Seventh In Ramah

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

Like a true foundation, these three remain. They can never be taken away or destroyed.   They simply exist and always will. The devil hates them, they mess with his plans. He can’t do anything with them, so he has to cover them. A devious way he piles things on top, is with our own emotions. He uses our flesh to manipulate the thing God gave us to enjoy life and be safe in it. 

Over faith, he puts fear. Over hope, he puts sadness. Over love, he puts anger. Anger in love turns to hate. 

We have to make sure our emotions are in line with the intentions they were given to us. Fear was given to keep us safe. Healthy caution. Probably don’t touch the fire. If you’re up high, be quite a bit more careful. Our flesh turns it into a road block. It keeps us from moving forward at all. The devil walks in and uses it as an over weighted blanket to make the light of our faith seem dim. 

Sadness was given to us by God. It’s natural in hard circumstances and helps us regulate. It gives loss its moment. It can be the basis of compassion and empathy. Can prompt us to change, turn into prayers and wisdom. The devil can use it to sink us. He uses it to create a thick darkness that makes us turn our back on the light of hope.

“The greatest of these is love”. Love has potential to carry us past our human strength. It has potential to build, heal. God’s love for us is beginning of the story of grace and woven all throughout our walk with Him. In our lives, it multiplies every good thing. The devil uses anger as a Love 180. Anger is given to us by God to see injustice and grow passion for the things He cares about. It’s a signal that something isn’t right and can give us courage if channeled correctly. Unchecked, the flesh can be blinded by anger. We say and do things we wish we could take back. Instead of tearing down strongholds, we tear down good things we’ve built. We hurt others. The devil uses our anger as destruction. Sometimes in a quick moment, but sometimes grown into hate. Destruction on a much larger scale.

We have to take the time to make sure what we’re feeling is under submission to God, acting as He intended. Is this fear keeping me safe or keeping me from acting in faith? Is this sadness a compassion or making everything too dark to carry on? Is this anger fueling me to make things right or tear things down? 

It’s incredibly hard to deny self, but realizing something like “This hate is not of God, and my anger is not submissive to Him” is life changing. It halts the path you’re on and turns you back in the direction you need to go. It stops destruction and begins building again. It makes wise decisions and believes for the future. It asks God to pick us back up again and let us borrow the strength to carry on. Factory resetting our emotions to work as they were created allows the voice of God to speak more directly to us. It takes the litter off of faith, hope, and love to give us a fuller life.