Monsters of the Deep

Sea world, Ohio, late 70’s

First line of
destroyers appear the obvious ones: beer, whiskey, cocaine,
heroin, Oxycontin. Then sex, in all of its weird forms outside of God’s design for
marriage, stealing, cheating, gambling, carousing, abusing others for gain,
angry displays, intimidation, kicking others butts, destroying another’s good
name; all hold a place with the overt ones. When  overcome, these may lose
their active status, and sentence themselves to the soul’s background. Watch,
they can reemerge.
 

Next group of
enemies are the intimidators. These close in from the deep unknown; seek to
mess with sound thinking, the flow of a man’s life, a man’s normal daily function.
How? They distract us from concentration, they interrupt, inhibit our ability and
essential need to think a thought through; they create chaos in the mind,
through magnifying a neediness to evaluate everything right now, creating doubt,
hesitancy, panic, unbelief.
 

These foes suggest
“helpful ideas” as they seem to be very good at self-analysis; they
make us wish we could be sports reporters. These tell us —our opinion deserves
some consideration, and we are foolish to trust everything out there. These teach us
how to “know things” not by study, but by my now developing
intuition, a 6th sense. These monsters may tell us “you
are much more important than people will let you become.” “They (the
big people in your life) just want you to shut up and stay out of the
way.”

These above mentioned bullies
and rationalizers all plan to reduce our straight forward, concentrated
progress of sound and cheerful thought production, in creative development of
God’s vision for our life. These return us to the weak and beggarly elements.
They want to shipwreck our faith, condemn us or scare us, or rationally talk us
out of it. They want to call a meeting with us, they ask us to put the project
on hold for a while. They want to shut up our mouth and cause our confidence to
recede. 

I have a friend
who is very involved with the study of God’s Word; hardly distractable. I am
betting that some really nice “devout” female schoolmate will become interested
in him. There will be a temptation to spend more and more time with her.
Finally, as his finances begin to dwindle, he will have to put the schooling on
hold, and during this time, because of her great support, may consider
marriage. This, of course, could end his Bible study “for now,” but “God
seems to be doing a new and wonderful thing,”sarcastically speaking.
 

Now, lets look at some bigger monsters; who are these? The biggest reside inside of the soul. These are the
self-destroyers. These are hiding in between the major areas of soul
development and just kind of linger in the background. Other soul-areas have
submitted to light, but these remain in the shadows. What are these?
 

How about the Christian
who never really assumes a place in Christ’s body with His people, because, to do so would mean
giving up his secret love for money and financial security? How about the lady
who stays in an abusive situation because of a private need for sexual
fulfillment? How about the alcoholic who never recovers because of a secret
pornography problem? How about the guy hanging on to that big scandalous event which
happened time past in his life, forbidding him to ever become anything.
This guy or gal reserves the right to remain delirious-state-held forever, and no
one can figure out why.
 

Some even more
ugly ones now; how about the weird sexual guy who knows about a fatal
disease but continues down his twisted road ending in infection? How about the person, who
has an opportunity for a successful career, and yet remains homeless on
the street, and prefers begging? How about those selling their own bodies to others,
for the sexual pleasure of them, who justify it as a means to make a living for
their family? It goes deeper, with hired murderers, slave traders and baby
killers and we could go on endlessly.
 

Friends, the thing
or things in us, whatever they be, that activate a propensity to sabotage every potential
blessing of God’s matchless providence, are the focus of God’s sword. The
ugly betrayer, witchy seducer, stubborn obstinate, self-serving preserver of
the right to disagree,  aim to kill God in a man.  Smug little “live in
my own head” types, with their push-away agenda, may destroy more people than the
body-killers.