Power and Strength

What is power? What is strength?

Power is privilege and right, it comes from God and His word; John 1:1.

Strength is support, power of residence, that which supplies strength; Psalm 46.

We as humans may struggle as to what and where we find these items. A lot of the time when we think of strength we think of physical strength (you are so strong) not spiritual strength and that is the same way with power. When we think of power we think in the physical content not the spiritual content. Do you struggle with where your spiritual strength and spiritual power come from? If the answer is yes, well guess what you aren’t alone. A bunch of people are like you and also struggle with these two aspects spiritually rather than physically.

When we lose sight of where our power and strength come from we fall for the traps that Satan sets for us. Some might fall into despair (depression) and honestly feel like there is no way out at all. They start believing all the lies that are planted by the Devil. You aren’t good enough, you can always do better, no one loves you, etc. It may get so bad that they start to believe that no one would even notice if they went and disappeared or killed themselves. They fall and fall and kept falling, believing that there is not hope for them. When they get to this point in some sense they have lost their spiritual power and spiritual strength as well as their physical power and strength to live. If this is you, guess what there is hope, there is a way out, and you aren’t alone. There are and have been people that have gone through this or are going through this, but there is hope.

What better way for you to understand than to give a personal story of this. For those of you that know me (the person writing this blog), what you are about to read maybe a bit shocking and hard to believe, but all the events from here on out are very true and very real.

I don’t exactly know where to begin so I am going to start where I started to lose my relationship with God and Satan started taking hold on my life, my heart, and me. It was the end of my senior year in high school and I had the summer to prepare for leaving for college. I didn’t know what to expect going into college and I was already nervous. Well that same summer my family and I left the church that I had grown up in all my life and we started church hoping.  After we left I couldn’t get comfortable in another church and didn’t even want to go. My mom tried and tried to get me to go and succeeded most of the time. I just started to not care, I wanted to leave home to get away from being “forced” (not really but it felt like it) to go to church.

Then it finally came time to leave for college I was excited. I would finally get away from having to go to church and do things that I really didn’t want to do. Got a few weeks into the semester and already my team captain didn’t like me. She made my life a living h***, along with two other girls on my golf team. I cared but didn’t care, if that makes sense. Well as time went on college life got harder, golf got more and more depressing, and I was also dealing with sister and best friend issues from 2.5 hours away. I just couldn’t take it anymore but I still acted like it was okay. I didn’t want anyone to know I was struggling, and that I was faking (aka lying to them) that I was okay. I found a church up near where I lived and occasionally I would walk to it and go. The days I did go the messages that the preacher preached on hit me and hit me hard but I didn’t want to listen or believe them. I kept going through life trying to pretend everything was okay. Then one day it seemed like everything went south in a heart beat.

I got accused of opening my mouth and saying something that I shouldn’t have, I got yelled at by my team captain and one of my other teammates, I was stressed out about my grades and about golf. I was also dealing with family drama and at that point I was done. I broke so hard. I got so depressed and hated golf and my life. I didn’t feel like I had anyone to talk to and in all reality I didn’t want to burden anyone with my problems. I started to get the thoughts of would anyone really miss me if I just up and died. No one cares about me, no one loves me, these people I call friends are not my friends. I kept lying to my parents telling them everything was alright because I didn’t want them to worry about me. I felt so alone, I didn’t have any friends and I felt like I couldn’t talk to God anymore, I was so ashamed of myself. I had lost sight of who I was in God’s eyes. I couldn’t take it anymore I wanted everything to end and to stop. I wanted all the bullying to stop, I want my life to end. Then and only then could I find peace and quiet. One night I got a bunch of ibuprofen pills, because I wanted to die, I wanted to kill myself because I had lost my hope, my power and strength to continue fighting. I had fallen so far from God and didn’t think He wanted me back. To me killing myself was the only way out.

These were all lies and feelings that Satan had been using on me. He found his way into my heart, my mind, and my soul. I had forgotten how to fight him.

Luckily that night that I wanted to die, something stopped me. I had this weird feeling and I just couldn’t go through with it. Up till about a year or so ago I hadn’t figured out why I didn’t go through with killing myself. Well now I can tell you this, that night God was looking out for one of His lost children. He sent His Holy Spirit to come save me from making one of the most terrible decisions of my life. I had forgotten where my power and strength were at and who they were from. I broke not because I wasn’t strong enough to fight my own battles but because I lost sight of who my protector and Father is. I had forgotten how to fight spiritually rather than physically.

Depression and suicide are very real things and are the result of humans forgetting where their power and strength to fight each and everyday come from. They come from the One who made it all, the One who took nothing and made it something, Our Father, our Healer, our Protector, the Almighty God, Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit.

For those of you that are struggling with self worth, depression, feeling alone, not felling loved, you aren’t alone. There is hope and there is a future. I wrote this to be able to reach people out there that are struggling with this. I am an example of what God can do. I went from wanting to die to becoming comfortable in a church. I started serving again, which is something I love to do, and I am still alive and breathing all because of our ever-loving Father and the plans He had for me. My strength and power come from the Lord and sometimes from my friends. God has surrounded me with some really amazing people. They have shown me what it means to be a friend and what it means to have true friends. Ones that don’t just walk out of your life and hurt you. Those people have stuck their necks out for me on multiple occasions and have loved me even when I am a butt to them.

Life will get hard at different points in your life but seek out God and seek out His plans for your life. When you do that He will open the door and show you some amazing things. There is power and strength in knowing where your Sword is during the hard times. It is easy to just want to quit and give up but it takes strong people to do the work of the Lord and to do it faithfully.

My hope it that this reaches anyone that reads this. You are not alone. This is not an easy subject to talk about nor write about, I had kept it hidden for so long but God has been showing me that it was time to tell part of my story, to reach the broken hearted, the lost, and the people that are hurting that haven’t fully given up.

All the praise from my life goes to God and only God. If He wasn’t the loving God that He is, I would be dead right now. He had different plans and I had a purpose that I wasn’t sure about. Most of my life I have struggled with my identity in Christ but now I can truly say that I am a daughter of God, I am a servant of God, I am worth it to God and to people and so are you. You are all children of God, Loved by God and are worth it to God. That is why He sent His son to die for us, so that we could have a way out and hope for the future.