What’s in Your Wallet

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the battle between good and evil. In this reflection, I’ve been asking GOD a lot of questions. A conversation with my daughter this morning compelled me to continue dissecting these questions with GOD.

In Ezekiel 28:12–17, Lucifer is described as the seal of perfection—full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. He lived in Eden, the garden of GOD. Every precious stone was his covering. He was an anointed guardian angel, blameless in his ways from the day he was created.

Then again, in Job 1:7, the Lord said, “From where have you come?” and Satan answered, “From going to and fro in the earth.”

So, I asked God, how is it that Satan gets to come walking up into heaven like he’s taking a casual stroll in the park, and You just start having a conversation? Then, in that same conversation, You invite him to start something with Your most loyal child?

I said, God, if Satan was perfect in beauty and wisdom, adorned with rare stones, why do we depict him as this horrific red creature with horns and a tail? Then I asked, if all things come from You and You are all-knowing, why did You even create Lucifer, knowing he would become puffed up with pride and defy You? Why did You allow him to take a third of the angels with him when he was cast down to earth?

Y’all stay with me here. If GOD is all things, and we are a product of GOD, does that mean we are both good and evil?

My daughter said it perfectly: that’s why He gave us free will—a choice.

God, like us, wants to be chosen.

Then BAM—God said to me, all of your human experiences are about what you choose. When my children have a hard time facing the evil within, they blame it on an entity outside themselves, because to look that deep within—to confront those dark, demonic spirits—is too much for the human mind to handle.

God sent Jesus to pull out those evil forces, to embody them for a moment in time, and cast them down. Once we accept Christ and believe that God sent Him for this purpose, everything else we do become our choice. It means that while we are both good and evil, we have the power to decide which force we give authority to.

When we see people committing unspeakable acts and wonder how someone can be so evil, it’s because they’ve chosen to build and nourish that side of themselves.

What we feed, we grow.

That’s why God urges us to surround ourselves with the Holy Spirit, pray fervently, trust completely, and worship faithfully. These are the medicines that strengthen our faith and plant seeds of goodness.

It’s important to feed our souls with the Word and Spirit of God because we all have the capacity to slip into pride, anger, bitterness, greed, jealousy, and vengeance. Those things can be sparked by depression, low self-worth, trauma, grief, pain, or loss.

Guarding our hearts is more than a polite request—it’s a command. Our hearts carry our seeds. When those seeds are not watered or nourished properly, they grow stale and die. That’s when our spirits become tampered within.

This battle between good and evil is our battle. It is us. It is who we are. We are not fighting an invisible enemy—we are fighting the enemy within. That enemy can either grow or shrink. It lies dormant inside all of us. That’s why we can go from 1 to 100 in a matter of minutes. That’s why some Christians say, “Be careful, I ain’t always been saved.”

Even though we have the capacity for evil, we also have choice. We don’t have to beat ourselves up when we make a bad choice. We just need to be aware—learn from it—so next time, we can make a different one.

But let’s go a little deeper. Sometimes the fury inside us is sparked by something righteous—like injustice, mistreatment, or when someone hurts those, we love. We come out fighting. Is that evil? I don’t think so. That’s what I call righteous indignation.

It’s the same righteous indignation Jesus expressed when He saw His Father’s house being defiled. Jesus said, “Wait a minute, I’m not having this kind of craziness in a place that’s supposed to be holy.” His response was to flip some tables.

Where did that fury come from? It wasn’t sweetness and light—it was born from a desire to protect and defend what is right. It’s important to examine our motives when that indignation rises up. It’s okay to fight for justice and truth.

Jesus was not a punk—and we don’t have to be punks in our journey with GOD. We just need to understand what’s inside of us, what our motives are, and why we’re making the choices we make.

So, the question we must ask ourselves is:

What’s in your wallet?

What are you feeding?

What are you killing within?

And what is your motive?