I was a cashier at a grocery store for three years before I became a barista. I saw so many people from so many different walks of life and at different places in their life. There was one guy who came through my line about two years ago with just a few groceries and, as I was scanning, I noticed the tattoos on his wrist. They were small but incredibly intricate, so I asked him what they meant.
“The war between heaven and hell is waging inside me.”
I didn’t realize then just how profound that small statement was until recently.
I’ve always been a Christian, a lover and worshiper of Jesus Christ, and a frequent church goer. I knew that there was a heaven and a hell but I didn’t realize that I held a piece of each inside my heart. I read the bible, I looked at scripture, studied it (certainly not as much as I should), and tried to live as Jesus did; easier said than done.
If you don’t know the story of Genesis, which is the begin of the bible, that’s okay! Essentially, God created the earth in seven days, and when he created earth, he created Adam and Eve, a man and a woman. God gave them everything they could possibly want or need in The Garden of Eden, with one simple rule: do not eat the fruit from The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve followed God’s rule until they came into contact with Satan, disguised as a serpent. The serpent is crafty and incredibly intelligent, therefore convincing Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, saying she will become wise, wiser than God, even. So, tempted, she eats it and disobeys they one and only rule God gave her. This is where the war begins.
If you’re looking at this story as a Christian, we have been sinners since the beginning of time. Eve took the advice of the serpent, disobeyed her Creator and Father, and ate the forbidden fruit from the only tree in the Garden that they could not eat from. She was naive, she was young, and she was tempted. Even with everything right in front of our faces that we could ever want in life, we as humans still do as we please. It’s in our nature and it is who we are.
Often times, now more recently, I have felt that war wage inside of me so violently, rocking my brain and my very being, and tearing my heart apart. I struggle so incredibly much with knowing what is right in what The Lord has commanded, what He expects of His people, and how we should treat one another. As soon as I remember all of that, Satan comes creeping into view, slowly at first, whispering words of temptations, but then just like a tsunami, the evils, the sins, the temptations, the harsh words, the lustful actions and thoughts, and the wrong doings come crashing in faster than you can even prepare for. I would reach out in the midst of the storm to try and grab hold of something, anything, that can help me, but the waves kept crashing. Have you been there before? Have you seen yourself drowning and not known what to do?
God grabs hold of you and holds your hand through the storm and the waves, fighting the devil off, because He is unfailing and His love is eternal… but do you know how hard that is to remember? Just like Adam and Eve we are given a literal handbook of what to do, how to act, the mistakes people have made before us, and what God did to save our sorry selves, which is send His only son down to earth to be brutally crucified on a cross for the forgiveness of all of our sins, always. And it still isn’t enough for us to abide by His rules. So, the war continues to wage and it always will.
But, in knowing that, I realized something.
No matter how many stupid comments I make to myself or to others, how many times I disrespect God, unintentionally or on purpose, no matter how many times I hurt my brothers and sister with my actions, and no matter how many times I fall into the trap of temptation that the devil has so carefully and craftily lured me into, God always loves me and loves you. There is nothing that we can do that would make the Lord stray away from us. If we as a human race were perfect, we wouldn’t need such a wonderful role model and Father.
I urge you to accept yourselves as broken beings who unfailing make mistakes, but I also urge you to lean on the King because He will always be there. No one’s perfect and thankfully we don’t have to fight the war that’s waging…because it has already been won.