Battling Satan With Love - Even When I'm Alone

When I'm alone in the dark, sometimes I fall into old habits of anxiety.  I start to get sick and then I say to myself "God wants us to fear nothing, He has the way to life."
Satan, the enemy, is the king of fear, but God doesn't want us to be afraid of him!  In my moment of anxiety I remember that God always gives us a way out.  What is the way out of this fear as I lie here?  Of course!  It's love!  God said perfect love casts out fear!

I have always believed love is an action and that action is putting other's needs before your own.  But how does one cast out fear with this love when one is supposed to be going to sleep?  My imagination and my mind and Satan in my mind is what makes me afraid.  At bedtime I have to be still, and that's hard for me because much of what makes me happy and at peace is doing and talking and being with people.  I mustn't forget that God comes in the still.   Satan tries to sabotage that and make me afraid of being still.

So I pray,
"Dear Jesus, always light me a way out of fear."  I started telling the Lord all the reasons I love Him.  I started thinking about all the people I love and why.  I started thinking about the things I love to do and places I love to go.  I prayed for the people I love.  I put their needs before my own by thinking about them and praying for them.

The fear was gone, I went to sleep and Satan lost.

The Difference Between Christ and Satan

We cannot live for ourselves for it is too easy to put too much importance into our earthly inhabitance and be lost to the king of the world, our enemy.  We can be tricked into living for him and he has many ploys to lead us to destruction.  It's easy to become self-centered, things that feel good and look good lead us astray.  That's the funny thing about Satan, I think he looks like this on the outside:

But his big, bright, fun, smart, comfortable, BETTER, offers lead us easily and painlessly to a place you'd expect to see this guy:

Once there, that's when you see what he really is and the narcotics wear off and we see what happened but it's too late.  I'm not talking about hell, I'm talking about the world and how we can die when we're still alive and we won't even know it happened.

If God's voice is a still, small voice, I think Satan's voice is like a lottery scam.

I think life is simpler than they say it is.

Painful Garden

Pain is good.  It makes us stronger.  Exposure to germs makes our immune systems stronger.  We get sick, and it's not pleasant.  Our bodies fight it, we get over it and we are never weakened by that particular germ again.

When working out, it hurts.  Especially the next day.  Our muscles are being worked past breaking point.  The fibers within are being torn.  When they heal up and the pain is gone, potential for how powerful they are is increased more than twice what it was before.  It hurts, but in the end we reap great benefits.

You know what also hurts?  Going to friends and expressing feelings and then having them help you weed out the nasty, gnarly weeds inside that make you feel like that.  Judgmental, selfish, accusing weeds.  They hurt coming out.  I find myself trying to hide them and throw some dirt over them, but they keep growing.  I'm afraid my friends will set fire to my garden if they see them...Instead, they tell me that I simply need to see the gardener more often, and I need to keep on showing my weeds.

I do have nasty things in my heart.  On the outside, I want to be this cute, stylish, thoughtful, sweet thing that I am, but I have junk inside.  I don't want to look at.  It's not my job to get rid of those things and hiding them doesn't help. I need only to keep on looking at them as they come up and letting them show and looking to Christ again and again.  Then He will take the weeds out.

No Sister :(

I'm aching for a sister,

Someone just like me,

Spontaneous and silly, 

with whom I can agree.

We'd wear each other's shirts and skirts

And do each other's hair,

We'd give each other foot massages,

We'd be the cutest pair.

If one wanted to watch a movie 

Out of the blue,

We'd throw on jammies, grab our blankets 

And make some popcorn too.

We'd craft and sing and bake and dance

And marvel at the stars.

We'd probably have the fieriest fights

And crash each others cars.

If my sister were a twin 

She'd have blue eyes, red hair.

Whenever one of us is lonely,

The other would be there.

We'd be content and happy,

And talk about the misters,

And it would take some doing

For them to get between me and my sister.

My sister would love me ever-so

And I would do the same,

But I haven't got a sister

'Cause my sister never came.

I'll tell you something not-so-fair,

And here is the twister:

My brothers got one, but not me,

I didn't get a sister.

.

Silent Protest or Humble Reply

You may have heard that silence is sometimes the best answer.  Someone says something to you that tics you off and you just want to punch them or tell them what you really think of them.  Some of us have the courage (if that's what you'd call it) to fight back. I've found that fighting back often encourages the other person and makes them feel more justified in their attack.  If you hit me and then I hit you, we're even right? No guilt.
So instead of smacking people with your words maybe you choose the safe zone of silence.

 If you say nothing then things won't get worse, right?  Silence will surely end all problems, after all you can't have an argument when just one person is talking.  Unfortunately with this choice is that everyone "feels" me anyway just as if I did say hurtful words.  They feel my attitude like green slime oozing out onto everything.

When we try the silent treatment they practically beg us to say something.  They want something out of us.  Silence is easy and we feel we can fight the battle passive aggressively

I constantly feel, though, that I should always choose the hard thing.  That in doing hard things I can become more and even more than what I am, like a diamond being cut and cut until it sparkles and is highly valuable.

In doing hard things and especially those things that chip away at my pride I can find humility and peace.  I feel that if I find humility and peace I can truly be free in this world and safe from harm.  In this case, what would the hard thing be?  Returning with a patient, respectful response.

Proverbs 15:1 is a good one!  "A gentle answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger."

I feel that answering an attack with a patient response is like giving a gift to someone who just knocked you down.  It's like pulling a stool out from under them.  They almost have no where to go.  It throws them off like a hound when it loses the scent of the hunt.  It suddenly lets them see themselves and it has the power to make them back off.  When we return good for evil the other person no longer feels justified to fight.

Like I said before, it is hard to do.  It is hard to not twist your face in anger and raise your voice and let them know just what jerks they are and why they should not be saying to you what they are saying.  It's hard to know what to say sometimes even if you are willing to turn things around.  I  sometimes have a hard time expressing what I want to express, I love the line repeated in Pride and Prejudice:  "Practice!"

So I hope I can learn to swallow my pride and be patient with people in my life.  I hope I can choose the harder choice and that is to speak kindly and help the situation rather than wallow in my loathing and punish those around me.  One is humility and the other is selfishness.

Homosexuality and God-Followers

In 2008 I listened to a Christian musical artist named Ray Boltz.  I loved his songs.  There was so much passion in them.  Several years later when I had my own laptop I was looking up old artists to kind of go back to what I used to listen to.  I found out that Ray Boltz had "shocked the Christian community" by announcing he was gay. I was surprised and I wanted to know more.  I read that he had written a song "Don't Tell Me Who to Love" and I also watched a video interview with him.  I wanted to know what he had to say because I just don't know how any God-loving Christian could justify homosexuality.  I haven't heard the song but just the title in reference to this subject seems to drip with rebellious disdain towards other people.

In the interview he spoke about struggling for a long time with the fact that he felt gay.  He struggled with the fact that his wife and kids didn't even know.  He said he felt like death "was the only way out" and he had suicidal thoughts.  Finally he came clean because he wasn't hiding his struggle very well.  His family came around him and told him "they loved him anyway."

He said that other people did not respond as well and said many terrible things to him.  Even telling him he should kill himself.  I don't think the people who said those things really love and are following God.  And I don't think Ray is following God either.

Early in the interview he said he had not experienced the transformation promised when one accepts Christ.  I guess that means he was not magically made un-gay by accepting Christ.

So here are my thoughts:  God holds marriage between a man and a woman very sacred.  It is special to Him and is His picture of how He wants the church to be as a whole.  Homosexuality is not how God made us, and to claim to follow and love God whilst choosing to be homosexual is going against God.  Another word for going against God is sin.  Man is sinful but Jesus and God want to save and cleanse us from sin.  God doesn't say "accept yourself and everything will be alright." He says repent of your sins and be cleansed and forgiven.

I know that sin is a tough thing to be chained to and no amount of striving on our part will change us or take it away.  It's like tar.  The more you struggle the more it entangles you.  That's why we have God.  Only He can rescue us out of it.

It is not instantaneous.  If we as Christians struggle with sin, we cannot simply say it is "just apart of us."  God does not accept sin he destroys it, therefore we should not accept it.  Through clinging to God, beseeching Him to cleanse us daily, spending time with Him, asking and begging for Him to fill us, we will be healed.   We need others who truly love God to keep us accountable.  We need to talk to them because God is in each of us.  We need to repent.

I don't think Ray is evil.  I don't want him to kill himself.  I do want him to realize that if He really loved God He would not just continue to go against God and be ok with it.  I want him to know that it does take time to be changed and the only way for it to happen is to SEEK THE LORD with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.

Lord, may I live up to this as well!  May I seek Your will above everything and please make me new, Lord.  Keep me from stumbling!  Do not let me think only of myself!  Show me all the ways in which I am selfish and not honoring You!!