I wanted to share with you something my lovely friend Scarlet shared the other night at the Bible study group I attended. It is such a powerful picture, and it has just continued to resonate in my heart ever since. It’s not budgeting, but it’s good 🙂
When her daughter was little, she reached that stage between walking and crawling, but just refused to walk. She knew how to walk, but just preferred to crawl because she could get there faster. One day Scarlet was watching her daughter crawl in the grass down the side of their house. Well, coming from the other direction was the neighbor’s cat. The cat and her daughter just kept moving toward each other until her little girl was face to face with the cat. At this point her daughter began to cry because she was intimidated by the cat. And as Scarlet watched this whole scene, she felt the Lord speaking to her heart that this was a picture of “spiritual warfare”. All her daughter had to do was stand up, and the cat would have run from her and she would have realized that she was bigger than the cat all along.
So many of us get into situations where we are battling something, and it is so difficult and we feel so small, but the Lord is just watching going, “Yeah, your enemy looks big when you are laying down on the ground looking at him, but all you have to do is stand up and you will realize that you have nothing to be afraid of.” Sometimes winning the battle is as simple as recognizing that you are in one, and then standing up in who God has made you through Jesus.
Many of us think that spiritual warfare is us doing battle with the enemy. However, Jesus has already defeated our enemy. The enemy’s only power is deception. He sends every voice he can into our lives to tell us that we are small and powerless. It is not the truth. It is not who God has made you. If you have found yourself in an extended battle with the enemy of your soul, the chances are that you don’t know who you are. Jesus gave us authority over the enemy because we are in Him. Like Scarlet’s daughter, our enemy only seems so big when we are fighting him from our bellies. So stand up today. Stand up in the rights that Jesus has given you. This isn’t a battle, it’s a question of authority. And the good news is, you already have it.
So this isn’t about budgeting, but it actually is a powerful message for your finances as well. Many times when the enemy wants to steal our joy and get us feeling despondent and helpless, he will attack our finances. Have you ever noticed how everything seems to break down at once? No, I don’t think that everything is the enemy. Sometimes things just break down or run their course, but I do think that the enemy uses the timing of those things to make you think that he is more powerful than he is. He loves to get glory, he loves for you to think of him as huge, and he loves to steal from you in any way that he can.
When Matt and I start feeling “under attack” in our finances, it is just a reminder that we need to stand up and walk the way that God has called us to walk. We remind ourselves about what God has said about us, about our home, and about our finances. We take the covenant meal together and remember what Jesus did in defeating the enemy, and then we rejoice that we aren’t in a battle. When you stand up in all your glorious armor, it’s not really so that you can fight. It’s so that you will remember who you are in Christ, and what Jesus did in defeating your enemy. Taking up the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-17) isn’t so that you can go into battle. The battle is already won. But it’s also not a mistake that you can’t sit down when you are clothed in armor. Because when you are standing in what Jesus has clothed you in, you will not be intimidated. You will not be afraid, because you will finally realize that you are bigger than the cat.
“You are of God, little children, and have overcome because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” ~1 John 4:4