Some random ideas...

"Give us aid against the enemy,
for the help of man is worthless.
With God we will gain the victory,
and He will trample down our enemies."

This verse is from the end of Psalm 60.

Where are we depending on ourselves? For a long time I have depended on myself in almost every area of my life. This idea that we are our own, and that we can emerge, on our own, victorious from our trials, is very wrong. For me it has led to a lot of frustration and discouragement. As it turns out, God is not as interested in our work, our production, our identity in this world, as He is in our identity with Him. When we were baptized we died with Christ. And then we rose to a new life with Him when He was resurrected. The problem is that we still have the choice to go back into our old jail cell. The door is still open.

This reminds me of Shawshank Redemption, when the old man is finally free from prison but does not know what to do with himself. He has become "institutionalized." After years and years of living in a world that is in some sort of oppression by evil, we are convinced that we are not free, and cannot be free. This somehow often leads us to some sort of pride in thinking we must live alongside it, or within it. This is a lie. We have been raised with Christ. The power of Almighty God is at work to defend and protect us.

We have to identify ourselves with Christ.

What I mean by identify is this; every bit of ourselves, the things we are proud of, the things we are afraid of, the things we like, covet, desire, dream toward, and honor...especially the things that are secret, we have to bring into the presence of God.

This means we have to trust Him. We have to trust Him with all those things I just mentioned. What this requires is that we must know about Him, His character and His power.

We have misunderstood who God is, who the world is, who Satan is, and who we are, for a very long time.

God is only good. He is infinitely more powerful than every force that can ever come against Him, or us.
The world is not our home. Creation even groans because it nows it needs to be restored.
Satan is evil. He is here only to steal, kill, and destroy. He has some power, but He cannot approach God.
We can approach God. The Holy Spirit is in us. God can defend us completely from our enemies.

We have to trust God. he will trample down our enemies. The good work that God began in us, He will finish it and complete it. He promises us that He will complete it. His promises do not fail.
This requires us to approach God, with everything that may be a part of us, or everything we may be a part of. We need to verbally ask Him to give us His Holy Spirit, to change our hearts, to burn up the chaff that we may have identified with.

We need to understand who God really is. This means we need to hear and see His word a whole lot. We need people to pray with us and for us. We need to ask God to show us who He really is, how much He loves us, how much we can trust Him.

A New Season

Hi everybody!
So, i used to send out mass emails whenever I felt inspired to do so. Several of you over the few years, mentioned that you appreciated it. Just the other day someone really important to me mentioned that they missed that, and asked why I didn't do it anymore, and I am not sure why really.
For almost two years now Valerie and I have been going to St. Andrew's Episcopal Missionary Church here in Gainesville. That time was really restful, spiritually, and may have had something to do with why I hadn't been writing those emails. Now I feel a little bit of a change in that, and since my friend reminded me about it, I have had the desire to share my thoughts with my friends again.
So, this is my new blog spot. I don't know how often I will write on here, but we'll see. All of you mean so much to me, even if we haven't talked to or seen each other in a while.
I hope some of my thoughts will be an encouragement in your day to day life, especially spiritually.
Thanks,
Ethan