biblical truth that the enemy DOES come after us. Many times, we don’t even know it’s him. He’s a deceiver, a liar, and will often disguise himself as something else, whether it’s an angel of light, “practicalities” of this life, our own mind, or even speak as though he is God Himself.
Since we’re not quite to heaven, there are going to be lots of times in this life when things are rough. Some of that is the nature of this natural world--it’s all kind of falling apart and creation itself waits for the Lord to come and heal us all. Some of that is sin--our sin, other people’s sin, collective sin, inherited sin consequences, blah blah blah sin sin sin. But sometimes, the enemy is pressing on us to keep us from going where we would otherwise have gone. Leaning on us ever-so-subtly so that things “feel” better when we go a different direction and “feel” worse when we go the way the Lord leads us.
When we feel fresh leading from the Lord, or even as we’re just going and growing, sometimes things will “suddenly” feel all wrong. Or like everything’s falling apart. That usually leads me to look at “reality,” to see if perhaps I was wearing my a-little-too-optimistic-pants, and what I thought would work just doesn’t really work when you take a real good look at it. Or I wonder if perhaps I heard God wrong, or maybe He’s changed His mind or changing my mind for me, or He’s telling me to go a different direction, using my “feelings” as the compass.
Those things might in actuality be true. Whatever the Lord asks us to do will (somehow) fit into our actual lives. Sometimes God does tell us one thing and then tell us something else that changes the course completely. He’s sometimes like a really good novel that yells “plot twist!” at you every other page. He’s not so much of a choose-your-own-adventure or write-your-own-ending kind of God. We follow Him and His voice.
However. Those things might also NOT be the reason for things suddenly getting hard. God doesn’t really work very hard to fit into OUR reality. Jesus was constantly ruining people’s realities and truths--breaking fishing nets with too much fish, telling people to throw their nets on the other side of the boat as if the fish were all hiding behind this invisible border down the center of the boat, nearly capsizing their boats with fish, calling people away from their livelihoods, not to mention HEALING people of their infirmities. Talk about NOT fitting into reality! He walked through doors, healed people when they TOUCHED HIS ROBE, forgave with a word, healed with a touch, CAST OUT DEMONS (not a fully-fledged part of most people’s conscious “reality,” am I right?)... I just wouldn’t put ALL my stock in the “reality” of my calendar or life or even currently-known capacity. He’s pretty much in the habit of calling us BEYOND our reality, BEYOND our capacity, BEYOND what we’ve known.
“I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, And crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, And not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42:16)
While God does sometimes tell us one thing and then tell us another that seems to be in direct conflict with the first thing, we want to be careful not to mistake our “feelings” as the same as God’s words. His peace should go before and behind us, so there can be a “feeling” of peace, as it were. It’s not a problem to let our feelings direct us to asking Him for direction or confirmation or any question at all, really. But we just want to be careful not to mistakenly believe that our “feelings” are a direct line of communication from God. The heart IS deceptively wicked, as we know, and God’s ways are most of the time NOT our ways, NOT our thoughts, NOT our feelings.
When life is “suddenly” so hard--especially after we’ve had fresh inklings from the Lord of a new direction, a new thought, new growth, new understandings, new “assignments”--there is another explanation. That whole enemy stealing, killing, and destroying situation.
The children of Israel came to Egypt after Joseph brought them there (incidentally after saving all Egyptians from starving to death--you’re welcome, Egypt). They were given great favor, and grew and multiplied in number, and everything seemed to just “go well” for them. After a while, the new generations of Egyptians who knew nothing of what Joseph had done for them, saw the growth in the Israelites and began to despise and be afraid of them. Afraid they would rise up and destroy them. So they thought they would just preemptively and subtly take over so the Israelites never realized how mighty they were. They set up taskmasters over them to “afflict them with their burdens”( Exodus 1:11). They put them to work FOR the Egyptians. They tried their best to just keep the Israelites down and busy enough that they never lifted their heads to realize what was going on.
Make no mistake, the enemy is keeping tabs on us. He is watching to see just how much are we growing in the Lord, how much do we trust the Lord, how much are the Lord’s words influencing and changing and growing us and affecting our world. As long as we’re just “busy” with life and what we’ve already got going on, it’s like a little stalemate--you don’t cross my line I won’t cross your line. He just presses on our insecurities and worries and helps feed them a little bit more a little bit more so that we have more to worry about more to think about.
But it tells us in Exodus the more the Egyptians tried to make the Israelites’ lives hard, the more they multiplied and grew! Well, that’s an exciting verse. Like it doesn’t matter what the enemy does to me, I could still multiply and grow! But then, the enemy doubles-down and the Egyptians “made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage” (Exodus 1:12). Whoa, easy there, little Egyptians, getting a little big for your Egyptian britches. Let’s talk about this.
See, as soon as the Egyptians saw them multiplying and growing, they went from subtle trying-to-maintain-control to all-out Operation Misery-Incarnate. They stopped with the under-the-radar and went Defcon level 1 (Maximum readiness, Immediate response, Nuclear war is imminent or has already started).
Likewise, the enemy of our souls, when he sees us growing or multiplying or heading in a new direction with the Lord, responding to His voice, being sent further than we’ve been before, he goes from stalemate bother-your-brain-a-bit to status everything-hurts-and-I’m-dying. It could be anything from insecurities rising up in major ways, to little mistakes being interpreted as huge life-altering problems, to relational discord, fights, hurts, even practicalities like every appliance in your house breaking at once…
I’m not saying ALL these things are ALWAYS the enemy, or even USUALLY the enemy. Life is life (broken), people are people (also broken), and appliances are appliances (let’s just say they have a shelf-life). However. When it feels like “all hell breaks loose” or suddenly everything falls apart or we were doing so great I have no idea how we got to this terrible spot in 30 minutes or I’ve never been so overcome by fear/anger/lust/depression/hopelessness--it’s just worth taking a moment to get your bearings with the Lord.
What’s the last thing the Lord said to you? Because I’m pretty sure He doesn’t direct us via break-all-your-appliances. I’m pretty sure He doesn’t direct us via insecurities. I’m pretty sure He’s not in the habit of stirring up a sandstorm in our relationships just to show us this path wouldn’t be worth it. It’s just POSSIBLE that the enemy of your soul is afraid of you. Afraid of your growth. Afraid of the Lord’s work in YOU. It’s true that the enemy himself is stronger than us. Anyone who ever sinned knows that story. But. We overcome because “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). The Lord IN ME is what overcomes. The Lord IN ME is what accomplishes great things. The Lord IN ME is what moves mountains and heals sicknesses and casts out demons. WHATEVER I do IN HIS NAME is done. Bound on earth means bound in heaven. The name of JESUS is ABOVE Every. Other. Name. Demons--the enemy himself--must bow. And though I find myself often “bowing” my heart and mind to the afflictions of fear and hopelessness and depression and self-pity, bowing to the Father of lies, the ruler of this world. He himself, the author of all my affliction, MUST BOW even to the very mention of the name of Jesus.
He who is in me. He’s in ME. And the enemy is deathly afraid of THAT reality. So he spends his time figuring out all the ways he can steal--steal away the “peace” the Lord gave with that word, steal away the excitement of following Him, steal away my confidence in what the Lord has done or how He’s made me…
He works on all the ways he can kill--the joy that is my strength, the inkling of a word that the Lord is beginning to give me, the fresh hope that just began, the trust that I’m trying to have, the faith that I’m gingerly stepping into…
He works on all the ways he can destroy--my hope, my trust, my faith, my praise, my worship, my confidence, my assignment, my giftings. Every good and perfect and wonderful gift the Lord has ever given me, he works to destroy.
The battlefield is most often our minds. There’s a whole lotta stealing killing and destroying he can do up there without us ever realizing it’s him. Sometimes it’s relational--because he’s also working on stealing and killling and destroying other people, so those battles can mesh together and suddenly there are bullets flying from all directions, and suddenly from those we thought were on our side! And even sometimes it’s practical.
But make no mistake. The enemy has come. He has come to steal, to kill, and to destroy you and me. The Lord in us. But. The moment we call upon the NAME OF JESUS, he must bow. He must back off. He must cease and desist. He must surrender. He has NO claim on you or me. His authority is rescinded. His power is broken. His bluff is called. We just have to call it.
“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; The righteous run to it and are safe.” (Proverbs 18:10)
“Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-11)
When things “suddenly” go awry, call upon the name of Jesus. Call out the enemy’s bluff. You don’t even have to be confident that it IS the enemy, just confident in the Lord. Not everything is God telling you “no” or life showing you it “won’t work.” Sometimes, the enemy is trying to steal, kill, and destroy the very good new thing the Lord wants to do in your life. Don’t let his affliction distract you. The name of Jesus is all you need. You’d be surprised how “suddenly” things can shift when the enemy hears us call upon the name of the Lord. EVERY knee must bow. EVERY tongue must confess. Only Jesus is Lord. Only He gets to dictate my “suddenly.”
Not everything is the enemy’s work. But he IS at work. So when I feel “afflicted,” I want to remember to run to the tower of the name of Jesus and get my bearings from HIM.
