The devil’s wiles

Well, friends, I don’t have my space chair yet, the one where I can lie in a zero-gravity position with my monitors suspended over my head (see “Lying down on the job,” October). We decided to try a couple of other things first.

But I’ll tell you what I do have: the emotional capriciousness of Peter the Apostle.

It is recorded in Matthew 16 that when Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” only Peter got it right: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:17).

Peter’s answer sent him to the head of the class: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah!” Jesus said. “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

After that, we don’t know how much time actually passed, but in the space of just six verses, Peter went from head of the class to back of the line. You know the story: When Jesus starts to teach His disciples about His coming death, Peter rebukes Him. “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” To which Jesus replies, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16:22-23).

When I wrote to you here in October, I had my mind set on the things of God. But like poor, fickle Peter, that didn’t last long. Probably not even the space of six verses.

To be fair, my cervical dystonia had gotten worse. I could no longer answer an email without my head jerking wildly and repeatedly to the left. (I’m using speech-to-text to write this column.) And soon after the last column went to press—a column in which I was full of gratitude and even dreaming about my bucket-list dog, a golden retriever—I found myself curled up on my bed crying. I know the Lord is trying to bring me closer through this trial. Still, I lay there in anguish, frustrated that I can’t do anything and trying to figure out what all this means.

That’s when the Holy Spirit reminded me that the Lord had been speaking to me—really, shouting to me—about the concept of peace. This started a few weeks ago as I began reading Eugene Peterson’s book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. When one repents, Peterson writes, and enters Christian discipleship, it is a “decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace.”

For the next week, the concept of peace came at me from every direction: in Scripture, in sermons, in secular media, everywhere. Throughout these promptings, my constant reply was something like, “Peace? I’m a doer, Lord!” Or, reformer, as one personality test I took described me. Not a lot of peace in a continual quest to do things better.

Ah, but now I can barely do things—drive, read, write, cook, sometimes even eat—let alone do them better. And yet, lying there on my bed in anguish, I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me again of peace and started to wonder: What if, even amid these infernal symptoms, I operated from a place of peace instead of a place of anguish?

Immediately, my perspective changed. It was like lifting my face from a puddle of mud and realizing it’s a sunny day. I began thinking of what I could do despite my limitations. How could I contribute? For whom could I pray, for example?

And with that, I suddenly gained an insight into the Enemy’s tactics. Anguish had curled me in upon myself and made me ineffective. Took me off the battlefield, swept me off the board. But peace opened me up, turned me outward. Peace had me looking across the world to see what I could do.

That morning on my bed, I realized peace and anguish likely have little to do with how I personally feel. Rather, anguish is one of the Enemy’s weapons for neutralizing believers, even turning us against God. But God’s peace—His eirēnē—is the countermeasure: supernatural, efficacious, undefeatable.

Peace not as the world gives, but instead the peace that surpasses all understanding.

That old devil is crafty, a great murderer of souls. He hates me, and I’m good with that. And so, that morning, I addressed him with a little salty verbiage I learned in the Navy, got up from my bed, washed my face, and concentrated on what I could do that day.

Then I laughed, because it reminded me of a jokey prayer a lot of us gals have heard:

“Lord, make me the kind of woman that when my feet hit the floor in the morning, the devil groans and says, ‘Oh, crap … she’s up!’”