Halloween and the Concealing of the Spirit World

 

I work with 20 somethings that have a propensity of knowing what they like. My coworkers seem increasingly enthusiastic about Halloween year after year. Many state it’s their favorite holiday. One even said “I like Christmas more but the ambiance of Halloween is better.” As demonic end caps showcasing death, the occult, and the macabre go up in the store, so does my praying. This is the first year I can recall that Target is selling Ouija boards. Perhaps if my life didn’t go through a season of being demonically possessed, I too would be wrapped in a Care Bear onesie going down the street collecting free candy as I did before I knew better. Now I know the darkness Satan and his cronies intentionally bring on this day.

 

 Thankfully this holiday has become a goldmine to engage in spiritual conversation with unbelievers at my work. They cannot contain their plans out of excitement so I always overhear. When people find out that I don’t celebrate it and I have young kids there is something inside of them that cries “foul.” Like they feel bad that my kids are born into my family for Halloween’s sake.  I know some Christian families that give me the eye-roll as if to say, “come on really?” The question I usually ask when a strong reaction is given to my abstaining is this: “What are we celebrating?” When asked, there is almost always a pause. Most of my coworkers will say that it’s a day for kids to dress up and get candy. This year I had a lady say “well historically it’s a time where witches celebrate and crazy things happen, it’s just great.” 

 

The reply that gave me the best opportunity to share the gospel came when another coworker replied, “It’s death we celebrate.” To which I replied, “sure, but my experience with death is grievous, not something fun to celebrate.” Without thinking she raised her voice and blurted out: “but it’s the most natural thing in the world!!!” Her protest caught me off guard, I paused and calmly replied, “I could not disagree with you more. I believe death was never meant to be.” Before we parted ways, I was able to tell her that God’s creation originally did not include death. She gave a laugh and walked away.

 

What do we celebrate on Halloween? The Occult? Witchcraft? Death? Being something or someone you are not? Or maybe an appropriate question is what do others celebrate on Halloween? In my opinion, as we go further down this post-Christian hole as a society, the spirit world becomes deemphasized and the tangible world has consensus and is therefore preferred. Halloween shows that the material world can conceal spiritual things more and more. The world of our senses is ruled by Satan and leveraged by mankind. However, in the spirit world, the supremacy is Christ’s. My greatest treasure is knowing that those two worlds coexist but only one of them is eternal.

 

When Halloween came this year, we had our third annual Reformation party complete with a printing press activity, the 5 sola’s, and a look at the biblical objections Martin Luther had of the Catholic church. We also passed out tracts with our candy and prayed as the neighborhood came to us.

A Father's Love

 

Dear prayer Warriors,

 

Happy Thanksgiving. I realize that it's perhaps poor etiquette to send out an email on Thanksgiving, but I was actually waiting for this day to send it. Where would I be without your prayers, the intercessory prayers of the brothers and sisters in Christ. Thank you that I can share my vantagepoint with you and you in return go to the Father for me and my family. These prayer emails have helped me work out my faith. Praise God for your responses.

 

Faith Birthday -a Celebration of my Adoption

I assume all of you know my testimony so let me be direct. Can you believe that I was consciously a "John Doe" for a day? Not someone found unconscious without an ID but a conversational John Doe.  That fact encapsulates my lostness.  Thankfully God knew that I was His even on my darkest day. How lost could anyone get when people ask for your name and you reply "I have none."  That was me, a few days of my life were lived in solitary “observation” rooms and I remember spitting on the walls, not even being able to control when I needed to use the restroom for a week or so. I remember being given a Bible and slowly crumpling up the pages. It was a Bible with the red letters signifying Jesus’s spoken words. Therefore, I found a red pen and scribbled over the pages with my red ink, proving to anyone/anything watching who I thought god was.

 

God’s creation of humanity receives life, free will, and time on this earth. So many people are happy with this. I know I was for most of 28 years. I did my best to be careful in trusting, slow to be loving and tolerant no matter the cost. Live and let live. I led a lifestyle that forged its own beliefs by trusting my senses. Evil and sin became hard to pinpoint as such. I loved my sin so long as it didn’t hurt anyone, I was on board to do it. How dangerous it is to have a world view with self-justifying morals. On November 10^th of this year, I celebrated my 18^th faith birthday. My complaints and self-pity were dismantled 18 years ago. God got my attention that day because I had been humbled again by my car getting stolen. In that moment of brokenness/ openness, the Holy Spirit helped me consider absolute truth instead of my own.  The cross was no longer a story to me. Jesus’s cross represented for the first time that which it always claimed: my forgiveness before God Almighty for everything. The claim of the cross is that Jesus died to pay for my sins. No longer am I bound to sin’s eternal punishment. Sacrificial love was used to reconcile me to God. This is why trusting the Bible as God’s Word, as absolute truth, became my remedy and Jesus my only King and Redeemer.

 

What a reward! I’m not talking eternal reward here; I’m talking about walking in the singularity of truth as being my reward. Now I can commit everything to Jesus and forsake the world because I live with His companionship, Lordship, and Truth. His shepherding through all of the changes and hard things is an enormous reward. Being able to ask God what to do when life becomes impossible and finding the answer of what to do in the Bible is a reward!  The Bible tells me that I can live by faith in the Son of Man, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

 

 Who is my Father?

 This year, particularly this day and time of year, I’m dwelling on God’s adoptive love. It is my treasure in the field. I sold all my copyrights, my entitlements, my loyalties and royalties to buy the field containing that treasure. The treasure of being God’s son. God asks all of us to surrender even our own family on His altar to see that Jesus is more.  Mankind is offended by the cost, believers call it being born again, but God calls it adoption. I’m not just a creation made by Him, I am His beloved child through faith, I’m in the family now. By God’s grace, I can worship God as my Father more sweetly than most because I was fatherless for nearly all of my childhood, youth, and young adult life.

 

When I lift my hands in worship particularly at church and in my home, I mimic my son Victor who will express his desire to be held by me by running into me, lifting up his arms and uttering a plea to be held. That is the posture I take when I raise my hands in worship to my Father. I am His son running to Him desiring to be picked up, held, and spoken to. I see the metaphor clearly; therefore, I father my children with an intentional desire to scoop up those outstretched arms (and find the nearest thing to sit down on for more support). What great love I have for my kids because of God’s great love for me. God’s greater love and greater goodness is bountifully being given and offered to me. Praise the Lord!

 

Yesterday marked the 44^th year that my earthly father died. It was on Thanksgiving Day 1980 when his love went missing, literally swallowed up in an avalanche on St Mary’s Glacier. It was on the TV and the newspapers for days, but this was our news to carry for the time to come. When I reflect on growing up, I can think of no greater offense that befell me than my father’s death on Thanksgiving. I thought it was a sick joke from God, that on “thanks day” I was rendered thankless, fatherless. For many years I blamed God for the avalanche that took my father’s life. I imposed on myself the pressure to be like my dad, liking the things he liked, but I could not even remember what his hugs felt like.

 

Praise God that 18 years ago I found my first lasting "thanks" on Thanksgiving: the death of my father was no longer pain provoking or cruel or seemingly meaningless. As I see it, the recompense for the death of my father was my Adoptive Father. This adoption and new relationship with Dad became important so that I could be the best father I can to my kids. In the years since, the Lord has called me to be a father to the most needy and to care for kids through the darkest valley.

 

Perhaps the greatest hindsight I have this year as I write this is the biblical promises that God has always been the protector of widows and the father to the fatherless. Year after fragile year, my mother had the support and love of her friends, family, and many church families. I see how God equipped my mother with great self-sacrifice and control to raise four boys on her own, in a country she did not grow up in. I glean that it was the Lord who acted as my dad sovereignly even when I hated Him. He lived among us through His saints, angels, and His Holy Spirit even when I wouldn’t be comforted and held.

 

Deuteronomy 10:18 declares that God "executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing." The psalmist in Psalm 10:14 said to God, "You have been the helper of the fatherless." Psalm 68:5 says, "Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation."

 

Praise the Lord for:

-The persistent memory-sharing of Simon particularly with our children. As parents, we count on Simon's vital, formative role in our family. This includes sharing our wonder of where God says Simon is and our future promises of a reunion. In turn, may my surviving children see their precious and vital contribution too. 

- We rejoiced at Renee and Victor moving into Simon and Renee's old room recently. what lay empty, desolate, that which was swallowed up for years has become a place for our children again. I'm going through Isaiah with Anna and there are many passages on how abandoned and in ruins the promised land will be,  but in Isaiah 49 the promise of Zion, the return of God's people has arrived. God says "then you will know that I am Yahweh, those who put their trust in me will not be put to shame. 49:23b" . May the Lord fill us to overflowing once again.  

-Anna's continued interest and work on the eye gaze device. We had a prayer warrior of ours share that she prays for Anna to communicate her hope and salvation in words. I have no doubt of her salvation, but I must admit I admire this lady's faith in wanting such a righteous thing for Anna. Anna continues to communicate to us using her “talker” (the eye-gaze device). The clinic we have been going for this has been great and refreshing to learn more about Anna.   

 

Please Pray for:

-Our continued desire to have another child, that the origin of this desire would continue to be on the foundation of Christ, for the Lord's glory. I grieve at how prideful I was in assuming control of how many kids to have, thinking that our quiver was built for four kids. Join us in asking for 5, thanking for 4, and praising Him for 3 under our current “loan”. What a gift children are! 

-Renee’s continued growth in faith and wisdom. We use her AWANA memorization verses as our family devotion times. Talking in depth the significance of each selected verse for memory. Then we all learn it by heart. Renee has been stepping up in wonderful ways and having setbacks as well. I was in a moment of frustration out of continued repetition, I raised my voice toward Victor. Renee sensed the tension, looked at me and said, “Dad you need less passion and more patience.” Once I picked my jaw off the floor, I agreed, complimented her on her observation and asked her for suggestions. She suggested waiting 20 minutes before escalating any situation.  As far as a setback, Renee pushed a boy knocking him down. My own childhood memories flooded in and I felt parental disappointment for the first time. After going to the boy’s house and talking with his family, I feel Renee has grown in awareness of her actions and what they led to. They say girls are made with “sugar and spice and all things nice”, I feel the Lord doubled the spice with Renee. Lastly, she asked me to baptize her. As we are preparing for this, it has opened the door for her to own her faith more. Pray that God would enrich her life through answered prayer, purpose her days, and lead her to a life verse of her own that has great significance for her.

-Anna, We have had 5 significant doctor appointments since I last wrote. All of which were positive. The biggest is the Cerebral Palsy clinic where her bone and muscle formation challenges (dystonia) are closely evaluated. Her scoliosis is not worsening, the doctor was pleased with her hip x ray as well. We were ordered some preventative care night time ankle braces in the hopes of avoiding ankle surgery, in my flesh I groan at another caretaking task to do daily. Praise God for the diligence, joy, love, and strength He gives us to do all her many cares. Anna already sleeps with a forced air mask, a wedge between her legs and now ankle braces. Please join me in praying one of the oldest prayer request I’ve ever asked for: “that God would show the good He has in store for her.” Pray we would select a wonderful Make-a-wish wish for her. 

-distractions of this world to be identified and removed. That my Father would grow me. I settle for comfort when God is offering me fathering instead. He is encouraging me to be more intentional and live with daily extra effort. Instead, I find myself scrolling marketplace items for sale and it has mustered up to me a covetousness that I am not used to living with. May I be contagiously thankful, a light at my work and a joy in my home. 

 

Thankful for you!  

Nic for the Currats