Real Life Reflections

Have you ever spent forty days and forty nights in the desert (sand, rocks, 100 degrees plus during the day while sometimes reaching the freezing point at night)? Without food? For the purpose of being tempted by the devil? Sounds like a party just waiting to happen, doesn't it? Maybe not. Have you ever spent forty days and forty nights in a spiritual desert (spiritual sand and rocks, emotional temperatures fluctuating between anger and extreme indifference)? It's not a party either. And there's plenty of temptation while you're there. Where are you weak? Where are you vulnerable (Despair? Unbelief? Self-hatred?)? Your enemy knows, and he patiently waits until your defenses are down before he whispers in your ear. He doesn't whisper full-out lies. That would be too obvious. He takes a spec of truth and twists it around. Check out Jesus in Matt 4. The Man is preparing for an intense three years of ministry, so He's alone in the desert fasting and praying. After f

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3 Become like little children? Really? Children are definitely cute and innocent, but that pretty much covers the positive qualities. On the negative side, however, the list is quite a bit lengthier: demanding, dependent, self-centered, messy, often smelly, expensive, and embarrassingly honest. So why? WHY in the world would Jesus tell us to become like little children? WHY in the world would He want that? What was He thinking?! Well, He was a thirty-something year-old bachelor. Maybe He didn't really know what He was talking about when He said that. I mean, if we come to Him like little children, it's pretty much guaranteed to be messy. We're likely to be crabby, cranky. We might be downright angry. Prayer-ADD is hard to control on a good day. If we're not on top of it, if we don't have our list in front of us to focus our thoughts, we&