Spiders and Satan

Recently, I witnessed a group of college girls who were taking a harmless stroll together outside. I watched them absolutely freak out of nowhere; high pitched screaming like you would have thought they saw Channing Tatum shirtless or witnessed a gruesome murder or something. (It's kind of hard to tell the difference with us females.) They literally sprinted the other direction and took a totally different path than they had been walking upon.

I walked over and examined the cause of their fatal sounding cries and course change and saw a fuzzy black spider no bigger than the size of a nickel harmlessly scurrying along the sidewalk. It was definitely ugly and nothing anyone would want crawling around their bedside, but it was literally just ONE LITTLE SPIDER. I laughed out loud.

After being overwhelmed in so much freedom this last week, I realized something:
Satan is a lot like a spider. 

He's ugly, he's scary, he's intimidating, he uproots fear, he makes you feel like something scary is surrounding you and crawling all over you. He can send a group of people screaming in fear and running all kinds of chaotic directions. But look how small and weak... look how easily He could be crushed right under your foot. Look how LITTLE power He has over such a strong being as yourself. We give Him way too much power, when really we ought to disregard him, squish him like dust into the ground, and keep walking on the path before us.


That power lies within you. It's never been stolen or taken, but it's hard to see when you yourself have been trained in the lie that one tiny fear can destroy your courage and your future. It CAN'T. It can only make you THINK it can. The spider doesn't want you to know you can destroy IT with one simple stomp of your foot. What is literally just one tiny spider, our fear sees as a 20 foot shark ready to devour us. But do our feelings and perspective actually alter what lies before us? Never.

Stop letting tiny, powerless fears keep you from walking where The Lord has directed you. They may be hard to look at, they may bring up a disgust within you, they may tempt you to believe the rumors you have heard about them are true, they may appear bigger than everything else around you, they may steal your focus, but they are powerless. Go step on them and keep walking. Chase them down and squash them if you have to. They are actually terrified of Y O U. Go be brave because you were made to be, and something as small as a spider was never meant to be your end.

You were made to be strong; you were made to WIN.
You were made to conquer things far bigger than fear.
Refuse to let a monumental feeling overshadow the microscopic reality.

When you remember the power that is IN you, nothing can knock you down. When you can stand immovably atop the truth that YOU HAVE BEEN MADE STRONG, everything begins to look like tiny, weak spiders in the lens of your warrior eyes. Yet another laughable, powerless, tiny bug that you will gladly stomp out of your way.



Be brave, walk again where you were made to go, and reclaim power over all that has had control over you for far too long. That victory is yours. Go take it.

-Han


Psalm 18

I pursued my enemies and overtook them;
    I did not turn back till they were destroyed.
38 I crushed them so that they could not rise;
    they fell beneath my feet.
I beat them as fine as windblown dust;
    I trampled them like mud in the streets.

Hands Wide Open

It's been a pretty non-stop, chaotic, stressful, painful, and scary few months.

Those seasons in life where you look up into the clouds and ask their Maker when you'll get a break. Sometimes, it's all too easy to forget that I'm not owed something just because I persevere through the challenges. I already received all I need the day that Jesus found me. Anything extra apart from His heart beating inside of mine and His grace leading me through each day is a special and unexpected blessing-- not something I can earn. 

Last week I climbed Pikes Peak by foot. 799 staircases, 17.2 miles, up to 14,115 feet above the clouds. Definitely one of the hardest things I've ever done. Sun poisoning, altitude sickness, fainting from lack of oxygen, pounding headache, dehydration, and overall exhaustion made for a very trying climb. I may have cried a few tears. 

But I learned something very difficult around mile 8:

With every step I was looking forward to flat ground eventually, every new mile I awaited an "easy" part of the climb, my thought process often went something like this: "Well, I just need to push through THIS steep & rocky mile with everything I have no matter how much I want to give up because then I'm sure I'll see some level ground and my body will have a break."

I realized how much that thinking was doing terrible things for my endurance. Because the following mile ended up being way HARDER than the previous. Less oxygen, less energy, less hydration, less coherency, less strength. The more that I awaited the a future"easy", the more challenging the present "hard" became. Because I gave it all I had and was completely empty by the end of that mile and didn't want to keep going onto the next. 

I saw how much that was like life. Pushing hard through each challenge waiting for God to bring my "well-deserved break". And every time it didn't come, I would measure my endurance and assume I wasn't doing something good enough or trying hard enough. 

But that's not what God asks of us is it? To try and try and try until we're out of oxygen and furious we have breathing problems. We took away our own oxygen. God never stole it from us. It's this "let's just get this over with" attitude that steals away our joy, our purpose, and our patience in the storm. 

While we say "Let's just get this over with already."

God says: "Let's take our time and just walk this out together no matter how long it takes."

Patiently taking one step at a time creates something inside of us that we will never find if we're sprinting past each step: a closer walk with the Spirit in our hearts, an ability to patiently endure amidst our weakness, and eyes to clearly see the purpose intricately painted upon each step. 

It seems much less overwhelming when you take one step at a time. And that's how God designed it. His yoke is easy and light-- I'll say that again: His yoke is EASY and His burden is LIGHT. He doesn't require for us to reach the top at a certain time, He just asks us to let Him walk with us in our journey. 

A song that has totally changed my life and been God's anthem over me in this season goes like this:

"I lean not on my own understanding; My life is in the hands of the Maker of Heaven.

I give it all to you God; trusting that You'll make something beautiful out of me.

I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open.
There's nothing I hold onto."

I thought about those words during my hike. And especially in my life. With clenched, exhausted fists that are yearning to find eventual rest, God can't put anything into my palms as I climb. But with hands wide open, He can freely pour His strength and His joy inside of me. 

He tells me I can rest AS I climb if only I don't view each step as something to get done and over with; but instead as something beautiful He can use my open hands to create. And let's be honest, He is the Maker of Heaven-- the designer of the stars, the Author of the sunsets-- there is no other Teacher I would rather entrust my canvas to except for Him.

Random freezing blizzards.

Breathtaking.

 

And sometimes, God sends an angel your way to help you finish. 

The last part that just about killed me.

Right next to the sun. 

His promise stamped at the top.

-Han