Revelation 18:2 English Standard Version (ESV) And he called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.

The ESV does not provide many uses of the word haunt. Isaiah links it to jackals and here in Revelations our Lord links it to the fallen. It might be best to look at haunting memories as unclean spirits, but do not confuse them with demons. Man has a spirit, a life force that is separate from the Holy Spirit.

Thanks to PTSD therapy I am no longer haunted by the memories of being shot by someone I knew. That was dealing with trauma involving the action of another person..

What continues to haunt me is the emotional attachments to a completely innocent event which stirred up strong emotions. The world recreates that image in one form or another in what should be considered innocence but in me it triggers an emotional image that is not so easily shaken.

My childhood is littered with events associated with my  Asperger’s syndrome. As a child that was undiagnosed and I had no coping mechanism. As an adult, having a better understanding of that disorder I can place a mature understanding of the emotions of my youth, misplaced as they were.

That does not remove the memory. I have to deal with those memories as a life without Christ. While I was innocent then, I am no longer innocent because I have partaken of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I now know what sin is and what sin does. While the memory is not sin, the image leads to strong emotions that left unchecked could lead to sin.

I can only assume that we all have something in our past that is better left to forgetfulness.

I thank God that He has chosen to forget that which I find difficult to forget.

Paul had his thorn, we all have our own to deal with.

Grace is sufficient. Amen!!

2 Corinthians 11:1-6 English Standard Version

1 I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! 2 For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. 5 Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. 6 Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.

How many times can we preach the gospel of salvation and tried to keep it fresh and interesting?

There are as many angles to the salvation story as there are differences in personalities and experiences of believers. Yet the essence of the gospel remains the same.

The deceiver is the devil and not everyone who presents a new thought is by nature the devil. One line here strikes at home to the problem, verse 5 calls out the issue of ego, those super-apostles. In modern terms it is those that raised up church membership in the tens of thousands. Inquiring about those supercells I discovered their membership ranks included many  individuals that no longer attend,  what we would call sincere devoted Christians.

See how Jesus fed the five thousand.

Mark 6:39-40 English Standard Version

39 Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties.

Doing the math there might have been as many as 67 or more smaller groups. How did 12 apostles feed that many smaller groups? It is likely that other believers helped feed others so that no one would be ignored and go hungry.

So often we look at the big picture and miss the finite details that show our involvement.

As to being sincere and devout Christians, being on the membership roll of a mega church does not make a person a Christian, no more than sitting in a movie theater makes us a cast member.

Memories paint a picture but is that picture a true reflection of a life in Christ?