Are There Holes In Your Armor?

Our Light Brahma chickens are starting to lay. They are over 6 months old. This is the longest it has ever taken for any of our chickens to start to lay. Yesterday morning, my husband went out to open the chicken coop before work. He found 3 dead chickens inside. Something had killed them, but had not eaten them. There were a couple of small holes that something could get in, so we were thinking weasels. There was a slightly larger hole up high, but he did not think anything came through that one. He went out last night after work, to plug the holes that he had seen. It was dark by the time he got out there, but the light was on because of the timer. He found 2 possums in the coop. The door had not been shut yet for the night, so it is easy to see how they got in. He came back up to the house for something just as my son arrived home. Joshua went out and took care of the problem. I am hoping that this will not put them off laying for awhile due to fright. There were no dead birds this morning. Praise the Lord!!!

This reminds me of our lives. We leave little openings in our spiritual armor. We think that those areas are not so bad. We continue to flirt with things that we have no business being around. However, we allow the enemy to enter through those areas. May we listen to the Holy Spirit and His leading in all areas of our lives. It saves us so much heartache. Often times when the heartache comes then we ask for the Lord to deliver us, or say "Why Me?" Instead, we should start in humble repentance and ask the Lord's forgiveness and then go back and allow the Lord to help us plug the holes we left. There is still heartache, but He will help you to walk through it and he will bear you up in it.

I love the picture someone showed me one time. They drew a circle and put a dot in the center. They said that the circle was the Christian life. The dot in the center was Jesus. Then they took an eraser and smeared the outer circle into a big smudge. They said that in today's world, that the defined circle is no more. Christianity has been watered down in today's world. Many Christians try to see how far into the smudged area they can live and still be a Christian, instead of what else could they change or get rid of to get closer to the center. This kind of thinking is where the holes in our armor come from. May we all listen for the Holy Spirit's prompting to move closer to that center. I am reading a book by John Piper. It is called, "Don't Waste Your Life." I would highly recommend it. I believe that most of us who claim the name of Christ are wasting our lives. We are caught up in the affairs of the everyday life. 2 Timothy 2:3,4 Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier May we be about the Master's Business.

The pictures are just some fall pictures and one of our chickens.