day no. 14,972 continued... between two thieves

Laurelai,

Today, before Sunday afternoon naps it came to light that you had been stealing your siblings toys and hiding them in your backpack. As we chatted before nap, we discussed that stealing was breaking God's Law and that someone who steals is a thief. We talked about how thieves deserve to go to hell and that when Jesus died He was hung between two thieves. They were being killed for what they had done.

You felt the weight of your sin and believed that God was just in His handling of sinners, particularly thieves. Knowing yourself to be one, you understandably began crying and begging not to be separated from your daddy and to be sent to hell.

Then, I shared the Good News with you. Jesus was perfect and went to the cross for the sins of thieves. He was separated from the love of His Father on the cross so that we do not have to be separated from it. Jesus died for sinners so that they would not have to die for their sins or be separated from the love of the Father for them.

In sharing this Good News with you, I asked you if you wanted to put your faith in Jesus, repent of your sins and follow Him to receive His sacrifice to be for your sins. You said, "yes, but you didn't know how." I led you in praying to God for forgiveness, gratitude for His provision and commitment to walk by the power of His Spirit.

You went to nap a comforted girl and woke up with new life. I could sense even a change in your countenance and a proactive looking to the needs and interests of others almost immediately. I noticed a change and a softness when it came to responding to commands and requests from your mother or me. You are a new creation, a sister in Christ, not just a daughter I adore.

Before bed, after family movie night, you asked to take a picture with me to document the day. Attached is a picture of us in the hallway before bed celebrating all that God is doing in our hearts and under our roof. 

Praise God for His tender mercy and for saving us and making us family twice over, by blood and by grace.

I love you, Lolo! So excited to watch you grow in wisdom, stature and favor with God and others.

Your Daddy

day no. 14,972: frictional characters

"Friction is the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult.” - Carl von Clausewitz

Friction is the force that resists all action and saps energy. It makes the simple difficult and the difficult seemingly impossible. The very essence of war as a clash between opposed wills creates friction. In this dynamic environment of interacting forces, friction abounds. 

Friction may be mental, as in indecision over a course of action. It may be physical, as in effective enemy fire or a terrain obstacle that must be overcome. Friction may be external, imposed by enemy action, the terrain, weather, or mere chance. Friction may be self-induced, caused by such factors as lack of a clearly defined goal, lack of coordination, unclear or complicated plans, complex task organizations or command relationships, or complicated technologies. Whatever form it takes, because war is a human enterprise, friction will always have a psychological as well as a physical impact.

While we should attempt to minimize self-induced friction, the greater requirement is to fight effectively despite the existence of friction.

Proverbs 14:4
Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.

Everything has problems. Opposing wills produce friction. Oxen produce manure.

It is not difficult to understand that oxen are useful for plowing fields and that oxen help you produce a greater harvest than if you had to do their work by your own power. It is also not difficult to understand that in order to keep oxen, you must feed them and take care of them. It is easy to see how feeding them and housing them will lead to you being responsible to clean up after them and all of the crap that comes with that. Quite literally, shoveling their shit.

As easy as all of that is, it is difficult sometimes to bring yourself to endure the smell, the sweat, the work, the effort of keeping oxen. As easy as it is in one sense is as difficult as it is in another.

Friction is what makes apparently easy things difficult. Something should slide one way easily enough, but friction makes the force required to move it greater. It takes something simple and make it more complicated. Such is life. 

Such is war.

In the world as God has willed it, enmity, war and friction are hard-wired into the system. It is the way it is. It is a problem, but it is the problem we are to contend with, resign ourselves to and overcome. It is not our mission to end the friction, but to account for it and fight in spite of it by faith that overcomes obstacles without discounting that they really were difficult to get over or around.

Because God has designed us to be whole, the strain of this is felt in the form of physical, mental and spiritual exhaustion. The costs are real and accounting for them does not pay them for you. While we must account for the problems, the accounting does not solve them. It only enables you to avoid creating another problem - that of overlooking the obvious.

The requirement of the Christian is to fight effectively despite the friction, in light of the friction and in the hopes that by God's grace the friction we face now in the form of thorns and thistles will one day be the problems of our pasts as we embrace the new problems of glorifying God without encumbrance.

day no. 14,971: imposing our will on the enemy

The essence of war is a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other. War is fundamentally an interactive social process. Clausewitz called it a Zweikampf (literally a “two-struggle”) and suggested the image of a pair of wrestlers locked in a hold, each exerting force and counterforce to try to throw the other.

War is thus a process of continuous mutual adaptation, of give and take, move and counter move. It is critical to keep in mind that the enemy is not an inanimate object to be acted upon but an independent and animate force with its own objectives and plans. While we try to impose our will on the enemy, they resist us and seek to impose their own will on us. Appreciating this dynamic interplay between opposing human wills is essential to understanding the fundamental nature of war... 

The object in war is to impose our will on our enemy. - MCDP 1, 1-4

War is an inescapable concept. It is not a question of if there will be war, but which wars will there be, which uniform will you wear, how will you fight and ultimately, who will win? 

Enmity is part of our world by God's desire and declaration. Enmity has been placed between light and darkness, good and evil, the offspring of Eve and the offspring of the Serpent.

Genesis 3:15
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and her offspring;
He shall bruise your head,
    and you shall bruise His heel.

The enmity between light and dark is put there by God.

The imposition of wills is inescapable. It is not a question of if one will and purpose will be imposed upon another, but rather, which will and purpose will be imposed upon which and again, whose will win?

The end goal of opposing forces is to impose its own will and purpose upon its enemy. In the meantime, until one is subdued by the other, there will be friction. Friction and tension are a result of opposing forces pulling away from or bumping into one another, but being unable to escape the other as long as it exists.

This is the world as God has ordained as a result of sin. Sin and righteousness will be at war until sin, Satan and death are finally overcome, subdued, and overwhelmed by the appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ! His will and purpose will ultimately be imposed upon the earth and those who dwell therein as it is now Heaven.

Isaiah 2:4
He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

By God's grace, a day is coming where war will be no more. Enmity and opposition will be subdued entirely. But that day is not today. Until then, we carry swords and spears. To lay down our arms before that day is to surrender. The enmity will NOT go away until He returns. To seek to end the enmity in any other way is to betray our hope in His appearing. To lay down our arms before He returns is to join the enemy. The enemy will not stop warring. They have believed God's promise and will not stop trying to impose its will upon us. They have taken the enmity seriously.

Have we?

Jeremiah 6:14
They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.

To seek peace where there is no peace is to ensure more casualties in the war. The war will continue whether we like it or not. To shake hands with evil is to have been overcome by evil. To make a peace treaty with darkness it to have the will and purpose of darkness imposed upon us.

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
- George Washington

day no. 14,970: principles cannot remain hidden

This morning (9/4/19) while having coffee with my friend, Josiah, he reference the MCDP (available HERE). This is a published, public document detailing how the Marines tactically and philosophically approach war and warfighting.

This prompted me to ponder the fact that our military's principles are published in the public domain which led me to my next thought... The difference is not knowledge of the principles, but application of them. The manual may be available to all, but only a few will actually apply them. This is what makes the document possible to publish without it becoming a liability. 

Principles cannot remain hidden. If they can, they are not principles. Principles can be abandoned, ignored, abused, applied, embraced, but they cannot remain hidden. If they could be hidden indefinitely, they could not be definite principles. Principles are axioms that guide everything whether you like it... or not; whether you notice... or not; whether you employ them... or don't. 

You could discover a principle and then attempt to keep it hidden, but if it is truly a principle, you cannot truly withhold it from being discovered by another. You could keep your mouth shut, but the principle would still be available to your enemy if they looked hard enough. 

Principles reveal themselves. They are self-evident and authenticating. They are there. Always there. That is what makes them principles and not mere preferences. They may be fashionable, but they do not go the way of fashions. They may be en vogue in one season and out of vogue in another, but they do not cease to be principles based on whether or not they are applied. They remain: constant, faithful, dependable, reliable. 

They weather every storm whether or not we do. 

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” ― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

Christianity is not a secret. It is in plain sight and obvious. It is not for lack of availability that it often goes unemployed. It is for lack of appreciation and application.

day no. 14,969: we are becoming permanently the persons we meant to be only for the moment

Jeremiah 13:23
Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.

Our habits are hardening us into a particular mold. What we are accustomed to doing is a product of who we are becoming and is simultaneously making us more into who we've decided over and over again to become.

"Consider what power we have over our lives. We shape them to a large extent as we choose, and then, through habit, they tend to harden into the shape that we have given them, as the plaster hardens into the shape which the artist has chosen....

We think that we are acting always from our own choice, that it is no matter what we do now, because another time, whenever we wish, we can do differently. But all the while a certain habit is forming and hardening, until at last we find ourselves almost helpless. Thus, even our tastes, our amusements, our selection of books, the tendency even of our most secret thoughts, are becoming fixed, and we are becoming permanently the persons we meant to be only for the moment.

If the artist takes such pains with the plaster that he is forming, so that it may harden into a shape of beauty, what care should we take of the habits which are to effect so strongly and permanently our bodies, our minds and our hearts." - Charles Carroll Everett, Ethics For Young People

day no. 14,968: we cannot resist our natures

"The stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times" - Aristotle, Nicomachaen Ethics

Like a rock, we are not, by nature, not falling upwards. And we cannot, even by great rigor reverse our natures. We do not, by nature, desire to change our natures and even if we did, we couldn't.

Ezekiel 11:19
And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh

If our rock-hard hearts could have been trained to be softer, there would have been no need for a new heart. If  old hearts could learn new tricks, transplants would be unnecessary. 

Ezekiel 36:26-27
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Our old hearts could not resist their natures. They move downwards and only downwards. Even if we, by great zeal and devotion, we to chuck our hearts upwards ten thousand times, they would, by nature, return to their downward movement. If is where they always end up going.

For us to be saved, we need new natures. We cannot rouse our old natures to new heights without watching them fall to new depths. We don't need better rocks, smoother rocks, warmer rocks... we need to be done with rocks.

2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

day no. 14,967: untrained principles are prisoners of war in waiting

"Principle untrained may sometimes give way to a temptation which habit would withstand"
- Charles Carroll Everett, Ethics For Young People

Hebrews 5:14
But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

An untested principle, untrained by regular exercise, may fall victim to temptation. Our habits are shaping who we are becoming... for better or for worse. A principled man in theory may become a disappointed man in reality if he does not, by habit, reinforce his principles by regular, habitual exercise.

"The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

Practice is a living application of actual principles. Preparation is principle embodied.

Proverbs 24:10
If you faint in the day of adversity,
your strength is small.

If your principles cannot hold under pressure, they are not your principles.