The battle

These past few days have been so humbling in ways that I cannot describe. I pray daily for freedom from evil thoughts and fight through lies but in the end God always delivers. So recently I have been dealing alot with pride. Yesterday it felt like a normal day with me going through the motions and such and just being tempted with things of this world which happened a while back. I was sort of surprised because recently I have kept my eyes to the heavens but yesterday I struggled alot with just loving my apartment mates, people around the campus, and just my friends.

The struggle recently has been dealing with authenticity because that is the one flaw I DISLIKE in myself is when I am not being who I am. However, when I see others just spending time with God I judge them which sucks because it says in Romans that we are ALL sinners including myself which of course I try to validate myself by saying "At least I actually go to God with an open heart" or "At least my prayers are honest" look at them they are not like me.

So during Intervarsity worship two days ago I was standing in the back next to a guy and I saw him and heard him pray and stuff and to be honest my head was judging already because I think the way I feel if I am on the right track is comparing myself to other people. However, there is no standard of how you are doing in your life with God all that matters is that you love being with him. Which I guess in my head always has been a trippy subject because I feel like things should be earned. Anyways later God just tells me to get rid of my pride and go ask him for prayer which I end up doing. I get blessed even though I went outside not expecting God to do anything. Afterwords God told me to humble myself and just ask people for prayer in general. One of the hardest things for me to believe is, after seeing some crazy conferences and just the amazingness of prayer, believing that God will work the same through a random person who may not even believe their own prayers. MAN it is such a trippy idea that God of crazy conferences and crazy God-loving people is the same God for the meek and the posers. I cannot limit God to just a certain group of people or a certain church or whatnot God is God of the world he can use whoever he wants too, to bless me , heal me, or just love me. I need to learn to remain humble and be open completely to ALL my brothers and sisters no matter where they are in their journey for I could missing out on some great fellowship and blessing.

So yesterday, I was feeling spiritually attacked with just negative thoughts and lies about myself the bible, and God. I discerned that they were not from God and I called a couple people to pray for me and come intercede or just pray on my behalf. However, alot of the people that I thought could help me did not pick up, people that I looked up to in a spiritual way and that I thought God could easily work through and deliver me. But he had a different plan, in my somewhat panicked calmed state one of the older brothers from IV called me back and told me to go call people to pray for me because he can come see me in 3 hours. Knowing now that what I would call "reinforcements" for this attack would not be there to later in desperation I started to text people who I knew would pray for me and I put down the idea of pride that I thought certain peoples' prayers were "stronger" or something. And I just told God I will just ask all these people God. And as I was texting people I felt lighter and lighter and that the evil presence was lifting. I actually got prayed for and I just believed that God could work through anyone WHICH he can. I later met up with one of my friends from Intervarsity and she prayed for me and man at first I was sort of skeptical to be honest. However, God spoke through her into my life and I realized I need to deal with jealousy and anger issues and that sometimes I just want to fit in and not be left alone. On top of that being left out of groups of people in my past made me want to prove that I can pursue God by myself and that "I" can do crazy things for the kingdom without a group. Pretty much I just wanted to prove myself to everyone that I am strong.

However, God told me, "Marc you need to learn to run with the pack", when I was praying I saw and wolf and the interpretation was that wolves travel and hunt in packs for protection, effectivity, and bonding. I have been the lone wolf for too long it is time to put aside that pride and jump on a team with brothers and sisters. God told me that on a championship team it takes every player and sure I might not be the kobe bryant but pursuing God is what matters and his kingdom matters not my own personal accomplishments. For a single player in basketball could score seventy out of eighty of his teams points and they could still lose. But another player could only score 10 points and he backs up his teammates and together they could score 100 points. I am ready to join a team guys.

Time to be open, time to be honest, time to be humble, time to love, time to be authentic, time to just be who i am :).

Prayer request: Spiritual protection, authenticity, an abundance of love, courage, steadfastness to obey and read the word