On the way…

The apartments we lived in in China all had one thing in common… they were full of cockroaches! Some apartments were worse than others. I remember going out to the kitchen in the evenings after the kids were in bed and turning on the kitchen light to go and make a cup of tea… as soon as I turned on the light, I saw a seething mess of little black things with legs scuttling away into the nooks and crannies! They loved the darkness, and thankfully hid away in the daytime. But when it was night, they all came crawling out. I remember being woken up by a very big one biting my face in bed! And to top it off, we had to fight mould in everything as well! When we felt God leading us to move back to New Zealand, I remember thinking “well, at least we won’t have to face cockroaches there!”

When we moved back to New Zealand, we lived in a farmhouse.  It wasn’t long before we found out it was time to face a new pest: mice! I had never dealt with mice before, and they were pooping all over our bed and our baby’s cot! Something had to be done… Thankfully we knew some people who knew what to do. We got good recommendations for some mouse poison that could be out of reach of the kids, and we set traps. We then realised that there were also possums on the farm eating the fruit in the orchards! My uncle helped set up traps and taught us how to check them. The pest situation got under control. Eventually it was also discovered that the mice had been eating away at the wiring in the house! Suddenly, power-sockets stopped working! Half the house had to be re-wired.

We have since moved house, and are now fighting ants! Why did I think there would be a dream home where I wouldn’t have to fight some kind of pest? Some pests erode the safety of our home. Some pose a threat to the health of the inhabitants. Some eat away at the food supply… and some quietly eat away at the interior, unseen, subtle, until one day things start falling apart and stop working. Each pest is different in the way they affect us, and also in the way we must fight them! As far as I know, a mouse trap is useless for keeping ants away!

What are the pests that are trying to infest your life at the moment? Your relationships? Your church? Do you know how to fight them? Are they noticeable, or are they hidden and slowly creeping into your heart?

Here are a few common spiritual “pests” which can become infestations that destroy:

Idolatry (worshipping anything or anyone other than God), pride, selfishness, materialism, disobedience, deception, unforgiveness, unbelief, complacency, destructive thought-patterns, self-sufficiency, jealousy, unhealthy anger.

We will never be free of things trying to invade our life, our mind, our heart, our relationships… they may be different each time, but we need to know how to deal with them. Paul told us in Ephesians that we are not fighting a physical battle as Christians, but a spiritual one. How do we fight that kind of battle? It took me a long time to learn this lesson. It all seemed too abstract to me. But when I started losing control over areas of my life, I started to realise how important it was to fight the battle. Here are some of the weapons that we can use to fight “infestation”:

Prayer, fasting, praise and worship, love and grace, obedience to the truth of Scripture, the gospel, humility, thankfulness, the blood of Christ, our testimony, encouragement, the armour of God (found in Eph. 6:13-17), church discipline, spiritual gifts.

Sometimes, invading pests can turn into “infestations”, and we need others to intervene and help. We don’t have to fight on our own!

Recently I saw a post on social media about natural “pest control”… spiders! Honestly, I hate spiders! Perhaps it’s my years of growing up in Australia, but those things sure creep me out. However, when I was living in rural Korea (which also had a lot of the same spiders that Australia had, funnily enough!), I decided to face my fear, literally. I would go for a walk through the farm-roads, and when I saw a big Orbweb spider in its web, I would walk up close to it, and just look at it. Stare it down! I realised there really was nothing to be afraid of, it was just how they looked! They probably don’t even bite…

Spiders sure are great natural pest controllers! Fear has been a “pest” that has infested my life before, but now I know better… therefore, I’ve (almost) overcome my fear of spiders, and am trying to allow them to just do their pest-controlling job! Perhaps we need to overcome some fears in our lives in order to get the pests out too…

Are you afraid of being obedient to some areas of scripture? Are you afraid of confessing some things to someone? You might just find that these are the very things that will get some pests out of your life!

There are landmines everywhere. They seem to be in most families, most marriages, most churches… things that are not supposed to be talked about, topics we don’t bring up, things that happened that aren’t to be mentioned. If they are, there’s a big explosion and everyone will get hurt.

I’ve been pondering landmines recently, I mean the real ones, and considered a few key things about them… they’re usually weapons used in a war. They’re often hidden, or covered. They explode and hurt people when they’re touched. They are often things left behind long after the initial war is over. They are often stood on later by those who are innocent, uninvolved in the war, or unaware they are there. Then I thought about the relational ones. We go to war in our relationships… “you have something I want, I want to be right, you’re stopping me from having something, you hurt me and I’m going to punish you, I deserve better.” If unresolved, these “wars” leave behind landmines in our relationships… topics that will explode again if they are brought up. They are hidden or covered in an attempt to “preserve the peace”, but are really just creating a minefield. Sometimes, new people come along and unknowingly touch the landmines, and suddenly there is hurt (confusion, cold silence, arguing…).

Then I thought of the ways to deal with mines. It seems you either need someone who is familiar with the territory and can tell you where to avoid standing, or the mines need to be removed… set off, dug up, thrown out (or something like that, I’m certainly no mine expert!). If the mines are left there, there’s still fear, there’s still tension, and the land can’t be used properly or enjoyed. It seems the best way is to remove them. How do we do this relationally? Maybe things like pride, selfishness, unforgiveness, anger, and judgment need to be removed, repented of… Maybe there has been miscommunication, or misunderstanding. Maybe we need to sometimes humble ourselves and let go of our “rights”, and allow God to be our Defender and Provider. Sometimes this can be a very painful process! And maybe sometimes it needs to be the right time, and probably needs to be covered in a lot of prayer first…

I am certainly not innocent of creating minefields! I am most prone to do it in my marriage. We have a “war”, and then I go cold and silent. If he brings it up again, I fight my point to the bone using every cunning argument I can muster! Sometimes he’s completely unaware that he’s upset me! Fortunately, I have a husband who relentlessly digs up the mines, humbly listens and is always the first to say sorry and want to change. Sometimes I want to say “But I was really enjoying that war!” My Mum used to tell me I should have been a lawyer… I always loved a good argument! Pride, selfishness, punishing others with our anger… these things somehow make us feel entitled, powerful, or in control. But my husband’s attitude leaves me defenseless… I can’t be angry anymore! No matter how much I want to prove my point and be right, his humility and love takes all the air out of my argumentative sails. He tells me that the relationship matters more to him than being right. How does it come so easily to him… I’m also learning to be more communicative about things that have upset me that I know he might be unaware of, and I’m learning how to communicate them effectively and inoffensively.

James had something really interesting to say about all of this…

James 4:1-12  “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:  “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”  7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.  11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?”

Don’t you just love James?! So practical… and he doesn’t mince his words! He seems to be saying “Recognise what you’re doing, who you’re really fighting, and by God’s grace, stop it!” Easier said than done… but I noticed three key concepts in there: Submit (to God), Resist (evil and your selfish desires), Humble Yourselves. Probably the three things I struggle with most! But as I watch my husband do this (and wonder why it seems so easy for him), and as I start practicing it myself, it seems to get a little easier and happen a little sooner every time.

Side note:
Here are a few things we learned from a marriage course, and learned from our mistakes, that I hope can help others on this relational journey! Certainly not just for marriages…

• Take out the trash – all relationships, especially close ones, regularly build up “trash”… things that were said, hurts that were felt. We try to bring these up for removal regularly with each other. This is especially important with “the little things”… these can easily turn into land mines! 
• We can easily offend each other with how we bring up our hurts. We learned about the “I feel ______ when you ____” statement. For example, “I feel hurt when you spend more time looking at your phone than engaging with me in the evenings”, or “I feel unimportant when you don’t remember the things I talk to you about”. This helps it to be less confrontational than “you don’t think I’m important!” or “you never listen to me!”