Christianity

Should we be looking for the Pink Slime?

I am studying 2 Thessalonians with a group of young women.

In chapter 2 it says: For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work. This is Paul speaking in the 50’s AD.  Here we are in 2018. If Paul was warning the Christians over 1900 years ago to be aware because the secret power of lawlessness was already at work, how much more should we, as Christ followers, be mindful today?

Yet every day the news is filled with fellow human beings fighting each other.

After living in Memphis during the late 80’s early 90’s, we would joke that there had to be a river of pink slime flowing under the city.

(See video from Ghostbusters if you aren’t familiar with the pink slime)

But the longer I live, I am more inclined to think the river is flowing from one end of the country to the next, and is finding every tributary it can, to spread.

This chapter goes on to say that “The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”

As I think about these scriptures, and think about all the negativity that has been created in our society. I am saddened that so many Christians have sat down, tired of running the race according to Gods standards and are embracing the worlds standards.

In Romans 1:28, it says that there will be a time when God will give us over to our depraved, (immoral, evil, wicked, corrupt) mind because we don’t think it is worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God.

If Paul felt it was worth the warning over 1900 years ago, how much more should we heed the warning today.

2 Thessalonians 2:7-12 NIV

For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.  And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

Romans 1:28-32 NIV

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.  They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.  Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

 

Satan will no longer take me hostage

 

 

I suffer from Asthma which is induced by food allergies. Over the past few years, I went from “yes you have food allergies, but you should be able to add things back into your diet; to I am sorry, now you can’t have… and the list gets added to.

To date I have to stay away from:

  • Gluten
  • Dairy
  • Eggs
  • Corn
  • Soy
  • Safflower/ Sunflower
  • Refined sugars
  • Peanuts

 

I have had doctors tell me:

Your body needs to rest

You need to heal

You are too stressed out

You have adrenal fatigue.

You need to take care of you.

 

So for the past few months, I have tried to lay low and to care for myself, especially when I was told, “you need to get rid of the stress or the stress will get rid of you.”

I was also told during this time that my food allergies may be the result of stress.

In reality though, I did not understand what any of that meant. No one was banging down my door to tell me what to do in a way that I understood it, so I muddled through the best I could.

It became apparent that I needed to figure out something because my asthma attacks were getting more and more frequent. So we made arrangements to change the way we did ministry; allowing me to REST.

But problems can become apparent when you allow your body to REST.  You may find out there are more layers of UNREST below and it rises to the surface.

This happened on October 7th.  I was teaching in my hometown in Michigan.  I did not think anything of it, but I guess my body did.  By the time the training was over, my neck was hurting.  It got so bad that I couldn’t sleep well, I had to hold my head to turn it while I was laying down and I had to hold the back of my neck just to swallow without pain.

By Wednesday I was in so much pain that I finally went to the Urgent Care Clinic.  I needed relief.  I still had one more training before I would be able to get home.   The Doctor said there was nothing wrong with me medically, but my neck was in knots, so she gave me a steroid shot, a prescription for a major steroid, a muscle relaxer and sent me on my way.

I was grateful for modern medicine but I also knew that I needed my chiropractor back home.

The rest of the trip went OK thanks to the steroids, but as soon as I was done with them and they were out of my system, it was back to the same level of pain.

I got in to see my chiropractor that week, he adjusted my neck and it started to feel a little better.

On October 24th, it was flared up and I was living on the muscle relaxers and pain relievers, so back to the chiropractor I went. As the doctor started checking me, he adjusted my back and did a few things through reflexology, but he never adjusted my neck.  He sat me up, looked at me and said “Meredith, there is nothing wrong with your neck. It is all stress related.  It is what I call a psychosomatic response. It’s all in your head.”

What? No! There has to be a medical reason.  Food allergy.  Something.  Not a psychosomatic response.  I was working so hard for the past few months to reduce my stress, because this is the same doctor who told me that if I did not reduce my stress, it would be reduced for me when my body shut down.

As I was on my way home, I texted my mom, “The verdict is in… its stress”.   When I was in Michigan earlier that month she told me it sounded like stress, and I answered, I have no stress.

The rest of the evening Rob and I started talking through things.  My childhood. Our marriage.

As we were talking, I wouldn’t have to say yes or no that did or did not bother me, my body did it for me. These talks turned into me having an ugly cry face, but I went to bed that night for the first time in 17 days and slept pain free.

You see I am really good at helping others figure out their life. Over the past 15 years, I have been working on myself, but only in a form of teaching and using my story to free others.  In September I was given a self-study that was geared toward healing my body.

On November 16th, a blog came out about what self care really means. Click here to read it

In this blog there were a couple of things that stood out. The main thing was:

 “how much (anxiety) comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.”

In our program we teach on this very thing, but we don’t put this way.  For whatever reason, this statement hit me like a lead balloon.  I got out my journal and started thinking through her statement with The 180 Programs diagrams and my past.  Listening to the lies of satan through the voice of my step dad.  I believed what he said about me then and unfortunately I was allowing his words to shape my current thinking.

As I read and re-read the blog, I realized I was allowing the antics of satan to tell me that I was not good enough and that I was not being healed because I did not have enough faith.  I was also allowing my “lens of life” to be one that unfortunately still had the blurred lines of lies that I was trained to believe.

The day after I read this, I was able to journal my thoughts and feelings, God brought a woman into my life and she led me in a one-on-one prayer of self-reflection.  During this prayer time I was directed to events that were troublesome. I was then directed to just talk it out.  When I was finished talking, she would ask Jesus to tell me where He was in all of this.  What were the lies. Where was the truth?  As I sat in the room with a total stranger, I wept until I could cry no more, but I felt free.

For quite a while I have been praying for healing.  I was asking for healing from my food allergies… but what I realized was God healed me from something greater.

When I woke up this morning, I realized I was happy.  I have been asking God to make me happy in my journal for a long time.  I had not realized how many lies I was still allowing to engulf my daily life. I was still allowing satan to take me hostage in my own thought life.  It was subtle, but I realized how I framed my questions, how I framed statements, how I allowed the voices from my past to become the lens I walked my daily life through, and they were keeping me in bondage of fear.

Today I choose to walk with a renewed mind.  I will work to see myself through lenses of a loving Jesus.  He may choose to allow something bad to happen again, in fact I’m sure I will face difficulties, but I will not let those events be the lens that I filter my tomorrow through.

I have a choice and so do you.