Now there's a headline you never thought you'd see. Maybe we will see pigs fly someday. We're that much closer.
When I heard this story on the news last night, I thought it was time to clean my ears out. You gotta be sh!++in' me. Witches are offended by Halloween??? *breaks out a box of Kleenex©™* ACHOO! *sniff* Felt that one coming on. Where was I? Oh yeah... Gimme a break already. I love Washington. But sometimes their liberal majority needs to stop trying to accommodate every tom, dick, & harry that has a lifestyle difference. For crying out loud. It wasn't until I lived in Washington that I actually met someone who didn't believe in God or any kind of "creator" or "spirit" of any sort. What are those people called? Atheist. Yeah. That was it. They were my best friend too.
My beliefs??? I believe in God and He's my Holy Father. I believe the Lord Jesus Christ is His Son who was born in the flesh to pay the price for sin through his once and final shed blood -- the final scapegoat offering for sin -- to purchase those who will accept God's free gift of mercy and love -- those who would put aside their doubt and just believe, by faith (which is defined as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen) -- that this happened because no man could ever accomplish this task... and since Jesus was of God, he knew God's love for us and knew what had to be done to redeem us, so he volunteered to pay the price for us... giving up his seat at the right-hand of the Father for 33 years (a drop in the bucket) to walk this earth, talk to us, hear our cries, experience what we do at every point first-hand... in order that death and hell would never claim us once this flesh of ours... this shell of a covering... this clay... yields to waste and decay and releases the spirit within each of us. I believe we are made of body, soul, and spirit and each one has its own processes they go through.
The body is nothing but the outer shell that this physical plane we live on can see and interact with. It is birthed into a temporal world and must go through the cycle of life that exists on this world. Like a seed, it must fall into the ground. Ashes to ashes & dust to dust.
The soul is nothing but our mind, will, and emotions. It births our feelings and inspires our choices. We can tame those things by exercising control over them or we can allow them to control us. For example, we can control our anger by recognizing it is a natural feeling that everyone experiences, learn how it manifests in us and in others, and educate ourselves in healthy ways to express our anger. OR we can just let the anger consume our being, blind our minds/rationale, and be led by it to make wrong choices and do stupid things as a result.
The spirit comes from God, gives us life and breath in our being. It returns to God in the end. The spirit exists in a spiritual plane and is how we can communicate with God. He is Spirit. I believe he sent His Holy Spirit to be a comforter to us and give us gifts whereby we can encourage one another. The only way to understand the spirit is to spend time in it. Without that, we spend 100% of our time in a physical plane - interacting with flesh and blood. But we can learn to spend time in the spirit...and one of those ways is through prayer. Prayer is a conversation. Only, we hear with our physical ears and what we usually hear is our own talking - so it seems its a one-way conversation. But we can ask God to open our ears to hear Him so that when we pray in the spirit, we can hush and hear what he speaks into our heart. And we cannot understand the Bible if we just pick it up and read it without being filled with the Holy Spirit. Because we wind up reading it with our earthly mindset. The spirit can only understand the spirit - and the Bible was written by man through the Spirit.
If you want to look at it from the perspective of witchcraft and mysticism, then the same holds true. For example, if you notice ...in seances, the person who is communicating with the spirit world will "go into a trance" or "meditate"... things that prayer has been likened to. The communicator does this to free themselves from the physical plane and tap into the spiritual plane. But their purpose is not to converse with God and glorify Him, seek His face, etc... their purpose is driven by their own reasons - to get answers, to put on a show, to "help" others, to make money... whatever. They go a different direction and follow after another spirit. They wind up leaving their "shell" and "outer covering" (a.k.a. body) open... wide open... to what is called "possession". This means that some spirit can jump into their body and take over the person's soul (mind, will, emotions). Your physical eyes can see that the physical body is the same but their behavior may change. This is a dangerous practice. Those kinds of spirits are self-seekers and they don't care about your life or mine. Their purpose is to maim, kill, and destroy by whatever ways they choose. Verbal, physical, mental, whatever.
As I typed this out, I realized that we bring our soul and body into alignment with our spirit once we begin praying to God more and more. By tapping into the Holy Spirit, our spirit is refreshed and more aware of God's voice and...more importantly... His heart. We begin caring for people around us in a way we never experienced before - because His heart has a direct line to ours. And from the issues of the heart, the mouth speaks. So our lips and tongue begin to have good conversations - speaking words of encouragement, kindness, assistance. We learn to love as God loves. We realize the incredible love in the act of Jesus: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Those are my beliefs and I praise God for them. Each year I mature in Him - from every experience and every relationship. Like the saying goes: I'm not perfect, I'm just forgiven. He says, "Come as you are. I don't care what you have done, where you have been, who you have been with... Come and let Me hold you. Come and find comfort under My wings of love. Come and rest. You are tired and weary and heavy-laden. Come to Me. Give Me those things and I will refresh your soul."
I don't know about you - but that kind of an invitation does not have to be spoken twice for me.
I'm there! Where do I sign up?
Wiccans are looking for a spiritual guide. They're just looking in the wrong place. It's natural to be interested in the spirit world. We're 1/3rd spirit. But it's just a matter of being interested in the right kind of Spirit. There are too many that will damage our lives. There is One Who will give us life and give it to us abundantly. It doesn't take a mathematician to help me add that one up.
So this Halloween, if you're out there trick-or-treating and you see a witch... remember, they have feelings too. They're searching for One who will care for them. They've just been mis-led.
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