Battles & Wars Part Two: Knowing Our Battles.

In the last post, I ended with a verse that is so very relevant to my life these days:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12 (KJV)

I have been familiar with that verse for many years, but it seems that just recently my eyes are opened to it like never before. God has really been moving in my heart about the times we are living in right this moment, and I find myself asking other people if they are feeling the same way. Everyone I have asked has replied with a strong "Yes!"

Think about what the Bible is telling us here: we are wrestling with something, and that 'something' is not flesh and blood.

I'm no Bible scholar, and I'm not the most intelligent person in the world, but I don't need to be to understand God's words. He is speaking to anyone who studies on His words with sincere prayer.

When I have think about this verse now, I think about it in very real terms. I think about what the 'principalities', 'powers', 'rulers of the darkness of this world' and 'spiritual wickedness in high places' mean.

We are in a war and we need to be identifying for ourselves who the opposing forces are. For me it was pride and arrogance. I was always pursuing anyone and anything that made me feel important and special. I focused a lot of time and energy on these pursuits.  This went on for so long that I convinced myself that I had no purpose outside of finding a niche for myself within those goals.

Other people get caught up the same way in other things: their love of some form of entertainment, or their dreams of being successful at something, and so on.

There is one other story in the story in the Bible that brings all this home for me personally. It's the story in Mark 10 of the rich man who encountered Jesus:

As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked. “Only God is truly good. But to answer your question, you know the commandments: ‘You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. You must not cheat anyone. Honor your father and mother.’”

“Teacher,” the man replied, “I’ve obeyed all these commandments since I was young.”

Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. “There is still one thing you haven’t done,” he told him. “Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

At this the man’s face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!”  (Mark 10:17-31)

I would like to think that, had I been that rich man, I'd be able to give up everything to follow after Jesus. But, truth be told, there are so many things that stop people from following Jesus. When I put myself in the place of the rich man, substituting riches for my love of other things, I know that I am being a hypocrite to judge the man in that story.

For years, I was that man. I wanted to hold on to defending things I did, people I associated with, and my love of certain things. I would clean some things out of my life, but hold on to other things. And I was really good and convincing myself that to do so was harmless.

If you want to think about that point on a personal level, ask yourself what would be hard to give up right now?

I know that I am redeemed. I know that I will never be sinless as long as I live in this body. God loves me and has forgiven me for all that has been, is, and will be. I know that, but I want to honor Him with my obedience.

Picking our battles has to start with admitting we have battles.

If we are supporting, being involved with and being entertained by blasphemous relationships, people, goals and ways, then we are like that rich man. What are we willing to walk away from to walk into the arms of Jesus?

I really do feel that time is getting so short for any of us who have not accepted Jesus' pardon. Since none of us know whether we will make it alive into our sleep tonight or wake up in the morning, it's time to pay attention.

Peace
--Free

Battles & Wars Part One: Picking Our Battles

There's a piece of advice I've always liked because it fits just about any situation: "Pick your battles." I used that with my niece just a bit ago.

My great-nephew (I call him my grandson when he's not being a little terror) was in a mood for whining about everything when he woke up. My niece is not feeling well and had to fast all night to go out early for blood work.

I'm fine with a whining child as long as they aren't making themselves (or me) sick. DJ was not making himself (or me) sick, but he was tap-dancing on my last good nerve. But he's three and he's not usually in his worst moods for long. However, my niece isn't feeling well today so I advised her to give in to his wanting to eat while sitting on the couch instead of at the table.

That advice about picking your battles is one that my mother used, but she added a reason: "Pick your battles because the war isn't over."

Good advice, right? Especially for Christians today. The problem some of us have is that we don't focus on the fact that we really are in a war. We don't recognize the battles we face every moment of every day. And there are many battles all around us:

• Sin that we have to deal with in our own lives.
• Dealing with acquaintances, neighbors, co-workers - even loved ones - who aren't helpful in our lives of faith.
• Struggling with the assault on our senses from the media and the world we are living in.
• Trying to love and witness to people who don't really want to hear it.

The list goes on and on. We wake up every day to a life lived in a body that tries to defeat us. We have to deal with health issues, stress issues, mental issues, etc. That's to be expected. We are human with these bodies made of flesh and blood.

The battles we pick are often ones to do with these bodies. We work at looking younger, thinner, and more 'beautiful'. We will endure all kinds of stress and mental anguish by working for more money and prestige and other ego-related reasons.

The battles we don't even recognize are the ones that the Bible told us about. 

Watch how we choose our battles:

• The Bible tells us to take care of our bodies and minds, but we don't even read about that. When a celebrity or popular doctor tells us about some new miracle diet, exercise or meditation technique, we jump right on it.
• We spend a lot of our time bad-mouthing preachers and other Christians than we do praying for them. Meanwhile, we can't live without the music and movies and other entertainment featuring people who not only hate our God, but are working to promote other gods.
• The Bible has laid out all the information we need about what will happen and how we are to respond, but we won't study that. We read stories in the news and don't question any of the sources or motivations. 
• God gave us answers for dealing with and enduring life's problems. When we get stressed and anxious, we seek out all sorts of strange therapies, illegal drugs and questionable methods for relief. 
• We have access to the greatest Therapist, Friend and Comforter, but we go on Facebook and Twitter and all the other social media sites to gossip, discuss our sex lives, and play passive-aggressive games with people in our lives.

I know that, until recently, I was choosing the wrong battles. My problem was that, while I loved the Lord, I wasn't taking time to study the Bible. It's the field guide for his war that we are in. 

One of my biggest mistakes was spending more time studying the world around me than preparing for the world to come. I got caught up in and fascinated by talented people I admired; trends and social cultures; and trying to be recognized and accepted for the few talents I have.

Now that I am focusing on God and the Scriptures, I am learning to more carefully pick my battles. It helps a lot that I know what the true battles are.

 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12 (KJV)

In Part Two, I'm going to talk about my personal battles with specific things.

Peace

--Free

When Things Get Real

Do you remember the moment when you shifted from feeling "not grown" to "grown"? Or when you underwent any other major change of attitude, style, or sense of yourself?

I don't remember those moments. I don't remember when it happened that I stopped playing with adulthood and actually started being a true adult. Or when I stopped thinking about relationships in a shallow way and begin to understand their seriousness.

Yesterday, though, I underwent one of those major moments. Something in my soul shifted and rearranged itself in some way that I am still trying to understand.

I was sitting in my sister's room, watching as her son tried to begin going through her some of her belongings. We want to pack everything up and store them until we decide what to keep and what to donate. It's been a month now since she passed away and I guess my nephew and I thought we were ready to deal with this task. We weren't.

My nephew looked around at all those things - the hats she wore throughout her chemo treatments; the miniature bottles of perfume that she preferred over the full-sized ones: "Obsession" and "Queen" and "Giorgio"; cards and gifts that she'd received for birthdays and Christmas - and he suddenly was overwhelmed with the very gone-ness of his mother. My sister. And everything in him just gave in to the grief. It seemed that he was just winded with the pain of it.

I think this is the first time that he was understanding that she really is gone. Not here. Not ever going to be sitting on that bed, or putting on those hats or that perfume, or laughing with us, advising us, comforting us, fussing at us.

And so.

It was later, after my nephew had gone home, and I was sitting there on my sister's bed that I had that moment I was talking about. I'm not the first to have this particular moment but, for me, it was like my heart had always been partially blind until just then. That moment.

Though I'd always known that nothing is as important as the soul, it was at that moment that I truly understood that fact.

I understood that nothing - not issues of politics, race, gender, sexuality - none of it matters as much as God. What I realized is that, not only does none of that stuff matter as much as we've been made to believe, but a lot of it - most of it - is a distraction.

The other week, I saw someone online pondering about whether or not Ebola had been a distraction from something else, considering how big a media topic is was for such a short period of time. Now I was thinking of all the other issues that keep us busy and distracted and warring among ourselves.

Maybe, I thought, everything is a distraction from the biggest thing: eternity.

I think it was in "The Screwtape Letters" that C.S. Lewis talked about ways Satan and his tempters distract humans away from the very thoughts we ought to be having. I know that that's been true in my own life.

Always before, I allowed myself to be distracted from important matters. I can list things that I spent way too much of my energy on:

• Anger at injustices (personal and in general)
• Competing with myself in personal goals and with others on the job
• Finding ways to fill my "me" time with fun and adventure and any kind of entertainment
• Worrying about my shortcomings as a woman, a wife, a sibling
• Working to improve my outer self

It's not that those things don't matter at all, but I let them matter too much. I wasn't spending enough (or, in some cases, any) time and energy on things that really do matter:

• As a Christian, I am called to be ready to give an answer for why I believe. I can recite some Bible verses, but I can recite some popular book and movie lines better.
• I don't pray enough. I'm too busy allowing myself to be distracted about how and where and what to pray for. Until I get into some kind of trouble.
• I don't share my faith enough with the people right around me. I might profess my beliefs, but I don't always show those beliefs with actions.
• I don't ask myself the hard questions about whether or not everything I do might be pleasing to God.
• Most of all, I don't always live as if this moment could be my last on earth.

What I realized is not only have I allowed myself to be distracted but, a lot of the times, I've wanted to be distracted. 

It's easier for me to argue how racial profiling affects me than it is to think about racial profiling as being part of the bigger issue of ignorance, intolerance and injustice. None of those things are new and we aren't going to solve them.

That's dangerous because instead of focusing on the fact that evil and wrongdoing exists (as it always has) I (and especially non-believers) are tempted to focus on why a "good" God "allows" such things.

It's easier for me to worry about work and making more and more money than it is for me to ask myself how much money really matters. I've even allowed myself to be manipulated into worry about what kind of work I do rather than just working at all.

That's just insane because so many of us will suffer by going without any decent work because we think we deserve something better. (And "better" might mean work that we aren't qualified for, suited for, etc.) Some of us get to the point where we'd rather sell drugs than work at a fast food restaurant once we're past a certain age.

It's easier for me to pursue useless entertainment. Simple enjoyment has taken a backseat to more and more and more. Where I used to be happy with just enjoying a good book, now I get caught up in having the newest devices for reading a book. Where I used to just get out and walk and enjoy being out, now I have gadgets that monitor how much I'm walking - or I even just stay indoors and walk on a machine.

And it goes on and on.

Bottom line is, we've been manipulated and distracted. Not all of us, but so many of us - and by "us", I mean those of us who call ourselves Christian. So, if we - those who claim Christ as our personal Savior, those of us who read and study the Bible, those of us who know the warnings - then what about the people we are supposed to be spreading the Gospel to?

Anyway.

I can't speak for anyone else or have "the moment" for them but, now that I've had mine, I've got changes to make. I'm really focusing on balancing out the time and energy I spend of anything. And I have to pray constantly about these distractions.

Peace