Tag Archives: Freedom

Rest before Responsibility

Today I actually began to grapple with some of the material I’ve already written for Sky. Went through the notebook, putting in additional dividers and just seeing what I had, cleared off my desk and backboard, read through the prologue. It’s a start.

At the same time I’ve been thrashing anew with my attempts to take control. Despite all the lessons, all the months and years of learning this concept, it’s still hard to apply. Maybe because it’s been awhile since I’ve had to apply it to writing.

For several days now the internal nag has been growing louder. I have to get to work. I have to get this proposal done. I haven’t. I’m bad. I need to be more disciplined… blah, blah, blah… see about a hundred of my past blogs for this same ridiculous conflict. For me, it really IS “Let go and let God.” Of course, that presupposes the daily exposure to the teaching of God’s word and keeping sensitive to whether I’m filled with the Spirit or not. And confessing if I’m not.

But in practice, when it comes to what I should do, it’s let go. Stop trying to control the process, stop trying to think you know what is supposed to happen in your life, and even what is supposed to be “working” on the book.

For example, yesterday (Tuesday) I took my mother for her MRI. I had to sit in the office for about an hour and twenty minutes. I read Lone Survivor. I know stuff gleaned from that will go into Sky. I know, because stuff from that is going into my life. I could probably do a hundred blogs on that book, but I won’t. (That would surely violate copyright). It’s just there’s so much there that lines up with the Christian life, in the area of training and in the actual combat, so many terrific visual aids…

Even more than that, I’m not just here to write a book. I’m here to bring glory to God and that is mostly done through thinking. Through capturing every thought to the obedience of Christ or Bible Doctrine, since that is the mind of Christ. I’m supposed to be actively thinking the things I’ve learned, applying those principles to ever facet of my life.

And what I’ve been learning lately, over and over, is that God is going to do the work and I’m going to receive the benefit. If you’re going to trust someone else to do a job it means you step away and let them. I have to wait for His timing and stop trying to dictate. It’s a privilege to be able to help my mother, and a pleasure. Why sully the experience by letting myself worry and fret in the background about “time lost”?  It’s not time lost, it’s time spent on my Father’s business.

Instead of condemning myself for doing a bunch of other things rather than the book… recall that God is leading me. That I don’t know what His plan for my life today looks like. That I have to be flexible to follow His leading, not insist on how I think the day should go. And I’ll admit I do have a template that I keep pulling out and trying to slap over my life.  It looks something like this:  I get up in the morning, get dressed, eat breakfast and go immediately to work on the book, writing  a certain amount of words each morning (like every other  professional writer seems to do), and maybe another amount of words after lunch. Then I can feel good about what I’ve done.

Then I can feel about what I’ve done.

Instead of just trusting it to God. Instead of feeling good because I’m in union with Christ, a child of God, in the Plan.

I’m trying to provide my own peace and contentment by “accomplishing things” when that’s not what God wants at all.  Focusing on that peace and contentment seems to be most helpful. If I lose it, I can rebound and remind myself that God has everything under control. Go back to Him and ask again for his leading. I keep wanting to be “responsible” and “reliable” before men (including myself). When what I really ought to want is to be in the rest with the One who really matters.

“Therefore, let us fear lest while a promise remains of entering His rest any one of you should seem to have come short of it.”  – Heb 4:1

Freedom for Security

Today I was reading in one of my husband’s technical magazines about new techonology being developed that would enable hundreds of thousands of law enforcement investigators to collect and share information on suspects, crimes investigations, etc. Users are expected to be able to make several million queries a day. Law enforcement agencies will work together better than ever to catch criminals and stop terrorists before they commit terror. (Sorry, couldn’t resist)

As I read I thought, that’s nice, but what if the criminals were “enemies of the state?” I thought that because I’ve recently been reading about Soviet Gulags and how those came about. (Criminals were the minority.)  It doesn’t have to be that you’re Christian, just that you are opposing in some way the dominant political party.  How fast our techology and applications are being put in place to enable something like the mark of the beast in Rev 13 to work in real time!

Some may believe there is a conspiracy of wealthy Bilderbergers or Council on Foreign Relations Members or mysterious Illuminati. I don’t know what I think about that. It’s possible, but it doesn’t matter because I know for certain that at least one conspiracy exists and that’s the one sponsored by the Kingdom of Darkness. When you read about law enforcement working together to keep us safe from criminals and terrorists that seems like a good thing. Those pesky terrorists will have no place to hide! But neither will anyone else. That may not be troubling if you think that no one will ever be after you, but as I said earlier, what if they came because you’re Christian? It’s happening already in China and in Muslim countries and it has down through the ages. Why couldn’t it happen here? And we know from Revelation that it’s going to happen in the Tribulation during their one world government under the Antichrist. Don’t worship the beast, don’t wear his mark and you’re toast.

Who would have thought it would be backwards jihadists in the mountains of Afghanistan, where the culture, education and technology remain in the dark ages that would be the catalysts of the enslavement of the citizens of the mighty United States of America? People who live in mud huts, have a pit at the side of the village for their sewage, fight with knives and guns and explosives transported on camels… who live in a world with no TV’s, cell phones, dishwashers, cars, grocery stores, Starbucks, NextCare clinics, shopping malls… Deep in this world, primitive, angry men came up with a dastardly plan to hijack airplanes and run them into tall buildings in America thousands of miles away… and now we’re all afraid. Now we need security, need to be sure that we can control who gets on planes, who walks into terminals…

Speaking of which… the same magazine also mentioned a technology that mixed bioemetrics and RFID devices (Radio Frequency Identification) to give us the abilty to quickly identify people from afar and in large numbers. These technologies could be used at border entries, military bases… concerts, rallies…churches, religious conferences… They already have cameras that can take pictures of thousands of people at a time with sufficient resolution that you can pick out and identify nearly every face in that crowd.

The website Global Indentification has an article  on how they want to use RFID devices in airports to “make airport procedures more efficient and more secure for both airlines and passengers.” Efficiency and security: two things growing ever more valuable in our modern world. We don’t want to wait and we don’t want to worry and if we have to give up a little freedom and privacy, what’s the big deal about that?

[Side note: Two years ago in July I wrote a post on RFID technology called “Getting Chipped.”  If you’re interested, you can read that here.