Let me preface this entry with a bit of an explanation. There is in every generation, a certain grouping of people who know without a doubt that they belong to a bygone era. I do not say this with pride, but with longing. For the need to escape into a world and a time long gone often calls my name. My favorite time period is the '50s, and no, I do not refer to the 1950s, but rather the 1850s. What could I possibly want to be a poineer woman barely surviving the bitter winters of the plains in a mudhouse? Why, a fight of course. I need something to conquer.

Only recently do I feel at peace with this need to conquer and win something for it is God who helps to fill this need. He created me to embody this fighting and conquering spirit. I express a need for the 1850s as it is the last known untamed, wind and snow ravaged territory known to the American. Once the West was ours, all there was to look towards was the Moon and Space, of which there really no is daily struggle for Life and Death in a safe little bubble of steel and fire-resistant foam. There is no great monster whether it's the unrelinquishing cold, the ruined crops that were planted with the remaining harvested seed, or the fear of not knowing whether the Indians would harm yourself and your children.

There is a spiritual bend to this need to conquer, and conquer I will, in the name of my Lord. But woe to the person who thinks they can start an arguement with me and win. The call of a fight is louder and stronger than nearly anything I've known. I have got to learn how to harness this power, this drive and use it solely in the name and the goodness of my Christ. As I have not yet learned to do this fully as of yet, I am liable to lapse into fighting spells and old language and turns of speech. For the need to conquer lies in my blood, it engulfs me, and therefore ought to be released and expressed in every manner of things whether it's my speech, my handwriting, my hand-sewing, or my gardening. I will let it out until my Lord shows me who and where upon to target my conquering spirit.

Perhaps now you can understand my argumentative side a bit better and also understand my deep interest in Spiritual Warfare.

For a while now I have had an intense interest in Spiritual Warfare, because I thought it was so interesting of how there could be battles occurring daily for our minds and souls between Angels, demons, and ourselves. That interest has not gone away.

I do not think that before this weekend I understood the warnings others had given to me for being interested in the darkness that enfolds Spiritual Warfare. Now I do, and I have a new vested interest in the matter.

I have read only a little on the subject matter, but what I have seen has given me tools to understand how to bring down the demon: scorn, laughter, knowledge that the Battle has long been won, and the tools of the opposition are endless, dark, and deceitful tearing away at the human heart, but not at the life and light we have in our Father.

I know understand and believe what I did not really trust in before, that my Father will come down as a Living God, and defeat and scare away the demons if only I ask Him to. All I have to do is ask and He is there for me.

Through various interactions on the internet and through e-mail I have noticed what countless others have: it's an extremely horrible way of communication. Especially when the two in the electronic conversation have two completly different endpoints in mind.

I can only suppose at this point that the emails I am recieving from one particular individual is in response to the manner in which I conduct myself. I am not writing of sinfullness, but of facial expressions, speech, etc. Simply because I walk around on campus as I have someplace to be, or my questions are quite pointed and direct does not mean that I am not at peace with my Lord. I all too often, and I have no shame in this at all, rely on Him to be there for me, whether it is after a night of discussing religion that dredges up old memories better left alone, the anniversary of Roe versus Wade, or a simple conversation that I hadn't the slightest inkling of it being flirtation!

I wish I could say directly to the person that they are far off the mark. I am at peace with my Lord, but I am not at peace with the World. Nor do I ever want to settle into peace with the World, or it is not the World I seek to please.

Philippians 4:4
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice. Joy has been commanded upon us, as has been peace. I have learned in the last few weeks through on-campus ministries that all the things Christ tells us to do are for our benefit.
Further inspection reveals that when the Bible tells us to rejoice in the Lord, it is to be calmly happy and at peace with our God. I am that, yet the recipient of my e-mails does not see this. Oh, if I could be open so he'd understand the true depth to which I am content in God. Linked with this time in my life is the passage admonishing us to not let others see our trife, but to continue to wear anything but sackcloth, to not call attention to ourselves. I take joy in each day I live in the Lord, in the growth of the Spirit within me. I cherish it. Therefore, I am able to move on, live life as the World demands of me in the middle of disease and biopsies and occultic practices and self-disrespect.

Don't judge me based upon what you do not know, lest you be judged the same.

This morning, on KKLA at 8:30 am the opening comments were directed towards making changes in your life, and that God is the mechanism through which these changes and transitions occur.

Since I have started believing more than 6 months ago, most weeks do not go by without one realization or another whether its about the Bible or where my life does not match up with the godliness God inspires and impresses upon me. There is little else than I would love to be than that elusively godly wife someday. (I need to date and get a boyfriend first, of course!) But I don't think I had put so much faith in informal social control/public confession before. I think there is a drawback to the Catholic confession, in which its just the individual and the priest, for as the nondenominationals and Evangelicals teach, you are to go to eachother and confess. The social sanctions are more than enough to shame us into changing our sinful and godless ways. I don't that same shameful feeling when I go to a priest because it's not nearly half as public.

When we come face to face with public shame we are more apt to change our ways. It's likened to the difference between the laughing stocks in the town square and telling someone in private who is sworn to keeping his mouth shut. When you are aware of the fact that someone will not go about prattling your sins you can feel safe that you can go about your business with out shame or guilt. I say, hand over to me the shame and guilt, the more the better, and therefore the more likely I am to change my ways. In a public affirmation of our sins, there are more people we are held accountable too. You don't need to take a social psychology course to understand this, the writers of the Bible didn't have college courses available to themselves, but they got it correct: public statements are more likely to bring you to shame which pushes you to change your ways more than any tiny confessional can bring me to my knees and to change.

I read it and nearly hear it said all the time, that God has conquered the Darkness when His Son embodied sin and died on the Cross for us; so that we could experience eternal life with the Father.

I think Satan is smart enough to know when the Battle has been won, so why does he attack us still with temptation? The Father is all knowing, and all-forgiving so long as you repent and believe in Him and the Son. For Christ told us, that no one can know the Father and not accept the Son; so Faith in Christ and the Father is our being saved. In addition to this, so long as we are believing, and repentant, we have a claim to eternal life. Therefore, why plague us, the Saved?

Satan is not satisfied with the consumerism and pluralism of today. It's not enough that young women and men abandon the ways of purity that are so pleasing to the Father; nor is he content with the people he effectively lures away from the light with lust and flesh that will only decay with time. He has to have more, for the one thing that Satan is when you boil him down (as the Hell Fires eventually shall do anyway) is greed, that need for more, more, and yet still more.

He can never be content, and so he grabs at loose ends thinking that he is winning.

But he has already lost; the Battle was won on the Cross.
Denial won't get the demon any closer to winning, he'll just lose some more, until the Judgement Day when Satan and his band of demons will lose it all like they never thought possible.

You dumb, selfish demon: don't you see I can't be had? I'm a Child of God, and I like it here in the Light just fine.