The Wrestle

I have wrestled with God,
and do you know how He wrestled me down?
With love.

snow

Snow so bright,

lights up long winter nights.

Grey days set ablaze,

by every starry whiteness.

Softly blowing,

sweet caressing,

of earth, tree and shrub.

Sheer abundance,

cause to pause.

Breath and feel,

alive.

Muscle aches and skin glowing,

reminding of our smallness.

A tender thing, deserving of respect and wisdom,

such power over life and death.

No beauty without pain,

no comfort without sacrifice.

The soul hungers,

for what the spirit remembers.

Two Kingdoms

This morning during my drive to drop off my youngest at playschool I had some very interesting thoughts going on. I'm not sure how it got started, but I began to think about how humans are hosts to spiritual beings, spiritual beings who want authority in the earth, but can only get it through an alliance and agreement with a human being. Truth is stranger than fiction. Why can't these beings just take what they want? Because the earth was given to mankind by God.

We abdicate our authority when we make agreements with the deceiver, Jesus Christ got it back for us, but we have to believe the keys exhist before we can use them. What we believe makes a world of difference. When I asked Jesus to come into my life and be my Lord and Saviour, I became His human host. This is why the Bible refers to the Church as the Body of Christ. When Jesus came into my heart and life He began to clean up any resident darkness, and so over the years, as I've surrendered to His process, I've become lighter as He cleanses this spiritual house that is me. The opposite happens when we let darkness in through agreements we make with the things of the kingdom of darkness.

During Jesus' ministry on earth He delivered some people by casting out the dark spiritual beings they were hosting. In one such story they begged Jesus to let them go into pigs, since they had to come out of the man at Christ's order. I gather that a pig host is better than no host, but the pigs rushed into the water as a result, and drowned. Eventually, the kingdom of darkness leads to death, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. Since God loves the world, He sent His son to deliver it from the kingdom of darkness. All who invite Him into themselves and submit to His transforming power, will prove it in increasing measure, by coming out of agreement with the kingdom of darkness and destroying the spiritual work, and thus the physical destruction, caused by that dark kingdom. We are to do this by loving people.

God is love. Satan cannot love. Not real love. If we cause factions and strife, if we make judgements and condemn people based on judgements, we have missed our true calling. If we need to be right, we've missed it there too. Wrong exists. It touches everyone, it hurts, it's painful, it's frusterating, especially if someone you love is being hurt. We are to protect the innocent. We are to set the captives free, to release the prisoners of darkness. We do that by shining the light of love and truth. The truth is Jesus, not a philosophy you smack people with. Jesus shed His blood for us. That is truth. When we invite Him in, we invite the dominant spiritual power of light to overtake the darkness, from the inside out.