#like to him the satan thing is just a prerequisite for getting new outfits and being able to sing and dance and crack jokes.

[ratgirlcopia]

if copia had 5% more control over his life he'd just be a drag queen. that's it. like that's literally it that's what this, collectively, is all pointing toward. imperator's like Oh Thank Satanas my definitely-not-kid is a weird little fruit who belongs on a stage. i can use this to obtain ultimate power. meanwhile copia is like the autistic homeschooled religious kid who absorbed an itty bitty fraction of the actual, like, doctrine and spent most of his time looking at images of large men in the illustrated satanic bible. but is fine being the frontman because he gets to wear makeup and bedazzled shit and nun clothes.

#copiaposting #the progression of serious devotion i think the emeritus line has toward satan is sort of like. primo was genuinely invested. #secondo was also genuinely invested despite all his personal hangups getting in the way. #terzo was more like the satanic version of that kid who went to bible camp every summer and knew all the songs. #but also treated bible camp like a dating/interpersonal drama retreat. and wanted like. a high school movie experience out of it. #and copia is just like. okay i read all the stuff i was supposed to! can i go shake my ass onstage now. #like to him the satan thing is just a prerequisite for getting new outfits and being able to sing and dance and crack jokes. #i do often miss things but. i feel like in the chapters he literally never once is like “i'm doing this for satan.” not even as pretense. #he's doing this because his mom told him to first and foremost. and then secondly because he enjoys dressing up glammy and being liked. #and maybe. MAYBE satan is third. but only because there were like. a lot of really hot satans in that illustrated satanic bible.

[setfreeexcerpts]

Chapter 26

Spurring On Our Death

_________________________________________

Though certainly not a prerequisite, lest we put God in a box, it seems that the more deeply spiritual, operational incisions initiated by the Holy Spirit coincide with times when one has been veritably leashed (sometimes physically, whether through injury, searing crisis or otherwise) to such foreign practices as stillness, silence, and sincere meditation on the Truths of God and His Word.

For our part, we label these times as “interruptions to our productivity.” For the Spirit’s part, He labels them as opportunity.

Oh, Christian friend, it is in such times our loving and gracious God is giving us a painful pause intended to spur on our death. And more often than not, we hate every minute of it.

All we can do is think about what isn’t getting done. “Lord,” we say, “what duties should I be carrying out right now which I am incapable of doing because of this cursed stillness?” All the while, the week, month or quarter year of relative incapacitation ticks away, pregnant with God’s purpose for us, and…we miss it.

The One who gave his life to gain relationship with us is stilling us and calling our name–but we cannot hear him because we are too concerned with our self-importance. The ears of our heart and soul are stopped up with the temporal. And we fail the test.

I can nearly see all of heaven, from the angels pausing from their work to our great cloud of witnesses, holding their collective breath when we are stricken with such times of what we call “unproductive stillness”– and we fail to recognize that it was a time divinely ordered for our becoming into Christ.

Your time of involuntary stillness may not be as incapacitating as was Dr. Rich Edwards’, but if gifted with such, I pray the outcome will be comparable. In his book, Not a Fan, Kyle Idleman tells this man’s story. I’d like to recount it here.

On February 10th, 2006, I was in control of my life and I liked the direction things were going. I had a thriving chiropractic practice, two sons and a devoted wife. On February 11th, everything changed.

I was heading out to my hunting cabin where I planned to meet up with friends and hunt wild boar. As I drove along, I could see the effects from the severe drought we had been experiencing. Everything seemed to have dried up and died.

By the time I had reached the road heading to the cabin, it was dark. As I turned, I missed the road and ended up in five feet of thick brush. I tried to free my truck by putting it in forward, then reverse repeatedly. The friction from that somehow ignited the brush. Within seconds, the truck was a large torch.

I reached for the door handle to escape, but the electrical system burned out and I was locked inside. Seconds later, the window exploded. I don’t really know what happened after that. I have no idea how I got out of the truck. The next thing I remember is walking down the road to the cabin telling myself over and over, “Don’t stop. Keep going.”

When I reached the cabin, my friends thought I was wearing some kind of three-dimensional, leafy hunting outfit. But it wasn’t camouflage. It was shredded, charred skin.

A Medflight helicopter took me to a burn unit where I was told I wouldn’t have much of a face left, and I would probably lose my sight as well as the use of my hands. God put an absolute halt on my life.

I was so busy being successful, I was on such a fast track, that God was a part of my life, but he wasn’t the most important part. He was not on the throne of my heart or at the center of my universe. I was at the center.

I don’t believe God caused the fire, but I believe God allowed it because he wanted to get my attention. Like a parent who tries to get through to a child, God grabbed me by the shoulders, sat me down and said, “I want you to listen to me.”

That was the beginning of a spiritual awakening in my life. Over the next four years, the doctors amputated seven fingers. I couldn’t use what was left of my hands for even the simplest of tasks, but the doctors said there was nothing more they could do. That’s when my wife, Cindy, asked about the possibility of a hand transplant.

That began a time of waiting, testing and prayer. We spent countless hours reading the Bible and praying together. Finally, the day for my double hand transplant arrived. Twenty surgeons and three anesthesiologists took seventeen and a half hours to attach my new hands.

Many people have pointed out that it was a miracle I didn’t die in the fire that day. That’s true, but in a very real way, I did die in that fire. The man I was died that day, and God gave me a new life where I’m not in control but have turned the controls over to Him. I’m not in charge of my life anymore, but have submitted everything to Jesus.

These days my wife and I constantly pray to be used by God in any way he wants–to bring glory to himself. It may sound crazy, but I would rather have gone through all of this pain and suffering, and all of these challenges and have the relationship with Jesus that I have now, than continue down the path I was on before the accident without that relationship.[1]

May I ask you a question? 

Given the torrid pace of your life, how but through a time of your being dropped onto a bed of stillness can the voice of God be heard in your life? 

Likely, you are too busy to hear otherwise! How can He become your great Love if you’re incessantly consumed with the affairs of this world? How but through incapacitation might you recognize how broken and dead you really are in your overly confident flesh?

Oh, how God sits, waiting, His figurative hands folded patiently. He does not want what we can do firstly. He wants us. Broken. Humbled. Tender. Delivered from ourselves. In times of quiet and lengthy need, the odds of our looking longingly (and long enough) heavenward, significantly rise; it is in these times we stand the best chance of understanding the delivering value of a complete death to self, without which we are destined to a life of relatively powerless self-exertion.

Left to ourselves and without giving up, we are like those Habakkuk prophesied about in Habakkuk 1:11 where he spoke of the Babylonians as “that ruthless and impetuous people….guilty people, whose own strength is their God.” I don’t think this is meant to be our encouragement to live likewise–in our own strength.

No, our own strength, if we desire a vibrant walk with the Spirit of God, must be ruthlessly slayed.

I know this is a tremendously counter-cultural message, but it is the only way. 

When, after all, did we start finding it important to live sensitively and tolerantly in line with the cultural persuasions of the day? Certainly this is not the picture we see when studying Jesus’ life. Certainly this is not the picture we see when observing the lives of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the lives of Moses and Aaron, the life of Stephen, the life of the disciples, the life of Paul, and so on. Instead, those surrendered to God live in notable contrast to their culture’s modus operandi.

But while our need is for self-abandonment, positioning us for a life empowered by the Spirit of the Living God who aches to be unleashed within us, we seldom find the time for the prerequisites God often uses for such positioning–stillness, silence and sincere meditation on the Truths of God and His Word.

Such practices do not naturally coexist at the breakneck speed of our hectic lives. Like it or not, the busyness of America and much of the developed world thrills our adversary. 

While Satan knows he cannot have our souls, he is ecstatic about the unexamined pace of our lives. 

For it is this hurried (dare I say frenzied) pace at which many of us well-meaning Christians lead our lives that aids and abets such a low bar of spiritual expectation.

Yes, our adversary must keep us away from lives of contemplation by incessantly filling our eyes, ears, minds and hearts with things that, at worst, please temporally and relatively, and, at best, occupy our time with spiritually neutral substance. And while it would be difficult to point out what is wrong with our daily, weekly, monthly and, before we know it, yearly pursuits, it may be a better question to ask what is right with them.

And so as a result of the “busy and good” commotion of our lives, we seldom ponder the proposition that our Christian walks were intended to be so much more than fire insurance–a journey relegated to the enjoyment of good music which lifts our eyes heavenward while possessing a gracious heart of thanksgiving to God for saving us from hell.

Were there a thematic declaration of prognosis for our spiritually shallow and weak living to which I could point, it would lie in the content of the single-sentence paragraph you just blew past.

PAUSE to PONDER

How have you responded to painful experiences that have inhibited your busy and productive life?

Have you ever considered the possibility that there may be more to these ‘interruptions’ than meets the human eye?

If you are a Christian, and your omniscient and omnipotent God is love (I John 4:8), can you trust Him with your life? How about with the unexpected and painful circumstances that change your plans, even radically?

[1] Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan; Chapter 3