Baseball Day

Saturday


Baseball day today! Pennants, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” performed by the staff at breakfast, hot dogs (from a jar!) for lunch – but on bakery buns and baseball in the afternoon. (If this makes no sense at all, I’m trying to write it before the evening meeting while sitting in the room while “Cotton-Eyed Joe (techno party version) is playing, along with kids line dancing, billiard balls clacking, another camper banging away on a different tune on the upright, ping pong and foosball. The there are the conversations held at a decibel level loud enough to compete with all of the above. It’s the golden hour between dinner and the evening meeting I which I’m supposed to get focused on what I’ll be sharing as Bible teacher. As you might get it’s not so easy to gain that focus but the good side to that is I have to leave it up to god to direct my thoughts and words. Tonight we speak of spiritual warfare in general terms – how we live in a dangerous world and have no ultimate choice except the ultimate choice to join God or His enemy. All else flows from that. I thought much about war as a metaphor for the Christian life as well as the fact of Christian life. It really helps you get things in perspective. Here are some things we looked at:

We live in a state of spiritual warfare.
Ephesians 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

We live in enemy territory
1 John 5:19 19We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

We act as infiltrators
2 Corinthians 4:4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

We can win because God has won.
1 John 4:4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

You are at war

War is by nature dangerous, confusing, frustrating, exhilarating, sometimes boring, sometimes too much at one time.
War is episodic – battles form and conclude, some are won, some are lost and all the while the war continues.
War has major conflicts and minor skirmishes.
War has casualties - dead, wounded, missing, captured.
War can be hard on family and friends who love the soldier but don’t understand the nature of the war. War tests the heart of the warrior.
War is so much bigger than the individual warrior. “The fog of war” describes the difficulty in making sense immediately of the mess you’re in.

Tomorrow we take the gang of 47 to church – and you thought it was tough getting your family out the door!