#The positive impact it had on my life is insane and honestly drawing this piece also made me realize how much my art style improved overtim

[ayyunah]

happy (late) birthday owl house. I miss you everyday

[kingdomofthelogos]

Reason Belongs to God

Read Mark 4

Download a printable version here.

The world desires us to commit the suicide of thought, to take our God-given will and make it passive to serve both sin and hell. Our faith calls us to be patient in waiting for God but also hastening the work of Christ’s Kingdom. The world often wants to bait us into going to war over narratives, emotional opinions, and all things petty, but Christ wants us to preach His message: the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15) This is the message that we must preach, realizing that reason and truth belong to God. When Christ calmed the storm at the end of Mark 4, He was giving us evidence that we must either accept or ignore. Either Christ calmed the storm or He did not, and if He indeed did such a miracle, then that means something substantial about everything He said. We do well to illuminate the truth of Jesus’ miracles, for they show us how the spiritual affairs break into our material world.

We tend to think of our faith in the abstract, that the spiritual warfare of powers and principalities is confined to the heavenly realms. We tend to think of the supernatural as that which breaks the laws of physics and reality, and therefore it can be dismissed as both impossible and irrational in an orderly world. However, to you I posit this: that perhaps the supernatural is not the breaking of the laws of physics, but the perfection of them. Perhaps the great miracles of God are not behind the curtain manipulations of the elements in life, or the quick swapping of cards done by a magician's sleight of hand, where God quickly rips a broken piece from our world and replaces it with a new one before anyone sees His dangerous appearance, but rather the miracles are the skillful and holy actions of the resolute hand of the Master of all. The miracles are not breakdowns of logic in the fallen world, but restorations back to the providential order of creation. 

Inasmuch as Jesus teaches us wisdom through parables, He is extremely gracious in showing us signs. The calming of the sea is a material fact, and through such an act of domestication Jesus shows us how the immaterial virtues break into the material world. Do not be deceived, the spiritual world  is breaking into our physical one and it has a substantial impact on everything in life.

The arena of objective truth belongs to God, and it is the devil who lives in opinions and subjectivity. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and at the end of each day said “it is good,” but the devil came along and tried to deceive Eve in saying “did God really say?” Jesus firmly declared that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but His murderous accusers wanted to contrive a narrative where Jesus said He was the King of the Jews. Not even the ancient world would deny the fact of the resurrection or the material miracles of healing and exorcisms; therefore, it would create narratives and perspectives to distract from the hard facts.

Reason belongs to God, and the more people pay attention to the logical order of God’s creation the more they are drawn to God. It has been a very clever trick of hell to make us believe the foolery that reason and faith are contradictory to one another. Reason is not opposed to God, but the whitewashed idolatry that charades as reason is. Hell wants us to view truth as a sensation, something to only summon as it pleases.

CS Lewis writes very cleverly on this matter in the Screwtape Letters. Uncle Screwtape, a demon in hell, writes to his nephew Wormwood saying: “It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of God’s clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly news and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” or “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional” or “ruthless”. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences.”

What CS Lewis is trying to teach through these demonic conversations is that reason and objective reality belong to God, but hell wants to distract you with subjectivity, with the unreasonable world where you have “your truth” and I have “my truth,” and nothing is actually held as true. The fact is this: if people will use their minds to contemplate the healings and miracles of Christ, things which were not even denounced by those who hated Jesus as He walked the earth, then they will be inclined to realize that He is Lord of all creation and the true Messiah. Those who disbelieved in Jesus could not denounce Him on the basis of rejecting His miracles or resurrection, so they had to ignore those facts and make statements like “would God really care about your sexual life,” or “how could a loving God permit suffering.” All rejections involve some form of ignoring the material truth of His miracles, because if you honestly square your mind around calming a storm, or around a bodily resurrection, then your mind is awakened to the truth of Christ.

In Acts 4:16-17 the ruling counsel said 16 “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everyone living in Jerusalem knows they have performed a notable sign, and we cannot deny it. 17 But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in this name.” The counsel in Acts 4 included Annas and Caiaphas, two High Priests who had interviewed Jesus and then sent Him bound to the cross. By the time of the events in Acts 4, they realize they cannot argue with the factual truth of Jesus. If people know anything about the resurrection or healings done in His Name, they will discover the truth that He is the Messiah. Therefore, the only choice they have is to censor the discussion. If any light is shed on the subject, even in a biased way, they run the risk of the truth getting out. Their only choice is to outlaw any mention of it. 

If someone does not want a subject talked about in the public sphere, history tells us this is almost always because giving any light on the matter will disprove the official story. One does not have to silence things which disprove themselves. Our world has a big problem with shoes being made by slaves in sweatshops, and recently I have been trying to buy some shoes not made in a sweatshop. There is a particular company that asserts itself as being a virtuous shoe company, giving a pair of shoes to an impoverished nation for every pair someone buys in a developed country. However, they will not give a straight answer to the simple question “are your shoes made in a sweatshop?” Here is a truth: if someone cannot answer a simple question like this in broad daylight, then the answer is not good. If something is indeed false, then the best tactic for defeating it is to shed more light on the subject, not to cut out to the tongues of dissenters and hope that others forget their dissent. 

In our modern world we are afflicted by an inability to receive truth. Sometimes it is a rejection of the truth, and other times a lack of interest. Regardless of intention, our world only tends to believe something is true based on whether or not we like the consequences of something to be true. Rather than letting the truth be its own reward, we tend to be more focused on whether or not we want to live with something being true.

For instance, if we consider the fact that a child has a unique human DNA at the moment of conception, then we will indeed realize that aborting an unborn son or daughter is indeed murdering a child of God at his or her most defenseless state. There are many in the world, even the secular world, who will happily quote 1 John 3:15 saying, “anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer,” so that it can feel morally superior in giving a tut-tut to those who speak roughly, but at the same time they will bear false witness about abortion with the euphemism of calling it healthcare. They ignore the very fact of murder because they do not want to live with the consequential fact that those who advance it are openly advancing murder. The assertion that abortion is healthcare is not rooted in logic, reason, or truth, but in the desire to appear morally superior; however, any recognition that a child is indeed a child will immediately destroy any notion of justice or mercy. It is through this attitude that some become so obsessed with wanting to slander the church as ignorant and immoral that they  completely ignore the fact that they had to stop kissing a statue of baal in order to speak.

Despite this sad degeneration into paganism, we must count it as joy when people kiss a statue to baal before slandering us in our faith. For the more open the world is about its paganistic insanity the easier it is for us to draw the distinction between the Way of Life and the way of death. James 1:2 instructs us to consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials. 

Hell is filled with storytellers and yarn-eaters, but the seat of Heaven has a watchful eye through which all things unknown will be made known. God is one of truth, and in the business of making things known. At the heart of revival, is recognition of an almighty and absolute God. Christ wants us to step into the light and walk in the truth. The more we speak the truth of Christ’s authority over the wind and storm, the more the Gospel is spread. It is God who wants us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, and hell who wants us to be passive and have others think for us. For so long we have been shy about asserting the hard truths of Christ’s power to heal and cast out demons, but the more we awaken the organ of critical thinking on these issues, the more glory is given to God.

When Christ displayed His authority over the sea, He demonstrated with evidence that His power is genuine. He is not here to dismantle creation, but out of love to restore it. The sea is a great mystery, for its depths wait in eternal darkness far beyond the reach of ordinary man. Yet, Christ is even lord over the sea. The miracles of Christ are not a creed, philosophy, or even a narrative. They are a fact, a piece of evidence that one must then either reconcile or reject. Christ gave us the means of verifying the great truths He revealed, both those which were moral and those which were material. 

Our modern world is extraordinarily concerned with whether an idea is “what the scholars say” or if it is merely an opinion held by the “non-college educated,” whether something is the “prevailing narrative” or “conspiracy theory.” But this is the suicide of thought, and Jesus comes in strict rebuke of it. Jesus calms the storms, and He gives us something which is a material fact. People can bicker all day long about whether or not they think Him a sorcerer, but if they recognize the hard fact that He calmed the storm then something serious is awakened. Moreover, the chances are that if people come to terms with the fact that He calmed the storm, they will then realize He is Lord over the sea, and if He is Lord over the Sea then He is indeed the Messiah. From this fact, it will then become certain that His teachings are indeed correct.

The suicide of thought is very serious problem in our modern world. We must understand that reason belongs to God. The more we tell the Gospel and trust its truth to convict fallen hearts, the more it will spread. God wants to transform us and restore our minds that we might be free from the inescapable burdens.

Ephesians 6:10-12 instructs us: 10 finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. It can be discouraging to realize the sinister dimensions of the evil against which we truly stand. However, we must raise up courage. We are called to both be still and know that I am God, as Psalm 46:10 details, but to also contend for the Gospel as instructed in Jude 1:3-4, where the apostle appeals to us saying: I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. 4 For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Peter gives us clarity on how we walk this straight and narrow pathway. 2 Peter 3:11-12 read: since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?

We must be patient in waiting for God but also hastening the work of Christ’s Kingdom. The world often wants to bait us into going to war with one another over petty things, but Christ wants us to preach His message, which we find in Mark 1:15, the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” That is the message that we must preach, and when we let the Gospel out of the cage it will awaken minds more than any popular topic of our day. Sure, the world was obsessed with the politics of Rome vs Jerusalem, but Jesus’ message was altogether different. Jesus did not debate the world on the topics it wanted, but affirmed an entirely different way of thinking. It was the Gospel and its unwavering truth, and it alone is the way to good, the true, and the beautiful.

[queengeekrose]

Setbacks and Mental Health

As some of you know, I started streaming on Twitch last summer, in July, as a way to help me manage my mental health and deal with some of my issues that I have because I'm almost completely housebound. Being housebound like I am means I have very little interaction with other people, except online, and what I do have tends to be limited to doctors and other people who are also ill, or to people who are seeing me in a very limited set of circumstances, most of which are not positive, and people tend to judge me rather harshly for, for a variety of reasons. It makes my introverted nature and extreme shyness and social anxiety a lot harder to deal with, especially since I hear a lot of very rude comments whenever I go out, because I have very good hearing, and sadly, I am far too used to hearing this type of thing. I've been hearing abusive comments thrown at me since I was old enough to understand words, from one person or another. Most of them I can just let roll off my back, but some bother me, a lot. I get triggered, in the true meaning of the word, by some of the comments and I start to backslide into mental health issues that are scary and it can take days, week, or even longer to pull myself back out of those pits. I haven't really talked about it with anyone online, honestly, but maybe I should. Maybe I should bare my soul and be honest about what happened to me over time, instead of just hinting at things and letting people draw their own conclusions. It might help me deal with things too. I'm not really sure.

Some of the things I've taked about in my writing, extensively, happened to me. Others I drew from experiences I helped others get through. All of them however do have more than a large helping of truth to them, when I was describing the hardships of abuse, mental torture, rape, violence, kidnapping (someone I knew in college was grabbed by an ex and held against her will for about six days, she was extremely traumatized and had to leave school because of it by the end of the semester and ended up moving in with me for a few weeks before that, because she felt safer around me than anyone else), eating disorders, anxiety and panic attacks, and painful shyness. I have even talked a bit about PTSD in my stories, and ADHD. All of these things I'm pulling from my own experience, to make my writing as real and human as possible, even though I'm trying to write a character other people can relate to as well. What I'm trying to do is flesh out enough realism to give 'you' a backstory without taking over whatever headcannon you are creating for yourself in the story, when I do that, so I borrow very heavily from my own experiences to keep the experience geniune and grounded. I want thing to be so real you can picture them vividly in your head and immerse yourself, not get lost because something seems inauthentic or wrong, so I tend to pour myself into the writing, more and more, as time goes on. And it's somewhat cathartic too, to a degree, to write about some of the issues I've been through. Don't misunderstand me in anyway please. It's still extremely hard to think about to talk about with anyone and still feels like an open and bleeding stab wound most days, but maybe now it feels like the knife has been removed and the bleeding has slowed a bit, to the point it's not so dangerous anymore. I can cope with things a lot better, most of the time. My writing gave me a lot of my mental piece of mind back.

And then I found streaming and the online communities on Discord and Twitch. This really turned around a lot more then. I had suffered a major mental setback when my father died, even though we were estranged, for a variety of reasons, and mental health had reached an all time low. I went to a doctor and started some new medicines, which helped, slowly, and after about four months on them, I was able to function somewhat normally again a bit. That's when I found Twitch and really threw myself into streaming, modding, and Discord, communicating with people that way. It helped me pull myself back out a lot faster and basically reset my mental health meter to normal much more quickly and stay balanced, with fewer slips. I still had a few day to day struggles with things, like remembering to eat, something I had gotten out of the habit of doing much of, or really at all, when my mood swung started to slip. It had been nearly a year, really, since I had eaten normally, if I'm being honest. That means, as of writing this, in February of 2019, it's been over two years of me having little to no appetite, often skipping meals or forcing myself to eat just one meal a day. I had a lot of medical treatments in there too that made me nauseated and I threw up anything I did eat. Sadly, I never lost a large amount of weight and I am still rather overweight. I did lose some, not that I was really trying to at any point, I just haven't had the appetite or desire to eat anything and facing for often seems like too much for me.

Twitch helped me find people with similar interests and helped me find new areas I was able to absolutely shine in. It didn't matter that my legs didn't work normally, I had a natural talent for keeping communities in line as a moderator on streams for other people. So what if I was a bit overweight? I could make badges and emotes that people liked. Who cared if I struggled with shyness in person? The internet was a great buffer and it meant I never actually saw who I was talking to directly in my streams. I was just talking to names. And yes, sadly I did get trolls. But not that many really, compared to a lot of women I've talked to. I figured it was just soemthing I'd have to live with. Mostly I got them early in my streaming career and they came in and heckled me about my weight, I kicked them out and it was over, I moved on, no harm no foul. I mostly even forgot about them pretty immediately. They didn't leave any lasting impact on me because as I said, I've been hearing that kind of comment, or ones like it all my life.

The trolling I got last week on Wednesday night was different though. For the first time ever it was very sexual in nature. It made me extremely uncomfortable. There were three trolls involved as well. The first was fairly harmless, just egging the second on, who I warned several times, then timed out and eventually banned. The third crossed several lines and has caused me so much emotional and mental distress I have been struggling with severe relapses of my major depressive disorder, PTSD, and even dissociating, which my family doesn't know about. I don't know how to tell them about it. They think it's just me spacing out or my mind wandering, not that I'm literally unable to answer and I lose chunks of time, even if I've answered. I didn't even realize I had been dissociating again until a friend told me he had said things to me and I couldn't recall any of those conversations, nor most of the evening really. I realized I had large gaps in my memory of what had been going on with small breaks in the fog that were clear, what usually happend when I'm having my episodes, and I knew I had to do something. I had to take a step back. I don't dissociate unless something is seriously wrong, obviously.

Now, I'm sure all of you are wondering just what happpened that triggered me so badly that night. I'll explain. First, those two trolls shook me up pretty badly. Like I said, I'm extremely introverted and streaming is already a struggle for me a lot of the time, even if I put on a good front and can act like it's no big deal. Inside, I'm terrified. It wears be down and wears me out. Dealing with trolls in my own stream is hard on me. (On other people's channels, I have no problems, when I'm the mod. I know it's my job and they trust me to handle things.) Secondly, there was a later troll who came into the stream who sent me a direct message, without ever addressing the stream, asking me personal questions like what I was wearing, then trying to buy my panties for insanely large amounts of money. That triggered my PTSD very badly. In college, I had had a guy attempt to sexually assulat me and call me a whore, offering me increasing large amounts of money, much the same way. I only got away because I kicked him off me and screamed for campus security, who heard me and hauled him off. I never told my family about it, mainy because I hate talking about it and don't want to bring it up. I will say though, I don't think he was getting up quickly from my kick at the time. It was before I was in a wheelchair and I had a very powerful set of legs and actively practiced kickboxing. But regardless of that, it triggered me very, very badly the other night, and I'm still suffering occassion episodes. I have a doctor's appointment scheduled very soon, and I intend on talking to her about what to do then, if things haven't gotten back to normal by then, but in the mean time, I'm immersing myself in my usually stress relieving activities and taking a short break from Twitch and twitter to get my mental health back in order.

Sadly one of the side effects of all the mental health issues I struggle with is terrible insomnia. It means many nights I'm unable to sleep, or sleep only a few hours. I know it makes my friends and family worry, but I can't help it. It's all my brain is letting me get. I nap when I can. If I try to sleep more, I have horrible, terrifying nightmares and sleep paralysis. I also just can't sleep. I'm really trying to do my best here everyone. Please know that. I appreciate the worry. Just know I'm still here, struggling on, one day at a time. That's the real meaning behind #PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) after all. Just doing my best, moving forward a day at time and not giving up. It's also why I try to pay it forward as much as I can and make sure everyone else is happy and taken care of too. Stay safe and happy everyone. I love you all!

QueenGeekRose