The next time Eva was at her mom's house, she borrowed the videos her dad had purchased a few years before his death. We set up a time to see them with our friends. Then, when the time arrived, we were at their house, gathered around the TV, ready to watch. There were three videos (over 4 hours of footage) so we got out the popcorn and began to witness the impressive and destructive power of nature. The first video was more educational, showing how they form and clips of tornados out in the fields doing minimal damage. The second video was much worse. There was no doubt those tornados were scary things as they hung down from clouds, snaking across the landscape, wreaking havoc in fields, on barns and farmhouses, in cities, suburbs and trailer parks. The devastation was sad. One lady was very distraught as she came onto our screen, looking directly into the camera lens, she said, still in shock, "He died. The man in that trailer over there…died!" The narrator's voice-over on this video came on and stated, "He died a horrible and violent death…" As the evening wore on, and the tornados got bigger, our spirits began to sag some. Deborah had taken some medication for allergies and suddenly felt dizzy and tired, needing to go to bed. Crystal, the friend of Kristina's whose birthday we had celebrated a few stories back, was with us. She came up to Eva and began to open up to her about a drawing she was doing. She is normally a very quiet and shy girl, but Eva, caught up in the tornado footage, asked her to be quiet, as she was watching this show. Then I suddenly got very sleepy and couldn't keep my eyes open. I went into another room and stretched out on a couch. Despite all those indicators that something was wrong, we made plans that the next day, we would watch some more of this horrible footage.

In my prayer time the next morning, I began to feel anxious. Suddenly in my heart, I heard, "Would you like to ask Me whether you should watch tornados tonight?" I opened my eyes in surprise and asked aloud, softly, as I slowly turned the quarter in my hands, over and over to assure randomness, "Lord, do You want us to watch tornados tonight?" I flipped the coin. No. Okay, I thought. "Lord, do you want me to tell the others?" Yes. I called and told Mark why I wanted to cancel the funnel cloud party. Then, in my spirit I got clarification that seemed to come on its own, separate from my own thoughts.

"All of life is filled with sermons. What is being preached to you in these videos? They teach you of the finality of death and the power of random destruction. And where is My power, the power of the One who calms the storms? Is this a true message from God's Word for His dear and precious children? Should these videos be your focus?"

Nature of God: I felt the truth of this as, later on during the day, I talked to Eva. I thought of Hollywood and the amazing amount of impure preaching that is going on through the medium of the motion picture and television industry. The news media also focuses on the negative, and continually rehashes the same carnal observations over and over. And we, the congregation, kneel and pray at the foot of its idolatrous altar, begging that these disasters and broken lives and embittered spirits, not be the truth, but convinced, even as we close our eyes to pray, that these shattered lives with their disastrous consequences are the only truth there is. Their stories are being preached to us from the great Hollywood Bible of scripts in which carnality is not only a fact, but it is taken for granted that this is all our meager lives are: arenas for disaster.

Follow the Lord as we know Him, from the Word, and as we know Him in our hearts. He does not tear you apart with sad scripts that say life has no meaning. Nor does He try to fill the emptiness you feel inside with yet more emptiness and hopelessness. He offers the only answer that really fulfills our needs. Himself. He does not live in this world's carnality but, outside it. We, too, must prayerfully focus on Him that we, too, might overcome the world in the only way possible, through Jesus Christ. As we hunger to know Him and hear Him, and only Him, He will answer our questions to Him and even put the questions He wants us to ask into our hearts so that, if we desire, we might prayerfully flip the coin and physically see the truth He wants us to know!

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