A Mighty Battle

The house I grew up in was at the top of a hill, and it had a massive yard with several huge oak trees, a couple of walnut trees and a chestnut tree. One of the oak trees held a rope swing that Daddy made for me when I was young, and I remember gathering walnuts in buckets for Mom when they would fall from the walnut trees. I've got a lot of "tree" memories from my youth, not the least of which involves the tree house my brother Jerry built for me and his young sons. But some of my most vivid memories concerning the trees in the years of my youth took place beneath the large chestnut tree that resided in the side lot of Mom and Dad's yard.

For those of you who aren't familiar with chestnuts, they grow inside of burrs ... burrs that are covered with prickly spikes that are as sharp as needles. While I am sure that there are all sorts of proper ways to remove chestnuts from their burrs, my friends and I would simply smash them with our feet (with shoes on, of course) and remove the nuts. As the chestnuts ripened, the burrs would turn from green to brown and fall from the trees, most of the time splitting open and releasing the nuts within. And here's where my vivid memory comes in ... when the burrs began to fall, my friends would gather at my house for chestnut burr battles. We had some massive wars throwing the burrs at each other, and more than a few times, we would leave the battleground of Mom and Dad's yard wounded and bleeding where the spikes of the burrs had stuck into our skin ... and we would leave talking about how much fun we had ... taking great delight in the mighty battles we had fought.

When I was in Kentucky visiting my brother and sister-in-law a couple of weeks ago, my sister-in-law gave me a devotional book titled Jesus Calling. It's an awesome little book ... each day has thoughts written as if Jesus were speaking directly to the reader, followed by several Scriptures pertaining to each day's lesson. It's been more than interesting to me that every day's message thus far has so perfectly been exactly what I needed to think about for that particular day. The day my sis-in-law gave me the book was the day I was leaving my family to head back to Kansas City, and the deep feelings of loneliness had started washing over me that morning when I woke up ... I truly did not want to leave my family and go back to my lonely life. I opened the little book when I stopped to get gas, and this is what I read ... "Once you have trusted Me as your Savior, I never distance Myself from you ... no matter what you may lose in this life, you can never lose your relationship with me." Oh, yeah, you can rest assured that the tears flowed when I read those words.

Last week, someone told me that she didn't believe that God wanted me to stay in the place I have been in for the last year or so, and that she continues to believe that there is something else that is causing depression to refuse to relinquish its grip on my soul ... and her words have made me ponder some things over the last few days. I've told myself again and again over the last months that God had a plan and a purpose for having me where I am ... and to think about the possibility that He doesn't ... well, that thought knocked the wind out of me. But the more I thought about my friend's words, the more I wondered what is going on in my head. And the more I wondered what is going on in my head ... the more I wondered what ... is ... going ... on ... in ... my ... head. And then I picked up the little book ... Jesus Calling ... and this is what I read ... "There is a mighty battle going on for control of your mind. Heaven and earth intersect in your mind; the tugs of both spheres influence your thinking ... stay in continual communication with Me whenever you walk through the wastelands of this world ... stay alert, recognizing the battle being waged against your mind." As I read those words, I couldn't help but think about how many times I've said that I'm tired of fighting, that I don't understand this place ... this desert, this wasteland, that I don't have the strength to face another day.

Hmmm ... there's a verse in Ephesians ... "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." A mighty battle ... a mighty battle, indeed.