He is my Song

Teenagers are asking big questions: Who am I? Where do I fit? How do I stop hurting? Witchcraft shows up with answers to all three, and entertainment makes it look glamorous. Movies like The Craft made witchcraft look like the answer for bullied, lonely girls, and today's shows and feeds are doing the same thing with better special effects. Sarah's Story Take Sarah Anne Sumpolec , for example. Her family moved often when she was a child, and when her father finally settled them into an old house in Delaware, he told her, with excitement, that it was haunted. He taught her that she had special powers and was meant to follow in his footsteps. When she was 13, he handed her an old book of witchcraft, and that was the beginning. She wanted power over her life and an identity to call her own. By high school, she considered herself a witch: séances, tarot, spells, and an altar in her room. But the spirits she invited in didn't give her a new life. They convinced her that the only...

Children learn what's normal from what they see and hear. Before they can explain what they believe, they've already been formed by the heroes they cheer for and the songs they sing in the back seat. That's why we should be concerned when we see big family entertainment brands peddling spells, potions, and friendly witches as wholesome fun for preschoolers and grade-schoolers. This is the formula: they take something God calls an abomination, give it big eyes and a catchy soundtrack, and make the witch the kind, brave one. A child doesn't hear "occult"; they hear, "Magic is good, and the girl with the spellbook is who I want to be." Everyone who has children knows this to be true: kids don't watch something once; they watch it twenty times. They sing the songs, wear the costumes, and act it out with their neighborhood friends.  I once heard about a woman named Marisa who became a Wiccan witch at eleven years old. She said it started in late child...

There is a popular book entitled Theo of Golden  by Allen Levi that I have begun reading. It's a truly beautiful story of an elderly man who visits a small southern town named Golden. He enters a coffee shop and eventually notices 92 pencil portraits hanging on the wall for sale of regular people from the community. Theo starts buying the portraits, one after another, then hunts down each person in the drawings and hands them their picture. The only thing he asks for in return is their story.    What would happen if instead of just passing by strangers, we just stopped to listen to them? Pray with them? Show the love of Christ, instead of deeming them unworthy of our time or care? The Other Side of the Road.   Jesus told a parable about this very thing in Luke 10:30-37:   “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest ca...

" ..because I was crushed by their adulterous heart which has departed from Me, and by their eyes which play the harlot after their idols; they will loathe themselves for the evils which they committed in all their abominations." (Ezekiel 6:9) This verse reveals two different things: (1) it tells you what unrepentance does to God, and (2) it tells you what repentance actually looks like when it's real.  "I was crushed" The Hebrew is shabar — to break, to shatter, to crush. God didn't have to describe Israel's idolatry that way. He could have utilized the language of a judge reading a verdict and honestly, that would've been true and sufficient. But instead, He reached for the most human word available and told them, in terms they couldn't misunderstand, exactly how their unfaithfulness hit Him. Scripture is clear in that God isn't tossed around by us the way we're tossed around by each other. He isn't at the mercy of His creatures. H...