You and I were born together. We experienced life at the same time. From the moment we opened our eyes we started seeing life together. When you were hungry I heard you crying for someone to come feed you. We laughed together when they tickled us. When they would say words to you I helped you repeat them.
We were partners from the beginning. We were meant to be together experiencing everyday life. We caught onto the signals and sounds the adults were showing us. Some we liked and some we did not like. We found out together we cannot always get our way, but you always tried to get me to figure out a way for us to get what you wanted.
I was the brain and your were the one to put things into action. You wanted your older brother to chase you. I told you to kick him in the knee and run. It was funny when you tried to kick him in the knee your little leg could only reach his shin. You started running down the hall with us both laughing out loud that it worked. I saw your older sister and told you to run behind her and you did. You wrapped your little arms around her legs looking up through them to your brother who had stopped chasing you.
I could hear you breathing with excitement and anticipation of what might happen next. I could tell your brother had that look of “I will get you next time“. I heard your sister telling your brother to leave you alone. I thought now you have a refuge to run to anytime you wanted your brother’s attention without any cost until one day an unexpected turn of events.
You did the same thing running down the hall away from your brother hiding behind your sister who is the oldest, but this time the words exiting out of your sister’s mouth was not the same as before. She said your brother’s name and the unexpected happened, “get him” were the words she spoke as she pulled you from behind her turning you over to the clutches of your brother’s fast tickling hands. You laughed so hard that tears rolled out of your eyes.
I knew you loved every minute of it. You loved your brother and sister very much. It did not seem long after that we found ourselves very lonely. You and I did not understand why the house felt so empty. You and I were seemingly always alone now. I did not realize until later the explanation of why we were so alone.
If I understood I would have told you why you do not see your brother and sister much anymore. I would have told you your sister is twelve years older than you and she has gone out into the world to discover for herself a life she wants to live. I would have told you your brother is nine years older than you and he is doing his thing in the world.
If I had known I would have told you your dad was working three jobs to support the family. I would have told you our mom carried us inside her while going to college to go to work helping to support our family. Our emptiness and loneliness could have been more bearable if we understood. We would have understood why mom was so busy when she got home. We would have understood why dad came in so late at night. We would have understood our brother and sister are gone out starting their own life without us.
We were growing up together on our own with the passing moments with mom and dad. We started playing in the woods picking up sticks pretending they were guns playing Cowboys and Indians. The older neighborhood kid got us into a lot of trouble because we did not know what were doing was bad. We both thought he was our friend.
You and I learned to entertain ourselves in the summer with the warm breeze and sunlight flickering down on us through the trees. We played in the snow together following whatever tracks we saw into the rolling hills. We sat on the couch with our knees in the seat and our stomachs against the back looking out through the window at the cloudy skies and the pouring down rain.
LIFE STARTED TO CHANGE
I was slowly finding out how naive I was and could not protect you from things. We both fell into situations we had to find out the hard way it was wrong. You became addicted to smoking cigarettes. You were always pushing me for ways to get or buy more cigarettes. The lies and deceptions started changing us. We developed an appetite of wanting revenge for having our happy naive world destroyed by people pretending to be good.
You started wanting more and more of things while I was having doubts. I felt like you wanted to do things without thinking about them. You were getting caught up in the moments and I was having second thoughts. Little did I know we were slowly separating and going different directions. We were having fights between us below the surface of what people could not see.
We finished elementary school together and went to middle school. We both found the same thing there, but with more intensity. The bullies were bigger and meaner. The ones who wanted to experiment more things conned you into trying them and I followed. We both truly did not know how naive we were until high school.
Right before high school our older brother visited and it was good to see him. He had become our hero that we looked up to through imaging what he would be like if we had truly known him. He wanted to share a few words of advice about the same high school we were going to the next year. He said, “the first year will be like hell and then it gets worse after that“. Of course, being brothers the advice was heard, but not fully understood or believed.
HIGH SCHOOL
We were in the eighth grade, which is the first year of the high school. It was a school from eighth grade to twelfth grade. We both were so excited to be in high school, but the advice came to life so quickly our brother had given. We did not see with understanding that the high school providing dorms for foreign exchange students and out of state students brought in a mixture of experiences.
I did not understand until it was to late the congress kids, kicked out of local high school kids, kids with addictions, anger management kids, and other types of issues kids brought in the knowledge about drugs, alcohol, and sex. We were both so naive and country innocent with being slow to catch onto the greater lies of all the players callous to hurting and destroying those around them. We had fallen into many traps enjoying and hating things together.
THE SEPARATION
This is where you and I started to have a great separation. You went on a warpath of getting back at all those who used you, abused you, lied to you, took advantage of you. I was seeing more clearly for the first time you and I were very different. I followed you and helped you thinking we were the same.
You did things to other people with me right there with you recording the entire event. You were happy with each revenge and I was also to a certain degree, but not completely. Something was wrong and I could not see exactly what it was. Your wants and desires seemed to be out of control and reckless.
I saw you wanting to do to the naive the things that were done to you. You had become one of them inflicting the pain and experimenting. I was wanting to back off, but you did not. You had a hunger for evil and I wanted to cruise for a while. You had me doing things that I did not understand. It seemed like I wanted to do one thing and you wanted to do another.
I started looking at you really hard and I did not like what I was seeing. You were telling me what to do without considering the consequences. You really did not have any consciences. You were like an animal with the “eat or be eaten” philosophy. I was looking back at all the people in the wake of our past with them drowning in the pain, the deceptions, the theft, and other sorrows.
I WANTED OUT
You and I were born together. We really had good fun growing up when we were younger. I remember when we were on top of the shed thinking we could run down the roof and jump into the backyard over the child proof fence our parents bought to keep us from wandering off.
We did alright through elementary school. There were some good times outnumbering the bad ones. We met many new friends and teachers enjoying it for the most part. When we moved onto middle school it was basically the same as elementary with a little increase of things, but all in all not bad.
High school was our turning point. When our brother told us, “the first year will be like hell and then it gets worse after that” was not a joke because it was absolutely true. It was definitely not something we planned, but all things fell into place just like he said and beyond what he may have thought.
I wanted out of things you were constantly gravitating towards. I was tired of the games and the lies. I just did not how to be free from your influence. I knew I could totally leave you, but I had to find a peace of mind. The life you were trying to live had become tortuous to me. I had hated what we both had become and wanted out. I wanted a change.
THE CHANGE
You and I adapted to things the hard way. It seemed like we were always into troublesome situations. Everywhere we turned our lives was being filled with hurt, sorrow, pain, and despair. We changed from being the “receivers” into the “givers” and I did not like that, which you did.
I went to church one Sunday morning sitting as far away from the preacher as I could. I have no clue what was being said because I was just sitting there abiding time. I heard a voice in the form of a thought dropped into my head with no one close by that said, “you tried everything else why not try me?” It made sense to me to give God a try and I did.
You and I saw lies and deceptions from schools, neighborhoods, and churches, but this was different. This voice I heard came from not a school, a neighborhood, or church person. At this point I gave God a chance to be my best friend replacing you and others for a little while.
As I was getting to know God and how He felt about things. I began to see and understand you better. We were so close that I did not truly see you for you. Some of the things right underneath your nose can be totally missed.
I SEE YOU
We became a confusing blur of actions and I did not know what I was doing until God, the Spirit of truth, began to show me all truth about myself and you. I was trying to quiet, but with you I was doing the things I hate. I discovered I was not doing the bad things, but guilty allowing you to do the things, which implies an agreement to your actions to others. I realize there is nothing good in you.
You are totally committed to your selfish desires dragging me into your world and I did not know how to stop you. I wanted to do good, but I did not do it because you convinced me otherwise. God has given me strength and understanding on how to be truly happy not with temporary fixes.
You were the one warring against my thinking. You were the one that wanted to live life recklessly for yourself and who cares about others. You influence made me a prisoner in my mind that your ways were the answer. The whole world has been tricked by you. I was born with you and now “I SEE YOU” for who you are.
I was born with you at the same time into this world. You were my flesh and body. I believed in you. I trusted you with your instincts. We did all kinds of things together, but you had your own agenda. You were going to take my spirit with you. You used my thinking. You used my will. You deceived my heart into believing you. My spirit believed the things you were wanting were all good, but in the end there were consequences you did not care about. (Romans 7:15-25)
YOU CAN’T HIDE
When we were little I did not see the subtle secret desires you possessed until we got older. You had me blind thinking we were a team. It was not until your desires became evident of selfish origins regardless of other things in consideration. You were against my spirit from the beginning. Your animal instinct was literally your way of thinking. It is because of God I can now see your trickery and fight against you. This makes it difficult to do anything you please.
God’s Holy Spirit is now my roommate with my spirit inside your body leading and helping me to overcome your “immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these…” (Gal. 5:19-21). You are packed with every wrong intention and influence you can trick any spirit into brainstorming more things in the world. You hate God and could never be a Christian.
No wonder when I was trying to read God’s word you were dispatching extra sleep hormones. No wonder when I wanted to pray and fellowship with God you would try to distract me with things you thought more important and should be done. You were hating every moment that God was speaking to me.
God was showing my spirit that I can have in my life “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Gal. 5:22, 23) I could live a life that there would be no need for a man made law to govern me because I acted upon things that does not need to be controlled?
Look where you took me inflicting false love, facade of joy, no peace only war, kindness to get something, goodness for a foot in the door, blind faithfulness to steal, gentleness as a set up, self-control to get the first punch in, and being detained by the law because of suspicion of doing wrong.
YOU CAN’T GO WITH ME
Now, that I understand you. I see though you were born with me “you can’t go with me” (1 Cor. 15:50). When we were born together in this world you were born with a count down clock of death and decay. I was born with you having an eternal death of punishment and fire. You were simply going to return to the earth as dust and as we departed from each other my spirit was destined for eternity of pain.
You wanted to live it up while you could selfishly ticking downward to existing no more all the while my spirit was feeding your needs oblivious to the unchanging punishment awaiting me. If it were not for God and His second chance of eternal life for my spirit I would have followed you to the end of your day being release from you into my eternal days of punishment.
When I was born with you into this world I did not know you were a body of death. I thought we would live forever and not become like the old people we saw in life. I was going to die with you maintaining a spirit of an evil death forever. Wow, it is really shocking the difference between you and me.
I WANT TO GO
I am truly alive in more ways I could ever know. I can have in my life “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Gal. 5:22, 23). I appreciate being born with you and the vehicle that you have been for my spirit, but greater now that I know I can have a God led life while the clock of time ticks downward to the day death visits you freely returning you to dust and releasing me to eternal life.
You were with me when I was born again of the water and the spirit applying God’s plan of salvation to my spirit. You were with me when I was lowered into the water baptism having the name of Jesus Christ pronounced over me symbolic of being buried with him in death applying the blood of the Lamb of God that he shed on the cross, which the blood is in his name washing away all my sins. You were with me when I was praying if God wanted to give me His Spirit like they received on the day of Pentecost that I wanted to receive it and He did. You were with me when His Holy Spirit came bursting forth from deep within me speaking another language that I had not learned through you praising God, which was a sign to you and me along with anyone else who could hear Him speaking through me (Jn. 3:3,5; Acts 2:4, 38).
You were with me when we were both born into this world. You were with me when I was born again. You are with me now as we walk each day understanding each other’s destiny. We will always be at odds, but thank God you will return to the dust of the earth with no lasting punishment and I will be released being reconciled with God with no lasting punishment, but life eternal.
SEE YOUR BODY AND SPIRIT
Your body can’t go with you no matter if you go to heaven or the place of eternal punishment. Your body loves this world only and the pleasures it has to offer. It will return to the dust of the earth. You will not need your body to experience feelings in heaven or the other place. Your body is locked into returning to the dust of the earth.
Your spirit is going to go to heaven or the place of eternal punishment. God has provided a payment plan to pay off death, hell, and the grave for your spirit through Jesus Christ. It is a necessity you see your body for what it is. You were born with it, but it is not the best guidance counselor for your spirit’s destiny.
You can be born again of the water and the Spirit (Jn. 3:3,5; Acts 2:38). This gives you the best guidance counselor living inside your body as a roommate to your mind, heart, and soul helping you to live inside your flesh with the fruits of “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Gal. 5:22, 23)
It comes down to the “want to” in your life. The wants of your fleshly body or the wants of your spirit. Are you tired of the battles you are fighting? You have no support from your flesh. It is a false lie pretending to be your friend and what it thinks is best for you. God is the true support and friend guiding you to absolute completeness you could ever experience.
I pray God’s goodness showers upon drenching you with His Holy and loving Spirit opening your life to the greatest things you could ever experience.