Spiritual Law of Replacement 2/6/13

Matthew 12:43-45
It was funny today. Carl took the boys out to their breakfast bible study this morning. They came home and I guess were in a good mood. They sat down and started devotions and everyone was pretty much well behaved. It was the best devotion time yet. we read Matthew and began to discuss the section in Matthew where Jesus is talking about the demon leaving the man and then coming back to find the house empty and returning with more demons. The state of the man was worse than before. Before I could begin to discuss it William said, "Boy Mom, that sure sounds like the spiritual law of replacement." I just laughed. Can you tell that we have talked about this before? The key here is that when the demon left, the man did nothing to replace the bad things that the demon caused him to do. I told the kids that it is kind of like a person who listens to heavy metal secular music. He is convicted and stops listening to all music as a result. That will not work. He must take the music he was listening to out of his life but he needs to replace it with Godly, uplifting music that honors God. We must remove bad things from our lives but if we do not fill that void with godly things then we are just going to fall back into our bad habits. We have talked about this with the kids before. I guess that the kids really have been listening to the things that Carl and I have been teaching them. It was very encouraging.
Reading Exodus today I was struck with how many times the Israelites complained to Moses about God. I was just amazed at how ungrateful and whining they were. It was convicting as I know that sometimes I am like this too. I have passed this down to my kids. I have been working on this lately. I have purposed in my heart to be more grateful. I am doing the 1000 gifts this year and it has been amazing. I find myself being much more joyful and actually looking forward to my assignment each day.

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