CASPER
THE FRIENDLY GHOST
It is often reported by people with fresh spiritual experiences that afterwards, it seems like everything in their life is set up to oppose their new view. It's as if they're being subjected to test after test. Why is that? Let's look at some of the reasons:
1. The old life was built around the Old You: old habits, old friends, old pleasures, old behaviors. The New You gets dropped straight into this, and it feels like diving into a cold pool.
2. Part of being 'new' is that you become aware of evils that weren't noticed before. They were always there, but they used to be treated as simply being part of life. Now, the new believer has a new and greater goal, and the boulders that were climbed as par for the course are now seen for what they were all along.
3. The 'newbies' have yet to learn how to discern. Discernment takes a lifetime to get right (maybe that's one reason God gave us a lifetime in which to do it?)
4. It takes time to learn how to see things in their right context. There may be good, godly ways and reasons to do what one used to do sinfully. Often, as the newborn faith develops, God gives back much of what had to be spurned at the beginning. One of the most common experiences of the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was that the new convert would throw away all their old 'secular' rock and roll records, only to find out years later that they were not such a danger after all, and that a few of those old records even expressed a well-tested faith or spoke a truth we needed to hear. God gave them back the gift of enjoying the music, but had to take it away at first so that their inner priorities could be changed and their New You could take shape.
5. Satan really does attack early and often. He does not like losing anyone. It's easier for Satan to pull back those who are not yet solid in the faith.
1. The old life was built around the Old You: old habits, old friends, old pleasures, old behaviors. The New You gets dropped straight into this, and it feels like diving into a cold pool.
2. Part of being 'new' is that you become aware of evils that weren't noticed before. They were always there, but they used to be treated as simply being part of life. Now, the new believer has a new and greater goal, and the boulders that were climbed as par for the course are now seen for what they were all along.
3. The 'newbies' have yet to learn how to discern. Discernment takes a lifetime to get right (maybe that's one reason God gave us a lifetime in which to do it?)
4. It takes time to learn how to see things in their right context. There may be good, godly ways and reasons to do what one used to do sinfully. Often, as the newborn faith develops, God gives back much of what had to be spurned at the beginning. One of the most common experiences of the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was that the new convert would throw away all their old 'secular' rock and roll records, only to find out years later that they were not such a danger after all, and that a few of those old records even expressed a well-tested faith or spoke a truth we needed to hear. God gave them back the gift of enjoying the music, but had to take it away at first so that their inner priorities could be changed and their New You could take shape.
5. Satan really does attack early and often. He does not like losing anyone. It's easier for Satan to pull back those who are not yet solid in the faith.