ABDUCTED BY ALIENS!

Jimmy: “All right, this is it. These crummy aliens stole our parents; it's time to show them what we're made of. We're tough, we're mean. Darn it, we're carbon based life forms.” (From the Movie; Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius)

Perhaps you have not seen this movie. Personally, I might count that as a blessing. The setting takes place in a community where Jimmy Neutron, the boy genius, makes contact with aliens. This eventually leads to

aliens coming to his community and abducting their parents and taking them to their planet. The aliens take over control of the parent’s minds, which leads to making them do the “chicken dance.” At first having their parents abducted by aliens seemed like a good idea to them but then they missed them and became determined to go to the planet where they were kept and get them back.

                                                          

Authentic Christianity is alien to those outside the faith. Authentic Christianity means a changed life. It is not a reformed life. You don’t need God to do that. It’s His life in us. It’s a Life not of this world. Those who knew the “old you” are not comfortable with the “new you” and often try to bring you back to your senses. To them, one who is giving control over to God is as strange as an alien taking over your mind to get you to do the chicken dance.

For those of us who are Christians, sometimes it’s not those outside the faith trying to get us back. Sometimes it’s God trying to get us back. He tries to get us back when we have stopped listening and responding to Him. We replace the living faith with something lifeless He seeks to turn us again to a living faith, full of His life, joy, strength, holiness and love. He is not trying to do this to get us to do the chicken dance, but to cause us to sing the songs of heaven and dance the dance of redemption.

In the book of Hosea God was speaking of the sever judgment Israel would face because of their “vile (spiritual) adultery”. That was a prophecy for the near future. But He also delivered them a prophecy for the distant future. It begins ….

Hosea 2:14 - "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her”

Israel, as a nation had the same problem we sometimes have, replacing the living faith with something dead. God was “alluring” them into a place where they could hear Him again.

For most, to hear God’s voice is not an audible. But if we are paying attention, He most certainly speaks to us. It is the experience where His Life enters, and moves within us. It reveals itself through alien thoughts and desires. We know we have heard Him, for example, when we find we have a strength we didn’t have before, a confidence our circumstances can’t explain, or a love for Him that seeks fulfillment in a desire to respond or obey.

When we listen God speaks to us. When God speaks, He creates. He is creating a different “us.” The more He speaks to us, the more alien we seem to those who don’t understand this experience. And those who don’t understand this experience don’t like it when God speaks to us. They don’t realize we were created to be more than “carbon based life forms.”

Ignatius of Antioch, in A.D. 110 said this prayer on his way to the Coliseum: “May I enjoy the wild beasts that are prepared for me. I pray that they would be found eager to rush at me, and I will also entice them to devour me speedily and not deal with me as some, whom out of fear they have not touched.”

What compels a man to say a prayer like that? Perhaps he was abducted by aliens.

Getting Rid of Unwanted Guests

“Quite a nasty piece of work. Not the sort of person you'd want to have dinner with.” 

[On the subject of Mr. Bean] Atkinson, Rowan

Now perhaps we have all felt that way about someone. But some guests are harder to get rid of than others. Of the hardest, to me, are the unwanted guests that enter my mind. Of the unwanted guest that can enter man’s mind, perhaps one of the hardest are thoughts brought about by wounds of others. Our minds go to them almost naturally, and once in the door they run through the rooms of your soul wreaking havoc. They cycle around producing vindictive thoughts, anger, and darkness. Like an unwanted guest that shows up at your door, and you can’t seem to get rid of.

Yet God is more merciful to us.

Psalm 86:5 says; “For You, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, - And abundant in mercy to all those who call upon You.”

How comforting it is when we think of God we think of one who is “ready to forgive.” 

Then we came to a passage like this… “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others” …

Now praying that is almost frightful. It’s like saying, “God I want you to forgive me to the level I am willing to forgive others.” Now this seems terribly unfair to me. God is all powerful – so powerful He has the ability to forget. I am not, and I have the hardest time forgetting old wounds.

The best definition of forgiveness that I’ve run across (I believe Jay Adams) is something like; “a commitment to not bring the matter up again, to the offender, to others and to yourself.” Sometimes, good definitions make all things possible. Consider, it is first of all “a commitment.” It is committing to process until it becomes a reality. Forgiveness is a journey, a pilgrimage, and a destiny. Of the three commitments; not bringing it up to yourself is the hardest (and takes the longest). Yet this is the point in which we are made free. It is the point where old wounds stop invading our minds and we brood over them. One might say, the point of forgetfulness.

It’s like keeping an unwanted guest outside the door, until you forget his is out there. That is where the journey of forgiveness leads to – it leads to freedom.

Now one of the principles of forgiveness, is to remove an obstacle that is between two persons – or between God and man – that leads back to an open relationship.

Consider what 1 John 1:7 says: - “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

To walk in the light means walking in God’s truth as well as being enabled by His life. God wants to empower His church. He wants to send the blood of Jesus Christ through the whole body. Now when scripture speaks about blood, it is speaking about life. The blood of Jesus Christ is the life of Jesus Christ.

Leviticus 17:11 tells us “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.”