This is really happening. The New Testament. The Kingdom of God. Redemption. Salvation. Eternal Life. It’s all really happening.

The nature of The New Testament is a bully-beat down. The enemy has had his grip on the entire world for long enough. We (especially the secular world) sometimes think of the war in Heaven and Lucifer’s contingent being thrown to Earth as his defeat. That was one phase, but he continued to struggle against humanity throughout the Old Testament as witnessed by Daniel in the Book of Daniel Chapter 10. In this passage it was revealed that demons could interfere with the answering of prayers indicating the struggle continued all the way until…

The Cross. This was the event that defeated the enemy, because humanity was free to believe that there was life after death. This was impossible because we had no access to the Truth, even Israel lost Faith without direct access to God. But there is more to this. I will start here with two eternal truths: God will not be seen as a tyrant and God will never compromise free will. The latter is good for any of my reader’s conversion efforts; this will be thematic throughout the life of this blog.

The former is what Christ has restored us to (and also can be helpful for conversion efforts). I believe Our Heavenly Father was in great pain throughout the Old Testament (from our perspective of course, as He lives in Eternity) knowing that we basically (outside of Israel) believed He was evil. This is the nature of Lucifer’s device. He essentially said that God lied because he was fallible, and therefore Evil, because only a perfect God can be good. So we went along with it, yielding to selfish desires (after all, if no one is good then we are essentially on equal footing, hopeless; we may as well satisfy selfishness). We know that selfish desires lead to death; it’s no wonder we have the myth of The Genie.

Wishing is for Genies

The Satan essentially is or represents a Genie, “I wish this problem would go away” and if you accept his response by sinning, it actually does…for a time. This is what happens when you get drunk, satisfy sexual urges, murder/harm, lie, the reader can ‘go down the list’, so to speak. But of course, the problem comes back. And, being a genie, what does The Enemy do? Listen to your complaint. ‘I thought this’ or ‘how come that’. He listens, waiting for you to wish again. We’re all familiar with augmenting our wish, hoping for success and it never comes, no matter how wisely we craft the new wish.

God is the one who can guide us to defeat the problem conclusively. Notice I didn’t say that He does it; God already defeated all Evil and He empowers us to do it with His spirit. A young Christian may be waiting on God to do something for him/her, I’m speaking to this (of course, there are things only God can do so a person should ask for these). He will never simply remove an obstacle because he’s already removed the biggest obstacle(s) in His defeat of evil. For a perspective on this, remember that God himself is not the one who through the evil angels out of Heaven, it was Michael and his angels (Revelation 12:7-10).

In other words, God is so powerful that He didn’t have to lift a finger. It was simply his Will that strengthened the Holy angels. And we, in kind, but not modeled after them, must do the same. As I’m writing this, I pray the reader is getting a sense between wishing and doing through empowerment. God’s way is the actual True way, if you defeat something yourself (empowered by God) you know it’s not coming back. This is one of the endless, eternal and blessed reasons The Father Loves The Son as much as He does. Where God had to drown Israel’s Egyptian pursuers to prove He is on our side, He no longer has to do this. God is not evil; He does not wish to drown people simply because they don’t understand.

Our Struggle

However, with Jesus, we’ve run out of excuses. We have the power now to defeat The Enemy. Here is the help I wish to provide in this post: The next time you think about your current struggle (which you really shouldn’t do in the way that you do, but that’s another post) try to catch yourself saying “I wish this problem were gone”. This is a death nail. Think in terms of actuality, you must defeat the problem. To help you step over this problem, make a note that as you wish for the problem to vanish you are thinking of it as an obstacle to the next best thing witch we generally think of as good and peaceful, but really it’s just another obstacle. In other words, you may secretly be thinking once your current problem is gone it’s going to be smooth sailing. It’s not. You are simply stronger and better equipped with sound mindedness, good judgement and holiness.

I nearly ended the post there but the Truth is that we perennially have this idea that the problem we face now is our Big Problem and once it’s done, ‘we’re good’. But life is a series of problems to be defeated so the more you focus on the one in front of you the more you sink into the ground you are currently in and the bigger the boogie man becomes. The Big Tip for today is to start working on the next problem while ignoring this one, you will see that that next big thing you are trying to get to is itself a problem and the prospect dwarfs (or eliminates) the current one as an obstacle.

Never think that life is in particular ‘easier’. As a Christian, you should expect to live differently than everyone else; we are made strong in an Un-Earthly way and it takes courage to think in such a way that no one around you does in any given situation. After beginning to embrace this, surround yourself with other believers to stay grounded because as you meet your brothers and sisters you will see that you’re not so special that as you judge all things spiritually you are set apart by yourself (a person will perish with no sense of humility) and that your brothers and sisters do this as well. God makes strong towers/temples out of His children both for their sake and for the sake of others. But you must embrace that this is really happening.

Until next time, take care.

Gregory Longmore, LMHC is an online-only Christian Professional Mental Health therapist based in NYC.