ON PRIDE AND THE NORMALIZATION OF SIN
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 29, 2023 – The devil works hard to convince people he doesn’t exist. He does this because if people don’t believe he exists, then morals are relative rather than absolute, which means there can be no such thing as sin.
And if sin doesn’t exist, then people don’t have a moral compass to guide them when they’re tempted. Not having a moral compass, they fall prey to any kind of persuasion, including being convinced that what was once considered sinful is now just a personal preference for those who were “born that way”.
In other words, sin is rebranded as natural, normal, and healthy.
The normalization of sin is a process that begins with eliminating the devil, which the devil himself is only too happy to initiate. Each soul he convinces that he doesn’t exist becomes his by default, because a soul that doesn’t believe the devil exists is a soul that doesn’t believe God exists, and anyone who doesn’t believe in God is by default the spiritual real estate of Satan. That the captured soul doesn’t believe Satan exists is just icing on the cake for the old snake, who finds the irony delicious.
The image above is from a “pride” parade in Toronto a few days ago. It doesn’t need commentary but it does stand as a fitting representation of the fallen spiritual state of what used to be known as “Toronto the Good”. The devil’s obviously been busy in Toronto to bring it to the point where middle-aged men can, not only metaphorically but literally, parade down a street to the cheers of hundreds of thousands of onlookers. Yes, public nudity is still illegal in Toronto, but it seems that laws only apply to those who won’t comply with the global agenda to normalize sin.
Men who exposed themselves in public, especially to women and children, used to be promptly arrested and then named and shamed to deter other men from doing the same. Yet here we are, supposedly on our way to peak social progress, and Torontonians have less decorum or motivation to protect their women and children than primitive jungle tribes, who at least have enough self-respect and respect for their fellow tribespeople to wear a loincloth when they’re out in public.
The rebranding of pride has turned it into something we’re supposed to admire and celebrate rather than avoid and shun. Until just a few decades ago, pride in anything but your country or in the hard-earned accomplishments of yourself or your loved ones was considered vanity and the mark of an immature mind. Pride was not admired. In fact, pride was not only not admired, it was considered a sin, and a deadly one at that: one that presaged a great fall. Only vain and frivolous people paraded their pride and they were justly ostracized and condemned for it.
The rebranding of pride has turned the notion of pride into something else altogether. This is the devil’s doing, and the general public is lapping it up. If you’re reading this, you know what “pride” now stands for; there’s no point in my going into details. Let me just say that “pride” as it’s understood and used today is just as sinful as pride always was. That aspect of pride has not changed.
“Pride” was the sin that got Sodom obliterated. And if you think history isn’t repeating itself, think again. Former Christian nations are being set up for annihilation through the overspreading of “pride”, especially among children through the educational system (which includes story hour at public libraries). A whole generation is being brainwashed and groomed into accepting “pride” as natural, normal, and healthy. If you wonder how Sodom could have devolved to the point where Lot’s house was surrounded by locals banging on the door and demanding that Lot hand over his guests for, well, “Sodom-izing”, you have your answer. To the people of Sodom, who were raised believing that what they were doing was natural, normal, and healthy, Lot was the one who was perverse and out of line.
Sound familiar?
God gives the devil permission to turn everything upside-down because testing is required for his good purposes. God needs to see whether you want what he’s offering or what the devil’s offering, whether you embrace his version of reality or the devil’s. The majority, unfortunately, are choosing the devil’s version, as is witnessed by the nearly wholesale support of “pride” across former Christian nations.
I had a discussion earlier today with a self-identified Christian woman who’s allegedly against men exposing themselves to women and children but has no problem otherwise with “pride”. She didn’t see the connection between her support of “pride” and the consequence of men being empowered to expose themselves in public or dress up as caricatures of women to read lasciviously to children. She seemed to think these were two different kinds of “pride”, but really there is only one “pride”, and it’s the same “pride” that got Sodom wiped off the map.
Pride in all its forms and guises needs to be outed for what it is, not sugar-coated and heavily made up to pretend it’s something it’s not. Rebranded sin is still sin. Sin cannot be virtue. The devil cannot be God.
As born-again believers, we are obliged to pray for those who are bound by sin, but we cannot in any way align ourselves with their sin. We can’t support their expression of sin, which means we cannot support or participate in “pride”. We cannot rebrand sin as natural, normal, or healthy because it’s none of those things. Sin is today what it always has been – a fast track to death and a sure way to separate yourself from God.
And as a former “pride” supporter turned born-again believer, I can tell you there is no worse state of being than separated from God.
SILENCE IN HEAVEN
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 28, 2023 – [Sound of a phone ringing and then the click of an answer:]
Hello.
You’ve reached the voicemail of God.
I’m sorry I’m not here to take your call personally, but please feel free to leave a message and someone will get back to you before you die.
Alternatively, you can press “666” at any time to speak to an A.I.
Thank you for your patience.
This is a recording.
[Sound of a long beep and then silence.]
I am not a fan of this world. I’m grateful to God for allowing me to be here to get right with him and to learn my lessons, but the world is a cold and dark place that is growing colder and darker by the day. I can’t sugarcoat that. I can’t look past it and pretend it isn’t so.
For the past few decades, I’ve been tending the graves of my two grandmothers. Both graves are now starting to be desecrated. One of the headstones was knocked over last year, and when it was repaired (set on a new foundation), someone twisted the headstone sideways before the cement had time to harden. In the whole graveyard of thousands of headstones, my grandmother’s is the only one that has been turned sideways. This is the headstone of the grandmother who prayed for me for 36 years before I was reborn.
But I’m sure the vandalism was just a random act and not targeted at all.
In another graveyard with the remains of my other grandmother, the flowers I lay for her at each visit have been torn to shreds and scattered around the headstone. When this first started happening about a year ago, I thought it must be the wind or birds or some other animal doing it, but then I noticed that only my grandmother’s headstone is being attacked. The flowers on the other headstones are undisturbed.
When you become a born-again follower of Jesus, you get God’s seal on your soul. You can’t see it and other humans can’t see it, but those in the spiritual realm can see it, like they can see the mark of Cain. You become known in the spiritual realm when you’re reborn. You gain extra spiritual protection because of it, but you also become a target of the evil ones who use people to accomplish their aims.
The evil ones are ramping up their attacks lately, and God is permitting it. What God permits we need to submit to. Still, I cried when I saw the headstone turned sideways, just as I cry at each visit to the graves when I see the flowers mangled and torn to shreds. I feel like I’ve brought this on my grandmothers, and the fact is, I have.
*****
When Jesus stepped out of his comfort zone and took his place as the Messiah, he immediately became the target of the devil. If you want to get the devil’s attention, stand your ground as a believer, even when you face persecution. The devil doesn’t bother with those who claim to be Christians but live like the rest of the world. He knows they’re his already, or nearly his, and that it won’t take much to get them to capitulate. But take a stand for God as a born-again believer and the devil makes a beeline for you.
As I mentioned, whatever God permits, we need to submit to, and the devil can only do what God permits. This to me is a comfort, as I know God would never allow me to suffer anything that I can’t overcome with his help. The same holds true for punishment (at least while we’re still here on Earth). God would never allow us to be punished beyond our capacity to endure spiritually with his help. How you know whether God is permitting you to be tested or permitting you to be punished is that when you’re being tested, you want to draw closer to God, whereas when you’re being punished, you want to hide.
The past week has been one test after another, and just when I think I have time for a breather, I get hit again. Each time, the test comes via people. Most of them are heavily tattooed or identify as the opposite sex, so it’s kind of a given that they’re spiritually messed up and easy prey for demons. Some may even be purposely invoking demons. My response, after the initial impact shock, is always to pray for these people. At the same time, I pray for me too, that I respond like Jesus taught us to respond. The temptation is very strong to be outraged or go into self-defence mode or (worse) try to reason with the messed-up souls. You cannot reason with these people, as Paul found out the hard way. You can only get up, wipe the dirt off yourself, pray for them, and move on.
Silence in the face of false accusations and bullying has never been my strong point, but I’m learning. Jesus had to learn, too, and he did so to an exemplary degree, as he demonstrated during his trial. His earlier run-ins with the Pharisees and Sadducees and all the resticees were good practice that stood him in good stead when he needed it the most.
I sure am getting good practice now.
I can’t claim to be acing my tests, but at least I’m improving. At least I hope I’m improving.
God is never far from me during the testing. He doesn’t intervene and he doesn’t interfere, but he lets me know he’s there – not watching from a distance (like from the bleachers), but standing right behind me, close enough to whisper in my ear. He’s my coach, reminding me to apply to the present what I learned in the past. Sometimes he brings specific scripture to mind as guidance. He can’t interfere during the tests, he can’t tell me what to do, but he can bring to my mind what I already know. He can cheer me on. He can be there for me.
I can’t imagine going through these tests without knowing God is right here with me through his Spirit. Jesus is with me, too. What a formidable team they make! It’s humbling to know that I’m on their team.
The tests will continue during the rest of my time on Earth, and it looks like things will only get bleaker from hereon in. For every believer who dies, evil increases: That is spiritual math. (So is counting your blessings.) Yet God reminds us not only to count our blessings but to see things for what they are. Jesus told us to watch, not look away, so I’ll watch even if it makes me cry.
I thought about getting my grandmother’s headstone reset, but I know that even if the vandals don’t get there before the cement hardens, they’ll do something else to it. My response to their provocations needs to be like Jesus’ response, which is silence. I’ll pray for the vandals but give them no further cause to condemn themselves.
The next time the devil comes a-callin’, he’ll just get my answering service.
TO BE HONEST
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 21, 2023 – Jesus teaches us that we need to be converted and become like little children to enter into the Kingdom.
What does he mean by that? Conversion, as a spiritual process, we can understand, but how can we become like little children again if we’re already adults? Should we put on kids’ clothes and wear pigtails?
I am not and have never been a game-player or manipulator, even though I’ve been surrounded by such people all my life. I’ve come to see game-playing and manipulating as standard adult behavior that people start to learn when they enter their “tween” years. I guess I must have missed that memo on how to gameplay and manipulate because I was always a terrible liar and I tended to take people at their word, finding out too late that they didn’t really mean what they’d said.
It was confusing for me as a young teen and older to find that people I’d grown up with were starting to use words as bargaining tools rather than statements of fact. The more I was betrayed by alleged friends, the more I retreated into my own world that grew smaller and darker as the years passed. I learned to make do without friends and only had short-term relationships with men. I had no interest in getting involved in anyone’s life because my experience had been that as soon as I got involved, that person would in some way betray me. They would say one thing and do another, as their words meant something different to them than they did to me.
Most children are not like that. Most kids, if they say they’re going to do something, they do it. If they say they feel something, they feel it. Most kids use words as a means of communicating their genuine thoughts and feelings rather than as bargaining chips or chess pieces. They play games, but just for fun. Some children do learn to manipulate, but only when they’re a bit older. Most young kids still take people at face value, still take them at their word. That’s why you have to be very careful about what you say around little children. They’re like sponges, soaking up every syllable they hear and processing it for meaning. They have to learn, over time and by watching older kids and adults, to use words deceptively, to say one thing and mean something else, as using words as tools of deception doesn’t come naturally to them.
I think this is part of what Jesus meant when he said we need to become like little children. He didn’t mean we should dress like kids and play hopscotch, but that we should take words at face value and also use them as such. We shouldn’t manipulate or lie. We should trust those who have been proven trustworthy and assume they’re acting in good faith. This should be our default position with God.
In the Bible, God goes out of his way to let us know that he’ll never leave us or betray us. I feel as a born-again believer that I can invest everything in God and not worry about him feigning affection or talking about me behind my back. I would never make such an investment in most humans, even born-again ones.
Other traits of young children that I believe Jesus was referring to is their ability to forgive and forget, to move on without looking back, to share what they have cheerfully, and to wear their heart on their sleeve. Children also love to learn what they love to learn, are constantly expanding their interests, easily accept guidance, nearly as easily accept correction, and enjoy helping out. These are all good traits for the Kingdom.
Conversion is a process that’s initiated by God and depends on him, but becoming like little children is something you can accomplish on your own. You can start by saying what you mean and meaning what you say and by letting your true feelings show rather than hiding them. You can start by being honest about everything and by not only saying that you’re willing to help out but actually being willing to help out wherever and whenever help is needed. These are baby steps on the way to becoming like little children again, but they’re a good place to start. The rest, if your heart is in the right place, will follow in good time.
And if people object to your Jesus-approved approach to life, they’re the problem, not you.
“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Matthew 18:3
PRAY FOR HAMISH HARDING AND HIS FAMILY
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 20, 2023 – I do text editing and proofreading for my daily bread (Paul fixed tents; I fix tenses lol groan).
One of my clients years ago was a search and rescue (SAR) helicopter pilot who wrote articles for military journals about his rescues. It was fascinating to read his “insider scoops” about his missions. Many of the rescues were of people who’d done things they shouldn’t have done, such as gone skiing in locations that were off-limits due to avalanche dangers or headed out to sea in an approaching storm in a flimsy boat. Still, as a SAR operative, my client always had to put his personal feelings aside about the foolhardiness of the people he was attempting to rescue. He had to put his personal feelings aside and conduct a rescue mission, even if he personally believed it was a lost cause and even if it meant he had to put himself in harm’s way. Regardless of his personal opinions on the matter, he had to conduct a rescue mission. That was his job.
There’s no shortage of people doing things they’ve been warned not to do who then get themselves in a pickle they need rescuing from. But the time of rescue efforts is the not the time for giving up hope or for wagging your finger or for saying “I told you so.” The time of rescue efforts is to do everything in your power to bring the distressed people to safety. After they’re safe, then you can lecture them.
I mention this because a big part of our job as born-again believers is to pray for people. If people request our prayers, we pray for them. Our prayers are our spiritual SAR. We offer our prayers regardless of our personal feelings about the people who’ve asked for them or the reason they’ve asked for them. When people ask for our prayers, we go into spiritual SAR mode and conduct the requested mission.
As of the time of writing this article, a billionaire adventurer has gone missing during a trip in a submersible to the Titanic wreck in the North Atlantic. His family has requested prayers. And because his family has requested prayers, we need to pray for the safe rescue of the billionaire and everyone else on board the submersible. Regardless of our personal feelings about the man’s adventures (or now misadventures), we need to pray for him. That’s our job.
So please pray for him. The man’s name is Hamish Harding. Please pray for Hamish Harding, at the request of his family. Please pray for his safe rescue and the safe rescue of all those on board the Titan.
“Hamish Harding’s stepson, Brian Szasz, confirmed his stepfather was on board the vessel when it went missing.
“‘Hamish Harding, my step father, has gone missing on submarine. Thoughts and prayers,’ he wrote on Facebook, sharing family photos and articles.
“‘Thoughts and prayers for my Mom and Hamish Harding,’ he added.
“In a follow-up post, he added: ‘Thoughts and prayers for my stepfather Hamish Harding as his submarine has gone missing exploring Titanic. Search and rescue mission is underway.’“
*****
tldr: When people ask for your prayers, you give them your prayers.
That’s a non-negotiable request.
Regardless of your personal feelings towards the people making the request or the reason for their request, you pray for them. You ask God to help them.
That is your duty as a Christian.
If you choose not to do your duty, you’ll have God to answer to.
PRAYERS FOR THE ALPHABET-RAINBOW
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 18, 2023 – The provocations of the alphabet-rainbow agenda have been legion this year, and for a reason.
The reason is to provoke you to respond with anger rather than prayer, protest rather than prayer, disgust and outrage rather than prayer. Christians have even been provoked to join ranks with people whose faith dictates they throw their enemies off a roof. How can Christians align themselves with such a belief system? And absent – glaringly absent – in all this shouting and outrage is the call for much-needed prayers.
If we don’t pray for the alphabet-rainbow contingent, who will?
If we don’t see their issues as spiritual, who will?
I’ve written before HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE about the primacy of prayer over protest. Christians aren’t called to protest: Jesus never protested, and we’re to do what Jesus did, not what the world does. Protesting was a popular pastime during the days of Jesus’ ministry, but Jesus never once participated in them. How do we know that? Scripture tells us he never raised his voice in the streets. He was never involved in insurrections against either the Roman or the Jewish powers-that-be. He instead focused his energy on the task at hand, which was preaching and teaching the Word and PRAYING for those who hated him, not throwing them off a roof.
If you’re a Christian and you’ve been caught up in the heady backlash against the alphabet-rainbow agenda, please reconsider what you’re doing. We Christians are to respond with prayers, not protests. At the same time, we cannot align ourselves with a belief system that advocates for violence against those they consider enemies. If we align ourselves with such a belief system, we’ll be tarred with the same brush in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of God we’ll be hypocrites.
If non-Christians want to protest, let them; it’s not our business to tell them what to do. Our business is to follow Jesus’ example, which is to pray for and bless our enemies, not ridicule, malign, and threaten them.
Prayer is the most powerful force in the universe. The best – absolutely best – thing you can do in response to the alphabet-rainbow provocation is to pray. Satan is using these people to provoke you into hatred. He wants you outraged; he wants you protesting. Don’t give into him. Don’t fall for his tricks.
“Love your enemies.”
Please take this to heart.
I BET: A CALL TO SPIRITUAL ARMS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 18, 2023 – I bet, were someone so inclined, he or she could chart the steep decline of the developed world (or what used to be known as “the West” or the now politically incorrect “first world” or the even more politically incorrect “Christendom”) – I bet that someone so inclined could chart the steep and swift decline of former Christendom by connecting the falling away or death of each believer to an uptick in evil.
That is, for every believer’s death or turning away from God, evil would show an increase.
I bet it can be charted, this correlation between the withdrawal of God’s Spirit and the inrush of demonic forces. I bet it can be charted and I bet the devil is already doing it, because for every light that dims and/or goes out, God permits Satan to extend his reach. When the devil extends his reach, wildfires burn out of control, endless wars erupt, government corruption flourishes, people run out of money, families break apart, kids don’t know if they’re male or female, and killing your own child is as simple as swallowing a pill.
No, Charlotte, you’re wrong, sniffs the world. It’s White supremacy. It’s colonialism. It’s systemic racism. It’s socioeconomics geared towards the ruling oligarchy. It’s insufficient diversity and inclusion. It’s insufficient equity. It’s cis genderism.
It’s climate change.
I bet, if you had the right instruments, you could measure evil. You’d need very special instruments to do that, though, because evil doesn’t always look like we think it should look and you’d have to find it first before you could measure it. And you might have a hard time finding it. Evil shrouds itself so you look right past it, so “you don’t see it coming”. That’s how evil has gotten away with being evil for so long. It flies under the radar. It pretends it doesn’t exist. Sometimes it even pretends it’s your friend.
It’s not a balance, the favourable measure of good and evil. It’s more a percentage, like 33.333% falling from Heaven and 66.666% not, or a fixed number, like 10 righteous souls holding back Sodom’s destruction. Balance implies compromise and God never compromises. He would rather have only one committed soldier fighting the good fight than thousands who are only in it for the payout. He saved Noah and his family and let everyone else die. He wanted to give everything to Moses and kill all the rest of the children of Israel in the wilderness. For God, it’s not about balancing out the good with the bad, but about sifting and panning until he finds a gold nugget; if he finds only one, God will make do with that and dump the rest.
I bet, were someone so inclined, they could chart the fall of the standard of living in former Christendom with the decline in faith, they could chart the rise in crime with the decline in faith, they could chart the rise in hopelessness and divorce and suicides with the decline in faith, because there is your real correlation for standard of living, crime levels, and happiness – the level of faith within a community. And when I say “faith”, I mean faith in God as a follower of Jesus. The greater the faith, the higher the living standard, the lower the crime, and the greater the happiness. This is the real reason why the first world became the first world in the first place.
But again, you don’t need a lot of people to have a lot of faith. Even just one person of strong faith can have the righteousness to cover many. God would have been pleased to spare Sodom had there been just ten righteous souls among hundreds of thousands, but there weren’t. Truth be told, there might not have been even one righteous soul, considering how Lot treated his daughters (and how his daughters treated him). Scripture tells us that God spared Lot and his family as a favour to his righteous uncle, Abraham. Whether or not Lot was actually righteous himself is for God to know.
The obvious antidote to the rising levels of evil in former Christian nations is to increase the amount of faith in the people living there. But getting more people to believe is an uphill battle that we may not win. The only alternative is for us born-again believers to increase our faith, so that while we may be few in number, we’ll be counted as many for righteousness. Whereas previously 9 out of 10 in a family believed, there may now only be 1 in 10, but that 1 will be strong in faith, maybe even strong enough to cover for the whole family. This is what we need and this is what we must pray for – that our faith be increased along with the faith of our spiritual brothers and sisters.
This is how we stop the steady uptick in evil – not by reparations or “equity” or electric vehicles or regime change, but by building our faith strong enough to move mountains.
And this, my fellow born-again believers, is up to us.
ON PROVOCATIONS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 18, 2023 – Our example on how to deal with provocations (also known also as tests or temptations) is always Jesus.
Jesus knew precisely how to respond.
When provoked, he didn’t engage: He instructed. He didn’t invite a response to his instruction, he simply left it there for the recipient to chew on.
And when he wasn’t directly or personally provoked, he ignored the provocation. It wasn’t his business.
Provocations are designed to test your spiritual mettle. God permits provocations because he wants to see who really wants what he’s offering and who’s just saying they want it. He also wants to give us a chance to move up in his Kingdom by giving us a larger share of his Spirit. Many Christians say they want what God’s offering, but most of those fail when put to the test. In other words, they may claim to want what God’s offering, but when provoked show they’re not actually willing to do what’s required.
Jesus was tested on a daily basis. The most famous of these provocations took place in the desert after his 40-day/40-night fast, but Jesus faced tests every day during his ministry years. We read about those in the Gospels. Sometimes he was tested by his sworn enemies, sometimes by his own followers, and sometimes by strangers. In every instance, God permitted the test. When God said that he was “well pleased” with Jesus, he was stating his approval of Jesus’ test results.
Like Jesus, we also are tested on a daily basis. The tests may not look like Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, but they come from the same tempter and are meant to trip us up. Here are some of the standard everyday provocations employed by the devil and permitted by God:
- Temptation to be outraged by something.
- Temptation to break the Commandments.
- Temptation to express tolerance for something you know is wrong.
- Temptation to condemn your enemies rather than to pray for them.
- Temptation to “name and shame” your enemies rather than to pray for them.
- Temptation to protest.
- Temptation to focus on end-times “spiritual porn’.
- Temptation to be sustainedly curious about demons.
- Temptation to complain about your circumstances.
- Temptation to blame others for your circumstances.
- Temptation not to forgive (hardheartedness).
- Temptation to think or speak uncharitably of someone.
- Temptation to put someone or something before God.
- Sexual provocations.
- Financial provocations.
- Temptations to misuse or misallocate resources God has put into your care, including your God-given talents.
Obviously, this list of provocations could go on for pages, and I’m sure that even off the top of your head you could easily rattle off a few dozen more. My point in listing them here is to hammer home the reality that nearly every minute of every day we’re tempted to act in opposition to God. Provocations are not a one-off thing or a rare event but an ongoing process of spiritual refining. This process involves learning, testing, failing, relearning, retesting, etc., a specific spiritual principle (e.g., pray for your enemies) until we get it consistently right and it becomes our default position.
All born-again believers are immersed in the refining process from the instant of their rebirth. We can’t avoid it. In fact, if we genuinely want what God is offering us, we welcome the provocations because when we successfully pass them, we gain a bigger share of God’s Spirit and so move up higher in the Kingdom. A higher position in the Kingdom means moving closer to God. Without successfully passing our tests, we can’t move closer to God.
We should never pray to avoid being tested. The only temptation we should pray to avoid is the one Jesus explicitly told us to pray to avoid, which is the test of the tribulation. We should pray not to have to go through that, but every other test we should patiently accept, knowing it’s for our ultimate benefit.
Provocations are a test of our spiritual mettle that, when successfully passed, bring us closer to God. I don’t know about you, but I want to be as close to God as I can be. So while I’m not foolishly going to say to the devil: “Bring it on!”, I will pray for the strength and guidance to respond like Jesus did to whatever provocations God does permit.
PRAY FOR YOU
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 17, 2023 – In praying for others (which I know you do every day, even several times a day), don’t forget to pray for yourself. We often overlook our own prayer needs in focusing on the needs of others, but God wants us to let him know what we need. He invites us to let him know. He urges us to let him know. In fact, he stops just short of making it a Commandment. Jesus says: “Ye have not because ye ask not.” We need to ask God not only to protect and strengthen those we pray for, but also to protect and strengthen us. We should never presume God’s protection; we need to pray for it, just as we need to pray to God to protect others.
Jesus says that, in praying for ourselves, we should ask God to take us Home before the “test”, which most people call the tribulation. So, in following Jesus’ advice, we pray to God to take us Home before the tribulation starts. In case he chooses not to take us Home but rather to let us go through the test, we also need to pray for his protection and strength to endure it. We should never presume God’s protection, not now nor during the tribulation; we should always pray for it.
So today, and tomorrow, and the day after that and so on, when you pray for others, take a moment to pray for yourself, too. Pray for God’s continued guidance and protection and pray for him to strengthen you to endure whatever he sees fit for you to endure, which you know ultimately will be for your benefit.
Never presume God’s protection, but always – ALWAYS – have faith that he will provide it, even before your prayers leave your lips.
ON PRIDE, SATAN, AND AI
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 10, 2023 – Wisdom without humility is pride, and pride will send you down the wrong path, as Solomon found out maybe too late. Maybe when he asked God for wisdom, he should also have asked for humility to temper the pride that is the natural outflow of too much wisdom.
Pride was also the fall of Satan and of all those who sided with him against God. Likewise, pride was the fall of Sodom and of Gomorrah and of every kingdom that once was but is now either nothing or a pale shadow of its former self.
Pride is the final stage of what the world calls “greatness” before the greatness falls. Pride accumulates like dirt and debris in the crevices of a sole. The dust wraps around the depth of the sole and embeds itself between the sole and the skin of the shoe. There it continues to accumulate and in so doing to break down the connection between the skin and the sole. Over time, the dust-into-dirt solidifies and becomes a presence in and of itself that demands place, but place can only be given it if the sole and skin part company. This they finally do, and the dirt reigns fully from the bottom to the top of the sole and all around. But the reign of the filth-encrusted sole means that the shoe has lost its purpose and is no more a shoe.
This is what happens to kingdoms.
Daniel’s vision of the fourth and final kingdom was of a composite of various materials, some precious, some semi-precious, and some common. The mixing of the precious with the semi-precious and common weakened the kingdom whose sole purpose appears to have been to destroy, after which it itself was destroyed.
Pride has its place. It serves like mold on old bread or like bacteria on rotting meat. The host is long past its prime and has become unpalatable and in fact poisonous.
Pride should not be celebrated any more than mold or bacteria is celebrated. Pride should instead be acknowledged for what it represents in the life cycle: the end stage, the dissolution, the turning of something good into something foul and rotten. Jeremiah in a vision compared this stage to “naughty figs” that were so “naughty”, they couldn’t be eaten and had to be thrown away.
What so beguiled Solomon that he turned his back on God? At the end of his days, he began to worship the demonic entities his hundreds of wives and concubines worshiped. How could he have done this? How could he have turned his back on God?
The same question could be asked of Satan and has been asked. How could Satan have turned away from God? The answer usually given is that pride blinded him. Yet pride didn’t blind the other holy angels. They remained holy and clean and intact while Satan grew dirty and moldy and “naughty” until he finally fell apart from his skin, forevermore to be only a filth-encrusted disembodied soul who’d lost his purpose. So God gave him another purpose – to destroy. God repurposed Satan as a destroyer, and so he remains to this day and until such a time as his time is finally up.
There is nothing to celebrate in pride, only an acknowledgement by its presence and expansion how far we’ve fallen and our destruction that surely lies ahead.
Wisdom without humility brought us here, the same wisdom that grew on a tree in the Garden of Eden.
Pray for wisdom – by all means, pray for wisdom – embrace wisdom – but at the same time pray for the humility to handle the wisdom. Without humility (that is, without willing submission to God), wisdom will be your undoing as it has been the undoing of countless souls and kingdoms throughout the ages.
There’s nothing wrong with wisdom that a little humility can’t fix.
TURN BACK, O MAN!
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 4, 2023 – When I was 16, God in his wisdom had me play Mary Magdalene in the musical “Godspell”. It was a high school production with all the missed cues, corniness, nerves, and occasional flashes of brilliance that characterize such productions. The lanky, long-haired cool guy who played Jesus was 19 and in a heavy metal band at the time (he’s a preacher now) and most of us in the troupe were either hard-core or closet atheists.
So there I was, playing Jesus’ closest female disciple while not even believing in God, let alone Jesus. But God, of course, knew exactly what he was doing in placing me in that role. I thought I was chosen to play Mary Magdalene because the character’s solo was more spoken than sung (I’m not a talented singer, to put it mildly) and God let me believe that at the time. Now I know otherwise.
Our conversions, when they happen, are sudden and monumental. The day I was born-again, I woke up an atheist and went to bed a Jesus freak. The actual instant of conversion occurs outside of time, in the eternal realm of God’s Kingdom, and involves the exorcising of the world’s spirits (demons) and the inrushing of God’s Holy Spirit. For me, the conversion happened while my body was lying dead on a beach in Australia and my soul was communing with God. As instantaneous and definitive as my conversion was, it was the fulfillment of a process that had started many years before and of which I was only made aware after I was reborn.
In the musical “Godspell”, Mary Magdalene sings (actually, kind of purrs) a song called “Turn Back, O Man”. I knew all the words to that song even before I auditioned for the part, because when I was 10 years old, I’d won a “Godspell” album as a prize on the radio (for being Caller Number 4! Yay!). I used to play the album on my little brown and white portable record player and then when I got older, I’d play it on my parent’s big wooden floor-model stereo, full blast. I knew all the songs in “Godspell” by heart, which you may or may not know is based on the book of Matthew, with a few of David’s psalms thrown in for good measure.
God must have had a good laugh watching me sing his Word off-key but enthusiastically as I warbled along with the album. He must have smiled the kind of smile that only God can smile, because I was a proud hard-core atheist at the time, having been removed from religion class when I was 7 after so disturbing the nun by something I’d said to her, she didn’t want to teach the class anymore with me in it. But there I was, a little nun-disturbing self-professed atheist, reciting Jesus’ teachings verbatim without realizing what I was reciting. Like I said, it must have made God smile to see me singing his Word, and then a few years later to watch me playing Jesus’ friend, Mary Magdalene. By exposing me to “Godspell”, God wasn’t so much priming me for my later conversion as he was providing me with a radically different perspective of Jesus than the mainstream church and society were offering.
And he was planting his seeds.
As farmers and gardeners well know, not every seed that’s planted germinates. And of those seeds that do germinate, not every sprout survives, and of those sprouts that do survive, not every plant makes it to fruition, and of those plants that do make it to fruition, not every fruiting plant continues to bear fruit. Farmers and gardeners also know about weeds and pests and watering and fertilizing, and about the heartache of frost and drought and blight. Some even know that some seeds take a long time to germinate – sometimes years, hidden away in the dirt and dung – and then yet more years, post-germination, to grow to strength and maturity. I was such a seed, trodden down and covered in filth and sludge, but God knew I was there and he never stopped watching over me. He never stopped moving things thisaway or thataway (though never interfering with my free will), all the time time betting I’d some day say “YES!” to him, while the devil kept on betting I’d say “No”.
From this blog, you can see who won that bet.
I took “Godspell” with me in spirit during my hitchhiking travels in my late teens and early twenties, singing God’s Word as a comfort (without realizing I was singing God’s Word) when things got really bad, which you can imagine they did with increasing frequency for an atheist who believed she was a law unto herself.
What I mean to say here is that we start our journey toward turning back to God long before we actually turn. And it may look like we’re moving farther and father away from God, when in fact we’re starting to go through the refining process. Refining involves burning, sometimes with heat and flames, sometimes with chemicals. It’s a crude and dangerous process that leaves enormous amounts of waste behind. But it’s how God makes us fit for his Kingdom by sloughing off all the worldly impurities we’ve accumulated living life our way rather than his.
But I’m here now, in God’s Kingdom. I turned back. I’ve arrived. It took a lot of behind-the-scenes shifting and digging and weeding and sloughing on God’s part, but I turned back. I finally said “YES!” to God. The song that I sang all those years ago as Mary Magdalene in my high school’s production of “Godspell”, I now know I was singing to myself. I was preaching to myself. I was begging myself.
I was warning myself.
I now sing that song to you.
____________________________________
Turn back, O man
Forswear thy foolish ways
Old now is earth
And none may count her days
Yet thou, her child
Whose head is crowned with flames
Still will not hear
Thine inner God proclaim
Turn back, O man (mmm, I like that)
Turn back, O man (Handle with care)
Turn back, O man (can you take it?)
Forswear thy foolish ways
************
Earth might be fair
And all men glad and wise
Age after age their tragic empires rise
Built while they dream
And in that dreaming weep
Would man but wake
From out his haunted sleep
Turn back, O man…
Turn back, O man…
Turn back, O man…
Forswear thy foolish ways
************
Earth shall be fair
And all her people one
Not till that hour
Shall God’s whole will be done
Now, even now
Once more from Earth to sky
Peals forth in joy
Man’s old undaunted cry
Earth shall be fair
And all her people one
************
C’mere Jesus, I got sump’n to show ya!
Turn back, O man
Forswear thy foolish ways
Old now is earth
And none may count her days
Yet thou, her child
Whose head is crowned with flames
Still will not hear
Thine inner God proclaim
Turn back, O man
Turn back, O man
Forswear thy foolish ways!
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 