First of All, Pray: Blog
Bringing Biblical Truths to Daily Life
Fresh water
Every morning I call out to my three cats, “Who wants to go potty?” and like clockwork, all three without hesitation trot down to the basement where I keep the litter pans. I do this because one—Gideon—was having issues with not using the litter box. The Lord directed me to make litter pan time as pleasurable as possible, and for cats, that means not only clean litter, but also treats, strokes, and congratulatory baby talk for proper litter pan use. Don’t knock it; it works for us.
I also keep a water bowl downstairs, up on a counter. After litter pan scooping and treats, I call out, “Who wants fresh water?” and rinse out the bowl and refill it. This is a big deal for Gideon who likes to drink the water off of his paw, similar to the way three hundred men did who were chosen for his namesake’s army, the biblical Gideon.
One morning Cammie beat him to the water bowl. I must have been extra groggy, because evidently I didn’t announce the fresh water for his highness, Gideon. Cammie daintily lapped up some of it, and then Gideon noticed that she was in “his spot”. Shoving her out of the way, he sat. And sat. And sat. He looked at me as if to say, “Have you lost your mind, woman? Where’s my fresh water?”
Have you ever tried reasoning with an animal? I tried; it didn’t work. There Gideon sat, on his throne, staring at me, waiting for his fresh water.
Grumbling, I poured the perfectly fresh water into the sink and made a show of refilling the bowl. Gideon was meowing up a storm as I set Fresh Water 2.0 in front of him. Happy, he pawed it and drank his fill.
And then as soon as Gideon shut up, the Lord began talking. He showed me that even though the cat had already been given fresh water, he didn’t believe it. Gideon expected his water to arrive a certain way every day or he’d have nothing to do with it; he expected a showy presentation.
We believers have a tendency to be like Gideon if we aren’t careful. We have fresh, life-giving water available 24/7 in the pages of God’s Word, ready for the drinking, and yet so often we search here and there to “get a fresh word”. Like Gideon, we want to sit at the water bowl, refusing to drink until we get some showy presentation. Instead of majoring on drinking from the Word ourselves, we want to know “But what does Brother or Sister So and So have to say about it?” In other words, we wait for someone else to serve our water; all too often we don’t trust that the Bible water we get on our own is “fresh”.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s imperative to join regularly in fellowship with others to hear the Word. But what about in between these “pit stops”?
If the only water you drink is from another person’s hand once or twice a week, be careful—you’re in grave danger of dehydration. And by the same token, if your primary source for spiritual edification is random “words” from various people, you may not be getting true water at all! There is only one “sure word of prophecy” and that’s the Bible, sitting right there on your table or desk. Don’t be afraid to open it on your own and drink long and often. It’s guaranteed fresh, 24/7.
It’s sort of cute when Gideon the cat expects a showy presentation before he’s willing to drink his fresh water. But for grown Christians to search for a “word from God” everywhere except their own Bible? That’s not cute. That’s dangerous.
Dorothy
So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. 2 Peter 1:19
A Word from God Received June 29, 2008
The following revelation came to me on June 29, 2008, while meditating on Scriptures as I was drinking coffee at Panera Bread Company after my church’s 9:30 Sunday morning service. (You can hear from God anytime, anywhere.)
“I’ve made you a new, sharp threshing sledge with two edges. You’ll thresh the mountains and beat them small and shall make the hills as chaff.” Isaiah 41:15 (my paraphrase)
“For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12
As I studied that morning, I was picturing that one job of the Isaiah 41 threshing sledge is to separate wheat from chaff. The word of God, which is also two-edged and of the sharpest substance known to man, is likewise used to separate, this time to the division of soul and spirit. This is the sword of the Spirit we are to wield as we embark on our new, sharp threshing sledge with two edges.
At this point of my study, the revelation began.
As we yield to the Spirit of God and abide in the Word, we will be directed in the job of threshing mountains of opposition and intimidation and “beat them small”. We will do this under the direction of the Lord and will possibly be unaware of the effectiveness of our act of threshing, beating, and pulverizing. Telltale signs will emerge, however; strongholds will start to lose both their “strong” and their “hold”; institutions and systems set up to mock, block, or defrock justice, just laws, and the righteous will start to totter, falter, and fail, and men and women who have exalted themselves and agendas not of God will be challenged, exposed, and will flounder and fall, seemingly out of nowhere.
Those who know their God will find their places and their parts in this new economy. To the world, the bulk of the vibrant, vivid vigil of victory energizing these folks will be unseen as believers take their stand in this hour.
God will move in churches and in meetings and will visit these gatherings in sweet and unusual manifestation.
However, He will also move in the pastor’s quiet study; He will move on the young mother as she returns from seeing her children off at the bus stop; He will move on the grocer and the shelver, the checker and the bagger. He will move on the gristly retiree as he sits on his porch with his coffee. He will move on the rush hour commuter as he breathes a quiet prayer. He will move on the working woman pumping gas into her car. Wherever humanity lifts its face or bows its knee in humble faith, God will move.
We—believing humans—are far more potent and powerful than we have ever imagined.
“In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.” Psalm 5:3
In the midst of an orchestrated assault on the values and advantages of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, men and women of worldly privilege and power plot and plan to gain leverage over those they deem small-minded, narrow-minded, and shallow. Webs are woven, snares are set, and global corralling of capital and thought is being brokered. Wonderful inroads, to their way of thinking, are being paved into the lives, livelihoods, and loves of this current generation. The confident expectation emitted by these celebrity candidates and their power-partners seems to sweep through the nation like a flood with one aim: the capitulation and conformity of the American Dream to a new paradigm, their paradigm, “Land of our Greed, Home of our Slaves”.
Climbing in confidence, conquest, and coverage, the elite prepare for their ascendency and establishment upon the summit of our time. The bases are covered, they think; the stage is set. Those who offer resistance are growing weary, losing support, and fading in appeal. With time, even these voices will be silenced and forgotten, so they believe.
However, God has reserved for Himself a weapon, a secret weapon—hidden, trained, held in the wings for such a time as this.
“In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.” Psalm 5:3
In the morning.
In the quiet, private personal time of the day, men and women of faith have met with their Father, the Lover of their souls, for years. Quietly, faithfully, nearly daily, verses of scripture here, whispers of prayer there, the army of God has seemed scattered, disjointed, incongruous, ineffective in the eyes of the world. Yet one Master, one General, has trained them all, daily, morning by morning (or evening by evening), verse by verse, prayer by prayer…the small and the great, the mighty and the weak. And such training, although intensely personal and private, has been coordinated and orchestrated from above, from the Headquarters of the Ancient of Days Himself. And the time has arrived and now is that a corporate anointing will rest upon the many in their individual quiet times, bringing forth a multitude of pieces to the puzzle to unite the Body of Christ as never before in binding and loosing, confronting and confounding, exposing and expelling the designs of the wicked. Impenetrable plans will be toppled and forces of darkness will be held back and stymied in the fulfillment of their schemes.
In other lands and other times, during seasons of persecution and distress, the Holy Spirit has, on more than one occasion, gathered a body of believers from the North, South, East, and West to one place for assembling without one word uttered or published by human agency.
Thus we ourselves will become participants in the greatest series of “corporate” gatherings this side of Eternity—and each one of us—each one—will have a part—a key part—to play!
The very depths of darkness will be shaken to its core; men and women who insist upon their sponsorship and establishment of this new slavery will cry and gnash their teeth in fury as this quiet, unseen force wreaks havoc on their carefully calculated constructions. Indeed, throughout the earth where plots of wickedness are being devised, they will be revealed to men or women of faith and be thwarted. More than a few times will the evil engineers be enraged as was the king of Aram in Elisha’s day when he discovered that “…Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.” (2 Kings 6:12)
Supernatural knowings, Holy Spirit-directed thwartings, reworkings, and recoveries will be the rule of the day, not the exception, in the time of the end.
Wickedness may, indeed, pour forth as a flood, but the righteous God will lift up a standard—His people and His Body—against it! We are witnesses and participants in this day of confrontation between the consolidated forces of darkness and the supernatural, almighty workings of God which He is orchestrating and directing through the prayers of His people!
[The above entry can also be found in the back of my book First of All Pray: Prescription for a Nation in Crisis (© 2013 by Dorothy Frick). It can be viewed or purchased at https://www.amazon.com/First-All-Pray-Dorothy-Frick/dp/0985756438/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471536193&sr=1-1&keywords=first+of+all+pray ]
My guy won. What now?
I posted this on my Facebook page today, the day after the presidential election. I wrote:
Like many of you who stayed up most of the night last night, I am operating on fumes. I know many of you are rejoicing in this outcome, but today my heart has returned often to those—and they are many—who voted for Mrs. Clinton, for Gary Johnson, for Jill Stein…or who left the “president” section of their ballots blank.
I’ve been praying for them. I know they feel hurt, devastated, even broken, and I don’t revel in their pain. They are part of this wonderful American experiment and we NEED them.
If you are so inclined, join me in praying for those who now feel like some of us felt in past post-election days. God has NEVER called us to gloat or mock the pain of others, but rather to love, to minister to, and to pray for them.
Friends don’t always see eye to eye; families may experience strong disagreement among themselves; but we are called to peace as we pursue our future with confidence and an eye to Him who cares for the sparrow.
Remember this: “A bruised reed He will not break and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish” (Isaiah 42:3). If God doesn’t crush someone when they are down, then we have NO right to do so, either.
May God bless and bring His peace to us all.
Dorothy
Response to a lawless culture
I wrote this post on my Facebook page today concerning the lawlessness that all of us are facing in this nation, and in particular, in my own region:
With Officer Snyder’s senseless death yesterday, and with Officer Flamion’s life-changing assault earlier this year, I wanted to share something I observed this morning on a Starbuck’s run in my beautiful north county neighborhood.
It’s glorious outside, and my windows were open. I was driving the slow residential speed of 25, and I heard the voice of a lone young man loudly speaking to someone on his phone. As I approached him, I could tell he was agitated and angry. I felt compassion come over me for him and I began praying for him as I passed him, asking God to help him with whatever he was upset about, to cover him with the peace that passes understanding. I asked God to send him godly intervention and clear thinking….I sensed that he could get in serious trouble without God’s intervention.
As I think about him now, I still sense that compassion of God prompting me to pray for him.
Jesus said that in the end times because lawlessness would increase (and man, has it ever!!!), the love of many will grow cold.
I challenge you (and myself!) to pray over every police car pulled over behind someone and pray for both officer and civilians. If you see agitation in an individual or a group, pray for them boldly, asking God to intervene. We have more impact through prayer than we realize!!!! Some of us are called to intervene personally; all of us are called to intervene on our knees. 🙂
When Jesus said “the love of many will grow cold,” it was NOT permission to despise those who you feel are wrong. It was a warning: DON’T LET YOUR EFFECTIVENESS WITHER BECAUSE OF THE LAWLESSNESS OF OTHERS…whoever they are.
I believe all of us were born for such a time. We have the opportunity to witness Divine intervention as we refuse to fear, hate, or cower. We can actually LIVE in the wisdom and love of God in a lawless generation….with God’s help.
Dorothy
Setting your compass aright
If you’re anything like me, you get distracted all too often. Not too long ago, I sat at my computer from morning until late afternoon, only to break away to eat, feed the cats, and use the restroom.
And what did I have to show for my time? I had commented on several Facebook posts, I joined an online “I ♥ Cats” club; I watched several cat videos; I stumbled onto some “prepper” sites; I learned about homemade compasses; I caught up on the latest political conspiracies; and some stiffness in my spine and “sitter” returned. Productive. Yeah, right.
Needless to say, I was a tad disgusted with myself (although I was pleased with the “likes” and comments I received on the post and pic of an old cat I once owned); so when I drove to church that evening for a prayer meeting, I was telling myself and the Lord, “Something’s gotta change! Help!”
In these particular prayer meetings, my pastor gives us about a half hour or so to pray on our own before we come together as a group, so there I was, still irritated at myself for allowing technology to so perniciously consume my time and my life. Therefore, as I walked the sanctuary I continued my quiet complaint to God. Out of nowhere, I heard this:
“Set your compass aright in the morning, and you will maintain the right direction throughout the day.”
“Set my compass in the morning,” I muttered to myself. “Set my compass in the morning!”
The lightbulb came on. DUH! I thought to myself; my day will go the way I set it first thing in the morning! I knew that; I’ve lived that. But I had gotten sloppy again.
But here’s where my earlier technology marathon came into good use. The instruction I had wandered onto about homemade compasses drove this fresh revelation home.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR DAILY COMPASS IN THE LORD
You see, to make a compass at home, you first need to magnetize a tiny piece of metal. The metal is not a magnet, but by contact with a magnet, it will start acting like one. You do this by rubbing a bit of wire or a needle against a magnet—rubbing it the same direction several times. Then the metal, which was once not magnetic, is now magnetized, and will, if floated on water, point due north.
You also, as you come into close interactive contact with the Lord each day, will become “magnetized” with a godly magnetism. Remember, a sewing needle is not a magnet, nor are you God. However, with close interaction, that needle acquires a measure of the magnet’s properties, and you acquire a fresh measure of the divine nature.
A magnetized needle will point due north when carefully placed on water, and again, although the needle is not a true magnet, its association with a magnet gives it the ability to be a reliable compass.
You yourself will more likely find true direction easier to access as you daily interact closely with your Father.
And here’s an interesting tidbit about many hand-held compasses that I didn’t know: Most of the traditional ones contain liquid. The reason? The needle moves more smoothly and less erratically when suspended in liquid.
Think about your life. You spend time with God, worshiping and interacting with Him, but for some reason, you may find receiving direction from Him to be a bit erratic for your liking. What do you do? Suspend that needle in some water!
Paul analogized the Word of God to water (see Ephesians 5:26), so follow me as I continue this analogy: Just as the liquid in a natural compass brings smoothness and enhances true direction, so too does daily access to the Word of God, along with worshipful interaction with the Father, stabilize and enhance smooth direction for your life day by day.
“Set your compass aright in the morning, and you will maintain the right direction throughout the day.”
Dorothy
Urgent update: Impact to the left temple
First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men… 1 Timothy 2:1
You have a massive prayer assignment. It is because of this that God has armed you with secret weapons to accomplish your task. Praying without ceasing (see 1 Thessalonians 5:17), praying in the Holy Spirit (see Jude 20), and staying alert in prayer (see Colossians 4:2) can work together within you, whether you are in your prayer closet or just going about your daily routine. As you move through your day, you can pray quietly within yourself, whether in the Holy Spirit or your own language, trusting that God will toggle your understanding when necessary with important and urgent updates in the Spirit about this man or that woman, this nation or that situation. As you allow yourself to participate in the process, you recognize that God wants you to be available and ready so He can give you His insight for the purpose of prayer. This empowers you to do your part in praying for all men.
I encountered one of God’s urgent updates in 1997. As I was driving home one night after a meeting at church, I experienced an unnerving sense of impact to my left temple as if I was about to be struck by gunfire. I found the nearest semi-truck and drove right next to it for cover against flying bullets! Thankfully, as I precariously hugged that truck, I realized the Lord was giving me an intercessory assignment for someone. I entered into prayer as I pulled back from the semi, entreating God for safety for myself, my relatives, my friends, my colleagues, and anyone else in danger of impact. The sense of danger lingered, so I continued praying both in the Holy Spirit and with my understanding until it lifted.
When I arrived home I called my friends from a neighboring church, John and Janet, who had joined us earlier that evening. No one answered, so I left a message.
The next day John called and told me that he and Janet were involved in a head-on collision on their way home from the meeting. He was fine and Janet would be released from the hospital that day. John explained that upon impact, Janet, who was not wearing a seatbelt, flew over him and shattered the windshield with the left side of her head. She fractured her wrist upon impact in an attempt to protect herself, but her head was unharmed. In fact, for the next few days as she combed her hair, she pulled out clumps of it along with fragments of windshield, leaving an unscratched, quarter-sized bald spot on her left temple! Fifteen years later, she and John are alive and well and very involved in effective street outreach and missionary work. (From my book First of All Pray, copyright 2013.)
Praise God for the urgent updates from the Holy Ghost! Help us, Lord, to heed them.
Dorothy
UPDATE: Now 19 years after the accident, John and Janet are still going strong in the Lord, serving Him in remote regions of Alaska for months at time among the Inuit people.
September 11
Sometime in 1997 I awoke with a jolt in the dead of night. Trembling, my heart pounding in my chest, and my skin covered in the cold sweat of fear, I leapt out of bed to shake the dream out of my mind…
The dream started innocently enough; I was sitting in a field with several of my dear friends on a beautiful late summer morning. Soon a Christian convert from Islam appeared, interrupting our pleasant conversation, eyes filled with terror.
“They just hit New York City!” she panicked.
I started to make a joke of it, but looking to the horizon I saw tops of skyscrapers exploding in the midst of the famous skyline.
I rarely have nightmares. But this, so vivid and horrible, knocked the wind out of me. I spent the rest of the night pacing my living room in my pajamas, praying with urgency, pleading for mercy, wondering if any of it was real…
All that week I prayed. I couldn’t shake the urgency. I knew two things: 1.) New York City was a target; 2.) Muslims were involved.
Sharing it, however, didn’t help to bring wisdom or ease the burden. Instead, those I told assessed the dream lightly as something to simply “bind” and forget. I felt the lead weight of self-doubt crash upon me; who was I to presume God would speak to me about anything of import? I summarily blocked the urgency tightly bound in my belly and went about my life.
Fast forward to September 11, 2001. My eighth grade pre-algebra class was finishing up a test. One of the girls returned to the room from the restroom and whispered to me, “Ms. Frick, was there an accident at the airport?”
“No, honey. Why do you ask?”
“Mrs. McDuffy and some of the other teachers are in the hall crying, and I heard someone say something about an airplane.”
“No; I don’t think anything has happened,” and I sent her to her seat.
But when I poked my head out of the classroom door, I saw tears streaming down my colleague’s beautiful dark cheeks. “What’s going on?” I whispered.
“Girl, they’ve hit the World Trade Center! Looks like America is under attack!”
As I reentered the room, I paced the rows of desks, privately consumed by restless agitation, waiting for the last few students to finish up. I had to know more.
After what seemed like an eternity, the last test was face down on my desk.
I stood in front of the class and quietly told them what I had heard. I decided that since they were 13 and 14 years old, they would be able to process—at least as much as any of the rest of us—what was going on in our country; in fact, I felt they needed to know—and I had to know. I turned on the classroom TV bolted high on the wall in the back of the room, and all of us watched in shocked silence as we stared at the screen.
And there I saw it before my very eyes…my dream of horror, playing out on breaking network news.
I have learned that God is no respecter of persons; He doesn’t choose to speak to us because of our pedigree, our ministry title, or even due to whether we exude the “it” factor which naturally draws people to us. No; He speaks to whoever will listen; to whoever is available. He warned many about 9/11 before it happened; for some reason, we didn’t thwart it.
I am convinced that His warning came to so many of us so that we could thwart this vicious attack on our soil. But living, as we were, in relative “peace and safety”, I guess we didn’t take His warnings as seriously as He intended.
We find ourselves today not much different than we were on September 10, 2001—things are fine. Life is good. But on September 11th that year, the veil was stripped away, and we were forced to behold the hideous face of evil.
My prayers for the last few years have largely been directed toward awakening vigilance and alertness in the American people and particularly the American church. I know the burden of “seeing” evil before it happens yet being considered odd or peculiar—even paranoid, negative, or in unbelief—when sharing that burden with others.
But, praise God, things are changing. The sleeping giant is shaking itself and is starting to stand up. In this hour, we must pray all the more as we find our way in this shifting, changing landscape. We need God. We must hear from Him, individually and corporately. Lives and souls depend on our sober response to His leading.
It is time to pray.
Dorothy
Dealing with worry and fear in prayer
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7
How do you deal with worry and fear in prayer? All of us deal with it at times. I wrote about this critical but all too common dilemma in the following excerpt from my book First of All Pray:
Stability, power, and precision
Watch the news lately? Like it or not, it’s loaded with chaos and instability. Ever notice the values pushed in popular culture? Not the stuff of “Leave it to Beaver”, “Bonanza”, or “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. Have you ever wondered if the Good Old Book sitting on your nightstand contains the relevance necessary to counter sophisticated progressive philosophies inculcated in schools, universities, and by all the talking heads crafting their spin?
Consider this concerning culture’s obvious disregard for God or anything to do with His Word: God is not an impatient God; He’s known as the Ancient of Days and has seen and heard everything. He has witnessed philosophies rise and fall, religious and political leaders come and go, and revolutions fire up and die out. No empire has outlived Him; no godless paradigm has befuddled or outwitted Him. The nations are as a drop in the bucket to Him.
Consider this concerning your place in the grand scheme of things: a house is not built in a day; your own life is composed of one small decision after another. Likewise, your spiritual life is built over years—one thought, one decision, one action at a time. In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus clearly emphasized this fact when He taught about building a house on the rock. He compared the person who heard His Word and acted upon it to a wise builder who anchored his house on a stable foundation of rock, enabling it to withstand any storm that blew its way.
The pressure to conform to values that fly in the face of the Word of God is designed to force you to throw away your faith in God’s standards. If you were to believe in elves, unicorns, or goddesses, do you think the pressure to conform would be as great? Certainly not. But why is that?
The reasons are many. Here are a few:
A foundationless soul is an easily deceived and easily controlled soul.
- Stability. The Word of God gives you a strong foundation upon which to build your life. Storms come to everyone. Sometimes things don’t turn out as you had hoped or even prayed, but you have an anchor in your life despite those things—an anchor that will not move with a changing culture, an anchor which will endure forever. The alternative to building on the rock is building on sand—banking on the current popular mindsets and sophisticated progressive agendas that have all the appearance of tolerance and freedom. However, storms will still rage, and a house built on the sand collapses quickly—“and great was its fall” (Matthew 7:27b). A foundationless soul is an easily deceived and easily controlled soul.
If you’re linked up to God’s Word, you are linked up to His power. And His power cannot be controlled by the laws and constraints of men.
- Power. According to Luke 4:32, “…[the people of Capernaum] were amazed at His teaching, for His word was with authority and ability and weight and power” (Amp). The power that manifested through Jesus’ words back then is still alive and active in His Word now (see Hebrews 4:12). Why would that be of any concern in today’s culture? Because if you’re linked up to God’s Word, you are linked up to His power. And His power cannot be controlled by the laws and constraints of men. Therefore, great attempts are being made to separate you from your faith in His Word, rendering you unable to access His power. But remember, it is by the Word of God’s power that He upholds all things (see Hebrews 1:3)—and that includes you!
The Word of God is neither a vague philosophy on one hand nor a set of suggestions for polite society on the other. It has the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel and the accuracy of a marksman’s arrow.
- Precision. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (NIV). The Word of God is neither a vague philosophy on one hand nor a set of suggestions for polite society on the other. The Word of God has the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel and the accuracy of a marksman’s arrow. It does not miss the mark, ever, and it alone is able to pierce cleanly to the division of soul and spirit. Philosophy can only guess at the thoughts of the heart; the suggestions of a polite society can never redeem the attitudes of the heart. God’s Word, in your mouth and in your heart, can arise in the midst of chaos, turmoil, despair, and seeming defeat to bring critical deliverance and change to your life, your neighborhood, your nation, and your world. It shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it (see John 1:5). This is why the Word is so maligned by those who hate God in this hour.
In Jesus’ time, He was viciously accused of being a fraud and possessed by the devil. After a particularly intense assault against His message, He asked His disciples, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” (John 6:67b). Don’t be surprised if He asks you the same thing when you are confronted by our culture’s open mockery of His Word. He is merely testing you—will you cling to Him despite the disdain of a godless society? In response, let yours be the resolve of Peter in John 6:68. “Lord, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life.”
When the world around you calls into question your intelligence or sanity because of your faith in God’s Word, remember this. His Word brings stability, releases power, and has precision accuracy. Where else could you go? He has the words of eternal life!
Dorothy
Message in a motorboat
I felt distinctly led to rerun this blog entry from last summer. It has a message for our time.
For a summer and a half I had the privilege of working at Ranger, a primitive camp across the lake from the main camp where I was a counselor for six summers. The boys and girls at Ranger slept on opposite hillsides in tents and lean-tos and met in a central valley between the two hills for cooking, camaraderie, jumping into the lake off of a huge two-story diving tower we built ourselves, and for massive games of flashlight capture-the-flag under the night skies.
The most memorable session at Ranger was a year and a half before I got saved. Two of my co-counselors that session were Gordy, the Ranger director that summer, and Carla, both of whom were bold, born-again Christians.
The first time I ever prayed out loud to the God of creation was after jumping off of the Ranger diving tower while taking a midnight dip with Carla.
“Let’s pray,” she suggested.
“Here? Now?!” I asked, incredulous at the non-religious setting.
“Sure! Hi, Jesus! It’s so fun to swim with You under the stars tonight. I love You, Lord…” and on she continued as we swam in the star-illumined, midnight water.
I talked to Him, too, telling Him how cool it was of Him to make nature and summer and camp and freedom. I didn’t ask Him to be my Lord that night, but how could I ever despise a God who listened so attentively and lovingly to two teenage girls swimming in a starlit lake at midnight?
A big deal that summer was the copperhead infestation at camp. As more and more of the snakes were discovered, it became a badge of honor among the guy counselors to catch a copperhead with their bare hands. Even one of the female counselors caught one. I was secretly envious of her; I wanted nothing more than to say I had captured a copperhead with my bare hands, but alas, I had already been bitten by three non-poisonous snakes that summer at different times while holding them. I knew something was off with my snake-handling technique, and therefore, catching a copperhead—although awesome—was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
Gordy did catch one late in the summer, though, and holding it, asked me to drive him across the lake in the motorboat so he could release it way back in the woods. (We didn’t believe in killing copperheads back then. We all thought that “the children and the flowers are our sisters and our brothers”, a la “Rhymes and Reasons”, a John Denver song. That included copperheads, too.)
Gordy sat in the bow of the boat facing me with the copperhead in his hands. I pulled away from the Ranger dock and motored toward the other side of the lake.
“He’s trying to get away. If he does, he’s mad enough to bite one of us before flopping out of the boat,” Gordy observed.
“Well, don’t let him go!” I demanded, one eye to the lake and the other on the snake.
After a while, the snake stopped lashing around—and that’s when Gordy started preaching a message I’ll never forget. “He’s relaxing. His muscles are not tensed up beneath my hands. He’s just like the devil. If Satan can’t beat you by fighting, he’ll bide his time and seek a different strategy, just like he did with Jesus when he left Him for a more opportune time.
“You see, this snake is very aware of my grip. He’s testing me, I can tell, just like the devil does. He thinks if he backs off, I’ll get lulled into complacency. He’s waiting for my hand muscles to relax. And if they do, he’s ready. He’ll swing his head back and latch onto my arm!
“If a believer stands his ground against the devil, then the devil will back off—but he won’t give up. He’ll bide his time and watch for the Christian’s guard to drop and his life to get sloppy—and then, just like this copperhead, he’ll swing back and strike!”
I didn’t even believe in a literal devil at the time, but eyeing that copperhead as it went through its stages of fight and relax, fight and relax, everything Gordy said in that boat made total sense to me.
You certainly do have an enemy over whom you have authority—the devil. Resist him, firm in your faith, and according to the Word, he will flee from you (see James 4:7). But once he flees, don’t drop your guard; live not only harmlessly, but also shrewdly (see Matthew 10:16), armed with God’s Word every day of your life. That way, when the enemy seeks to return for a more opportune time—and he will—he will find you alert, ready in season and out, and without a single toehold by which he can slither back into your life.
Dorothy
And do not give the devil an opportunity. Ephesians 4:27