By 
We quickly ran piling sandbag after sandbag around our house hoping and praying to deflect the oncoming flood! The rain once again began to fall in sheets of penetrating force destined to break through our temporary barrier. I smiled as the wall of sand held, keeping the inside of our house dry, only to discover an instant later that our sump pump had failed in the basement. My smile quickly faded and my eyes filled with tears as I realized that our entire finished basement was underwater.
Just a week before, when it started to rain, I discovered that our new house was built in a flood zone. Our insurance did not cover flooding and our basement would have to be dismantled and remodeled! It would cost thousands of dollars!
The enormity of the situation had my nerves fraying and my emotions exploding on and off about how I was going to accomplish this project! My son’s room was in the basement and now he had nowhere to sleep. The few pieces of furniture that were saved were in the living room along with my son’s bed. The house was so messy I wanted to pull my hair out.
We had moved into our new house just a year earlier happy that we would have very little to do, but now everything had changed. Our home business was growing by leaps and bounds. The phone kept ringing off the hook and new employees needed to be recruited and trained for our expanding business.
The pressure was so great that I found myself lashing out at my kids and husband and secretly plotting to get in my car and leave everything behind. Desperate, I went to the doctor and he prescribed me two antidepressants, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
We stopped going to church because we were working all the time to keep the business going and make needed repairs in our basement. I stopped praying except for emergencies and reading my Bible, “Well, there just wasn’t time!”
My husband had a child from a previous marriage and this child was detrimental. Every time it was time for the visit, I prepared myself for a fight. It wasn’t just the problems with his daughter, it was also his mother and her husband. They demanded that we give up and buy everything they needed for her because we had more money than they did. All I could think was that we already paid child support for her and that she should buy these things with that money.
To make my frustration even worse, my husband gave in to all of his demands and this caused a serious rift in our marriage. I kept telling her to confront his daughter and ex-wife. But no matter what I said, he wouldn’t listen to me! He loved her daughter and wanted a relationship with her and he felt that he had no choice but to give them what they wanted.
And then it happened, a man I met through our business started showing me some attention. He was thoughtful as he listened to my problems. He smiled and invited me for a ride on his motorcycle. He called me on my phone and encouraged me. I started to think of him as my friend and looked forward to calls from him and texts from him.
I began to block out the bad from my mind and entertain myself with a new life with my biker. He had no children, because he had never been married. Of course he told me that he had been in jail for a few years, but that he was a different man and that he wanted a wife and a family.
Whenever I thought of him it seemed easy, but when I thought of my own life it was a mess. I began to withdraw even more from my husband and my family. I treated everyone poorly and left most of the phone calls about our business and work for my husband to handle. All I could think about was myself and how horrible my life had become.
It amazes me how easily good people can be disappointed by the traumas everyone faces in the global game of life. This is why it is so important that we understand why bad things happen to people and how to avoid a massive disaster in the making. Our fight in this world is not against flesh and blood, but against Satan.
Ephesians 6:12, “For we do not fight against human beings, but against the evil spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities and cosmic powers of this dark age.”
Natural disasters happen because Satan has the power to create havoc in our world. Jesus came to open our eyes to the attacks of the devil. He came to teach us to be patient when we are forced to rebuild after a flood. He heals our broken hearts and gives us supernatural strength so we can get back on our feet as we rebuild our lives with joy and peace. He tells us in the “Our Father” how to pray so that we can win the fight against Satan’s evil tricks.
Matthew 6:13, “Trial us not, but keep us from the Evil One.”
Satan will take a mess and overwhelm us to the point of crippling our ability to function. He will tell us over and over that we have too much to handle. It is a constant voice of deception taking place on the battlefield of our minds. A war that pits good against evil by taking our weak human thinking and making us believe that our suffering is overwhelming and impossible to overcome.
This is why there are twenty million depressed people in the United States alone. When we don’t understand that the battle of good versus evil takes place inside our minds, we are subject to how the world believes. Satan is the god of this world and his answer for people who are under mental fatigue from anxiety is medication. He tells us to think only of ourselves and numb the reality of our lives with alcohol and drugs.
Satan wants to destroy families. He wants a second marriage to fail due to complications with children from other relationships. He wants us to take out our frustrations on them and hold grudges against other parents. He wants us to blame our peers so that we hate instead of love our families. Jesus tells us to forgive up to seventy times seven.
Matthew 6:12, “Forgive us the wrong we have done, just as we forgive the wrong others have done to us.”
Satan is so evil that he will provide us with ways to escape, which are actually meant to make our lives even worse. This is the reason why many husbands and wives commit adultery when faced with a difficult problem. They turn to someone else instead of Jesus for comfort and are drawn and trapped into turning a situation into a substantial issue leading to a messy breakup that only leads to more frustration!
James 1:12-15, “Happy is he who remains faithful in trials, for when he passes such a trial, he will be rewarded with the life that God has promised to those who love him. If a person is tempted by such trials, he should not say: ‘This temptation comes from God.’ Because God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone, but one is tempted when he is attracted and trapped by his own evil desire, then his evil desire conceives and gives birth to sin, when it has come to its fullness, gives birth to death”.
This is why it is so easy for Satan to deceive people into believing that God caused a natural disaster. The media proclaims when a disaster occurs that it is an “Act of God”. This is simply not true, God cannot do evil. But Satan is free to cause evil. He has the ability to tempt a person. He is the great deceiver, who came to bring every evil problem that can destroy people’s lives.
1 Corinthians 10:13, “Every test that you have passed is one that normally comes to people. But God keeps his promise, and he will not allow you to be tested beyond your power to stand firm; the moment you are put to the test, he will give you the strength to bear it, and thus give you a way out.”
I gave my pastor a hug as he explained why all these bad things were happening in my life. He knew that Satan was a terrible force against Christians, but he had no idea how easily he could persuade me to hate my family instead of loving it. He really loved my husband and his daughter. Just acknowledging this helped me feel stronger.
As I left Pastor Bill’s office, he gave me one final instruction. Trials can make you stronger or they can corrupt your life and make it worse. I listened to his warning and decided to fight against Satan’s attacks that were destined to destroy my life!