Dang! Anyone dealing with teens really DOES need a lot of prayer support! I'm glad you had that when you needed it. I grin about the stuff Bev tells me that she faces as a substitute teacher. I remember it well. But after the grinning, I remember that it's a job that provides a perfect opportunity to have an impact on kids. She and I often talk about how small interactions can make a huge difference in kids' lives. So, yeah, we have to be prayed up and have back-up to face the world out there.
Mark, in this post you pose some perennial difficult and even baffling issues. Yes, we are on a Battlefield, and in a conflict that we have not chosen, it has been chosen for us. But when the enemy is in our own campground . . . . “Houston, we have a problem.” I have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy in the past 50 + years resisting (and even battling) manipulative pathologically ill leaders (and at times followers), relational dysfunctionality, outright sinful, and at times evil “Christians.” There have been way too many occasions similar to the one you describe, but, in my case, almost none of them were spiritually resolved. Seminary does not prepare you for this. Curiously, there are not that many books or seminars about it either. Yes, we must make Ephesians our war manual, without any doubt. But I am reading Paul’s epistle to the Philippians and I am observing all of the emotional, feeling language he uses with regard to those who are problem people, or his “enemies,” or those who have become “enemies of the cross.” He does not take it all lightly. I often ask why it is that “the few” are called to resist carnal, sinful, hard-hearted behavior in the Christian community. Why can’t it be a large group, even a mass of Christians, who band together to live righteous lives and discern and resist evil in all of its manifestations? (Maybe I should have driven up to participate in the recent Asbury revival.) I guess I have some “Jonah or Elijah syndromes” inside of me that need to be exorcised. We need to pray for you, Mark. But we need to pray for each other too so that the insidious alienation of the pandemic of loneliness and isolation of our current historical moment might be ameliorated by a palpable, felt unity among us pray-ers, thereby producing true community in Christ that can find strength to resist, and having done all, “to stand.” (Sorry for the long post.)
Dang! Anyone dealing with teens really DOES need a lot of prayer support! I'm glad you had that when you needed it. I grin about the stuff Bev tells me that she faces as a substitute teacher. I remember it well. But after the grinning, I remember that it's a job that provides a perfect opportunity to have an impact on kids. She and I often talk about how small interactions can make a huge difference in kids' lives. So, yeah, we have to be prayed up and have back-up to face the world out there.
Mark, in this post you pose some perennial difficult and even baffling issues. Yes, we are on a Battlefield, and in a conflict that we have not chosen, it has been chosen for us. But when the enemy is in our own campground . . . . “Houston, we have a problem.” I have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy in the past 50 + years resisting (and even battling) manipulative pathologically ill leaders (and at times followers), relational dysfunctionality, outright sinful, and at times evil “Christians.” There have been way too many occasions similar to the one you describe, but, in my case, almost none of them were spiritually resolved. Seminary does not prepare you for this. Curiously, there are not that many books or seminars about it either. Yes, we must make Ephesians our war manual, without any doubt. But I am reading Paul’s epistle to the Philippians and I am observing all of the emotional, feeling language he uses with regard to those who are problem people, or his “enemies,” or those who have become “enemies of the cross.” He does not take it all lightly. I often ask why it is that “the few” are called to resist carnal, sinful, hard-hearted behavior in the Christian community. Why can’t it be a large group, even a mass of Christians, who band together to live righteous lives and discern and resist evil in all of its manifestations? (Maybe I should have driven up to participate in the recent Asbury revival.) I guess I have some “Jonah or Elijah syndromes” inside of me that need to be exorcised. We need to pray for you, Mark. But we need to pray for each other too so that the insidious alienation of the pandemic of loneliness and isolation of our current historical moment might be ameliorated by a palpable, felt unity among us pray-ers, thereby producing true community in Christ that can find strength to resist, and having done all, “to stand.” (Sorry for the long post.)