Sin

Sin is a strange and remarkable thing. It’s innocuous and horrible at the same time. It slips in without the sinner noticing it’s there. It jumps in and consumes a sinner in one fell swoop. It’s barely there and it’s all consuming at the same time.

As I write this I am holding a sleeping baby. This small little person has only been on this earth a handfull of months. In that time the baby has done no wrong, not in human eyes anyway. All actions have stemmed from need, the need to eat, the need for love, the need for companionship and care. What may appear to be selfishness in the first six or so months of life is more often than not the child’s attempt to adjust to life outside the womb and to have all its needs met.

And yet...somewhere deep within that child, deep in the heart, there is sin. It sits there, lurking, hidden from view, waiting to make its presence known. Like an intruder hiding in a closet, sin hides in the heart. It will one day make an appearance but infancy isn’t when it shows, at least not really. Yes, this sleeping child fights having a diaper changed and getting its nose cleaned. It sometimes cries at being restrained or left by a parent. It whines when it can’t reach something or doesn’t feel good. Squirms and complains in a baby kind of way when sleep doesn’t come easily or deeply. But is that really sin?

I can only answer that from my human mindset and in my humanness, I would have to say those things are more about having needs that must be met by another than it is about sin. The Lord built wonderful things into babies to see to it that they tug at the heartstrings and that cause older kids and adults to want to help them.

Big eyes and small baby sounds draw the attention and pull the nurturing out of almost all people that encounter a baby. Cries are pitched so that they bring out a ‘I must fix whatever is wrong, NOW’ reaction. Particularly in women. These are things the Lord placed into babies to draw out a certain reaction from those in a position to care for and nurture them.

I saw an article a year or so ago about cows that found a baby...something, I forget what the animal was...stuck in the mud. The cows stood in a circle around the baby, protecting it the best they could until people came and rescued it. The article spoke of how babies are made to draw out that nurturing instinct, especially in females, even in the animal kingdom.

So my human heart and mind cannot see the things young babies do as being sin although my Scriptural understanding is that those babies are created with sin in their hearts. It lives within even the most innocent of people, lying dormant until whatever time it comes to the surface and shows in the actions of that person.

Even the elect are not immune to sin. We all do it. Scripture talks of it often and in great detail. We are told how it comes to be in people, who the author of it is, the punishment for it, and more. Knowing all of that, having it spelled out before us, we still find ourselves mired in it. Even those born again, regenerated, elect people of God commit it every single day.

And we encounter it in others, strangers and loved ones alike, as we go about our lives. There isn’t a day that goes by, a breath we take, a moment we live, that we are not surrounded by and mired in sin.

To live…

Is to sin.

Scripture tells us that we must all live out the lives assigned to us. For many years I had no idea of that bit of wisdom passed down from the Lord. Hidden within what appears to be a very long book, placed in the midst of much instruction and teaching, lies a tiny granule of a huge treasure. It’s located in 1 Corinthians 7:17 and says…

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.

I can think of that verse and remember it day in and day out but let me get faced with people committing certain sins and those sins push just the right button to create an immediate and human reaction in me. There are just some things in this life that I handle a lot better than others and certain human traits push every button I have. And try though I might I cannot seem to not find myself bothered by those traits. And in my humanness I tend to forget that each person was set in the life they have.

And yet...people everywhere sin. I have found myself thinking a great deal on sin lately. It just kind of keeps coming back to me. When I started writing this I had encountered a couple of things in my personal life where sin was involved. I thought of sin then. I thought of how different people are overpowered by certain sins, much the way some people have interests in one thing or another. I like dolls. My husband likes golf. I have relatives that love exercise, video games, movies, concerts, and more. Each person is drawn to what interests them.

It seems to me that we are just as drawn to certain sins. Adultery is not my sin. I cringe at the very thought. It was never my sin. Even in my young teens I remember being appalled by adultery. But I was drawn into romance books which is, in many ways, a love affair of the heart. I gave up romance novels when I married but I read more than my share of them before then. Were those books sin? Some of them were. Some of them had explicit adult only situations that must be some kind of written pornography.

Those books were far from my only sins but I was drawn to them from a young age through no intent of my own. It just happened.

And so I was slowly working my way through writing this post, setting it aside often to tend to family and other obligations, when America experienced yet another atrocious school shooting. I'm sure I'm not the only one that was shocked and horrified, terrified and angry, sad and worried...the list goes on and on, and on. My husband was away from home and text me that there had been another shooting. Until I got that text I was blissfully unaware. In my curiosity I flipped the news on and watched a few short minutes, just long enough to find out the location and that the shooter had not been caught. I turned the TV off again. I didn't want to see it, didn't want to hear it. I couldn't stand to see it played out before my eyes.

And I must admit I did something else too.

I thanked the Lord that none of my family were there. I thought 'but for the grace of God that could be us in that situation'. It was a selfish thought. A selfish reaction. But it was so very heartfelt.

In the moments that passed after that, moments that added up to I don't know how much time, I flipped the news on from time to time. I did not want to see the scenes, did not want to hear the commentary. I just wanted to know if the kids in that school were safe yet and what the death toll was.

That shooting still lingers in my mind and heart. I think of the kids I know that are of the age that they could have been in that school. I think of the days when I was a substitute teacher and how we never had to face those things. It never crossed my mind to even think about such a think happening back then.

And then I thought of the sin that culminated in that horrific act. At first I thought that might be the most horrific outward manifestation of sin...a shooting at a school...but then I knew that to me there was a worse one. Abortion has to top a school shooting, for me anyway. Abortion is the slaughtering of the most innocent of all people. It's the murder of people that can do nothing to protect themselves. And to make it all the worse it is the mother that does it. Oh, she may not wield the knife or inject herself with poisons but she does it just the same.

What kind of sin must it take for a woman to kill her own child?

But is that most horrific example of sin, that total evilness, any worse than any other? Scripture says that if we commit one sin, we commit them all. So if we tell a lie...we have murdered. I will admit that I don't fully understand it all. My human mind cannot fathom the depths to which sin goes. I struggle and stumble through my own thoughts on sin right now. I question and seek.

I saw a question on a reformed site just this morning. Someone had read something by Charles Spurgeon and said they were struggling with it and did not understand. Someone else responded that that was a good thing because in their struggle to understand they would dig deeper, go further, learn more.

Sin is simple.

It is the disobedience of God.

So simple. So easy. So complex. So hard. My human mind relegates sin to evilness. I think of sins like murder, adultery, child abuse, theft... But, it's not that simple. It's all those things and more. All those things and none of them.

It is, simply put, to disobey God. And yet it consumes people until it literally controls them. I saw something the other day, and I can't remember now where I saw it, that said the government wants to put chips in all people's heads to control their every action and thought. I don't know what that was about, I saw it for only moment and paid it almost no attention but I think of it now. If a person had some sort of all controlling chip implanted in them it would override everything else in them until that person was at the mercy of whatever was controlling that chip. Sin is much that way. It is a tiny little thing, deep inside us, and it controls everything. Living and breathing within the human heart like some sort of vicious monster.

At least it does unless we are saved from it.

Only that vicious monster is like a tiny speck. So little, so small. Just the disobedience of God. It's in that small single little thing that it becomes so very huge and evil.

It's easy for everyone to see why murder and stealing is wrong, easy to understand why lying and adultery are wrong...or is it? There are some that see nothing wrong with lying, there was a time that I saw nothing wrong with it. I have a relative that often tells me that I should say or do something that would be a lie and I have to tell this person I do not lie. I have even had this person tell someone else that I would say something even though saying it would be a lie and I had to correct them before this other person. For some reason this relative does not seem to get it that I'm not going to lie, not even a little.

But most people can see the evilness in acts like murder. Some can see it in things like stealing and lying. And many more see nothing wrong with it. Even if they do at first see the problem areas it's a slippery slope because they may think it's wrong to commit adultery but they may see nothing wrong with being attracted to some Hollywood star or musician. They may find nothing wrong with looking at someone with inappropriate thoughts while out in public.

Growing up I was in and out of 'church' buildings. I heard all sorts of rights and wrongs within those so-called holy walls. I was taught to have reverence in the 'church', taught it was God's house. One of the things I was taught in 'church' was that a sin is a sin is a sin. In other words no one sin is greater than any other, yet Scripture tells us that the greatest of commandments is that we love God with all our heart, mind and soul.

So, Scripturally the greatest sin would be to not love God above all else. That's a sin even the elect commit every day. We simply do not have it within our beings to love God all day long, every single day, every second, above all else. It can't be done. But we are told to do it.

What kind of love is required of us? Are we to love God with the kind of love we feel for our spouse and children? An earthly emotional love? Or is it something else?

That's a very good question and a possible topic for another day but for today I have no answer. And for today all I can say is that to sin by not loving God with all of our being for every second of our entire life is a sin that has no outward manifestations. Yes, there will be far reaching consequences for not doing so, even the elect will feel and see them, but there is no easy to see 'he lied' kind of proof.

It is a sin of the heart. A sin that hides so very deep within the soul that only the Lord can truly see it. Even we do not have the ability to fully know to what depths we commit this sin.

And that brings up a whole different side of sin- the soul deep side.

Scripture says, Christ says, that people will call him 'Lord, Lord' and He will say, "depart from me, I never knew you, you workers of inequity'.

Who are these people that will cry out 'Lord, Lord' only to be turned away? Cast aside when the last hope is gone? Christ says they will say, 'didn't we do these things in your name', and yet He will cast them aside anyway.

WHO are they?

They have to be believers. At least to some degree. They will call him "Lord, Lord" and tell Him they did things in His name. So outwardly they must be some kind of believer. Inwardly too. It seems like maybe they will be shocked when Christ turns them away. For that to happen they had to believe themselves to be saved. They had to think they were given salvation. They had to BELIEVE, probably to the depths of their souls that they were regenerate, born again Christians. And Christ will tell them to 'get away from me you workers of inequity'. Oh, the horror that day will bring for anyone that finds themselves in that situation. But Scripture says it will happen.

And why?

What separates us from Christ?

Sin. Sin is the separation between us and our holy God. And it's sin, sin rooted soul deep within us, that divides us from Christ. That then is what will divide the people that cry out 'Lord, Lord'. And yet these people BELIEVE. Their sin in that day of reckoning will be just as great as the murderer.

So sin is obvious-we see it in people like murderers, people that lie, cheat, steal. We hear it in profane words and all sorts of media. But it's also so quiet, so unassuming, so decietful that it hides so far within the souls of people that they can hold a belief in Christ, seeming almost to cling to Him, maybe even die for Him, only to be told, 'I never knew you'.

We are told to make our calling sure, to make our election sure, but how many religious people have tested themselves and believe themselves to be in the faith?

Sin is a horribly, remarkable, horrid thing. It's easy to see in most people but it's no less deadly when it hides so deep within the heart that the very person does not know it's there. It can be so deceitful as to hide under a guise of Christianity.

Life is but a frayed rope dangling us between heaven and hell. One last break of the cords takes the illusion away and sends us plummeting or soaring. We all deserve hell, are all sinners in need of punishment. Only those given grace are saved from the horrors of hell.

And sin...

Sin is an all consuming fire devouring everyone in it's path, everyone that ever lived. Only the elect are saved from it's grip when God's mighty hand snatches them away.

And as huge as that fire is...

It's summed up in the tiny little explanation that sin is quite simply the disobedience of God.

The 'benefit' of abortion

I have a relative that identifies as a femnist. Through that relative I have been exposed to some of the femnist thoughts.I probably represent just about everything femnists stand against and am certainly in objection not only to the femnists thoughts and beliefs but even more so in the way they try to push those thoughts and beliefs on the world while claiming its best for women.

I could probably stay busy from now until forever writing about how those femnist thoughts and beliefs are in opposition to Scripture and how they are have made things worse for women not better but my intent today is to cover one tiny bit of a single part of femnism.

A while ago I was looking at something my feminist relative brought to my attention, more to see just what it was this relative was interested in than anything else, and discovered just how vocal some of these women, and a very, very few men, are on the subject of abortion.

That didn't even come close to surprising me. Well, maybe seeing that there are male feminists out there was a bit surprising. I guess I'm sheltered but there are some things I just don't know and that's one of them, or at least it was. I can't begin to comprehend why any man would want to be in support of feminist ideas. Isn't that like being against themselves, more or less anyway?

Shocking as that discovery was it didn't come close to my other discoveries. There were women actually writing of unborn babies being little aliens or monsters taking over their bodies.

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that reads anything I write but just for claritys sake let me just say that I in no way support abortion. I do not feel that abortion should ever be allowed. Under any circumstances. I have a 'Christian' relative that used to say abortion was only acceptable if the pregnancy puts the mothers life in danger or if it's a result of rape. I do not support abortion for either of those reasons. To kill a baby because pregnancy could be dangerous to the mother is to kill a child for what might harm the mother. I would die before I would kill my own child, even a teeny tiny unborn child. And rape...well, a pregnancy that is the result of rape simply means that something wonderful comes from a horrible situation. Yes, I truly believe that. That same relative that says abortion is okay for rape victims once told me I could not really believe that. Oh, yes I do. Babies are wonderful. They are marvelous. They are as close to true innocence and perfection as we can get here on earth. At least to my mind and heart. And a child that comes from rape is a bright ray in a black experience.

Okay, so I'm biased toward babies. I gladly admit it. Picture a happy little yellow smiley face here.

But back to what I am supposed to be writing about...

In all those comments, comments that hurt my heart and baffled my mind, I came across one that said something to the effect of how men are silent on how abortion benefits them.

I guess, if I really think about it, there are some men that do benefit from abortion and I'm not talking about the doctors that get paid to perform such grisly acts. Some would be dads are 'spared' supporting a child, being tied to it's mother, or 'playing' daddy. They are saved from years of child support by abortions.

But those weren't the dads I thought of when I read that unfeeling comment. I thought of all the dads out there that have begged and pleaded a woman not to kill their child. I thought of all the dads that grieved the death of a baby because the woman they got pregnant didn't want to have the baby. I thought of all the dads that never even knew their was a baby.

Granted, a lot of those dads could probably care less but I'm sure there are some that would do anything to get to save their child, to raise it, to love it.

As I write this I have a small baby sleeping on my chest. The warm weight of this precious human treasure fills my heart with love and my mind and soul with joy. These tiny baby breaths make me grateful this child was given to the parents it was and spared the pure evilness of the mothers that would kill their own child. The type of mother that cold heartedly writes of how men are benefited by abortion and calls unborn babies monsters.

An atheists theory

Quite some time back I came across something written by an atheist. To my knowledge I have had very few encounters with true atheists and the ones that I have had have left me...disturbed, for lack of a better explination. I don't claim to fully understand the belief system of an athiest, or the lack of a belief system. I don't even claim to partially understand it. All I know is that they deny the existence of God. Should I know more? Maybe but I do not feel led to further learn their standings on any particular matter. What I do know is that the very few encounters that I have had with athiests have felt very much like butting my head against a brick wall. I got nowhere real fast.

But then again I have had much the same experience with professing 'Christians' that are Armenians. It's just a matter of who, or what, they put their faith into and they usually cannot be shaken from that faith. An Armenian does at least profess the existance of the Lord and therefore gives you a placeof connection however flawed that belief might be. An atheist on the other hand...well, there is nowhere to start with them because they are disdainful of all of Scripture and lack any belief in a higher power, particularly God, and so they pretty much shut you down from the first word you say. Nothing you say after that gets anywhere with them. At least not in my limited experience.

My husband once told me...'he's an atheist. Don't waste your time debating with him.' And he was right. I tried and tried and got nowhere fast.

All that to say...I have little experience with atheists and what little I have had was disheartening to say the least. And so when I came across this short snippet written by an atheist I was intrigued. Not because I in any way shared their belief but because their thoughts were so far removed from my own and because that short bit of writing gave me insight into the thought process of a group of people that deny with their mouths the Lord I hold so dear.

This bit of writing was about the Bible. I would love to quote it here but that isn't an option so I must content myself of giving a summary of what was written.

This atheist wrote that they were more agnostic than atheist but that came after a profession of being an atheist, whatever that means. I guess it means this person is more than an atheist and less than an agnostic? I really don't know and I don't suppose it matters, whatever they are, they are lost, unregenerate, and writing out of their lost and sinful nature. This person admitted to believing there is probably some kind of 'omnipotent supreme being' in control of 'the universe'.

I can't even begin to grasp the mindset of someone that is agnostic/athiest and yet believes in a 'supreme being'. What exactly would this supreme being be? How would it operate?

I have no idea and I am not willing to put the research in to try and figure it out.

This atheist/agnostic implied that humans are a close minded lot with a very bad idea of what that supreme being is. Apparently Christians have it wrong as do all other belief systems...what then would this 'supreme being' look like?

The snippet of writing went on to say the Bible is wrong, the Koran is wrong, that all holy books are wrong. They admitted to talking to others, many of whom were supposedly church goers that all agreed with their thought process.

According to this person 'holy books' have given us much in the past but are no longer relevant. Why? Have we come so far as a human race that we no longer need the Lord of all? I have heard that college professors, among others, claim and teach that God is a crutch for poor people, that their lives are so bad they need some kind of hope so they must believe in an imaginary being that somehow makes it all better. Have we come that far? Did our distant ancestors need holy books that are no longer relevant to our modern times?

But here's the thing, from that point this atheist almost seems to me to prove his own point wrong. In a rather disjointed way he went on to say people are incapable of whispering a sentence to each other, passing it through several people, without messing it up. Their point, I assume, was to say that the Bible and any other 'holy ' book must be inaccurate because people mess things up and the Bible has been passed down through centuries.

A couple of years back I did some research into the history of the Bible, a fascinating subject, and read many things about just how amazing it is that the Scriptures came to be and how most of the authors never met, never read the others writings, and yet the different parts all correlate.

And yet this atheist says the Bible can't be right because it would have been messed up with each 'retelling'. No doubt there are some messed up versions out there. I would even agree that the changing of just one word can and does ruin the point to a whole section of Scripture. And out of all those differing versions, different 'holy books' as the atheist called them, we have many varying belief systems.

That is a simple, sad truth. It would seem that if people had only 'kept the facts straight' in Scripture, in the 'holy books', than we wouldn't have all these mixed up beliefs but that isn't the case. People have been believing erroneously since almost the beginning of creation. It is a flaw in the sinful hearts of men to seek after...something.

Scripture tells us that all men know the existence of God because all of creation points to it's Creator and yet some will deny that knowledge.

The Lord has protected his Scriptures, kept them holy, and reserved them for his people. For as long as their is time on earth there will be the written word of the Lord. People may do their best to corrupt and distort it through intention or error but the Truth will be preserved.

The Lord has allowed all these other versions to pervert his Truth while also preserving his Word for those that He has not allowed to be deluded.

And so...I have read and reread that atheists words, wondering, thinking, marveling at his thought process. Almost amazed at his thinking. How does one come to such a convoluted theory that they can both make a good point and prove their own point wrong at the same time, without realizing they have just done that?

God's protection

This morning I came across something that struck me as really strange. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty in our world that strikes me as bizarre but for some reason this just really stood out to me. And I guess in the whole scheme of things this wasn't even really all that bad. Or maybe it was way beyond bad. It's really all in how you look at it.

I was on social media, glancing through things to see if any of my loved ones had posted anything new whenI saw a post from someone I used to know. This someone is a 'Christian' and her post was from a so-called 'Christian' preacher. It was a link to a video which I did not watch. I very much wish there had been a transcript of the video because I would love to have skimmed over it to get a better idea of the content. 

I did get enough of an idea from the title though. It had to do with not wasting your angel. There was a subtitle that spoke of not wasting God's protection. I couldn't help mentally shaking my head at that one. How far must the human mind go to come to the conclusion that we mere mortals can waste anything our holy God sees fit to give us? Yes, we are all guilty of wasting the time He has given us. Just one example of that is this very post I'm writing. While I do not consider it to be wasted time, it is taking my time, taking me, away from those the Lord has given into my care. But even with that thought in mind I know the Lord wants this written or I wouldn't be sitting here writing it.

And yet...

My human mind marvels at how important a person must believe themselves to be to ever believe they have the ability to waste God's protection. 

God, the God that created the world from nothing, the God that spoke things into existance, isn't going to allow mere mortals the ability to control any protection He sees fit to bestow upon them. 

I'm left wondering just what that man thinks it took to get him out of bed this morning? To see to it that he didn't have a car accident yesterday? To save him from all the folly he commits every day? To give him the very breath he takes in? And whether or not that man sees those very things as the Lord's protection and if so...then how is that protection given to him? Is it because that man willed it so, did he chose to breath each breath, to wake up this morning, to avoid a vehicular accident? Or is that kind of protection somehow different than the protection supposedly given by 'your' angel? 

Regardless of how he feels or thinks about all of those things it would appear that man somehow has the ability to control God's protection and somehow, someway, we can control whether or not we use or waste 'our' angels. 

I don't pretend to understand the thought process behind that kind of thinking but I will say that it doesn't surprise me. It goes hand in hand with man's belief that he or she has the ability to control our own salvation. 

I was recently talking to a relative about marriage and divorce and I had to ask this relative if they believed in God, if they believed in Christ. The answer I got was that this person believes in God, that 'He gets me through every day'. And yet this same person gave no response to whether or not they believed in Christ. I didn't press the issue. I was content, at the moment, with the knowledge that they professed a belief in God because of the direction I needed to go to continue our conversation about marriage, divorce, and the sinful nature of non-Christians. And in that moment I was using the term 'Christian' loosely because it was needed for that particular conversation. I simply could not move that conversation into deeper territory. The person I was talking to was in a fragile state of mind and I doubted their ability to grasp what I was saying and didn't wish to alienate them, at least not that day. So a professed belief in God was good enough for me that day. And in the whole scheme of things it is a start. At least an admission of 'He gets me through every day' admits a reliance on the Lord that many do not even profess.

But today, as I ponder on how someone, a someone that leads others, can think they have the ability to waste God's protection, I also ponder on how far men go to believe in 'God' and just where they think they stand in that belief. 

Fallen man, according to some people, can control their own salvation but now it would seem that they can also control God's protection. 

Years ago I heard someone say that we should always pray and ask 'God' to surround us with His angels, to have His angels protect us. Maybe this idea that we should not waste 'our' angel stems from that. I don't know.

What I do know is that I cannot waste my Lord's protection. He will send legions of angels to protect me if He deems fit and He will deny me the protection of a single angel if He deems fit and there is NOTHING I can do to change what He has set in store for me.

I was recently talking with my husband about situations where it would seem that someone survived something they should not have survived only to lose their life shortly thereafter to another cause. My husband told me of a movie he saw years ago about people that were cheating death only to have death persue them. I never saw that movie but understood the reasoning behind it. I even told my husband that I could truly understand how the lost might think that way. Afterall, if a person does not believe in Christ, or has only a surface deep belief in God, if they don't understand Scripture, than it might seem that we are always cheating death and that death persues everyone.

Without the understanding that the Lord controls all, that even our very days are numbered and we cannot change that, wouldn't it seem that we 'should' have died many times but didn't? Wouldn't it seem like we could prevent our own death, or the death of a loved one, if we but knew to do something different?

My nephew was cut badly a few months ago. This cut bled profusely, so much so that my sister had to tightly wrap his hand and rush him to the hospital. At the hospital the nurses were amazed with the cloth that my sister used for the bandage. There was nothing special about that cloth, in fact it happened to be an old cloth diaper, a diaper with a story behind how it came to be where it was when my sister needed it most, but it was the only kind of cloth that could have done what it did that day or so the nurses claimed. They said that the type of material it was made of allowed my sister to wrap my nephews hand tightly enough to keep my nephew from 'bleeding out'. In other words...that cloth saved my nephews life that day.

By man's thoughts, my sister was able to cheat death on my nephews behalf. Had she prayed for God's protection on her family when she woke that morning? Knowing my sister, I would say she probably did. Did that prayer keep her from 'wasting' the protection God wanted to give my nephew? No. The Lord has plans for my nephew that included the injury he experienced and did not include death at such a young age. 

And yet I can see how the unregenerate, how those that are lost and seeking to believe in something, might see that accident as the day my nephew should have died but did not. I imagine the 'preacher' in that video I did not watch this morning might say my sister did not waste God's protection that day. 

What happens then to those that die in any manner on any given day? Did they 'waste' God's protection? Did they somehow fail to pray the right way? To pray hard enough? Long enough? For the right thing? Did they bring on their own death or the death of a loved one because of their prayers or lack of? Was God simply sitting back waiting to see if He would give His protection based on how they prayed?

I'm sure there are MANY different beliefs that place man's importance or abilities above the Lords but I am so very grateful that I do not serve that God. I find comfort in knowing that my God is an all powerful, all knowing God and that He is in full control of all that happens in this world.

Unequally yoked

I'm part of a reformed Christian group on social media. Mostly I just read what others post on the group. I have found it to be enjoyable, enlightening, and educational on more than one occasion. While I still find that to be the case there have been a few things posted to that list lately that have made me wonder how those things found their way into a reformed group.

The first was a man that posted a short thank you to the group. It went something like this...thank you for letting me join. I'm a Roman Catholic. That really had me wondering what would cause a Roman Catholic to want to join a reformed Christian group. It seemed that I wasn't the only one. There were a number of people that questioned him on why he wanted to be a part of the list and what his beliefs were. The last I saw of that post they were still discussing his beliefs and his reasons for joining a reformed list. There was even a secondary conversation going on between the others on the group because some of the members had addressed the priest as 'brother in Christ' and some kept saying that a priest cannot be a brother in Christ.

I never saw the end of that discussion, although I've tried to find it again several times, but having seen the discussion and read the comments I am left wondering about several things. What would make a Roman Catholic want to join a reformed group? Why would a supposed reformed Christian ever refer to a Roman Catholic as a brother in Christ? I have no problem with a Roman Catholic joining the group. So long as a non Reformed Christian isn't trying to cause trouble I have no problems with anyone joining the group. I think a Reformed group is more than most people can handle but if they can handle it than they might learn a bit of Truth and that would be a good thing. But...a Roman Catholic in a Reformed group is definitely something that seems a bit strange to me.

I have a friend that once professed to believe in a monergistic way. About a year after this friend said that my reformed believes nearly became the destruction of our friendship. Not because I was trying to destroy the friendship but because this friend couldn't seem to accept that I didn't believe in free will. And that was a long term friendship that had weathered storms before. How then can a Roman Catholic handle being a part of a reformed group, a group where most people think their beliefs are heresy?

Not long after the Catholic Priest joined the group I saw another post on the same group. This post was a link to a blog article about being unequally yoked in marriage. The person that shared the link wrote a short paragraph on the same topic. I don't recall exactly what they said but it held to reformed beliefs. I was intrigued with what they wrote and what kind of article had prompted them to write it so I clicked on the link. It was good enough at first.

In fact at the beginning of the article the writer made a point that reminded me of something I told someone a couple of years ago. This someone was talking to me about marriage and how they didn't want to marry anyone that believed the way my husband and I do. My response was that I hoped that they didn't marry anyone with our kinds of beliefs either. It hurt me a whole lot to say that at the time because I very much loved the person I was talking to and would like nothing more for this person than for them to share my beliefs and to marry someone with the same beliefs but at the time I had to tell them that I wouldn't want them to marry anyone with those beliefs. I meant it then and I would still mean it today. At the time that this person said that to me they were pulling away, maybe running away would be a better definition, from what little faith they had. Today this same person denounces any belief in the Lord.

Because of their beliefs, or lack of, at the time we had that conversation I had to tell them I would never want them to marry anyone that believed as I do but I said it not so much for the sake of the loved one but for the sake of the person that they might marry. I was thinking of how bad it would be for a reformed person to be married to someone that had very little (at the time) faith in the Lord. Looking back on that conversation now I can only imagine the heartache that both the non believer and the believer would experience.

And I was reminded of all of that as I read that blog post on being unequally yoked in marriage. For the believer they would be tied to a union that could never be fully functioning. It could never be what marriage is supposed to be. I've thought many times of how marriage must truly be designed strictly for the Lord's elect. I'm not saying that no one but true Christians should ever marry, obviously the Lord works His plans out through the elect and the non elect. But when I truly think of what marriage is, what it should be, and what it represents, I simply cannot wrap my mind around the fact that no unbeliever really has what it takes to do marriage justice...if that's the right description. How can a non believer truly engage in and partake of a union that borders on being Holy, if it doesn't outright cross the line into being holy? How can a non believer, or a professing believer, ever rightly experience, partake in, enjoy, much less treasure a relationship that is designed to represent Christ and His ekklesia?

I think of the many married couples that I've known and honestly can't imagine ever wanting to enter into a relationship like most of them had. Even those people whose marriages managed to stand the test of time did not, to my way of thinking manage to do so in a way that would ever make me say 'I want what they have' or 'I want to be a part of that'. I think of the married couple who the husband clocked the wife's odometer to make sure she wasn't 'running around' while he was coming and going and seeing any woman he wanted. I think of the married couple that argued over every little thing, seemed to actually enjoy arguing with each other. I think of the husbands that I have known beat their wives. Of the couple that would stand in their front yard and scream at each other. And even when I think of the couples that seemed to get along well, I still can't recall any that gave a good enough representation of marriage to ever make me think 'I want what they have'.

The thing is I always wanted marriage but for me the marriage I wanted was an ideal I had in my mind, where that ideal came from...it took me years to understand, but I wanted what no one I ever saw seemed to have. I remember people telling me in my younger, premarriage days, that there isn't a marriage out there like what I wanted. But those people were wrong. That kind of marriage does exist. The thing is it only exists when it's in Christ. It takes two people living for a totally different reason than what most people live for to be able to achieve that kind of marriage. I have been blessed to be able to experience the kind of marriage I used to dream about.

And it's through eyes that know that kind of marriage does exist and what it takes to have that kind of marriage that I viewed what I thought was going to be a reformed article on marriage. There were a few things at the beginning of the article that were a bit off but overall it started out good. Trouble was, long before I reached the end of the article, which I never got to, it sort of just fell apart. It was still a pretty good article, I suppose, for a professing believer.

What started making me wonder at the direction the article was going was when the author said their son was a 'Christian' and that he had been raised in a 'Christian' home. Umm....Is there ever truly such a thing? Even when both parents are truly Christians...that does not mean that everyone else that will ever live in their home will be. I met someone once that informed me that it's completely possible to ensure your children are believers. The implication this person made was that you can discipline your beliefs into your children. At the time I had children quite a bit older than that persons kids were. I had to point out that you can only influence your kids so far. I can instill my Christian beliefs in any child I ever raise but that does not mean they will embrace them when they get old enough to think for themselves. I can demand anyone, child or adult, that lives in my house live according to my beliefs but even if I manage to get them to comply it does not mean they will share my beliefs. In fact, chances are, all I will succeed in doing is making them resent my beliefs. But that person truly believed that enough discipline would make their children believe as they did.

History alone tells us that cannot happen. How many people have died for their beliefs? How many non-Christians have died for their beliefs? Scripture gives us the basis of understanding why that is. Only certain people truly belong to the Lord. They are the only ones that will ever have salvation. If a person isn't one of God's elect they can never attain salvation no matter how hard they try. And if a person is one of God's elect they can never escape salvation no matter how hard they try.

Who in their right mind, before being truly converted, would ever want to embrace true Christianity?

I think of the professing 'Christians' and how pretty much anything goes in their beliefs and all I can think is how hard it must be. Even when your 'God' allows you to do what you want and loves you anyway...how hard it must be to stick to the most basic of Christian values. It's no wonder they pick and chose which parts of Scripture they believe apply to them. It would be impossible for them to measure up to even a tiny speck of Scripture if they took it as it really is, in whole and in truth.

And I think of the flat out non believer...what need to they have for even a single Christian value...and their marriage to a true Christian. Scripture gives us the definition of being unequally yoked, ant they are, but when I think of what it means to be yoked together, something we rarely see in our modern world, I think of cows, horses, donkeys, oxen, etc being harnessed together in a situation where they must work together as a team to accomplish something. Then I imagine what an unequally yoked team in a situation like that would be...yoking a horse and an ox? A cow and a donkey? I can easily imagine the trouble one would have trying to handle such and unequally yoked team but that trouble doesn't come close to what I think an unequally yoked marriage would truly be. Maybe it would be more like trying to yoke an ox and a chihuahua or maybe a bird and a horse. Or maybe it goes way beyond even those images to be an owl and a snake, or a cat and a mouse. Maybe its more like predator and prey.

Scripture says that light and darkness cannot mix. If you mix a non believer and a true Christian, you have mixed light and darkness. You have mixed enemies. They may love each other, they may skate along the surface and appear to have no problems for a while, but how long before the enmity of their souls must clash? How long before the evil in the soul of the non believer will feel threatened and will begin to fight the spirit of the Christian? Scripture tells us that we fight a spiritual battle, one that cannot be seen but that rages all around around us, even through us, and will rage through all time until Christ returns. That spiritual battle cannot be changed, altered, or stopped simply because a Christian loves a non Christian, or even a professing Christian. Love, in the human form, cannot override the spiritual hate that a non believer, or an unregenerate person, will feel in their own souls.

It's actually amazing to think about. To consider the unregenerate people we love, the unregenerate people that love us, and to know that those same people truly hate us deep inside their souls. That the evil that controls their souls would truly destroy the souls of the people that they love in this human life simply because the Christians soul belongs to Christ and theirs belongs to Satan.

That situation does not change simply because a Christian loves an unregenerate person in this human life. It does not change if the unregenerate person loves them in this human life. And it will not change just because that love may take the form of a husband and a wife. Sooner or later their souls will battle no matter their human affections. And then what?

What wins?

Who wins?

And where can they possibly go in their marriage? The Christian will most likely settle in and be prepared to weather the storm, come what may. The non believer...that's anyone's guess. But battle they will even if no harsh words are ever spoken.

But that isn't what that article I read spoke of. In the article the author went into how the 'Christian' will want to go on mission trips and the non believer won't, of how the 'Christian' will want to go to 'church' and the non believer won't... Those things may create strife in a marriage but I cannot see them as the problems of being unequally yoked. Those sorts of issues are, to me, on par with will we go eat pizza tonight or hamburgers. I can see no difference in one person wanting to go on a mission trip and the other not wanting to than I see one person wanting to vacation at the beach while the other wants to vacation in the mountains. They may be issues but they don't come close to being the problem of being unequally yoked.

A mission trip may, or may not, be a good thing for a person to participate in but having one spouse that wants to do so and one that does not cannot come close to the everyday, unseen battle that will rage between a Christian and an unregenerate person. A mission trip is an earthly, mostly feel good, type situation. Professing believers feel the need to go on mission trips because they believe that their presence in an unregenerate people can and will make all the difference in the salvation of those lost people. They believe they are bringing salvation to those people and more often than not they count the trip a success if they can count the 'souls' that were 'saved' while they were there. Those saved souls are, for the most part, nothing more than a fairy tale that they believe in because they offered the unregenerate, or lost people, something that drew them in through their emotions and the 'Christian' then gets an emotional high because they get to say they 'saved' another soul. I know there are exceptions to this scenario but those exceptions are few and far between in what we call mission trips. I've met the missionaries, seen the videos, heard their testimonies and in almost all cases it comes down to what the Christian accomplished. It's an emotional high. It's not truth and in most cases it's not Scriptural.

And yet that is what the author of that article used, time and again, to show the problem in an unequally yoked marriage. That's not unequally yoked. Unequally yoked is that unseen battle that rages in the spiritual world. It's the unseen battle that will destroy not only a marriage but the very people in a marriage that happens between a believer and an unbeliever. And I can only imagine that that battle would influence anyone that comes into contact with the married couple.

Years ago we had a neighbor that I can't exactly say I was friends with but we did have something of a friendship. This neighbor was married and had several kids. In fact they not only had several of their own kids they took in several other kids during the time we lived near them. This couple was...unusual, I guess. They fought like cats and dogs. The wife never had a good word to say about her husband and in fact seemed to actually hate him.

I was simply a neighbor that crossed paths with them from time to time. I would stand in the yard and visit with the wife. And never once did she say anything not derogatory about her husband. I was never in their home more than a few minutes at a time so never really saw what went on behind closed doors but even a few minutes in their presence was enough to feel the battle that constantly seemed to rage between them. How much more so did their children and the kids they took in feel that battle? How much more so did their family members feel it?

And that was with a couple whose battles were very much visible to anyone around them. They were unregenerate people living in a fallen world and trying to make a go of a marriage that at least one of them seemed to not want to be a part of. In fact I spoke with that neighbor a few months ago. I hadn't seen her in years and happened upon her. She very quickly and very happily informed my that she is now 'happily divorced'.

The battles that couple experienced were out in the open, they didn't even hide them from the neighbors. Battles in a marriage between a Christian and a non Christian might not be visible for anyone to see, maybe not even the married couple, but they're still there, they exist and they have a force to them that no unregenerate couple would ever encounter.

That is what being unequally yoked means to me. Predator and prey. Light and darkness. Evilness and holyness.

Women are being cheated

It never fails to amaze me how things often come together to show us something, teach us something, or in today's case for me, lead me to write about something.

Just this morning I read an article on foster parenting. The article in itself was both profound and extremely simple. There was little to the article other than trying to help people see where all the foster kids come from and where they are in the daily goings on of life. The big point seemed to be that behind every drug raid, car accident, fire, domestic battle, and arrest there is often a child that must be cared for, an innocent child that may have nowhere else to go but to a foster home.

The other aspect of that article was to try and show people how they can help those foster kids, and explaining that helping them doesn't always come in the form of fostering them. The article gave a list of things to do for foster parents that will help the whole family taking in the child...take them dinner, go shopping for the family, help provide the things that child needs, etc...

This morning was also the result of a couple of things in my own life that got me to thinking about...well, things. My husband and I had a couple of conversations, one about something he enjoys doing in his down time. A conversation that is fairly regular around here but for some reason today that conversation struck me the wrong way. It rubbed against feelings and upset me. I don't think my husband is aware of that...he will be when he reads this though. But this morning that conversation came very close to making me cry.

Why?

I have no idea. I can only say that I'm at a point in my life where thoughts and feelings sometimes get the better of me for absolutely no reason at all.

Almost immediately after that conversation I saw one of those Armenian 'Christian' poster things. This one was about "I" asked God for this and He said 'No'. There was a long list of things that 'I' supposedly asked God for most of which made no sense...things like asking God for more faith only to be told 'no' that He will not supply more faith that it is our place to develop more faith. At the very end of this paragraph it said 'I' asked God to love other people more deeply and God said...something to the effect of 'finally you asked for the right thing' then it went on to say something like treasure these moments.

And not long after that my grown daughter text me out of the blue. I called her back, disrupted her at her work, and got to hear her voice. It was a precious moment that made my morning just because I got to hear her voice.

Then came the second conversation with my husband, this one instigated by me. There is a huge company, a company that seems to have their hand in everything, raking in millions (or more) every year, that is now trying to promote an agenda in the children's movies they make. There latest...stunt...hit the news this last week and has had many people up in arms, some vowing to boycott the company, some vowing to have nothing to do with the latest stunt, and others...others supporting this move or claiming its a way to discuss certain issues with their kids. But today I saw a woman promoting a secondary company that is owned by this huge company and wondered if this woman knew what she was promoting. Then I wondered what I might have dealings with that I may not know this company owns. So I looked it up and found out that this huge company owns far more than I thought they did. Not that it really matters.

But I went and shared some of what I learned with my husband. That got us started on a conversation where my husband pointed out that all these companies, all the people that hate God, will promote sinful things just because those sinful things fill their hearts. And they will want everyone to embrace what they love.

I agree with that. But the conversation moved on from there and my husband said that those same people hate women not working. And they do. Oh, how they do. I can't count the number of times I have had someone say something derogatory or make faces that clearly told me their thoughts when they found out I am a stay at home wife and mother. Some women simply say 'I could never do that' and others...well, others say lots of other things. I've even been asked why in the world I would ever want to do that. And just about every one of those encounters has come from other women.

I've had relatives tell me that my money belongs to my husband and that my car isn't my car it's my husbands car. Now, technically, my car is registered to my husband but then...my husbands vehicle is registered to me, so... what does any of that mean? And why do people not see that husbands and wives own all together? Why don't they see that's whats mine belongs to my husband and what's his belongs to me? Why the division in marriage in any way? Why not see a married couple as a unit and not as a 'that belongs to your husband'? My husband doesn't think of our car as his car even though it's registered to him...he calls it my car. And he doesn't think of his vehicle as mine even though it is registered to me...he calls it his. And the money he provides us...he calls it ours, unless it's in my possession and then he calls it mine. So why do other people, people who really have no business in our personal life, refer to it as anything else?

Because there is an agenda. A push by people and companies to want women working outside the home, to want people to put there kids in day care and public school, to want...well, something that they want for all people because they have some idea of that's how things should be and they base their ideas on nothing more than their own thought of what is right and wrong.

And in the midst of all this that has happened in little over two hours I sat down to look at a magazine that came in the mail the other day and I haven't taken the time to look at yet, in fact, I had to hunt it down when I decided to look at it. I didn't even know where it was.

And there inside the front page was a note from the woman that puts out this magazine, her own personal ministry, telling of how she was only able to publish one magazine last year despite her intent to publish no less than four a year because they publish when donations allow and last year the money just didn't come in. Then she told of how they had had four weddings in their family in the last year and how important she thinks it is to have all the family involved in weddings because friends will come and go in a persons life but your kids will one day look at pictures of family and be thrilled to see how aunt or uncle has changed over the years.

When I turned the page, the first article in the magazine was written by a woman that started her story by saying she has kids in age from five to adult and that she had lunch with her grown son just the other day and wiped food out of his beard. Than she marveled at the fact that he had a beard and said it was just yesterday that she washed peanut butter off his face. And now the little boy that vowed to live with her forever is married and has a beard.

And I thought of my grown daughter, the daughter that I spoke to this morning, and of my son, the son that used to tell me he was going to marry me when he grows up.

And I thought of all the other things, all the million and one things, that add up in a day. Do those women that told me they could never be a stay at home mom realize that their little boys are falling in love with 'teachers' at day care and imagine marrying them instead of their mommy...not that any son should marry his mother but it is a natural part of little boyhood that is there and gone in the blink of an eye. Do the women that turned up their nose at the idea of spending every day with their family know the feeling of their preteen daughter sitting beside them on the couch, cuddling up close, just to talk to mom for a few minutes, do they know the joy of a day spent reading books, playing games, or even watching movies? Are those women there when the storms rage and their kids seek shelter in their lap? Are they there to go outside and watch the pouring rain or see their child's joy at playing in the rain?

Are those women that say they could never be a stay at home wife there to experience the joy of greeting her husband when he comes home from work? Are they there to do the things for him that make his life a little bit easier as he works to take care of her? Do they know the joy, contentment, and appreciation of knowing her husband is working hard, fighting the elements, dealing with people, so that she doesn't have to? Do they know the satisfaction brought when her husband thanks her for doing the things he doesn't have time to do? And do they know the joy of just being available whenever her husband wishes to spend his time with her?

Those are all little things, little moments, things that can easily be passed over or not even realized as we go about the course of our day. All the smiles, the hands to hold, faces to wipe, coats to button, shoes to tie, lunches to make, and cups of coffee to refill are so easily passed by as a woman 'could never do that' and so she spends her day working at some job, doing a million other things, and doing it all for someone that can and will replace her when the time is right. And it all happens while her kids idolize a teacher or friends mom, while their husband comes home to an empty house...while all the little moments of their family pass by without them knowing.

I used to work in a daycare, many, many years ago, and was told that I was never to tell a parent when their child took their first steps. We were to keep absolutely silent about that so that the parents could see their 'first' steps themselves. Only it was an allusion because that baby took it's first steps while with me. I witnessed that amazing moment in parenthood...to someone elses child. I dried tears, washed faces, tied shoes. I doctored owies, soothed nightmares, and rocked sick babies. Because mommy 'couldn't do that'. And because mommy couldn't do that she missed out on the baby that held onto my hair as it fell asleep, in seeing her baby smile for the first time, learn to crawl, learn to walk. In getting the steady stream of flowers from a child whose heart is trying to make the person they love happy. I got the colored pictures, the little hands in mine, and all the other little 'nothing' moments that make up a day in the life of a child.

And as I think of all those things, of all the kids that I played mommy to and of my own children and all the moments I shared with them. As I think of all the moments I've shared with my husband because I was home to share them....granted I get more moments than most because my husband works from home...I think of how empty life would be if I 'couldn't do that'.

And 'that' is what women are supposed to be. 'That' is what the Lord made us to be. "That'' is what we were created to be. I've never been a career woman, never wanted to leave my family so I could work. I've always longed to be 'that' wife, 'that' mom. And I can't imagine the emptiness that must come to those women that could never be 'that' mom, or 'that' wife.

Yet those very women, the women that miss out on so much with their husbands and children, try to tell me that I should give it all up to have what they have...I could have it all too. Only I do have it all. I have all the moments they never get. What satisfaction do they have when their boss congratulates them on a job well done? What enjoyment do they get at knowing they did their job well today? What fun do they have in their work meetings or parties?

Is it all enough to know that someone else saw their childs first real steps? Is it enough to know that another woman got the bouquet of flowers their child picked and that she was the one sharing their childs tea party? Was it enough to know that today someone else dried their childs tears and rocked them to sleep?

Or was it enough to offset the fact that their husband picked their kids up from school and their entire family came home to an empty house? Was it enough to know that when her husband wants time with her...she's too tired to give it? Or she has to focus on some project for work?

But then...some of those people that 'could never do that' also want me to believe that having a husband and children is a detriment to being happy and fulfilled. There are women out there that truly believe that, that push that on other women. And there are companies out there that put that into their products, fill their movies, songs, and books with it.

The thing is...all those people miss out on what's truly important, while they reject what the Lord says is right, they miss out on the baby smiles, the first steps, the thank you's for the cups of coffee, the conversations, the hugs, kisses, cuddles and love.

Look at all the things that women are cheated out of because they have bought into the lies of 'I could never do that' or even the agenda to make women think that being a wife and mother is somehow demeaning, even to the point of turning women into slaves. It's such a HUGE lie and those poor women don't see it. They are being cheated out of the greatest part of being a woman.

While women march in the streets, complain and proclaim to anyone that will listen that they are being treated as second class citizens, while they demand equal pay and equal rights...women are cheated out of the greatest part of being a woman.