We dream of an ideal world. We want to see it. Organisations like Greenpeace and Amnesty among the highest profile ones but there are other smaller organisations doing similar work to try to see balance restored in nature and humanity treating each other in a humane way.

We were designed for such a world. Man was made in the wilderness, but placed in the garden. God was of a single mind when He created us. We were made in His image. Designed to run on Him and with Him as our friend. In a world without sin and where evil was never a consideration.

We are haunted by the image of the paradise we didn’t see, but we somehow retain a memory of. We sit and dream of Eden. We long for perfection but we can’t reach it. Something in us knows it, but we strive for it anyway.

While I didn’t enjoy the 2nd and 3rd “Matrix” movies as much as the original, there were elements that struck me. The “Architect” character who designed the program Neo and Morpheus are trying to free humanity from tells Neo the first version of the Matrix was rejected as the human brain could not process a “perfect” existence. Humanity was designed to run on God in a perfect world. We spend our lives trying to create exactly that. Satan spends his time trying to drive us away from that.

In “Batman Begins”, Bruce Wayne is told by Raz al Gul that the League of Shadows tried to destroy Gotham with economics – a new tactic. It’s what Satan has done in the last 200 years. We’ve been hoodwinked into believing economics will give us back Eden. We move towards generating more and more money fro the sake of having more money. Apparently when Howard Hughes was asked how much money it takes to make you happy his response was “Just a little more”. I don’t know if that is true or an urban legend in terms of it’s factual accuracy, but it’s certainly how we live these days. We live and work and separate ourselves from our hearts to earn money so we can go to work and separate ourselves from our hearts a bit more. 

Every day we move ourselves voluntarily away from what God designed us to be, and without even realising it. It’s become so indoctrinated into us that we don’t even see the cage and the chains. It’s exactly what Jesus came to free us from, and exactly what Satan came to trap us with. We can’t see the pain often, in spite of us being steeped in it. We struggle onward in agony we’re unaware of. It’s not that we want the pain, it’s that we are numb to it.

I believe in healing as part of the atonement Jesus bought us, but not all of my body is fully aligned with my heart yet. I am a diagnosed diabetic, but my symptoms of this “progressive” illness have not got worse for 10 years now. Assorted different tablets, and more recently an injection have allowed it to be stemmed, butbefore I got the handle on God wanting me healthy I lost feeling in my feet. OK, I know this sounds like it’s off topic. The thing is, it’s actually right on topic for this. My feet are numb. Right now I have a bad infection, a cellulitis, in my left foot. If it weren’t for the numbness of my feet, it would make it impossible for me to walk. I’m on antibiotics now for it, and a few days and it will be cleared up again. The point is that the infection is there and the damage is done. And I couldn’t feel it. If my wife hadn’t noticed my foot was swollen the first indication may have been gangrene setting in. Part of me dying and I didn’t realise.

We live in this world, dying each day and totally oblivious to it. Like me and my foot.

It’s killing us and even as Christians it’s driving us away from a full knowledge of God. Somehow the third world is better off than the West. The economics that drives the West is selfish and divisive. It tears families apart and destroys lives. Sadly the Third World countries strive to be like the West. We look for ways in South Africa (my current location) to be more like the US or UK. It’s working in the cities – to an extent. The townships on the edge of the cities are growing fast. The largest in Cape Town has more than doubled in size over the last 10 years and now has over a million people living in it – and there are several around the city.

At the same time the “leaders” of the country live in mansions and build bigger and more expensive houses for themselves while these informal townships expand without proper sanitation, roads or other basic amenities. In winter the shacks burn down and lives are lost in the cold and the fires. In summer the tin shacks get too hot to sit in during the day. Without running water or sanitation the result is rapid spreading of communicable diseases like TB, HIV and a host of other preventable illnesses. The moral breakdown that started with Apartheid has been expanded into the post-apartheid era and the immorality of the white minority leadership has been expanded on by the new leaders. Economics to build their personal Edens.

We are all victims now. The “leaders” as much as the general population. The struggle to free this country is the same as it was 20 years ago. An oppressive regime striving to keep itself in power by building on the lowest ranks of the society. The leaders live in splendour and riches. They think they have a measure of paradise in that lifestyle, but it’s smoke and mirrors.

Haunted by Eden and a true Paradise they never actually saw they try to recapture it and build ever more impressive palaces for themselves. But it misses the point. Eden was selfless. The paradise was equal for everyone.

Even those not in powerful positions strive to build our own little paradise. From mansions to shacks and everywhere in between we try to carve out Eden again from what we have.

Haunted. Dying. Oblivious.

But there is one way back. 

‘“And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.”’ (Deuteronomy 8:18 NKJV)

We can have something of the promise here. By turning to Christ and leaning on Him we can begin to live again. Life, and life abundantly is offered. John 16:3 says knowing Jesus is Eternal Life. That’s where Paradise starts.

That’s where we can put the ghost of Eden to rest.

That’s where we can finally be free.

In Christ.

I get inspiration from some wierd places. Tonight it’s the 2008 movie “Hancock”. Charlize Theron’s character tells Hancock “I thought you wouldn’t miss what you didn’t remember” and it just stuck.

I’ve heard many talks about this kind of topic before now and it’s not hit me until now. We long for a place we’ve never been. We long for experiences this world can never give us – and we know it can never give it to us, but we long for it anyway.

CS Lewis said “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” (Mere Christianity)

It makes sense.

There’s a song I heard, recorded by The Vocal Union in acapella a few years ago whith the line “I’m kinda homesick for a country, a place that I’ve never been before”. I really understand that. It’s funny how that thought can be triggered by a secular movie.

We weren’t built for the World we live in. We were designed for Eden. The blueprint didn’t change when the Fall happened because it was hardwired into us. We were designed to be in God’s image. We were built for Eternal life – knowing Jesus Christ and the Father (see John 16) – and to live and interact directly with Him as an essential part of our daily life.

Other places God has used include “Reposessed”, a Leslie Nielson spoof of “The Exorcist” which reminds me how we need to be single-minded andfocussed only on what God has called us to and nothing more. He stands his ground against the protagonist as his colleague and friend pays the price for his focus. We need to be able to do that as well.

But mainly we long for what we don’t remember. It calls to us as we walk this life. Every flower, every drop of rain cries out the Glory of God. As Jesus noted, the rocks themselves cry out the Glory of their creator – and we can’t escape it. We allow ourselves to be “voluntarily lost” from the pull on our heart. As humans we try to fill it with things that in our deepest places we know will never fill it completely, but may dull the ache for a while. For some it’s the pull of money. Financial wealth built into the value of a small country controlled by an individual. Seriously, if it’s not financially viable for an individual to surrender the value of the time to pick up a $100 bill, there’s something very wrong. And there’s a few people that’s true for.

Even the most “philanthropic” individuals retain the majority of their wealth – despite having personal fortunes that could eliminate the debt of a third world country and leave change – then that individual has too much, no matter what they do.

The majority of the world will go to sleep tonight hungry, whilst production quotas prevent first-world countries from shipping the excess they produce to them to provide decent nutrition to billions of lives whilst artificially inflating the prices of those same commodities in their domestic markets.

Somewhere inside we remember what we were meant for, the Glory we were designed to reflect and share in – as His representatives, the crowning achievement of Creation and the only ones built in His Image. Eve was the final measure, something as men we tend to forget. Adam was created first, then – just to show off – God creates Eve out of the best of Adam.

But we don’t remember. We long for t, but we don’t remember.

We need to learn to remind ourselves that we were made for a purpose, and whether you’re a (yikes) white, middle-aged guy living in a country that actually doesn’t want you or a suitably “qualified” (in South Africa read ‘Black’) individual you still have a purpose that’s God-appointed and no earthly policy can get in the way of it. God will open doors for us to fill posts that will allow us to express His ideas and ideals to the World. We are called to be a living reminder to the World that there is something more than this world can comprehend.

“Atheists” will doubtless disagree with me, but I will disagree with them. They will say a line is straight of skew, but to say that there must be a reference that says “this is straight” or “this is skew” hardwired into us. It’s not something you see in nature. I’ve never seen a chimpanzee lining up a plank to make sure it’s planed and honed perfectly straight and smooth. It’s unlikely that a hippo in a pool actually cares if the pool is a perfect circle or not. Atheism cannot explain the detail we search for in our lives. It cannot explain the need for certain lines to be “right” and others being “wrong” without a concept of what “right” and “wrong” are.

We instinctively know what “right” is. We recognise it in justice, natural physical laws and so on, but what it is exactly is uncertain to us. Until we remember what we’ve never experienced.

Once we do that we begin to touch God in a new way. In the way He intended.

The way we long for.

The way we miss, but we’ve never experienced.

The way it’s open to us thanks to Jesus rebuilding the way to relationship.

It’s there. Waiting for us to allow restoration.

Waiting for the memory to be restored.

We have a “natural” instinct to go it alone. I say “natural” in the inverted because we actually weren’t created to be self-reliant. We were designed to run on God.

I’ts not as simple as it should be because we surrendered our true selves when Adam turned away from God and chose to rely on himself instead.

Our Natural instinct until that point was to turn to God. He walked with us in the cool of the evening. We talked with Him as friends. Adam relied on Him for everything. He was the Source for all our things to come.

We tend to overlook that nowadays. And by “nowadays” I mean since Adam, but it’s become even more prevalent in the last fifty years. Western society, which I acknowledge it may seem like I bash a bit, has single mindedly been eroding the certainty that had come prior to 1900, that God, and He alone, was our provider.

It really happened a little before that with the Industrial Revolution. Two World Wars later and two generations of young men decimated resulted in Fatherhood being lost for most Western countries. England, America, Germany, France, Japan (OK, Eastern, but with a hefty self-sufficient dose) all embraced the concept that we could choose our own destiny, which God says is true, but also that we could meet our own needs. We rushed in to do this, to fill the void in our heart. The result? “Free” love in the ’60s and the moral breakdown of society. It continued on through the ’70s and ’80s with Generation X – my own generation – a childhood lost to computers and despair. Drugs – legal and illegal – and sex became the tools of the generation, and we were followed by Generation Y who seem to be the pinnacle of selfish ambition. The wisdom of the older generation – people in their 50s and 60s – is disregarded at best. We need the wisdom to be put back into us from it’s real Source. God.

And the Bible makes it clear from Genesis to Revelation that all He wants is to be that source. For us to let Him be God in our lives and to look to Him for our solution and salvation. To allow us to be reliant on His goodness and mercy instead of relying on ourselves.

Being born-again means we recover our True selves, restored and established in Christ’s image, and releasing God’s power in our lives by doing so. But it’s a conscious decision we need to make daily. We must be able to put ourselves away and allow our own desires to be replaced by His vision for us. It’s a choice we have to make. To trust the Source we are plugged into and reject the old, sinful nature.

And we need to do it every day.

It’s very easy for us to live in a sheltered world as Christians. Particularly middle-class, decent-income, Western society people. We forget the problems that are associated with other people because we are “comfortable” in our existence.

Until one day something happens to us.

Nobody is immune to the troubles of this world. Jesus said so – “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace and confidence. In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. [I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.]” (John 16:33 Amplified)

But the reality for most of us is that we either don’t know the promise, or we can’t accept it.

I struggle with my temper. Have done for years. I’m learning to temper it, to take my thoughts captive as Paul put it. But it’s hard. Especially when the anger is directed at someone hurting the people I love, and even more so when it’s my wife who hurts.

Pain is something we all struggle with. Physical pain is easy enough to deal with, but most people don’t comprehend the emotional pain many people suffer. Even the closest people are often stunned by a suicide attempt because they didn’t see it coming. They couldn’t comprehend the emotional pain that person was going through.

I attempted suicide four times in my twenties, and considered it several times in my teens. I’m not ashamed of this, and Christ’s Grace has healed (mostly) the wounds in my heart that put me in that position where I was so desperate I could see no other way out. I felt abandoned, unheard and like I didn’t matter. My life was worthless and nobody would miss me if I left.

It’s a story I’ve heard from several people since then, including some people very close to me, and I still struggle with the thought processes that lead someone to that point – even having been there.

The big problem is that we seem to live in isolation. In the early years of the Church, Luke tells us in Acts that the followers lived in each others lives and shared everything so nobody had lack. The support in the face of such hostile adversity pressed them closer together. They didn’t feel abandoned by God or His children.

A huge problem is that we tend to surround ourselves with people who are not really believers. They have the labels, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist etc, but their hearts are selfish and they have no true interest in others except how helping them will boost themselves in everyone elses eyes. Modern Pharisees, crying from corners to show how good they are.

See – I said I had a problem with anger. There are a few individuals who – if I’m honest (and I see no reason not to be) come to mind as I’m writing this. It’s not healthy. It hurts me, and separates me from Jesus because I end up sitting in judgement over those people rather than looking at the action and the person seperately.

The anger I feel initially at the behaviour may actually be what God feels at it as well, but in me it quickly develops into judgement, condemnation and outright hatred of the person if I allow it to. Then that turns inwards and quickly becomes an insurmountable obstacle between me and God. I end up feeling abandoned by God, and isolated and abandoned by family, friends and Fellowship. Please note, Fellowship – capital “F” is not church on a Sunday morning. It’s the people we surround ourselves with who speak Godly words into our lives and allow us to do the same.

The first thing the Enemy tries to do is to isolate us. A branch severed from the vine will die. A single coal removed from the fire will grow cold quickly.

You get the point.

We see pain as a problem, and to be honest it is. As far as we allow it to be. Modern Western society has cut us off, especially men but increasingly women too, from our emotions. We are encouraged to bottle everything up. Elkie Brooks had a UK hit in 1978 with the line “Don’t cry out loud, Keep it inside, Learn how to hide your feelings”. That seems to be increasingly the attitude of society, and it’s more damaging than anything else I can think of.

Even Jesus allowed Himself to experience and express the full range of human emotions. He wept at Lazarus’s grave, embraced the children – presumably with smiles and laughter as kids tend not to respond so readily to other stuff – was even confused and angry. Read the Gospels and you can’t miss it. He was fully human in His life here. And His life did nothing but give Glory to God. He even knew despair and torment. It’s impossible to read the accounts of Gethsemane and not see a human being in anguish who takes captive the thought patterns and submits them to God.

He shares a joke with the disciples. He shares His torment with them – how else would we know about Gethsemane. He needed Fellowship, and I can’t help but hear a catch in His voice when I hear His conversation with Judas in my head at the Last Supper. He felt the pain of the betrayal. He felt the pain of Peter’s denial too. In the adaptation “Jesus of Nazareth” where Robert Powell played Jesus, the scene of the denial is captured as Jesus and Peter’s eyes meet as the cock crows.

The key is what we do with the pain. Judas lets it destroy him. Peter comes back and asks for forgiveness. Jesus must have been so happy after that conversation on the beach after breakfast.

Peter felt the pain of his actions. He ran back to his boat. We do the same. We run to the familiar instead of the Cross. We bury ourselves in business, all the time hurting more and more, until eventually it overwhelms us.

The answer is Jesus. But we have to find the strength to call out to Him.

I know I use it a lot, but Peter walking on the water to Jesus is exactly the image I have to keep in my mind when things threaten to swamp me. He was in the boat. The boat was sinking. He saw Jesus, called to Him and walked over the problem that had been killing him, faltering only when he takes his eyes off the solution, Jesus.

So do we.

Like a lot of people, I enjoyed “The Matrix” when it was released – the first more than the sequels. The concept of us living in a world where we are sleeping and the world we see around us is not the “real” world.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” writes CS Lewis in Mere Christianity. The simplicity of the statement is jaw-dropping. Lewis sums up in one sentence what the screenwriters took two hours to say.

With one important difference.

Lewis was stating a Truth.

We are all faced with the same choice Neo is given by Morpheus. Which pill to take. “I did not say it would be easy. I only said it would be the truth” – so Morpheus tells the newly awakened Neo.

We have that same choice. Accept the sacrifice of Christ – the red pill – and your life changes forever. But it doesn’t guarantee it will be easy. Quite the opposite. Jesus tells us we will have troubles in this world. He tells us we will be persecuted for following Him. He tells us that a day will come when killing His followers will appear to be a “godly” thing to do.

Or there’s the blue pill.

Deny the Truth we know in our hearts and keep going in the same pattern we have always been stuck in. A few people I was at school with have connected with me via Facebook. After over 20 years they still have the same pattern of thinking they had at school. They refuse to believe in any god, particularly Christ.

It saddens me when they talk to me. The Bible is disregarded as a fiction. Christ’s very existence brought into question despite more non-canonical primary source historical documents mentioning Him than there are mentioning Julius Caesar. Ignronace that has been chosen is somehow more saddening to me than ignorance that has come from never being exposed to Truth. Choosing ignorance is heartbreaking to see.

Over the years I’ve been in the situation where I’ve been the one to ask a friend if they wanted to accept Christ a few times. Thankfully, most of the time the prompting I had resulted in them accepting Christ, but twice it didn’t. I hope the two people concerned will live long enough to make the choice again.

Neo has to free his mind of the influence the Matrix has over him before he can live free.

Luke Skywalker has to hear a similar message when Yoda tells him “do or do not. There is no ‘try'”.

Jesus tells the disciples “Only believe”.

One life has a future.

The choice is ours.

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Ok, so nobody uses the full name these days. Halloween has become something to be used to revel in all things not Christian, whether it’s ghosts, witches, vampires or politicians.

But in the Christian calendar it was once a memorial day, a day of preparation for 1st November – All Saint’s Day. All Hallows day.

Something to think of. It was a day that the church used to remember the saints and martyrs who had literally given their lives for the Faith.

Even the name “Hallows” is the same word Jesus uses in his model prayer. It means to make Holy, or set apart for God.

Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t let the kids have some fun tonight. What I’m saying is the adults need to think hard and remember where the day started. It had nothing to do with pumpkins. The candles lit were a symbol of the light of Christ. The saints were remembered and their sacrifice celebrated. Witnesses who had gone before, and even those around us now.

We are called to be a light to the World. Surely this festival should provide an ideal opportunity to do that? We should be remembering people like John Wesley, William Wilberforce, William Booth, John Tyndale who were mocked and persecuted so we could enjoy the freedoms we take for granted.

So just a short entry today. It’s not about pumpkins.

Be a Light to the World. Be the City on the Hill.

Take a Stand. It’s a challenge. It’ll test your resolve. I guarantee most people will laugh at you.

But they laughed at Jesus and His message too.

You’ll be in Good company.

It sounds so straightforward. Choose Life.

That’s the decision God puts before Israel in Deuteronomy 30. “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live” (verse 19)

Choose Life. It’s like God gives a multiple choice quiz to the Israelites, and hands them the answer script with it.

The Blessings are listed, wealth, health, long life and Blessing in the land He will give them. The curses are also listed. Death and poverty.

It seems an easy choice. Follow God, and you get the Blessings. Don’t and you get the curses.

But they don’t – mostly. The Old Testament is filled with the stories of men who started well, but fell apart before the end, turning away from God and watching their life’s legacy fall apart with it. A few stand apart from the crowd. Caleb and Joshua, Jabez, Elijah, Elisha and some of the kings like Josiah who oversee revivial and repentance in Israel, but the majority is men who fail for one reason: they failed to fix their hearts on God.

David was a man who was known to seek God’s Heart. He was so in tune with Him that when his own sin in the murder of Bathsheba’s husband is brought to his attention he repents immediately. His son starts well, and his grandson even more so, calling off an entire war because the prophet tells him to. But Solomon and Rehoboam took their eyes off the game, and ultimately the kingdom was divided and fell apart. Ten tribes were lost into captivity and the once powerful nation never regained it’s former status.

Because the leaders chose something other than life.

We have the same choice. The curse is lifted – as long as we accept Jesus’s sacrifice – and we can live in the full Blessing God outlines in Deuteronomy. The Law was never meant to be fulfilled, rather it pointed to Jesus as the one person who could keep it, wholly set apart but at the same time a man in time. A sacrament for our relationship restoration.

So choose Life. Life in Christ. It’s not easy. It’s free, but it costs everything.

There are days when darkness will close in around you and all we have is the smallest of candles, but even that light cannot be extinguished by darkness itself. We have to choose to let it go out.

Choose Life.

Life. The Glory of God is man fully alive wrote St Iraneus. Man fully alive. Jesus’s own words echoing back at us, that His heart was for us to have abundant life. He wanted us to live to the fullest.

Yet we allow ourselves to be burdened with “ought to” or “should” or “didn’t” and heap condemnation and death on ourselves. We need to learn to cast off these shackles holding us to the old life we had before we became Christians, and actually be Christians. Imitators of Christ. In the first century it was a nickname given to the believers because wherever they went describing the works of Jesus, those same works, signs and wonders followed them.

I’ve never seen anyone raised from the dead, although I have met 5 people who have been raised up from physical death. I’ve seen a few little healings here and there, and received a few myself.

But Christian, an imitator of Jesus? I wonder if it would be recognised by the men and women who were followers of the Way in Jerusalem? I’m not sure.

James says we should demonstrate our faith through our actions. Signs and wonders are supposed to follow us as believers. How then have we reached the place where the spiritual cart is before the horse? We want to see a miracle, then claim responsibility for it. Scripturally, that’s not how it works. Jesus would do the miracle as a wake-up call to the people, feeding them spiritually and mending them physically to back up His words. We (including me) miss that part.

Stand with me today. Take up Jesus’s challenge.

Choose Life.

The very first post I wrote on this blog, “When the road is Darkest”, shows as zero readings, but for me right now it is something I’m coming back to.

There are other posts here that follow similar themes, but none that are as explicit.

I wrote it in Feb 2011, and now – almost 3 years later – I find myself facing many of the same challenges, but with a slightly different perspective.

I’m relying heavily on teachings I heard many years ago, which I’ve practically worn out the original cassettes (yes, that long) from repeated listening.

The teaching centres around Jesus final words to His disciples the night of the Last Supper, as recorded by John in chapters 14-16. But the one thing I’m having to lean on most heavily right now is the first few verses of chapter 14: “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” (John 14:1-3)

Basically, Jesus’s message is “Don’t Panic – Believe” (Thanks to Andrew Wommack for that phrase!)

It’s easy to panic as the waters start to swamp the boat. It’s easy to try to hide as Adam did in Eden. It’s easy to try to dig ourselves out by our own strength – even when we know we can’t do it. We see people taking these “easy” options every day. It’s easier to leave your spouse than to wade through the issues that have ravaged your marriage because you kept sweeping them under the mat and pretending they weren’t there. It’s easier to stop talking to your friends than to compromise and repair the relationship. It’s easy to go and find another church because the people in the one you’re in are just “wrong”. At the extreme, people believe it’s “easier” to commit suicide than to go on living in this world.

Every case above is one I’ve faced personally.

Including suicide.

It may seem odd to find a Christian writer openly admitting he struggled with suicidal thoughts at one point. It went further than thoughts. Four times I tried to end my life, and four times God helped me through. I’ve still not completely worked out why, but I suspect His unconditional Love for me probably has something to do with it.

And yes, all those attempts happened after I was born-again. It took a second personal encounter with Jesus to get my head clear enough to battle the thoughts that drove me so deep, and it’s a constant one. The war doesn’t stop after a single victorious battle, sadly. I was plagued with the thought processes for years after my last attempt, but in the darkest hours that those thoughts came, I was reminded by Jesus of His Love for me, and His goodness.

It seems incongruous to have a Christian blog comment on such things, but it is a part of my story, of how Christ has helped me in the battle for my life.

But where should we rather be able to comment on this kind of thing? If we can’t talk about the battles we fight in our minds within the Body of Christ, it’s a poor reflection of our ability to be part of that Body. These things get swept into the realm of psychology and out of the consiousness of the church. But Paul writes about the weapons we have being forged specifically for fighting thoughts. Any thought that sets itself up in our mind against the knowledge of the Truth. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-6) Paul’s inferrence is crystal clear. The weapons we have are specifically designed to shape our thoughts. To bring our thinking in line with God’s way of thinking.

No matter how dark the hour, no matter how deep the suffering, His Love and Light can shine in and break the hold of the Enemy.

But only if we remember Jesus’s words. 

“Let not your heart be troubled”