August 8, 2012
For some of us, El Guapo is our El Guapo!!!
In The Three Amigos, the boys are trying to rally the townspeople to see what they are good at and use that to fight off the soon arriving banditos that are coming to destroy the town. They go on and on with the idea that we all have something that we must fight. For some, fear is our El Guapo, for others poverty may be our El Guapo…etc, etc, etc. But the thought is ended by saying: for us, El Guapo is our El Guapo. I think we need to realize that we do have an enemy of our soul; we try to fight all the other little El Guapos but fail to realize that behind it all, our El Guapo is our very own sin nature. And the sooner we realize it is not the symptoms, the sin, we need to be fighting, but that carnal nature that desires above all else to be god or ruler of our life. This is where the real battle is.
Listening to Jerry Dirmann yesterday, I got some clarification on what is actually going on in our Christian walk of Sanctification. For those of you that wonder what sanctification is, simply, it is the process of becoming more and more like Jesus. We are promised in the letter to the Romans that God is busy at work in each of our lives to make us more and more like His Son.
Many of us live our lives as Christians in failure because we look at Jesus and then we take an honest look at our own lives and we see that there is no resemblance at all. We more identify with Paul in Romans 7 where he talks about doing what he doesn’t want to do and not doing what he knows he should. Why this failure, this disconnect, if we are being changed from glory to glory?
It is because we are our own worse “El Guapo”. We are living in our minds, emotions and body, rather than allowing our spirit, which is now alive in Jesus to be the leader. The more we realize we are no longer the physical part of our person, but we are the ‘born again’ spirit that is alive to God…redeemed…bought for a price so that we can now live in true freedom. We are no longer subject to the bondages, addictions, sins, temptations, accusations, weaknesses, being victims of people and situations….BUT we are free in the spirit to Jesus…the author and finisher of our faith.
When we screw up we can now say…Hey that was my old rotten nature…that is not me now…of course we take responsibility for the actions and ask God to forgive us knowing He will because He has promised us that He will. We no longer have to listen to the devil or people or even our self trying to bring us down for our actions…telling us we are not worthy to be called a Christian. We can agree with them that we are not worthy, but then speak the truth that Jesus paid the price and because of what He has done for us, we have been made worthy. We are now the righteousness of Christ, because He took our place for the punishment of all of our sins.
Now there are some practical things we must do if we expect our body, mind, emotions and will to catch up with our spirit in walking in true freedom. First and foremost we must spend time in the Bible getting to know the Truth. We cannot live our lives in ignorance, expecting that God will just take care of everything for us without our even taking the time to get to know Him. This is a love relationship and just like you would want to know everything you could about a person you are falling in love with…you should take the same attitude with Jesus. And amazingly, the more you get to know Jesus and what He has done for you, the more you will fall in love. The more you fall in love the more you will want to know, and the more you will want to be like Him.
In conclusion, do not let El Guapo intimidate you any longer. It is defeated!!! You have the right and the freedom to live in victory. You no longer have to do what El Guapo wants, but the ability to follow in the footsteps of a living and loving Savior.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Starting on the blog again;-))
August 16, 2012
I feel like a kid waiting for Santa Claus! The internet man is supposed to be here to hook me up. I have been offline for almost 2 weeks. Talk about going through withdrawal…not only am I away from my kids and grandkids, I cannot even keep up with what is going on in their lives on facebook. But in a way it has been nice, no news, no TV, no outside problems, just enjoying some of the books I downloaded onto the computer before I left and lots of music.
Well, 2 weeks ago I was preparing to load up the Uhaul to come up here to Chinle. For those of you that have no idea where Chinle is…I am 1 mile from the visitor center for Canyon de Chelly. So I am in the Northeast corner of the state of Arizona and only 300 miles away from Gilbert. In many ways it feels a lot farther. Even in Costa Rica it was only a 10-15 minute walk to get on the internet.
The land is beautiful and the skies are amazing. The people have been very friendly, but they are a quiet and reserved people and I think it will take a while to make friends. The city seems to mostly be made up of people that either work for the schools, the district, the hospital or some other governmental type agency. We all live in housing that is provided, mostly in the form of apartment communities. There are homes and trailers around that are obviously not parts of the system and for the most part these are very rudimentary. There are even a few hogans around but they do not seem to be their primary residence but either something left over or used for something else. We are most definitely in the minority but it does not seem to be a problem.
The funniest thing is the horses and cattle that roam the streets. You really have to watch out when driving around or you could end up with a hood ornament. We were sitting at A&W last week and I could see across the highway. There was 4 head of cattle grazing on the side of the road. Eventually one of the cows decided she liked the look of our side of the highway better and stood at the edge of the road. She actually looked both ways and waited for a clearing before crossing the street. I started laughing and told David to turn and look. Sure enough she made it across before any other cars came, but her 3 buddies were not so smart, they just saw she had left and started following. By that time there were some cars, which had to stop to let them cross. Oh, I forgot to mention, when we had driven up to A&W there were 2 horses grazing in the dumpster.
We have taken a couple of short drives to the Canyon. First time we went on the north road and stopped at an overlook of where 2 canyons meet. Very beautiful! And last Sunday we took the southern road and stopped at 3 or 4 overlooks. David talked with some of the native artisans and I decided that we needed to get in shape and come back when it is cooler to take the hike down to White House ruins. This is the only trail that goes into the canyon that outsiders can go on without a Navajo guide. It was late when we were there and it says on the sign it takes about 3 hours to do, besides that I was out of breath just walking around on top. But definitely a place we will take visitors…should be really gorgeous in the fall.
I feel like a kid waiting for Santa Claus! The internet man is supposed to be here to hook me up. I have been offline for almost 2 weeks. Talk about going through withdrawal…not only am I away from my kids and grandkids, I cannot even keep up with what is going on in their lives on facebook. But in a way it has been nice, no news, no TV, no outside problems, just enjoying some of the books I downloaded onto the computer before I left and lots of music.
Well, 2 weeks ago I was preparing to load up the Uhaul to come up here to Chinle. For those of you that have no idea where Chinle is…I am 1 mile from the visitor center for Canyon de Chelly. So I am in the Northeast corner of the state of Arizona and only 300 miles away from Gilbert. In many ways it feels a lot farther. Even in Costa Rica it was only a 10-15 minute walk to get on the internet.
The land is beautiful and the skies are amazing. The people have been very friendly, but they are a quiet and reserved people and I think it will take a while to make friends. The city seems to mostly be made up of people that either work for the schools, the district, the hospital or some other governmental type agency. We all live in housing that is provided, mostly in the form of apartment communities. There are homes and trailers around that are obviously not parts of the system and for the most part these are very rudimentary. There are even a few hogans around but they do not seem to be their primary residence but either something left over or used for something else. We are most definitely in the minority but it does not seem to be a problem.
The funniest thing is the horses and cattle that roam the streets. You really have to watch out when driving around or you could end up with a hood ornament. We were sitting at A&W last week and I could see across the highway. There was 4 head of cattle grazing on the side of the road. Eventually one of the cows decided she liked the look of our side of the highway better and stood at the edge of the road. She actually looked both ways and waited for a clearing before crossing the street. I started laughing and told David to turn and look. Sure enough she made it across before any other cars came, but her 3 buddies were not so smart, they just saw she had left and started following. By that time there were some cars, which had to stop to let them cross. Oh, I forgot to mention, when we had driven up to A&W there were 2 horses grazing in the dumpster.
We have taken a couple of short drives to the Canyon. First time we went on the north road and stopped at an overlook of where 2 canyons meet. Very beautiful! And last Sunday we took the southern road and stopped at 3 or 4 overlooks. David talked with some of the native artisans and I decided that we needed to get in shape and come back when it is cooler to take the hike down to White House ruins. This is the only trail that goes into the canyon that outsiders can go on without a Navajo guide. It was late when we were there and it says on the sign it takes about 3 hours to do, besides that I was out of breath just walking around on top. But definitely a place we will take visitors…should be really gorgeous in the fall.
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