So, summer is officially here...well, I guess not OFFICIALLY officially, but it FEELS like summer. When it's getting up to 94 degrees out - it's summer. We just finished a week at VBS, Hero Headquarters. I was at our new campus, Stewarts Creek, this year (I've always been at the main campus) and so it was a new experience. As usual, we had our typical over zealous kids in each group, but for the most part it was pretty good. The whole week was geared toward unnamed heroes in the Bible...the boy who brought the fish and loaves, the girl that told Naaman about the prophet who could heal him, and today's lesson was about Paul and his nephew.
As one of my closest friends and I discussed just this week...if anyone in Christian history had a right to complain it would have been Paul. He was put in jail, shipwrecked, beaten, bitten by a snake...and those are the stories that were written about in the Bible. Who knows what else he endured? But we don't see him complaining or giving up.
I'm going to be real here. Recently I've found it difficult to write because I've been complaining. Don't get me wrong, it's been a "holy" complaint - if you will, but nonetheless it's been complaining. I've been struggling with decisions made by friends that I felt saw eye to eye with me on HUGE, serious, spiritual issues. I thought we were compatible and in agreement completely. But we're not. And that really stinks.
A few weeks ago I had to confront my friend - hopefully I did it in love - about some sin issues. It wasn't received the way I had hoped, with complete acceptance as truth. And I've talked about this and talked about this with my Daddy, wanting to know WHY my dear friend is being deceived. And I realized how He must feel.
If every true believer would get angry and hostile toward the enemy who is trying to steal, kill, and destroy...this world would be turned around. But too often we're busy flirting with the enemy. We'd rather blame God for the things the enemy does in our lives than to see the devil for what he really is - a deceiver. A rotten, ugly, vicious, hateful, destroying, malicious, horrific deceiver.
When are we all going to begin to fight back? Fight for marriages and family? For purity and innocence? For what's RIGHT according to the Word of God...and seeing it as right, not as an "option" for christian living? I seriously believe some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction in believer's lives are apathy and lethargy.
There is darkness all around us, and it shows itself in the form of smiling faces that are fighting holiness. If we're called to be a peculiar people, which we ARE, than our lives should show it in the everyday decisions we come against. We have the power of the Living God at our disposal, but we often times forget that, or simply don't believe it. But it's the TRUTH. Paul knew that. And that's what kept him going, not giving up. He was sold out.
So I'm going to try to complain less and pray more, believing that the seed is planted and that the Great Gardener will produce fruit. I'm going to try to remember that there is an enemy out there knowing he has little time left to do much destruction. And I'm going to continue to fight for truth and spiritual freedom in lives all around me.
Maybe the kids weren't the only ones that learned something from Hero Headquarters this week.