more on tripwires

recently i have been pondering more on tripwires. the Lord has been showing me how they work in my life, and I believe it is a common thing. a tripwire, in the spiritual sense, can be anything that triggers an old way of thinking that used to get you and keep you in a hole of some kind, or cause a mental disturbance that set off an emotional storm. anything like that. its probably different for each person, but the same principal. like me, for example (since i know my own experience best), i saw on the cover of the 'believers voice of victory' the headline for an article called 'living the dream'. it became a tripwire for me. it set off a rash of thoughts about how i always miss out, how i always fail to achieve or obtain, how everyone else gets the prize but i miss it. it isnt a rational line of thinking, but because of a series of events earlier in life a foundation for such a belief was laid, and then later built upon because i had accepted it as my lot, it became a stronghold in my mind. after becoming a Christian, i set about to pull it down because it opposes the knowledge of God. remnants still remain, or else there could be no effective tripwires. thing about them is, you never know when, where, or in what form they are going to be. you know them when you hit one. avoiding them is impossible. dismantling the traps they set off, by casting out imaginations and renewing the mind, is the only way to render them useless. what effect is a tripwire if there is nothing for them to set off? its nothing but silly string then.
so, identifying the tripwires is not important. dealing with the thoughts they trigger is. if something gets triggered, and it brings despair or causes you to feel downcast, identify the belief that is the basis for those thoughts, and see if they match what the Word of God says about you. then start casting out the old belief and replacing it with the Word of God, which is living and active and able to discern between bone and marrow, spirit and soul. the soul must always yield to the spirit, because the spirit is already in the image of God. the soul - the mind and the emotions - is what we renew to make it match the Word.
easy peasy, right? well ... not always so easy. but that quality decision to do it makes all the difference.

google Tags: tripwires

tripwires and clotheslines

recently I have been in a monumental battle. over very little things. but Scripture tells us that it’s the little foxes that ruin the vines. why? because the big foxes can reach the grapes, and so simply eat the grapes. the little foxes cannot reach the grapes, so they chew down the vines to bring the grapes to them. Scripture also tells us the a little rudder steers a huge vessel, and a slight misdirection can send that vessel to the wrong side of the planet.

so it is with tripwires and clotheslines.

Tripwire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A tripwire is a passive triggering mechanism. Typically, a wire or cord is attached to some device for detecting or reacting to physical movement. From this basic meaning, several extended and metaphorical uses of the term have developed.

Metaphorical usage

The Berlin Brigade stationed in the divided city of Berlin during the Cold War was given the mission to be the "tripwire" for a Soviet incursion into West Germany.

Literal usage

Military usage may designate as a tripwire the wire attached to one or more mines — normally bounding mines and the fragmentation type — in order to increase their activation area. Alternatively, tripwires are frequently used in boobytraps, whereby a tug on the wire (or release of tension on it) will detonate the explosives.

Soldiers sometimes detect the presence of tripwires by spraying the area with Silly String. It will settle to the ground in areas where there are no wires; if there are any, the string will be suspended in the air but not set them off due to its light weight. It is being used by U.S. troops in Iraq for this purpose.

tripwires in life can be anything that sets off a mental mine, an image inside of loss, failure, or insufficiency. maybe something you read, or see, or hear. God tells us in His word to be conformed to His image, and that looking into the perfect law of liberty is like looking into a mirror with Jesus reflection in it. you do that enough times, and go away with that image in your mind, and pretty soon you begin to believe that is what you look like. tripwires set off those inner images from past failures and upsets that, when you hit them, trigger a kneejerk reaction in your own mind designed to throw you completely off the path to victory.

Clothesline

Urban Dictionary

clothesline
a pro wrestling move in which a wrestler puts his arm straight out to the side and knocks his opponent over, either from his own momentum or his opponents'

Hulk Hogan gave a wicked clothesline to the Macho man.

clotheslines in life can hit you unexpectedly from anywhere. they come in the form of people, saying or doing something that hurts, offends, angers. it’s like getting the wind knocked out of you. God says in His word that perfect love casts out fear. that He has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind. that love covers a multitude of sins.

it seems hard sometimes to remember that walking in the Spirit puts us on the path to overcoming, and that keeping the Word of God before us and meditating on it day and night is what makes us prosper and have good success in everything we set our hand to. but once we have tasted the goodness that God has for us, and that walking with Him is, it gets easier to remember. in fact it gets to be the thing we chase after, and desire above all.

we live in a fallen world. it’s a warzone, with a crafty enemy that sets traps and mines everywhere, using whatever resources he can. he can’t overcome us himself, as he has been stripped of his authority, paralyzed of his power, and ruined in all his works, by the blood of Jesus. but he will make use of anything he can manipulate, whether it’s something in our own mind that isn’t renewed to the image of Christ, or someone that doesn’t know God or maybe does but doesn’t realize he’s being used. either way, we have been given the armour, the weapons, and the inner image of Christ to completely overcome every thing the devil sets in our path to stop us.

we can remember that once we are born again, we are not of this world.

google Tags: victory,tripwires,clotheslines,warfare

long hard times

it started with my vacation. the first three days were fun. the weather was nice, there wasn’t anything to do really, except what we wanted to do. we went on several long drives, things were green, and calm, and pleasant.

the 18th of the month, wednesday, in the middle of my time off, was the second court date for the beau’s worker’s comp claim. once again, the attorney was unavailable, and there was a fill-in. she was less than stellar, to put it politely. she was more concerned with impressing the judge she thought we had drawn, who apparently was a stodgy old guy in his seventies with no experience as an attorney and was not too familiar with workers comp court. great. but it seems we actually had a better judge than that. still, our fill-in was put out with us both for being upset that it mattered more what kind of mood the judge was in than what she was going to present in his case. when we got into court, she made no abjections, asked minimal questions of the beau, and mostly sat there with a glassy eyed look. the opposing lawyer was more into it than she by far. we were before the judge because we could hardly believe the paltry offer on the table for a life altering injury. evidently our attorney had left out a major part of the claim, that being the subsequent injury to his elbow, that he continually told their office about and that the treating physician refused to address.

this case is not over, so I wont yet go into more details than that. there will be more to come. but we were much disheartened by the way this attorney handled – or rather didn’t handle – his injury. many times the beau tried to tell him that his elbow was a factor, but at the end all he would say was he knew nothing about it and didn’t see anything in any of the reports about it.

absolutely unacceptable.

we recovered some of our joy, and were determined to enjoy the rest of my time off.

God has been providing means for us, and we have managed to keep our utilities on, with only a couple of disruptions in service. since the beau hasn’t been able to get work, it has been a daily walk of faith, but God is always good for His word.

still, people are not. after having paid the ebay account because it had been suspended, the beau relisted everything. several auctions were near ending, and we had several bids. this is more income, so very important right now. right before they ended, ebay suspended the account again and ended all the auctions, preventing last minute bidders from bidding. their reason was that a payment had been returned the previous month. they had tried to get the payment that we had just made from my account, which by the way had posted, from an old account that had been closed three weeks ago. he called them to find out how they could do this, only to spend nearly 4 hours and several conversations with people in an eastern call center who speak terrible english and will not listen to the caller but insist on reading from their prompts. he was in a furious state of mind by the time I got off work. during this time the water had been shut off. we have good neighbors, so I got to shower for work, but still … and God provided, so we got the water back on the next day. but it was a very hard few days to endure. the beau was unable to sleep, and his hand and his arm have been in so much pain.

then our internet was turned off, even though again we had made the payment. the service had been disrupted, we paid and got it right back on, and two days later – during all this other mess – because those at AT&T did not rescind the shut off order once the payment was made like they are supposed to, our internet was gone. once more while I was at work, the beau spent more time than is right trying to get more middle eastern call center workers to turn our internet back on, only to be given the run around and hung up on repeatedly. you think im kidding? I tried too, when I got home, and got the same treatment.

the next day the beau tried again, and got an actual caring supervisor who first listened to what he had to say, and then acted on our – the customer – behalf. he had our internet back on in thirty minutes, and gave us a free month. and he said he was going to deal with the people we had spoken to previously, because all the calls were recorded.

see? there is a God. He has to deal with those kind of people too. most people don’t think about that.

so while it has been a truly taxing and trying last couple of weeks, I believe I see a light, and it isnt an oncoming train. it’s a crack in the roof of this dark tunnel we have been in for some time now. the Lord has made us some promises concerning getting out of oklahoma, and getting us past all this turbulence. He always makes good on those promises.

google Tags: God's promises,trials by fire