Women preaching??

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Very Human

Its really starting to amaze me how truly very, very human I am. By human, I mean flawed and inconsistent. I have a story to tell. It was about two Saturdays ago in Lynchburg, Va. that this story takes place. It is early on a Saturday morning, and myself and a few friends are moving some girls I know from work from their apartment to their new and improved place downtown.

However, this move is gonna be some signigicant work. There is alot of heavy stuff and a ton of other stuff, filling up a U-haul and three other cars. Needless to say I'm not super-stoked to begin with to have to do this with my Saturday morning-afternoon. (However, how good of a person are you if you can't help someone when they ask you. So I looked on this as an opportunity to build charachter I guess you could say)

As soon as we arrived to the apartment I was informed that some football players had been called to help with the heavy-lifting up the four flights of stairs to the new place. Thats right, four flights (narrow too). Well, thats about all it took for my pride to shoot through the roof. I turned to my friend and said " I would love nothing more than for these "football players" to come here and have nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs".

I preceded to practically run up the stairs carrying all the heavy stuff I could: dressers, cinderblocks (to make bookshelves), couches, chairs, etc. To my delight my plan went perfectly. The entire u-haul was empty by the time the offensive line made it. On the outside I wasn't smiling but inside I was beaming.

I took a second, to let them carry some light things up the stairs, when I heard my friend Anna ordering pizza for us for helping. There were only four guys lifting anything all day. When the other five "strong guys" came, and worked for all of ten minutes, compared to my 3 hours you can imagine my thoughts as I heard her ordering 6 pizzas.

Immediately I thought, "well, thats nice to reward them the same as us". Heck no. I started to complain in my heart. They didn't deserve to be rewarded the same! I did all the work and my three friends. I got so bitter I turned to my friend and said, "This is bullcrap man", why should they get pizza?"

Nothing could have hit me harder than my friends reply of, "Its kinda like the parable of the workers in the field". "Jesus hired a bunch of workers at different times of the day but they all got paid the same in the end." Thats when I got nailed by an overwhelming sense of convinction. I was so disappointed that I was the complainer in the parable. The guy who doesn't understand how to live in the kingdom of God. Getting to realize you just failed a test, immediately after it happens is quite impactful.

I sat down after my friends words. I sat and thought that Jesus was right on the money, and laughed (but wanted to cry) how often I fail him, but he still loves me anyway.

Interesting Perspective

You must have often wondered why the enemy (God) does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses and at any moment But you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as his felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them , will not serve....Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience , all supports and incentives. He leave the creature to stand up on its own hind legs- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish...He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we can to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand...Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
- Uncle Screwtape (demon mentor)
C.S. Lewis , The Screwtape Letters