Category: Life

Why I Stopped Watching R-Rated Movies

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Some Christians can watch anything. I cannot. I have to be careful about what I watch, and I am. One of the things that I watch very rarely is R-Rated movies – unless I have a clear idea of what I’m actually getting myself into.

I don’t watch R-rated movies for the typical reasons. Most R-rated movies are incredibly violent. And if they are not violent, then they’re filled with sex. The ones that are sexless are filled with cursing and blasphemy. PG 13 rated movies are only slightly better.

Violent television and movies don’t just affect you spiritually – they also affect you physically. There are physical changes that actually occur in your brain when you watch the ‘wrong’ TV shows and movies. Studies confirm that when a person watches the ‘wrong’ thing, harmful brain changes start to occur. But it’s not my brain that I’m worried about when I turn on the television – it’s my conscious.

I don’t want to violate my conscious by what I watch. So, I choose to keep my television diet very simple and minimalist.

The Bible describes Job as blameless and righteous. Job made a covenant with his eyes. In Psalm 101, David says something similar stating that he would not set before his eyes anything that is worthless. Yeshua said that the eye is the lamp of the body. The eyes play a remarkable role in our spirituality.

I’m careful what I put before my eyes. I don’t watch just anything on the tele.

Am I missing out on great entertainment?

Maybe so, but I don’t care because my conscious is clear.

I sometimes listen to the sermons of Zac Poonen. He once answered the question from a viewer on whether or not Christians should watch television and movies. His response is harsh. He explains that when people ask these kinds of questions, what they are really asking is “How close to the edge of a train platform can I stand without falling over?”

The real problem is the desire to stand at the edge in the first place.

The Call of 5AM

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I’ve been a night owl most of my life. However, my schedule has been shaken up a few times and I was able to dismiss my night owl ways so that I could party with the dawn and enjoy the sunrise. I require really dramatic shifts in my physiological and emotional clock to get up early. When my son was born, I was no longer a night owl. I did dabble in night-owlism after his birth, but I was mostly a morning bird… because I had to be.

After the arrival of my son, I no longer stayed up till two in the morning as I had previously done, but was up much earlier and making very strong coffee at 5AM. Of course, as he got a little bit older I was able to stay up a little later and sleep in a little longer.

The call of 5AM was gone.

And then I moved from the East to West coast which again disrupted my circadian rhythm and I became a morning lark again. After a couple of weeks of waking at 4AM to start my day I couldn’t stop waking at that time. I enjoyed it. But my husband and I both noticed that our schedules were drifting further and further apart from each other.

So I ditched waking up between 4 AM and started to embrace my inner night-owl again. But then something else happened. Our life was shaken up by a temporary family member. Waking up early became a new part of my ritual again. Waking up early made me realize how much I missed the quiet of the morning and the productivity of the day. So, of course, it peaked my interest when I was reading Luke 21:38 which states:  And early in the morning all the people came to Him in the temple to hear Him.

This is a beautiful scripture for many reasons. The first reason it’s beautiful is because you have a demonstration of love that the people have towards Yeshua. Biblically, we love Him because He first loved us. Most people wake up early because they have to – they need to – they have to go to work – or they wake up because they want to. But these people wanted to wake up early to hear God. The voice of God compelled them to get up in the morning before the world awoke.

We all need to wake up and hear Him in the morning before the rest of the day closes in on us. Before we check our email, have coffee, read the news, or cook breakfast we need to wake up and hear Him.

Can Rocks Speak? (Hosanna in the Highest)

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When Yeshua entered Jerusalem on the donkey and the people started to cry  Hosanna, the Pharisees’ immediate response was to tell Yeshua to tell the people to stop praising Him.

Yeshua’s response to the Pharisees is interesting. He tells them that if they don’t worship Him the rocks will cry out. This is intriguing for many reasons. First, it’s interesting because rocks really can cry out, scientifically speaking. Researchers who dug into the mysteries of Stonehenge discovered that there was acoustic energy in the stones. They called them sonic or music rocks.

Rocks speak.

Sound is vibrational energy – and for some strange, metaphysical, geological reason – rocks CAN hold sound. Yeshua was geologically accurate when He said that the bricks would talk because the rocks around Yeshua were carrying the praises of God.

Yeshua wasn’t just a man, but also God in the flesh. I can’t imagine the infinite pool of vibrational energy that must have exuded from Yeshua. Even His clothes carried a divine energy that repelled sickness and disease. Everything about Him and everything around Him was affected by His Presence… including objects that are otherwise ‘inanimate’. Yeshua brought so much life to the earth that even His clothes held the life of healing.

The second thing that’s interesting about Yeshua stating that the rocks would cry out is the humbling realization that God doesn’t need our praise. Everything that has breath praises God – we know that. But here in Luke, we see that even that which has NO breath is capable of praising God. When the Psalmist said that all creation praise the Lord, he wasn’t just speaking of people – but literally meant ALL creation – the trees, plants, water, and even the rocks.

Saturated in Prayer

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I keep a snippet of a short article on my desk that I received from a Missionary Newsletter. The article talks about how blessed the missionaries are for one profound reason – they saturate their work in prayer. In the newsletter, it talks about how they pray for EVERYTHING.

The missionaries have so much and are fully equipped – emotionally, mentally and spiritually because they pray. Now, the Bible clearly says In James 4:2 that you don’t have because you don’t ask.

How many Christians are lacking what they need physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually because they don’t ask God? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve encountered an obstacle – or something that I needed emotional or spiritual strength to fight through, and I forget to pray. Instead, I tried to fix things myself, which is insulting to God, who wants to supply all of my needs.

God cares about the details in our life and we need to go to Him for EVERYTHING. I once heard a woman teach a congregation about the spirit of poverty. She explained to the crowd that one of the reasons the spirit of poverty plagues people is because they are under a curse of self-sufficiency. A curse of trying to do everything in their own power and leaving God out of the equation.

Christians walk by faith and not by sight. We must lean in, trust, and depend on God. We are to let God direct our paths and fully surrender everything to Him. He supplies all our needs when we are fully dependent on Him. This doesn’t mean we sit there and do nothing – but it does mean that we don’t leave God out of our daily lives and decisions. Never leave God out of your problems – that is exactly where you need Him.

Saturate your life in prayer. Saturate every move and choice you make with prayer. We need to pray about everything and worry about nothing.

When Every Disagreement Turns into an Argument

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All couples experience conflict… it’s inevitable. If you are married, and you’ve never experienced conflict, then your relationship simply isn’t passionate enough. Some couples don’t like to admit that they have disagreements because they’re afraid that they’re vicariously telling people that they have bad communication. But it’s a false assumption and myth that a lack of agreement means you’re an awful communicator. The New York Times journalist who broke the internet when she suggested making guacamole out of peas is still a great communicator despite the rest of the world disagreeing with her.

The logical thing to do is to agree to disagree. On a superficial level, this is good advice and easy to say – but when you have a disagreement about finances, parenting or a similar issue – agreeing to disagree simply isn’t an option. You have to make a decision to spend the money or not – continue with time-outs or revert to spanking. The gray area of agreeing to disagree completely disappears. And that’s when a disagreement often turns into an argument.

The technical definition of an argument is a “typically” heated or angry exchange of opposite views. When people argue, they attack each other’s logic. But here’s a thought: instead of attacking each other’s logic, figure out a way to solve the problem. Of course, this is easier said than done. If both people believe that the resolution is rooted in the other person accepting and applying their opinion to the problem, you don’t get far.

If you want to resolve a problem and side-step the argument, you’ve got to be willing to dig deep. A lot of the disagreements that I have with my husband have deep roots. A conflict over finances is often rooted in fear and insecurity. But sometimes it’s something else like irresponsibility or impulsiveness. Conflicts over how to parent is often rooted in childhood. How we were raised affects how we parent, and sometimes ‘issues’ with our childhood spill over into our parenting. Again, it’s about uncovering the root. Once the root is uncovered and dealt with, it’s unlikely that we’ll have an argument about it again in the future.

And when all else fails, I try to remember that we are on the same team. We are both on Team Wakefield. We’re a united front. And that is exactly what happens during a disagreement, you forget that you’re on the same team. We are not each other’s opponent – the opponent is the problem.

Biblical Meditation – Matthew 11:28

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I’m one of those people who feels a little rough around the edges if I haven’t had enough sleep. Rising early has always been my Achilles heel.

And then something happened that changed everything. I moved from the East to West coast, and the move completely reset my circadian rhythm. Suddenly, I had a difficult time sleeping in later than five in the morning.

I became one of those type-A personalities who’s up before the rest of the world while even the sun is still sleeping. I awoke to think, pray, meditate, write, work, and I must say that it was exhilarating. There is something about the morning hours that hold a peacefulness that’s absent throughout the rest of the day. It was a tranquility that I was truly enjoying.

But then my husband questioned my sanity. For years, we had been an eccentric pair of night owls working in perfect synchrony and reveling in the late night hours – up at 2 AM watching movies and giggling in the dark like children.

My husband’s clock didn’t reset. Our schedules became less and less aligned until he finally said “You have to stop waking up so early.” Setting my clock forward a mere hour completely threw my circadian rhythm off. It seems like such a small sliver of time, but it felt like a giant leap. I started to drag throughout the day. I was tired, exhausted even.

My behavior became increasingly robotic. I was sleep-walking and going through the motions.

I moved my wake-up time up an inch – 7:30 AM.

I’ve learned that when you don’t get enough sleep, everything else in your life falls out of sync. Your productivity declines, your mental acuity flies out the door, and you aren’t able to process information very well so you make poor decisions.

And so, this is what happens when your life becomes burdensome, and your life gets weary. Everything declines.

In Matthew 11 Yeshua says something so beautiful. He says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Your body needs sleep. You need sleep to detoxify your mind, and you need sleep to rejuvenate your cells and properly manage your immune system… you need sleep.

Your body is a machine that is fearfully made, but you must give it rest. Yeshua offers us rest. He offers to take away our burdens. Yeshua came for people who don’t have enough hours in the day and whose fringe hours are infringed upon by the cares of life. He came for people rocked with insomnia because of apprehension about the future – these are the people that Yeshua wants to come to Him for rest.

But this rest has nothing to do with the circadian rhythm. His rest properly syncs our spiritual rhythm. When our spiritual rhythm is on the right track, the rest of our life falls into place – our spiritual quality of life is enhanced. In the same way that you need sleep to enhance your physical quality of life, the same thing happens in your spiritual life when you don’t get enough rest… so rest in Yeshua.

Being a Control Freak is Too Risky

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I used to be somewhat of a control freak. I became that way while living in Chicago during my early 20’s. It was a time when I had no idea who I was or what my purpose was. To gain a sense of identity I thought I needed to seize the reigns. So I ripped the reigns of my life out of the hands of God and tried to control everything – and as soon as I did that – everything went out of control…

Contrary to popular belief – we are not masters of our fate. This is not to say that we shouldn’t live a life of diligence and wisdom. And it’s not to say that we should consume everything we have and plan for nothing. And this is not to say that responsibility is meaningless. But… this IS to say, that unless God is in control, and He has the reigns, everything will be out of control, even if it looks like it’s under control, it’s an illusion.

We are not sovereign. We cannot control the outcome of anything. We can plan things and attempt to control our lives, yet most of us have come to grips with the fact that our lives aren’t completely under our control. This can wreak havoc on the emotional and physical health of the control freak.

I am no longer a control freak. Being a control freak is entirely too disappointing and risky. I’ve matured enough to know that trying to control everything isn’t good for my emotional or physical health. Instead I look to God, seek His face, and give everything to Him. This isn’t always easy. Sometimes I snatch situations out of His hands forgetting that He can handle life much better than I can… But then I remember – that I can’t do this alone. I NEED Him and His strength to help me daily.

Cursing Christians

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I remember the first time I used a curse word. I was in middle school. My peers cursed, and I rapidly developed the same habit. It was a combination of social pressure and moral degradation. It became an ingrained habit that I found difficult to break.

Curse words walked with me beyond middle school and into adulthood. I have struggled with an untamed tongue for many years. And although my tongue was brushed a little cleaner the further I dove into Christianity, the struggle was still there…

And then I had a child.

If you want to know how to clean your mouth quickly, there is any easy way to do it. Have a child. Prior to having children, my husband and I discussed all of the things that we would need to stop doing for the sake our child’s well-being (and sanity). Cursing was one of the vices that definitely made the list.

We didn’t want our child to grow up thinking that it was acceptable to use such language.  I think most people are a little surprised when they hear a child curse. It’s because it’s not the language that we expect a child to use. It’s “grown up” and by “grown up” I mean far less innocent and far more morally corrupt. Some people might see a cursing child as cute while others find it incredibly appalling. But even those who think it’s cute when a child uses a curse word, often cringe if they discover it’s a natural part of the child’s vocabulary and not restricted to one-time usage.

Most of us believe that cursing somehow defiles a child and taints their innocence. Why would we think that a curse word defiles a child? The answer lies in how we perceive profanity. The words are dirty. The simple idea of children and cursing together may arouse nostalgia of an angry mother forcing her child to wash his mouth out with soap. The soap symbolically cleanses the filth attached to the ‘dirty’ word that came from his mouth.

There are plenty of parents who curse in front of children. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad parents because I am quite sure that a lot of parents who love their children deeply and would die for their kid may drop an F-bomb of two. I still cringe a little when I hear people curse (especially when they are Christian) but I’m also sympathetic because I know that taming the tongue is an impossibility apart from the Holy Spirit.