When Evil Comes Knocking
“So we do not lose heart.” 1 Corinthians 4:16
We’ve all been there. We’ve felt the gaping wounds from someone else’s sin. We’ve felt our hearts break due to the pain of others’ choices. We’ve cried out to God for justice when we feel like there is none. Recently, God has lead me to see the correlation between evil and faith.
Psalm 37 begins by telling us not to fret or be envious of evildoers. How do we do this? Practically speaking, I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit worrying about evil. Verse 3 tells us to “trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.” The latter part of the verse can also be translated as “feed on faithfulness.” If we eat food, we receive nourishment and what our body needs to function properly. In the same way, faith can nourish our souls to help us in hard times to not worry about the evil around us. In 1 Peter 5:9, we are told to resist the devil by being firm in our faith. The context of this verse is speaking to those who are dealing with difficulties. It’s so easy to believe the lies that Satan whispers in our ear in the dead of night to our hurting hearts. “Does God really love you? Is he really with you? Does he really want what’s best for you?” The way we fight these lies is with faith. In fact, when speaking about the armor of God, Ephesians 6:16 says, “In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.”
Faith does so much more than just help us to trust God and resist temptation. Hebrews tells us that our faith, especially in the midst of adversity, pleases God. It also says that without it, it is impossible to please God. (Hebrews 11:6) There is a whole chapter devoted to listing people and their acts of faith. I know what you may be thinking. What do you do when your faith is lacking or you’re hanging on by just a thread? Hebrews 12 has the answer for us; we look to Jesus who is the “founder and perfecter of our faith”. (v. 2) We can also pray for faith; it comes from the Lord since it is a fruit of the spirit.
Evil will, at some point, break our hearts wide open with pain. It will leave us curled up and weeping, asking God how he could let this happen. With faith, we can keep doing the next thing. We can keep trusting that Scripture holds true, no matter our circumstances. Faith reminds us that this world is not our home and that all of this pain is “preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” (1 Corinthians 4:17)
May we keep looking to our heavenly Father to keep helping us fight evil with faith.