Guerilla Warfare

When the British came over to fight the Revolutionary war, we were a young country with little munitions.  We were unskilled and we were outnumbered.  In Britain, they learned how to fight formally by lining up in  a line.  Someone said, “Fire” and they all fired their guns.  When they got up, the next group got on one knee until they fired their weapons.  As they fired, they advanced.  The colonist knew that they could not fight that kind of war, they weren’t trained for it.  They used a method of warfare made famous by the Native Americans already on the continent.  It is called Guerrilla warfare.  It is a type of guerilla warfare that involved shooting, running, hiding, and tricking.  It was winning by any means possible.  The Britain’s were no match for this type of warfare.  They were not used to having to find their target hiding in the swamps.  They also had bright red uniforms with a big white “X” telling us where to shoot.  It is no secret that we won.  I think that we try to formally fight the enemy.  We try to gain strength from just coming to church on Sunday and Wednesday.  We try to gain strength by just doing the conventional.  When the enemy is more powerful than you or simply just wiser, you have to get crazy.  You have to go and find a revival, call up a friend and have a shut in, pump Christian music in your home all day long.  You have to go to every service that your church offers and make a friend out of the strongest person you can.  This is not a cute fight.  It is a nonconventional battle.  This nonconventional battle requires nonconventional means.

Manuever War

This war strategy is a strategy where the enemy hits you so hard that you become disoriented and confused.  This is the blow  that has you seeing stars and catching your breath.  It is the kind of hit where you may have to stop and think about how to recover before you move on.  In December of 1941, the Japanese army did just that at Pearl Harbor.  They hit us so hard that it took us a while to recover.  In Germany, they called this, "The Blitz".  I acknowledge that the enemy can punch you and leave you heaving, but the key is in how you get your wits about yourself.  After Pearl Harbor, it was like awakening a sleeping giant.  America came back and ended the entire war by dropping two bombs on two cities.  Now, all over the world people talk about why we did that.  I remind historians who question our ethics that we did not start the fire.  They bombed us first.  The blows of the enemy can shake us, but we should get up with the resolve to take them out.  We have the power because we have God.  The Father, the Son and the Holyghost is a deadly combination.  Japan may have won the battle, but America won the war.  You need to come back into the ring swinging until the bell rings.  I know that the blow will knock you off your feet, but it should not knock you out the ring.

Shut Up

A war of attrition can come upon you from people you would not think are attacking you.  When the enemy is trying to wear you out, he keeps coming at you in an area that you are weak until you just give in.  This is the couple trying to have a baby, who has to put up with meddling relatives asking them every five seconds if they are expecting.  This is the mother who crosses the line to remind her son or daughter that they really should lose weight every time their feet push under the table.  This is the meddling father who constantly reminds the daughter, that she is not getting any younger and she needs to get married, despite the numerous failed relationships from which she needs a break.  This is the church mother who is trying to hook you up with a husband while trampling on your right to privacy, like you need her help.  This is the person who constantly reminds you that you don't have the finances you need.  If they said it once, it may have been a constructive.  When they said it twice, it was irritating.  When they said it three times, it was an attack.  The attack was to make you jump up and do something without thinking just so you can get the enemy to shut up.  I can remember when many people seemed to violate the privacy of my life with their notions of how they think it should have ran.  When I got tired of the voices, I shut them up.  I told all them married women who stayed in my business to go to their own homes, jump in the bed with their own husbands and leave me alone.  I told my relatives that my weight was not their problem nor their concern.  I cut off a whole side of my fathers family because they could not accept a woman in ministry.  I have stopped folks in mid sentence.  I have addressed them while the words are oozing from their mouth, not because they were trying to help me, but because they were trying to attack me.  The problems for most of us is that we don't know when we are attacked.  We get confused because the attacker is our mother or our father or our friend.  Sometimes, you got to look folks in the eye and rebuke the devil if they are acting like the devil.  I love my relatives, but they ain't above God, so in the name of Jesus, get off my back.



An Attack
http://youtu.be/feK8DO8t-Ow

Not an Attack
http://youtu.be/TEmhq6tgY9Q

War of Attrition

War is not pretty, but it is necessary.  One day, while studying something for a class unit, I began to take a strong look at the strategies of how man fights man.  If these strategies work on man, then they may be strategies the enemies uses to defeat us.  As we know, Lucifer tried to exalt his throne above God and I read no where in the Bible where he still is not trying to do it.  He is trying his best to get the best of God.  One example of military strategy is a War of attrition.  In a war of attrition, the enemy attempts to wear out his opponent.  The Vietnam war was a war of attrition, the North Vietnamese were sure that they could tire the South Vietnamese.  It worked.  In a war of attrition, you have to make the enemy think twice about repeated attacks.  As long as America was in the conflict, we gave them everything we had.  It is only when we left that the South Vietnamese were overcome.  While we were there, the enemy thought twice about attacking.  If the enemy wants to keep attacking, you have to show him that it is not worth his while.  Bothering me makes me go deeper in God.  I run to the rock quicker.  I call for help sooner.  I get on the altar earlier.  I want the enemy to think long and hard before he attacks me, it just may make me go higher.  Don't let this tactic wear you out.  The enemy only backs off when the strategy is not working.



War
http://youtu.be/bX7V6FAoTLc

Shoutin time

The process of becoming something great is a great thing.  I like the ending but I love the process.  Sometimes, if you just stop and think about where you are versus where you were, you will run in the aisle.  I may not be where I want to be, but thank God I am not where I used to be.  I don’t have to run from elephants in the living room and I can shut my door on every kind of confusion.  You have to have an appreciation for the desert.  It sure ain’t Egypt.  I keep a scrapbook of different events in my life, so that I can do just that.  I like the to take that stroll down memory lane and then burst out into a shout when I see how far the Lord has brought me from.  If God has brought you from a mighty long way.  If God has turned your life right side up, here is your music.  Find some space and let loose.

Karen Clark Sheard 101 Convocation

http://youtu.be/A5XBNJ6lMyU

Pray

When I was a child, I remembered senseless praying.  The saints would pray for people that I wrote off in my mind as useless.  They prayed for people so close to death, that even the doctor had given up and went home.  I can remember a time when you prayed until there was no need to pray.  I miss that time.  Now, people pray until the odds are against them, but they don't pray against the odds.  They pray until God makes a decision but they then don't pray for mercy.  They pray for God to fix the problem, then don't pray for God to fix the problem maker.  We need to pray until there is nothing else left to pray for.  Hope against hope.  Until God gets me off my knees, I am praying.




I know what prayer can do.
http://youtu.be/ZE4QRK9Qr8o

Intent

God knows the heart and the intent of it.  We all tend to think that if we talk a lot, we can hide intent, but the sad fact is that intent is hard to hide.  Whenever I am with a person for whom I am looking for deception, they seem to follow the same pattern.  Private people, like myself, let you know from the beginning of the relationship that I will not tell you everything about me.  I have nothing to hide, but my life is not a museum.  I am pretty forward.  Liars are different.  Most of them try to find something to say.  They have spent time making up excuses and rehearsing lines so that when the subject comes up, they have a quick and easy answer.  it is almost, too convenient.  Many liars resort to the answer that they think makes all their problems go away.  "I don't know".  I have heard this in so many forms."I blanked out and when I woke up, I was in handcuffs", or "I hit my head and I can't remember anything" or "I got confused because of a medication I was on".  Intent is rarely said through the mouth, but if you watch what they do, it becomes as apparent as the sun at noon.   Behavior speaks louder than words.

Don't Know Why I Didn't Come
http://youtu.be/tO4dxvguQDk