For those of you who have been reading my blog regularly, you probably remember one of my first entries, When I Was Five, but if not I'll summarize it quickly. Most five-year old children dream of being firefighters, doctors, policemen, and Bob the Builder. Unlike them, I had the lofty dream of being a husband. It is my firm belief that God planted that desire within me and has been grooming me to fulfill that dream for whatever God-glorifying purpose it may serve.
Now, it had never occurred to me in such terms that Satan would be on assignment to destroy my dream. It has been said that you don't need to kill a man, but rather if you kill his dream he is only a walking corpse. It may seem somewhat unbelievable that a charismatic prayer warrior like myself would not realize this, but sometimes head knowledge doesn't fully make it's way to the heart and therefore gets shoved away into the intellectual caverns of a prepossessed mind. Spiritual warfare is not an unfamiliar term, and while some like to chalk everything that goes wrong in their lives up to spiritual warfare, it may surprise some of you to know that that isn't far from the truth. In John 10:10 Satan is compared to a thief out to steal, kill, and destroy. It is not even a stone's throw away from absolute truth to assume that Satan may never physically destroy his targets, but if he can destroy the dreams, hopes, and aspirations then he doesn't need to kill the body; souls are really what's important to him anyway.
Over the past months I have been wavering between two extremes: love cannot exist and love abounds throughout the very fabric of all that exists. I know within my essence, that is my soul and spirit, that love the single greatest gift mankind can exchange. So why would go from that belief to, "love cannot exist?" To say that the devil made me do it is really dishonest and not taking responsibility for the choices I have made. Jesus told His disciples that they would be fishers of men, but did it ever occur to anyone that Satan is also a fisher of men? In my case, Satan dangled the bait out in front of my face and I bit. Satan can't make you do anything unless you first give him the authority, and when I started to believe his lies I began a downward spiral in my thinking that led to a whole host of absurd and bitter rantings. Make no mistake, it was my choices that led me to this thinking, Satan merely provided the material with which I then disseminated into dark thoughts and ill-spoken words.
I'll end this with the theme of my next rant on love, in the words of my Bible study leader and pastor,
You can't have love this way (points from himself to the crowd)
If you don't have love coming and going this way (points to the sky and then back to himself).
Until next time, which could be as early as a few hours,
De Facto
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