Suck it, Devil! God Wins!

Tonight was an interesting night at youth group. It was good, in fact I think it was one of the best nights we've had in a few weeks. And I think the fact that the night turned out so well just made it even more interesting. Tonight I am willing to say there was a bit of spiritual warfare going on. Now, I am not one to talk much about spiritual warfare, or the devil, or anything along those lines. Not because I don't believe in it, I most certainly do. But because I am of the disposition that feels why give the enemy any airtime? Why talk about him when, in reality, he's already lost? Let's not even give him the time of day. Let's focus on what really matters.

With that said, I have experienced some pretty dramatic moments of spiritual warfare in my life before. Tonight was not necessarily dramatic, but it was - in my mind - a blatant attempt to disrupt a night dedicated to the worship of Christ. The only reason I feel it is something to share is because it didn't work. Yet again, God won!

So what happened? Well, we were starting a series on worship tonight at youth group. Going into tonight I was a little frazzled and jumble-minded. I had my message prepared, but I was just scrambling to get everything else ready to go for tonight. Basically, even though I had checked all equipment and instruments as always in preparation for our worship time, when it came time to start singing, a number of the instruments simply weren't working. Period. And if they were working they kept cutting in and out (my guitar). And to top it all off I had forgotten to bring my guitar capo and pick with me from my office, so I was playing the songs in the normal key, but with chords I had never played the song before. Not good.

Needless to say, it was probably the worst worship time I have ever led, musically speaking. But despite all of that the students were singing louder tonight than I have ever heard them sing during worship. After we battled through our 3 songs I closed in prayer laughing and acknowledging how awful that just was, but thanking God that even if we think it sounds bad (and it did) He thinks it sounds amazing. They all laughed along with me and we moved right along.

Again, tonight we started a series on, of all things, worship. Honestly, I have been disappointed with my own messages recently. They just haven't been good. But tonight was much better. The students really seemed to be engaged in it and were responsive to what I was saying. I even had one student come up to me and literally say the words, "your message tonight was good". That just doesn't happen, ever. So I was quite pleased with how things went.

So, at the end of the night, as I was cleaning stuff up I thought about everything and realized what really just happened. I mean, everything that possibly could have gone wrong did, but also everything that we ever want to go right did. The devil was trying his best to screw up our night of worship, but God just wouldn't have any of it. God wins! In the end, no matter what, God wins!

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