Reflections

This is a day when I simply want to reflect on a tool the enemy uses against God’s people.  The enemy is attacking the family.  The family was the first ordained relationship God established when He said. “It is not good for man to be alone.”  He created woman and the first family had begun.

The family is highly important to the plan of heaven.  Since members of a family are bound by blood, agreement between them is a strong weapon against the enemy.  So, the enemy inserts spoilers into a family to divide and destroy it.  Sometimes it is people, and often one who is a member of the family… a type of “stealth” weapon, if you will.

The family, in God’s plan, is meant to be a place of safety.  It should be a fortress, where one gains strength.  It is meant to be a place of trust.  The world in which we live is a hard place, where many battles are won…and lost.  Everyone gets frustrated and tired in the fray, and all need someone to trust…someone to whom the heart can be emptied out to…someone who will keep that trust and say, “You have my confidence.  I will not betray you.”  That should be found in the family.

It is needed, because there are times when other family members are the ones that frustrate us.  That is because we are still imperfect vessels in an imperfect world.  We all try to walk in perfect love, but have we attained yet?  Not hardly.  As often as we try to self-police, we say things out of turn.  Does that mean we love any less?  No, it just means we have a bit farther to go in taming our tongues.  A family should be able to absorb that and move on.  After all, every member of the group is guilty at one time or another.

Unfortunately, the flesh is weaker than the desire to do good.  Ask the Apostle Paul.  He fought the same battles we do every day.  Ask James.  His discourse on the tongue sounds like he had first hand knowledge of the experience.  Though the family should be the refuge, the safety zone, it seems all too often that when a family member loses favor with one, all confidences are out the door and tongues wag about tongues wagging.  The first thing everyone engages in is the thing they all say they hate the most.

Then the stealth weapon of the enemy is fired.  You know it…that one person that capitalizes on contention and drags the whole family into the fight.  Notice how that person always seems to come out smelling like a rose while everyone else is in the muck and mire slugging it out?  If that person controls the emotions of the family, then they control the family, itself.

How does the family combat that stealth attack?  With love.  “All have fallen short of the glory of God…”  But, as long as he has forgiveness, shoudn’t we?  And don’t throw in the old, “I can forgive, but I can’t forget…”  God does.  He says He “will not remember our sins…”  He expects us to pick ourselves up and go on from there.  And that is what we must do.  Isolate the stealth weapon, identify it, and defuse it with love.  It’s the only way we can grow.