Yesterday five people filled out cards at our Honey Lake Church and Worldwide Ministry service stating that they made decisions to follow Christ. To date every service has been blessed with people coming forward who are determined to follow Christ and not the world.
Do you suppose satan is happy that our little church is moving in the right direction?
No I think he’s probably just a wee bit miffed at the moment. Satan doesn’t like me and the Bible states that he doesn’t like you either, and further he wants to destroy us both and he works pretty darn hard every day of his miserable existence to make it happen.
I don’t know how you feel, but I for one don’t like him either! Furthermore I don’t have to sit by and take his crap like some cowardly namby pamby without fighting back.
This weekend was incredibly busy and exhausting to me. Honey Lake Resort and Spa was full of guests all weekend, including pressure packed events Friday and Saturday with Governor Rick Scott and his wife Ann, and a group of distinguished leaders from across the state.
Saturday our family hosted the Governor and First Lady at my house for lunch and immediately afterwards I drove several hours to a large Baptist Church in middle Georgia and arrived just in time to serve as keynote speaker for their fundraiser for the Promise of Hope men’s rehabilitation center. Immediately afterwards I drove back home in order to arrive in time to prepare for our church service yesterday. Then after church and the Sunday Gospel Brunch, the resort hosted a beautiful wedding and the festivities for it concluded late last night.
So today I start off the week already tired. My situation this morning reminds me of one of the football teams I played on in high school. Ours was a tiny school, but our team played some very large schools. In fact one game in particular comes to mind in which they had more guys on their football team than we had in our entire senior class at school.
As the game wore on, they kept sending in wave after wave of huge, (ugly), fresh players to pound us into submission. We had so few players we played on both sides of the ball, (offense and defense), and we just hoped that no one got hurt so we didn’t have to send in the water boy. By the second half we were worn to a frazzle, bloody, tired, and visibly limping into the locker room.
At halftime I remember one of our players actually crying because he didn’t want to go back in for the second half because he was being pulverized by the huge lineman across from him. Our coach physically picked him up off the floor and slammed him into a locker and told him to quit acting like a crybaby and get his @$* back in there and keep fighting.
Hmmm…That didn’t inspire me, but that is not to say I wasn’t inspired to get back in the game. I wanted to get back in there so I could fight back! I had the attitude that I might lose the fight, but they’d darn sure know I’d been there and remember my number 87.
I assume satan and his innumerable horde of minions are fresh and have picked up on the fact that I’m tired this morning. He will no doubt send wave after wave of fresh minions to fight me today. But I have some news for them; if they expect me to roll over and let them pulverize me without a fight, they have another think coming.
One of the folks that made a decision for Christ yesterday was telling me that he didn’t know why God was singling him out for torture. His life is a wreck. His marriage went south; his son is having serious problems; his new love vamoosed, etc. I told him that he was misplacing his anger. God isn’t the culprit; satan is, and he should be the object of his ire and not God.
So many folks have this all wrong; death, sadness, disease, grief, divorce, poverty, racial hatred, perversion, crime, bitterness, addiction, et al, all come from sin and satan and not from God. The Garden of Eden was perfect until satan tempted them with sin and they succumbed to it. Chaos tore through that peaceful setting like a hurricane devastating its way through the Florida Keys from that point forward, and has reigned on earth ever since.
Why does God allow it?
Because God cannot lie! He warned Adam and Eve that if they disobeyed Him they would surely die, and sure enough, He told the truth! They died and we, their offspring die too. He told us our days would be “short and full of trouble” and He told the truth; our days are short and full of trouble.
Anyone who has ever studied what happened to Christ before, during, and the three days after His horrific trip to the cross has to understand that God loves us with an incomprehensible love. He could have just stayed on His throne in heaven and avoided the humiliation and terrible suffering, or He could have just destroyed us all in disgust and just started over.
But He didn’t, because He loves us more than we can imagine, and wants to restore our once perfect relationship forever. He provided a path to reunification, but now it’s up to us to choose Him or satan.
I choose God! And in so doing I fully realize that makes me an enemy of satan.
Okay, bring it on… I may get tired, bloody, and limp around some after getting the crap beat out of me for a while, but in the end I’ll be on the winning side of this slugfest. I fully intend to battle him and his minions every day of my life until that final buzzer goes off and Jesus takes me home.
It may seem petty or even weird to you, but I pre-record all of the football games that I watch. After the game expires I look at the score and if my team wins, then I watch the game. If they lose, I erase it in disgust without ever viewing it.
When I watch one of those pre-recorded games that my team wins, I don’t get discouraged or even anxious when it looks like all hope is lost and they are making mistakes right and left and even getting the heck beat out of them, because I know that everything is going to turn out fine by the time that final second ticks off.
The same is true for this life. I’ve read the Bible and I know that everything turns out just fine in the end because I have FAITH in Jesus Christ!
Now that inspires me!
Romans 8:28
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.