Resist

 Being awkward and chubby as an adolescent didn’t do much for my position in the social hierarchy of my elementary school. Being the only kid in school to wear homemade polyester slacks and scuffed wingtips didn’t help either.

Looking back, those years prepared me more for adulthood than any other single thing. They taught me to have tough skin, to understand, fundamentally, that though sticks and stones may break my bones, words would never hurt me and that bullies will bully until you resist them. I also learned that how people view you is on them and not on you. If you can’t see past the pinstripes and the button-down collar on an eleven-year-old, that’s a you problem, not a me problem.

It’s not that my parents were pacifists, but I think they had a mild form of PTSD from all the times the police showed up on our doorstep in the middle of the night asking to inspect the home to ensure that we were not in possession of any illicit materials. By illicit materials, they meant Bibles, and although most often there were Bibles in the house, they never seemed to find them, but that’s another story for another time.

Both my mom and dad were of the keep your head down and don’t make waves mindset. We were fresh off the boat, so to speak, and they didn’t want or need any trouble. My grandpa, on the other hand, was a bit more direct, and when I told him that a couple of the boys had set their hearts on making my days less than sunny, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “it will stop when you want it to stop.”

That sounded mighty esoteric to me at a couple of years shy of being a teenager. Looking back, I know he was right, and the profundity of the statement, although simplistic on its surface, has me returning to that moment over thirty-five years later.

I was hoping for an easy fix. I was hoping someone else would fight my battles for me. I was hoping my grandpa would show up to the school, broomstick in hand, and give me justice. Although my grandpa loved me, and I knew he did, he knew that my hoping for someone else to fight my battles was no way to go through life.

A few days later, after a bloody nose and a lump on the head from a rage-swung backpack, Ramon and Felix never bothered me again. Since it happened after school while on my way home, my parents didn’t even have to endure the terror of having to show up at the school because they had been summoned.

It’s easy to see how past traumas affect people presently, most often in how they react to everyday interactions with individuals they deem the face of their persecutor. The one time my mom got pulled over because she’d crossed a double yellow line, she almost had a panic attack.

I’m sure the chickadee quartet will pipe in and point out that she should have gotten deliverance or had Benny Hinn blow the spirit of courage upon her, but you suffer through decades of not knowing if your father or husband will come home from an interrogation, or constantly being on high alert because at any moment you could have men with guns and grim looks on their faces turn your world upside down. Do that; then, we can have the conversation.

It’s easy to let words fall out of your mouth without considering the context or the situation the individual was in. I got why my mom was scared of authority figures, especially people in uniform. I understood her instinctual reaction toward flight. Once bitten, twice shy is a thing.

It got better with time; eventually, she, too, decided it was time for the fear to stop, and it did.

James 4:7, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

If the devil is not resisted, he will keep pressing. He does not retreat when he has no reason to because, at heart, the devil is a bully. He seeks out easy prey, then attacks it until what he deems easy game fights back.

The onus is on you to resist him. I know it’s a lot simpler if God were to fight our battles for us, and because we take one verse in Exodus out of context, some people believe this to be the case. Read the whole chapter through, and you’ll see it settles differently than how most modern preachers insist that it does.

It wasn’t God that said I will fight for you; it was Moses trying to bolster the flailing courage of the people who said the Lord will fight for you.

Then, in the next verse, we see God speaking to Moses, not enthusiastically backing Moses’ play.

Exodus 14:15, “And the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward.”

Go forward. Don’t just sit in the dust waiting for things to fall into place, don’t let fear paralyze you, and don’t let yourself be bogged down by a thousand voices saying a thousand different things. Go forward!

Yes, the sea is before you, the enemy is behind you, you see no way out, you want to quit, and you have no fight left in you, but you still need to go forward. Only when the people of Israel advanced did the sea begin to part. If they’d just sat there indulging in their pity party, they would have been overrun by the Egyptian chariots.

The devil isn’t the only thing that will flee when you resist. Fear will flee, doubt will flee, uncertainty will flee, and all the things that negatively impact you have no power once you resist them.

Stand up to the bullies in your life. It will stop when you want it to stop, and no one can stop it for you.

Yes, God will do what you cannot. No amount of people could have parted the sea. He won’t, however, do for you what you can do for yourself. The people needed to go forward of their own volition. No magic carpet rides then, and no magic carpet rides now.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.