Okay,
Lord, choose my songs for me.
My iPod was set to shuffle, and the
playlist was called “Cranky Girl Mix.” Please don’t for a second think it was a
collection of upbeat, encouraging music chosen to pull me out of a bad mood. It
wasn’t. So even as I challenged God to choose the songs, I had stacked the deck
against anything uplifting, edifying, or encouraging.
The sky was gray, and although it wasn’t
that cold, it was a bit windy. I was feeling kind of under the weather. I didn’t
want to go for a walk, but I had committed to walking every day. And two of my
friends were sure to check up on me, per my own request. So when I had noticed
the sun peeking his sad little face through the clouds, I figured I’d better
get out the door before the sky went all gloomy again.
I sulked and felt sorry for myself, but
I walked. And I listened, off and on.
Toward the end of my walk, three songs
got me thinking about spiritual warfare.
The first was Switchfoot’s “This is Your
Life (Are You Who You Want to Be?).” My sister used to have it as the “hold”
music on her voicemail. That one line always stopped me in my tracks, silenced
the churning chatter of my thoughts, and made me consider whether I was living
deliberately at all or just lurching through my days, reacting to the demands
life threw at me.
The next song was “Hit Me with Your Best
Shot.” I know, I know—frothy, silly snark. “Well
you’re the real tough cookie with the long history / Of breaking little hearts,
like the one in me / That’s O.K., lets see how you do it / Put up your dukes, and
let’s get down to it! / Hit me with your best shot!”
Sir
Thomas More described Satan as a “proud
spirit [who] cannot endure to be mocked.” So if Satan (or any other demon) had
this Pat Benatar lyric flung at him, would he be provoked to attack or insulted
into retreating? I couldn’t help but snicker at that idea. (Okay, so deep
inside, some part of me is still fourteen. Big surprise.)
The last song was the Eagles’ “Heartache
Tonight.” I remember roller skating to it during junior high. “Somebody’s gonna hurt someone / before the
night is through. / Somebody’s gonna come undone. / There’s nothin’ we can do.
/ Everybody wants to touch somebody / if it takes all night. / Everybody wants
to take a little chance, / make it come out right. / There’s gonna be a
heartache tonight, / a heartache tonight, I know. / There’s gonna be a
heartache tonight, / a heartache tonight, I know. / Lord, I know.”
I had a hard time arguing with that.
(Except for the line “There’s nothin’ we can do”—and even that seems true
sometimes.) We’re all broken. Somebody’s always coming undone. Sometimes it’s
us; often it’s someone we love. We live in a fallen world. We all struggle with
temptation and with sins for which we have an innate inclination. We watch
people we love suffer, get beat up by the world, and make destructive choices—in
spite of our best efforts to protect them and influence them (or even control
them!). We work to untangle lies and beliefs in our own hearts—the lies we soak
up from the enemy, our culture, and even our own families versus the truth of
God’s Word, the truth that He offers love, mercy, light, healing, creativity,
redemption, and transformation. He pours them out, sometimes without our even
noticing.
I was mildly surprised but pleased that
God had, indeed, chosen some songs to float me out of my sour mood and
self-pity.
Then about an hour after I returned home
from my walk, a friend called. She felt like she was under attack. She was
about to step into a bigger role in ministry, a position where she’d be
instrumental in helping a lot of hurting people. So Satan was trying to derail
her. He was pushing her buttons like nobody’s business, using things she’d
struggled with in the past—and made tremendous progress with—to distract her,
undermine her, drain her energy and focus, and pile on the guilt. I listened,
and we talked, and I affirmed that she was right. She was under attack! We
prayed together on the phone.
When we hung up, she went away
encouraged. And I was humbled. Those songs I heard on my walk and the idea that
they all related to spiritual warfare—that was a gift from God. But the gift was
not intended just for my own encouragement or amusement. It was preparation for
my friend’s phone call, preparation for prayer. It was not, as I’d thought,
just lightweight, enjoyable reflection on spiritual warfare, but rather a call
to awareness of spiritual warfare so that I’d recognize it when I saw it and be
able to lend a hand. It had been a call to arms.
Isn’t God amazing? He turned such poor
raw materials, my crankiness and a few pop songs, into an opportunity to
prepare me for prayer, for battle. Surely He is our Creator still. Who else
could do that?
Thank
You, Lord.
Question:
What has God given you to pass along to others?
