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Tanara McCauley

~ Love Knows Color

Tanara McCauley

Tag Archives: unforgiveness

Know Your Enemy

24 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by tanaramccauley in Faith, Relationships, and Other Topics

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

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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A Classic Wreck

03 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by tanaramccauley in Writing and Pursuing Publication

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

77 buick skylark, car accident, classic, consequences, courage, criticism, flawed, guilt, imperfect, lie, mistakes, Oklahoma, redemption, rejection, truth, unforgiveness, when morning comes, wreck

It all started in a ’77 faded red Buick Skylark. The engine was stellar, the white leather seats unmarred, and the driver a young eighteen-year-old version of clueless personified: me. There I sat behind the wheel on a humid summer morning, cruising backwards country roads on my way to work. Windows down, warm air slapping at my face, and the grating sound of locusts peaking every time I passed a tree or bush. Then it hit me: the very unladylike urge to spit out the window. For most this is an uneventful occurrence. But for me – a novice at the practice – visions of spittle flying back into the car and landing on my forehead played in my mind. I over thought it.

Too bad I had already prepped the spit in my mouth. I had to do something with it. Convincing myself it couldn’t be that hard, I leaned my head as far out the window as I could, and let fly. It didn’t boomerang right back at me as I had feared. But all the same I suspected it didn’t clear the car. Oblivious that I was otherwise occupied in steering this heavy vehicle down a two-lane residential street, I craned my neck further out the window and turned it to investigate the car’s rear. Colossal error.

Residential roads in parts of rural Oklahoma can be a bit complex. While the driveway leads all the way to the street, there are ditches to separate each driveway from the next. So for about four houses, me and my Buick barreled down ditches, only to be tossed into the air with each driveway collision, taking a host of mailboxes and garbage cans with us. By the time it was over, I was parked in the middle of the street with the windshield busted out, the hood up, and the entire car inexplicably totaled beyond repair.

Elderly residents flocked out of their houses at the noise, followed quickly by the arrival of the police. They all wanted to know the same thing: Are you okay? Are you hurt? Can you stand? When I confirmed I was fine, the inevitable was asked: What happened?

What happened indeed! I couldn’t bring myself to say, “I spit out the window and was checking to see if it landed on the car.” Especially since that car had previously belonged to my beloved great-grandfather, who passed away only months before. I couldn’t – and didn’t – say what really happened. Instead I said the first alternative that came to my mind. “The steering wheel locked. I don’t know why.”

I felt guilty as soon as the words were whispered. I felt even worse when those sweet elderly people proclaimed me the poorest dear they’d ever seen – giving me hugs and rubbing my back and thanking the Lord “this precious child” was unhurt. And worse still was having to repeat the lie to my grandmother, my parents, my aunts. Oh the agony of deceit.

It took me years to confess the truth of that accident to anyone. Why? Because like most people, I feared rejection, unforgiveness, and criticism. I made a mistake. I wrecked a classic family heirloom, and wrecked the truth right along with it. But in the end I found the courage to fess up. And I learned a great lesson. We all make mistakes. Sometimes we right them, sometimes we make them worse. But nothing is irredeemable. In my debut novel, you’ll find characters just as flawed as the clueless eighteen-year-old driving the old Buick, and as imperfect as your neighbor and yourself. Some make bad decisions with the potential to wreck their lives, and they learn about consequences and redemption in the process.

What things in your life qualify as a classic wreck? Is it something you can laugh about now? Or does it still hang in the shadows threatening to surface at the most inopportune time?

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