The Demons at Home

The demons at home....

You know what I'm talking about; those nagging people, habits, home details... the things that make Home the last place you want to be. Everybody has them stashed away--those things that make their very own safe place undesirable.

I have my own 'demons' at home. For years I've been saying, "If only I could move into my own house, get far away and live on my own and..." be it nagging family members, depressing living qualities, or just plain bad habits.

The Prodigal Son must've had a few demons hidden away in his closet, unsatisfied with life on the farm as he was, and he did what for years I longed to do; took what belonged to him and left. He got along alright for a while, but the fact is he had no business stepping out to face the real world while the demons at home were left unconquored.

No matter how you look at it, the demons in the closet and the monsters under the bed have got to go. I've tried running away from mine many times, that or simply ignoring the growing fiends, but the truth never changes. So what are you waiting for? This is your life; are you who you want to be? Are you ready to run off the farm lock stock and barrel, or perhaps there are things under your bed that you've been ignoring? Bad neighbours? Difficult family members? A livingspace in chronic disorder? Then perhaps it's time that you unlocked a few doors, pull a few monsters out into the light and change a few habits. Are you unsatisfied with where you are? Then remember that where you are at and what you have is where you have been placed and what you have been given. You have been placed here with the authority to live as you were created to live and you cannot conquor the world till you face your own castle.

Did He Really Just Say That?!

A week before I had (if not somewhat bitterly) borded a bus to make the last leg of what had been an 8 hour journey stretched out over the course of a 9AM-to-8PM day. If I had not known where I was going perhaps the journey would have been more enjoyable. Perhaps if I had not been accompanying the 15-year-old female 9th-grader in the seat ahead of me it might have been more restful. But regardless, I was being driven quite literally down a road I did not want to go. Part of me resented it, part (the part which I hid under my seat) actually wanted to go, but the rest and most of me was just terrified of what lay at the end.

The bus rolled in at 8:45 PM and we waiting a moment before joining the small departing surge. Very quickly my four travelling companions who had boarded the bus along with me discovered their respective hosts, as did I. I was greeted by a much younger looking couple than what I had certainly expected who introduced themselves as Warren and Rosanna--the teacher giving my two core classes, and his wife--and welcomed me cordially to the lake-town. They would provide my accomodations for the next week; a week spent full of long, exhausting days and activities, A.K.A. - School.

That's right. For one week I had been given an opportunity which I had never before seen in my lifetime; the opportunity to go to a real school and take normal classes. Having been homeschooled K-9 and after that enrolled in an online, 100% government-funded "Distributed Learning" program for my sophomore and junior years of highschool, I had only ever in my lifetime seen the inside of a school building for every reason OTHER than schooling. But now was my opportunity to get the real deal--or as real as it gets in a small Adventist-Christian school.

To my small surprise the days went by relatively quickly and my motivational levels skyrocketted (seeing as I had only four classes in an eight-hour school day and two spares not including extra time before classes begun; I certainly had nothing else to do) I wasn't about to go anywhere near the other students, besides, I had classes to catch up on and homework to get done. If they wanted anything from me they were just going to have to work for it, and boy did I make them work.

Of course, most didn't even bother; that was no surprise. I separated myself just far enough so that people could sense my invisible wall, and stayed just close enough that they might see over it every so often and see the creature self-housed and self-loathed inside. Yes, I played as difficult as they come. I was the quiet mysterious type--the one that continues on even after the game has become old and obnoxious, and I still wasn't quitting.

I will never forget the last day, the first portion of which I spent hanging around this large group of people in the home of one of my prior teachers. I hated it. How it is possible to be surrounded by so many people, yet still feel completely and terribly alone I will never understand. Sure they were nice enough people. But to how many of them did it really matter that I was there? I was just another face. I will never forget that teacher; she saw through my guises and my walls all week long. She said it like it was just the fact she'd been studying all week rather than a question; "You don't care much for big groups of people, do you." And I knew she saw more than I wanted to reveal.

That night special activities were planned in the gym; games. It was all kicked off by a truth vs lie game and ended in table games and volleyball. But in the middle of it all a time of prayer was had while we, having remained in groups from a previous activity, were asked to have a short prayer time with each other. The teacher whose house I had had the unseamly displeasure of three hours in surrounded by people, joined my group and broke the ice with her own prayer, followed by a popular local 12th-grader next to me. I will never forget his prayer and as he spoke I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Did he really just say that?!

He had thanked God--specifically mentioning me by name--for the opportunity for me to be there that week and spend time around them. I melted. WHAT? Had all my walls failed me? Why should he say a thing like that? How could he know who I was? I had vowed ever after never to share my true feelings over that moment with anyone, but in that moment all my walls fell with a terrific crashing, and I was broken to the core. I suddenly wished that I had kept better guard. I suddenly didn't want to leave, wanted to say I would come back in the fall. I suddenly realized that somewhere in this place that I had fought against for so long, that I had built walls against for months, someone wanted me.

That night after the following volleyball game I left, aware that the following morning I would take the 8-hour journey back home and try to return to daily life as I had known it a week before. I almost wished I didn't have to go, but for the protection of my fragility I pulled down the plexiglass dome over myself and left iron-faced, passing no one a glance as I went by. Still fighting. But although my defences had only been breached for but an instant, the few words spoken behind my walls would continue to affect me time and again afterward.

His Public Offer - Max Lucado

His Public Offer

-By Max Lucado

“All of us became part of Christ when we were baptized.” -Romans 6:3

We owe God a perfect life. Perfect obedience to every command. Not just the command of baptism, but the commands of humility, honesty, integrity. We can’t deliver. Might as well charge us for the property of Manhattan. But Christ can and he did. His plunge into the Jordan is a picture of his plunge into our sin. His baptism announces, “Let me pay.”

Your baptism responds, “You bet I will.” He publicly offers. We publicly accept.


 [I did not write this; it is reposted from here]

Glorified by Impurity

¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God.
Renew a loyal spirit within me. -Psalm 51:10

What a beautiful picture; a sinner at the foot of the cross, bent under a burden of sin, receiving redemption and freedom. For those of you who don't know, the picture above is from one of the most touching scenes of a cartoon remake of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Here is Pilgrim, come to the cross. He's struggled on and on with this weight of sin on his shoulders. But at the cross, his burden falls off his back and into the grave which he deserved to be his own.

A week or so ago God spoke to me about purity. As some of you know I have struggled a very long time in the area of purity. This particular day I was feeling quite discouraged, having just fallen down under my own burden of sin, and I was talking to myself, beating myself up over this incident. But then God told me something quite clearly and it was this: "I don't want you to be pure for Me; I want to be Pure for you."

And it hit me. Why am I striving toward a goal of purity? Why am I trying to be pure for myself--for others? Only God is Good and only God is Pure. He is the source of all purity. Just as Paul wrote to the Colossians:

²⁷ ... And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory. -Colossians 1:27b

Christ lives in you. You can't do it for yourself. I can't do it for my self. I can never be pure enough. Christ lives in me. 'I want to be Pure for you.' For years I have believed that I had to deal with my struggle, that it was my responsibility to make myself good. But look back at Psalm 51:10; David doesn't say, 'God help me make my heart clean, help me be loyal to you.' No! David says, (paraphrased) 'Father, it's impossible for me; remake my heart, no don't just remake it, create it all new. Put a loyal spirit in me to follow your will. You do it, I can't' The sad reality is that my prayer has been self-empowerment--'help me to do...'--rather than divine enabling--'I can't do this, Father, do it for me'

I lived by 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 for a long time, but I missed the point completely. I stayed focused on God not taking away Paul's thorn when I should have been focused on the reason why: God's grace and glorified strength.

God's Purity is glorified in my impurity.

So what part of your life is to God's glory?

The Wheat and the Weeds

Matthew 13:24-30 (New International Version, ©2011)

The Parable of the Weeds

²⁴ Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. ²⁵ But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. ²⁶ When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. ²⁷ “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
²⁸ “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
²⁹ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. ³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”


Did you just catch that? I read this and I had stop right there and process it and say, 'Did he really just say that?!' So you might be saying now, 'Hold up! I answered 'no' to the first question! Anyway, what did he say?' Well maybe you ought to read that parable over again?

When I read this parable I realized something. The Sons of God, being represented by the wheat, were already planted and the sower of the good seeds--the Son of Man--knew the wheat from the weeds, and what's more, he planted the wheat originally. What does that mean? It means God knows exactly who is to be saved, and he knows who isn't.

But wait. What does that mean?

That means God has it all figured out. When He says 'move', you better move. It means that from the begining He ordained those who are saved, it means that there are some that he saved, and there were weeds that were already lost--that he knew were lost--that from the begining he knew that no matter what he could do, the sad reality was that they would never turn to him even if he tried for all of eternity.

'Okay,' you say, 'so why didn't God just destroy those people? Couldn't even a just God do that since he knew they would never turn?' But take a look at verses 29 and 30 again:

²⁹ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.
³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

The just God could have destroyed those people--he did it in Noah's day. So you say, 'Why would he do it then, and not now?' Look at the earth then, and look at it now. The Bible states in Genesis 6 that the earth was full of wickedness. But in verse 8 of that chapter the writer tells us that "Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord"--Noah alone--he and his family, his sons and their wives, were the small remnant of those that could be saved. And so they were.

So what about the earth now? Noah's remnant was all of 8 people. There are 6.5 billion-some people on the earth today, and how many of those are God's remnant? And so I ask you, was it easier for a just God to show 8 questioning, unknowing human beings a dillemma of his wrath, or would it be easier to show hundreds of millions of questioning, unknowing human beings an even greater wrath? Now, I don't know the real reason God hasn't wiped all the wickedness away, I can only speculate, but the parable does tell us one thing; that if the harvesters were to pull out the weeds before the end, the wheat would be damaged and uprooted. For out of the flood God took Noah and his family, out of Jericho God took Rahab and her family, and out of Sodom he took Lot and his family, but were it for even ten righteous people, he would have spared even the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah. [Genesis 18:16-33] And for a billion he has spared even the wickedness of the earth.

²⁹ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.
³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

[The Parable of the Weeds Explained: Matthew 13:36-43]

Look Up to the Cross

Isaiah 53:3-4 (New International Version, ©2011

^[3] He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. ^[4] Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

Look up to the cross. Who did you see there? Just another man... a common criminal receiving the wrath of God? Just another zealot? No. On that cross hangs the Son of God, the "Firstborn of all Creation." On that cross is God in flesh, and why? Because the zeal that holds him there is the same zeal which holds you to his heart now. It was not nails or soldiers that held him there but love--strong, pure, true love. Even after we despised him, rejected him, spit in his face... even after the very face of his father was turned from him, he chose his cross.

Look up to the cross; who do you see there? Just another man... a common criminal? No. On that cross hangs the Savior and Lover of your heart, fullfilling His perfect act of love for you.

One Way

1 Timothy 2:5-6 (New International Version, ©2011)



[5] For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, [6] who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time.

How many different roads are there out there? How many different ways does the world offer? Sex, drugs, parties, righteousness by works... there are alternate directions every way we turn. It all comes down to one central idea; the idea that you're just fine without God.

The world offers many roads, but God only offers one, and it is straight and narrow. There will be hills on this road; it will go up--sometimes very steeply--but only up. And at the end, the throne of God. It is the only road which will take you to the Father, and this road is called Jesus.