Giving Up

Giving Up

2/18/15

The title of article is a bit touching but rest assured it comes strictly from God and no other source.  Yes it will step on some toes and yes it is meant to for there is something big approaching this society and while it is on a collision course it still can be stopped from occurring.  It is the direct subject of this article that can change this collision course and it needs to be spread as far and as fast as possible in order for things to be changed.  Never mind the religious contents in the article as examples for God is strictly interested in your heart instead of your religious practices.

Many of us have at one time or another made a New Year’s Resolution and immediately after making such change vowed and declared that this year will be different and that there would be no stopping us from upholding our promise.  We all start out with good intentions and for a while it seems like our will power will conquer this task without any problems.  I can guarantee that if you ask a person who has tried this method of quitting something that they will say that it was not too long until the desire to fulfill the stopped habit returned and that their mind was riddled with tortuous thoughts of the kicked habit.  I know that I have been in that category and to be fair there are some habits that I returned to without any hesitancy.  And, just as millions of others who have made these types of resolutions, we fell right back into what we had “given up” within a few weeks or months.

There is no question that our intentions are of a good nature, for at some point, whether it is jokingly or with a serious tone, and we decide that our will to keep this habit out of our lives is smaller than the habit itself.  The next logical question that one makes is sometimes addressed and most of the time is ignored and that is of what happens when we allow this habit to return? How important does the returned habit become in our life and do we increased the frequency of this habit and mutate it with our added desires?  Most would quickly admit that it is back in our lives but will not admit to its further deepening within our mindset and functionality.

I remember a few weeks after 9/11 occurred and how the people of the world seemed like they were going to return their hearts back to God.  Momentum was strong within the church communities and the attendance which had sloughed off prior to 9/11 was back to its earlier levels and from all indications deemed to surpass those levels.  Excitement was back in the church walls and the people were back out displaying their beliefs to others without any care in the world.  On the surface it looked like this event served its purpose and that we were once again back on tract as a godly nation and society.  The news even carried a weekly short clip of when the president entered into the church building every Sunday; things were changing, so it seemed.

A few days later I was watching the news and one of the news channels was giving an interview to a well known person who did not believe in God and represented an organization that clearly wanted God out of our national business and basically out of our personal lives as well.  One of the questions that the news anchor asked this person I found very bold and very upfront but it was the person’s answer that meant more to me and stuck with me up until this very day.  The question that was asked to the person went something like this: With all of the people in this country praising God and saying that we are turning to God for answers, how does that make you and your organization feel about the stance that you have? 

The answer that this person provided kind of took me off a bit and at the time I had no idea of exactly what he was saying about this country and society but his answer rings loud and clear today.  He answered the question in this manner: we understand that there will be a time of mourning in this country and throughout the world, we accept this.  But after a while and when the cries diminish, we will return to our course and continue our efforts to remove God from all governmental establishments from this country.  His candor and demeanor while he was answering spoke volumes to me as well, for both were very calm and collected with no animosity, hesitancy or anger presented, only a purposeful and directed statement that had been calculated out and accurately delivered.  And his answer serves as the basis of this article and just how important it is in our lives.

While many people would automatically become upset with this answer and wish to debate him on this setting but more importantly he understood the inner conditions of our lives more than we did and do today.  He had the decency to tell us the truth and instead of us realizing this truth we have physically began to argue our religious roots through our denominational stances and history.  It is one thing to know your history and stance but it is another to recognize this history and stance and what is being portrayed to others.  See, other people will notice our stances and history and will weigh our actions accordingly just to grasp an idea of how firm we are about the issues that “define” us.

The person answering this interview question knows Christians well enough to understand that in a short time our outward cries towards God for our wrong doings and for the attacks on our land will fade.  This person understands that our actions are strictly superficial in nature and has no meaning from the heart.  Most of the younger generations have never had this truth placed within their hearts and many of the older generations which fervently lived through their faith have gone to be with God or are deemed irrelevant by the world’s standards.  It is frightening to know that atheist groups and non religious people know more about the condition of our spiritual lives than we do.  Tell me if I am wrong but isn’t that scenario supposed to be reversed?

Want a biblical example?  How about the children of Israel that were wandering in the desert for forty years?  Look at all of the trials that they incurred while they made the trek in those conditions.  At first it seems like God was very cruel in His methods of freedom, and for the most part it becomes clear that the majority of the people did not understand exactly why they were being led around for so long.  It is also clear that the leaders of the people did not completely trust God enough to find ways of showing how God took them out of Egypt but still had to take Egypt out of them while they were approaching their promised destination.  A setting in which the Church leaders of today are following to a tee!  In order for those people to be totally free, they needed all of the Egypt out of them as well and there would be no way that God could totally set them free until Egypt was gone from their hearts.

It became abundantly clear that the children of Israel had plenty of Egypt remaining within their hearts due to the fact that God allowed them to have some time alone while He talked with Moses on the mountain.  We all know the story of how the people lost their focus on God and accepted their immediate surroundings and began to build their own temples according to their selfish and “Egyptian” desires.  A gold calf was soon erected and the party began and continued even as Moses was coming down from the mountain.  The people did not repent of their sins but they argued and made excuses for their actions.

As time continued, the children of Israel eventually became a gathered nation and had defined borders.  For a while they served God and obeyed all of His laws of protection without too many difficulties.  However, as time went along more and more people began to stray away from God and began to serve themselves instead.  The blatant falling away became a necessity and an unwritten law that the entire nation adopted as their own.  Idols popped up and ungodly sacrifices crept into their society until God was left out completely.  God allows this to occur because of His covenant of choice with mankind but their actions had reached its limit and God had to do something in order to preserve their own survival, both physically and spiritually.

In 722 BC, a basically unknown army came to power and with a few years time totally destroyed the Kingdom of Israel, enslaved its population and scattered them across the known globe.  The results of this movement began one of the largest and more ruthless empires that this world has ever known, the Assyrian Empire.  While its rule eventually faded away its lasting effects on Israel lasted up until the modern times when Israel was once again a formal nation.  One would have to question that it took that long to get Egypt out of Israel?  It does pose an intriguing thought.

A custom that many people around the world practices today is called Lent.  This custom of Lent beings at a certain time each year and lasts for a set period of time.  It is a wonderful concept and one that people should live out every day of the year and not for a short period of time.  I know that it is our goal as Christians to live this practice but do we really grasp the spiritual concepts of this custom and it should be applied to our lives each day and not for a short period of time.  It is this custom that God wants us to examine and He wants us to understand the full intent of this custom that goes back far beyond of the origins of the Church.  It is a custom that began with the first sin in the Garden of Eden and it shall be in place until the end of times simply because of the choices we made a very long time ago.

I totally agree with the concept of Lent, however, I have a problem with the length of this custom.  The idea of taking something from our lives that we recognize that is not good for us is a wonderful concept and one that we should examine daily from within our lives.  It is being a part of God’s Kingdom when we are completing this task because it removes us from the world and its deadly standards, the prime principle of Kingdom!  Keeping a bad habit or type of food, or other habit from our lives demonstrates this type of physical commitment.  But many of us fail to recognize this concept when we apply to our spiritual lives and it is this origin that the sky becomes cloudy and for a good reason.

Humans have a tendency to think only in the physical and leave out the spiritual.  This ideology is not hard to understand because we notice the physical every moment of our waking day and do not place the spiritual in like manner.  This is one explanation as to why it is easy for us to allow things back into our lives for we do not see the entire picture, being both the physical and the spiritual.  If we would comprehensively try and understand both sides to our lives we would be far more cautious in the things that we accept and deny but our enemy has done a fabulous job in jading our lives so that we voluntarily leave out both sides.

It is the “dumbing” down principle that our enemy uses in order to open doors to our lives and it is through these doors that he is able to manipulate our physical in order to dim our spiritual; since it takes a tuned heart to understand spirit.  If our physical is “dumbed” down far enough there is no way that we can ever understand past this part of our lives.  Yes we need to understand the physical but we cannot leave out the spiritual because the spiritual represents our eternity.  Would any parent tell a child “no” to something or take away something from that child that they know will harm them, just to give it back to them at a later time?  As a parent this action would be a horrible thing to do to a child especially if that parent knew that the item or situation would cause harm to their child.  And it is this part of Lent that I have problems with, if one is going to eradicate something bad from their lives, then leave out do not allow it to return.

It is compulsory that we understand that the spiritual side of our lives is eternal which means it cannot change.  We must also fully grasp that God is spirit and that He can never change.  However, the physical, and the most readily recognized, can change.  So if our enemy can manipulate our physical enough to completely override our spiritual aspect of our lives, he has effectively won us over.  Our physical lives are just that, physical and will come to an end at some point, but it is the spiritual that represents our creation in an eternal capacity.  God is spirit first and so is our spirit, both are eternal.  Hence how bad of an influence it would be for our parents to allow us to have something, take it away yet give it back to us as if nothing was wrong with it in the first place.  God cannot do this and He shall never do this for once His laws are established they must be followed by Him, no matter how hard humans try and skirt around them or try and change them.

It is the process of masking our spiritual that leads to God having to deal with the physical.  It is also why the physical has problems seeing and understanding as to why God operates in such a manner.  If our spiritual aspect is known it will allow us to know that God’s laws are in place for a reason but if we intentionally allow our physical, Satan, to blind us from our spiritual aspects, it is easy for him to steer us in the wrong direction yet at the same time allow us to believe that our physical portion is doing the correct thing.  This belief does not occur overnight, it takes time.  Yes, certain events, issues or circumstances might rapidly change our immediate thinking or be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but it takes some time for our beliefs to change.  It is through this process that people, groups and nations move from point “A” in their beliefs to point “B” in their life, with point “B” being the place where God has to do something to preserve mankind.

It is this portion of Lent that I struggle with, the spiritual side of it.  I can only imagine if there are those who really take this time of the year and apply the concept all year around.  In all honesty I believe that this is what the “fathers” of Lent intended, but I could be wrong; I would hope that they would believe in this manner.  Are we that weak not to have the desire to leave what we take out on a permanent basis?  Or do we just do it because there is only a set time, as the religious laws have set into motion?  Taking something away and then allowing back into your life is like giving it a general or an army a victory parade upon their victorious return from battle.  Their return into our life serves as a mantle or trophy case in which we are physically and spiritually saying “your presence is welcomed in my house and you may have whatever room you desire” or something along those lines.  It is a dangerous game and if we allow it to continue the Church as we know it shall not be around much longer.

God challenges us to keep the concept of Lent within our hearts, not for a certain period of time but for all time.  It is through the separation of our physical and spiritual lives that represents the full completeness of Lent and the exact Kingdom principle that is first on God’s list for us to apply.  Allowing God to have certain portions of our lives for a certain amount of time only produces a Church that is weak and susceptible to deadly attacks simply because she is blind, and if you look at the Church today that is exactly what you shall see.  It also explains as to why the things of the world are occurring as they are, for the Kingdom that rules the land is in full control and the fruits of that Kingdom will be displayed.

It does not take too much study to find out that humans follow patterns and from the patterns that the world is setting before us are do so with unabated fervor.  This is because the Church has stopped praying, fasting, praying, witnessing, praying, standing up for God and praying that these worldly conquests are being allowed to develop and grow fortuitously.  The Church needs to take a stand for godly issues and to ensure that God’s choice is heard.  It is not an issue that the world does not care about God, this is a given!  It is our responsibility to tell the darkened world AND the darkened Church that God is just about to point “B”. We need the entire spiritual and physical meaning of Lent in our lives at all times and if we do not, study Israel in the year 722 BC and you will have a general idea of what our lands will be giving up.

God desires for us to keep Lent in our hearts but not for a short or an allotted amount of time, but on a continual basis.  We need to pray that we allow God enough access to our hearts that He shows us what we need to get rid of within our lives, permanently.  If we allow God to accomplish this within our hearts there will be no question about having the presence of idolatry or double standards ever.  God is a loving God and a Creator who wants nothing but the best for His children.

DLB