The Parable of the Cardboard

By: Suzanne Matthews

As a child, I had always had a serious problem with fear and really bad nightmares or what are called night terrors. When I got saved in 1979 all that seemed to go away, but much later I wandered away from the Lord. All the terror and fear and horrible dreams came back. Sometimes I would dream that I was physically fighting Satan by myself and I would wake up screaming for Jesus. When I finally gave myself back to the Lord, it went away again, thank God!!

A while back I had a dream one night. In the dream the devil was trying to kill me by covering me with cardboard. He just kept throwing it at me. Pretty soon I seemed to be covered with it and I started to get scared and felt that I would suffocate. I woke up and thought, "That was strange, I don't think that it was Satan trying to torment me in my dreams again, I'm not scared - how wierd!!" And that was the end of the matter, so I thought.

The next few days were terrible. Everything that could go wrong did. Even the old problem I had of feeling worthless and wanting to die came back. I couldn't understand what was going on, and I had completely forgotten the dream about the cardboard.
I was really going down fast, and I just didn't even want to try to fight it. I kept saying to myself, "I thought I was healed and delivered from all this junk."

Immediately, the dream flashed before me. I started laughing out loud and saying, "Cardboard, it's just cardboard!!!"
The reason that the dream didn't scare me was that it wasn't Satan coming to me it was God trying to tell me to prepare for a battle, I was about to be attacked in a major way!! And I sure was.

As I sat there laughing I remembered the scripture in Ephesians 5:25-26 "...just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless."
Washing with water through the word....Water...What happens to cardboard when it gets wet? It falls apart!!!

The Lord was trying to tell me that I would be attacked but all the devil's weapons are cardboard. They can't do much damage at all. He only wants to scare us and suffocate our faith until we surrender, but if I'm washed with the water of the word those weapons will just fall apart!!! And all the lies the devil told me are plainly exposed in that scripture, because in Jesus I am blameless.

God is always on our side and He's trying to help us, sometimes we just don't pay attention. I know that when we're in the battle the weapons don't seem like cardboard, but if we keep ourselves washed with the water of the word we will be able to see clearly and emerge victorious.