Fiery Darts!

Following a great weekend at The Call we went low key on Sunday night at Contagious. I was "taught" out and the student had enough content from The Call and from Pastor Steve's sermon to chew on all week.

Sometimes you just need a good laugh. So we watched Tim Hawkins on DVD. He is hilarious! I sat in the back and it was fun to watch the shoulders and head of students and leaders shake as they laughed.

We played that Ping Pong game again. It's become an addiction during Hang Time for a large portion of the students, even the ones that couldn't hit a ping pong ball with the side of a barn. I have googled trying to find the real name for this game and can't come up with anything.

It was interesting in the weeks leading up to The Call I was tremendously busy trying to prepare for The Call and get the Kids' Zone wrapped up. Someone mentioned to me that it seemed that the devil always attacked our youth ministry/The Call as we got close to The Call. This year he changed strategy, rather than attack before he attacked after. I recognized it immediately. Following two weeks of putting in lots of hours and being mentally drained and following two nights of terrible sleep (certain little someones decided the day should start at 1am, 2am, 3am, etc....)

There are a few things I know about the fiery dart attacks of the devil:

• Satan is not omnipotent, all powerful
• Satan is not omniscient, all knowing
• Satan is not omnipresent, everywhere at once (so the devil himself probably never directly messes with me, he has bigger fish to fry)
• Satan doesn't scare me (Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world)
• I must recognize the attack and make sure the armor is on
• If Satan is not attacking that must mean we are doing nothing to advance the kingdom
• Satan attacks the church from within the church. My experience has been that when Satan attacks he uses church folk. (just study some church splits and you will probably agree with me)

My reaction is to remain calm. I learned in my firefighter training that panic only makes a bad situation worse. So I choose to remain calm in the attack, crack open the Bible, pray, trust God because he is my shield and my fortress. Quite honestly I don't like the attack but I'm glad because if we are under attack we must be doing something right.