When I was around 3 years old, I had an experience that is forever sealed in my mind. There was a vacant lot behind our house, and there was a stack of cement blocks on the back part of that lot. My sister, age 6, had climbed up on the blocks and was waving at me to come. I got on my tricycle and proceeded through the tall grass that stood between me and the blocks. After much struggle I finally reached my destination. Just as I made it to the blocks, my knee hit into something soft and unfamiliar; a nest of yellow striped wasps. The next things I remember after that are: it was a very big nest, it felt as if my leg caught on fire, and I screamed with all my might. I remember that my father came and picked me up with one hand, while raking the stinging, clinging wasps off my bare leg with his other hand. He then laid me in the backseat of a 1960 Bronze Chevrolet then drove me to the emergency room.
The battle for our souls begins early in life. In fact, before we are born the battle begins. World-wide there is an average of 126,000 abortions per year. Regardless of what is said, there is more to this statistic than just a simple medical procedure used to get rid of the “problem”. This battle is raging in our world and there is a cosmic reason as well as a local one. Once our world, or we as individuals, start on the slippery slope of devaluing human life, there is no end.
As we are born, we wake up in a world where parenting has become the least important job of society. There is a break-down of the basic foundations of family. This breakdown starts when the bonds of marriage become just a piece of paper that is issued by a government, and can be torn up with little or no thought. When mothers are deemed as “unimportant” and almost disposable, and fathers useless unless they can provide a paycheck, then it’s only the money that’s important.
Even if we find ourselves born in the best of circumstances, raised by good parents, each stage in life is set up for failure, as we grow older the choices we make, set in motion who and what we become. The world tries to tell us what these choices should be; Hollywood, fashions, pop culture all try to influence our lives.
As boys grow up they want to be good at something. Girls want to be considered pretty. If anything is said or done to place doubts on these first foundational ideas, then we become wounded. The depth of the wound depends on who and what caused them. The teen years bring on even more focus on the questions of life, frustrations with ability, height, weight, and feelings that we have been rejected by our family or friends. Then on to college or marriage or career, choices that should fulfill us, but usually fall short. We ask ourselves “what is wrong with us”? Then we realize we still deal with the same wounds and insecurities we had when we were younger.
At each stage of life, once we start to understand the game, the world changes the rules, and offers something else, to keep us totally off balance. The carrot of the “things” that are offered is always a little further down the road. Somehow we always need or want something else, something we can never obtain.
John 10:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
The “adversary” uses every insecurity, every wound, as an entry in the calculator that he uses against us. All of our secrets, how unfair life has been to us, how we did not get to grow up like everyone else, or how we were somehow shorted by something or someone. He then tells us that God has failed us and does not care about us anymore. So, we are left to deal with our wounds; some in secret, some open, some obvious and some not so obvious.
Slum Dog Millionaire is a movie about a boy that grows up in deep poverty in India. He falls in love at a young age with a girl who is one of his best friends. He commits his life to save her but having no power, money or resources she is destined to slavery and he is destined to watch it happen. Eventually through all his struggles he finds himself on the game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” with a chance to totally change his circumstances. He then realizes the answer to every question being asked has been burned into his memory by all the bad experiences and struggles he grew up with.
Isaiah 61:3
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified
The truth of the battle for our soul is this: because of Adam’s Sin we have all been “stung”! Also, the world is full of wasps, but because of our wounds and our struggles we become stronger, and it makes us who we are. If we can somehow reach the point to accept that every pain and every hurt we experience is used in God’s plan and purpose for our life, and that we need every experience, the good along with the bad, so that we can ultimately become the person God visions in us.