I love it when the Lord brings several different thoughts into my head and then begins to string them together. The best way I can come up with to explain what He is teaching me this morning is to give a scenario, Say you are a soldier engaged in battle. You have confidence because you are surrounded by your troops and you all have a common enemy. You step out in front and move forward into battle. Then it happens. You realize your troops have retreated and you are now surrounded by enemy soldiers. Another scene would be as a kid, hanging out with your best friend. You're walking down the street when the neighborhood bully steps into your path. You can take him, because there are two of you, but then you realize, your friend just high tailed it off toward home and there you stand facing a 6ft beast with fangs, drooling as he is about to make you is midday snack. Okay, one more. Your father is about to beat the soup out of you like he has done so many times before. Your thoughts are something like this, "Maybe this time Mom will speak up. Maybe this time she will pack our bags and we will leave here for good." Or "Maybe this time he will kill me." because Mom just walked out the door. It's too difficult for her to watch.
When you think about these scenes, what thoughts come to mind? Where did they go? Why did they leave me? You may fight briefly or try to run, but often times, we give up, we give in to the enemy and hope for the best. I read a book years ago explaining how abusive men were usually abused as children and they have a hatred toward women because their mother's abandoned them, didn't protect them. As adults they expect their wife to love them enough to rescue them from the darkness, but it's not possible. So they do what they know and beat her.
What I am seeing this morning is how the enemy uses abandonment in our society today to show up and imitate God. We all have a need to be loved and accepted. When a person is abandoned the hurt is from the one who abandoned them, more than the one who beats the snot out of them. To abandon someone is like saying, "You have no value. You are nothing." This is why street gangs are able to scoop up kids who have no parental attention. They come home from school while a parent is at work and they sit there alone and bored. That's when the enemy comes in and says, "You are okay by me. I accept you." It seems so backward that we would turn to the one who abused us, but if nobody is there to show us what real love is, we take what we can get. We focus on what is in front of us.
Abandonment causes us to settle. If I am not worthy of love, I will settle for the closest thing I can find. Abandonment is the opposite of God's greatest commandments to love Him with every part of us and to love each other as ourselves. Love is an action. He tells us to care for the poor and the lost, because if we don't show up at their door, the enemy will.
As we sit idle or are too busy focusing on ourselves and our hurts people are answering to the false security the enemy is offering. Abandonment works through generations. It feeds all the other beasts of the enemy like low self esteem, anger, isolation etc. The power your past has over you needs to be turned around and pointed outward, into your future and into others lives.
You can only be abandoned by those you expect to stand beside you. Not all abandonment is intentional. People die unexpectedly, but there is One and only One who will be with you every minute of every day. He has been with you every minute of every day and will be from here through eternity if you choose Him. The real Comforter.
Part of what God is showing me is how our sense of who is good and who is evil is dulled when people we are supposed to be able to trust hurt us. Good people do bad things. Also in the enemy's attempt to imitate Christ, evil people do good things. I believe there are two ways people react to this confusion. They trust everybody or they trust no one. When we are offered comfort when our world is full of hurt or we are offered acceptance when our world is full of rejection, it's difficult to walk away, especially when we are not sure who is good and who is not. Sometimes we need to find someone further along in their Christian walk to help us determine who to trust. I pass things by Dave all the time, even when I think I'm sure I know the answer. My group of trusted friends is growing.
You can't judge a book by it's cover. I have seen young men who appear to be someone you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley jump up to help somebody in need. I have also seen an elderly woman rip a young store clerk apart with racially motivated name calling. We have to learn to allow God to show us who is good and who is evil. And who is influenced by good and who is influenced by evil. Just because a person calls themselves a believer, doesn't mean you can trust them. There are Christians who are totally under the influence of a demon. What better tool for the enemy to use, believers against believers. Trusting God goes far beyond believing he will provide our next meal. I believe there are some of us who need to see evil, not to run away from it, but to face it, expose it, and demand it leave whomever it is tormenting. If we were all afraid of demons, and unable to hear from God, who would enlist in the army of spiritual warriors?
Romans 8:37-39
New International Version (NIV)
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Part of what God is showing me is how our sense of who is good and who is evil is dulled when people we are supposed to be able to trust hurt us. Good people do bad things. Also in the enemy's attempt to imitate Christ, evil people do good things. I believe there are two ways people react to this confusion. They trust everybody or they trust no one. When we are offered comfort when our world is full of hurt or we are offered acceptance when our world is full of rejection, it's difficult to walk away, especially when we are not sure who is good and who is not. Sometimes we need to find someone further along in their Christian walk to help us determine who to trust. I pass things by Dave all the time, even when I think I'm sure I know the answer. My group of trusted friends is growing.
You can't judge a book by it's cover. I have seen young men who appear to be someone you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley jump up to help somebody in need. I have also seen an elderly woman rip a young store clerk apart with racially motivated name calling. We have to learn to allow God to show us who is good and who is evil. And who is influenced by good and who is influenced by evil. Just because a person calls themselves a believer, doesn't mean you can trust them. There are Christians who are totally under the influence of a demon. What better tool for the enemy to use, believers against believers. Trusting God goes far beyond believing he will provide our next meal. I believe there are some of us who need to see evil, not to run away from it, but to face it, expose it, and demand it leave whomever it is tormenting. If we were all afraid of demons, and unable to hear from God, who would enlist in the army of spiritual warriors?
New International Version (NIV)
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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