Christians, He Is Risen!

There is a war going on all around us. Every day, every night, while we work, sleep or play and most people are unaware.

To us it looks like issues that divide us, and it is an ever expanding list, constantly pushing the perimeters outward. But for some issues it’s pushing the boundaries inward, and its desired effect is strife and division. Where is this division coming from? What is there to gain? I hope and pray that most of us would be more comfortable with kindness and harmony but I can’t find much proof of that anywhere. Why not? I think the answer to the last question is simply that we are never shown harmony on a consistent basis, but what we are shown consistently is division. Remember the parable of the two wolves… the one you feed is the one that will grow strong. We feed the bad wolf and starve the good wolf, and wonder why there is so much hatred.

I don’t have a very high opinion of people in general. We make the same mistakes over and over, even when we swear that we have learned our lesson, over time, we jump right back into the mess we pleaded to get out of. I’ve seen it too many times to count. Some will say that we are good and learn to do bad, but I disagree. I think that we all have a terminal disease and some of us are just better at living with this disease than others. Sin. It’s not very popular to talk about anymore and I don’t think it was ever something that folks wanted to brag about having. Kind of like herpes or leprosy… or a toenail fungus. And that brings us to the ongoing war…

Ephesians 6:12

If you are able to be here, reading this, you have everything you need to look that up for yourself and if you do, also look at 2 Kings:17, and Daniel 10:13. I hate it when people give me things and when I look them up they are not in context, so on each of these I suggest that you read more than the verse posted. There are more passages but I use these to say this. We are right in the middle of a spiritual war that we can’t see and we are like children locked in a battle to the death against someone we can’t beat. They play us against each other to keep us weak and to keep us preoccupied with temporal things. Imagine devoting your whole life to something and finding out at the end that it had no value. And rejecting the only thing of real value. It happens to so many every minute of every day. That’s part of the war.

The same could be said of most every issue that beguiles us today. Our battle is not with each other but that’s who we are fighting. That’s who we are doing harm, and our enemy laughs. The crisis of the moment is gun control. I could go back over the decades and list all the crises, and each one locked one group into a life or death battle with another, and I suspect that it has been this way since the beginning. And we get death and destruction, hatred and division, and we never figure it out. The enemy counts on us never figuring it out.

Now here is where you may disagree, and that’s OK by the way, go in peace. I’m surprised you put up with me this long, but listen…

We can’t figure out why so many children place no value on life… but we place no value on the life of so many children. The time between conception and birth is very dangerous for so many. 

We can’t understand why there is so much anger in our children that we drug and leave to raise themselves, with no discipline or guidance. We let them pass the time with the worse thing someone that age could be exposed to. The internet. From Hell to us, to them. What a babysitter.

I occupy a very unique time on this planet and I have seen so many things come to us so quickly, new and untested and wonderful. I remember our first computer that filled our entire car, and took forever to set up. It was indescribable and I’m certain that families with their first television must have felt the same. So much information at our fingertips. And so much evil.

Now that computer that filled an entire car will fit in my hand. And we give them to children. And children destroy their lives with this technology that a decade earlier we monitored the best we knew how. And on and on and on…

We have access to more information than ever before and we can’t trust any of it.

There is more but here is the main problem in this war against an enemy we can’t defeat. We don’t acknowledge sin. Many don’t acknowledge evil. When everyone is trying to figure out why somebody did what they did, sometimes evil is the answer. It’s much easier to imagine that with the right medication so and so wouldn’t have done what he did, I know. I think the enemy loves that kind of thinking too.

We can’t win but listen, we don’t have to. Greater is He who is in us than he who in in the world. If we could only see the army around us, there would be nothing to fear, and I have none.

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