The Devil is a Liar
I woke up on September 2nd in a lot of pain. I wasn’t sure why exactly, but I thought it was because I had been putting weight on the ball of my foot (which my surgeon had told me I should start doing after the third surgery). I had done it some prior to my doctor’s appointment the day before but afterwards I tried to walk on the ball of my foot more consciously. I was given a special shoe to make it so that when I walked on the ball of my foot my toes wouldn’t hit the ground. It was at that time that I started trying to walk with just a cane.
The first three and a half weeks I used a walker because I
didn’t put any weight on my foot at all.
After the doctor told me I should be putting weight on my heel I started
trying to do this while still using the walker for support. When I saw him on September 1st he
told me to start putting weight on the ball of my foot. This hurt at first for many reasons, the
first of which was that I hadn’t used that part of my foot for 6 weeks. Even though only 2 toes had been badly wounded,
my entire foot had gone through extreme trauma.
~
In chapter 5 I talked about how the enemy tempted me with a
fleshly desire to get human justice for someone’s mistake and how I made a conscious
decision to forgive and work in the opposite spirit of how I felt because I was
deciding to trust God for healing and not people. The devil is real, and he
works tirelessly to harass the people of God and get us out of the simplicity
and purity of devotion towards Christ (2 Corin 11:3). He does this because he knows that when we keep
our eyes on Jesus that nothing can stop us.
While I don’t pretend to understand entirely why God allows
satan to do this I do believe a big part of it is to propel us deeper into
relationship. When trials come the
solution is always to dig deeper into God and when we do this, we find a friend
that sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24).
I faced another kind of test during this time. I was helped in this test because I had faced
it in prior times in my life, and from those early trials I had learned how the
devil speaks to me. When I say “the
devil was talking to me” I’m speaking in individualized language that is easy
for the believer (who has likely experienced something similar) to
understand. But I must say that I don’t
actually believe that it was satan himself who was doing this. If I’m being technical my best guess would be
that it was a deceiving spirit, or collaboration of spirits, that serve satan
and do his will.
Its important to say this because satan is not omnipresent
and I don’t think that I matter enough in the scope of influence in the world
to merit one of satan’s finite thoughts.
But it is clear from Scripture that when the devil rebelled against God
that he left Heaven and took a third of the angels with him (Revelation 12:4). These angels are now servants of satan on the
earth and are both his agents of information (this is how he learns things and
devises strategies for attacking Christ) and the means by which he does things (deceiving
unbelievers, harassing believers, possessing those who seek him, etc).
The devil’s reign on the earth may be compared to that of an evil human ruler like Adolf Hitler. He has generals that command armies that have operations in different parts of the world. What he might do in America may be different than what he is doing in Africa and so on and so forth. Under his generals are lower army ranks all the way down to foot soldiers. It's likely that we battle with the "foot soldier" variety of satanic forces. When we get a victory against one of these, we gain ground in the battle. If enough people - or perhaps key people - get victories than it can turn the tide in a region. If an operation in a region is defeated, then satan's ability to hinder the work of God is diminished there (Daniel 10:13). This means that his ability to deceive the minds of the people regarding the Gospel is reduced and Gospel breakthrough can come into that place.
So, with that being said I am convinced that some manner of deceiving
spirit tried to discourage me regarding the color of my foot. Following my third surgery, when I was
walking on my heel, I would notice that as soon as I put my foot down (I
normally had it elevated above my heart) that it would begin to turn a
reddish/purple color. This would extend
not only to my injured toes but also to my entire foot and even my lower
leg. At first the blood would rush down
so quickly that it would be incredibly painful, and I found that I could only
take about 5 steps before I had to take a break.
The color of my foot bothered me and it was a battle to
remain in faith, believe that what God had told me – that “it is finished” –
was true and that I was going to keep my big toe. Right in the middle of this a neighbor (who
is a very nice guy) was helping us with some stuff when he offhandedly
commented that his brother had in a lawn mower accident like me and that they
thought it was going to be ok but his foot kept turning this bad color and they
eventually had to amputate.
This obviously sent me deeper into a battle for faith
because the worry that had I been trying to dismiss as paranoia had now been
given real-world sanction. But I was
strangely not as deterred by this as you might think. I was guarded from this attack by similar
experiences that I had gone through earlier in my life.
When I was in college I went through a very difficult
struggle with doubt. I wrote a whole book about this, and I recommend reading it if you are dealing with a similar struggle. During this time,
I would find myself wrestling with a certain question that would completely
occupy my thoughts for most of the day.
I wouldn’t talk to anyone about this particular thought so no one knew,
but my roommate would strangely bring up the very subject I had been wrestling with
and would speak out loud the very doubts that had been troubling my mind.
After this had happened a couple of times, I realized that
what I was going through was spiritual and that perhaps the same evil spirit
that kept hounding me with these thoughts me would somehow plant stray thoughts
into people’s heads when talking to me and cause them to bring them up to me during
our conversation. I don’t claim to fully
understand the invisible world, but it seemed like this spirit had some level
of ability to extend its influence around me so that when someone got close to
me in conversation that it could plant that idea in my friends’ minds as a
harmless conversation piece, not knowing that this was something that I was
struggling with.
The more I would worry and try to figure out these thoughts
in my mind the more other people would randomly bring the thoughts up, so I
found that the solution wasn’t to fix the worry with my mind but rather was
prayer and worship. I found that when I touch
the Spirit of God that He comes and destroys the demonic spirits that are
present. Then later on Holy Spirit can
download an answer to the question itself but the key to receiving this answer
is to operate in the peace and rest that comes from encountering God in the
midst of the internal storm and not from the worry and anxiety of trying to
solve all our problems with our minds.
Since I was aware of this dynamic, I was hardly affected by
the fact that my foot was an unnatural color.
I worshipped God after hearing my neighbor’s words and chose to lean in
faith to what God had told me because it pleased His heart to do so (Hebrews
11:6).
A week or so after this when I was at the doctor’s office my
doctor pointed out that my foot was a weird color. He asked me “does it always turn that color
when you bring it down?” I said “Yes.” He then responded with “Yes, that’s from the
trauma. It may take a long time for that
to go away but it's nothing to be worried about.”
And with that the battle was over and that age old saying
once again proved to be true:
THE DEVIL IS A LIAR
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