Two Camps: God vs. Demonic
There are two camps: both promise the same thing “I can make you become like God”. However one recommends obedience and the other disobedience. One will be faithful to fulfill their promise and give you all it takes to accomplish the promise because they actually desire your good. The other will keep you numb until it’s too late, constantly seeking new ways to keep you sedated by deception and betray you when and only when it is convenient because they couldn’t be more apathetic to your good. Which camp are you walking to?
Why are we so attached to prayerful consolations? Why do we prefer pleasure, wealth, power, and/or honor to prayer? Because we do soon forget the goodness of the One we pray to for the sake of good feeling. If we know constantly of God’s goodness and know it in our heart what then do we need such consolations for? It is then we come to know and understand that God does not change as is always good, thereafter the true consolations are His promises and that he continues to encounter those He loves in the sacraments because these consolations are actual, not fleeting, and even eternal. God is love, he does not need you but desires to give you even that which seems un-receivable. God goes beyond what can be expected, actually heals, and brings life. He doesn’t remove deeply rooted sores but brings them to healing.
The camp of Satan promises everything that God does, more and immediate satisfaction. It doesn’t require a difficult path. It does not recommend preoccupation with what is right and wrong. It does not recommend you care about anything that is not relevant to you. It doesn’t encourage you to believe anything but what your desires may require. While Satan’s camp has sung beautifully and eloquently all you could ever want, its recommendations rob you of goodness, truth, love, and beauty. Instead of healing, it gives morphine sometimes to avoid pain and strife moving you further into the need for God. The further from healing it draws you the more desperate and the remaining strength to adhere to the way to God is. Because it has convinced you of the lack of urgency/importance, you no longer care about the state you are in only that nothing disturbs the numbness. Further, even should your desire of, the sight of the true, and intrigue with beauty not become perverse, what strength remains to fight against allurements dwindles. The longer we adhere to sin the more our perception becomes what matters (from our perspective), the greater the graces of conversion and resolution must be to extricate us from the downward spiral of sin. All the while greater and greater damage is done without you being able to feel it.
In conclusion, at the surface or from the point of divergence the camp of those who work for your destruction for all eternity seems more appealing and desirable than the alternative. What are we giving our life’s to? Where are we spending our resources (time, energy, money, thoughts, etc.)? Who are we trusting with these and ultimately our soul? What assumptions have we made? Have we actually investigated what we believe? Are we absolutely sure we haven’t been slowly led astray? Take charge of your life by giving it to the camp of God who is the foremost in all desirable qualities. If you can’t trust God who can you trust? Let us keep our minds and hearts on the things of eternity, for which the time spent here is a breath of time. In doing so, we shall not be held captive by unfortunate outcomes, unsatisfied disordered passions, etc. We should act as though God, is the only other thing for us to encounter because He is only that which can hold us from the grip of the enemy.
