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Tanara McCauley

~ Love Knows Color

Tanara McCauley

Tag Archives: enemy

Know Your Enemy

24 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by tanaramccauley in Faith, Relationships, and Other Topics

≈ 6 Comments

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Bible, Christian, Christianity, community, compassion, enemy, faith, forgiveness, grace, healing, hope, justice, love, mercy, power, prayer, relationships, roaring lion, unforgiveness, unity

Black-maned male African lion roaring, headshot, Africa

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him.” 1 Peter 5:8, 9

The enemy is very busy with today’s Christians.

Busy getting friends to turn on each other because their opposing views become offensive and that offense becomes more valuable than the love they used to have for each other.

Busy getting us to one-up each other in sarcasm and rhetoric rather than outdo each other in love, mercy, grace, and kindness.

Busy getting Christians more concerned about issues than souls, more condemning of others than forgiving, more critical of others than prayerful, more determined to make a worldly point than testify of the goodness, faithfulness, and sovereignty of the Living God.

The enemy is very busy with today’s Christians.

Busy inciting fear, hatred, violence, injustice, retaliation, bitterness, separatism, vengeance, murder, and deception in the world, and busy getting Christians to join the ranks in picking worldly sides and buy into it from a worldly perspective, while we completely ignore his handiwork from the shadows.

He’s very busy there–in the shadows, recruiting the same souls for destruction that we should be turning to the Messiah. Recruiting us to rally for a candidate or a cause rather than look with compassion on the lost. Recruiting us to redefine “the lost” and to use our own judgment for determining who’s worthy of compassion and forgiveness. Recruiting us to look at skin or uniform color rather than the soul inside. Distracting our attention away from who and what we really wrestle against.

The enemy has convinced many of us to ignore that in our anger we should not sin, that the very sins we condemn others for we ourselves commit or have committed, that those sinning against us are in need of the same grace and repentance we have been given, that we are to love our neighbors and enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute and spitefully use us, and not resist an evil person.

The enemy is busy getting us to live like desperate citizens of a lost world rather than confident children of the Almighty God. Children who have the wisdom that is from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy, without partiality and without hypocrisy.

He’s busy getting us so angry that we become unforgiving, and in becoming unforgiving we forget how our own sins ripped through Christ’s flesh.

He is busy convincing us that God is silent. And that if God is silent we should be shouting. At the world. Not crying out to our Father. Together. United.

The enemy is very busy with today’s Christians. He is busy keeping us subjected to the influence of media and away from the instruction of God’s throne. He is busy trying to make us look and feel hostile, sarcastic, furious, forgotten, forsaken, indifferent, uncaring, hard-hearted, and hopeless. He is busy trying to make us look and act like him.

Resist him.

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12

 

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Warrior Tribe

08 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by tanaramccauley in The Scorpion Chronicles

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ancestors, arizona, arthropod, bark, battle, chronicles, clan African, enemy, family, Indian, Irish, roots, scorpion, tribe, warrior, writing

We’re a family with tribal roots. African tribes, Indian tribes…even my Anglo background reaches back to the Irish-Scots clans – just another word for tribe. Our ancestors of each variety were warriors and hunters armed with spears, bows, and weapons of iron, striking out on countless missions with the noble goal of providing for and defending their people.

Centuries later, we carry that same warrior spirit into a new generation using new methods and facing a new enemy…the scorpion.

But we don’t wield arrows and daggers. In stealth we take up our black lights and go in search of a fluorescent green glow that marks the lethal arthropods. Then our female members issue a battle cry — one part roar, two parts scream — while our men spear the tiny beasts with long, slim, pointed stakes. I break from my guttural duties long enough to spray a mist that will cover and kill any scorpion escaping the stake (though the poison will take a few days). And the sledgehammer is our failsafe backup.

The danger is ever near us, but we are ever ready. Like those who came before us, we protect our own, and we do it ferociously with the warrior spirit passed down to us.

When the hunt is over we ask God to protect us from the scorpions we didn’t find. Then we break out the family games, pop the popcorn, and brag about our feats of bravery as if we’d just manhandled a few bears. Until we hunt again…

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