It is May 4th and you may have noticed a lot of advertising using the theme of "May the 4th" from a Star Wars quote, "May the force be with you." If you're a Star Wars fan, this is nothing new or interesting, however, I would warn that going too far with spiritual themes can be unhealthy, even if they only seem to be fictional, innocent, story plot elements.

As someone who grew up with Star Wars and love the original story, I was dismayed at the directions the franchise took after Disney bought and took it over. This also is nothing new as I noted Disney has been a problem with much of its later and more "adult" content. They often promote bad morals and focuses that are not appropriate for a company that promotes itself as a family friendly venue. Their films and other content often oversexualize girls, normalize lust, promiscuity, and homosexuality, and hype up the importance of having special gifts. Making these things normal and desirable has people, especially children and teens, want to pursue things that are not good for their well-being.

For Star Wars, I noticed how they made characters depend too much on "the force," using prayer-like chants to be one with the force, which is not much different from the bad spiritual practices of some Eastern and New Age spiritualism. If people do such chants seriously, which young and naive fans may actually do, it can bring them into sins of idolatry, which is to greatly value and have faith and loyalty in things that are not God. So teach your family about avoiding such things.

Repeated reciting of prayers, even ones to God, is of little value, for Christ said, "When you pray, do not use meaningless repetition" (Matthew 6:7-8). Instead, we are to have great faith and know how prayer is meant to work (see Balancing the Truth and Prayer for more). Using many repetitive prayers like I've seen being done daily in the church, may seem like a good idea, but there are only a few things we need to pray for every day, while the rest is meaningless repetition as God said.

Going with the Star Wars example, praying constantly to be one with God and walk by the Spirit, like the characters recite, I'm one with the force, does not really make you one with God or help you be attuned to and walk by the Holy Spirit. It is much more complicated than that, requiring learning, discipline, and getting rid of sin and darkness that is done through years of maturing in Christ as you try to walk with God.

But praise be to God that He helps us in our naive immaturity to help us in the long term good fight. Today makes me recall 14 years ago when I was naive in the ways of God and His kingdom, when on May 4th, He gave me the revelation to spiritual guidance about the numbers 5, 4, and 2. I spoke of this before. It involved the working of many alignments to physical real-world things with spiritual guidance given over much time to different people. That is the working of God, the true "force" in our universe, who helps, guides, and matures us in inexplicable ways. The glory goes to El Elyon, God Most High, and His embodiment in Mashiach Yeshua forever and ever. Amen.