Spiritual Warfare

I was just sent a link to this video. Visual application is so powerful! We forget sometimes that there is an ongoing battle in the spiritual realm for our souls. Notice in the video that as soon as she made a decision to move towards God, He battled on her behalf and eventually came to her rescue completely. God wants what is best for us, but the enemy does such a great job of distracting us and wooing us with the things of the world. We fall for it and end up empty and miserable. God was there all along and will come to our rescue if we make up our mind to seek Him.

2 Chronicles 16:9 - For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.

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What is the purpose of The Heavy Cross?

Last night we watched the Passion of the Christ again as a reminder of the importance of Easter. I feel as though God really spoke to me as I watched it.

The same people who acknowledged Him as The Christ as he rode into town were some of the same people yelling "crucify him"!

Think about this...these were people who believed in Him, loved him, cheered for him, celebrated him...yet they were caught up in the emotion of what was going on around them (their society) and ended up mocking Him, spitting on Him, and throwing rocks at Him while He was carrying the instrument of his dramatic public death!

I realized that our society today is full of people (professed Christians), including myself, who believe in Him (even the devil does that), say they love Him, cheer for Him (when it is convenient or need something), and celebrate Him (on holidays or even once a week).

If we examine our lives we must ask ourselves: Do we really...love Him?

Did He die for us so that we could say a salvation prayer, say we're sorry, acknowledge Him once a week, ask for His help when we're desperate...and then continue to feed our fleshly desires by spending more time on the internet, in front of the tv, playing sports, doing crafts, etc.?

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with these things; however, are we not mocking Him when we justify our idols, which I believe is anything that we give more attention and money to than we do Him? Were we really born again if our heart is to defend everything that brings us pleasure instead of a willingness to remove anything in our lives that separate us from intimacy with Him.

When we say we love Him and then give Him a our last bit of time, our last bit of money, and most importantly the last available room in our heart; we are placing ourselves right there on that fateful day on Calvary. We become the man or woman yelling "crucify Him". We are picking up the lead tipped whip, striking his body, and pulling away flesh! We are taking the hammer and driving the nails through his hands and feet!

Is it enough to say a prayer? Is it enough to believe? Is it enough to be sorry?

Let us consider this: Sure a few verses say believe and you will be saved; however, there are many that add to that and say we must repent!

Have we forgotten what repent means? One definition is to "turn away". So if we say we are sorry and continue to live in sin once we have heard or know the truth, have we turned away or repented at all?

EXAMPLE

I can say I love you, but how do you KNOW I really do? You know by by my actions! There is NO way to prove to someone that you love them by simply telling them…you must show them.

What about if I say I love you...my actions seem genuine for a while...then I start to spend all my time with someone else, I avoid your calls (His voice), tell you what I need before I go to bed, and no one who knows me has a clue that I have any sort relationship with you.

What if I say I'm sorry? That makes it alright right? What if I say I'm sorry but I still make no time for you, still avoid your calls, always ask you for help but never ask you what you want. Would you think I meant it when I said sorry?

Repentance is not just saying you're sorry! It is something we MUST do every day!

Were you really born again if your life doesn't look any different than it did before you accepted Christ? Were you born again if you use your salvation as a blank check to live any way you want?

You see, there is nothing we can do in our own strength. Jesus paid it ALL. I just think we should all examine our lives and ask ourselves are we truly saved just because we fit in to the requirements of what our pastor says, our family says. What does the Word of God say?

I have recently realized how dangerous it is to base your salvation on someone else's interpretation of salvation and of the Bible. Beware of a false sense of security!

Is it not worth taking the time to examine for yourself?

Has the Christian "majority", throughout history, ever been the group that was walking in the truth? Are we Christians that look like the rest of the Christians in our society? Does that make you feel safe?

How about this…is our life something that is worth Christ dying for? Are we living a live that is worth Jesus being so brutally murdered on our behalf? Does He know we love him by what we say or by what we do? Would our check book and appointment book prove that we have no idols before Him?

I realize these are all tough questions, and I am sharing what God has put on my heart because of my own recent personal convictions. Christianity is not easy! There is a cost that no one talks about anymore!

We have a short period of time on Earth. As a matter of fact, we are not guaranteed tomorrow. Grace is not a blank check as I’m sure we would all agree. Every breath we take is an explicit example of God’s grace…giving us the opportunity to repent from our sinful nature before we sit before the judgment seat of Christ.

You see he is a fair judge. He became flesh, he was tempted, he felt pain, anger, shame, and even subjected himself to death on a cross. We will have no excuses on judgement day. We can cry out to him and say “but Jesus…I believed in you, I asked you into my heart, I was even baptized like you said”. He will say, “You asked me into your heart verbally, but did you repent and make room for me in your heart? Even the devil and his demons believe in me and tremble at my name! When you were baptized, were you truly born again or did you continue to live in blatant disobedience while mocking me by saying that is was ok because of grace? Did you become a new person or did you stay the same? Were you a faithful bride or did you say you love me and then have continuous blatant affairs with the world? You did have grace, I gave you chance after chance to love me…but remember that love is a verb. It requires action and words just are not enough.”

Do you carry heavy cross or do you leave it at home? Do you give anything to your savior that costs you something or just what you have left over?

This is the time of year to reflect on the sacrifice and on Easter we celebrate the VICTORY!

May Jesus get all the glory He deserves! I challenge everyone to think long and hard this Easter holiday about the sacrifice and victory.

Three days later he rose and the tomb has been empty ever since!

Happy Easter!

Below is a powerful video that is a MUST SEE this holiday season!

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Hairbrush Experience of Beth Moore at the Airport

This is a moving story of obedience to the Holy Spirit. God is so good! Enjoy...and get your tissues ready...even you guys.

For those of you who do not know Beth Moore, she is an outstanding Bible teacher, writer of Bible studies, and is a married mother of two daughters.

This is one of her experiences:

April 20, 2005, at the Airport in Knoxville , waiting to board the plane, I had the Bible on my lap and was very intent upon what I was doing. I'd had a marvelous morning with the Lord. I say this because I want to tell you it is a scary thing to have the Spirit of God really working in you. You could end up doing some things you never would have done otherwise. Life in the Spirit can be dangerous for a thousand reasons not the least of which is your ego.

I tried to keep from staring, but he was such a strange sight. Humped over in a wheelchair, he was skin and bones, dressed in clothes that obviously fit when he was at least twenty pounds heavier. His knees protruded from his trousers, and his shoulders looked like the coat hanger was still in his shirt. His hands looked like tangled masses of veins and bones.

The strangest part of him was his hair and nails. Stringy, gray hair hung well over his shoulders and down part of his back. His fingernails were long, clean but strangely out of place on an old man.

I looked down at my Bible as fast as I could, discomfort burning my face. As I tried to imagine what his story might have been, I found myself wondering if I'd just had a Howard Hughes sighting. Then, I remembered that he was dead. So this man in the airport...an i mpersonator maybe? Was a camera on us somewhere? There I sat; trying to concentrate on the Word to keep from being concerned about a thin slice of humanity served on a wheelchair only a few seats from me. All the while, my heart was growing more and more overwhelmed with a feeling for him.

Let's admit it. Curiosity is a heap more comfortable than true concern, and suddenly I was awash with aching emotion for this bizarre-looking old man.

I had walked with God long enough to see the handwriting on the wall. I've learned that when I begin to feel what God feels, something so contrary to my natural feelings, something dramatic is bound to happen. And it may be embarrassing.

I immediately began to resist because I could feel God working on my spirit and I started arguing with God in my mind. "Oh, no, God, please, no." I looked up at the ceiling as if I could stare straight through it into heaven and said, "Don't make me witness to this ma n. Not right here and now. Please. I'll do anything. Put me on the same plane, but don't make me get up here and witness to this man in front of this gawking audience. Please, Lord!"

There I sat in the blue vinyl chair begging His Highness, "Please don't make me witness to this man. Not now. I'll do it on the plane." Then I heard it... "I don't want you to witness to him. I want you to brush his hair."

The words were so clear, my heart leapt into my throat, and my thoughts spun like a top. Do I witness to the man or brush his hair?
No-brainier. I looked straight back up at the ceiling and said, "God, as I live and breathe, I want you to know I am ready to witness to this man.

I'm on this Lord. I'm your girl! You've never seen a woman witness to a man faster in your life. What difference does it make if his hair is a mess i f he is not redeemed? I am going to witness to this man."

Again as clearly as I've ever heard an audible word, God seemed to write this statement across the wall of my mind. "That is not what I said, Beth. I don't want you to witness to him. I want you to go brush his hair."

I looked up at God and quipped, "I don't have a hairbrush. It's in my suitcase on the plane. How am I supposed to brush his hair without a hairbrush?" God was so insistent that I almost involuntarily began to walk toward him as these thoughts came to me from God's word: "I will thoroughly furnish you unto all good works." (2 Timothy 3:17)

I stumbled over to the wheelchair thinking I could use one myself. Even as I retell this story, my pulse quickens and I feel those same butterflies. I knelt down in front of the man and asked as demurely as possible, "Sir, may I have the pleasure of brushing your hair?"

He looked back at me and said, "What did you say?"

"May I have the pleasure of brushing your hair?"

To which he responded in volume ten, "Little lady, if you expect me to hear you, you're going to have to talk louder than that."

At this point, I took a deep breath and blurted out, "SIR, MAY I HAVE THE PLEASURE OF BRUSHING YOUR HAIR?"

At which point every eye in the place darted right at me. I was the only thing in the room looking more peculiar than old Mr. Longlocks. Face crimson and forehead breaking out in a sweat, I watched him look up at me with absolute shock on his face, and say, "If you really want to." Are you kidding? Of course I didn't want to. But God didn't seem interested in my personal preference right about then. He pressed on my heart until I could utter the words, "Yes, sir, I would be pleased. But I have one little problem. I don't have a hairbrush." "I have one in my bag, "he responded.

I went around to the back of that wheelchair, and I got on my hands and knees and unzipped the stranger's old carry-on, hardly believing what I was doing. I stood up and started brushing the old man's hair. It was perfectly clean, but it was tangled and matted. I don't do many things well, but must admit I've had notable experience untangling knotted hair mothering two little girls. Like I'd done with either Amanda or Melissa in such a condition, I began brushing at the very bottom of the strands, remembering to take my time not to pull.

A miraculous thing happened to me as I started brushing that old man's hair. Everybody else in the room disappeared. There was no one alive for those moments except that old man and me. I brushed and I brushed and I brushed until every tangle was out of that hair. I know this sounds so strange, but I've never felt that kind of love for another soul in my entire life. I believe with all my hea rt, I - for that few minutes - felt a portion of the very love of God. That He had overtaken my heart for a little while like someone renting a room and making Himself at home for a short while.

The emotions were so strong and so pure that I knew they had to be God's. His hair was finally as soft and smooth as an infant's.

I slipped the brush back in the bag and went around the chair to face him. I got back down on my knees, put my hands on his knees and said, "Sir, do you know my Jesus?"

He said, "Yes, I do." Well, that figures, I thought.

He explained, "I've known Him since I married my bride. She wouldn't marry me until I got to know the Savior." He said, "You see, the problem is, I haven't seen my bride in months. I've had open-heart surgery, and she's been too ill to come see me. I was sitting here thinking to myself, what a mess I must be for my bride."

Only God knows how often He allows us to be part of a divine moment when we're completely unaware of the significance. This, on the other hand, was one of those rare encounters when I knew God had intervened in details only He could have known. It was a God moment, and I'll never forget it. Our time came to board, and we were not on the same plane. I was deeply ashamed of how I'd acted earlier and would have been so proud to have accompanied him on that aircraft.

I still had a few minutes, and as I gathered my things to board, the airline hostess returned from the corridor, tears streaming down her cheeks. She said, "That old man's sitting on the plane, sobbing. Why did you do that? What made you do that?"

I said, "Do you know Jesus? He can be the bossiest thing!"

And we got to share.

I learned something about God that day. He knows if you're exhausted, you're hungry, you're serving in the wrong place or it is time to move on but you feel too responsible to budge. He knows if you're hurting or feeling rejected. He knows if you're sick or drowning under a wave of temptation. Or He knows if you just need your hair brushed. He sees you as an individual. Tell Him your need!

I got on my own flight, sobs choking my throat, wondering how many opportunities just like that one had I missed along the way. .. .. all because I didn't want people to think I was strange. God didn't send me to that old man. He sent that old man to me.

John 1:14 "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We Have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather, to skid in
broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly shouting, "Wow! What a ride! Thank You, Lord!"

Don't tell God how big your troubles are - tell your troubles HOW BIG your GOD is!

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