“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39). To paraphrase Gandalf’s admonition to Bilbo at the beginning of the film, The Fellowship of the Ring, there are many powers in this world, and none of them should be taken lightly. There are earthly powers that can have a huge influence on us - governments, political parties, multinational corporations, even bosses and landlords. The people that we spend our time and attention on can also have power over us, like influencers or gurus or celebrities. The books we read, the videos we watch, the music we listen to - all of these can have power over us as well. But beyond mortal influences, there are older and darker and more relentless and implacable forces arrayed against us and hell-bent on our destruction. Satan and his minions have and are and will continue to do everything in their power to make us at least as miserable as they are. Their efforts range from the blatantly obvious to the gradual and patient and undetectably sophisticated. They have no sense of fair play. They will strike at us when we are at our most vulnerable, and also right before we are about to have our greatest successes. Perhaps their greatest tool is not in tempting us to sin but in convincing us that once we have sinned, we must not and cannot repent and that our sins and mistakes are evidence of our inherent unworthiness of God’s love. With all of these powers, both human and demonic, marshalled against us, how can we possibly succeed? Thankfully, these are not the sum total of all of the powers in this world. As the prophet Elisha told his servant as they faced down the army of the greatest power in the known world at that time, “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them” (2 Kings 6:16). All kinds of powers will attempt to separate us from the love of God, but for all of their bluster and dazzling displays of anger and intimidation, if we have built ourselves upon the Rock of our Redeemer, then those powers can roar and gust and blow until they’re blue in the face, but neither we nor the Rock will budge even a millimeter. I know that the powers that are with us when we hold to our covenants are orders of magnitude greater than all of the other powers combined and as long as we keep ourselves focused on the Savior, nothing can separate us from Him.
