On possessions; junk and generosity

This article – Sorry, Nobody Wants Your Parents Stuff – prompted me to share these thoughts:

I liquidated my dad’s house when he was killed and my mom then moved into her own little place. Then I liquidated her home when she moved in with us. Then when she died I did it again with her stuff. Then I moved to Europe and liquidated our home, acreage and belongings. Last year we, mostly Kristen and her brother, liquidated her parents home when they moved into assisted living. It’s painful to see a life times worth of stuff end up in a dumpster.

That said, shame on those who turn down free family stuff and opting instead to buy trendy crap on their own, and usually with credit. Learn how to refurnish something, get artsy with old stuff. Be thankful. It may not be much, but it’s your inheritance and it blesses your parents to be able to pass things on. I love giving to my kids. If they want it they can have it, now. Books, coin collection, pictures, guns…. they show interest and I give it to them. Oh, but I had to work hard for this stuff and I don’t want to give my kids the impression there is any such thing as a free lunch! I had that thought too. But it was canceled out by my desire for my kids to know me as generous and that maybe they’ll value generosity too.

Once Thomas craigslisted something I gave him — had a bill due he couldn’t pay (both my boys are masters with craigslist, better that than the credit card – new is overrated). It bothered me at first but good for him trying to get the highest price. (It was a window unit air conditioner.) Better to sweat than borrow!!! I’ve passed on my aversion to debt to my son!!!

Kristen and I lived the first fifteen years with furniture from garage sales, we’d joke about our furniture being early garage sale era. The kids beat it up anyway, why get something good? Hand me downs are God’s provision in your life.

I’d encourage older people to start early liquidating their estates so their kids aren’t foolish with the stuff later. I had my kids walk through my home and tell me what they wanted. If they all wanted the same thing I took note and they traded this for that. The rest I sought a home for- don’t worry about recooping dollars- there is a bigger blessing in giving it away to young people in your church. If something means something to you, stick a note on it or your kids won’t have a clue later.

Liquidating your stuff is both scary and freeing. It’s a spiritual journey, of sorts. It is not God’s will that you have a full home and still need a storage unit. When you want to buy something, ask first if it’s a legacy purchase or just more crap for your kids to deal with.

Should Christians store food right now?

Kristen told me I need to put something new up here on my blog because people are tired of checking back and seeing the negative title of the last post. So, something positive… we got a new puppy. Lucy is her name. I call her Goose. Here she is guarding one of the latest picks from our garden.

I sent this pic out a few days ago via Twitter joking that we are almost ready for the third seal/black horse (famine and food shortages) and that Lucy was guarding the loot.

So, until I get going here again on the blog, enjoy this picture and feel free to discuss the reality of food shortages in America and whether or not it’s wise to store food. Anything goes.  I’ll get you thinking…. Joseph prophetically saw seven years of famine coming and was able to set aside provision so he could be a blessing to millions.  How is food storage any different than life, health, or car insurance? If we don’t provide for our family aren’t we worse than an unbeliever? The government is telling their employees in Homeland Security to have 3 months of food stored up. If they are telling their people this, what do they know that we don’t? Some tell me it shows a lack of faith in God’s provision to store food. What do you think? I think abundance now IS his provision. I have a lot to say about this but I’ll let you all discuss.

Why can’t you just enjoy the movie?

Thomas and Caleb have enough movies on their laptops and ipods such that we could probably watch two a day. And, there is an extensive movie collection here at the house we are staying in. So far we’ve watched Luther, the Longest Yard, the Sound of Music, Transformers I and Transformers II (in a theatre), Santa Claus I w/Tim the toolman Taylor (Thomas does Christmas and Christmas Music ALL YEAR long) and Shindler’s List last night.

A few interesting things about seeing Transformers II in a theatre here – 1) your seat in the theatre is specific to the ticket you buy 2) the subtitles were in German and French and 3) halfway through the movie the lights come on and everyone gets up to go to the bathroom and get another bottle of beer.

The Transformers movies provided me an opportunity to explain and illustrate to Thomas and Kaitlyn the Catholic Doctrine of Transubstantiation which the Reformers combated here in the 16th century. Surely they would have fallen asleep during that ad hoc teaching moment had I not been able to relate the bread/wine physically transforming into the literal body/blood of Jesus to be kind of like the regular old Camero in the movie transformed into an alien. Thomas thinks that since arriving here I’VE transformed into an alien from the planet Zwingli. Kristen gives me the look that says – why can’t you just enjoy the movie?

Last night Shindler’s List was our choice. If you can believe it, I hadn’t seen it yet. Didn’t expect all the naked prisoner scenes during which all our kids are trained to look at the ceiling. It’s actually kind of funny when a nude scene appears on the screen to see three heads instantly pop up to look at the ceiling. Our job is to tell them when it’s over.

On a more serious note, the total disregard for human life here during the holocaust IS truly hard to watch, let alone comprehend. It’s so beautiful here its hard to imagine spiritual darkness so thick gripping entire nations. The movie is helpful to put faces and families where we have tended to only see large numbers and piles of nameless bodies.

I think we all need a list of those we are willing to give all we have/are to reach. I think Schindler saved something like 1100 Jews, many are no longer alive today but 6000 descendants of Schindler Jews are alive today.  I know that there are childen alive today because of my labors contending on behalf of the unborn warring against ideologies that deny them humanity. They have names and I’ve held some of them. I know teenagers who didn’t commit suicide and now have families of their own because I got involved in their life and combatted the spirit of death seeking to destroy them. Who knows if one day there will be 6000 descendants of those who are alive because of me, but it’s a work I’m honored to spend myself on behalf of.

The Ravens of Dachau

Literally, right outside our quaint upper room window, starting at 5 am, a dozen to fifteen crows decided to re-enact what sounded like the Sound of Music for the rest of the neighborhood. Here’s an eight second clip – make sure your volume is up so you can appreciate this fully. Then imagine it’s 5am and it’s all right outside your window.

I rebuked them openly at 5:15 dubbing them the “vultures of Dachau” though now that designation seems an insensitive overstatement, considering. I did think to ask God why my interceding Rizpah’s back home weren’t awakened to their post to shoo off the ravens on my behalf. Then I realized it’s a bit selfish to pray he’d waken them to pray that I’d sleep. (Years ago KH and I had a similar experience when a rooster was stationed right outside our window when we stayed at Yassar Arafat’s compound in Gaza City.)

It was a rough night anyway. I went to bed with a head filled with yesterday’s dose of the reality here between 1933 and 1945. And just prior to hitting the pillow I openly rebuked these territorial spirits in my last post on this blog. No wonder the spirit of death harassed me throughout the night with terrors.

To make matters worse, my US/UK power converter didn’t work so I had to go to sleep without my C-PAP breathing machine. (Funny thing though, I mis-spoke and referred to my C-PAP machine as my “pap smear machine.” Only seconds later the look on Kristen’s face alerted me to my error. I mumbled something like… “C-Pap – pap smear… same difference.” Her second look I wish I could have captured on film as it’s still etched in the fear sectors of my brain.

I broke the tenth commandment today

The forecast today was 70% rain – we discovered that means seventy percent of today it was pouring down rain. We now have forty Swiss franc’s worth of umbrellas to bring home.

Also, I discovered that if you keep driving for a while after the gas light comes on… it starts flashing at you. Maybe some of you who love to live close to the edge thought the rest of us already knew that. Not so.

We also learned that if you buy a can of corn in Germany, the words “4 stück” on the side of the can means it’s not kernals but four ears still on the cob. All would have been well if the can had 5 stück, but 4 stück means that one of the five of us went without.

Among other things today we went back to Zurich to the Beyer watch store.  It’s like there is a magnet drawing me there. Here’s a picture of the front of it and here’s what our travel book says about this location; “Banhofstrasse – some call it the finest street in Europe -along its path is an impressive display of wealth – the head offices of the “Gnomes of Zurich” (the five largest banks in Switzerland) – this is the center of Switzerland’s opulence – everything you can never afford to buy is sold there.”

Since I can’t buy I decided to covet instead. You know, covet, as in the tenth commandment thou-shalt-not-covet. Not to worry, I hardly covet a thing, ever.  But watches are hard for me.  And this one in particular kept winking at me as I went by. I think it’s The One. Kristen says Dream on, she’s way out of my league.

I have no idea if anyone else is interested in this but I for those who are I want to show you another amazing clock from the Beyer museum.

This one is called Pendulette de table avec Planetarium (aka Planetarium Table Clock). It keeps time.  AND, the earth rotates around the sun in perfect real time.  AND, the other nine planets rotate as well, around, up, down in relation to the etched constellations of precisely positioned stars on the crystal globe, which if you are smart enough will reveal what season it is. (You can see the stars better in this pic).  I have trouble getting my watch’s date feature to not switch at noon each day and here’s some guy back in 1770 had the whole universe gracefully moving in precision.

Here’s the thing – the universe is a billion times more complex than this mind blowing clock which is unquestionably the product of an amazing mind. I don’t know, I guess I just don’t have the faith to believe even this level of complexity could be in any way random. Honestly I felt like worshipping God after I saw this clock.  And to think kids today are being taught they are just the next mutation in a unguided process. Sad.

I’m teaching my kids they are no mistake but rather they were conceived in the mind of God before the foundations of the world (as the Bible says) and God’s dream for their life only manifest in the flesh at conception.

My kids wonder if anyone else out there besides me who thinks of ways to hammer both on the theory of evolution and abortion while wandering around a clock shop.

We travel all week starting tomorrow AM and are not sure where along the way we’ll have internet. Stay tuned.

Twilight is a welcome mat for the demonic

Can you imagine… I wouldn’t let my three teenagers go see the most recent Batman movie because I’m convinced the spirit of death was/does operate in it.  Lead actor Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose of sleeping and anxiety meds during the filming of it and confessed the weeks before to struggling with insomnia since the filming began and that the movie “messed with his head.” His friends noted something came on him during the filming because he just looked different, drained.   

One of the spiritual gifts listed in the New Testament is the discernment of spirits. If you are wondering how I can conclusively say the spirit of death was operating in the movie Batman all I can tell you is I discerned the spirit and, coupled with my experience in deliverance ministry, coupled with police chaplaincy, my own personal testimony with the occult, and I’m telling you this isn’t the Batman of twenty-five years ago.

Go ahead and chuckle at me – but most of you haven’t been to the number of teen suicides I’ve been to in the last twenty years. I look at what’s on their walls when I walk in to see them hanging by their neck in the doorway. I’m not saying your kid will go kill himself if he sees Batman, I’m saying demonic spirits have full access to our kids today through media and entertainment venues and parents are clueless.

And here, though I’ve not personally seen it, I’m going to urge you to keep your kids away from a hugely popular movie and book series – Twilight. I have only seen the preview and that was enough for me to shut the gate in terms of allowing this teen craze into my household.

My 14 year old daughter reports to me Twilight has fully captivated her high school peers. I got online and watched the trailer and learned it’s an action-packed, modern-day love story between a teenage girl and a vampire (a vampire is a corpse that returns from the grave to terrorize and drink the blood of the living – the idea that there is a good one out there, one who is lovable is dangerous fantasy and deception at its peak). 

The Twilight Saga is a Gateway drug –  lowering inhibitions and desensitizing.  It creates a fantasy world where girls experience Edward’s advances vicariously within their own imaginations – writes a Catholic blogger who has written extensively on this series. The movie and books are targeted to adolescent girls.  350 different fan websites are now on the internet averaging 31 female fans for every male. The demonic is after our daughters. It’s a part of the devil’s ancient war on women.

Parents need to be careful to not expose their daughters to the darkness that strategically emminates from this movie. One parent/Catholic school teacher reacted this way…

I agree, this is a female mass intoxication with disturbing implications. The book, which I finished yesterday, is hypnotic and addictive. The mixture of sexual stimulation and bloodletting/violence is sickening, yet despite having such strong misgivings, I did find myself anxious to read the book again. ..to see what happens.

Take a good look at the picture  above and see if you can’t figure out a few reasons why I don’t want my daughter imagining herself in the arms of that spirit. I don’t want my daughter running around joking with guys quoting this movie – bite me, I want you to bite me.  Or how about this…

What would you say if your high school aged daughter told you she was dating a vampire who had to fight the urge to kill her and suck her blood every time they were together?  And you thought dating a football player was bad enough!  If you were a sensible parent you would intervene and end the relationship, fearing that it might end in tragedy.  In fact, you would have an obligation to protect your daughter from the danger she was unwilling to recognize.  Your love for her would compel you.  So, what would you say if I told you your high school age daughter really is dating a vampire, vicariously, by reading The Twilight Saga?  Oh come on – you might think – it’s not the same thing at all.  The story is just a fantasy.  What’s the big deal?  Nobody is really getting hurt here.  Or are they?

Do you think I’m over-reacting? Here’s the deal, we do deliverance ministry week in and week out here at our church. These seemingly minor things – like movies, books, posters, charms – are welcome mats to the unseen evil world. We have discovered all it takes is one willful glance at soft core porn to release powerful demonic spirits of lust and perversion into seemingly strong men. Within months, good dads start walking around like zombies fully captive and bound to their perversion. Families are destroyed.

I discern the same demonic, blood-drinking spirit in Twilight that I battle against in the abortion industry – a demonic spirit that targets our daughters to drink the fresh blood of the emerging generation that bears the image of God.

Evil has a world-class marketing department and they are masters at packaging stuff to touch deep needs in the human heart. And there is no sector of our society more receptive and vulnerable than adolescent girls. Wake up parents! My wife was a middle school teacher and for years she kept current on the literature marketed to adolescent girls today. She regularly commented to me it’s far worse than parents realize in terms of sexuality and sorcery.

Some will say I’m sheltering my kids too much. Thanks for your concern but my kids have been in public schools and I’m pretty sure they aren’t in for much culture shock when they enter the “real world.” But hello? Isn’t my role inherently a sheltering role? I will continue to stand in prayer and in practice between my daughter and the demonic.

Here is a link to some other critical reviews of Twilight. Though a couple of my favorite Christian and pro-life bloggers are loving the Twilight series I do not share their enthusiasm.

I’ll end on a bright note. Youth today are wide open to the reality of the spiritual world. Between Christmas and New Years again this year our family will head to Kansas City for the annual OneThing Conference. It’s with great joy I report my three can’t wait to dive into the Book of Revelation which is to be the main focus of Biblical exposition this year at OneThing. This same God-given curiousity that the darkside is exploiting in movies like Twilight can been seen at One Thing as 30,000 young people pursue the One who is love and fully supernatural.

Fruitfulness!

Fruitfulness – cantaloupe, potatoes, apples, green beans, acorn squash, corn, onion, carrots, tomatoes. The plan today was to can the tomatoes and make salsa and spaghetti sauce. But, we had a fireworks show come out from underneath one of the burners on our stove and now the stove doesn’t work at all.

I am posting, just not here – the battle for LIFE has begun

I’m having trouble doing two things (blogs) at once. And though I do appreciate the readership here at GatePost, I’m trying not to feel guilty about the infrequency. The battle for LIFE in South Dakota has begun again and my free-time is mainly focused there. If you miss regular posting here from me you can read the latest from me on my LIFE blog – voicescarryblog.com.

Here are three recent but very important posts that you many find interesting.

Planned Parenthood Gets Religion

Let’s have FUN kicking off our Campaign to Kill

More “Fun” with South Dakota Planned Parenthood’s new slogan – Let Families Decide

My son Caleb put up a nice little pic on his blog that you may appreciate. He gets to vote this year for the first time. You’ll note he’s starting to lean toward one side : ) Caleb has some strong views. I don’t know where he got this from. We move him to KC for school NEXT WEEK – I’m not sure how I feel about this chapter of life coming to a close.

For a few months my son Thomas and I have been looking for a Mustang ($3-4K range) so he can drive to school this fall. He’s pretty set on a Mustang and has been for a while. He’s got some pics on his blog of one that we found ($2K over budget). I know he’d appreciate the traffic on his blog – so be sure to check it out. He finds blogging discouraging because “nobody reads his.” He’d even more appreciate others joining him fasting and praying for this extra “miracle money” to somehow appear so he can buy this car. He knows we won’t be making a covenant with a creditor.

Funny story… I told him the only thing I don’t like about him getting a hot car like this is that he’d get into popularity/girls and his relationship with God would really suffer. He said, “no, if he had this car it would really help his relationship with God because he’d wake up every day praising God and drive down the road with praise music everywhere he went.”

Tornado passes by our place – God is in the whirlwind!

We just had a little excitement with a tornado passing by our place. We lost a few big limbs and got really blasted with wind and rain. Thomas and I went out and perhaps got a picture of it here – they said the tornado itself wasn’t visible because it was surrounded by rain, but I don’t know. The power of God is awesome. Thomas and I prayed the blood of Jesus over our place, commanded the winds away from people, etc. The girls were a little more timid. Caleb was driving home from church during these moments and we made him turn around and wait a while. In the pic below we are just north of the blue dot near Ellis, SD just beneath the two tornado circles on the map. This weather map was after it had passed us.

Apostolic Preaching at it’s best – Allen Hood of FSM in KC at IHOP

We are getting ready at the Hickey household to send our kids to Kansas City. I’m really wishing I could go – a few uninterrupted weeks in the prayer room would do me good – and, even after being away for 18 years, in a sense, it’s still home. Thomas went down last summer to STI (now called ATC… what’s with the fixation with acronyms at IHOP-KC?). ATC stands for Awakening Teen Camp but I still slip and call it STI (which, last summer, stood for Summer Teen Intensive). Now the kids correct me when I say STI… “Dad?! Hello?! STI stands for sexually transmitted infections and that’s why its ATC this year.” Anyhoo, his sister is going this summer as well for this annual two-week summer intensive for high school students. But the big thing we are gearing up for here is sending Caleb in 60 days to start a four year program in Apostolic Preaching under Allen Hood at FSM in KC. (See what I mean about the acronyms?)

Here is an 11 minute taste of Allen Hood preaching at the OneThing conference. You will see why I’m excited to get Caleb to FSM. And, for what its worth, this clip alone nullifies all the smack talk against IHOP-KC. This is indeed a strategic equipping center for the Kingdom of God. Any who’ve said they preach another gospel are simply bearing false witness (one of the Ten Commandments by the way). The evangelical seminaries I went to didn’t preach this message with this boldness.

Thanks to Zack Hensley for finding this on YouTube. The video is a bit odd as the images really don’t relate to the message but it’s better than audio only.

God revealed himself to me today

God revealed himself to me today as Creator while I was sitting outside in a lawn chair. Thomas and I picked a little group of trees to sit under – Thomas has plans for that spot as soon as he gets an extra $47.

I looked to my right to see one seed left on this dandelion. I thought to myself, “there is no freakin’ way that evolved. Oh the fantasy life of the evolutionists! To think that the first dandelion plant had the sense and ability to perpetuate itself, and then the genious to produce near-weighless seeds atop a launch pad each specially rigged to a umbrella/parachute-like lift system designed to catch the wind to transport the seed… ugh!” A fool says in his heart there is no God. If this doesn’t reveal the brilliance of a Creator I’m not sure what does.

That this was designed by a Designer is a plain fact – you hear that science community? Fact! Your theory is ridiculous fantasy. It’s remarkable to me that there is even a debate on our origins. The existence of a Creator is not religious dogma, it’s just a plain-as-day, open-your-blind-eyes fact. There isn’t even a remote chance this seed or anything else evolved. Please don’t offend my intelligence or force the children of the world to accept your fairy tale theories.

Graduation pictures – Caleb

Where’s waldo? Can you find Caleb?

Can you identify the trees behind Caleb? How about the white one blooming over my left shoulder?

Thomas loves this one because he’s tallest – really we are standing on an incline 🙂

With Kristen’s mom and dad