Ambush of the Heart

by: Dr. Tim Clinton

Excerpted from Turn Your Life Around: Break Free from Your Past to a New and Better You (New York: FaithWords, 2006). Order your copy today at the AACC Store for just $10 ($21.95 value)!

Life is no fun when things aren’t the way they are supposed to be.

How do you live with someone who seemingly doesn’t love you? How do you love someone who misuses and abuses you? It hurts to be rejected, blamed, or unjustly accused.

How do you go on when you feel all alone, when life leaves you feeling bruised, beaten, and as if you’re going nowhere?

How do you parent children who think you are the worst thing that ever happened to them?

How do you cope with all of the things that compete for and against what you love and hold dear?

Why do normally sensible people abandon all hope for what should have been their blessings in Christ?

Wherever you look, you’ll find that eight out of every ten people aren’t living out their dreams. Most of them are simply worn down. They have surrendered their hopes and traded their dreams for the uniform of uniformity. They have forgotten or simply never understood God’s promise of abundant life (John 10:10).

This darkness that threatens the hearts and faith of good people is nothing less than an ambush of the heart! The assault often begins with a major disappointment or sorrow that wages war on the mind and the soul. An attack may begin in quiet ways, creeping in on the back of chronic exhaustion with a nagging suspicion that we lack something that other people seem to have in abundance.

We don’t want to admit the attack exists or acknowledge that it affects us. It is easier to revert to our favorite childhood solution: if we whistle in the dark loud and long enough, perhaps our nagging secret fear—the unnamed specter that traces our steps day and night—will just go away!

This silent shadow seems able to break us down and inspire fear and heartbreaking hopelessness without warning. Perhaps it is the reason behind the treason of Peter in the garden when he denied Jesus. Could this help explain why the once-loving husband and dad meets another woman at the bar across town? Is this a dark influence drawing the beloved Sunday school teacher to the adult bookstore night after night? Or why so many of us feel as if our relationship with God is dull and empty?

The assault is too deadly to ignore or dismiss. Someone far wiser than I once explained that “heartache crushes the spirit” (Prov. 15:13). Today, hard-won experience—suffering—has made me quick to confirm the wisdom of these ancient words. We serve a good and loving God, but in His wisdom He seems to allow things to drop into our laps that shake us to the core.

What takes a man or woman from a place of fresh faith and closeness with God, to a place of utter despair and hopelessness?

People are hurting! And the pain is not merely limited to the unsaved masses. Something is seriously wrong in Christian City, and God is ready to fix it. But how?

Far too few of us seem willing to admit there is a problem. This is a tragedy. We sing boldly in our church buildings, but little evidence of our personal pain ever leaks out into the streets, the homes, or the cities around us. Why are we so afraid to admit our failures and heartbreaks?

We are more stressed than ever before, we’re pulled in every direction, we don’t have time for anything. Add to that dismal picture the fact that hell itself is against us. Verses such as 1 Peter 5:8 confirm this fact: “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” None of us is exempt.

You are I are in an all-out battle against disaffection with God and life. It is time to claim our freedom from the accuser! We do have God’s promises and His ability to see us through anything and everything. But when your courage flags, when you find yourself on the brink, at the edge of despair and human frailty, then what?

It’s not just your immediate response that matters—it’s how you deal with spiritual attacks in the long run, especially when you are hurt, disappointed, or angry at God. Will you turn to him, and find “an ever present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1), or will your turn away to something else? Performance. Addiction. Adultery. Workaholism. The list goes on and on.

Your choices today will determine your future, and, ultimately, your spiritual vibrancy!

Excerpted from Turn Your Life Around: Break Free from Your Past to a New and Better You (New York: FaithWords, 2006). Order your copy today at the AACC Store for just $10 ($21.95 value)!