What to do with a long holiday weekend?
Black Friday shopping perhaps? I've been there and I've done that and I think never again most aptly describes my attitude towards that experience.
Decorate for Christmas..... Soon but not yet.
Work on a paper for Bible college or the book I'm writing? I'm proud to say I did do some work on both but maybe I was suffering the effects of tryptophan from the turkey consumed because i didn't write much.
Be it tryptophan or the fact that I was paying off a sleep debt but this weekend was spent in my chair in front of the television in varying states of consciousness.
Seated in my chair I decided to be productive and started to eliminate items from my Netflix watch list. One of the movies I decided to try was a documentary called "The Nightmare".
I know what is a Christian doing watching something with a macabre title like that? Shouldn't I be watching Highway to Heaven or Vegitales?
Well, honestly I do enjoy a good scare and I like to remind myself that even though I live in the relative safety of Middle class America there are dark forces to be aware of either in the evil that men do or in the spiritual realm.
With that said although I was a huge horror fan before becoming born again I am noticing that I don't have the stomach for the macabre as Much as I did before, especially when a film is violent or gory just for the sake of violence and goriness with little or no story. I recently said good bye for ever to AMC's the Walking Dead as a case in point.
Anyway so I sat down to watch the Nightmare. To be honest I didn't know it was a documentary before I started watching it but was somewhat relieved because watching a documentary is educational right?
The Nightmare is about people who suffer from a sleep disorder called sleep paralysis. It was really quite interesting and honestly a little creepy and unnerving. I won't give any spoilers here really but a common thread through the victim's of sleep paralysis is the presence of malevolent "shadow men".
The film does a good job of taking a wide view of the experiences of the sufferers of sleep paralysis and theories of what is happening. The explanations range from the scientific to the spiritual and even the extra-terrestrial. It is definitely worth the watch and could actually help a Christian's worldview, that we are in an "open system" where God, and good and malevolent spiritual forces can and do interact in our lives. One of the suffers came to faith in Christ as a result of her experience and another admitted that they were no longer an atheist because of what they had experienced.
I have had a spiritual experience, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is real and cares about us. To quote the x-files, there's something out there but I think that the something is not extra-terrestrial in the sense of aliens but are most likely beings in the spirit realm.
I often quote Matthew 6:33,
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. ,
Because in my experience I have sought Him and the truth has been revealed, and continues to be revealed to me.
So enjoy the film and considered the questions of life death, and the unseen realm of the spirit.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you the only way through to God and an afterlife of peace and joy is through Jesus Christ. John 14:6 says
6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
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