Testimony - Look Up and Rejoice

            I don’t think I have yet to write about an actual personal testimony on my blog. I am going to remedy that right now; something happened to me recently that I’m going to share. Most things I write about on my blog are my thoughts, opinions, etc. but not my personal real-life experiences so... I’m not quite sure how this’ll go, but hopefully it’ll go well enough that you can get something good out of it for yourself.

            During the past few weeks, since thanksgiving, I have been resisting the temptation to go back to one of my old bad habits. I won’t tell you what it is because it’s very personal, but I will tell you that it’s something I have been doing quite habitually for a very long time. On thanksgiving (or maybe the day before) I simply decided to stop doing it. For a day or two it was easy of course, but old habits die hard (Die Hard and Christmas time... interesting... but never mind); after a little while I was tempted quite strongly to go back to it, but day after day I would just say “no” to those old thoughts and feelings and cravings, because I really do have my reasons (good reasons; I’m not just doing this because I think it will make me thinner or give me more time to play computer games).

            On Tuesday, a couple of weeks ago, late at night after my dad had gone to bed, I was tempted again, but this time so insidiously I actually thought that I might go back to that old habit that I really wished I could be rid of for good. My carnal mind was trying to convince and persuade me that it would be alright, that there would be no harm and no foul, and it was doing a really good job of it. But remembering the reasons why I had wanted to let this thing go in the first place (Let It Go... with the arrival of winter, that’s funny... but anyway) I reached out to God for assistance and boy did He deliver (Deliver Us... Prince of Egypt, great movie but... never mind! What is it with my brain and movies right now?). At first, I was just feeling desperate and in great need, begging God to free me from this evil spirit of temptation, though after a moment or two I realized that that is exactly what I should be doing anyway; silly as it might sound (I also know no one can argue against it) it is entirely too easy to fixate on the wrong things in your life that you can forget the good things you have and that can give you strength when you just let them. In that moment I realized God had shown me my way of escape; when the enemy thinks it has you surrounded, just look up. That song (Look Up and Rejoice) actually came to me in that instant and I started singing it quietly to myself, and I didn’t even get through half the lines in the chorus before I realized that the rather heavy spirit of temptation which, just a moment ago, I had thought would claim the victory over me was banished! I had not even noticed its departure; I could only view the temptation-shaped hole in the metaphorical door of my mind (it must have left in a hurry). And just in case you don’t know the song (it’s a good one) this is how it goes:

(the words in parentheses are my thoughts, not actually part of the song)

Look up and rejoice, a new day has begun

(fairly self explanatory)

Look all around you; see what the Lord has done

(He delivered me from an enemy I thought had me surrounded)

He has turned your darkness into his marvelous light

(again, self explanatory)

With the dawning of a new day and a future so bright

(I find that new day part very amusing because it happened at night right before I went to bed)

            Since then, every time my old carnal self tries to rear its ugly head, I just use that as a reminder to pray and rejoice and just make sure my faith is secure in the Lord. It’s remarkably simple but very powerful; just last night, I had a dream conjured up by that old mind, but the new man in me, the one who seeks after the things of God, hated it while it lasted but used it for motivation in the morning to devote this day to God, and so far today has been a very good one. To sum up, I have seen how easy it is to draw upon the Lord’s strength in my moments of weakness, and even turn that dastardly devil’s own devious devices against him.

             That’s my testimony. Well... for the past few weeks, but the grace God gave me at the start is still good today and it is my hope that now you’ve got a hold of some of it as well. Until next time, God bless y’all! And Merry Christmas!

Forgiveness and Resetting the Board

       Last week, Thursday, God opened my eyes to something I had never seen before. It's about the fact that the Earth's magnetism periodically switches polarity; the magnetic north pole becomes the magnetic south pole and vise versa, so north becomes south and east becomes west as the magnetic field goes through this strange flip or reversal. Stranger still, God showed me how this relates to forgiveness.

       You can read for yourself in the Bible in Psalm 103:12, "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us." I don't know what David was specifically thinking when he wrote this; most people would interpret it as God forgiving and cleansing our sin so completely that we'll never see it again, just as you can head east for as far as you want and you'll never be headed west, which doesn't work for north and south directions of course. The phrase forgive and forget is also used a lot by people who would like others to not use people's past (forgiven) mistakes against them so they never have to even hear or think about them again. But such thoughts are false and shallow interpretations of the power God has shown us in His forgiveness. For one thing, there's no way anyone is forgetting king David's greatest sin, his adultery with Bathsheba; that story has in fact become an integral part of any Christian's heritage. as for the "east and west" thing, science itself can show you that east becomes west and west becomes east because God periodically flips the compass, just on a physical level.

       Spiritually you can see God do this with David. Just in case you aren't familiar with the story of king David's greatest sin, it's very simple: one night, king David sees Bathsheba bathing on her home rooftop, seduces and sleeps with her, gets her pregnant, and then has her husband Uriah (yes, she was married already) killed so he can marry her and make the pregnancy look legitimate. Basically, the only reasons Bathsheba is in the picture to begin with is because of lust, lying, adultery, and murder. However, God forgives David (very generous) and Bathsheba in fact becomes the mother of the next (God-ordained) king of Israel, Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived and who led Israel into its golden age. Bathsheba also becomes the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother (that's 25 greats) of Jesus Christ, although if you look in the first chapter of Matthew, it does not name her in the lineage but rather it refers to her as the wife of Uriah (apparently it was difficult even for the writers of the Bible to understand why God let this happen). Lust, lying, adultery, and murder were the only reasons Bathsheba was in the picture to begin with, but she becomes such an important part of history; you could in fact make the argument that were it not for lust, lying, adultery, and murder, the king Solomon would never have been born, and (by long extension) you could make the argument that were it not for lust, lying, adultery, and murder, the Lord Jesus would not have been born. Of course I am not advocating these horrible sins; please don't do these things ever, they've always been awful and always will be. But that right there demonstrates how profound the power of God and His forgiveness really is. For king David, a man after God's own heart, God changed the game, reset the board, and flipped the compass; what was totally unacceptable, God accepted, and what was so horrendous and wicked and awful, God made it into one of the greatest, most uplifting stories history can tell.

       Now think about how this might apply to yourself and to the people in your life. God can transform your deepest sin into highest praise. He can turn your weakness into strength. He can take your longest, hardest, darkest personal struggle and turn it into your favorite testimony which you won't let anyone forget. God can take that moment in which you fell short of the grace and the glory of God and use it to show everyone just how glorious He is. It of course makes no sense to the natural mind, but such is the power of God and the power of forgiveness. So the next time you see someone (this includes yourself) struggling with the darkness or making some sort of horrific mistake, forgive them as soon as you can, and you can access the transforming power of God to completely turn things around. Perhaps a good way to look at this is that God, as moral as He is, does not see things in terms of right and wrong; He looks at it in terms of life and death, and then He does the thing that promotes life. Really that's what forgiveness is all about: conquering death and giving life.

       I hope you found this helpful. I just love when I can spend an afternoon meditating on something given to me directly from God. And I'm not kidding about that by the way; I didn't even try to put all this together, God gave it to me. But anyway, that's all I have for now. Until next time, God bless!

Jesus Doesn't Want Your Shoes

          At the moment, I just have a brief thought that's been circling through the rat-maze of my brain for a few days now and that thought is all about how to treat people. I hope it's enough to satisfy you for another indeterminably long while.

          When I consider how I should behave myself in regards to other homo sapiens, the phrase "what would Jesus do?" comes to mind. But I gotta tell ya, something's never sat right with me about that idea, and since I've been thinking about it recently, I now know what it is that's wrong: me. Before I go any further do not think that this is some sort of pity party on my blog; when I say that I'm what's wrong, I mean that I really have no idea what Jesus would do were he in my shoes. I'm a flawed human being prone to making mistakes as much as any sinner and I have a long ways to go yet before God's finished perfecting me. As such, it is an awfully big (not to mention self-righteous) assumption to think I know what Jesus would do in my place.

          God instead gave me the scripture found in Matthew 25:45 which says, "Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, in as much as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me." In this passage, if you read it in context (which you always should) Jesus is talking about treating people right. But there's something in the message here that never really hit me until now, Jesus wasn't telling us to try to think or act like he does; he was telling us not to put him in our place but to put him in our neighbor's place.

          So instead of thinking to yourself "what would Jesus do?" think "what would I do for Jesus?" The Bible is riddled with messages of love, specifically giving love, and if you think about it, Jesus may represent a lot of things to all the different kinds of people that there are, but to those who have a real relationship with him, among whatever else there may be Jesus represents love. So the next time you see someone struggling with something, put Jesus in their place (Jesus did come to earth and live as a human being so he is fully acquainted with the kinds of struggle we people go through) and think about how you would treat him. I would hope that you would not let your pride, prejudice, fear, anger, etc. get in the way of letting Jesus know how much you love him. When you see someone struggling with say... a heavy emotional burden, imagine that they're Jesus; would you say to Jesus "get over it" or "it doesn't matter how you feel, you need to get moving anyway?" I wouldn't. Why? Because I love Jesus and I would never treat someone I truly loved in such a manner. Now imagine that someone is crying, or shouting, or getting frustrated and impatient, or feeling lonely, or about to do something that you know they're going to regret, and ask yourself, "what would I do for Jesus?"

          One last thing: in the first part of this post, I mentioned that I am imperfect, flawed, and prone to mistakes. That's all true of course, and not just for me but for a lot of people. But I recall that the Bible has something to say on that as well, "Fear is not in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment. He that fears is not perfected in love." (1John 4:18). The whole verse is great of course but it's those last three words that stand out to me: perfected in love. I may be flawed but I don't need to be so forever, and the road to perfection requires living in the love that Jesus taught us about.

          Well, that's all of it but I hope you found it edifying. I have to go now because Sunday morning church service is about to start and I have to finish getting ready. Have a blessed day!

The Wall and the Road

I stood atop a wall of my own making

I thought its height was breathtaking

But I knew that it enclosed me

And I often felt quite lonely

So I made a gate for those who may

Wish to enter and brighten my day

I kept it shut in times of war

And opened up when peace was at the door

One day a stranger came and called up to me

I looked down from above in my fortress to see

A man whose kind heart was full of sincerity

As he spoke to me my mind gained in clarity

He spoke of a land full of riches and harmony

And the way he would show at great cost to me

All that I had and that I’d gained

Must be given to him ‘till nothing remained

I knew it would be a great sacrifice

And questioned how I could pay such a price

Not all at once, he told me with compassion

One brick or stone at a time from your mighty mansion

I loosened a brick I had acquired with care

From the lust and pride which held it on the wall there

I took it to my new friend and offered it to him

He had me place it at his feet almost as if on a whim

I continued on for I knew he spoke the truth

Not about some fairy tale like the fountain of youth

His words made my heart ache and my soul sing

He appeared meek and lowly but I thought he must be a king

I took another stone and remembered why I placed it there

Every experience, every idea, every desire, and every care

And placed it at his feet again as he led me farther out

He showed me a wondrous sight just as I began to doubt

The world beyond my wall was more lovely than I knew

And as my friend kept speaking my anticipation grew

But I had to stop when I saw the look in my new friend’s face

He told me that all these stones must be securely held in place

He offered me a simple mortar of humility and trust

And said that just a little was far better than pride and lust

So I applied the mortar to the stones on the ground

Soon they were stable-set and I was paradise-bound

Day by day it went on in this manner

But the king’s smiling face was above me a banner

I held to his course brick by brick and stone by stone

Gratefully trusting that I’d never be alone

Eventually I saw atop a far hill

A kingdom of light and endless good will

And behind me a road from the old to the new

A confusing life and a winding journey in my view

I have since met others who’ve joined me on this way

Seen those who were lost find this road and stay

And though sometimes I may need a loving goad

I know I’m bound for heaven on this road

Everything which I had built up around me

Was of a darkness that can no longer surround me

And though my life is now laid down

I know that with a new one I’ll be crowned

Because the king spoke to me

Now I can see

And I’m free

Spiritual DNA

I have mentioned spiritual DNA earlier in my blog, but it was brief so I wish to reiterate and explain in more depth.

Natural DNA that all organisms’ cells contain is a blueprint for most every internal mechanism the cell needs to survive. Many people possess the misconception that DNA continually and forever dictates the function of the cell. That’s like saying a blueprint for a building exerts absolute control over the contractor who’s using it. This is obviously false. DNA can become rewritten or even damaged by certain environmental factors. The control center of the cell is really the cell membrane, which can be adjusted – if one only knows how – to allow or disallow certain things to enter or exit the cell, but I won’t be going into that – at least not now.

Spiritual DNA – if you’ve read other posts in my blog, you probably know how much I like symbolism – functions in the exact same way, though I myself do not refer to it as a blueprint but rather as a law. There are of course different kinds of laws, the law that is written inside the hearts of fallen, wicked men is the law of sin (death) and the law that is written in the hearts of those whom God has redeemed is the law of love and liberty (life).

This law of life is the Word of God people often hear referred to in church and in the Bible. Most people think that the Word of God is the Bible, but that’s the written word of God, not the living Word. The word found in the Bible comes alive when the Holy Spirit is allowed to flow through it and you, writing those words in your heart and not just on paper (2 Cor 3:3). Of course, don’t think that I wish to discredit the Bible to any extent; it is of course one of the most powerful tools God uses to inspire, teach, and convict people’s hearts, the single most powerful one in written form. That anyone would try to discredit or diminish it in any way would be a repugnant atrocity. Just keep in mind what Jesus himself said (in John 5:39) about the scriptures: “They are they which testify of me.”

Jesus was and is the quintessential word of God, the law of life incarnate, and it is by the same Spirit which kept him on his Holy path that we can receive that law into our hearts. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” is what the Bible says (in 2 Tim 3:16). If one were to bother to look into the original translation, the phrase “inspiration of God” really means “God-spirited” which is a direct indicator as to what one needs to give or receive the living Word of God, written in one’s heart.

Well, that’s all I have to say on that subject, but I hope I’ve “inspired” you (or at least made you use your brain). Until next time, God bless!

The New, Old Meaning of 1 Peter 4:1

          Not too long ago I was searching through the scriptures using a very interesting computer program, the Interlinear Scripture Analyzer, which I had downloaded. There are lots of interesting things to be seen in the scriptures when you can better understand the original writings but I just want to draw your attention to one particular verse, I Peter 4:1, which says “Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin” (AV). It took on a very different meaning for me when I looked at the most literal word for word translation of this verse which reads “Christ, then, emotioning for our sakes in flesh, you also arm yourselves with the same thought, for he who is emotioning in flesh has ceased his sins.”

The verse after this explains, in very simple language, what that thought is, but I won’t put it here for the sake of making you read your Bible more:) However, I’d like to point out that a single thought is a much simpler thing to wrap one’s comprehension around than an entire mind (multiple thoughts, feelings, perspectives, etc.).

The word “emotioning” is also noteworthy, not only because "emotion" carries a very different meaning than "suffer" but also because it is used here in a verb form – as something someone does rather than simply observing. Taking deliberate action concerning one’s emotions would inevitably involve some sort of sacrifice (i.e. pain) but also require oneself to be present and alive rather than having one’s thoughts stuck in the past or the future, full of fear and worry, or pure fantasy. This adds incredible poignant depth to what would otherwise be a somewhat morose phrase.

As you can imagine, I’ve had some fun searching through at least a few scriptures using the Interlinear Scripture Analyzer. Perhaps you who read this will be able to get something out of it as well. Until next time, God bless you all!

A Lesson in Subjectivity

Lately I have seen certain questions raised concerning good and evil, truth and lies, life and death, and free will. While I don’t plan on going into great detail on everything I have ever experienced with such things, I will share a few of my thoughts.

            Free will is often an issue for my own mental self-conjecture, concerning who has it and how it works. On the face of it, I’ve always thought of free will as the ability to choose to live my life as I see fit. Beings such as angels and evil spirits, or demons if you prefer, simply do what they were made to do and, in that manner of thinking, it makes sense to say that they do not possess free will. However, having a deeper understanding about the corrupt nature we all inherit from Adam, I know that angels and evil spirits do not have the internal conflict we all know too well: when we want to do one thing and end up doing another, through no fault of our external circumstances. If we truly had the ability to choose to live our lives as we see fit, then we would do exactly that, every single time without any difficulty or regret, and I know that is not the case. In this sense, angels and evil spirits, devoid of such an internal struggle, have free will, the ability to do what they know to do, however confined it may be to the purpose for which they were created. The only way I know of to rid ourselves of our internal conflict is to submit ourselves to God. From my own experiences with Him working in my life, I know that God never asks me to change and be someone I don’t want to be, but rather that I allow His Spirit to bring the real me to life and become the perfect version of myself.

            Concerning good and evil, I know that many people think that there is some sort of battle going on between God and the Devil, and between angels and demons, but I’ve learned that this is false. I’ve been taught and studied that the only thing that is against God is our own corrupt way of thinking and feeling, what the Bible calls the carnal mind. Concerning what the Bible says about the Devil and evil spirits, every account agrees with the fact they are subject to God: what He says to do, they do, and what He says they can’t do, they don’t. A lot of people have heard stories, of course, about someone being tormented by some sort of evil spirit. The only way to be untouchable is to be under the mantle of Christ. The Bible actually uses the language of being “in” Christ, and it makes sense that a person living in Christ can’t be haunted by demons because they are subject to God’s Spirit. Some may have a problem wrapping their head around the truth that evil spirits are subject to God because God is love, light, and life. Just remember that the Lord Himself placed the tree of knowledge of good AND EVIL in the very Garden of Eden at the beginning of the world. It has been the sinful actions of mankind that has led to the wide spread of spiritual evil in the world.

            The carnal mind is something else entirely. First we should be clear; a mind is a way of thinking, consciously and subconsciously, about everything we experience and do. The carnal mind is what the Bible calls the corrupted, iniquitous way of thinking we inherited from Adam which causes us to sin. It is because of sin that people die, according to the Bible. The son of God came down to Earth, however, that we might have life; he showed us by example and through his teachings how we can have the mind of Christ, the way of thinking that leads us to life as well as all the things that make a life worth living: love, joy, peace, boldness, wisdom, etc.

The language of the Bible can, at times, be obscure, even self-contradictory, and requires personal time spent studying it to decipher the truth of it. Specifically, when Jesus spoke of denying yourself, picking up your cross, and following him, he was actually referring to this matter of the mind of Christ: leaving the carnal mind, having instead the mind of Christ, and allowing that mind to operate in you, producing the same kind of life Jesus had. Other phrases found in the Bible such as “reckon yourself dead” and “I die daily” may be hard to fully comprehend because it’s hard, understandably, to take them literally. I myself like to think that the word “reckon,” in this instance, means the same thing as the word recognize, and the “self” you need to recognize as being dead is the version of you created by the carnal mind. However, a new way of thinking is something that no one can simply completely adopt anew just because they were able to recognize the truth once; it has to be made a habit, which explains the need to do it on a daily basis. We need to practice having our thoughts made subject unto God. That might sound complicated or obscure, but the true reality of this behavior is not for the physical brain of a person to understand, it is for the spiritual thinking. On the surface it looks something like this: you have a thought, you know how you would act on this thought, you know why you would act this way, you recognize if this action will actually bring you closer to what you want, if it brings you good or evil, if it would bring you good you do it, and if it would bring you evil you choose to think and act differently. I know that it doesn’t always seem so simple but it is, and when it happens you will feel a softness in your spirit and a clarity in your thoughts.

The key to all of this is being subject to God. If you can make that sole decision, the rest is much easier, even if being diligently self-analytical is not one of your strengths. Pray for God to reveal to you the parts of your heart where darkness resides, to open your mind’s eye to the truth, and to establish you in the truth. Do this and God will give you faith, the spiritual “substance” of a righteous life. Think of faith as energy with which you can finally do all those things that the carnal mind said were impossible and have the life God wants for you, a life full of love, joy, peace, and success in every area.

That’s all I had for now, but I hope whoever reads this will get something edifying out of it. God bless you!