<\/p>\n

There are so many benefits to starting the day with God.\u00a0 Never had I considered one of them to be saving me from assault and battery charges. Not until \u201cthe incident\u201d at the movie theater had I ever considered such a benefit.\u00a0 The one-year anniversary of \u201cthe incident\u201d is fast approaching and you\u2019ll soon discover that I clearly have some more inside work to do.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s because ever since the incident, I see The Movie Lady at the gym, the grocery store, the elementary school.\u00a0 Everywhere, it seems.<\/p>\n

(Strike up the dramatic Hollywood soundtrack as background music.)\u00a0 I awoke to a dark, rainy day on this particular student holiday.\u00a0 The day before we\u2019d made plans to meet another mom and her two kids at the theater to take in a new movie \u2013 which turned out to be a brilliant plan given the weather.\u00a0 The house was still quiet.\u00a0 Not a creature was stirring, not even the kids.\u00a0 I spent some leisurely time with God in my prayer chair to calibrate myself for the day ahead.<\/p>\n

Within a few hours, we arrived at the theater early to meet our friends.\u00a0 The combination of no school, bad weather and a new movie release brought a sea of people to the theater so we decided to go save six seats in the theater before standing in the mile-long popcorn line.\u00a0 Yet another brilliant plan because when we returned with all of our buttery deliciousness, the theater was jam packed.\u00a0 Only single seats remained but near the top we could see our saved seats so up we went.<\/p>\n

One problem.\u00a0 Only five seats were saved with our jackets.\u00a0 My seat was occupied by a woman and on the other side of her were two young kids.\u00a0 I politely told her that we had saved six seats and that I\u2019d like to get my seat back.\u00a0 Staring straight ahead she said, \u201cYou can\u2019t save seats at the movies.\u201d\u00a0 I tried to reason with her. I tried to talk tough.\u00a0 I tried to guilt her into giving me back my seat – her kids were watching after all.\u00a0 The exchange went on and grew a bit louder and that\u2019s when two nearby women, chimed in with a crescendo \u201coooooohhhhhhhh\u201d as though certain the juicy argument would soon attract security.<\/p>\n

In that instant, I knew it was God who spoke to me.\u00a0 It was not audible but oh, was it crystal clear.\u00a0 He whispered, \u201cAre you for me? Your kids are watching you…along with half the movie theater. Are you going to represent me well or not?\u201d\u00a0 The theater of my mind shot back to the scene of the morning prayer chair and the passage in Joshua 5:13 \u2013 \u201cHe looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand.\u00a0 Joshua went up to him and asked, \u201cAre you for us or for our enemies?\u2019<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 Similar questions flooded over me as the previews ended and the feature film began.\u00a0 Who am I for?\u00a0 Who do I want to represent in this moment?\u00a0 I made my way to a single seat one row down.<\/p>\n

The movie played on and I couldn\u2019t have told you one thing about it.\u00a0 I was churning and burning on the inside.\u00a0 One hour into the movie a beautiful opportunity presented itself on a silver platter.\u00a0 The Movie Lady had to leave the theater with one of her children to take him to the bathroom.\u00a0 I looked back and said to my kids, \u201cHey \u2013 here\u2019s my chance!\u201d Every cell of my body wanted to hop the row and sit in my original seat next to The Movie Lady\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n

God used my sweet Lauren to cement me to my lone seat.\u00a0 My daughter practically yelled down the aisle, \u201cMom – you always say, \u2018return evil with good.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Darn – there goes that option.\u00a0 But I could still glare at The Movie Lady when she returned to the theater.\u00a0 I shot her visual daggers as I tracked every step of her walk back to my original seat\u2026turns out she was petite\u2026I could have taken her.<\/p>\n

As the old hymn resounds, \u201cI am prone to wander.\u201d\u00a0 I am so weak in my natural self.\u00a0 And sadly, all too often, I do not choose to back away from the evil one\u2019s traps.\u00a0 I can so quickly make sin my master rather than the ROCK Eternal.<\/p>\n

But on this day, He rescued me.\u00a0 I was ROCKed<\/em> at the movies and it was all because I started my day with Him and invited Him into it.\u00a0 His power can be our power when we spend time with Him.\u00a0 He loves it when we allow Him to pour His SUPER all over our NATURAL.\u00a0 Sit.\u00a0 Stay.\u00a0 Restore.\u00a0 ROCKon<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So this month I don\u2019t have a brand new shiny deeply spiritual theological principle to share with you.\u00a0 Just a simple blockbuster benefit to practicing His Presence:\u00a0 Go to God, not jail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are so many benefits to starting the day with God.\u00a0 Never had I considered one of them to be saving me from assault and battery charges. Not until \u201cthe incident\u201d at the movie theater had I ever considered such a benefit.\u00a0 The one-year anniversary of \u201cthe incident\u201d is fast approaching and you\u2019ll soon discover […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":700,"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions\/700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}