New Year’s Eve 2019

Listening to a John Eldredge podcast. He says don’t take the Christmas décor down, listen to Christmas music until Epiphany January 6. His message is don’t rush from Christmas to New Year’s. (“Well! We got that done and survived! Next?”) Then the question: What are you going to do for soul-care during the days in between? What am I going to do? It’s New Year’s Eve! I’m behind already!

The anticipation stirs some dread and uneasiness. We better get this year right or Western Civilization is in the dumpster. The November, 2020 day looms like a tornado siren that is stuck on “Take Cover, now!”

Carole does a tasteful job decorating.  I like it.  I woke up this morning expecting the tree to be packed away for another year. (You do know that if I get up in the night to go to the bathroom, she jumps up and makes the bed.) So when I told her that Eldredge suggested décor and carols should remain she smiled—“Well that’s not going to happen!”

The Ransomed Heart leadership uses these days to ask God what message He has for the New Year. What word? What theme? What Scripture or phrase? Having heard God direct, they pray into that revelation or guidance and adjust soul-care into His direction.

What his team has to say feels like a solid message. Preparing for 2020 seems important. Like…

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you (Psalm 32:8).

The link will take you to the podcast I referenced:

https://www.ransomedheart.com/rhplay/podcast/between-times

©2019 D. Dean Benton   I wonder as I wander

Want to know how to get a rat addicted to cocaine? Dr. Jordan Peterson knows. He says rats are family oriented and have assignments to fulfill. One of Peterson’s peers says rats play with their siblings and will laugh. She found the rat would laugh when she tickled him/her on the belly with a pencil armed with a green eraser. The laughter is discernable when the recorded interaction is slowed a bit.

Rats are too busy and occupied to mess with drugs unless they are isolated from their pack, swarm or the official name for a rat group—Mischief.

Dr. Peterson sees news for humans in that rodent’s experience and warning.

Are you acquainted with “Elf on the Shelf”? Chanda Bell is the primary creator of the book and with her husband, mother, sister and brother built a huge business. If you are an entrepreneur, have family members interested in business, a podcast from Donald Miller Storybrand is inspirational and helpful at an MBA level wrapped in laughter:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/179-chanda-bell-believing-in-the-magic-of-your-mission/id1092751338?i=1000459734249

The capsule of Ms. Bell’s mission and how the family went from zero expertise to…

When Chanda Bell’s family sold 5,000 units of the “Elf on the Shelf” book and doll in its first season in 2005, they knew they were onto something. With 11 million elves now in homes around the world, they were right. But that success didn’t happen overnight. Hear on the podcast how this family bootstrapped their beloved family tradition into a cultural phenomenon without the help of publishers and corporations — and what we can learn from their enduring success and unique company culture. If Chanda and her family can do this with a fictional story, imagine what you can do with yours. Listen now!

Rats, elves, family rituals have been part of soul poking related to purpose and calling. I’m working on “Seizin’ the Season” again. Using Psalm 37 as biblical base with Ruth and Naomi as guest personalities.

Thought you would want to know.

©2019  D. Dean Benton      Writer and Wonderer

Living in abandoned subway, railroad, flood, sewage tunnels, and heating shafts, several stories below large cities are communities of homeless called “Mole People.” Questions come to mind. Do the communities send foragers to the surface for food? Do they work? Bathrooms? Baths? Are these peaceful places where families live? What about light and heat? Do these Mole People get any natural light or suntans and if not, how do they stay alive, let alone healthy?

John Quincy Adams initiated an excavation project to dig to the center of the earth where he believed mole people lived. John Quincy was not a crazoid, so I wonder what tools he proposed to do the digging.

About the time I learned about Mole People, I ran across reports that there is an increasing demand for Catholic exorcists to fulfill the increasing requests for exorcisms.

Jordan Peterson writes in 12 Rules for Life (Chapter 6—“Set your house in order before you criticize the world”), what he has concluded about teen mass shootings. To understand more clearly that these young men have a problem with reality, I listened to the Jordan Peterson Podcast of November 1, 1987 recorded in Cambridge, UK. Peterson uses all the words we use in describing a demonized person. When we name the places: Columbine, Sandy Hook, (and seemingly dozens of other killing zones) we conclude that the killers appointed themselves adjudicators after deciding humans do not deserve to live.

Peterson talks about ideas that are hundreds and thousands of years old, but “are alive” and take on the form of personalities that can and do take dwelling places in people—the indwelt become possessed and then empowered and motivated by those ideas. Those ideas take on flesh which inhabit humans like sub-personalities. You mean like Mole People living six stories below the surface of our souls—mind, will, emotions?

Look at the words Peterson uses: possessed, dwelling places, inhabit, sub-personalities, possession. The very words we use to describe humans influenced or controlled by dark spirits. It helps me to think of personified dark spirits and dark territories and geographical zones. I think dark spirits attack us or become part of lives through:

1. toxic ideas that capture people,
2. spirit entities: singular demons on assignment and groups
3. institutionalized hatred, malice and behavior toward marginalized groups.

Activities, behaviors, feelings, worldviews where the dark spirit world manifests:

1. Hatred, (violence as a subset of hatred, racism),
2. Confusion about reality, not knowing who to trust-who is telling the truth,
3. Nihilism-death mindset
4. The Jezebellian spirit may be the controlling spirit of our age, at least influential.

My family has been questioning how to pray against what we discern attacks or attempt to take control of people, cultures, nations and institutions in Western Civilization. Jesus said and still says,

“I am the way, the truth and the life…John 14:6.

When hatred is pervasive, we know hatred is not God’s way, so we pray, “Jesus is the way and I speak His way into the hatred to dispel and replace. Jesus is Lord, therefore hatred is commanded to leave. Jesus “way” is not limited to a roadmap to heaven. It is instructive for a way of life that enriches persons and communities.

Who is telling the truth? Who can we trust? This Truth may be about correct doctrine/belief, but it is also about discerning the source of debated reality and where it will lead. “I speak/project Jesus’ Truth into the spirit world and into cultural business. (7 Mountains of influence)

Many historians, futurists and students of “now” say we are living in a death culture. Abortion, suicide, hopelessness, murder and killing what God intended and intends. “I speak Jesus’ life into the places where demons, spirits, principalities and powers are designing death missions.”

Ephesians 6:12 ¹²For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 KJV (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ

What are the weapons we are to use? Picture praying an arrow of Jesus love projected into specific clusters of hatred. Pray an agent carrying Jesus way into a culture fragmented by chaos. Think about a syringe administering Truth into a glob of confusion—no foundation of Truth. That is done through speaking God’s Word and your command: “I pray into this (place) a perception of Jesus’ Truth.”

©2019 D. Dean Benton—Writer, Wonderer

I welcome questions and clarifying comments

Helpful resources on this topic:

Peterson and Eldredge are very helpful in explaining.

The Jordan B Peterson podcast—iTunes—“Set Your House in Order” Nov 3, 2019

John Eldredge–Ransomed Heart http://feeds.feedburner.com/ransomedheartaudiopodcast Prayer sessions 3 &4.