Evil is real--but God is stronger!--by Linden Malki

There is an advantage to knowing that there is an Adversary to our Lord God. We can't help noticing that we human beings are a long ways from the good we are created for, but the understanding that we are not the only character in this struggle helps us deal with our shortcomings. If we were to believe that we are totally responsible for all the sins and failures of the whole world, this would be unbearable. Knowing that we have an ally in the heavens, even with an enemy prowling around,
helps us realize that we can overcome the evil we would otherwise think we are destined to live with. We can separate ourselves from temptation and disaster--even when it happens, we are reminded that "all things work together for good for those who have been called according to His purpose." It may take longer than we want, and take us places we'd never expect, but we will be given strength when we ask in His will, and in the long run--we know we will be with Him.

There are two things that we need to know about evil: how to recognize it, and that we are not without a way to deal with it.  At one time, there was someone in the life of my family that was very destructive, and one of my inlaws commented that this same person was not good to be around because he left everyone with a bad attitude. I realized that if other people were reacting this way, it wasn't us, it was the person who set everybody else off.  So I began really looking at what was going on, and realized that there was something evil about the way this person was behaving and interacting with others. I began deliberately praying specifically about this person's attitude, and for removal of the evil influences that were putting us on edge. Eventually, the situation did change, and he became much more pleasant to deal with. He was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer and as it turned out, he only had four months left. He did ask forgiveness from the family and also was restored in his relationship with God.  There are still loose ends that I would wish to see cleared up, but the darkness in the situation is gone. I also found out that specifically praying for my family also made our life much smoother and happier--even through some really major difficult situations.  It's not that bad things don't happen, but when they do, they usually work out, and we survive the pain better than we expect.

We have seen in the past 20 years the miraculous survival of our church, through a massive attack of evil. Our sanctuary fire was in October 1999, and when we discovered that our insurance carrier had been thrown into liquidation by the events of 9/11, it was very scary. We did rebuild, we did survive, but in the teeth of a major recession that saw many of our stronger members forced to move away, the financial collapse of our on-campus school, and a financial situation that led us to spend 5 years in a temporary location while leasing out our campus. We were led back to our spiritual home, and were approached by Sandals Church offering to merge and restore our original dreams. Satan tried to shut us down, but didn't succeed--and we are now stronger and enabled to reach out to our community in new and better ways. My reaction when the problems of our rebuild looked their worst, was that we needed to demonstrate God's ability to hold us up in the very teeth of Satan.