Philppians 2:1-4, "1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."

It's easy to care about yourself. It's easy to care about your family. It's easy to care about your good neighbor. It's easy to care about church families. It's really hard to care about people with whom you are less than thrilled. But the most difficult thing is to think of absolutely everybody else before how you might gain from any action you take. It's not an attitude easily adopted. Now the Bible doesn't say to forget yourself entirely, it says "not only ... but also". So you can get away with a benefit every now and then, but don't forget that it's Christ's benefit that we're looking for.

Considering that we don't wake up and ask ourselves, "How can I help so-and-so today?" We're doing pretty good to get by these days. Just because only recently television has jumpped onto the lend a hand bandwagon, let us not forget that it's one of our many Biblical responsibilities as a Christian. Chances are we won't get that free trip to Disney land and not all the people we assist will look good on our resumes. There's one thing that's on our side, true humility.

Christ lived out His life as our ultimate example of humility. He chose poverty over wealth. He chose sinners over piously religious leaders. He chose to die on a cross over living out the full extent of his days. If we should choose to make ourselves rich, it should be with friends and family. If we should choose a church, it should be full of regular people who love God and each other. If we should choose to live out the full extent of our days it should be spending each and every one of them following Jesus in every way.

The young man was already in tears by the time the pastor's prayer was over. Since he was going through alot of things, the pastor asked the congregation to step up and pray for him, and so they did - some three quarters of the congregation. He took some annoting oil and began to pray loudly and quickly. It sounded like wailing really. I heard the phrases "pleading the blood of Jesus" and "he who is saved by the Lord is free indeed" both interspersed with hallelujahs and amens, yeses and Lords. Each of the dozen or so people praying for the young man were praying differently. I could hear some grunting, presumably from the young man, but a microphone can only pick up so much. After several minutes the noise subsided as the pastor directed the young men to saying "hallelujah" and "Jesus loves me". They called it a spiritual battle. One thing was for sure, I had never seen anything like it. I hope the kid's okay, it turns out that he's related to me.

The sort of churches that I'd attended all my life were the places that never said but always implied that religion was between a man and God and the sort of thing you keep quiet in public. Nobody ever told me what a spiritual battle was supposed to look like or if the 'spiritual battle' I had just seen was the sort we were supposed to fight. I couldn't ever really imagine what the accounts in the Bible of Jesus casting out demons or healing people. Were they always so dramatic?

Awhile ago, on a special on television for Halloween, there was an account of a nun who was possessed. She believed that a minister had invited the trouble upon her and the rest of the convent who were also possessed. Then that pastor was caught and tortured - ran through the usual tests to prove whether or not he was a witch or agent of the devil. When they weren't satisfied, they tricked up and got the "evidence" they were hoping for. Then they executed him. As for the sisters, it took years for them to be freed of their possessions. I was concerned until I realized something. Jesus said that anybody who was freed from possession ran the risk of getting repossessed if there was nothing there to stop them. The possessed nuns must not have been true believers, after all, they were responsible for the death of an apparently innocent man. Now the whole story took place in the thirteen hundreds, a time when people were more apt to believe in that sort of thing. So now I wonder, does today's general unbelief of such phenomenon leave us in the free in clear or leave us open to danger?

All I really know is that if you resist the Devil he will flee. Jesus did that by reciting scripture and sticking to it. What do you know of spiritual battles?

(It's been a bit of a quiet birthday, mostly because of the fact that the birthday boy is elsewhere doing something else. He'll at least have his favorite kind of cake waiting for him should he decide to stop by. Now that we're finally catching up on Stargate, it's nice to see how it all folds out. It took us a little while to figure out that today was his birthday, but at least we didn't out-right forget like somebody else's birthday two years ago.)

More than anybody, you would have thought that the Ninevites would have learned their lesson. They did, after all, recieved a word of warning from Jonah. After repenting, they should have continued to do what was right and teach others to do so. But they didn't.

America should take their warning to heart. From careful reading of the Old Testament, just because Israel was God's chosen people didn't spare them from the occasional spanking. Eventually, the nation was conquered and its people scattered. Thanks to our adoption, we too are on God's good side, but that doesn't exempt us from the punishment for our arrogance. If God allowed Israel to be conquered because of their unfaithfulness, what will become of us?

(Not to ruin any birthdays or anything, but only under one condition has God ever allowed a punishment to slide - whenever Jesus paid the price. But even so, as a nation we have to pay the price. Still, now's a good time to do that which is right and to teach others to do so.)