November 04, 2015
No-Call-List
Being on the do-not-call list
hasn’t stopped my getting unsolicited phone calls. Normally I simply hang up,
but the other day in frustration I called the number back. To my surprise the
recording said, “If you think you have been called by mistake and want to be
put on our no-call-list press five.” I now return unsolicited calls and often I’m
able to get on the individual organization’s no-call-list. I haven’t stopped all
the calls, but eliminating even a few has given me a sense of empowerment. Spiritually
speaking, the devil is also on my do-not-call list, but that hasn’t stopped him
from calling either. James said, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil,
and he will flee from you” (James 4:7 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----God is all orderly and proper. Satan is all chaotic and radical. In God’s heaven, everything benefits everything. In Satan’s world, everything benefits itself. Submitting to God builds orderliness and propriety into your nature and the things over which you have control, and it extends the benefits of your efforts beyond just to yourself. In a sense, you grow the kingdom of heaven by becoming it more and more through submitting to God's righteousness, peace, and joy, thus working towards the answer to your own prayers, “…Thy kingdom come…” It is there, in His kingdom that the rampart against Satan is raised high and strong, where everything works also to your good so well Satan’s chaos can cause no more than feckless anomalies, one of which even death becomes.
-----“I love thee, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.” (Ps 18:1-3) How orderly and proper is God? So much so that even the arrangement He made of the stars speaks His story of our salvation Ps 19:1-4). The zodiac’s fourth chapter of book one regarding the work of His temporal life is Sagittarius, the centaur drawing His bow in aim at the heart of the sting of death -Scorpio.
-----As I finally became convinced God drew the gospel with the stars, that mythical, half horse half man creature portraying Christ yet bothered me. What truck does the Lord have with Greek mythology? But the centaur is not Greek. This creature was in Sumerian, and then Egyptian zodiac representations long before any Greek was a twinkle in his daddy’s eyes. OK. That chaotic chord is cut. But still, why half horse and half man? It struck me not long ago in one of those sweet aha-moments. To the ancients the horse was what the Sherman tank, the Howitzer, and the Apache helicopter are to us: war equipment. “Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the LORD our God. They will collapse and fall; but we shall rise and stand upright.” (Ps 20:7-8) God’s word is replete with the message of our dependence not upon our own strength, not upon our own “military might“, but upon His. Therefore Christ is our war machine against Satan and the ills of radical chaos to the point that He makes even our own deaths become inconsequential anomalies within the orderly, proper, splendor of all things working together for good. Sagittarius is the portrayal of Christ, our man of war, our victorious war hero, who has shot death in the heart just for you. Praise God! His truth spreads over us from horizon to horizon in an orderly canopy of His love expressed!
-----Most often when I hear “Resist the devil…” it is a stand alone quote. But sorry. I alone have no resistance. I’m not the horse. Therefore, if Satan is going to do any fleeing from me, it will only be at my submission to my Lord who is my war equipment. Nor should we fail to seal the deal. For this “making Satan flee” thing has a third expression: “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you,” seizing the territory Satan fled. Yet, in this world where error penetrates into the deepest layers of our minds, we will have then come to stand at another layer of our onion for peeling, more place from which the Devil should be fleeing, lit by God's new nearness. So then, there is also a fifth expression to it: “Cleanse your hands…purify your hearts…mourn and weep…Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.” (James 4:8b-10) Resisting the Devil unto his fleeing is a redundant, multifaceted process of the new life at work making kingdom in your heart and amongst your affects within this broken, chaotic, temporal place.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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