Strange things. No, I'm not talking about dystopian werewolves or superheroes with double lives and secret powers... I'm certainly not talking about the American web series featuring a litany of science fiction and supernatural splendor.
I'm talking about strange things... Things that seem to happen in real life that appear without any rhyme or reason and without any true understanding as to why.
Perhaps your best friend suddenly stopped speaking to you without any explanation. Perhaps your significant other suddenly changed the way they treated you... overnight. Perhaps, one by one, a series of events keeps happening that leaves you wondering "What is going on here? ... Why are things so different??".
While I certainly can't speak specifically to each one of your unique situations, I can say that often times, (especially for believers) one of two strong forces is working behind the scenes.
When these unusual and inexplicable events start to occur in our lives, we tend to look for clues or indications as to why. Sometimes we place blame (more commonly on ourselves) to explain why something has changed. So-and-so stopped speaking to me? Maybe I did something wrong... Or She's not showing affection like she was before. Maybe there's another guy!
In any instance, when strange things happen that take us by surprise, we try to reach some level of understanding so we can "fix it" or get it to go back to the way it was. Sometimes, the technical reason is simple. Maybe your friend was mad at you for something, and instead of telling you they just cut you off without trying to work it out. Maybe that significant other just "fell out of love" and didn't know how to tell you. Those kinds of reasons are all one dimensional. When we peel back the surface though and look with a spiritual Christ-centered magnifying glass, we begin to see the second dimension where those other forces that I mentioned are at work.
What does that mean? Well, one force works like this: it sees spiritual strength or weakness, looks for a way to cause distraction and destruction to either break the strength or increase the weakness, and ultimately utilizes its skills and tactics to create said strange events. Let's address this force first.
This force described above that is at work in the second dimension is called the enemy. The enemy sees when we are either thriving or struggling and in either instance wants to tear us down by throwing a wrench in the mix. This surfaces as those strange events i.e. the random seemingly out-of-the-blue things that happen and cause us great concern.
How we respond to this force has a great impact on how we grow and mature as children in the body of Christ. Of course, just as with Job in the Bible (reference the book of Job), we as believers know that the enemy cannot use his force against us without permission and that when permission is granted by God the Father, all that we experience will be used for good! When we don't know that or simply lose sight of that, we let the force behind those strange things get the better of us making us sad and weak and even angry... and the enemy, that is the devil, claims small and shallow victories. Poo poo 👎🏽
Do not lose hope in reading that though, for the ultimate victory belongs to the Lord! Jesus has already won!!
I will continue this topic in a second blog post to discuss the other more important force at work behind the strange things that tend to happen in our lives.
For now though... If you feel that you have been experiencing some strange things in your life (past or present) and just don't know what to make of it...
Let's pray about it...
B.B.S.S.
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