taken childhoods

It is interesting how the enemy will come and take childhoods with abuse and neglect that causes such a loss of innocence and childhood, creating the child to have to grow up before their time.

This then creates grown-up children but does not provide maturity. Maturity will come through healthy process of time and development- not from being thrown into an adult or abusive situation that they should be protected from.

The devil wants to steal, kill and destroy. He is not “a cheeky one- trying to get us into trouble”; he wants to literally kill us and twist us so bad that we are destroyed and destructive. This means that the intention is not only to twist the development and steal the innocence of childhoods, but also then impact the ability to be mature grown-ups- therefore stealing the adulthood of maturity by grown-up children now using adulthood to have their childhood (a whole lot of twists and perversions), only now this can impact negatively on those around them as ‘others’ then become the adults for the grown up children, causing dysfunction in friendships and relationships.

The devil desires to twist and pervert every bit of order that God has created- there is nothing that he won’t try and grow earlier than its time, or hinder and try and abort when it is due.. Let is not be naive that the enemy of our souls is very real and active. He is not all-powerful, but he has all the power that we hand over (knowingly or not knowingly) to him, and will definitely take all power and authority that we do not take up ourselves.

Stay alert. Be brave. And let us allow God to make not only our paths straight, but every perversion that has been twisted in our hearts, minds, lives, relationships..

Only God can make the crooked ways straight.

a lesson from a psycho

A few months ago I listened to the testimony of a psychopath before and after Christ. His story was powerfully hard hitting and at the end he talks about how he is married with kids etc. I found this really difficult to understand as I thought that loving someone would be an emotional connection. But as I listened to his story unfold, I realised how I have been almost brainwashed in this western culture that love is all about feelings and they come and go and you just flow with them, but actually love is a choice that we have to make choices about daily (many times daily). The guy explained how although his life has been transformed and changed, he still does not have emotions, but he is able to know how to love as this is about choices and commitment. He gave the example about Jesus going to the cross. We know that Jesus prayed for this to be taken from Him, and yet submitted that desire to the greater act of Love that took Him to His horrific death.

How much we can learn from submitting our emotions to a Higher Authority.

How absolutely devastating is it to be “loved” by someone who doesn’t make the daily choices of love and therefore allows his (or her) heart and mind and attention to wander to others, and then find themselves “loving” someone else. This is such a deep betrayal that breaks hearts and trust and value, and ultimately tears families apart and breaks down communities.

We can see the western culture is all about how we feel- about ourselves (identities, sexualities, etc)- and there is no value in submitting our feelings and emotions to our previously made commitment or vow, or even to the truth of the matter. All we desire is to have our way and we make sure that we become the best lawyers to defend that this is the best way for us.

We are so self-consumed and selfish that we don’t consider how our decisions impact others- even those we have professed to “loving”. All this culture does is break hearts, trust and people. It creates further selfishness as everyone is protecting their own selves and not able to trust or confide in others.

This is not okay.

Let us not be like this. Let us rebel and rage against the system by loving others when it’s difficult, by staying true when we want to leave, and fighting for each other during dry or hard times. Let us make up our minds to love and be faithful and value this over our ever-changing fleshly desires.

Let us change the narrative and become a counter cultural resistance.

perversion of submission

We seem to have such a perverted mindset about submission- that it takes away our freedom and we become like slaves and not able to think for ourselves. But the truth is, if submission is to Love then we will be the most alive ever, and the most protected ever as we are accountable to someone who is then accountable for us. But if the submission is to man (human) who has no love, then it is truly an abuse and oppression as this is then about control and power.

We have to understand that when we are told to submit to God then this is the ultimate care that we can come under. This is not an abusive or powerless place, but a safe and protected place.

As man(kind), we have such a thirst for control that submission becomes a horrendous abuse of power in relationships- rather than being safe, it is unsafe.

We must get to know the God of the Bible so that we can see that He hates religion and the hypocrisy and abuse of people. We need to see that when He talks about submission it is from a very different place- which is Love and not control. There is no control in Love. The very fact that we have free will is because God Himself does not want to have us “controlled” into living for Him, “loving Him”, or anything else that is a farce. He is pure and requires our purity of choice- unmanipulated, uncontrolled, unforced.