In Matthew 12:43-45 (NIV), Jesus says this:
43″When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”
Upon reading this, the first thought that came into my mind was “Doom is upon me…I am doomed to contain my demons forever. How can I ever be free of them if they’re just going to come back in greater numbers?” I wonder how many others also have this thought going through their mind.
However, upon speaking with my dad he offered a piece of optimistic insight. It goes something like this: in order for your demons to leave/get kicked out, you must be at a certain level of faith and assurance in God. Now, while you are building up in faith, your demons are roaming around. When you are finally at the pinnacle of your faith again, the demon returns with a new gang of other demons, be it increased addictions or what have you, as an attempt to bring you back down.
And so this is how I’ve always seen my walk as: a semi-constant roller-coaster increasing and decreasing in faith — this is something some strong fundamentalist Christians would shun. I believe their argument would be something along the lines of, “Faith should always be increasing, if not constant. You should never be losing or decreasing your faith in God.” But don’t all of us have valleys of dryness, trials and death?
that’s why we have David who wrote Psalms 23rd to remind us what we can do in times of troubles. We all go thru ups and downs, don’t cheat on ourselves.In 23:5 “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies”. God knows we will be able to conquer the evils, thus the dinner is well prepared for us in advance to enjoy,one catch here,We have to have faith to sit besides Him first, yet faith needs time to build up. Rome doesn’t build in One Day.
that’s quite a scary thought. and i agree that our journey with Christ is a roller-coaster (which also scare me) and from my experience, as much as i’d like to say that faith should never decrease, it’s easier said than done — but it’s also important not to give up just because we do go through trials like this. The goals of demons is to get us down, and sometimes they succeed, but as long as we have a friend to remind us that God’s power is greater than any amount of demons — what else can we do but keep on believing?; even if everytime the demons leave, they return in greater number, we still have to put up a fight knowing that when we overcome those demons with the power of God, our faith will be stronger. the peeks on the roller-coaster continue to get higher and higher and that’s something to rejoice in! — i’m glad you posted this…it’s something to think about.
[…] previously written a post (Worse Than Before, But So Much More), which talked about our human issues of relapsing into sin, and I’ve found that I’ve […]