the fight.

One thing that I love about the Harry Potter books is that the children in them know that evil is serious business. It's not made up stories, or something they don't have to deal with. It's something they are always on alert to and able to battle it themselves.

I think I started to learn this lesson too when I went on a mission trip to Jamaica in college. There was one moment where I knew something wasn't right. The air was thick with something more than just the breeze and sounds of mothers and children begging for the candy I was handing out. The crowd was on the brink of chaos, and my team and I were hurrying down a mountain to our car at the bottom. We didn't say anything to each other in those moments, but it was clear--a spiritual battlefield had erupted in the unseen, and the Spirit was urging us to leave.

Like many mission fields, it seems that evil and good is easier to discern in impoverished areas overseas than here in America. The gray--the inbetween--is foggy, and suddenly, you find yourself where you never intended to be. In the lap of indifference, at the foot of wealth, or asleep with entitlement. You look back and wonder, where did you cross the line? How did you even get here?

Margaret Feinberg, an amazing Christian writer and speaker, recently said, "When you fight the dragon long and hard, sometimes you look down and realize you've gotten scales in your hands." Infected hands full of what you never intended--bitterness, anger, indifference, or negativity.

Simply stated, you have become what you thought you were fighting.

How sneaky of evil to do that to you. To wiggle its way in when you weren't even looking. But it's like that--it comes in forms that are more creative than ghost stories or horror movies. It comes at you when you're unguarded or distracted in only a way that's specific to you and only you.

So, how do you get out of this pit?

This, my friends, is where faith enters. True faith. Not the one that's mentioned in the zillions of Christian forwards in your inbox. Not the faith that you simply read about in your Christian heros' books. It's the kind of faith that only you believe and say to yourself, "God can overcome this impossible, unforeseen situation in my life. He can restore me back to Him. He can rectify the sacred."

In a way, this world is a fairy tale, full of monsters, injustice, and antagonists that won't quit. But, there's also a Hero who's already won. Believe it for you. Relax your tense stance and read His Words. Know that things can be as they should.

Let Him fight for you instead.