A couple months ago I was cooking dinner for my friends when I made a huge mistake. I always love experimenting with ingredients in the kitchen, and I thought that I had bought poblano peppers from the grocery store. As I was prepping the ingredients to make my taco pie, I started to cough, but I thought it was just from the very strong onion I diced up. Little did I know it was not from the onion. I sautéed all the vegetables and was still getting choked, and then I realized that I had accidentally bought habanero peppers instead. My hands were burning from the encounter with them, and I even had to that night take my contacts out and flush my eyes out because nothing would neutralize the pepper juice on my hands. For days I had to endure fiery hands, which definitely made me regret trying to experiment with peppers of all the ingredients, but I just accepted the consequences. However, I was reminded of a very important lesson that week of fiery hands and it was not that I should be careful when using peppers in the kitchen. It was that spiritual warfare is real, and if we do not lean on God during times of trial, then the consequences will be worse than just enduring trials. Lately I have been able to see the spiritual warfare in my life more evidently than I ever have before. It has tried to distract me from being motivated and desiring to spend time with God and it has taken away my energy. Just like I was distracted by a new ingredient I had never used before and I misread the fine print before using so it took away my excitement of cooking for my friends, spiritual warfare can become a distraction and steal our joy in God and what He’s doing amidst the trials. In the end I realized the problem and saved my friends from the fire of my dish and my taco pie turned out to have the perfect amount of spice. If we lean on God no matter if we are dealing with spiritual warfare or not, then when spiritual warfare comes our way it will be evident to us and we will be able to get through it. God gives us tools to help us discern the things of evil and the things of good such as: prayer, community, and God’s Word. It is important to pray to strengthen your relationship with God when you are not enduring trials, so that when the trial comes you will still find joy in God during it. It is important to read your Bible and meditate on the Word of God, so that you can discern more clearly what is of God and what is not. Lastly, it is important to have a strong Christian community to endure the trials with you and pray for you. Now, I know this sounds like simple truths that we have heard many times before. However, we need to constantly be reminded of these truths, myself included, because we easily lose sight of God and what He is doing and forget to have joy even in the trials.
1 Comment
Sharon L Faulkenberry
7/7/2016 04:19:41 pm
Great job. I needed to hear that.
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AuthorAshley Faulkenberry Archives
October 2016
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