We talk extensively about what plans Jesus has in mind for
you. They begin with your
liberation. Your freedom from slavery to
self-love, and the sin you embrace. The
plans of Jesus for you, start by breaking your chains to pain and death, and in
their place granting you a new life, a real life, something way more than mere
existence. In short, what Jesus has in
mind for you (and only you), is unique to you, and offers a purpose without
end, an infinite place in His Kingdom that will never expire – and they begin
in the here and now, as soon as you allow them to begin. But unfortunately, these are not the only
plans that exist where you are concerned.
Your life is a not a simple choice of what you want, and what Jesus
wants. That is not the two-way choice
you face. If it is not the light you
choose to embrace - that will form a shield around you; the darkness is all
that is left to you. The darkness tells
you, that “you” are strong and in charge of your fate. Submission is an act of weakness, you need
not submit to Jesus (though the reality is that through submission, you replace
your weakness, with His strength).
The goal of the darkness is to first deceive you into
believing that there is no darkness at all.
Once you accept this premise, darkness will have full sway over you, and
you without the slightest recognition, that events, circumstances, and results
are not “just” because of what you choose, and why you choose them; but because
you are under attack by a darkness so black its malevolence cannot be fully
measured. Yet so many, even within the
church, come to believe the darkness is not real, something of bed time
stories, and tools to control the masses through fear. But fear, is not a tool to escape sin, it is
a reason for sin, and a symptom of sin.
Jesus does not want your fear, He wants your trust, and ultimately He
hopes you will make a choice to love Him.
The devil is slick in projecting the negative aspects of who he is on to
God, accusing God of the things he (the devil) is most guilty of himself. Obfuscate, hide the idea of darkness at all,
and convince you that your life is a matter of luck, and God’s punishment, that
darkness plays no role in it at all.
But what happens when you begin to deviate from “normal”
behavior. What happens when you
entertain thoughts of the abnormal, of the unacceptable to social norms, and
find them attractive, appealing, and ultimately ideas you wish to follow and
embrace? What is perverse, becomes a
part of who you are, and who you have chosen to become. And perversity need not have only to do with
sexual expression, it can exist in a number of plains. The kleptomaniac steals, like you and I take
a breath. We look at these people and
refer to their condition as a sickness, as a form of mental disorder. But that is not how they see themselves. What is aberrant and perverse to us, is fully
normal to them; even if normal is different, just a different idea of
normality. The drug addict, and addicts
of every variety, understand logically the danger of their behavior but choose
it anyway to get the fix. The child who
entertains the ideas of torturing small animals, and works his way up to
humans, becoming a serial killer and a sociopath – chooses not to see himself
as a “problem” but as a “solution” to our society. The perverse expanding its reach across our
populous more insidious than any virus, and more effective in its spread. Until every man looks in the mirror and
determines that they are good person, despite whatever differences there might
be in how they behave.
But facts remain. The
timeline for darkness is finite. It will
one day come to an end. John wrote in
revelation about the very end of evil, when Satan himself will finally be
consumed in the lake of fire. And once
that is done, death itself will be consumed.
The ultimate death of evil. The
ultimate death of death. No eternal
minions to propagate the existence of evil, or torture, or dying. Instead the absolute end of it, in thought,
in motive, in deed, and in instruments of its expression. This means Satan is on a clock. Where once he existed from his creation, in a
life not intended for an ending, now he is destined to one day be finally
consumed in fire, never to exist again.
That clock ticks loudly in his ears.
Every day is a day closer to his final end. He cannot avoid it (though he will try). He cannot overcome it. He is bound to his fate. So as evil does, it looks for a way, to plot
revenge. Forgiveness does not exist in
the mind of evil, any more than mercy does.
And to strike with revenge, he must strike at what God loves the most,
namely at you.
So darkness formulates plans for your life, just as firmly
as what Jesus does. The darkness can
hurt God, by hurting you. They can make
the pain of God greater, by having you blame God for the pain that comes your
way (when in secret it was never Him).
They can make the pain of God better, when they get you to hurt
yourself. They can make this pain better
when they can deceive you into believing that a “new normal” is just as good as
any old normal, even if that includes being a serial killer, or an addict, or
someone who thinks forced sex is better than consensual sex especially as it
relates to children. In morphing what
you do, the evil spreads, and impacts itself on other children of God further
increasing the pain. And do you then
have value in the dark kingdom … no. You
are nothing to them, merely a tool to spread pain, and a victim to have pain
inflicted on. Lest you believe any
differently, or think it could never happen to you, or think you are too
innocent (or your baby) is too innocent, to ever be caught up in this – lets
take a look at a story Matthew recorded in his gospel in chapter seventeen.
Matthew picks up in verse 14 saying … “And when they were
come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him,
and saying, [verse 15] Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore
vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.” First note, that the victim is not the man
himself, a father, and someone who believes in the power of Jesus Christ. The victim is the son, a child, presumably an
innocent child. But his state or age in
life, did not prevent his possession, by a demon of the darkness. And what does this demon force the victim to
do, to fall into fires to burn, or into waters to drown. The darkness plagues this boy, to send pain
to his father, his parents, his family.
The darkness tortures this boy to rebuke the church (whether old or
new). And the boy, or what happens to
the boy is of no consequence.
Matthew continues in verse 16 saying … “And I brought him to
thy disciples, and they could not cure him.”
Yikes! This father, brought the
boy to the disciples of Jesus. You know,
the ones with the keys to the kingdom, who are able to bind things on earth
(figuratively) and have them reflected or heard in heaven. James the future leader of the church in
Jerusalem, Peter the future evangelist to the world, and John the chief prophet
of the Christian faith, as well as all the others and none could cure him. Now everyone of us, looks at Judas and says
in our hearts – figures. But then Judas
had the same gifts of demon repulsion as did any other disciple, and was no less
a leader in the church, and in the faith as Peter, or as you, or as me. So the failure of Judas was no more or less
the same failure as Peter. It was not
about what Judas would ultimately do, that causes him to fail. For Judas could have been forgiven of that
future sin, just as Peter was forgiven for ones he would commit in the heat of
those events. The problem of this
father, and his boy, were in the here and now, and in the here and now – not
one of the disciples could overcome the darkness nestled in this boy.
Matthew continues in verse 17 saying … “Then Jesus answered
and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?
how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. [verse 18] And Jesus
rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from
that very hour.” First note, that the
child is healed immediately. There is no
delay on the part of Jesus. The misery
the darkness brings to this child’s life is over for now. But the words of Jesus look none too
happy. “O faithless” generation. Is Jesus speaking to the dad, seems very
unlikely as the dad believes, and tried the disciples of Jesus, before coming
to Him personally. And the boy may or
may not even be present, and is infected with a demon, so unlikely Jesus is
challenging his faith. There will be no
blaming of the victim here.
But the church? Is
Jesus challenging his own disciples? Is
He challenging the Pharisees and Sanhedrin?
Or is He challenging you and I?
Perhaps all of the above. But it
is not just our faithlessness that warrants the attention of Jesus, it is also
our perversion. Have we adopted the
aberrant as normal, perhaps just a different kind of normal, but one far
outside of harmony with the laws and character of a God of love? Do we see ourselves in the mirror, and see
nothing wrong. Have we perverted the
Word itself. Have we used the Word to
justify our traditions, our ideas, and our notions of separation with the
brotherhood of Christ – each group claiming purity, while ostracizing any other
“less informed” groups of believers. Our
perversion need not just be in our sexual expression, it can also be founded in
how we read the Word, and what we do with what we find, using it as a weapon
against other sinners, instead of a hospital field manual of how to love others
back to the feet of Jesus, ever pointing them there for the relief they so
desperately need.
How long shall I be with you? And more poignantly; how long shall I suffer
you? These questions of Christ imply a
seeming limit to His patience. But I
believe it is more a statement of His absolute frustration with us. He offers total healing. He offers a path to perfection, and a life
beyond our wildest dreams. And we sit
around delaying that choice, avoiding it, postponing it. As if the pain and death we now embrace is
somehow better than what He offers. Our
blindness, our stupidity, so amplified against what the alternative is. This is the plans of darkness for you,
unfolding in your real life. To keep you
from submission to Jesus. Making up all
kinds of excuses why you should ever avoid that choice. Not yet, you need to make more money
first. Not yet, you need to have
unbridled sex with as many as you can first.
Not yet … the list goes on and on … each choice a hidden pathway to pain
and death and misery along the way. The
words of Jesus reflect a coming finality to making that choice for something
better. There is a clock, and it is
ticking – whether for Satan, or for you with him. This is not about fear, it is about a choice
for something so much better, that could be made now, right now.
Matthew concludes this snippet picking up in verse 19 saying
… “Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him
out? [verse 20] And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily
I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto
this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing
shall be impossible unto you. [verse 21] Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by
prayer and fasting.” We have our
answer. Jesus tells the disciples, that
it is “their” unbelief that caused their failure. That was not a slight against Judas
alone. It was an assessment across all
of them, even the ones who will one day take a more leadership role in the
faith. And perhaps a continued
assessment of you and I. Faith as small
as a grain of mustard seed is a tiny thing, and yet none of us seem to wield
it.
We accept the cancer we encounter as “a fact of life”, never
once considering it might be a direct result of the darkness. We accept the need and the poor, as just
another “fact of life”, again ignoring the influence and direct plans of the
darkness on the lives of those impacted.
And none of us wield our grain of mustard seed to provide the fix – not
a relief to suffering, only an accompaniment through it – instead of a true
miraculous fix. We just let the pain
linger. Afraid to test our mountain to
be moved. Afraid to be shown publicly,
we lack the faith to even make it rumble a little. And the plans of darkness triumph at the
expense of the weak wielding of our mustard seeds of faith. What is more, Jesus offers that this
particular demon requires prayer and fasting to get it to leave. As we try to pray with our tiny faith,
perhaps our faith would be better augmented if we were willing to fast quietly,
pray incessantly, and then look again to see if our mountains have been moved,
and the demons of darkness vanquished against the bright light of Jesus Christ,
in whose name we pray.
Your life will come down to only two paths. It will not be a choice between good and
evil. That is too easy. It will be a choice between submission to
Jesus, and a liberation and freedom that leads to real life as it was meant to
be enjoyed. Or it will be consumed with
the plans of darkness who care no more for you than does a tyrant stepping on
an ant as he moves from one place to the other.
There is no middle ground. There
is no happy median. There is life
abundantly. Or there is misery even more
abundantly. Everything else is
deception. Everything else is fear. There really is only one way out, and His name
is Jesus Christ. And Jesus had more yet
to say …
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