“An evildoer gives heed to false lips; A liar listens eagerly to a spiteful tongue.”
Proverbs 17:4
Well, I just left in a huff. I suppose I found something I’m passionate about. My passion can be intense if those around me are sensitive. Especially if they are shell shocked from a past full of excessive loud, bad noises. I take this into consideration, when it comes to my family. This is part of why I responded the way I did.
I am a loud person. When I say loud, I should use all capitals, cause, it’s more like LOUD. I like sports, and am fully competitive. I like concerts, and I leave my voice at the venue when it’s over. I like kids, cause they don’t understand the rules of volume, yet, and that’s fun. I like the loudest fireworks, the stereo turned up and the party bumping.
When I was drunk during those years, volume was something in my life that could have benefited from, once again, tact. The more upset I became, the louder I would get. The louder you got, the louder I would get. The more you needed peace, the louder I would get. And I could always get louder. When you were stubborn, I would get more belligerent, and even louder. There was no limit. My selfishness was so overgrown in me that there was no embarrassment or destruction that I was not willing to create and endure, just to prove a point or get my way.
In turn, my family felt, on a daily basis, that they were not safe. Now, to them, if I get angry, I may not stop. They have experienced, that, there may be a chance that I am capable of doing anything imaginable. In the past, at any moment, Dad could lose his mind.
And that’s scary.
We attended a neighbor friend’s basketball game today. It was the first game of the season and, I didn’t really make it through the whole thing. Not without a childish breakdown. Thankfully, these fits aren’t always loud, anymore. But I did leave in an uncomfortable haste. I changed plans and came home directly after the game, because I got upset. It’s so difficult to be upset. I’m not good at handling it correctly. I’m writing, right now, to grow through it, instead of complaining.
I’ll quote the ol’ Methodist minister William Watkinson from his sermon, “The Invincible Strategy”;
“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” It’s also a radio song lyric that’s been going through my head for weeks.
It’s solution based thinking, and it’s the only way to improve any situation. In other words, it’s way, way better to look at all the possibilities in which a difficult situation can be utilized and overcome, so that it benefits us, and our positioning in Christ is strengthened, not injured.
Complaining about an outcome or struggle is the autopilot response to the voice of satan. The usual response of someone who is not “sober-minded” nor “alert,” as 1 Peter 5 puts it, is usually, to repeat what they hear. We tend to claim it out loud, almost instantly and then we live as if it is an inescapable truth, even though it’s not.
Things like confessions of defeat, doubt, worthlessness, you name it. You’ve heard the thoughts, the phrases from the enemy:
“I can’t do this.”
“People won’t like me.”
“He did that just to tick me off.”
Or worse; “The world would be better without me.”
It’s the voice of satan and his minions. They tell us real, personal things, too. The moment your Bride gets too many dings on her phone?
“She is cheating on you!”
And then, without giving it an ounce more thought, we begin, and without complete foresight, to completely dismantle our marriage, instead of building up our Bride. We choose to be wary of, instead of lending to trust. We begin to look for things that testify against, incriminate and “catch.” Thus begins the path towards the destruction of a perfectly valuable marriage. And it all started from giving too much attention to the wrong thought. A thought, that was actually a lie from the pit of hell. Something we should have picked up on our spiritual radar.
If we’re not constantly vigilant in our thinking, our very lives, themselves, are put in peril. Death and destruction, imperceptible to any of us, sit right outside our door. I’m not talking about just physical death. A fool can unintentionally injure himself and lose his life, and this is a shame, but there is death that can kill a man, more than just his flesh. It’s a forever death. One that seals our destiny for eternity once we leave what we call “reality” behind.
Proverbs 14:15 advises that; “The simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps.”
Satan whispers to us, at just the right time, right as we walk in the door at the end of the day; “They don’t even care.” He sees us glance at the pile of dishes, the toys on the floor, food on the table, while the kids are just zoned out on the TV. He’s been preparing us all day. Work was hard. We’re tired, we’re hungry. The kids are arguing. Without thinking we agree with him. “I shouldn’t even try.”
Then, we repeat it under our breath, in disbelief… “They really don’t care!”
“Yeah….it’s pointless, anyway,” the liar leans in…
“This is stupid. This is stupid. This is just stupid.” we say under our breath a few more times, “No one really cares.”
But more importantly, we live as if this lie were true! We wake up every morning, and everything we do in our lives is affected by the agreement that we made with the lie: “I shouldn’t even try.” Our hearts set a foundation of faithlessness, we put up our walls and we trudge through, completely on autopilot.
I believe we are equipped with an autopilot system, of sorts. Its target destination is set to default, unbeknownst to us, by observation and contemplation, through experiences and agreements we make with the world around us. The things we hear and experience that sound like truth to us, based on what we decide. The problem though, is that people around us, innocently as it may be, say and do a lot of the wrong things for us to experience. We grab ahold of these “lessons” and whatever we learn from them, correctly or not, takes hold of us before we understand that there is an absolute truth. And there is one. It’s the Word of God. The Christian Bible.
When the “spiritual forces” of this world say all the wrong things to us, constantly, and abundantly, we have to have a firm footing in what it is we believe. (If you haven’t read the post “Get the know-how, then know how,” then I encourage you to check it out. It’s about hearing the voice of God over the voices of the enemy.) If we have no firm foundation for what “truth” is, then, at any new piece of information we are presented with, our entire belief system and consequently, everything in our lives may need to change. If our foundation is not on Christ alone, we have no good foundation.
The enemy is always trying to hurt us. He’s always speaking. Yelling, scolding, demeaning. In fact, he’s such a fool that he doesn’t understand the value of moderation, so he talks way, way too much.
That’s one of his ‘tells’: excess.
God speaks to us as well. Just not, frantically and full of hurry, or worry, or self-awareness and concern. God’s voice is the quiet one, the gentle one… the hard to hear one. This is why we must look for the different sounding voice. Because, it’s not the same as all the rest. Aaaand this is why I left the bleachers at the basketball game.
But next week, I’ll tell you about how the inventor and scientist who created the ‘blue’ LED using a metal called gallium nitride, lost his job, despite his amazing discovery. (And why the events at the basketball game had me in such a rut.)
I promise, this whole post started with that story.
Keep seeking Christ.
Thanks guys.
To be continued…
From Death to Life 
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