Many of you know the feeling. It normally hits you once you’ve relaxed and are lying in bed after a long day. Maybe it hits you in the quiet hours of your day. I call it the two a.m. effect and when it hits you, it hits you hard. It’s a potent mixture of self-doubt, failure, and every mistake you’ve made in your life, dumped on you all at once. If you’re not careful, one sip of the poisonous concoction and you’re down in the dumps for the remainder of the day. Trying to resist it is hard, but giving in to it can prove an even bigger uphill battle. The arrows have poisonous darts at the end and if you don’t dodge them quick enough, a root takes hold in our mind.
Growing up, my mom called this “the battlefield of our minds.” It’s where we over-analyze our mistakes and where our greatest ideas come from. It’s our hard drive to how we live our lives and what we watch, listen to, and who we let ourselves socialize. She hung a hand-drawn picture on our fridge and I think it’s still there to this day. It’s faded and worn even in its plastic sleeve, but the message still rings true. The devil wants us and he’ll get us any way he is able to.
The picture was of a stick figure’s head. Inside his brain was split into sections and each section had a different inscription written on it. This particular drawing was filled with positive thoughts.
Love with a gentle heart.
You have a purpose.
Trust in God.
Walk the path He shows you.
Those words didn’t mean much to my seven-year-old self, but now a junior in college those words mean more to me than I thought was possible. The devil loves to use doubt as his greatest weapon and I have admittedly fallen prey to his strategy too many times. While I was in Guatemala, my mom did a fantastic job of tidying up my room. (I’m not the most organized person known to mankind.) When I got home, I found a book I had been looking for for several years. Well, my mom found it and put it on my desk.
The book was given to me after my dad passed away when I was six. Pages are missing, the white pages are no longer white, and the cover is torn, but the book has helped me in some of the most difficult times during my childhood. God’s Promises Rock Your World had a ridiculous picture of a dog wearing goggles on the front. The contents inside is what mattered to me. Over ninety different topics of Scripture helped me immensely. I haven’t had the chance to flip through it yet but it’s still sits on my desk waiting for me to peruse its pages again.
Through Scripture and devotionals the devil loses his grip on our lives. The two a.m. effect no longer keeps us up at night when we turn over everything to God.
Salvaged by Grace 