Part 3: Spiritual Warfare (listening to lies of failure + hearing heaven.)
When I was in college, I dated a Christian guy who was incredibly emotionally and verbally abusive. So sad that this isn't all that uncommon.
Because I was so wounded, my self esteem wavered, and I begun to believe the lies touted.
And though I never would have admitted it at the time, I even began to wonder about my worth in Christ.
After we broke up, I floundered in who I was for awhile. I think we've all been there, where we weren't fully living the life of freedom God created us to bask in.
Galatians 5:16-17 says:
“So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.”
I remember sobbing so fiercely one day that I couldn’t stand, only able to inch my way up hand over hand, knee over knee as I crawled to my second floor apartment.
As I slowly made my way up the staircase, something told my very soul how worthless I was.
It replayed back in detail how I had let my family, friends, and God down.
This vehement uttering , which sounded like my own voice in my head, was telling me everyone was going to leave me because I was a complete waste.
I begun believing the voice, that my life was a farce and according to this whisper inside me, I needed to just give up.
I was living in a tornado, spinning out of control. I knew I was.
I thought briefly about ending my life that day and the days surrounding it, convincing myself it was easier. I knew I needed to get out of the life I was beginning to live and couldn’t quite figure out how on earth to do it.
I didn’t want to be a failure. Death just seemed so much sweeter than living the life I had begun creating for myself.
I wish I could tell you that day I had a “come to Jesus moment” or a “come back to Jesus moment” I guess would be more accurate. But little by little, God drew myself back to Him.
One day I heard music.
The most beautiful music I’d ever heard.
It was so loud, it woke me up one morning, as sun filtered through the thin drapes of my room.
My roommate and I always had something playing, whether Andrea Bocelli, Frank Sinatra, or 90’s hip hop, some sort of music was constantly playing from the stereo. So I just lay there for a few moments, basking in the beauty of it. It sounded like a choir, but one that was far enough away that I couldn’t make out the words….if there even were words.
“They’re so synchronous”, I remember thinking. As if they’re one voice.
Unlike my high school choir where certain talented (and particularly boisterous) singers would be heard above the rest, I couldn’t hear one voice above the other.
The sound was intoxicating, I felt like I was hearing heaven.
After a few moments, the beautiful voices drifted off and I could no longer hear them. Not like an off-switch, but instead as if someone turned their radio down slowly, till the music could no longer be heard. Or like a car passing by where one moment it was easily heard but the farther away they drove, the quieter the music became till it was too far away to be heard at all.
The strange thing is, as I shuffled my tired self to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, I realized my roommate wasn’t even home.
Over and over, through the next weeks and even months, I would hear the magnificence of this choir.
It would come at various times through the day, as I was simply living my life. Sometimes I was at home, other times in the car, or at work. Sometimes I was hanging out with friends when I would suddenly have ears tuned toward the Kingdom of Heaven, though I never mentioned it to them.
It was my special little gift from God; something I was still trying to explain away.
As it continued though, it became like a secret little time of healing between myself and God.
I realize this sounds incredibly cheesy, but it was like a hug from Him. It was as if He was stopping to put His arms around me for a few minutes.
A place where I could let my newly built walls down, a place where I was loved and forgiven.
The music would never last more than five minutes or so and I could never make out a particular hymn or even a single word in the songs themselves.
What I can tell you though is the music served as an awe-inspiring example that I belonged to God. That I didn’t go far enough to rip His love away from me. I didn’t dunk myself into a tank I couldn’t get out of.
Because there is nothing. NOTHING. we can do that is too far from God.
He was with me the entire time, patiently awaiting the moment when I was finally done struggling on my own and trying to do it all myself.
He waited ‘till I was ready to be forgiven.
Until I was ready to face Him, asking for forgiveness…but not only forgiveness from Him, but get to a place where I could forgive myself.
God Himself temporally tore open a slit from the Physical World to the Spiritual World just enough that my mortal ears could eavesdrop on heaven.
He knew as I took in the voices of a multitude in complete adoration and worship of the Creator of the Universe, my heart would be opened to the fact that He hadn’t given up on me. That He trusted me. And that I was and forever would be His daughter.
He knew it would work.
And it did.
Have you ever been at a point where you thought you were too far from God?
Can you believe there is literally NOTHING we can do that is too much for Him? Nothing He won't forgive if we genuinely and honestly lay it all before His feet for forgiveness?
Don't let it keep you from Him.
Stop and pray right now. Just talk to Him from your heart.