Hidden Royalty

In the eighteenth century in the country of France a prisoner was held in the bowels of the slum prison the Bastille. When rioting citizens of France destroyed the Bastille, they discovered within it’s records this mysterious entry: Prisoner # 64389000: The Man in the Iron Mask. The Prisoner according to ancient myth was believed to be the twin brother of the present day King Louis XIV. The King’s father King Louis XIII has died, his arrogant and selfish son has taken the throne and secretly had prisoner # 64389000 imprisoned. This is a secret he is determined to keep under lock and key…literally. Why? The prisoner is his twin brother! Louis XIV has France in the grips of starvation and poverty due to his carnal and selfish lifestyle and the cost of war. King Louis’s father King Louis XIII years before had four special warriors in his service, the Four Musketeers. Now during the reign of his cruel son, all but one (d’Artagnan) have retired to civilized life. Athos lives a simple life raising his son Raoul who is about to go off to become a soldier in the kings service, Porthos enjoys the lustful dainties of life like women and wine and longs and yearns for the days of yore long ago of battle and chivalry. He even at one point tries to hang himself because he is so depressed about not having a purpose in life anymore. The monotony of everyday life and chasing pleasure have bored him to tears and life without a sword and shield prove to be too much to bear. Just before his attempted suicide he utters a classic line we should all adhere to, “Better to die in my own blood than to die in my own piss!” What a heart, one all men should strive to possess. Then there is Aramis a Jesuit priest who dedicates his life to his faith and follows God faithfully and desires to see France flourish again…but under a new ruler.
Aramis has a plan, his plan is to rescue King Louis’s imprisoned twin brother and put him in place of his evil twin elder that currently sits on the throne and oppressing the country of France. Aramis gathers and calls the other Musketeers to a secret meeting, including d’Artagnan. He discusses a conversation the King has had with him. King Louis has told him he has gotten wind of a certain Jesuit priest that has conspired to murder and overthrow him and the King wants Aramis to find him and for God and Country, kill him! Aramis reveals to the fellow Musketeers that he is this Jesuit priest. To their astonishment they listen as he reveals his secret plan to dismantle the King from the throne. None but Porthos are interested. Athos is happy and content raising his son and d’Artagnan will not speak of raising a finger against the King he is so loyal to. The plan is abandoned. Days later at a party, the King spots Christine(Raoul’s) fiancé and confers with her. Later discovering that she is betrothed to Raoul he orders Raoul to be sent into the heat of battle in the war being fought. It isn’t long before news of Raoul’s death reaches his father. Athos is enraged and filled with fury and vengeance and swears death to the King. Knowing why the king desired the death of Raoul he attempts to kill the king alone in the courtyard. Quickly he is tackled by the king’s guards and swears he will have his revenge. He rushes to Aramis and now with a change of heart says that whatever he has planned that he is in! The Three are back together again and ready to execute a seemingly hopeless plan to free France from it’s current plight. Aramis, Porthos, and Athos. All for one and one for all!
The three form a plan to bust the twin out of prison and hide him away to a safe haven in rural France, far away from Louis. There they tell him his true identity and why everything happened to him and the cause of his imprisonment. Soon they tell him how they want him to take over the throne and take his brother’s place as king. All of this hits him at once and he is reluctant to do as the Musketeers say. However, later, he sees what his country has become and knows that Louis must be overthrown.
Later at a ball the king has thrown, the Three Musketeers secretly apprehend Louis the elder and replace him with Louis the younger. The plan works for a while until the impostor is found out by d’Artagnan. Seeking the truth d’Artagnan finds out the Musketeers and they flee for escape along with their king. Elder King Louis once again captures the throne for a short few hours while he returns his younger brother to his “prison”. In a final scuffle to go down and die valiantly as fighting men the Three Musketeers rush toward the captain’s guard in the face of bullets and sure death. Despite the barrage of gunfire(that the soldiers despised having to obey), the Three are not dead although they are wounded and scathed. The captain of the Guard ordering the soldiers out of the room, confronts Louis the elder that the Musketeers have in their control. He tells him all he ever wanted to be was like him. Pointing to Louis the younger. Hours before a great secret has been released. Louis the elder and younger, are the sons of d’Artagnan! He utters this seconds before his death, suffered in the midst of the chaos and confusion. The Captain of the Guard agrees to place Louis the younger in command of France and for it to remain a secret between only those in the room. Louis the elder however, tastes the very prison in which he encased his brother. He is now condemned to wear the mask that for years Louis the younger had to wear. It is kept secret for years. Louis the elder is ultimately released to remain in the rural parts of the country and never to utter what happened years before. Knowing that he is outnumbered, because by this time all of France has been liberated from the starvation and war that Louis had ensnared them in, he gives in and lives the rest of his days quietly and obediently under the younger kings reign.
This story is a lot closer to your heart than what you might think. As a matter of fact it is about your heart. In the days before we knew God, a certain king sat on the throne of our hearts, this king was called Self the First because he always came first and looking out for number one was his main mission in life. You could also call him Self the Stonehearted. He had rule over your life and pretty much kept you at war with yourself and like the people of France, you were constantly starved to death for some real life and living in spiritual poverty and moral decay. All along though, in the dark recesses of your being and innermost man, there was a prisoner being held captive. He was being held captive by death, that’s what death is, it is a prison. He was dead to God and there was no hope for him. He was imprisoned in a mask that was welded with words of fear, doubt, and pain. Those hurtful and misleading lies covered who you really were and hid your true identity. Satan didn’t want you to truly know what you were. He had to keep it hid. If anyone including yourself were or was to see what you truly are, they would demand that you be king and would never accept the false elder self that you showed the world for so many years. We’re in this prison though, and sometimes it seems we can never get out. The mask that was welded with words of rejection that made us feel ugly weighs us down and we believe we haven’t got the keys to take it off. The mask that Satan welded with words of abuse and neglect and fear hides our true self from the world that so desperately needs to see people that have been set free.There was a plan though, thank God! Three Persons had a plan to set us free and set us aright on the throne of our hearts and our own destiny! The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they are all for one and one for all! They set in motion a plan of redemption that would save our hearts and rescue us from the prison that Satan and the carnal stonehearted self had us in. Jesus came along one day and said , “Whom the Son sets free is free indeed!” Isn’t that amazing, going from a prison to a throne. That’s what He did though. Just like He did for Joseph. We talked earlier about being slaves to Satan and how he beats and breaks us until we tell him what our name is. He wants us to accept the identity that he has for us and not the true identity God has bestowed upon us. God called the boy with the coat of many colors Joseph. Egypt called him Zaph-nath-pa-a-neah, I think I like Joseph better, a lot less confusing. That’s what Satan breeds though, confusion. Saul became Paul, Abram became Abraham, and there was also Daniel, who the Babylonian’s named Bel-te-shaz-zar, again, a lot more confusing and not as whole as Daniel. Notice all the brokenness and division in the names Joseph and Daniel were given? God gives us a simple name and the world comes along and creates confusion and division. Notice too, that Joseph and Daniel were given those names after their godly fathers named them. That’s the way things are in the world or rather the Jungle, we are born with names of valor, honor, and nobility and Satan come along and names us something far more inferior. Most of the time we only know the name he has given us and never know the name that God has for us. What is worse is actually having no name at all and wandering the world trying to make one for ourselves. Nothing ever seems to fit. It is the spiritual equivalent to the greyhound dogs at the dog track trying to catch that little metal rabbit that goes around the track. You’ll never catch it. Why? Because your not meant to! That thing that your chasing that you believe will give you some kind of glory will always be two or three steps ahead of you. Picture Tarzan roaming the jungle having no idea what his real name was. He didn’t even know there was a such thing as a name. Sadly this is the case with a lot of us today as well. We don’t even know that we’re supposed to be someone in life. All we know is that we have to eat and sleep and occasionally have a bone of a vacation thrown at us every now and then. You ever heard of a guy named George Washington, Thomas Edison, Neil Armstrong, or Albert Einstein? These men knew that there was more to life than simply existing. Like Keating said in Dead Poets Society. “Make your lives remarkable, for tomorrow you are food for worms! Suck the nectar out of life! Carpe Diem! Seize the Day!!!!”
As I write at this setting, I have recently heard about a nineteen year old hockey star that collapsed just the other day that was a big NHL prospect. He died of a heart attack. Nineteen years young! They said the test they had given him showed that he was healthy. So what happened. I am not one to say. I can say this though. We can’t spend our lives trying to get this iron mask off and wrestling with who we really are in life. We have to get it right now.We have to stop struggling with this identity thing and know that the Trinity has set us free. Set us free from this dungeon of doubt and this mask of deception. Notice also that the mask is on us and not apart of us. These things that were spoken in our lives are simply surrounding our mind like the mask was Louis the younger, but they are not connected to us and not really apart of us. It does take the work of God however to get these things off and this mask removed.

Delay of Game

The other day my friend Mike and I were playing Madden football on Playstation. We play this game pretty religiously and like any other mach male egos, we love it when we win and we hate it when we lose. I have seriously walked away some nights when we have played with a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach from suffering a lose so devastating. There’s just something about losing that a man can’t tolerate. It’s like a blow to his masculinity when another man get’s the best of him, even in something as simple as a video game. Face it, none of us love to lose. Why? We were born to win and were never meant to suffer from something called defeat. When we do experience the heartbreak that comes from losing it can sometimes be devastating and almost impossible to take. Some loses are worst than others. When you were very close to winning but came up short. That hurts! When you at one time had the lead and lost it. That hurts! Something however happened on this one particular night that really rang home an eternal truth that I hope I never forget. You have to know Mike and I. Football is life. Literally! I mean I can get so many life lessons out of the game of football, that the game itself has grown to be a teacher to me over the years. Some of these lessons have been very rewarding and triumphant at times and others like I have said before, were very devastating. I know it’s only a video game, but you play marbles with your kids, you still want to win. The unique thing about playing with Mike on the Madden football game is that it has become something I like to call “video simulation”. You’ve heard of this before I’m sure. Commercial airliners use video simulation to train their pilots. The military uses video simulation to train jet fighters, tank commanders, and other various types of personnel that will be operating heavy machinery in the field of a high tech profession. Why are they doing this? Simple. They want to know how you will react to a certain event, know how you will operate this specific form of technology, hone and sharpen your skills in the areas where you are lacking. They want to see how you will handle things when you are behind the wheel. There is something interesting to note here. They actually want you to make a mistake. Why? Well simple, because it’s better that you make a mistake in a simulated virtual reality world that in the real one. It’s better for a pilot to make the mistake of not knowing his altitude, engaging his landing gear too slowly, or not knowing his instrument panel in the simulated world than in the real one. In the simulated world he will simply lose points on a test. In the real world his mistakes can cost people their lives. So the experts and teachers behind all of the testing and grading actually want the students in the mechanical fields to make mistakes, because then that shows them what they need to work on. In life you have to make mistakes. It’s the only way we learn. There is an old saying that goes, “I’ll be old enough to live when I’m old enough to die.” In other words when I’ve really learned about life and made all the mistakes and learned from them I’ll probably be about ninety-five by the time I finally get it. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are those who make mistakes and learn from them and there are those who make mistakes and just simply keep on making them. This is what separates and defines the wise from the foolish in this world. The biggest reason we have to learn from our mistakes I think is because the mind and the brain remember and associate memory to pain easier than any other emotion in the realm of our souls. We remember our hurts and our pains in life. We just do. Pain just seems to be the tape that sticks a certain event in our life to the wall of our memories. Pain is the tape, the abuse, hurt, heartbreak, damaging words or whatever may have happened to us are the little notes that we apply to our minds and souls that we go back and look on in our subconscious when making a decision in the future that relates somehow to the lesson that that one moment taught us.
What video simulation is to the pilot is exactly what Madden Football has become for me. It has tested me and taught me so much about life and war. You might be surprised by me using the word war. Well I’ll tell you right now, that’s exactly what we’re in a spiritual war. The sooner you start treating Christianity as war and not like religious pomp and orthodox boxed in thinking the sooner you will experience the kind of life that God has for you. Football is also war. It is a pattern and is similar to war in many ways. Each end zone is a country and each army or team is trying to invade each others end zone. In the process many valuable lessons can be learned.
There was one particular game Mike and I were playing that really spoke something to me that God had already been speaking to me about a week or two before. Psalms 119:60 gives us insight on how to run a play that God gives you.

“I made haste, and delayed not to keep thy commandments.”

God had been speaking this word to me about a week or two before Mike I played this one certain afternoon. I kept seeing this verse pop up and I had a hunch that God was going to ask me to do something that would require prompt obedience. I just didn’t know what it was. So I was keeping my eyes and ears open to His voice to see what the call from headquarters would be.I was tested sure enough one night at my church. Every Wednesday at our evening church service we have prayer at the end of the service. Everyone gets to make a request and share something if they want to. One night everyone was requesting and getting things off their hearts, and I had a feeling that I should request prayer for a friend of mine that was going through a very hard time in his life. The opportunity was there and the lady who was leading the prayer asked if anyone else had anything on their hearts. I just kept thinking , “I can pray for him myself or pray for him when we pray here” I never asked for any prayer for him. So we prayed and the service was over. Well at the time of this writing things still haven’t changed for my friend, and I wonder if God just wasn’t using that to teach me something. Well a week or so later He used Madden Football on play station to teach me this truth.
Mike and I were playing an intense game that was very close. I was playing with the Denver Bronco’s and Mike was playing with the Indianapolis Colt’s. I actually got off to a good start in this game, building a fourteen point lead. Mike eventually caught up with me though and we were just swapping licks back and fourth and hoping we would have the ball last, so the other person couldn’t score.
Here was the scenario. There was about a minute left in the game, late in the fourth quarter and Mike had a seven point lead. He had the ball and was driving even though he didn’t have to. Why was he still driving instead of running the clock out? Because Mike doesn’t believe in downing the ball and doing a quarterback kneel. He just plays until the end. He hates it when I have the ball and the lead and I sit on the ball and run the clock out. It’s a feeling of helplessness that drives him crazy. He calls it cowardly, I call it control. Like Yoda told Luke, “Control, control, you must learn control!” So Mike doesn’t down the ball just keeps running plays, I have used up all my timeouts and I cant stop the clock. Well I played good defense and cornered him to a fourth down play. He snaps the ball on fourth down and I am headed toward Peyton Manning like a runaway train, Mike throws the ball only for it to be incomplete. Before the snap of the ball there was about three seconds left on the game clock. After there was one second. He turns the ball over on downs and I have one shot at scoring a touchdown and tying the game.
I am scrolling through my playbook and can’t seem to find a play. At this point I’m pretty nervous and want just the right play with enough receivers to where if one isn’t open I can go to another. I look and look and cant seem to find the right play. All the while that I am looking for the perfect play, the play clock is running mad. When your at a crucial time like this in a game time seems to take on a whole new speed. So I said to myself, “Well I can take a delay of game penalty and just try again.” Well by the time I chose a play there was like four or five seconds left on the clock and my offense didn’t set up and snap the ball in time. I got flagged for delay of game. This was alright with me because its just a five yard penalty. I was already on the Colt’s forty yard line and five more yards didn’t make that much of a difference. There was one big glaring problem though. When I let the play clock run down and got called for the delay of game something happened that I had totally forgot. So many seconds have to run off the clock as a penalty alongside of the five yards you lose. In other words, there was no time left! Game over!
I felt sick after this game. I had gotten the miracle play to get the ball back and give myself a chance and I blew it. I simply sat on the clock and did nothing! I was dumbfounded. Don’t get me wrong, nothing was really guaranteed. I might not have made the touchdown even if I had ran the play. The point is though, you get an opportunity, DON’T SIT ON IT! DON’T DELAY! EXECUTE!
You see folks, God can do great things for us. God can give us great opportunities. It is up to us though, to carry out the mission and run the play. We can’t just sit on our hands and look for the “perfect” way to do things, just do what He has called you to do, or you might get called for delay of game!