The spirit is willing...

Hey Guys! Sally Kurtie here with a post, after like three months. O.o It would help if you guys posted comments and stuff (as soon as I finish this post, I'm gonna mess with the settings so that people without Blogger accounts can comment). Anyway, I've come up with an idea that will give me ideas to post for the next three weeks!

The 21 Day iPod Shuffle Challenge
If you come to the TinyChat meetings on The Endtime Tribune, you know that my dad talks a lot about the 21-day "prayer fast," where you pray about one thing and one thing only for 21 days. Well, I'm taking that challenge myself. But to add to that, I have a hard time having faith that God will even answer my prayers--ya know, cuz God does whatever He wants to. So I have to work on my faith the same time I'm praying for 21 days, so that I have the determination to keep that covenant. The way I'm going to do it is the 21-day iPod Shuffle Challenge--something I came up with myself.

A lot of the time, I'm praying for an answer and I ask God to give me that answer through a song. I just grab my mp3 player and put it on shuffle, and whatever song that comes up--be it a love song or a praise song--is supposed to answer my question somehow. Does it work? Well, sometimes. A few times I think God's sense of humor has kicked in and He gives me a song that has nothing to do with what I'm asking about. Well, for the next 21 days, once a day I'll put my mp3 player on Shuffle and think of a Christian lesson that goes with that song!

Today's Challenge: Curl Up & Die by Relient K

Now this one's a little tricky! This is actually a love song, and the meaning is a little encrypted. The singer feels bad for hurting the girl--and he's ready to move on, since the relationship is pretty broken. She's not, however; and he feels bad, because he DOES love her. So he says, "I'll just curl up with you and die too."

So how do I make this a Christian value? It's kind of easy, really. It made me think of this verse right off the bat:

Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that returns to his folly.
--Proverbs 26:11

My dad used this verse on me A LOT when I was...oh, 10-14 years of age, which were my difficult growing-up years. For as far back as I can remember, I got in trouble for the same stuff over and over again. Like waiting till my parents were gone and then rifling through the cabinets to steal snacks (I got a little overweight as punishment, by the way). Or I'd continually forget to clean off the highchairs or the coffee maker. Honestly? I'm still doing that. I'm just a backsliding person, honestly. It's hard for me to change my ways, unless I'm praying and reading my Bible every single day--if not multiple times a day.

Remember how Jesus said, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak?" I don't know what it is about humans, but we naturally want to follow the crowd. We want to obey the lusts of our dirt-filled bodies and practice those stupid things that the world thinks is cool. Like lying, for instance. People really don't think lying is wrong--until someone lies to them!

It's so easy to belt out a little white lie, like if you want to check your email for a sec, but your mom walks in and asks if you're done with your homework. Even if you're not, you immediately respond, "Yes." Why? Because for some stupid reason, your flesh would rather go to hell over checking your email than doing your homework like you're supposed to! And then think about the trouble you're going to get into if your mom comes in later and sees you working on your homework again! Either you admit that you weren't really done with your homework (if you ask me, that's the easier route) or you pile on another lie to say "Oh, I forgot this lesson," or "I'm just double checking my work." Or, even worse, you don't even bother to go back to your homework to cover up that little white lie--and get into trouble later because you didn't finish your homework!

Now what does this have to do with the song? Well, let's use some figurative language--personification. Imagine the flesh and the spirit as two people, a girl and a guy for instance. The guy is "breaking the girl's heart" by ignoring what she wants and going with what God wants. It hurts to be spiritual! Like the email story I told you a minute ago. I don't know why, but for me, that darn email is a temptation to me. I'm always wanting to check my email when A) I'm supposed to be doing something else or B) I'm not supposed to be on the computer. (FYI, I've checked my email four or five times in the time it's taken me to get this far in the blog post, and I'm getting that urge to check again.) I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've gotten in trouble because I was "just checking my email." In those moments of weakness when I give in and check my email when I'm not supposed to, that's the guy feeling sorry for the girl and going back to her.

It's stupid. I mean, why would I want to go to hell over checking my email? Well, because it's fleshly to love fleshly desires, and my flesh is a part of me! If I don't keep my spirit strong, going back to God every single day to get my daily dose of prayer and Bible vitamins, I'm going to cave in. Because my spirit feels "sorry" for the flesh, because it gets tired of denying itself, it "goes back"--just for one touch. But that one touch can grow into a whole lot more, and before long, I'll be in a relationship with my flesh again. So I'll be back to square one, and all that work I did to get away from my flesh is for nothing. Kind of like that dog going back to his puke.

So today's lesson: Don't "curl up and die" just because you want to do what you want to do. If you start getting weak, go to God. You don't even have to talk about what you're going through--talk about, I don't know, your peanut butter sandwich! It's human to want to feel accepted by whoever you're talking to, and if you're talking to God, you're gonna want to do what He wants you to. :)