On Guard

Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked. (I Timothy 1:19)

The conscience is made up of what we refer to as morals and principles - amassed while growing up. They act to define the actions we will allow in our lives and those we will reject because they don't align with this learned set of morals and principles. Whenever we are asked to violate our conscience, we might just feel a little anxious, fearful, or even guilty. In the strictest sense, the conscience has a "prohibiting" effect - if the conscience becomes a little "dulled" with the wrong set of morals or principles being applied, it may guide us into some pretty awkward circumstances. This is why we don't trust our conscience alone - it is only ONE tool used in the myriad of tools God gives us for our spiritual, emotional, and physical safety. Keep your conscience clear - the instruction is to not deliberately violate it. The smallest compromises in either our morals or principles can lead to the bigger ones. Our inward motivations dictate our outward actions - think about it long enough and you will act upon the thought! The other guiding influences in life are the Word of God, his Holy Spirit residing in us, and the sound teaching of godly people. Violate ALL of these and the road will be a really rocky one!

Conscience requires discipline - in order to form the right set of morals by which we make what people refer to as judgment calls. If your morals haven't been the best as you were growing up, or because you made compromises later on in life, there is still hope. Morals are just the "rules" of conduct by which we live - if you put Christ in charge of defining these, you will actually see them begin to change! You may have been raised in a home where criticism and nit-picking were just the "norm". In the community of believers where you now associate, this may not be considered very loving or kind. When we submit these "learned traits" to God, he goes about helping us "unlearn" them. Trust me, I know for a fact the things we have to "unlearn" are way harder than the ones we have to "learn"! We begin to realize the "changing of the guard" in our conscience whenever we begin to see the wrong choice before we make it, realizing it as a wrong choice. This is a good first step - learning to heed it is another! Conscience is "situational" at times - we go with it when it is the easiest choice, but we sometimes don't heed it when it is the toughest! How is it we get our conscience to not sell us short? I think it comes by keeping our eye on the three indicators of "right" or "wrong" in our lives - God's Word (what does it have to say about what it is we are about to do); God's Spirit (when is he giving us that internal "niggling" to respond or deny the response); and lastly, our conscience. I put conscience last because it is the least reliable source, so it doesn't deserve placement over God's Word or his Spirit!

Conscience can help us recognize sin in our lives - but not always stop us from engaging in sin. We need the other sources of "recognition", as well. Once we recognize sin has a foothold in our lives, there is but one response which is correct - turn away from it. This is what we call repentance. The most important thing if we want a change of conscience is the "changing of the guard" - determining who will be the center of our focus and choices. If it remains us, we will fail repeatedly because our conscience will not always protect us. If we choose to make Christ central in our world, the changing of the guard over our minds and choices becomes a reality! What does this look like? Perhaps it is learning to take a little time before we respond - just so we can be sure we are responding to the "right" voice. Maybe it is taking time to think about what we have learned from scripture - the "what does God say" principle. No guard is worth their weight in gold unless that guard actually preserves, protects, and pursues what is right. Just sayin!

Re-engaging the mind

Unprincipled really just says someone is lacking moral scruples.  Scruples are standards we live by - agreed upon as the "minimum set" of actions on one person's part which result in some type of restraint or inhibits some other form of action.  Is it safe to say that the "scruples" of our society have changed over the past twenty years?  I don't think anyone would disagree with this observation.  It would only take about one-half hour channel-surfing to get a flavor for how "low" the minimum set of actions has become.  We have housewives from somewhere out there acting like absolute terrors toward each other, their husbands, and their kids.  There are wives and husbands battling it out over how many photos she takes in a given day. Survivalists pit one against the other to get some coveted trophy and a little prize money, all the while changing up who they will "side" with based on who seems to be doing the best.  Divas galore flaunt their stuff and act like "unholy"-terrors on the big screen.  Sheesh - I wouldn't say these folks even have scruples anymore - I'd say it seems they live pretty "unprincipled" lives!

The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.  (2 Corinthians 10:3-6 MSG)

Our writer puts it pretty well - it is indeed a dog-eat-dog world out there and that "world" is trying to make an inroad into our hearts and minds each and every day!  If we are to guard against this type of "principle-shift" or exchange of morals, we really need to understand how the enemy of our souls fights! To wage war without a game plan is to walk into the enemy's camp without armor, fully exposed, and as a sitting duck!  Let's examine exactly what we can see about our enemy's attacks and how we can combat them:

- First and foremost, the enemy of our souls doesn't "fight fair".  If any parent has ever had their child run home to them to report one of their friends for not being fair, you probably had to take a few moments to explain what "fair" really looks like, right?  In the eyes of the child who feels their friend is being "unfair", "fair" usually looks like getting their way, having the last cookie, or being the one to pick the games they play.  When these things don't happen, the child proclaims life as "unfair".  Oh that our battles were this easy to handle in our adult life!  The enemy of our souls has more than the last cookie on his mind - he has our soul on his mind!  He wants company in hell, and he isn't going to be content until he gets it!  "Fair" isn't one of his tactics - in fact, he uses "fair" as a means of getting some form of discontent stirred up in our minds and hearts so we will focus on how mistreated we are, or how "unfair" life has treated us.  "Fair" is the enemy to contentment - learn this and you might just get the upper hand on some of his greatest weapons of warfare!

- He uses warped philosophies to get at our minds.  Philosophies are really just a set of principles set forth which explain something.  There are moral philosophies which set forth standards of conduct.  Then there are natural philosophies which spend a lot of time showing the relationship between things in nature, such as gravity's force and the way it affects those under its influence.  Add to this the metaphysical philosophies out there and you get all manner of beliefs about human knowledge.  No wonder we get confused with some of the stuff going around!  The enemy of our souls takes all of these and meshes them together in order to muddle our thoughts, affect our actions, or lead us into inactivity simply because we are so confused.  The truth about warped philosophies is the fact there is always some "truth" in them!  When we add or take away anything from what is "true", we get a warped philosophy.  For example, if we know it is the colors of red and yellow mixed together which produce orange, to present anything other than this would be an outright misstatement of truth.  But...if we want to subtly change the "hue" of orange produced, we add in other colors such as brown and a little more yellow to produce the color we call gold.  It is still an orange base, but now it is called "gold".  Truth still exists, it is just "changed" to a different "hue" by the enemy of our souls.

- The enemy is a master at erecting barriers.  Nothing speaks more clearly of his involvement in our lives than to be moving in the right direction, evidenced by God's peace within, and then coming smack-dab into a mess of barriers which just seem to block us as we attempt to move forward.  His goal is to obstruct our progress, or keep us from accessing what it is which is just beyond the barrier.  They put guard-rails up on the sides of roads to keep the cars from careening off into the canyon below - so not every barrier is necessarily from him!  We have to become proficient at recognizing the ones God places for our safety and the ones he erects in an attempt to keep us from making progress - they are totally different!

- Lose thoughts, emotions, and impulsive behavior are his final set of tactics with which he seeks to add mayhem into our lives.  Let it be known, we all have the capacity to act a little impulsively at times.  One of the things which we often see when the brain has been impacted by a blood clot or an event which limited the blood-flow long enough is this lowering of "inhibitory" ability, causing the person to act quite "impulsively" at times.  Don't gloss over that one, friends - it is when the brain is NOT engaged as it should be that our inhibitions are lowered leading to the greatest opportunity for impulsive behavior!  Learning to re-engage the brain is the primary defense against this attack!

We don't fight "fair" in this battle because our enemy doesn't fight fair!  We fight from the vantage point of "victors" - we already know his game plan and we are miles ahead of him in countering his strategies, friends!  We don't need to fear his attacks - we just need to stand up to his unscrupulous dealings and put him in his place!  Just sayin!

Election Advice 101

It is almost election time in the United States.  The next President will be selected in just a matter of a few days.  The course of the next four years is held in the hands of those who will make their ways to the polling places, casting their ballot for their "favorite" candidate.  Note, I did not say the "best" candidate, but their "favorite" candidate.  After all, isn't this what the debates, campaign speeches, and advertisements have been devised to produce?  They were all put together in such a way so as to "sway" the voters to choose either one or the other - plain and simple.  I have heard many say, "Well, I guess we will just choose the lesser of two evils."  Nothing is sadder than having to choose a candidate who comes "close" to your beliefs, sort of close to the way you'd vote on issues, and marginally "inside" the values you adhere to as your own.  Yet, in many cases, we don't get the choice of the "ideal" vs. the "imperfect".  We get a little bit of "ideal" AND "imperfect" in each candidate - forcing a choice which is the lesser of the two "imperfects"!

When the country is in chaos, everybody has a plan to fix it—but it takes a leader of real understanding to straighten things out.  (Proverbs 28:2 MSG)

I daresay, the country is in a state of chaos, especially in this election year.  The stock market is up and down.  The critics on one side blame the other.  The political arena is filled with all kinds of finger-pointing.  I cannot say I won't be glad to have the elections over with!  The campaign ads invade every moment of commercial space possible.  The campaign offices ring the house at all hours with the hopes to either raise funds, or to secure your votes.  Frankly, I think we go a bit overboard, causing a whole lot of hype about each candidate which really only serves to cloud the issues.  In looking at scripture, we can plainly see countries in chaos are NEVER without those who will promise a "fix" for the issues.

In retrospect, we can see how campaigns have evolved over the generations.  We've moved from neighborhood campaign headquarters and lots of hand-shaking into the realm of the social media and the instant messaging phenomena.  Has anyone else noticed how much "stuff" is invading your Facebook page, your snail mail, and your Twitter account?  Okay, so you may wonder why I am taking this time to speak of all this in my blog today.  Plain and simple - I don't want us to be swayed by the "fix" promised, but to be committed to pray for the candidates God desires at the helm for the next four years - both locally and nationally!

We definitely need leaders of "real understanding" to guide us.  These leaders don't find their way into office by accident.  Remember what happened with Israel back in the time when the nation was just starting up?  You only need to turn to I Samuel 8 to see the dialogue between the members of the nation and Samuel.  Their plea:  "Give us a king to lead us!"  The very next words state, "....such as all the nations have."  I don't know about you, but I don't want a leader "such as all the nations have".  I want a leader such as God would appoint!

No amount of "explanation" from the mouth of Samuel (a great prophet) could change the minds of the people.  He tried and tried to explain what a "leader like all the other nations" would produce, but they "refused to listen".  We can be pretty determined when we put our minds to it, can't we?  We see only one side of the issue, but we never stop to consider the other.  Samuel explained how a "king like the other nations had" would only result in their sons being taken into the armies and lives lost in battles; the use of the lands for his own gain; and the taxation of their lands.  Yet, they would not be dissuaded. So, what does God do?  He says, "Give them what they want!"

You see, God is not a dictator - he allows us free choice.  He will not violate our will.  Since this is the case, he allows for us to see the choice, then to choose.  It may not be his "will", but it is our choice!  Now, if we want to make the best choices this election year, we will do well to learn from what scripture clearly reveals - no "man" has the "fix" - only God does!  We need to be praying for the leaders to rise up who will connect with God's "fix" and not follow their own plans.  We need leaders of great understanding.  Great understanding is not learned in the classrooms and from the textbooks - it comes by taking the knowledge of the word and applying it to every decision made.  This is wisdom - the application of truth into the practical issues of today.

So, now you've heard my "political" speech.  I will not tell you I endorse one candidate over another.  Nor will I tell you to vote one party or another.  I will say this - God has this in his hands - we just need to give him access to our hands to accomplish what is best for our country.  Just sayin!