11 Ways Satan Likes to Trip Me Up

Satan is a sneaky guy. He’s the best liar ever. In fact, if he was a suspect on Lie to Me, he’d get away easily. Not even those guys would be able to tell he’s lying. Lying is Satan’s favorite, but it’s not so much lying as twisting the truth. As C.S. Lewis puts it, everything bad is a perversion of something good. That’s an encouraging thought, in a way. Badness can’t exist in its own right, and neither can lies. “The sun is square” can’t be a lie unless there is a truth, and that’s “the sun is round.”

Good news is, it’s not hard to recognize when Satan is lying. Know why? Cause everything he says is a lie. So we just recognize when he’s speaking in the first place, we learn to not take any of his advice seriously.

Here are some of the lies Satan likes to feed me. Sad thing is I usually don’t recognize him when he says it, so I believe him, if only for a little bit.

1. “You’re nothing special. I mean, you’ve never even had a girlfriend, you can’t even drive, and you don’t have a job.”

2. “God could be a myth, you know.”

3. “You can read the Bible later.”

4. “Don’t pray that, it’s pointless. It probably won’t happen.”

5. “Just give up. They’ll never come to church with you.”

6. “It’s okay to not love that person.”

7. “You’re smarter than your mom, so you don’t have to respect ALL of what she says.”

8. “Lifepoint is the best church because that’s where you go.”

9. “You should feel awesome because of your gift in music.”

10. “You can’t hear God right now, can you? That’s ’cause he’s not real.”

11. “Someone else will take care of that problem.”

Don’t let Satan get the upper hand! When confronted with a wave of lies, we need to hold on to the firm ground of the Truth, which is the Bible. That’s our greatest foundation and our greatest weapon. I am terrible at this. I don’t read the Word nearly as much as I should, and because of that, Satan gets a hold of me often enough.

Learning to recognize his voice is one thing, learning the truth that he’s twisting is another.

Normal Is Negative

One of the holes I’ve lately found myself falling into is to view what God is doing through me and in me as “normal.”

I’ll think about volunteering at Lifepoint, setting up in the morning, running lyrics during service, as a commonplace, weekly activity. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s dull. I’m saying I sometimes think of it as normal.

Oh, Lifepoint’s a pretty cool church. God’s doing great stuff there. Yeah, I’m on the production team.

Back up a minute, me. What Lifepoint is about isn’t normal, and as a part of Lifepoint, what I do isn’t normal either. Every Sunday I wake up at 4am, I eat breakfast with some guys at 5, and then we go set up at 6 until rehearsal around 7:30ish. Other people who don’t go to Lifepoint think waking up that early on Sundays is crazy. Even some other people at Lifepoint do!

But this extra effort we put in makes a ton of difference. No one’s forcing us to wake up that early. But when we do that with a positive attitude, it affects how we serve, and it affects how the entire service proceeds.

I think I get so used to all the faces I know, all the people I’m around weekly, that I forget that it’s GOD working through us. Yeah, I can say that as many times as I want, and it sounds good, but it’s hard to really grasp. The same God that led the Israelites is working in Lifepoint. He’s the same God who parted the Red Sea. He’s the same God who rose Jesus Christ from the dead. He’s the same as the One who just struck people dead. He’s the same God who created the earth and the universe!

Have you ever really consumed that thought? Have you ever stared up at the sun and thought, God created that. It’s not just a ball of gas and fire. God made that and he is chasing after me.

When I start to think about crazy stuff like that, about how God just put stars in the sky as easily as if they were bits of glitter on a blanket of velvet, about how he flooded the earth like it was a kitchen sink, about how he made us with the greatest of ease but the greatest of care, I start to get freaked out. ‘Cause this is what’s NOT normal:

That God wants to use me. Hello? Do you know me? Maybe you don’t really know me, but if you do, you know I’m retarded. I have no common sense most of the time, I fail at organization, I’m inept at time management, and I get distracted very easily. But for some reason, God just laughs in joy at who I am, and uses me. Yes, you, he says to me. I want you. I have use for you.

The thing is, if he really wanted to, he could accomplish whatever he wants to without me, easily, so easily. That means a couple of things.

1) He must want to do something in my own heart. He’s not just doing stuff to other people, he’s using me to change me too.

2) I have a CRAZY responsibility. God’s using me to help do something that’s at the top of his priority list. It’s the thing that makes his heart beat!

3) I have no reason to worry. Yeah, I could screw up in the midst of what God wants me to do, but he knows that, and if he wanted, he could remove me and take over completely any time I want. He’s in complete control, whether I feel like it or not.

It’s just refreshing to walk outside sometimes, look at the entire night sky, breathe it in, and think, He made this, and to actually feel that thought, know that thought, believe that thought. Then to think, He made me too. And then, He made me for himself.

It’s not normal, none of it. Next time I walk into Lifepoint, I’m going to try to remember that. This is not just praise and worship. This is a battlefield. The same Satan who tempted Jesus is doing everything he can to stop us, but the good news is the same God who will defeat him in the end will hold him back now.

It’s not normal. We’re part of a story vaster than we can even begin to imagine, a story that has one purpose: to bring the God of Everything eternal glory.

Addicted

I’ve been a casual drinker of coffee for years, mostly of decaf, but nothing substantial.  Now, over the past month, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m addicted. I get all the symptoms: fatigue, intense cravings, headaches, the whole deal. In acknowledging this, there was no panic, no distress, no regret even. I love the taste of coffee, always have. And coffee’s not detrimental to your health, really. Caffeine’s not the greatest thing for you, sure, but it’s not a cancerous substance.

So, when I realized that I was addicted, I did not freak out. I merely shrugged and continued with my life.

And what is it with people who don’t like coffee, anyway? Just saying. I mean the people who look down on it even. I can understand not liking some things, like okra. But clearly, when God created everything, he set aside coffee beans specifically for drinking and declared it very good. I mean, it just affects you in a good way when you drink it: physically, mentally, emotionally.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking lately. Thinking about my addiction that is. The word addicted kind of implies that I’m relying on something, or that something is taking something from me, demanding something from me, controlling me. Well, it’s not so. Coffee doesn’t really control me. It’s not like coffee makes the decisions and I follow suit, grudgingly. No, it’s a two-sided deal. Coffee likes making me happy, and I enjoy coffee making me happy. My body wants coffee and coffee wants me. It’s not an addiction–it’s a coffee relationship.

See, that’s the difference. With a relationship, one party can end it whenever it wants. I can stop drinking coffee whenever I want. Sure, there may be some heartache, but it’s possible. An addiction is more difficult because one party wants to leave constantly, but pretty much can’t. I have a coffee relationship. If coffee starts to abuse me in any way, I’ll stop drinking it. That’s an official warning. But I think we’re at a contented equilibrium right now though.

I like to define it like this. Being in a relationship with something or someone means you don’t want to live without that thing. Being addicted to something or someone means you can’t live without it.

There are somethings that are different, like God and me. That’s a relationship, but it’s an addiction too. I don’t want to live without Him, but I can’t live without Him either.

It gets dangerous when we start to get this confused with human beings, when we start to get our relationships confused with addictions.

“I can’t live without him/her!” Have you heard this before? That’s not true. If it was, you’d be addicted. It’s not even true about our family members, as tough as it seems. You really don’t want to live without your family, but you can. It’s painful, but it’s the truth. That boyfriend or girlfriend is a relation to you, not an addiction. If you let that person even feel like an addiction, that’s when they can control you. Don’t get the wrong idea about marriage now. That’s still not an addiction, but that doesn’t mean divorce is A-Okay. Marriage is like a relationship that you commit yourself to for a lifetime. It’s like saying, “I don’t want to live without this person, ever, and no matter what happens, I won’t. Not because I can’t live without them, but because I am making a promise not to.” Different when you think about it that way, isn’t it? You can live without them, but you are choosing not to. But don’t get it confused with an addiction ever. No matter how much of an addiction it might feel, it’s just a relationship.

It’s funny, because it’s the opposite with God. No matter how much of a relationship, or lack of one, you have with God, you’ll always be addicted to Him. He made us that way. We can’t live without Him.

Let’s go back to coffee for a moment. Let’s pretend like we’re all born with an innate addiction, a true addiction, to coffee. Like we can’t live without it. We don’t realize it’s an addiction, so we pretend like it’s a relationship, like we can either like coffee or not. Some of us, though, recognize our addiction, so we drink it like crazy. But for the people who are pretending like they’re not addicted, those who think coffee is “just not for me” or even downright disgusting, when they die they realize that they were addicted all along. And it’s sad because they’ll get addicted to other things, like alcohol or video gaming or surfing, but they’ll never be satisfied because their true addiction is coffee.

That coffee is God. No matter how much we shun Him or pretend we don’t need Him, we do need Him. But the thing is, He doesn’t want us to just need Him. He wants us to want Him. He wants us to be in a relationship with Him. Because once we start feeding that addiction, we start wanting Him.

Don’t get me wrong, we can be addicted to things other than God. But they’re fleeting. Our addiction to God is one that is spiritual, and that is everlasting.

Starting College

Well, it’s been pretty much a whole semester of college now, and it went by pretty fast. Too fast.

I was always one of those guys (or maybe the only guy) who was scared of college, in a way. It was out of my comfort zone for some reason. I had been away from my family, but I hadn’t really supported myself on my own.

And what was college like anyway? Sure, people had talked about it, but I still had only a vague idea of what the experience was actually like.

What I had gathered so far: 1) The professors weren’t anything like high school teachers, 2) there were essays upon essays, 3) the majority of your grade depended upon tests, 4) most people were wide awake in the middle of the night, 5) you barely knew anyone else because of the size of the student body, 6) finding food would be a problem, and most importantly, 7) college was fun!

Yes, I’d heard that college was fun, the greatest years of your life even, but had no idea what this fun involved. Images of partying, meeting girls, late night drinking, and I-don’t-know-what-else popped into my mind, and none of it suited me. I had never been a party-goer. I wasn’t an introvert, but I didn’t seek vast social interaction as a sole means for happiness. So how was I going to be happy, have fun, in college?

Not only were these worries tumbling around my head, there was also the difficulty of physically transitioning to college. I was pretty much late on every deadline, including signing up for housing, signing up for orientation, making a tuition deposit, and signing up for financial aid. I’m surprised I even moved in and and started classes on time.

And it was right after move in, right after everyone left, and I was standing alone, that I froze. I felt alone. I had hardly been around campus. I didn’t know where anything was. I didn’t know if I could even find my apartment again. Eventually I met my roommates, but it was still just…awkward.

But I loosened up, needless to say. When I found Cody, my friend from high school, and went through orientation with him, I joined with a group of people who would become my hang-out crowd. And that’s where my college fun comes from, just going around campus, being random, talking about nothing, being with people I know.

You know, it’s almost funny how close I came to going to colleges other than UNCW, to moving out of Wilmington and starting anew. Why didn’t I? Well, Wilmington was just starting to feel comfortable. I didn’t want to go someplace where I didn’t know anybody at all. I had my friends here, and I thought, “Well, at least a few people I know are going to UNCW too.”

I think some part of us is scared of branching out and meeting new people. We think our friends, our acquaintances are fine, and no one else would really be the same. But when we actually do make new friends, we realize it’s not so bad. Humans are humans, and we like each other. We get along. We laugh together.

College isn’t about the place. It’s about the people, and I look forward to meeting and growing closer to more people as these four years go on.

Google Wave

Today I got invited to Google Wave, something which I’ve heard of but had never really researched. I was uncertain about what it actually was. I had heard talk of “sharing documents in real time”–and I got a picture of something like a live version of Google Docs (also something I’ve never used.)

But I went and tried it out, but not after reading about it and watching videos about it. Apparently it’s a lot more complicated than just sharing documents. I soon learned that it’s actually a re-imagined version of email–a new way to communicate on the web. Is it just email? No. Is it like instant messaging then? Not exactly. I had to try it out on my own. But first I needed contacts. Once you have contacts on Google Wave, you pick things up quickly. You have a conversation. And it really is real time. You can see people typing as they type. You can edit people’s posts (for some reason), you can embed videos and photos into the conversation itself, in addition to many other features I’m sure I’ve yet to discover.

I look forward to investigating this new tool further.