Evil does not grow and develop in a vacuum. It develops in the human heart when the presence of God is absent. Satan loves nothing better than for humanity to believe God doesn’t exist nor should he be allowed to have influence in our culture.

This is the fourth and final part on dreams, so if you haven’t read the first three, please do so before reading this final article. Dreams are far more important than we have been led to believe and I believe they can be awakened and developed if we understand their importance.

Modern celebrations of Halloween may appear on the surface to be quite harmless, but the spiritual implications of dabbling with the spirit world are extremely serious.

I spent time with a good friend in Denver, Colorado this week and was gripped with a fresh awareness of just how good friends are. We are meant to be encouragers in this life rather than consuming our time and energy purely for our own comport.  How sad when friends gather together with just entertainment as their main objective. We are called to do so much more if we only would listen to the Spirit of God and surrender our will to the Creator who can make our life count for something other than just being a consumer or just for entertainment.

When I travel around, especially in airports or overseas, I see many people who are paralyzed from various debilitating diseases and it hits me how fortunate and blessed I am to only have a few things wrong with my body that hinder my life experiences at this age. When I see a person who is partially broken or paralyzed I pray a simple prayer for them and myself. First, I apologize to the Lord for my complaining over small pains and problems and I also ask the Lord to bless that particular person with the obvious difficulties. That he or she would be healed both physically, emotionally and spiritually. So often I recognize they do better with their disabilities than I do with my seemingly normal life.

Learning to have balance in our lives is becoming harder and harder to achieve partly because we all develop our sense of values and character by the actions of others. When heroes of character are in short supply, and I do believe they are in our day and age, we can lose heart in pursuing a high standard in our own personal lives.

In Part 1 I talked about getting trapped in the deception of idols in our lives. That it’s not just an Old Testament idea or practice. I shared that Israel being set free from the slavery of Egypt were trapped in the wilderness because they continued to have idols in their lives which messed up their relationship with God. Finally, I closed the first article with how Joshua, the leader of Israel after Moses, challenged the Israelites to rid themselves of the idols their parents had brought with them from Egypt and had taught their children to embrace at such a high cost.

So often we go to counseling to help us unravel our past to reveal the things that might have had a negative impact on our lives and therefore cause us to respond to people or behave in some negative way. There is a lot of good that can come from counselors who are gifted in discerning and unraveling past issues and encounters, but have you ever heard of a person going to a counselor and asking the question of why they behave well and make good sound decisions? I’ve been counseling people for nearly 40 years now and in all that time not one person has asked that question.

When I became a believer in Jesus Christ and embraced him as the Lord of my life I understood that all other idols in my life needed to bow to Christ lordship. The truth is I resisted becoming a Christian for just that reason. I truly “Loved” certain things and was always “Sacrificing” for them. For 9 months I was under constant conviction yet was so stubborn that it took hitting a car that was stationary with my motorcycle at 55 mph to get me to cry out for help to the Lord.

Early in our lives, we don’t know our limitations. Experience has a way of teaching us what we can’t do as well as what we can if we strive for understanding. If we are fortunate, when we are young, we have people cheering us on, though some have struggles from the beginning. The point is that we all have to determine whether to let life’s ups and downs control our future or whether we will reach for the understanding that will unlock the potential and purpose that we were created for.