We’re in the series on "Loving the Life You Live." Life isn’t always easy but there are some great strategies in the Bible for dealing with the hard times.
Today we’re going to cover what to do when your faith is under attack. What do you do to love life when you’re going through a testing of your faith, when God seems so distant that maybe you even have doubts that He cares about you? When He seems to leave you all alone? When even prayer seems difficult? When you don’t feel like keeping the faith?
Jesus said some things to one of His followers a long time ago that can help.
It was right before Christ was going to suffer and die on the cross that He spoke to His lead apostle, Simon Peter, about his faith coming under attack. If the Apostle Peter’s faith can come under attack then any of us can face such an assault.
Listen carefully to what Jesus said.
Luke 22:31 (NCV) "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to test all of you as a farmer sifts his wheat. 32 I have prayed that you will not lose your faith! Help your brothers be stronger when you come back to me." 33 But Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and even to die with you!" 34 But Jesus said, "Peter, before the rooster crows this day, you will say three times that you don’t know me."
These words from the Lord offer strategic help when your faith comes under attack.
The first thing they teach, when your faith is under attack is this:
1. Trust in Jesus more than you trust in your emotions.
Emotions are important but they are not supposed to have the final say in how you live your life. Your faith in God should always precede your feelings. Faith first: feelings follow. That’s certainly not always easy and you often have to think about it because God has given us some pretty strong emotional abilities.
There’s not anything wrong with having or showing the right kinds of emotion. You just have to work at not letting Satan use your emotions against you. You have to build yourself up with as many spiritual weapons as you can, things like worship and prayer, the Word of God, of course, and fellowship, and things like ministry to others. You have to follow your faith in God and His word.
Anytime your emotions don’t follow faith – don’t follow your emotions.
A lot of negative emotions can swell up inside you when your faith is attacked. Fear, anger, worry, anxiety, doubt… But one of the toughest emotions you face when your faith comes under attack is loneliness. You feel like no one else cares – not even God. Which is ridiculous because no one cares more about you than God! But that’s the false report your emotions send you nonetheless. "God doesn’t care! If He cared He wouldn’t let this happen to me!"
Your emotions can really play games on you sometimes. Things that aren’t real seem palpable. Things that are wrong seem right. Things that are harmful seem helpful. Your outlook can go from cheery to sour in a matter of minutes because of something you feel. Especially if you feel like you’ve been forgotten. This is a key tactic of your archenemy the devil. Divide and conquer. That’s his game plan. Get you to become so miserably certain that you are all alone that you quit the faith.
In a National Geographic article about the Portia spider, author Robert Jackson detailed the various ways it deceives its prey. Sitting still, the spider looks like a piece of dried leaf or foliage until a meal walks by. It will also crawl onto another spider’s web and tap the threads, mimicking the actions of a trapped insect. When the host spider appears, the Portia devours it. Deception is the Portia’s primary tool.
Satan is like the Portia spider in that deception is his primary weapon of choice. One of his favorite ploys is to get you so sidetracked by your emotions that you are ready prey for his attack on your faith.
Why should you trust in Jesus more than in your emotions? Why is this a good strategy when your faith is under attack?
Did you notice how Christ knew every detail about Peter’s denial? Jesus said, "Peter, before the rooster crows this day, you will say three times that you don’t know me."
Christ is aware of the attacks on your faith even before you are. You can’t possibly be going through something alone when He is aware of your circumstances. God can’t possibly be uncaring if He is concerned enough to pay attention to the details of your life. Jesus informed Simon Peter that the attack was coming. Christ’s awareness of the attack on Simon’s faith was in detail.
There isn’t a single detail of your testing that Christ doesn’t already know about!
One of the most well known attacks on a man’s faith was the assault by Satan on Job. Like Simon Peter, Satan requested permission from God to launch an assault on Job’s faith. While Job was fighting through his battle he said this about God.
Job 31:4 (NLT) He sees everything I do and every step I take.
Job was struggling but he knew that God was watching and caring. God sees every step you take. He knows every thing you struggle with, every difficulty you face.
The Bible also says this about God.
Psalms 37:23b (NLT) The steps of the godly are directed by the LORD. He delights in every detail of their lives.
Circle "every detail." There isn’t anything about your life that God doesn’t know about and there certainly isn’t anything that He doesn’t care about. The Bible says He delights in the details of your life! He gets pleasure knowing about every single thing that goes on in your life.
Deb and I have had this ongoing discussion about details during our nearly 29 years of marriage. When we’re having a conversation she usually loves to tell about things in detail and I, on the other hand, like to get to the bottom line. I want to skip the details. That’s probably a guy thing. But she forgives me and loves me anyway and I try to work on listening to more details. But because I’m human I fail.
God doesn’t fail. He’s always interested in the details. He wants you to know that you can trust Him by telling you that He is watching every detail of your struggle. He knows that the attack on your faith is difficult. He knows more about what’s going on than you do – just like Jesus knew more about the struggle Simon Peter was facing than Simon knew himself.
Since He is aware of every detail, why doesn’t he jump in right away and stop the assault on your faith from even taking place? Instead of saying, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to test all of you as a farmer sifts his wheat. I have prayed that you will not lose your faith”, why didn’t Jesus tell the devil to leave Simon alone? Why doesn’t Jesus stop the attacks on your faith since He knows about every detail? Why doesn’t Jesus tell the devil to leave you alone?
The answer to that question leads us to the second strategy you need to implement when your faith comes under attack. Not only do you need to trust more in Jesus than your emotions but you also need to…
2. Cooperate with God’s character building process.
God doesn’t enjoy seeing your faith come under attack. But He does long to see your faith mature. He longs to see you become more like Christ.
Christ’s comparison of Simon’s test to a farmer sifting wheat pointed to the positive outcome of the process. You can’t make bread out of wheat until the hull has been parted from the grain. That’s why sifting has to take place.
That is where you need to focus when your faith comes under attack. One of the things that happen when your faith comes under attack is that you have an opportunity for your character to grow. You can take heart that the sifting will eventually lead to success. Even if you fail the test of your faith, like Simon Peter did, you can still learn from your mistakes and that learning can be very valuable to you.
The great inventor Thomas Edison failed for over three years and 250 attempts to make an electric light bulb. Many years later a reporter asked him how he found the motivation to keep going after so many failures. "I guess I never considered them failures," Edison replied. "I just found a lot of things that didn’t work."
Don’t worry, your character isn’t just built when you succeed.
Trials of your faith are actually a rite of passage.
James 1:2 (NLT) Dear brothers and sisters, whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy. 3For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything.
God knows that you must grow – and assaults on your faith are an essential ingredient to the process.
What loving parent would try to keep their child from learning to walk? When a child learns to walk they often fall down. Sometimes they cry. But the parent doesn’t decide to keep carrying them everywhere so they won’t cry. A wise parent knows that in order for a child to walk there’s going to be some bumps along the way. There are going to be attempts to walk that end in failure. But those attempts must precede ultimate success.
A parent who protects too much leaves their child unprepared to face life. God is a great parent. He doesn’t want you unprepared. He could do everything for you and keep from ever encountering a problem. But if He did you would be immature forever.
Your heavenly Father lets your faith come under attack so that you will mature, so that you won’t remain a spiritual infant for the rest of your life.
And God has even more positive results in mind when He allows your faith to come under attack.
Here’s the third strategy for victory when your faith is under attack.
3. Take your focus off of your self.
That just seems like a totally weird statement doesn’t it? Take your focus off of your self when your faith is being attacked. But this is precisely what Jesus taught us to do by his words to Simon Peter.
"Help your brothers be stronger when you come back to me."
The test of Simon Peter’s faith wasn’t all about him. It was about what he could learn in order to help others. The attacks on your faith are not all about you.
At some point in your life, if you have received Jesus and want to be like Him, you should have prayed, "God, use me to help others." I certainly hope you’ve prayed this prayer. It’s natural. When God’s love enters your heart it makes you love others. God helps you and it makes you want to help others.
If you have said, "God, use me to help others," then realize that an essential part of being a people helper is having your faith come under attack at some point. Why? So you can empathize. So you can know what it feels like to hurt. So you can understand why someone would be so discouraged or feel so lonely. So you won’t just shake your head and turn the other way when someone is crying.
2 Corinthians 1:4 (NLT) He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
Simon, "Help your brothers be stronger when you come back to me." Take what you’ve learned and help others with that knowledge.
Try not to complain about what you are going through when your faith comes under attack. Try to think about how others need encouragement. After you’ve gone through pain, physical or emotional, you will understand the needs of others who suffer.
When Jesus told Simon what was going to happen Peter replied, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and even to die with you!"
Jesus knew that Simon Peter was only fooling himself.
Sometimes our response to God is like the young guy who said to his girlfriend, "For you I would climb the highest mountain. I would swim the widest river and walk the hottest desert sands. But I can’t go out with you tonight because it’s raining."
If you serve God only when times are easy you haven’t matured in the faith. Are you going to continue serving God when your faith is under attack?
If you’re going to overcome the attacks on your faith remember these strategies Jesus left us.
1. Trust in Jesus more than you trust in your emotions.
2. Cooperate with God’s character building process.
3. Take your focus off of your self.
"Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to test all of you as a farmer sifts his wheat. I have prayed that you will not lose your faith! Help your brothers be stronger when you come back to me."
After Simon Peter’s faith was attacked that lonely night he learned that he could trust the Lord even more. When he heard the rooster crow that Good Friday morning it probably hit him like a ton of bricks what he had done. The Bible says he wept bitterly. (Luke 22:62)
But I guarantee you the experience was something he never forgot. It was something that tempered him and made him the great servant of God that he became.
The attacks on your faith will make you into a humble servant of God if you will let them. They will teach you to apply God’s truth in fresh and vital ways. They will make you appreciate and understand spiritual truth in a deeper fashion.
Someone here today may need to repent about his or her attitude when your faith comes under attack. If the words of Christ have challenged you to do so, please do it right now while we pray.
