Coping Vs. Healing
Recently I was chatting with a friend who was struggling not only to resist the enemy’s lies in her life but equally struggling to disarm them with the Truth. She said something that I believe many of us do when faced with internal warfare…”I just need to keep busy and stay distracted to keep my mind off of the attacks.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀
As a therapist, I understand coping skills and distraction is one. Distraction can be a helpful technique when avoiding temptation but friends, distraction is not the right technique when facing accusation.
Tim Keller once taught on spiritual warfare and explained how Satan has two main strategies to knock down a believe: temptation and accusation.
With temptation, Satan minimizes or hides God’s holiness while magnifying His love so the believer says “God loves me, He’ll just forgive me if I do this.” Or, “I’ve been so good here, therefore, I deserve to do this.” On the other hand, he hides God’s love and magnifies His holiness leaving us in a state of accusation. The believer becomes so ashamed of their sin and guilt and forget the fullness of the gospel, the cross and God’s love. Both temptation and accusation are lies which is no surprise since Satan is the father of lies and his name literally means slanderer. He loves to baits us with thoughts that keep us from doing what is right and with either too high a view or too low a view of ourselves and an incorrect view of both God’s holiness and love.
Do you see why we cannot simply sit back and let the record of accusation play in our mind? Distraction, in my friend's case, would most likely only delay the effects of the lies from sinking in but they would surely come back with a vengeance and when they do, she will not be prepared to stand strong against them. So rather than staying busy, I encouraged her to face them head on. It was an opportunity to practice staring at the giant believing that not only is our God bigger but His truth sets us free. So we focused on disarming every lie with God’s promises, His Word and His love. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀
You can choose coping skills today to simply get through life or you can allow The Healer in to reveal the root and transform you by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2). Believe it or not, coping is the easier choice compared to healing. Healing is a journey. Healing requires surrender. Healing requires humility. Healing requires courage. Healing requires intentional focus on the root being pulled out where as coping may just cut the weeds (but they surely will grow back). Healing requires Jesus.
I don’t know what battle you’re facing, but I am confident you’re facing one because this is a broken world. You were made for more than just coping through your life. It’s time to wake up and disarm every lie with God’s Word and Truth. Pay attention to what bait the enemy tends to use on you and start feeding your faith so you can resist Him. Let’s choose to live today building our lives on the promises of God and alert to the devil's schemes.
