(further thoughts relating to the previous post. it may be helpful to explain that these two posts are taken straight out of my personal journal. taken, not in an effort to garner any sort of attention to the struggles at hand, simply with the further realisation that a life shared will enrich many other lives.)

I believe spiritual warfare is real. I believe that Satan, or his minions, or the world, or my own broken nature, or whatever you need to call it will always strive to keep me from growth. I believe this because the times of my life in which I have been the most tempted towards evil, and have usually given in to such temptation, have always come immediately before life defining events. There was the period in 2005, when my faith was being redefined. There was the nite before I went to live in England for Bible college. There was the nite before I drove to Portland to start a new chapter in life. Then there was a couple weeks ago, the first nite of Passover, the nite before our planned Seder.

Everything inside me told me that, because I had fallen, I was not worthy to lead my friends in a spiritually centered meal. But a tiny voice, and Lucas' encouragement, told me not to give in to this lie, not to give sin a victory. With broken wings and a bleeding heart, I stumbled through the Seder, a 4,000 year old tradition passed to me by friends back home, and on to my friends here.

I felt no direct spiritual comfort that evening. But I later learned that it was a very rich experience for my friends. One they received as a tangible and symbolic expression of the energy of God. He used my shattered soul, racked with grief, to channel His grace into an act of divine communion. This was a meal with Family, in every beautiful sense of the word. Had I given in to the grief and called off the meal, the experience would have never happened.
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To know that I can be used in spite of myself is humbling, to say the very least. To be faced with duality in my life, at one point being used as a blessing, at another point causing pain, is confusing. But it teaches me to not make too much of my mistakes. Yes, my sins are hideous. But I am not. Just as I am not agape, I am merely a channel through which His love sometimes flows, so am I not sin, I am merely a channel through which evil sometimes flows. I cannot deny that my actions are my own, but I am not God's enemy, even though I may at times use the weapons of evil. The key is an increasing desire to see agape flow through us ever more than sin.