Andrew Peterson on battling memories of shame and regret, mingled with the accusations of the Evil One:
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I don’t know if these occasional remembrances are coming from within me or without.
If they’re coming from within, it may be mere forgetfulness—forgetfulness that I’m a new
creation, that I have become, in Christ, the righteousness of God.
If they’re coming from without, it may be that the forces of evil in the spiritual realms have decided to toy with me.
Either way, I’m keenly aware that I’m entrenched in spiritual warfare. The field of battle is my heart, mind, and soul, and Satan is living up to his name; the Accuser is accusing. It is one of his chief weapons against the children of God.
What defense have I but to flee? Not to flee from the enemy, but to the protection of the King? I flee to the one whose victory is sure, whose strength is perfect, whose promise is unbreakable, whose words are immutable and eternal. When I hide in the wings of my redeemer, the arrows of the enemy clatter to the ground, powerless. If my strength is not my own, if my righteousness is Christ’s, my darkness only makes his light more lovely. Satan might as well be accusing the shadows in a Rembrandt of ruining the masterpiece. God bends even our sin to the service of his glory. This, I’m convinced, confounds the principalities of evil.
. . . When I look back on my life as a performing songwriter, among all my regrets, all the moments of embarrassment and shame from having blabbered too much from the stage, not once have I regretted proclaiming the gospel of Christ. It is only those times when I have strayed from that one luminous subject that I’ve wished I had said less. No man, when he comes to die, will ever say, “I spoke too much of the grace of God.” Let Satan accuse me of that. I welcome it.
I write these words with a profound sense of my weakness, but an imagination flooded now with the ringing of bells and the rustle of bright wings. The gospel gives me hope, and hope is not a language the dark voices understand.
—From the foreword to Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative, by Russ Ramsey.
