It is April 25, 2019 and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Satan is winning battles all over America. Now this isn't to say that Satan is winning all the battles, because he isn't. And this is biblical. We are told continually that there is spiritual warfare around us. The war is won. Many have just celebrated the defeat of death and sin by Jesus. The ending is written. However, we are told that there are battles all around us, and the good guys don't always win.
For quite a while I have taken the attacks of Satan as a good thing. It shows me that I'm in the fight. I'm playing to win and he knows it. So he is ready to fight me and I will toe the line. The battles aren't always finished in a day, a week, or a year. I still fight the battle of depression, but I know the war is won. I have the choice to listen to the lies or to tell them to bugger off! (We've done too much children's literature from England lately and I enjoy the English phrases sometimes. I digress.) I know I mention it everywhere that when I read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis I was hooked. We can either be someone that the dark side wants to fight or we can be complacent. Here in the good ole US of A the few fight for the many to uphold a land of freedom. A country built on the backs of humans that were persecuted elsewhere and therefore wanted a land where people could come and leave persecution behind them. However, human nature took over and they did to the Native Americans as had been done to them. Human nature took over and brought slavery and a vicious downward spiral of ethnic segregation. But one thing held true - there needs to be religious freedom. The problem I find in many Christian homes today is that they believe the founding fathers were all wonderful Christian men. The truth of it is, they weren't. Sure, many came from Bible believing backgrounds, but this country was not founded for Christians. And now when Christians receive the slightest push back they go crying about freedom and the founding fathers. They need to go back to the Bible. Persecution means the devil is scared. However, what we as Christians feel is persecution isn't always persecution at all. If one is confused, by all means "visit" a Muslim infused country or stay in China. Bring your Bible and hold a Bible study. You'll learn persecution. (You may want to say your good byes to your loved ones as well while you're at it.) One area I have seen the uproarious cries comes from the schools. I remember growing up in schools where religions were only discussed as "this is what they are" and never hearing "this is what I believe." Why? Because the country stated a split between church and state. The blurred lines come in with the original school houses. Many were built by missionaries to educate the children. Many were taught by missionaries who were trained to share their faith. Many used the Bible as the main reading material for children. However, once schools became federal property, the church was moved out. This never bothered me. I didn't attend school to learn the 10 Commandments or how to pray. I went to school to be educated in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and a whole lot of useless crap. I learned to read the Bible and pray at home and in the church. When I moved to the south I was stunned by the inclusion of Jesus within the walls of federal buildings. It was odd, yet refreshing. The first day I met Charlie, though, I looked at things differently. We were at a teacher's luncheon and the meal was prayed over. Again, I thought, "Wow!" Then Charlie spoke of his distaste for it (We'll label this before Jesus time). He brought up the concept of separation of church and state, and I began to look around. What if there were Jewish, Muslim, or atheistic teachers in the cafeteria. My first thought was, "Good they could use some prayer!" Then I thought, "What if the prayer was Islamic? What if the thankful prayer was to Satan?" I would have walked out. It made me realize how readily acceptable it was to bring Jesus to the fight and not expect anyone else to show up. So now we are in this age of everyone accepting each other and tolerance and whatnot. And those things have been twisted and turned and shoved down the throats of those that were praying blessings in the schools. Satan is using the sinful nature of humans to divide and conquer Christians everywhere. "Love the sinner, hate the sin," was the motto I grew up learning. The thought was in the right ball field, but it was never deep enough to hold. We can love those in sin because we are in sin. We can hate the sin of others, but we better hate our own. Two decades ago, Christians were only scratching the surface of what would come in these times. And every time we have gone to a place to take it in the name of Jesus we have thought that surely the devil wouldn't come back. Now our schools face integrated bathrooms for Timmy that wants to be Tina. And Timmy can pull out his jimmy in front of Susie and innocence is lost. Now when Susie's mother comes to the school she is labeled a closed minded bigot. With everything going on it seems that Christians are finding more battles at their doorsteps. I wouldn't see this as a problem except for the fact that too many have forgotten where they had that armor of theirs. So Christians spend their time looking for the belt of truth and trying to find their shield of faith instead of stepping onto the battlefield prepared. Too many have lost their breastplate of righteousness at the local watering hole. They rifle through the lost and found and can't seem to find the one with their name scribbled on it. I keep hearing over and over - If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything. No, it didn't come from the Bible, but it holds true. To me, it shows me where Jesus says in Revelation 3 that it is better to be hot or cold and that the lukewarm will be spit out. Lines are blurred. They will continue to get fuzzier the more "Christians" we find without armor. Every time a Christian cannot stand for what they believe in - if they truly believe - than they give another battle to Satan. Get ready for the fight. The fight has been ready for you.
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I hate excuses. It drives me up a wall to watch people make excuses all the time. I was going to, but.... I meant to, but... It's not my fault!
No, it never is. As a coach, teacher, trainer, wife, mother, and everything else I have found that there are just some people that choose to make excuses. I do not care for those people. I have heard it said, "An excuse is just a reason without a cause." Seems a little to flighty for me. So let's break that down. A reason is why something did or did not happen. Cause and effect relationship. I spilled the drink, now I am thirsty and sad. Reason for being thirsty and sad? I spilled the drink. So an excuse means having the effect without the cause. When my child acts a fool (technical terminology) but there is no cause, it means I have a pain in the butt for a child. They will probably try to make an excuse for poor behavior, but there is truly no cause. When my child acts a fool (that might be one word, perhaps hyphenated?) but they are lacking serious sleep, have had poor nutrition, and might be getting sick, now we have a reason. The definition of excuse as a verb is to attempt to lesson the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); to seek to defend. As a noun it means a reason or explanation put forward to defend or justify a fault or offense. Quick question - do either of these sound good to you? Everyday speak: You got caught and now you're trying to make things better for yourself. I absolutely hate that. And I believe it is something that I was just born with, or received with the Holy Spirit. I can vividly remember in fourth grade a time I got in trouble. My teacher was continually out with sickness. During a time with a substitute I began to lose my mind. She asked us multiple times to be quiet and this one kid would not shut up. Everyone was frustrated with him, so I dealt with it. Yup, I politely asked him to quiet himself so that we might perhaps have enough time on the playground to enjoy ourselves. Ha! No, I slapped him across the face. Literally. You could see my fingers on his cheek. My word. Well, the sub naturally made me put three checks on my calendar (you know, classroom management stuff). I did. I lost recess. Not a big deal. So many checks for the month and you loss so much, and all that jazz. I don't remember because it was my only time writing check marks. Anywho, the teacher comes back and sees the checks on my calendar and calls me over. She is very concerned. She was so upset that someone would write three check marks on my calendar so that they wouldn't get in trouble. "So," she began, "do you think you can remember who it was?" Woo! I had the opportunity to now throw Mr. Won't-Shut-Up-Long-Enough-For-Us-To-Leave-The-Cafeteria under the bus and say he did it. I didn't. I couldn't. That's dishonest. I did what I thought was right. I told her. She just looked at me. She tried to convince me that I didn't do that and that I shouldn't have those check marks, but I assured her I did and should. She asked if I stood on the wall for the next recess and I told her I did. Then she told me to erase the check marks. I couldn't. I didn't feel right. But she told me that I needed to. That all the other times I had been so well behaved took care of it and that I had paid the price while she was out, so there was no need to miss out on more. I didn't fully grasp it at the age of nine, but I sure do now. For a long time I just thought she didn't believe me or that she thought I was hiding something a friend did. And maybe that is the truth, but I'm going to choose to believe it is more than that. I believe she was showing grace. Perhaps I just see it that way now because of motherhood, or maybe I just know more of God, but that was how God's grace has worked for me my entire life. As a parent though, I'm not as grace giving as God. When my kids make excuses, I have little grace for their mistakes. The rule is to hold a plate with two hands while walking to the table. You held it with one, turned it sideways, spilled everything, then looked at me and said, "I don't know what happened." Little grace. The rule is to hold a plate with two hands while walking to the table. You held it with one, tilted it slightly, spilled everything, then apologized while attempting to clean the mess, acknowledging the fact that you didn't follow the rule. GRACE. The rule is to hold a plate with two hands while walking to the table. You held it with two hands and walked calmly but someone pushed their chair out and bumped you, you spilled everything and said, "Oh no" while attempting to clean the mess. GRACE. SO MUCH GRACE. I'm fickle. I know. But I received grace in that classroom, because I owned up to it. I knew I did wrong and knew I deserved the penalty. So she let me off the hook. As a coach I had rules. My players knew that academics were first, not second. If they missed a test and had to reschedule, we looked at the REASON for missing, sickness etc., and how to remedy that situation - late to practice, etc. However, if the student just didn't show up for first block and then had to take the test after school during my practice time then they didn't play in the next game. Simple. Now I had all different levels of disciplinary action depending on the issue at hand, but you get the picture. If they were late, they ran. "I was with this teacher." If they didn't tell me, it was an excuse. They always had ample time to come to me or text me and say, "I need to meet with _____, but I'll get to practice as soon as I can." There were plenty of girls that understood a reason versus an excuse. There is no excuse for no communication. Excuses are the guilty party's way of trying to get themselves less punishment. Excuses are the death of our society. We all have excuses - whine, whine, whine. Very few of us have reasons. Weight loss is an easy one for me to choose. The excuse I heard often was, "I was just so hungry" and fill it in. They ate the snacks in the break room or they stopped at McDonald's. To me that is saying, "I didn't plan ahead to think about the fact that I would be hungry." The reason you were hungry is that you didn't plan and pack healthy snacks. The excuse is that you were so hungry it was your only option. I know. I want to make excuses all the time. I want to blame the medicine or the fact that my son is an amazing baker. Those things do not have control over my will. I do. I can make excuses, or man up and say, "Put down the cookie. Walk away from the kitchen." I have seen the look on my son's face when he screws up and comes to me upset. He tried his best to fix it, but there's still a mess. Then I say, "Ok" and clean up the rest. He just looks in awe and wonder. Why is Mom not yelling or upset? Easy, responsibility. Ownership of the mistake, action taken to remedy the situation, now we have responsible people. God doesn't want our excuses. He understands our reasons. He would prefer our hearts to take ownership of the faults, turn to him from the sin, and receive the grace awaiting us. Our spiritual lives are our responsibility. It's time we take it as such. We're odd people aren't we? The fact that we have irony as a form of communication in and of itself so much so that we gave it a name and a definition seems a little off to me. But alas, we find ourselves in the pools of irony daily,
Personally my favorite was Alanis Morissette's song, "Isn't it Ironic?" from the beautiful 90's. Not a single bit of the song was ironic, it was simply poor planning and poor outcomes. People would consider it more bad luck than irony. She has stated in recent months that she will be releasing an updated version of the song. Regardless, the irony of the song is that none of it is ironic. Recently I had the pleasure of reading a quick story on Facebook that a man from church had shared.The story goes as this- A man had taken his father to the bank. They were in line for about an hour. The son was losing patience while is father was quite content. The man had asked his dad to join online banking. He could shop online. He could make the simple deposit online. An hour of their day would have been saved. The father chose otherwise. During their hour in the bank, he ran into friends and caught up, had conversations with personnel of the bank that have gotten to know him, and had an hour outside of the house. He was forced to get up and get ready for just a simple task. As he was growing older, he found it necessary to stay in contact with people. His wife had fallen while walking and a passerby drove her home, because they knew each other. The old man gave his son the mindset that technology is not everything. Honestly, I was struck by the irony that the story of putting away technology is on a social network. However, it made me think of all the other things we do that don't match up with what we say. According to dear old Webster, irony is the use of words to express the opposite of what one really means or the incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the expected result. I feel like according to this our lives are constant irony. We are constantly speaking the opposite of what we mean- or are we? In the medical world especially we find continual irony. People change their diets, fitness habits, health ideas only to find that they are not changed like they thought they would be. I for one take a medication that helps me feel better in the neurological sense and eases pain within my body, thus making it easier to exercise back at a level I once was. Too bad the medicine has made my body hold onto weight thus making me need to exercise even harder and losing some of the effects of the medicine - sick cycle. I watch people starve themselves to make themselves healthier. Or they get on crazy diets to be healthier, but in essence they are looking for a special number on the scale, not health. Or in a different direction, we want to raise respectful, kind children, but then give them nothing to respect in us. Or they watch us act disrespectfully and unkind showing them we don't stand by what we say. Perhaps a lot of what we do isn't irony but just being crappy people. Maybe it's just our constant desire for better without knowledge and wisdom to follow through with permanent changes. Either way, I have forced you to finish reading a blog on irony that may not have given fully thought out ideas on irony itself. How...ironic. |
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