I can't stop listening to this song. It's by a guy named Sufjan Stevens. These words aren't enough though; you really should listen to it. :)
No travel plans, no shopping malls
No candy canes or Santa Claus
For as the day of rest draws near,
It's just the two of us this year.
No silver bells or mistletoe
We'll kiss and watch our TV shows.
I'll come to you
I'll sing to you
Like it's Christmas in the room.
I'll dance with you
I'll laugh with you
'Til it's Christmas in the room.
No traffic jams, no ice and storm
For in the house, the fire is warm
No Christmas tree, no great parade
It's just an ordinary day.
No parties planned, no place to go.
It's just the two of us alone.
and in the house, we see a light
that comes from what we feel inside.
I'll come to you
I'll sing to you
Like it's Christmas in the room.
I'll dance with you, I'll laugh with you
'Til it's Christmas in the room, 'til it's Christmas in the room.
Oh, I can see the day when we'll die,
But I don't care to think of silence.
For now, I hear you laughing -
the greatest joy is like the sunrise.
No gifts to give; they're all right here,
inside our hearts the glorious cheer
And in the house we see a light
that comes from what we know inside.
I'll come to you
I'll sing to you
Like it's Christmas in the room.
I'll dance with you, I'll laugh with you
'Til it's Christmas in the room.
I'll come to you
I'll sing to you
Like it's Christmas in the room.
Like it's Christmas in the room.
It means a lot to me that Jesus was born among animals. No fanfare, decorations, or even visitors until the shepherds came...for a while, it was just Joseph, the exhausted Mary, and their newborn baby. And perhaps a sheep, a donkey, and a cow. One scene among many in which God honors the low and humble.
So, to have "Christmas in the room" means, in one word, intimacy. That's what I love about this song - creating "Christmas" means creating deep, deep connection. What was Christmas, after all, but God being intimate with us? He longs for oneness - first between Him and us, then between us and each other. That's why the Nativity is so popular. It draws us in because it is a perfect picture of intimacy.
I wonder what was going through the heads of those new teenage parents. They didn't have much. All they had was each other and the promises God had given them. And yet that moment they shared, humble as it was, has been recreated millions of times by artists and sculptors...because we "rich" people long for what they had more than anything. Oneness with God and with each other.
My grandmother sent this story to me in an email and I just had to share it. If you would rather watch the video of Beth telling this story herself, it's embedded below. Otherwise, scroll down and read the story. :)
April 20, 2005, at the Airport in Knoxville , waiting to board the plane, I had the Bible on my lap and was very intent upon what I was doing. I'd had a marvelous morning with the Lord. I say this because I want to tell you it is a scary thing to have the Spirit of God really working in you.
You could end up doing some things you never would have done otherwise. Life in the Spirit can be dangerous for a thousand reasons, not the least of which is your ego.
I tried to keep from staring, but he was such a strange sight. Humped over in a wheelchair, he was skin and bones, dressed in clothes that obviously fit when he was at least twenty pounds heavier. His knees protruded from his trousers, and his shoulders looked like the coat hanger was still in his shirt.. His hands looked like tangled masses of veins and bones.
The strangest part of him was his hair and nails. Stringy, gray hair hung well over his shoulders and down part of his back. His fingernails were long, clean but strangely out of place on an old man.
I looked down at my Bible as fast as I could, discomfort burning my face. As I tried to imagine what his story might have been, I found myself wondering if I'd just had a Howard Hughes sighting. Then, I remembered that he was dead. So this man in the airport.. An impersonator maybe? Was a camera on us somewhere? There I sat; trying to concentrate on the Word to keep from being concerned about a thin slice of humanity served up on a wheelchair only a few seats from me. All the while, my heart was growing more and more overwhelmed with a feeling for him.
Let's admit it. Curiosity is a heap more comfortable than true concern, and suddenly I was awash with aching emotion for this bizarre-looking old man..
I had walked with God long enough to see the handwriting on the wall. I've learned that when I begin to feel what God feels, something so contrary to my natural feelings, something dramatic is bound to happen. And it may be embarrassing.
I immediately began to resist because I could feel God working on my spirit and I started arguing with God in my mind. 'Oh, no, God, please, no.' I looked up at the ceiling as if I could stare straight through it into heaven and said, 'Don't make me witness to this man. Not right here and now. Please. I'll do anything. Put me on the same plane, but don't make me get up here and witness to this man in front of this gawking audience. Please, Lord!'
There I sat in the blue vinyl chair begging His Highness, 'Please don't make me witness to this man. Not now. I'll do it on the plane.' Then I heard it...'I don't want you to witness to him. I want you to brush his hair.'
The words were so clear, my heart leapt into my throat, and my thoughts spun like a top. Do I witness to the man or brush his hair? No-brainer. I looked straight back up at the ceiling and said, 'God, as I live and breathe, I want you to know I am ready to witness to this man. I'm on this Lord. I'm your girl! You've never seen a woman witness to a man faster in your life. What difference does it make if his hair is a mess if he is not redeemed? I am going to witness to this man.'
Again, as clearly as I've ever heard an audible word, God seemed to write this statement across the wall of my mind. 'That is not what I said, Beth. I don't want you to witness to him. I want you to go brush his hair.'
I looked up at God and quipped, 'I don't have a hairbrush. It's in my suitcase on the plane. How am I supposed to brush his hair without a hairbrush?
God was so insistent that I almost involuntarily began to walk toward him as these thoughts came to me from God's word: 'I will thoroughly furnish you unto all good works.' (2 Timothy 3:17)
I stumbled over to the wheelchair thinking I could use one myself. Even as I retell this story, my pulse quickens and I feel those same butterflies. I knelt down in front of the man and asked as demurely as possible, 'Sir, may I have the pleasure of brushing your hair?'
He looked back at me and said, 'What did you say?'
'May I have the pleasure of brushing your hair?'
To which he responded in volume ten, 'Little lady, if you expect me to hear you, you're going to have to talk louder than that.'
At this point, I took a deep breath and blurted out, 'SIR, MAY I HAVE THE PLEASURE OF BRUSHING YOUR HAIR? At which point every eye in the place darted right at me. I was the only thing in the room looking more peculiar than old Mr. Long Locks. Face crimson and forehead breaking out in a sweat, I watched him look up at me with absolute shock on his face, and say, 'If you really want to.'
Are you kidding? Of course I didn't want to. But God didn't seem interested in my personal preference right about then. He pressed on my heart until I could utter the words, 'Yes, sir, I would be pleased. But I have one little problem. I don't have a hairbrush.'
'I have one in my bag,' he responded.
I went around to the back of that wheelchair, and I got on my hands and knees and unzipped the stranger's old carry-on, hardly believing what I was doing. I stood up and started brushing the old man's hair. It was perfectly clean, but it was tangled and matted I don't do many things well, but must admit I've had notable experience untangling knotted hair mothering two little girls. Like I'd done with either Amanda or Melissa in such a condition, I began brushing at the very bottom of the strands, remembering to take my time not to pull. A miraculous thing happened to me as I started brushing that old man's hair. Everybody else in the room disappeared. There was no one alive for those moments except that old man and me. I brushed and I brushed and I brushed until every tangle was out of that hair I know this sounds so strange, but I've never felt that kind of love for another soul in my entire life. I believe with all my heart, I - for that few minutes - felt a portion of the very love of God. That He had overtaken my heart for a little while like someone renting a room and making Himself at home for a short while.
The emotions were so strong and so pure that I knew they had to be God's. His hair was finally as soft and smooth as an infant's.
I slipped the brush back in the bag and went around the chair to face him. I got back down on my knees, put my hands on his knee and said, 'Sir, do you know my Jesus?'
He said, 'Yes, I do'
Well, that figures, I thought.
He explained, 'I've known Him since I married my bride. She wouldn't marry me until I got to know the Savior.' He said, 'You see, the problem is, I haven't seen my bride in months. I've had open-heart surgery, and she's been too ill to come see me. I was sitting here thinking to myself, what a mess I must be for my bride..'
Only God knows how often He allows us to be part of a divine moment when we're completely unaware of the significance.This, on the other hand, was one of those rare encounters when I knew God had intervened in details only He could have known. It was a God moment, and I'll never forget it.
Our time came to board, and we were not on the same plane. I was deeply ashamed of how I'd acted earlier and would have been so proud to have accompanied him on that aircraft.
I still had a few minutes, and as I gathered my things to board, the airline hostess returned from the corridor, tears streaming down her cheeks. She said, "That old man's sitting on the plane, sobbing.
Why did you do that? What made you do that?"
I said, 'Do you know Jesus? He can be the bossiest thing!'
And we got to share.
I learned something about God that day. He knows if you're exhausted, you're hungry, you're serving in the wrong place or it is time to move on but you feel too responsible to budge. He knows if you're hurting or feeling rejected. He knows if you're sick or drowning under a wave of temptation. Or He knows if you just need your hair brushed. He sees you as an individual. Tell Him your need!
I got on my own flight, sobs choking my throat, wondering how many opportunities just like that one had I missed along the way... all because I didn't want people to think I was strange.
God didn't send me to that old man. He sent that old man to me.
I think a lot of people have left the church because they have either felt useless or abused. We have corrupted the image of the Body as a group of interlinked, codependent parts, and instead have exalted some parts above others. This is my humble plea as a member of an aching Body in America.
Many people spend years consuming sermon after sermon and song after song without ever knowing the satisfaction of working for the Lord, walking in the good works He has prepared in advance for them to do (Ephesians 2:10). Sometimes this is out of laziness, but I think more often it's because they don't feel needed or equipped. Even though "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness" (2 Peter 1:3), we sometimes believe the lie that we are simply dangling limbs being carried by the preacher rather than active, moving parts of a dynamic Body. We sometimes feel that a seminary degree is a prerequisite for service, even though such a requirement is never found in Scripture. In fact, Paul, even though he proves at the Areopagus that he is certainly knowledgeable about Greek culture and philosophy, deliberately tries to suppress all knowledge not related to the Gospel when preaching because he has "resolved to know nothing while he was with [them] except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). Wow. So just know that simple fact and you're ready to do some pretty amazing stuff.
The fact is, no single part of the Body is expendable. You are not expendable, and we are depending on you to fulfill the mission Christ has for you specifically. All have infinite value and God promises to use every branch that is connected to the vine of Christ to bear fruit - in other words, to heal souls in the same ways Christ did while He was here (John 15:5). What an incredible mission, and what an terrible tragedy that people connected to Christ forget they have this power! So many have turned away because it's so easy for us to doubt our worth simply because a few other people (who have but a breath in their lungs and wither like the grass, according to God!) make us feel small. Don't believe the lie any longer that you're just a money-spewing consumer at church, because you are in fact a vital part of the mission of expanding the Kingdom of God on earth.
Those who have not necessarily felt expendable have been abused. Abuse can come in many forms - gossip, taking others for granted, or prejudice, to name a few. Some have been taken advantage of because of their willingness to volunteer for the jobs no one else will do. Some have been the victims of people who care more about what they can offer (ex. money and time) than about who they are as beloved children. Others have attended "prayer meetings" only to find that they were really gossip groups, or been looked down upon because of teen pregnancy or family problems. Whatever the cause, many have been wounded. And so many attempt to continue their relationship with God without the Church.
The problem is, we can't live in obedience to God if we do not meet with believers regularly, nor can we be filled up with all the blessings He promises us. Not only does He command that we "not give up meeting together" (Hebrews 10:25), but He has formed us to need each other. You not only need us, but we need you! Solomon, the wisest man in the Old Testament, knew this well as he wrote in Ecclesiastes, "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work; if one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!" Not to mention that we are told God will be in our very midst if we have two or more gathered in His name. Jesus was hurt by many, many people, even his closest friends, and yet He didn't use that as an excuse to wall himself in on all sides.
This doesn't mean that you should fling your burdens on people who can't bear them. Deliberately look for people who are truly following God, who love Him as you do. I promise they do exist. Dare to dream of a group in which each member "considers others better than himself...not looking to [his] own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Philippians 2). I promise you're not the only person who desires this. In fact, talk to just about any Christian, and she longs for a deeper, intimate community of believers that is upheld by trust and purity. We all want this. We all want to be surrounded by "a great cloud of witnesses" so that we can "throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles" (Hebrews 12:1). Forgive those who have hurt you, as Christ has commanded, and dare to allow yourself to be loved again.
We need you back. Unfortunately, churches (because they're made of people, and groups of people in general tend to do this) sometimes act like clubs that require a rite of passage. Take all those reproaches you've heard in the past for not going to church and throw them away. I know this sounds funny because I myself am encouraging you to go to church, but what I mean is that often we invite people to church with an attitude that it's "their obligation" or "their duty," and we take it as an opportunity to demonstrate what good Christians we are by inviting them. BUT our attitude really needs to be one of need, not giving a guilt trip! We NEED you back in the Body. We need more people to encourage us and who will run the race for God with us. God has appointed you to minister to people. There are so many hurting souls who have yet to hear the good news, so many hungry waiting to be fed both physically and spiritually, so many young people who need you to disciple them, so many older people who need you to inject fresh, youthful passion for the Lord into their hearts. So many who would LOVE to have you in their lives and share your struggles and triumphs.
"Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body...The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!'...But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to those that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other." - 1 Corinthians 12
Cleaning out my email inbox and finding all these awesome old newsletters she sent...thought I would share this one too. Good stuff. How To Forgive the Guy Who is Just Not That Into You
The new comedy He's Just Not That Into You, reminded me of the painful reality of how many women have been hurt by what I call "bozo" guys. I asked a single gal the other day what she thought of the movie, and she said, "Good but painful." She went on to say, "It was painful to watch women who just don't get it." I have been on the war path for years trying to warn single gals about their pursuit of "bozo" guys. Now I realize that I need to teach singles how to forgive the bozo guy who just broke her heart, to forgive the guy who is "just not that into her"-who used up her attention, time and body and then tossed her like a paper cup. This is my new passion with singles.
How do so many wonderful single gals end up hurt by the guy who is just not that into her? The main reason she gets hurt is she breaks the 11th commandment: "Defraud Not Thyself." Countless women actually lead themselves on through the fantasy that this guy who just chatted so charmingly with them for an hour may actually be interested in pursuing a relationship with them. Consider how often women are angry about a particular guy leading their girlfriend on in a dating relationship. Girls and women alike are angered when a guy defrauds a girl by leading her on-often the result of a guy's agenda to merely play at love to get sex.
Yet how often do single woman get angry with their girlfriends who helped feed her own fantasy about "Mr. Right?" Defrauding oneself is such a masochistic crime against a woman's own heart. To defraud one-self is self harm! When a gal meets a wonderful guy, her immediate response needs to be prayer and not text messaging a friend about the "Mr. Right" she thinks she has just met.
Being offended is inevitable as long as you occupy a place on planet earth-but staying offended is a choice.
After realizing the time and energy you have put into a guy who is "just not that into you," you are likely going to be very disappointed. Inevitably, disappointment is followed by anger or depression. Because you know it is not healthy to stay angry, you will actually give yourself a "gift" when you consider forgiving this guy. The gift is your freedom.
Why forgive the guy who is just not that into you? When I don't forgive I become a prisoner to the resentment of being defrauded by him. One needs to forgive this guy for doing what he does best-being human. People assume that "time heals all wounds," but that is actually not true. Without the freeing choice of forgiving that guy, time simply moves the pain below the surface where it will ferment and poison your heart.
The gift of forgiving allows you to let go of hurt and move on with hope, because when you have hope, you are no one's prisoner! Don't be the gal who is held hostage to yesterday as she refuses to let go of unwanted hurt and move on to a new chapter. It's in that forgiving chapter that you have the prospect of a happy ending-the freedom to hope and love again.
This Hope Alert will be archived at www.jackiekendall.blogspot.com.
I subscribe to Jackie Kendall's newsletter, "Hope Alert." This one really stuck out to me. If you want to subscribe to her, click here: http://www.jackiekendall.com/
What Did Abigail, Obadiah and King Asa Have in Common?
A.O.A.
What did a wife, palace staffer and a king of Judah have in common? What is the common thread between A.O.A.? Here is a brief glimpse of each one-see if you spot the "holy commonality."
Abigail: wife of a very foolish rich man Nabal. Living with a difficult man became f context of instruction in good judgment for Abigail.
"Thank God for your good sense (good judgment)! Bless you for keeping me from murder and from carrying out vengeance with my own hands." (I Sam. 25:33)
Good sense in this passage spoken by David to Abigail refers to: good judgment developed through experience. Difficult marriage was not wasted on Abigail-she grew in discretion and wisdom-and blessed King David through her good judgment.
Obadiah: his name in Hebrew means: servant of Yahweh-worshiper of Yahweh. Now here is a servant of Yahweh whose job was the head staff member in the palace of evil twin rulers-Ahab & Jezebel.
"Ahab had summoned Obadiah who was in charge of his palace. Obadiah was fully devoted to the LORD - hiding 100 prophets from Jezebel who was trying to slaughter the LORD's servants."(I Kings 18:3,4)
Serving under two evil rulers did not keep Obadiah from being fully devoted to the LORD and even risking his life to protect Yahweh's prophets.
Asa (King of Judah): Asa used good judgment when he inherited the throne of Judah, he did not follow in the footsteps of his evil father but chose to follow his ancestor King David-doing what was right in the eyes of the LORD. King Asa not only rid the land of Judah of idols, he also deposed his own grandmother because she had made a heinous Asherah pole.
"He also removed his grandmother Maacah from being queen mother because she had made an obscene image of Asherah." (I Kings 15:13)
Did Abigail, Obadiah or Asa let their difficult situation keep them from doing what is right in the eyes of the LORD?
Abigail difficult marriage
Obadiah difficult work context
Asa difficult family heritage
Abigail, Obadiah and Asa made good choices even though the context of their lives was not always conducive to their devotion to the LORD. A.O. A. J. Can I add your initial to this list? I just added mine. By God's grace I have not allowed a difficult context to determine whether or not I would obey the LORD.
P.S. I am already praying for my granddaughter Emma that she will grow to be so devoted to the LORD that she would even "depose grandma Kendall" if I ever began to treasure anything or anyone more than Yahweh!
From "Transposition" by C.S. Lewis, in the book "The Weight of Glory."
Let us construct a fable. Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but the dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance, she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen.
She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities, and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that that outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute or two they are at cross-purposes. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception.
"But," she gasps, "you didn't think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?"
"What?" says the boy. "No pencil marks there?" And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition - the waving treetops, the light dancing on the weir, the coloured three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve.
The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother's pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.
So with us. "We know not what we shall be" (1 John 3:2); but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like pencilled lines on flat paper.
....
You will have noticed that most dogs cannot understand pointing. You point to a bit of food on the floor; the dog, instead of looking at the floor, sniffs at your finger. A finger is a finger to him, and that is all. His world is all fact and no meaning. And in a period when factual realism is dominant we shall find people deliberately inducing upon themselves this doglike mind. A man who has experienced love from within will deliberately go about to inspect it analytically from outside and regard the results of this analysis as truer than his experience.
As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism. The critique of every experience from below, the voluntary ignoring of meaning and concentration on fact, will always have the same plausibility. There will always be evidence, and every month fresh evidence, to show that religion is only psychological, justice only self-protection, politics only economics, love only lust, and thought itself only cerebral biochemistry.
/End C.S. Lewis, begin Becky
I'm thinking that while we should avoid a purely hedonistic view of heaven, at the same time there is no shame in picturing it as a place of great earthly pleasures. Not that they will exist there in the same sense that they exist here, but that we must associate heaven with our greatest joy. We can't deprive ourselves of picturing any pleasure in heaven simply because we can't now imagine the form it will take. We can't now imagine the incredible relationship we will have with the King, so we must take our best experiences with earthly relationships and with the Holy Spirit and combine them into a promising shadow of what will be. So the view of heaven provided for us in the Bible, a place of feasting and riches, is not an elementary one, but a way of relating for us the joy we are to obtain. And here is where God is once again so wonderful - on one hand, He tells us things we can't possibly understand and can only speculate on until we die, reminding us of His mystery and highness, but on the other hand He speaks of some of our purest, simplest pleasures being present there - aesthetic beauty and good food.
In this apartment, our posters like to fall off the walls. Frances and I have lived here for almost a full year now, with many days punctuated by shiny rectangles of inspiration crashing to the floor. Those double-sided Scotch squares never hold, white sticky tack never holds...and we even got that annoying orange Elmer's sticky tack that stains the walls, and it never holds.
I was proud of one poster in my room that had never fallen. It's right above my desk. It's a picture of a serene seascape with clouds up ahead and mountains in the distance. Your point of view is from a beach with a docked boat. The boat is pointing at this awesome jungle-y looking island looming in the distance, like Madagascar. It looks awesome. It's like a giant forested thumb rising out of the ocean. It makes you want to grab that boat and sail to that thumbish island, until you look down at your glowing screen and remember the English paper you're writing and your ears reawaken to the lovely Cain & Abel's soundtrack downstairs.
But then I came home the other day to discover that it had finally fallen.
And you know, the funny thing about these posters is that once they've fallen, they never stay up as well again. No matter how you re-roll the sticky tack and firmly press the shiny sheet against the off-white wall, it's always so much easier for the poster to fall down the second time, and the third time. My beautiful poster had held up almost a whole year before falling, but now that it's fallen off the wall once, it's far more likely to succumb to gravity again. It may take only a few days.
"Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary."
There's probably something you're struggling with, something that keeps tugging at you. Something you've been fighting for years. We all have our temptations, addictions, and rough pasts. You've been consistently practicing self-control and giving your burdens to Him, sharing little daily victories with God. But maybe right now that thing looks really good, or maybe you've hit a rough spot with God and just don't care much about pleasing him right now. Maybe now it's hard for you to have hope that you will reap rewards because it doesn't look like God is taking care of you.
Please don't fall. Don't allow gravity to take hold of you. The thing is, once you've taken one fall after climbing up for so long, it's so easy to fall again...and again...and again. We kinda have a lot in common with thin sheets of paper when it comes to God. I mean, we are that weak compared to His strength. Because we live in a world that is often hostile to Truth and Love, we constantly have to fight, but the gravity pulls and pulls and won't stop until we die. We get tired, and it's understandable. We're flimsy by ourselves, with no foundation and no purpose. No matter how independent we like to pretend we are, we need to be held up by our Mighty Fortress. Day by day by difficult day.
There will be times when we have no idea why we're following Him anymore, when we have no idea why we continue to obey. That kind of obedience is best, the kind that seems to go unrewarded, that pushes through when there appears to be no incentive from God and every possible reward from the world.
In The Screwtape Letters, a demon says,
"Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round on a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."
Keep holding on. Trust. TRUST. Don't fall back into what you were saved from. This could be one of the most important stages of healing - when your temptation is being flung in your face with all its riches, with all its seductive power...and succumbing looks so good, or so easy, or even the only option. Of course the enemy would love to make you fall, right when you're about to reach the top and conquer what he's enslaved you to, right when God is about to do something so great that you would not believe it even if He told you. Remember who is the author of lies and who is the author of Truth.
"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him."
