Adventures in Denver: April 2008

Thursday, April 24, 2008

...down in my heart Tuesday

It's funny how songs you sing as a child get forgotten and then somehow get remembered again when you have children. I keep having dreams that remind me of these songs I used to sing. There's one that goes...'my God is so BIG, so strong, and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do'. Then I forget parts and make up some new words. Elijah is a fan of 'I've got the Joy'. He ends the song by singing 'I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart Tuesday'. cute kid, that one. I still cannot believe how fast Elijah is growing. He'll be 4 years old this year!

And Stella, oh she's so much fun! She has the best smile I have ever seen (I am completely biased here, but many people agree with me), and she's generally very happy. She has started eating rice cereal, and she can roll over when she really wants to. She's also gotten into a napping routine, which makes life easier for me. She's still not sleeping all the way through the night yet, but we're working on it. Having two kids share a bedroom is definitely a challenge at bedtime.

We're going to be having some crazy months ahead. Ben's still doing research and finishing up grad school, but he's graduating in May! Wow, it's less than a month away. And then he starts his new job in June, and then sometime in July we'll be moving. Time is going by so fast. Stella will be six months old next month!

Some of you may have heard that KU won the national basketball championship, and since Stella is our little Kansas baby, we had to get the kids some shirts to mark the occasion. Oh, and today is Fred's birthday, so Happy Birthday Opa Fred!

Devotions

Click the link above for the Daily Devotional, daily excerpts from the book "A Day's Journey" by Pastor Jon Courson.

Selected Article from Abiding Life Ministries Intl.

Coming to a Place of Deception

By Michael Wells

James 1:14, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.”

Galatians 5:16-17, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.”

I am starting to believe that people are deceived because there is something in them desiring the deception. First, if Satan has the ability to deceive all men, then all men would be deceived. Obviously he does not have that kind of power. So what does he look for in a man that would allow for a deception? Satan is looking for something in the heart of man where the deception can begin. It would be impossible for Christ to deceive any person, for there is nothing in Christ that the flesh desires. True Christianity cannot deceive, for again, nothing in the flesh wants anything at all to do with Christianity.

Christianity has one message for my flesh: “Move over!” So what is it that makes man’s heart open to deception? I believe it is the desire of a heart that says, “I can be God.” Rephrased, it is the desire of the heart to be independent from God. This is why the Mormon religion is so successful; it is cleverer than the early Catholics who embraced the local gods of the people, or just gave them different names. As you know, many “Catholic” countries are rife with blends of Catholicism and witchcraft. Haiti is an example. However, the Mormons offer something more: man can actually become a god. Man can invite his wife to his celestial kingdom, where she can be eternally pregnant. This “deception” has incredible drawing power to those who have suffered under the hand of their unjust god, or who have served a god all of their lives. After all, who would not want to believe that he could become the one who hands out punishment and receives gifts from others?

Such a person is deceived with a ludicrous teaching, but moving past the cobweb to the spider, we see at the root a heart that says, “I want to be God.” Deceptions all offer the flesh something, and Christ is always taking something away from the flesh. When someone converts to Mormonism, or any of the other “-isms,” I never feel that the Mormons won one while the Christians lost one. Instead, I believe that the person, in believing the deception of Mormonism, actually revealed a heart previously hidden that is anti-Christ. Again, we see that nothing is working against us. God is permitting all the “-isms” for the revelation of hearts. The germ of every cult is this promise of keeping the flesh alive through some kind of God-playing. The amazing thing is that it holds any attraction, when it is so much easier to have a God than to play God.