"We Wrestle Not Against Flesh and Blood"

This post is dedicated to inform yall what the Lord has been doing, how the devil has been trying to work, and the lessons we've learned thus far. "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world."

The Enemy at Work:
One of the first attacks we've come across was dissension between Caleb and myself. The thing both of us realized is we both carried some pride into this trip. I realized that I didn't want to learn from his experiences. It is always a blessing when the Lord teaches us something on His own, and I love to teach and show others what the Lord has taught me. The thing about the Lord, however, is He has made it to where we are dependant upon the Body of Christ, and many lessons we need to learn will only be learned from other believer's experience: He won't teach it to us on His own. It didn't help that up to this point we hadn't prayed much together, so spiritually we were very seperated. We both repented of such pride, and are finding it much easier to learn from each other and grow from each others' experience.

Next attack for me was physical. We fasted one day last week for the youth of the church (I'll talk about the youth in the next post), and as mexican time works, we didn't get to bed until late, only got about 2-3 hours of sleep that night, and woke up early for a prayer meeting. The next morning I was drained, very close to throwing up a couple of times. But ya know I realized, "so what I'm sick, I can still pray, if I throw up, then I'll go do that, and come back and keep praying, probably feeling better too." It actually was a neat time learning not to complain, realizing Christians around the world are going through much worse, and chances are in the future I'll be hoping that an upset stomach is the worst I've got.

This last lesson I'll be addressing is the necessity, absolute necessity of spending time with the Lord before starting your day. Just because you feel like a million bucks doesn't mean the Lord is still with you, and it doesn't mean the devil won't take full advantage of your weakness. This day that I didn't make time to be with the Lord in the morning started out fine, though the first symptom of lack of Jesus' guidance in my life was when Caleb humbly pointed out how impatient I was being. That should have clued me in: "spend time with the Lord!" However there was much going on, small prayers here and there will be sufficient, so I thought. Later on that night Caleb, Daniel, and I were walking around in the macroplaza (place where everyone hangs out). Not to get into specifics, basically what happened is we began into a conversation about the Bible in regards to holiness that Daniel was not ready to receive at that time, needless to say the Spirit was not guiding my words, and I continued to push the conversation. We are called to "rightly divide the word of truth", and moving past the elementary principles of Christ, while we are called to grow in such ways, should only be done "if God permits", for building a building without a solid proper foundation and structure risks collapsing altogether. That night after realizing my grave error in speaking such truths without forming the foundations of holiness brought me under deep conviction and worry for Daniel, forseeing him turn against such knowledge that he is now prematurely going to be held accountable for. I repented much and prayed much for him, and after doing so was comforted by the verses "for God is not unjust to forget your [Daniel's] work and labor of love which [He] has shown toward His name, in that [He] has ministred to the saints, and do minister." (Hebrews 6:10) and "All things work together for good, with those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). It's good that we've got a good God who can turn our mishaps into working for good, for the advancement of His Kingdom. If we do our job and pray for the saints, and pray that God work every situation for good, we can be confident in our Father's healing ability. Our relationship with Daniel is doing very well, the Lord has given Him the jaws to chew what we stuffed in his mouth, and soon we will be starting up discipleship with him and a few other people perhaps from the church. It was a different kind of attack than we were used to, but notice this potentially grave situation all started with a lack of discipline to make time to be at the Lord's feet during the day.

This post turned out to be longer than I thought, next time I'll write about some of the amazing things the Lord has been doing both before and since we've been down here in Piedras Negras. I hope shedding light on my mistakes and how the devil has been attacking will help better encourage us all to "stand in the Lord, and in the power of His might," everyday, for in doing so we have the assurance that "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world."