The Father of Scammers

Like many folks these days, I seldom answer my phone if the number calling is not in my contacts list.  Now that telemarketers and scam artists can call from anywhere in the world while displaying a number that looks as if it could be your next-door neighbor’s, it’s wise to just ignore unrecognized calls and hope that if it truly is a legitimate call, the caller will leave a voicemail message.

The other day I received a call like that.  Most of the time, the scammers don’t leave a message, but this time I got a notification that I had a voicemail.  It went something like this:

““You will be taken under custody by the local cops. There are four serious allegations pressed on your name at this moment. We would request you get back to us so we can discuss this case before taking legal action.”

Sounds totally legitimate and scary, doesn’t it?  I’m sure if the local constabulary was on their way to arrest me, they would call to warn me first so I could get out of town before their arrival. 

Of course, like any good internet savvy person, I typed the words “four serious allegations” into Google and read about the type of scam these people were pulling.  Of course, it’s an attempt to scare folks into paying money to the scammer to avoid arrest.  I also got an email recently that prominently displayed a password I used to use a lot in the subject line.  That scammer really had obtained that password from a data breach from my health insurance company and used it to threaten me with exposure, saying that they had control of my computer and had a split screen video with my face on one side and the porn site I was allegedly viewing on the other. Of course, for a fee, they would agree not to send this video to all my email contacts.

Of course, in both cases, I knew I was innocent of anything the scammers were trying to pin on me, but I know  there are people who have enough guilt in their lives to believe  there might be some teeth in these threats and so they pay money to avoid the malicious actions these criminals are using as intimidation.

Satan is like that. 

Even as followers of Jesus, we will sometimes fall into sin, make mistakes, lose our tempers, or be unkind to someone.  We are not perfect and will not be this side of heaven.  Even a non-believer has a conscience and our conscience will tell us when we’ve done something that isn’t in line with our moral code. If we are walking in a close relationship with the Holy Spirit, He will gently rebuke us for our choices, but it is a loving rebuke meant to bring us into closer fellowship with God and to shape us into the image of Jesus.  The Holy Spirit won’t bring an accusation with a threat of condemnation, but conviction with a promise of mercy and grace.

The enemy’s accusations are meant to bring us into a place of shame, a place where we will avoid fellowship with God because we feel unworthy.  In ourselves, we are unworthy, but Jesus paid the price to bring us into a position of wholeness, cleanness, and right-standing with God.  1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Many times, Satan will bring an accusation against you that isn’t even true, but because he is the father of lies, he’ll put enough truth with the lie to make you question whether you were wrong in a situation.  Ask the Holy Spirit to show you the truth.

Don’t let that scam artist deprive you of fellowship with God. Don’t let him steal from you all the blessings God has given you.  Don’t give him permission to speak into your life and rob you of your joy.  Don’t answer back to him when he delivers a false accusation.  He just isn’t worth your time.

Today is Your Day.......

Back in my day.......

Have you ever heard someone use those words?  I even saw an ad today that was talking about grandparents and used the phrase, "in their day". When is my day?  Has my day passed if I'm over 30?  Heaven forbid!

When I was a teenager, I thought of someone in their 40s or 50s as old.  Now that I'm approaching my 60th birthday, my opinion on age has changed considerably! I think my attitude began changing when I was approaching 30 and feeling a little sad that my 20s were ending.  My husband said something profound one day that totally changed my perspective on aging. He said, "You act like you're sorry you lived this long."  I realized that getting older just meant that I was a survivor - it was a victory, not a defeat.

 I don't feel old and I definitely don't feel as if my time has passed or that it's time to just sit back and relax.  I'm just now really learning my full purpose in this life.  If God lets me live to be 100, I'll still be finding ways to serve.  My roles and responsibilities may change with time and with age, but each day of my senior years is just as important to God as the days He gave me in my youth.

Our church sponsored a youth conference this weekend and I am in no way taking anything away from the importance of what God wants to do through teenagers in the Kingdom.  We need to pour into our kids the wisdom of God, the strength and power of the Holy Spirit, and the dependence on Jesus that they will need to fulfill their purpose.  My prayer is that they will be established and strong and will avoid some of the pitfalls of the world that the enemy will try to use to derail their destiny. I just don't want you to think that if those days are in your rear-view mirror that you are finished.

If "our day" is only the days of our youth, what is the purpose of the rest of our lives?  The Bible shows us that God had a purpose for people of all ages, not just the young.  For every story of a young David or Samuel, there's also a story of an aged Abraham or the elderly prophetess Anna at the temple as she saw the infant Jesus.   Age means nothing to an eternal God.  He can use us from childhood to old age.  Every day is "our day" if we are walking with the guidance of His Holy Spirit.

Lessons from a Baby #10: Hold You

(This post is very brief, but it gets right to the point and it's a point on which I need to meditate right now.  Maybe it will speak to you in the same way.)

In just a few months, our beautiful granddaughter, Bella, will be two years old and at that point, I guess I'll have to stop calling her a baby.  Even now, she's communicating like a little person and beginning to put a couple of words together to make short phrases.  My favorite one is when she is standing at my feet and reaches her little arms up to me and says, "Hold you"! .......  Not "hold me", but "hold you". 

In my mind, asking to be held is communicating a need for comfort or rest, but asking to hold someone else is an expression of wanting to be close to and express love to another person.

Throughout my life, there have been many times when I have sought solace in the arms of Jesus.  The Holy Spirit is called our Comforter for a reason.  But what joy it must bring to His heart when we come to Him just to express our love - when we ask to "hold him"!

Room Enough to Receive It

I am a very organized shopper.  I get paid every two weeks and every two weeks I sit down and plan 14 days of menus and make a grocery list.  Now that I have discovered online grocery shopping with curbside pickup, I am saving time and avoiding standing in long lines. 

This week when my husband and I pulled into the pickup lot for our grocery haul, I got out and went to the back of the van to make sure there wasn't anything there to interfere with the store worker loading my bags of groceries.  Then one of those little "God moments" occurred as I got a quick analogy about having room to receive what I had purchased.

God has purchased everything for us - salvation, healing, deliverance, power, anointing, strength, peace, joy, wisdom - shall I go on?  Sometimes the back of my van holds my granddaughter's stroller or some tools that belong to my husband.  If I forget that those things are there, they must be moved to allow the van to be filled with those things that I need.  Some things I can move aside myself, but there are other things that are too heavy for me to move and I need the help of my husband - someone who is stronger than I am.

In our lives, God desires for us to have all those things that He provides, but there are times when our lives are filled up with other things which must be moved aside in order to us to receive what He is offering.  Some of those things we can move aside with a simple choice, while others require His strength to lift away. There are times when just talking with a brother or sister in Christ helps to lift those things that are in the way and put them in their proper place.

That was my case this past week.  I had allowed some mindsets to interfere with my walk with God.  I had listened to some lies of the enemy that had discouraged me and made me feel inferior, powerless, and useless.  In counsel with a couple who loves me, I began to recognize the root of some of these thoughts and they helped me to move them out of the way in the spirit so that I would have room to receive the thoughts about myself that God wishes me to have.

What is in your spiritual "trunk" today?  Are there things there that you need to set aside?  Are there things blocking the flow of blessing in your life that you need to share with someone who knows the mind of God?  Do you need to ask God to pick up that heavy thing and move it out of the way so that you will have a spirit that is open and clear and ready to receive from Him?

What I Thought I Wanted

I have only put sunscreen on my body once this summer.  Before you think me reckless and unwise, let me tell you that though I prefer warm weather to the stark and bleak cold of winter, I don't relish extreme heat either and I definitely don't like to sweat!  The time I've spent outdoors this summer has been in short periods of time that aren't in the peak times of day for the sun to do its damage.

When I was a teenager though, I strove to get that "healthy-looking" tan.  My friends and I would lay out in the backyard on lawn chairs, slathering on a mixture of iodine and baby oil, flipping from front to back at regular intervals to fry ourselves evenly.  Unfortunately, it was to no avail.  My daughter says I am the whitest white woman she knows!  I think she is referring to more than the hue of my skin, but it's true that I cannot get a tan by any means.  I burn, peel and go back to the same pasty white.  So, I made the decision pretty early on that since I could not get that golden glow that I'd avoid all the burns and the sweating and the frustration and limit my time in the sun.

So many times in life we think we really need or want something and it doesn't happen.  My dreams of looking like the girls in the teen magazines did not come to pass, but there was a huge silver lining in that frustrated wish.  By avoiding the sun for the last 45 years, my skin has maintained its youth better than some other folks my age.  I often surprise people who learn my age for the first time. Better than that, I seem to have dodged the skin cancer bullet as well.

What's all this got to do with spiritual things?  I know there are times  I asked God for things in my life I thought would make me complete or happy or fulfilled, but those prayers were not answered in the way I envisioned them.  In retrospect, I can now see the hand of God in the way He responded to the things I thought I wanted.  His plan was far greater than the limited one I had designed and some of those requests would have eventually spelled disaster for me if they had played out according to my wishes.

It boils down to this: God has a vision for our lives and a view of our lives that is so far beyond what we can imagine that the only wise thing for us to do is to trust Him.  Oh, how we want to dictate to Him how things should be.  We want His stamp of approval on our plans instead of seeking Him to guide us into His.

I once heard a sermon that referenced the scripture: "Delight yourself also in the Lord,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart." (Psalm 37:4) We think this means if you follow God, He'll give you all the things you want, but this pastor's take on the scripture was that if your delight is in the Lord, He'll put the desires in your heart that He wants you to have - those that will bring about His purpose in your life and in the lives of others that you touch. He is concerned with Kingdom purpose - not wish granting. It's an interesting thought.  Are we willing to let His desires become our desires and quit holding on to what we think we want?

Beyond the Obvious

There is a game that I play on my cell phone when I have an idle moment, like when I'm waiting in a doctor's office or when a meeting is late in beginning.  This game gives me just six letters to use to make as many as twelve words in a crossword-style grid, but with no clues.  At first, I see the obvious combinations and connect the letters to make the words that stand out to me.  Then I try adding suffixes to the words I've made if the correct letters are there to make that attempt. My next strategy is to think of words that rhyme with those I've already formed.  Finally, I actually look at the grid structure and see what hints are there because of the position of the letters in the words that remain.

Many times I will look at the few letters that are presented to me and think, "There is absolutely no way that I can make that many words from this meager number of letters!" It looks impossible and I can not find any meaning in the jumble of letters that are given to me.  Eventually though, with time and reflection, I fill in the entire grid.

I think the Bible is a lot like a word puzzle.  Of course, the worth of the Word of God is infinitely more valuable than a time-wasting game, but there are some parallels between the two. At first reading of a passage of scripture, we can get the surface meaning.  We quickly latch on to what is familiar and what we have heard preached and taught before, but if we move on and dismiss this as just that "same old passage" that we've heard a thousand times, we won't see the entire "grid" or structure that God is trying to build in our lives.

True Bible study is more than just reading.  Just like the puzzle, we must look at scripture beyond the immediate and instant understanding and find connections and associations between what we are reading and what God has said in the entirety of His Word.  We can find application to the current situations in our lives.  If we are willing to dig into the Word and ask the Holy Spirit to be our teacher, we will find treasures that will bring beauty to our lives and the lives of others.  Challenge yourself to complete the puzzles in your life with the letters you have been given.

Lessons from a Baby #9: Who Gets Your Attention?

Have you ever said something and realized, almost at the very moment the words were coming out of your mouth, that what you were saying had a meaning beyond the subject you were talking about?  Sometimes I will say something quite ordinary that turns out to be one of those phrases about which I can say, "That'll preach!"

I had one such moment this past weekend.  Our darling Bella, who gets to be the subject of so many of my blog posts, is a busy toddler.  There is so much for her to see and do that we don't get much cuddle time with her anymore.  The rarity of her hugs and kisses makes them precious - especially when they are given without request.

She was busy on Saturday morning, playing with her toys, checking out the pantry, looking out the window, and babbling on about something, when my husband asked her for a hug.  She stopped what she was doing, reached up for him, and wrapped her little arms around his neck.  "Aww, thank you!" he said and put her back down on the floor.  Emboldened by his success, I asked for a hug too, but little miss said, "No" in her tiny little voice and toddled off into the kitchen.

"Wait a minute!" I said.  "I feed you and I change your diapers and he gets the hug?"  Before the last word left my mouth, the Holy Spirit had already stopped on that thought.  "How many of your needs has God supplied and who gets your time and attention?"

I had to admit that more of my focus is given to the things of the world, the petty details of daily life, and my own amusement than is invested in the things of God.  I find myself preferring to be entertained by things that have no value than to spend time in the presence of my Father. The enemy's greatest tool in the life of a Christian is not to draw us into gross immorality.  He merely has to distract us from our life in the kingdom, make us prayerless and thus powerless.  When we stop pursuing Jesus, it's a slow drawing away that can leave us in a place we never would have chosen to go willingly, though it's those daily choices that we "will" that take us there. 

So today I vow to set my affection and attention where it belongs.

Colossians 3:2 says, "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." 

That's where I'll start - by remembering where I belong and who deserves my focus.  I won't do it perfectly, but I won't use that as an excuse to stop trying.