Dealing with Frustration

 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12(NKJV)

by Alexandra Copeland

Experiencing frustration in any area of your life can be a very troubling thing, but it is nothing when compared to being frustrated about something that is affecting your spiritual walk with Christ. Our precious Lord and Savior warned us in God’s Word that the student is not greater than the teacher; the Master endured struggle and strife, so we cannot expect that we will get by without enduring it ourselves. We simply cannot count on things always being peachy keen. Even so, there are a few things that we as Christians believe that we CAN rely on in life. And when the enemy, the devil, attacks those things, the level of frustration we experience is through the roof.

God has told us through the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:12(NKJV), “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” It is very easy to try and pick a fight with a flesh and blood individual that may be plucking our nerves at the time, but this is a very futile and pointless exercise. The enemy knows our weak points. He knows the areas of our lives where we have displayed the least amount of spiritual and Christian discipline. He has watched as we’ve allowed ourselves to fly off the handle in various situations, and these are the very devices that he uses time and time again to throw us off our game.

What is the point of his shenanigans? The whole point of the devil’s tricks is to get us off focus so that he can steal our power. If you’ll hearken back to the Old Testament in the Book of Genesis, you’ll see that he did the very same thing with Adam and Eve. God created Adam and Eve in His image, and in Genesis 1:28 gave them dominion in the earth. The devil wanted this power for himself and set about a plan to swindle Adam and Eve out of what God had given them. The enemy knew that the act of doubting God’s Word and doubting His power is the number one way to cause any child of the King to fall, so he got Adam and Eve to do just that.

Genesis 2:16,17(NLT) tells us that God warned Adam, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— ¹⁷ except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” In Genesis 3:4, the devil tempted Eve and lied to her by saying, “You will not surely die.” Neither Adam or Eve were stupid people. The bible tells us that God communed with them daily, and charged them with the tending and upkeep of the garden. If either of them had lacked capacity in any way, God would not have given them such a responsibility. Furthermore, Heavenly Father communed with them in the garden, and they enjoyed mutual and splendid fellowship with Him. So Adam and Eve doubted and disobeyed God with their eyes wide opened.

When they disobeyed God, they died a spiritual death. They lost their connection with Heavenly Father. God is Holy, and Adam and Eve could enjoy wonderful fellowship with God because He had blessed them with holiness as well, but when they sinned they lost their holiness. This was an utterly devastating reality. They literally removed themselves from the realm of heavenly places and positioned themselves in the devil’s territory. That’s what sin does. It removes us from a position of Godliness and positions us under the enemy’s realm of darkness, despair, chaos, and confusion. When Adam and Eve sinned, everything that God had given them was transferred to the devil’s domain. All of the dominion and authority that they once had belonged to the devil after they sinned.

The devil used a lie to steal from the first man and woman, and he has no new tricks under the sun. In the same way that he stole from them, he steals from us by using lies; by getting us to doubt our identity in Christ and to fall into acting, behaving, speaking, and thinking beneath our privilege as God’s sons and daughters. Frustration is one of the enemy’s principle tricks. When he can get us vexed to the point of frustration, he knows that we are more apt to act out and respond with actions that demonstrate our level of frustration.

Human nature may prompt us to become angry with ourselves because we have allowed the devil to trick us, but that goes against what our Lord and Savior has taught us. Romans 8:1 (NLT) tells us, “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.” Indulging self-condemnation only serves to take us down further, and this isn’t at all what God wants for us. He wants us to wake-up and recognize that we’ve got some place to be.

2Timothy 1:9 (NLT) says, “For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time—to show us his grace through Christ Jesus.” Not only has God saved us, but He has also called us. Yes, there’s a calling on our lives, and it has been a part of God’s plan even before the beginning of time. If our mistakes teach us nothing else, they teach us all we need to know about our weak and vulnerable places. They teach us where we’re exhibiting things like impatience, a lack of compassion, and selfishness.

Once we have a full view of those traits within us, it’s not a time to wallow in self-pity, it’s a time to press into God more than we ever had before. The Apostle Paul said in Philippians 3:14, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” And this is exactly what you and I must do. We have to press into God through Christ more than we ever have before. We must be confident that God is taking us higher in Him, and He is doing so because He has a purpose for our lives. He wants to do something new in us through the indwelling Holy Spirit. So yes, life can be very frustrating at times, but we will do ourselves the greatest level of service to learn to see this frustration as a wakeup call, because God is calling us to prepare ourselves for greater ways to serve and be a blessing to the body of Christ. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.