Halloween

Halloween always creeps me out.

It should.  It is a night of witches and devil worship.  Everything is either death, blood, and decay, or in the older age bracket, eating, drinking, and fornication.  There is no God in that.  The only blood I embrace is the sacrificial blood of the Lamb Jesus Christ, slain for the salvation of mankind.  The only death I rejoice in is His death on the cross; yet He rose again on the third day.  The only decay I love is the decay of my former self as I grow more and more attached to Him.

When I eat His body and drink His blood, it is not "real", it's spiritual, symbolic, remembering Christ's broken body and his blood poured out to forgive the sins of many.  When I think of sex, I think of the beautiful gift that God has given me and my wife to enjoy, not something that the scantily-clad people are doing all over the country right now.

Ghosts and goblins are real.  Devils and demons are too.  But so are angels of light.  God is a God of light, of compassion, of mercy.  Therefore everything dark, indifferent, tricky, is not of God.  Why do we have a night of embracing tricking others, demons, pretending to be someone that we aren't, and asking others for sweets?  Don't we see that it's a night that's destroying the moral fiber of our nation?

And isn't it weird how a night that's so full of demons, death, decay, and devils is celebrated by giving sugar to children, so much sugar that they'll go for weeks or months, if they even have any sort of moderation.  And society expects it.  Society demands it.  You're not allowed to give away healthy stuff, because if it's unwrapped, it could easily be poisoned (just like Snow White ['cause that's the only problem with that movie...]...).

When does God ever tell us to act frivolously?  When does sugar, especially in such mass amounts, become okay for the God who said, "When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you; and put a knife to your throat if you are a man given to appetite.  Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food."   With all the mayhem in the world, I know who fancies himself the ruler of it.  He has tried to take that title from God from the very beginning of his revolution.  And if these are the delicacies that this "ruler" is giving the world to eat on a night that is clearly in worship of him, shouldn't we as Christians, who claim a Higher King, above all others, avoid these sweets?

Where is our self control?  Where is our resolve to follow Christ, who did not indulge in appetite to satisfy His hunger ever on record.  Nowhere does God's Word say, "And Jesus didst eat too much, and his belly acheth."  Satan didn't waste his time tempting Jesus with to make sweets or anything "tasty." Why?  Because he knew Jesus wouldn't go for that!  He had to tempt Jesus with the basic biological needs of humanity.  Anything more than that would have been even easier for our self-denying Savior to resist.  Why do we think that eating is a right and a privilege?  When will we see that our bodies are temples of the Most High God?

I am chief of offenders.  I snack incessantly, eating what I want when I want it. I already had like 7 pieces of candy today, and kids haven't even started beating on my door.  What if they don't come, and we're stuck with all this sugary mess?  I want to throw it away.  I don't want it in my house, because I know I'll eat it.  And I know I'll like it.  But I am learning to set aside the pleasures of this world, in order to embrace the pleasures of the world that is to come.  I'm learning very slowly.

Have you noticed that when you eat a lot of garbage, it tastes really good to you?  Then, after a while, even that garbage gets old and we look for something even more enticing, even more "fulfilling".  Healthy food is a burden to eat, it tastes gross and gives us headaches.  But if we deny ourselves and begin to eat healthy, we become accustomed to it and start to enjoy it more.  Then as soon as we have a moment of weakness, of demonic trickery, we have a taste of our old favorite and go all crazy on our food choices again.

The Kingdom of God is only going to be pleasurable to those who find joy in the principles of His government: Self-control, self-sacrifice, love, mercy, justice.  Have you seen those shirts that say, "If there's no chocolate in heaven, I'm not going"?  People who truly believe that won't want to enter God's kingdom, because they have put a higher priority on chocolate than God.  They wouldn't be happy in Heaven, there are health standards there.

Temples of the Holy God.  I'm learning to become one.  What about you?  I challenge you to step up and do whatever God is convicting you to do.  You and I both know He's speaking to our hearts.  And just as I will throw away all this candy (without eating another bite of it) tonight, I challenge you to step up and rid yourselves of anything that is standing in the way between you and God.  Do it for yourselves.  Do it for Him.