Pick Up Your Sword and Fight

I got a really encouraging email from my dad encouraging me through some very complicated issues in my life. I wrote an email back to him and this is what I wrote. I felt really encouraged after reading what he wrote and this is my response. I felt like God spoke to me while writing him, and thought what God spoke to me might encourage someone else too.

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Pops,

I do remember you talking about the magic wands, but you know what? It's probably good you don't have one. It's because we go through rough times that help us grow stronger.

Through everything with Homestead, getting preggy, the military, job loss, financial issues, church issues, family problems etc, we're learning how to be better people. We're learning how to love, be considerate, thoughtful, and gracious with people. It's taught us to think, instead of judge so much. To ask questions, instead of assume things about people. We know how it feels to be hurt, lied about, have no money, wrongful job loss, needing help, family rejection, etc. It's good. It's not been comfy to have all this happen. Far from it. But it's taught me a lot to listen to people, hear them out, know their side, to be forgiving, and loving.

Am I perfect? Nope. Don't even try to be. I know I'm human. I know I fail. What I do try is to be my best and when I see I've failed, or someone shows me I've failed, then I make it right.

But ALL of this is teaching me to know what a true friend is and what Jesus wants from me.

Life will get better. We're praying a lot. It's drawn us closer to Him, each other (not that we don't have our moments...we do), and it's just teaching us a lot about ourselves and other people.

Randy Weiss posted this this morning, "Tough day? Wanna scream? Don't! Take a moment. Try prayer. It works in silence and won't freak out folks you are supposed to love. Milk shakes are also nice."   I think the devil is playing around with God's people right now. There are a LOT of posts on FB about issues, drama and a whole host of other things where people are running into obstacles and struggles in their life. It just goes to show that God has something REALLY good just around the corner and the devil knows it. The devil knows that Paul and I are supposed to be used by God. He wants to stop it. It wants to ruin our faith in Him. Instead, it's just making us stronger in God and causing us to fight even harder. Which in turn makes the devil fight even harder through avenues he knows bothers us, gets us down and discourages us. We can choose to wallow in that, let him win, or we can get up and fight. We're choosing to fight. If we know God is for us, and we really know that deep down inside, so much so that we fully believe it...then why wouldn't we choose to fight? It would be silly to not fight. Because we have the biggest, best, most awesome God on our side and nothing can stand against us.
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Be encouraged! Don't ever stop fighting. You DO have God on your side. Close your ears to what the devil screams to you and listen to the soft, every comforting voice of Jesus.