The Ultimate Battle Ground

I have been a little busy lately, so pardon the lapse in this regularly stimulating and well maintained blog. Aside from the holidays, nothing new on the north-eastern front except we also had a birthday and a party to go with it, and our normally little puppy is so huge ready to drop her pups any minute! (More to come on that, to be sure!)

For those of you who really want to know though...

I have been re-inspired in my book reading lately. I love to read, but the fluff stuff I have been forced to choose successful at finishing got a little, well, lame. "Why the fluff?" you may ask? Did I mention we have 5 kids? And do you know how impossibly frustrating and draining challenging it is to continue a single thought let alone a plot line in a book or spiritual principle for more than a moment without complete distraction or interrupttion?! Well, as they are getting older I feel less guilty about explaining to them the necessity of mommy having a little "away from YOU!" time. They have seen the benefits as well, and have of late even suggested it. "Mom... you NEED to read... RIGHT?!?!" Should I be happy or a little worried at their consideration of my quiet time? Hmmmmm?

One of the books I am reading is "The Veritas Project". A pastor's wife on our church staff had cleaned off the book shelves due to the recent move of our church, and this was a rejected selection. That gave me pause, but then I thought if it was in her possession the first place it couldn't be terrible. I am so glad I kept it! If any of you have read Peretti books and liked them, this is right up the same alley. It brings to forefront the spiritual battle we are living in all day, every day, and challenges me to recognize that fact.

My hubby and I were talking about how we are mixed up and think that the spiritual world exists because of the physical, and we get so wrapped up in what we see. The fact is this whole flesh and bone and concrete and dirt are the temporal! If that truth would become part of the every day fabric of my thinking, what I would do differently! God in his amazing power and wisdom and might made me the way he did, and I do not always understand why! It is my flesh, my emotions and feelings, that bungle me up! If I could be a non-emotional, (well, more than I am! Ha!) "intellectual only" being that was ruled completely be logic, my name would be Spock I would follow the Bible and God so much better. It just makes sense to wholly devote ones time, energy and resources into that which is eternal. But... would that be what God wants? A creation that obeys with intellect devoid of any emotion or heart behind it? Obviously not, because I have emotion. (really I do! Please believe me!) Because of emotion I can love, and that really is the meat of the matter. I do what I do- good or bad- because I love. The whole "good dog-bad dog" story. I will feed, nurture, spend time and resources on that which I love.

How did all of this come from reading a book on spiritual warfare? Because I realize much too clearly that I do not love God enough to earnestly pray as I should. My lack of passionate devotion for Christ causes me to be less than faithful in daily Bible reading. I do not take seriously enough the battle for the mind... MY MIND!, that I am engaged in, whether I want to be or not! We have all been spiritually drafted into the "War of the Ages", and we will and are fighting for one side or the other!!!

Let that reality sink in for a while.