Spirit of "---"

Last week I mentioned that one of my friends is involved in an activity which is common to the distraction of the Christian by evil and almost always ends with the Christian being mislead and ultimately defeated by that same evil.  The activity is Spiritual Warfare and how Christians get mislead is by seeing demons behind every yowling cat or flickering leaf.  Seeing evil becomes their focus - not the Sovereignty of God nor the Deity of Jesus - which we are told to concentrate on.

My dear sister Becka went to a Christian missions training camp back in the early 1980's, she was going to serve in the underground church in Albania.  She called me up so excited one night because she was learning about Spiritual Warfare and shared all.  Now, I had never heard of such a thing, but I knew what she shared was in direct opposition to what the Bible tells us: flee from evil!  This group was trying to hunt down Satan and make his efforts harder by turning people to God.  My Bible tells me that Satan is an Angel and as such much more powerful than man.  It would presume upon God to think He would back us up in attacking Satan, when we are told to flee from him in the first place!  Hmmmmmmm ...

As for Becka, well she was ultimately defeated seeing demons behind the steering wheel of every car which got in her way on the freeway!  She had taken her eyes off of God and literally was overcome by evil to such an extent that I was forced with her sister to institutionalize her and she is not "normal" to this day!  So, I am leery of anyone whom tells me of their success in Spiritual Warfare, I have seen the Christian casualties and those whom are truly successful have nothing to brag about because they know the cost at which it came.

Unfortunately, for a few years, against my will, I was dragged into Spiritual Warfare.  I do not care for it, I made all attempts to remain in-line Scripturally and I have to admit that there were some mighty odd encounters during that time frame which laid a very vivid foundation in me that evil is real, Satan is real and you had darn well better be drenched in Jesus blood if you expect to come out with your body, mind and soul intact!

I bang my drum against Western Theology and what America has done to destroy the Christian faith from the inside - corrupt Biblical teachers in its seminaries, publication of books for whom trees should have never died, all creating a shrinking Church because of the irrelevance of the Church today in the lives of the unbeliever (which includes most in a church service these days!).  And if the Church is irrelevant, so are your testimony and witness - because the Church has nothing to offer a lost world other than promises of materialism any longer or open acceptance of your sin.  Yeah, let us openly celebrate sin in the Church!

This is called the Spirit of Adultery.

The Church has left God and is following another doctrine, another god, another lover.  The vast majority of what is Christendom today will not fare well before God come judgment day I fear.

Anyone out there think they can turn an adulterous Church around?  Me either, but I can and do pray for God to raise up a revival - i just do not see it happening though and I worry as to why.  Is there no one gift of evangelism any longer?  Is the Holy Spirit no longer moving amongst us?

There are lots of "spirits" out there.  But the Bible covers what I just talked about - a corrupt people overcome by adultery to a false god (and boy do we have false gods by the handfuls these days!).  In fact it would seem that most of the Ten Commandments seem to have at their heart spirits or what we can call demons.

God is concerned about Himself and His relationship to us. (idolatry)
God is concerned that we appropriately respect His image He has built into each of us.  (murder, adultery, theft)
God is concerned when our focus is wrong. (pride, jealousy, envy, greed, coveting)
God is concerned that we respect marriage. (adultery)
God is concerned that we respect our bodies in purity of mind, thought and deed. (adultery)
God is concerned that we respect what is our neighbors. (adultery, theft, false testimony, coveting)

So you seeing the trend here?  What are the biggies of sin before God, all can have compelling, driving spiritual forces behind them!  But, you are not just suddenly afflicted out of the blue!  No you actually have to ask them for their help in dragging you down, which they will do willingly - fortunately, rare is the person whom would do this willingly!

Take lying.  I have known world class liars, they had NO ability not to lie, they were compelled to lie and could not understand why they always lied.  It was not until I became involved in a war against evil that I suddenly understood a few things:

My father was not a liar because he lied.
My father lied because he was a liar.
The spirit which drove him was one of lies, he never recognized this because he could not understand.
He had invited that spirit to help him lie because he wanted to lie and was willing to play evil's game.
In the end he never could see because he was blinded by this spirit.
And not being a Christian, could never have free himself (or be freed) from it.

Substitute your sin of choice in here and see how it reads out:

I was not an idolator became I was proud.
I was proud in my spirit because I was an idolator.
In being proud or participating willing in sin, I set myself up for oppression by evil, in this case pride. (idolatry)

(I have to use past tense here because that was shattered in my life in January.  And the one person I wish whom could understand and see this ... well I fear is past tense was well.  In fact, there is so little left of old me any longer ... )

What is important to understand here is that spiritual oppression, or possession, is the direct result of willingly falling into sin.  My fall was when my church turned on me and fired me as a pastor because I believed in the Holy Spirit (I refused to say the Holy Spirit was no longer active in the believer's life), my bride left me for my best friend, my friends at church abandoned me because I was in sin to had been disfellowshipped and my father believing me to be in idiot ordered me home and told me I was marrying a girl from the House of Burgundy!  No, sorry no lurid tales of sin here, I was in flat out rebellion to God because He had stripped me of everything.  I hated God.

And I had lots of future problems thanks to that period of "Good Bye to God".

I had to learn that there are consequences for every act of rebellion.  Nothing in my life did not affect those I cared for or whom surrounded me.  Sin always comes at a cost and one of them was my opening myself up to spiritual oppression.

So what to do?  You are suffering in this life trapped by a spirit of "---".  And not only are you not unaware of it but you have been lied to by Western Theology that you are strong enough to stand up to the very spirit which is oppressing you.  You probably have no idea if you are opposed or even what it is unless you can see yourself objectively.  And when you can, well, you need some Christian friends to help overcome this.

Your friends help, you are "freed", now what?

You had better be darn sure that you are now in right standing with God.
You had better be darn sure you renounce any and every sin you have ever thought of  or committed, and confessed all!
You had better have someone in place to be held accountable by!

These are not trivial matters, nor to be taken lightly.

I could write so much more, this is just the basics of a world that is not well defined for us and so much garbage you can read comes from the superstitions within the Roman Catholic Church, the corrupt Western Church and Hollywood.

Stay away from sin, if you can.
If you fall back into sin, you set yourself up for failure right off the bat.
Run if you are opposed.
Stand strong if you have to face the demonic world.
Understand that you have No authority or power over the spiritual world, only Jesus does.
Remember, demonic fate was sealed long ago.

Missionary Wife Falls

Unfortunately, we are now going to be discussing a friend, a very dear friend, someone so close it was originally thought 20 years ago that she was my wife!  So we put distance between us physically so that assumptions would go away but not mentally.  We have remained in close contact up until a few months ago.

Through the years, her husband became a very good friend as well of mine. He used to own one of the Munich hotspot techno bars!  He was a mess back then - PTSD from what went on the Balkans, too much death.  He was at the site where my cousin Bernard was executed in Bosnia - he told me things which have not even appeared in the Hague trials about what happened.  So yeah, blood brothers.

You might remember my mentioning many years ago about a wife, whom decided against her husband's wishes to go on the mission field and leave him with the kids.  He was a bit outraged, she really did not care less and told me from Chile that she may well not return.

Return she did, in time to have two more children, brought about by a couple's weekend for marriage counseling away.  Okay, I thought it was funny - and true according to him.  She was devasted and wanted to abort them ... and I thought, what has happened to my friend?

So, you know Kris, I confronted her.  It seems in Chile she had become romantically involved.  It wasn't serious, she left him behind, but it was physical.  We prayed together about this and I encouraged her to never return to Chile and only go on mission trips with her husband after this.

All was well for a number of years, but well, last August I got a note from her that she was leaving the church - too much gossip and evil things were being said about her husband.  So, I encouraged the both of them to find another church.  There are plenty of offerings in my little town.

And, silence.  Occasionally, I would get a recipe from her but never any real communication.  The husband was growing increasing upset and at one point was arrested for for hollering at the oldest son.  It was bogus, but it made him wake up and start to evaluate what was going on around him.  Why was he reacting this way?  It was too weird.

Then Thursday, he and I talked on the phone for many hours.  It seems she has been having an affair dating back to August with the same man, it is now out in the open and the husband has been pushed out to make room for this new guy.

I only learned this when I called him, because she had sent me nude pictures of herself.  The first ones were inappropriate, by evening time, they had become quite - uhm, heartbreaking.  My dear Elspeth had broken.  (yes, her real name!)

I as floored!

But, I meditated on this over the weekend.  Warning signs were there:

• her personality change
• willingness to kill her children
• the affair in Chile husband still does not know about
• the stresses of more children
• the stress of a PTSD husband
• the stress of poverty as he lost his job
• the willingness to offer her body, for ... what?

And she crumbled because she had walked away from her faith, the church and her friends.

God gave us friends to help support us, a church to help guide us and a faith built on rock.

Equally, God gave us a task to represent Him and when we fail and fall into sin, He will strip away our blessings.  It is painful to know, to witness, to comfort the casualties ...

I do not know what to do or say.  I can only offer distant statements of shock and sorrow for my vet friend.  She is not really talking still to me, so nothing I can do there.  And perhaps it is best I go away from her life ...

Prayer, lots of prayer.

A Vessel of Honor

Get Clean!
Of course here we discuss the vessel of honor versus the vessel of dishonor.
So the vessel of honor is something fancy in the Roman times, perhaps a perfume bottle.
The vessel of dishonor conversely is a chamber pot - the toilet bowl of the time!

I have two acquaintances Rich and Bud whom owned a pottery up in the San Juan Islands of Washington State.  With the State approaching it 100th Anniversary, they too were celebrating their pottery's centennial.  They wrote and told me of the events, the Governor, Senators, etc all came to the party they threw.  And all food was served up i antique toilets their parents had cast in the 1880's!  It caused quite a stir needless to say!  Of course, they had completely sanitized the bowls!  But, even at that, many would not enjoy the food offerings.

Luckily, you have the ability to choose the kind of pot you want to be!

• Who are your friends?
• What TV programs do you watch?
• What movies do you watch?
• What do you do with your free time?
• What kinds of things do you say?

All of these must be cleansed of sin.

God can (generally) only use those not participating in sin!  You must be:

• Set apart
• Useful the Master
• Ready for every good work

And that would be: yesterday, today and tomorrow as well!

Paul's point is - do not be the toilet!

And in order to do that you must:


Flee!
Run away from youthful passions.
Timothy was probably over 30, so consider that Paul is not telling him to grow up, but to not imitate the failings of youth.

Run away from sin.
Think about what separates us from God:

• sin
• stubborness
• argumentative
• arrogance
• impatience

Why?  Because any/all of these will poison your body as well as the church's!

Chase After!
Pursue for yourself righteousness, love, and peace.
Seek other's good - not just your own!

Culture according to Big Bang Theory

My youngest daughter has gotten hooked on the TV show, The Big Bang Theory.  I therefore catch snippets of reruns as I am usually cooking when it is on.  The other day they are revolving around the concept of dating and sex.  The nerdy guys are clueless, the females in question not sure having sex with them is "right".  (and she has never been on a date, so this kind of stuff does worry me!)

So, one of the guys is on date number three and learns that the female expects them to have sex since this is the important date.  Really?  Is this what the California perspective has dropped to?  See you three times and then I have to decide to have sex with you or drop you?  Really?

I know from a 1970's study they found that if you spent 50 hours in total with someone, across a short period of time, you could expect to either be in bed with them or "friended".  I remember laughing at that one.  But, I observe, make measured estimates and I would guess that 50 hours was certainly true for teenagers and singles I have seen in the church through the decades.  But near as I can tell, if you truly are a nerd, it might be closer to 5,000 hours - at which point you are friended anyways so it is all a mute point.  And if you are created hopeless, well, you will never actually understand the whole perspective even if you are made aware, because it is nonsense.

So, as I thought on this, as my numb fingers worked on loosing frozen bolts (I was having to pour hot water on the nuts to help loosen them without snapping them), I realized just how hopeless natural man really is.  And oh so much suddenly made more sense.

You go to the grocery store and the magazine racks are covered with cover after cover with sex topics that are supposed to lure you into buying the magazine.  The message?  Sex is where it is at, it is what there is, good sex is the basis of your "loving" relationship, sex is how you can find  your partner, sex is how you will keep your partner (that was the list from yesterday's visit to the grocers).  Yeah, I never quite got that message before.  This is the lie being shoved down our youth's throat, this is the lie our young adults have come to believe, this is the lie that leads to broken marriages, relationships and badly damaged people whom never should have been.  It is the lie my daughter bought into, as well as her mother, it is the lie I tried to show them without success, it is lie my son and all of "his" bought into, it is the lie my two oldest daughters bought into, it is the damage that is hard to walk away from because it is experiential and therefore more true than what reality is supposed to be.

If the above paragraph describes you, I do not have an answer for you apart from walking away from that lifestyle, repenting (for real this time), and living a life glorifying to God and not your hormones.  And yeah, that is not going to be easy because you are going to be fighting a drug called sex and an evil agent whom knows exactly how to pull your strings to make you come back into the world.

So, if the nerd gathering is a reflection upon truly natural man, if the state of man is so hopeless that sex is the only thing seen as having any real value in a relationship, then it also stands to reason that natural man can not understand the pull/lure of God because it is not based on sexual tension or allure.  (Which explains oh so much about crossed wires in 2012 for me!)  And yet, there is this thing called friendship which each of the TV show's nerds have mostly attained without sexual orientation.

But, if friendship is understood, then why is friendship no longer understood within a romantic context?  A friendship, a real friendship, seems to run about three years to define and to form the commitments necessary to form long term relationships.  The time period I mentioned is from studies done through the years, it seems to have been verified by my faithless bride.  We did not have three years, more like nine months.  We met, we "knew" we were the one, we engaged, we committed religiously and she lost it before the governmental seal of approval could be applied.  So, yeah, I like the idea of three years now.  She should have been my best friend beforehand.  (Conversely, thank you God from saving me from the disaster that one would have become!  And for the record, I was doing my best to be a Godly man - apparently my best friend was not.)

And I guess that is the point of the Big Bang Theory - friendship has nothing to do with sex, sex has nothing to do with a desire for more than self satisfaction, and self satisfaction actually has nothing to with love or you - it is all about me, my desire, my satisfaction.  Yeah, the ultimate egotism ...

Historically, we can look back to the Epicurean Movement of the ancient Greek world.  Whatever the male's desire, it is good for the body, both positive and negative.  Pursue your passions with gusto because you are only going to go through life once, so grab all the life you can!

Paul did not care much for the Epicureans, the Roman empire loved them however, and with the objectification of all females - it meant all females, any female, any time, any where, were created only for your (male) use and pleasure.  That is what this pagan trend of thought leads to and will again and again and time again!

If you are male, do you honestly love and care for the females in your life?  Do you believe they were created solely for your and/or other's pleasures?  And oh by the way, you have nothing to say about some other man taking the females in your life by force for his pleasure when he deems fit ...

If you are female, how do you feel about being valued only for your ability to be part of a sex act?  We are not talking any form of love here, we are talking violence at the hands of strangers!  That is where you are headed if this trend continues.

To disagree at this point is to disagree with history, which has repeated itself many times in this regard, in various forms!

Of course, to disagree with the culture and the way it is headed is to set  yourself apart.  To make a spectacle of yourself, to draw undue attention to yourself, to invite every form of attack.

Just as discussions over the female slave trade in our culture, the concept of a female's desire for purity or commitment is not really appreciated in this male centric western culture we have created.

Face it, your body is your body, you can do as you wish with it.  But, why you would not desire the best for yourself - simply by walking away from culture and healing, then beginning to find love in earnest - defeats me.

Fashion Attire

Women's fashion across the past several years has gone so far downhill, here in the northwest of America, as to be - why did they even dress at all?  Honestly, had these women gone out in public in the smallest bikini possible, they would have been more appropriate!

I was at a funeral not so long ago and the woman seated in front of me was dressed rather oddly for a funeral, but hey this is the northwest, a lack of convention is expected at times.  But, she was not very appropriate!  As it was an Episcopal service, there was lots of standing and sitting.  The more standing and sitting, the more the woman's sweater rode up, revealing an ever higher climbing thong.  Eventually it was to the point where I had to wonder exactly how much higher that thong could go before she gave herself the ultimate wedgie and ran screaming to the bathrooms!  I have to admit I missed most the later part of the ceremony as I was fighting with every resource to reach out and give that purple strap a mighty tug.  It also intrigued me as to why she could not tell that her sweater was just about reaching her neck by the end. Yeah, her escort was fascinated as well, so I am not thinking husband material there.

Saturday night I was at The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner with my youngest daughter.  It was fun, she spent most of the time on her cell phone clicking away and I was watching these two college age women whom were obviously picking out people to make comments about.  They were having a good time.  At the next table further from them, was a young couple, he obviously smitten, she more relaxed.  As they got up to leave - it seems her dress was not designed to ever cover her crotch.  But, it was all okay, she wasn't wearing any underwear either.  Well, that one was a shocker, but the two girls just exploded in laughter, turned bright red, covered their mouths, etc!  The young blonde girl did not even notice ...  Yeah, I thought of a smart ass remark at the time, but I would never say such a thing!  Someone called the cops whom arrived about 10 minutes after the couple had left.  The female officer then made the rounds looking under tables for other offenders ...  I was so trying not to explode in laughter myself!  As for the young couple, well they moseyed out to their car and the alarm rearmed itself and was still going off when my daughter and i left .... and the officer is just checking out crotches under tables rather than being curious as to the flashing lights and honking horn.

And at church the women, young and old alike, have taken to wearing stretch pants.  I am sure they have some modern fancy name but they are basically just a 1950's style stretch pant made out of some low grade body contour hugging nylon weave.  How low grade?  Well, if you wear any form of underwear they are plainly visible through the weave!  And oh by the way, many were not wearing  any.  So, imagine the look of that one!  I feel for women so stupid as to ignorantly be wearing anything so revealing and immodest.  I feel for the young men of the church - visually driven with no ability to deal with it.  I really wanted to take the stage, stop the program and give a lecture ...  I would probably start by naming colors, panty styles and then mention a mole I doubt many knew about.  Yeah, we are talking revealing here.  Of course, I am the evil one here by even thinking of being so insensitive!

The guys do not manage much better in church.  There are the guys for whom the mysteries of buttons were never explained and it always seems to be hairy chested men whom suffer from this affliction.  I am not sure what the lure is of a hairy chest, personally I think it is disgusting and should be combed and/or straightened.  Amongst the younger crowed through whom do not understand that if you put a belt on, pull your pants up, they will stay in place and not have to be held up with both hands, while bending over.  And I have only seen one guy ever come wearing stretch pants ...

Sure we live in a free for all society, almost anything is acceptable these days and shame on you if you have a problem with how I choose to live my life!  But, God created sexual attraction, otherwise the human species would have died out at Adam because he would be organizing unicorn football events and figuring out how to brew beer.  And with that attraction comes our own responsibility to treat with consideration any situation which could be uncomfortable or enticing to a member of the opposite sex.

Of course this evil culture we live in says it is your problem if you can not deal with how we choose to live our lives or display ourselves.  But, then we live in both a God-less (there are no standards) and Love-less (I do what I want to do) societies.  Yeah, that translates to the term EVIL in God's book.

Shadow of Evil

Quietly, in the background of my life, I have been trying to figure a problem out.  The problem is, the answer I keep coming to, is in direct opposition to something I know for fact.

People, anyone, you, me, your momma will during course of our lifetimes have problems or make decisions which will affect others around us.  How are we as onlookers to deal with these times?

First off, there are problems, Problems and then there are PROBLEMS!  So from normal to abnormal, is how they are arranged.

Everyone has normal problems - our own stupidity causing harm and to perhaps an inconvenient proportion of others around us as well.

Problems are more difficult because something has gone wrong inside of the person and we are now dealing with prayer and spiritual damage control.

PROBLEMS, well, yeah - we are talking plain and simple demonic activity.  Somewhere, somehow, the person fell off of the spiritual bandwagon and the demons have been rejoicing ever since.  Everyone is damaged in the resulting carnage!

You might remember that one my flippant interview questions I did on my birthday last week, I listed one of my natural talents as getting to the bottom of the causes for problems in my friends' lives.  It is also one of the greatest separators of my friends and I - no one likes having what only they know, no one else could possibly know, known - especially by me.  And then, have me address this with them.  Sigh ...

So, a family with PROBLEMS.  By what right would demons dare to attack this family?  Well, God could have said, "Hey Satan!  You did quite a number on Job.  Wanna have a go at another family?"  But, I do not think so.

Demons could be picking off the family members individually, but again doubtful.  Not a big enough exposure to give Satan the praise he seeks in disqualifying God and His power on Earth.  Satan likes vulnerable targets with lots of public exposure!  Not you or me.

So, we are going to think parents here.  Something went wrong with the parents, during the twenty years I was mostly away.  And that sort of makes me angry!

Both parents are currently quite insane if  you ask me.  Nothing makes any sense, it is random, it is irrational - it is all of the things demonic activity is based off of - except for the smoking gun of sin.  And that is the hard one.  If it was based on sin, it would be public, it would be discrediting other Christians.  Instead just this drumbeat of insanity destroying a family quietly in the dark.

I have been praying concerning this quite some time - with no direction, answer or hints.  Until tonight.

My heart was again broken from what I heard, no rational person would do, would say, or could have ... ever.  We are discussing hate here, which is not one of the gifts of the Spirit.  So, now we have a direct observation of salt water claiming to come from a fresh water spring.  Ain't, gonna happen!

And my mind wandered back to a stand-off between the father and I forty years ago.  What he did is not so important as that my reaction was quite violent.  He was going to die, make no mistake here, that old Kris had driven hundreds of miles to offer him a chance to change or to die.  It was that simple.  He chose wisely and did turn his life 180 degrees around.  And he held that course for decades.  Then something happened, somewhere, somehow, sin had regained control!

When I look at prejudice, hatred, judgement - all the "classic" adjectives used to describe an American Christian,  we are no longer talking God in control.  These three are in fact the root cause for the problems in his life, they go back to happenings in his life long ago, now boiling over due to resentment of others and his own physical condition as well as sinful nature.

And here is where I have been praying for knowledge, understanding and wisdom.

I now know, I now understand, but I have no wisdom as how to precede!  In fact I really need Miss Manners to contact me, if she even still reads this blog!  Wisest person I have ever encountered and this is Kris' SOS to you out there ... !

So, mitigating damage inside of the family I can nibble at the edges of and pray for changed hearts.
Praying for wisdom and God's words in addressing this with him, if I can ever get him alone because I think I know - but dear God I hope not!
And if you would join me in prayer, this is a badly damaged family of 6 and honestly, they are in need of a major God intervention ...
I truly believe God has His hand of judgement on them, trying to call them back and most seem obvious.

The Sin of Nothing

Please read Matthew 25:14 - 30.

So I was talking my friend and we started talking about privilege and how it pushes some down and raises others up.  Well, the conversation went sideways and my points were used outside of their context and all became a mess, however it set my mind to working on a real issue in this age in which we live, by way of application ...

Doing Nothing With What You Have Been Given Is A Sin

You are to take risks!
Being a SLOTH is a sin.  consider Proverbs 22:13
Being overly cautious with what you have been given is a sin.
Being fearful of failure is a sin.

I am allowing for some common sense here in this discussion!

Take Inventory!
What are your assets?
What assumptions do you hold that stand in your way?

Take Responsibility!
We each have 24 hours in a day, but we choose to use them differently.  consider Proverbs 19:3

NOW THE IMPORTANT STUFF!

So, the above is all well and good.  But ...

And this is where it gets hard in this culture to understand - there is no but!  If you disagree, just read on.

If you claim to be a Christian,
If you really are a Christian,
If God is using you (and He will if  the other two are true),
Then know that this world is not the end all to anything! 

You were not created for this world!  You are a representative of God - an ambassador for His coming Kingdom, anything/everything you have is supposed to be God's.  Anything you earn is because of God.  Anything stolen from you was God's.  God will put you where you need to be.  God said that He is responsible for providing your needs (assuming you are working!).  It is when we forget any of this we fall into failure, then sin.

Because we are not a part of this world, those of the world will be exalted before us in the eyes of all and richly rewarded by the world!
We will be cheated, we will be passed over for raises and promotion, we are guaranteed the short end of the world's stick! 
If you live your faith (not obnoxiously) you will be the "queer" one of your work organizations.  Expect not be invited to parties, nor to lunch.  You get to be the one gossiped about and to have extra work reviews - because you are just not "right".  If you over produce, your work will be credited to others because you made them look lazy (which they are!).

No, you will not be treated fairly or justly - because they did not treat whom you represent fairly or justly!
And, nothing need ever be said, what is in them is opposed to what is in you!

It is just that simple.

And where Dave Ramsey and his ilk fail:

Yes, God provides for you, He may even bless you abundantly - But, those are His provisions and are to be used by you for HIM and HIS efforts.

Nowhere is there even a hint of tying up HIS assets in CD, Bearer Bonds, become a slum lord, stock market baron, etc.  If God allows you a buck you need to use that buck wisely in supporting yourself and HIS work as well.   If God allows you a million buck, exact same principle, but can you live at the same level and allow God to have the excess?

Nope, gotta invest for tomorrow, because I have no faith He can supply those needs tomorrow, like He did today.

And for all of the Ramsey-ites out there, once you are out of debt, you are now burying God's money rather than investing it in His business!  And when He returns, which of the slaves with the talents do you think He will apply to you?  Hint: He does not care about your accumulated wealth - He gave so you could too.  And, you did not,  you invested in materialism and accumulated wealth, not in His Kingdom ...

A Question on Natures

I really need to talk with my friend.  I have called and called but just can not get a reply, which is a pity because with my mind, I am not likely to remember much longer what it is I need to ask.

So, I will lay it out here, perhaps one of you will answer ...

Now I have spent months roaming through my video library, culling out movies I really am not interested in any lionger: too boring, inappropriate nudity, or something is just plain "wrong" and I can not exactly define it.

So, remembering that I a newby here with an emotional nature now:

It is that third category which I have grown uneasy with: some of the TV I see my adult children watching, some of the TV grandkids are allowed to watch by their parents,some of my movies now...  There is a reoccurring theme I am finding across TV and some of my movies of an undercurrent of ... not sure how to word this ... objectivism of either sensuality or sexual natures.  Nothing blatant, something more subtle.

It could be because my nature is so new that I am overly sensitive, it could be my thought is correct.

Is there no standard of innocence or purity any longer?  Has our culture so eroded that everything is translated through filters of sexual content or salaciousness?

And the answer to that question really is bothering me.  Under my old nature I was beyond blind to even the existence of such.  I knew through my friend Chrissy that such a thing could exist - within the realm of abnormal psychology - she was a self admitted sex addict, had been the majority of her life.  Her friendship with me made her wake up and realize that she really needed professional help.  Unfortunately, she had already contracted HPV, becoming one of the first to die of this in the early 1980's.  We were stunned, we loved her for the sister she was.  And even her sisters were speechless.  A disease no one had ever heard of, killed Chrissy, while she was in therapy for her addiction, thankfully after she had accepted Salvation for real.  But, Chrissy's problem lay within the realm of abnormal psychology ... right?

Now with this new nature, I am revisiting that thought.  Was Chrissy more normal than abnormal?  Or has culture and society move so far towards the side of sin that there is no concept of actual purity or innocence any longer?  Are we nothing but meat to be hunted down by those whose conscious are scarred?

And if the latter is true, then how is Kris to be viewed by those closest to him?

In my previously, completely blind nature ... was I ever actually understood or just considered either the densest male whomever existed or the most libertine of any male whomever existed?  Neither would be true since I never had the basis from which I could have believed anything other than what Chrissy went through was anything other than abnormal.  Mind you any attempt to place Kris as guilty of such sin would be majorly in error, Kris' problems lay elsewhere.

Yet, movies and TV seem to have an undercurrent of expecting something like Chrissy to be normal ...

So, the question:

If purity and innocence can still exist, does the existence of the sexual nature then destroy the innocence which did exist?  Is one at the cost of the other?

And if the answer is a flat yes, I believe Kris is going to give up on humanity ...

You and Your Tongue

James so elegantly, so simply, tells of the power of the tongue.  Its power to destroy is probably easily known in all of our lives!  See James 3:1-12...

But the Bible has much more to say on this subject!  Solomon apparently had learned or observed many important lessons associated with opening your mouth.  So, grab your Bible, open it up to the book of Proverbs and think on what you have been told about the tongue of yours:

Consider not saying anything at all!
Proverbs 10:19, 10:21, 16:28, 17:9, 17:27-28

You do not need to say everything you know!
You do not have to say everything you think!
You do not have to repeat everything you hear!

Though with caution, as requesting prayer from those  you trust is very important to your life and walk!

Consider whether or not you actually know all of the facts!
Proverbs 14:3, 17:27, 18:13

Even if you are talking with an original source you have to stop and ask yourself if there is an agenda being run.  And as these last two years have shown me - a liar is going to lie, even when confronted!  You have to be careful in your sources.  The ability to use discernment can be very powerful in cutting through the personalities, agendas and emotions to find out what really is going on.

Consider the best way to say what needs to be said.
Proverbs 10:19, 12:25, 13:3, 15:1, 15:4, 15:23, 16:24, 18:21

There are lots of ways of saying the same things, without baiting the listener, without provoking a defensive or offensive reaction and without using weasel words!

Hence, the need to engage brain - before engaging mouth!

What The Heck?

What the heck is going on here?

As you might remember, several weeks ago I was treated to inquisition involving a long time friend of mine and his misbehaviors with the females of that church.  It took me a few weeks to get past the idea that I would willing execute him for what he has done.  Today, Thursday, guess what I got treated to - another inquisition!

This time, the guy was the youth pastor of my old church, at least up until three years ago, and his behaviors apparently spanned numerous churches and about 20 years!

Yeah, no one bothered to check any of his references before he was hired - he had been fired from every church he had worked for - for the same problem - inability to control himself around teenage girls!  Good Lord!  What has become of the church when it is too hard to check references?!?!?!?!?  And too hard to let the truth be known, much less charges filed against him!  Yeah, he appears to be getting away with his latest disaster as well.  Grrrrrrrrrr!

I am just sickened that we can place no trust that a job search committee will return qualified candidates, we can not trust the testimony of the answers given in interviews, no one is checking references when hiring those whom will be responsible for the care of the children and the church through more destroyed lives - looses even more the right to bear Jesus' name!

We do not need a revival in this sick Western theology poisoned church - we need a full blown REVOLUTION!

Out with the seminars creating these disasters!
Out with Elderships unable to make God-ly decisions!
Out with Pastors whom can not stand up for God!
Out with Youth Workers dedicated to satisfying their carnal natures!
Out with those whom destroy others through gossip!

The whole lot of you suck!
Get out of my church!

And yeah, that is exactly how I feel on this whole subject!  There is no room in God's Kingdom for these losers - and oh by the way - Jesus flat out said this at least four times I can think of!  It is the doctrine of demons which allow this culture to even exist in the Church, drive men to their baser natures, destroy the lives of the innocent and reduce Jesus' life and sacrifice to a nice story but of no real relevance!

Sorry, you will get what you deserve you sham of a church!  Your ministry is over.  God has left you.  Why do you even keep the lights on?

Now how to cause real change ... ?  Another denomination?  Or can a church be sued for claiming to be Christian when they no longer represent anything Christian?

I really feel pity for the likes of Hutt, Zwingli, Huss and Luther - fairly straight on men whom began a movement to bring people to God and it has grown into a forum for pedophilia ...

Where are our Christian leadership?  And if their absence is indicative of something, I worry for the immediate future of Christianity.

Another Church Failure

Something is fundamentally wrong in ourselves, in our churches, in our culture, in the society within which we operate.  I have sat on this post for two weeks now because I have not known what to say, how to say it or even if it needed to be said.  And I am still not sure I really have answers to any of those problems yet.  And, there is no way to address this with any eloquence.

I had expected to have a quiet lunch with an old friend - I had not planned on getting involved in an inquistion concerning a mutual friend.

The object of the inquisition had charges brought against them by concerned parents in my old church.  The church did not agree with the concerns and as the first complainer was one of the under pastors, he resigned and left the church.  It was his daughter, he would not support a church which could not recognize sin.

It took little for me to run down the tales, using discernment - you can not hide, you can not lie.  And I was sickened.  My heart is broken, my spirit crushed for my friend is beyond guilty...

The first was a ten year old girl, then a twelve year old girl, a fifteen year old gir and the final known one a sixteen year old girl!

I suspect at least two other girls in the church were damaged by him and I learned by accident of one marriage he has destroyed.

Only two of the girls feel drawn to the church, but can no longer trust a God whom would not protect them; nor a church which would not take action.

I am ill, my avowed belief is that such men should be quietly executed and removed from the gene pool.  It makes me ill to think of my friend as being worthy of execution - and knowing that I would willingly be the one to take action.

Pastors and Elders unwilling to move on accusations, churches where sin is allowed to fester and lives destroyed, cultures so warped that innocence becomes sin, sin is expected, sin is ignored and the church is sidelined - when it should be on the front lines of the battle.

A list of losers, a list of those whom now need major prayer and reached out to.
I am just sick!

Where Is God?

“Night, is a book by Elie Wiesel about his experience in the German concentration camps. “One day,” writes Wiesel, “as we returned from work, we saw three gallows… The SS [guards] seemed more preoccupied, more worried, than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was pale, almost calm, but he was biting his lips as he stood in the shadow of the gallows… ‘Where is merciful God, where is He?’ someone behind me was asking. At the signal, the three chairs were tipped over… Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive… The child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death… Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer; ‘Where is He? This is where – hanging here from this gallows…'

Where is God when a child is shot in Newtown or hung in Auschwitz or killed in an American drone air strike or for that matter dies of cancer? I don’t know. There is no answer.

Talk of God giving humans free will and thus allowing us to face the consequences of our choices solves nothing. If the creator could intervene personally when it came to the magic tricks in the Bible like making the sun stand still for a day in a battle, he could have done something about that child gasping out his young life. He didn’t. Theology that tries to paper this horrible fact over with explanations about why there is evil is nothing but nervous blather.

But I take comfort in the fact that sometimes a person of immense courage follows Christ to a cross. Such acts point to a God that had the empathy to share our fate. Sometimes one person’s example gives me hope that following Christ might be the path that leads us out of the hell we’ve made, even if I’ll never know why we’re here in the first place, let alone why God didn’t just make things simpler, better, faster rather than taking the slow path of gradual ethical evolution."

***

If you are Christian, if you deal regularly with the unchurched, sometimes even the churched, you will hear the wail and the anger - because there is no God, because no fair God would allow ...

And how do you answer them?

When I think of my late friend Peter, telling of me of the nun Maria's plight in a Magadan death gulag ...
When I think of the 6.5 million Jews, the 7.5 million Christians executed by my father's Reich ...
When I think of Lenin and his 19 million executions to purify the land ...
When I think of the 30 million Stalin in his paranoia executed ...
When I think of Mao Tse Tung and his 32 million deaths ...
Or Pol Pot ...
Or Rwanda ...
Or Ruby Ridge, Idaho ...
Or Waco, Texas ...
Or the assassination of John F Kennedy ...
Or a record setting typhoon ...

Where is God when the millions, or even the one is crying out in their death rattle?
Where is God in the storm, the waves, the tides, the mass deaths by nature?

How can a fair God ...

And that is the rub, God is not "fair".  If he was you would already be dead, as would I.
God is a "just" God, he does what is right, not what is fair.

When we see with human eyes, we are looking for fairness.
When we see with God's eyes, we are looking for justice.

And when we are judging God, we are judging by human standards, not God's standards.

Where is God?  Allowing man to trash and destroy His creation, even human life.  He has already provided the only standard of measure for life - the ability to stand with Him but acknowledging His son's sacrifice, at human hands.

Where is God in the storm or other natural disaster?  Perhaps judging a perverse culture, perhaps destroying false witnesses, perhaps testing the faith of His people, perhaps calling His people home because it is time.

We are not smart enough to know.  I can look at a culture dedicated to sexual vice and know God will call them to judgement.  I can look at authorities whom are ruthless or corrupt and know that God is going to call them to account for their deeds.  I do not know when, I do not know how, but anyone can read Jeremiah or Isaiah in the Bible and see that God has a standard and He was willing to use it even against His own people - to their own destruction!  How much more so for a just God, to do the same to  _____ (fill in the blank).

We are the creation, not the creator, we can not judge how He uses us, when he uses, where he will use us - we just have to be willing to be used, ready to be used and expect to be used.  The problems arise when we say, "Well, God would never work that way!"  Really?  Maybe you need to study your Bible a little more closely before you side with Western (American) Culture's beliefs about God.

The real God does not cause sin, that does not mean He can not use it to His advantage.  The real God does have control of everything and is more than willing to turn Satan loose upon a world unable to recognize much less fight against it without the Holy Spirit's intervention.

Everyday, in the world around you, in your daily life, God is there, God is working.  Can you see Him?  Can you see His handiwork?  Can you show others?

But, if you are not a Christian, well, there is no requirement that God does anything in your life or around you, other than to continually offer you the chance to make your peace with Him - through you acceptance of His son's death as the payment for your doing things your way and not His.  And then you get to be held accountable for having followed teachers of the truth ...  (hint, we are surrounded by those quite willing to lie to us and mislead us!)

So where is God right now?  Calling the hurting, the desperate to look to Him and not theirselves for the answer to their problems.  Calling you to account - right now, right here ...

That does not mean you are saved from death or punishment, but it does mean there is a better way from what you knew on this Earth.

Sex Slave Trade

It was August 1974.  I took a trip to visit my father in Colorado and spend some time with my two sisters and two brothers.  The youngest brother was off in Texas on a trip, the oldest of my sisters was up in Wyoming, the youngest sister was nowhere to be found and that left the oldest brother to hang with.

So I asked where Carmen was, the youngest of the sisters.  He old me that she had gone to Wichita for a school pre-season football game.  She was a cheerleader, so yeah, that made sense.  Of course, then the tale continued on about how she had been kidnapped.  I was horrified and more than willing to hunt them down and quietly bring her home and bury "them".

But, for as much as I loved my brother, he was a doper, so I had to check this with my stepmother.  Yeah, the story was true and she could not have cared less ...

I was 19 then, Carmen was 15, what on earth could anyone want with a teenage girl?!?!?  Too weird.  Of course a few years later, God woke me up to the whole white slave trade in young blond girls being trafficked to the Middle East.

In 1981, I was in Tempe, Arizona, where I ran a mining company out of and as I walked across a parking lot I saw a Polaroid picture laying on the ground.  I picked it up - it was of a blond woman, bound, gagged and laying the back of a windowless grey van.  The same van description given about the vehicle which had grabbed my sister 7 years earlier!  I was stunned.

Yeah, I called the cops and they explained to me about the slave trafficking in blond girls.  I was now ill, for now I understood what had become of my sister.  Make no mistake, if I knew where she was or whom was responsible - they would have been dead that week.  I was beyond murderous rage.  I even called back to Wichita and talked with the cops about anything being done to find my sister: nope, but there had been 11 more abductions with the same vehicle being described!  They would not let me have a  list of grey vans in a three state area ...

As for the photo I had found, she had been grabbed in San Diego the day before.  Probably headed for Florida, the cop commented.

Sunday, thirty-two years later, I popped into a meeting about something called Rapha House.  Sounded like another recovery center or something, there are lots of them around here, but I was willing to hear their sales pitch and see if there is something I can do to help them.

Turns out that they run sort of a half way house concept in Cambodia, Thailand and Haiti for girls freed from the sex trade.  Girls bought usually as pre-teens from their families and then, well YEAH!  Some can be kidnapped from their owners or enticed to seek shelter, some brought outright by the local police because even they can no longer offer safety to them.

There were only four guys at the meeting and she commented that this was an unusually high number  - so she spoke on how this sex slave trade culture can not be conquered until men's hearts can be turned to God.  She hammered guys pretty hard.  It made me smile.

I stayed after and talked with the director for at least half and hour.  A very genuine, concerned, woman with a heart for those trapped into the hopelessness of the sex trade.

She sort of agreed with me that there was no hope in ever recovering my sister, 39 years have passed since her abduction.  She would be 54 now and in a decade of searching the internet there is no one by that name that could even reasonably resemble her.  But, I am the optimist so I do hope to find her, rescue her if needed and let her know about the God I discovered while I was away at college that previous year.

There is little I can do to help this Rapha House project, no money - the IRS is currently garnishing me (for the next three years!) and too far away for me to help volunteer with their data center in Missouri.  But, this much I can do:

You can check them out and see if there is a way you can fit them into your giving or your church's support list!

WWW.RAPHAHOUSE.ORG

Stephanie Freed
POB 1569
Joplin, MO
64802-1569

Thanks.


And yet again, dear readers, I need to remind you younger men that when you hop from one site to another, a list of your previous viewing sites goes with you and is passed by Google to the receiving site as part of the analytical data - just in case I need to know, for whatever reason, how to better draw you to my site!  And, again, there is a flood of porno sites coming with your data and being stored by Google!

However, there was one new twist this time, a site from a nearby town.  When I click on the reference I do not know it is a porno site, just a place someone has visited.  So, it is with dismay when I see one of my friend's daughters, er - ah - uhm - displayed.  We will be having some words concerning this and if you are local to me, and you know whom you are, she is under age this would qualify as child porn.  So, when the Fed's find out about this site and then dump the server using addresses - yours will come up - and thanks to you so will mine.  I am not worried because I do not surf porn - so my nic-id will be of no concern.  You apparently do, so  your nic-id will be splattered all over the place.  Want arrested?  Keep surfing child porn!

However, you do need to address this sin area in your life.  I assume you know me locally, hence your reading my site.  However, you need to free  yourself of this slavery and the damage done to these young women/girls.  Corner me, talk to me, one on one - let us conquer this problem in your life now - before it becomes death to your soul...  I am very serious here about my being concerned about your eternity dude ...

Cult of Self

Sunday's sermon was odd.  I know what the pastor was driving towards, but I am not so sure that he got there.  Which takes me back  a few months ago and to running into Pink Hair Girl at an antique show.

I never told you the entirety of our conversation because at the time I did not know how to deal with something she had said.  Now mind you, her and her husband are as dear to me as my own children, so keep that in mind.

So, I had commented that I had not seen her or her husband at church in quite a long while and wondered if they had moved.  See, Kris can be non threatening when asking a question.  They had moved but that was not why they no longer came to church, it is because of the pastor.

Now, I had already had my January run in with the pastor by then and the thought had crossed my mind, oh maybe 10,000 times to just walk away from this church and go to Argentina.  But, then if I did, I would only be proving all of the gossips correct - which they are not but I just know everyone is waiting for Kris to prove the gossip right.  So, I stand in innocence, which I am sure grates on more than a few people here.  So, I wondered, had she or her husband transgressed the gossip hot line as well?

Her reply is what I have thought about, without a response until yesterday, "No, we just feel that the pastor, in his pursuit of a doctorate, has left correct teaching behind."  Yeah, how to respond to that one?  You know I condemn the western church and its theology system it has created to support heresy.  But that was not her point, his education was.  It was getting in the way of his presentation of the truth to her.

Interesting.

Now mind you, I think as the pastor has gained more and more knowledge, his doctrine has come more in line with mine as time progresses.  However, he is still sold out to western culture and theology, plus he remains overly impressed with the idea of being the next Rick Warren - Lord help us!  We really do not need another one of those!

And I can live with that because it does not get in the way of his having some good points, usually.

But, Sunday did show me the problem, PHG and her husband saw a year ago and left over: he has become impressed with himself.  No,  you can not point to any one statement and say "See!, there is the problem.".  But, I could see, without being critical of him in the least, that it has become a problem for him publicly now.  I offered to tell him back in September, what separated him from God - with no evidence at all, but he did not want to know and even stopped talking to me at that point.  And, no I have the evidence of what I "knew" last fall.  Sigh.

And my mind has thought on this for months.  Even last week I told my niece that I was working through this, because it needed to make sense but just did not quite yet.  Today, it came together.  My mind for one brief instant cleared and I could see the basis of the problem and the contrasting correction to it!  But, if I tell you here, this will become a tome!  So, look for something more interesting tomorrow.

Passing On Forgiveness

So you have a heart attack, your heart is completely unstable, your body has been invaded by dozens of needles, you are stressed to the max - and then you get visitors.

Dutchman and I were talking.  I strapped to a table for now 40 hours at this point, he stressed over something he did not want to say but apparently felt compelled to.  It was about my father in law.  I mentioned his death last August.  Just let dead horses lay, really! And though I would not post this, I think I will because perhaps someone out there needs to understand forgiveness as well.

For those whom do not know, I had a civil marriage, which was to have been followed by a religious ceremony several months later.  Yeah, two kids knowing they should tie the knot but wanting to do it right and wait for the real ceremony to take place.  So, civil was in August, religious was to be on Valentines Day the following year. Only father in law found out, as he worked for the government, and exploded while I was in Mexico on a month long trip.  I came back in mid-September to address a problem in his church (at the youth's request) and swung by my best friend Don's apartment, used his hidden key to get in to drop my bags, and instead found my would be bride and him heavily engaged.

I quietly left.

Back home I found I had a letter from her dated a week after I had left for Mexico, telling me that her father had annulled the marriage so she saw no reason not to explore my list of friends she liked.....  Yeah, sure glad I found out before I got that letter!  Of course, her and I had a $220 phone call that afternoon!  I lost a great many friends that fall.  Even Dutchman, the only one to  apologize, fell to her seductive powers.  And as for me, my relationship with Udie had been completely above board.  Silly me, it seems!  But, I was not that kind of person in any event and I never would have thought it of any of my friends!

And here Dutchman, paced in my room, in ICU, as he worked his way through telling something he had never said before, from a conversation with my father in law many years earlier, part of the apology he never passed along.  Now at the time of my disaster with that family, their youngest daughter was head over heels for a guy named Kurt.  It really did not take discernment to know what a POC the guy was, but the family had known him most of his life, really loved him and his family - and I was the intruder.  Yeah, I was smart enough to never saying anything in front of them concerning this creature from the underworld.  But, said demon, understood extremely well that I knew whom and what he really was.  And years later, my in-laws were to discover exactly how miserable a creep he was as well.

And Dutchman was conflicted.  Make no mistake he loves his wife but he remembers too well his relationship with my wife.  It almost killed him to tell me of how the father in law had told him of his own distress at how wrong he and his wife had been about me and Kurt.  They had trusted Kurt, they did not trust me.  They saw no future in computers but Kurt wanted to be a dentist, so they could understand that he had his feet on the ground.  Yet, Kurt went on to poison their daughter, after two children, and live "the life" afterwards.  Yeah, he abandoned the children, my in-laws got to raise them.  Because there was no "proof", no charges were ever filed, but in their town, everyone knows he tried to kill his wife.  She continues to live as a vegetable, at least I think she is still alive.  And then in contrast, there was the German, whom did okay with his career in computers, adopted for four older Russian orphans, continued working with youth for forty years now, etc.  Though they could never accept the idea of "that woman" being in my life, aka Gaelic Girl.

My father in law was proud of me!  But he was conflicted and therefore concerned over his own Christianity.  If he had been so wrong about me, and then Kurt, what else was he wrong about?  Should he have institutionalized his wife, as he had considered early on in their marriage?  (It is a long, horrible story, but she murdered her brother in law, though could not be charged because there never was "proof" she had done it.  Though, she had confessed to me, many years later how she actually had!)  And Dutchman had never told me any of this.  Had he of, I would have flown to be with my father in law, to tell him it was all alright, to pray with him, to let him know I have always loved him!

And so Dutchman, embarrassed and hurting, continued to pace as he spilled his guts over Udie and the words of my father in law.  I think it hurt him to know that it was me and not him, the family finally understood their daughter was to have been with.  He was still hurting from her abandonment of him as she continued on her quest to "know" all of my friends.  Sigh.  He was wanting to know he was forgiven by me, because obviously, he can not forgive himself - even forty years later ...

Though my heart rate is now something like 180 and the alarms are sounding from the nurse's station, I almost had to laugh.  I forgave him even while he was still with my wife four decades earlier!  She was dead to me, the woman I had loved was obviously dead and did not exist any longer, I learned that during my very expensive long distance phone call!  Sure, there is a body with the name of Udie attached to it, but it is not the woman I knew.  And that is what really hurt, no one saw the woman I knew, no actually loved that woman I loved, no one understood her real death, she was just meat in a culture addicted to meat.  Her modelling career fell apart, her life withered and died, and one day in 1983 God told me she finally understood this all and to call for an ambulance in her town, she was committing suicide.  No, she still thinks it a miracle a paramedic kicked in her door, because no one possibly could have known.  She does not understand the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so my almost life long friend, came to his peace in this matter, at the cost of a few thousand heart beats of mine.  He came by last night to visit again, to comment that perhaps GG really does like me, though it would be a hard sell to prove.  But, I was still exhausted and he did not stay long.  So I am hoping he is at peace on this issue. He is my best friend these days, one of the few remaining from the old days.  I hope he has truly come to forgive himself.

So, this post is not so much about what happened to me but the need for those involved to forgive themselves.  A lesson Dutchman is just now learning, a lesson my father in law never understood, a lesson his entire family would do well to learn, actually one most humans should as well.


What was it I wrote to my daughter last fall, following her betrayal of me?
      "The quality of forgiveness, is the quantity by which you have been forgiven ..."

For some it is learning to forgive those whom harm you, for my daughter learning to forgive God for her life, for others learning to forgive themselves.

Forgiveness is needed in this world, Pass It On ...

Of Faith, Obedience and Silence

For the past several days my mind has been revolving around an enigma, very strange things going on in my private life, things which certainly point to an ongoing attack by evil, a limited source for it to have originated from and yet God's call for my obedience.

For weeks now, I have been getting emails to my private account of an evil nature.  Yeah, I have my public account which is tied to this blog, however, I have a private address known only to my family members.  However, even at that, I get no emails from anyone in my family, we talk via phone and FaceBook constantly.  It has really only been used by my estranged daughter and niece.  So, as I said, limited resource to have disclosed my email address from, if that had happened at all.  Yesterday, I thought I would end this stupidity from whomever it was sending those daily multiple emails and ran down their IP address - they originated from where estranged daughter had an interest in serving as a missionary to and she has several "friends" there.  Okay, that  is weird and yeah, I could see her getting one of her friends to do this so as to prove I am the evil she now believes.  Sorry, but I am not whom you think I am.  Yesterday, I blocked that IP address because things got weirder.

Yeah, yesterday came with an invite to have a new friend on FaceBook, complete with photos.  It could have been someone else, whom looks a great deal like my daughter (NOT!), but just to be wise as a serpent, I hacked the originating IP address of that FaceBook account.  Interestingly, this one came from where daughter had served as a missionary many years ago to and to cinch it, there were already had two of her friends on there whom I remembered when we shared FB accounts with one another.  So, yeah this one was either her friends being cruel to her or flat out from her trying to snare me.

Now, what are the odds?  Two flat out evil offers, both originating from places she was associated with.  Both I believe to prove I was the kind of person she believes me to be.

I turned down the friendship offer and the account disappeared from FaceBook almost instantly.  Interestingly, it proves I was right, it was evil attempting to lure me, else why would it disappear when it failed to snare me?  And should my daughter actually be innocent of this, then again I must remind her that photographs taken during moments of great intoxication, are forever.  And really, my private email address, I would appreciate remaining private, just as I have honored your privacy but not "stalking" you, it is reasonable to expect the same.

So I have thought on this weirdness and am reminded of Zachariah - okay only in my mind is this obvious ... :

You might remember Luke 1:5-25 and 57-80.

Zachariah was told what God was going to do, but he chose to disbelieve.  So, for his disbelief, his voice was silenced until John (Jesus' cousin) was born.  His silence became a sign for the truth of what he had been told.  And EVERYONE knew it!

So there are three ways of looking at this and learning from it:

1.  When you are being silenced, you need to examine why and correct where your faith in God has gone wrong.
2.  When God is being silent in your life you need  to read, meditate and pray to know the source of the silence.
3.  When you are being obedient and have been silenced, you have to continue to be obedient to what God has told you.

So my family, my ex-friends, my church, my pastors and my estrange daughter all firmly stand on the first option for me.  And like the stubborn German I am, I stand solidly that I am of the third classification - only remaining friends agree with me on that one, but then they actually bothered to know me and look at the evidence before deciding not to condemn me.  I can only stand in place in obedience, even if at least 120 times this year I would have rather grabbed my cane and started walking to Argentina!  But, then that would have proven I was guilty to all!  Except to daughter, for she knows what that reference means.

Verses 66-77 are so beautiful!  Here Zachariah has been silenced and now can speak and agrees that the son's name will be John (probably a bit of a scandal since it was not a family name).

Zachariah did not expect a miracle, did not believe one possible when he was told there would be one and so God had to smack him upside the head to get his attention long enough to understand he was in for a miracle!

So, in like manner, even though my daughter has run away, does her best to attack me as she is able, I stand firm because God told me to.  I pray daily for her because God told me to.  I expect her to return because God said she would.  I will remain obedient because I am that stubborn old German.  It is called faith, it is called obedience, it is called for in the silence of my life in being able to bring her to where she is supposed to be.

But do not believe this does not bring its frustrations, as my poor Niece can affirm, the lure to run away is there but unlike Jonah, I already know I can not hide from the face of God, do not want to get swallowed until I learn my lesson, etc.  So, I stand, taking the rebuke from all, daily, in my face hatred for what I have not done but been accused of.  I will pay whatever the cost required for my daughter to return - in my innocence, because it is all I have.  From my perspective, if my family is reduced to only the size of my niece and estranged daughter, so be it.  It does not mean I do not love my family, for I do, but it does mean being obedient to God means more.

And poor Zachariah, he too learned a lesson and he stood and he waited, when he did not have to, and was mightily blessed for it.

Missing The Boat

John 18:1 - 14

First off, you have to understand that ALL prophesy is going to come to pass!  In this passage, Jesus finds himself, exactly where he was supposed to be, Isaiah's words are about to be fulfilled ...

You can miss it
Judas came close, but he missed the mark with Jesus.  He was there, he saw the same miracles that all of the other disciples saw, he heard all of the same words as the other disciples did, he sat through all of the same lessons, he walked in Jesus' footsteps.  But, something went wrong inside of Judas, maybe he never really was a follower...

Remember that Judas was hand picked by Jesus!  Jesus knew what He was doing, he knew Judas' heart at the time as well as what it would be in the future.

You can not fool everyone
The other eleven had no clue who Judas really was, either during the three years of following and learning under Jesus, nor what Judas had been up to recently.  At the dinner table no one thought the betrayer of Jesus would be Judas!  They each questioned if they were the one.

And that is interesting, each questioned their own dedication, love for the master and faith.  Indeed we each know the truth about ourselves, as ugly as it can be sometimes.  The disciples were no different than us in this regard.

Your disappointment can yield disaster
Was Judas greedy?
Was he scared?
Or maybe disappointed that Jesus was not going to conquer the Romans?
Was he politically motivated?
Or religiously motivated, to do what he did?

Take your pick.  What did separate his mind and his heart from God and God's will in following Jesus?  We may never know, but whatever the source of his anger / frustration, it forced him on to a path of disaster.

You can trade true love for something far less
Judas is going to betray Jesus.
Jesus offers him a chance to reconcile, but to no avail.
Judas returns with perhaps as many as 600 soldiers, priests, servants and people.

A fight was expected, but none was given.

You do not need to be a Judas
We can learn from his mistakes!
Have no strings attached to your relationship with God.

And expect, the unexpected...

Where Are You Going?

Well if you are a Christian, I know where you are heading to - in the end anyway!

John 14:1-3

In my father's house - guess what - we are all family!
Your room is apparently already awaiting your arrival.
In life you can be anxious, troubled, afraid of the future and where you are going.
But, once at our ultimate destination, our home with God, you can not be turned away, if you are in Christ!

Heaven is about family.
It is after-all the family of God whom is destined to be there.
Unlike the English translations concerning our home in heaven, we are not destined to receive a mansion, it is a room, attached to the house, the master - God - dwells in.
We will be with Jesus, living in close proximity.
Growing up with almost no family, this is going to be a bit of change for me and I imagine to many others as well.

Refocus!
How we face hard times, should reflect the changes within us, since you have come to salvation.
You have a future, it is secure, we can relax and not fret about tomorrow.  You do win, in the end.
When the culture turns against you, when times are tough, just keep believing.

We were made for somewhere else, our life is meant to find completeness in God, through Jesus, and with Jesus in Heaven.


Just a little different from the message of this age and culture, eh?

Failures and Success

John chapters 13 through 15 are essentially Jesus' farewell address to his disciples, soon to be the future apostles.  Thinking on our relationship with Jesus, ourselves and the failures/successes in our lives.

John 13:31-33, 36-38, Luke 22:31-34

The issue here concerns the topic of faith and trust.
We trust other drivers on the freeway, we don't even know whom they are.
We trust the cooks at our favorite dining establishment.
We trust the pilot of the aircraft we are on or is flying over our homes!

But we fail to trust in God wholly.  Faith evades us because we only can see today with no view of tomorrow.

We have to learn to relax and trust God, He knows what He is doing in our lives.  No co-incidents, no luck, no charms, no yin/yang, sparkly aura, or karma actually exists for the Christian.  God has a design involving you, you are where He wants you now, your situation (outside of sin) by designation.

By the way, God know what you are doing as well!
Peter offered to die for Jesus.  And Jesus knew that the future held only betrayal by Peter in the short term.
For each of us, God knows our desires but also our failures.  He does protect us from ourselves and from our weaknesses, in so much, as we are willing to allow Him to do so.  Yes, if you are hell bent for sin, He will step aside and allow you to reap what you sow.  And I have seen some horrible tragedies because of that one....

So, outside of your sin life, God is there with you.
He will be your God.
He will strengthen you in times of need.
He will help you to accomplish what you must.
He will uphold you before Satan and his condemnations.

Rejoice, for He knows what He can do with us today and through all of our tomorrows!

The Struggle

Kid gloves off here, dear reader, just admit you are a sinner (defined as you still fail God).  If you think you are living a sin free life, well you have a different challenge to address than you will find in this post.

We struggle, individually and even together with others if we are open, over our sins and failures before God.  Struggle is the word here, because life as a Christian in a fleshly body is a struggle, for some hourly, daily, weekly, monthly - what ever your failure rate, we still struggle to overcome our baser natures and perform as we know we are called to be!  And we fail.  And we grow disillusioned.  I mean really, if God wanted me to overcome 100% of failures, then don't you think He would be a little more helpful?

To make matters even worse for us, when our sins are found out - and they usually are - we are horribly embarrassed and all the Christians about us act like chickens clucking their self-righteous tongues at us.  And let us not forget that we have plenty of success stories to stare us in the face!  Testimonies we hear in church or read in magazines and books, "I was saved/delivered miraculously from:"  file in the blank.  Alcoholism, drug addictions, sexual immorality of all kinds.  Yeah, we cluck out tongues at those and forget the lies, gossip, slander,  our many hatreds, our pride before God, disrespect for our parents, the list is unending of our failures before God, but those do not count aftrerall - they are my hidden problems - not the obvious ones XYZ has.

Unfortunately, just to level set the playing field here concerning sin -  the worse sin is Pride.  I am cursed by it, it crushes my relationship with God.  Guess what!  Because of that, I am actually worse before God than the greatest sinner whom has ever lived!  And just like whom ever that is (me maybe?) I still need forgiveness and supernatural strengthening daily, if not moment by moment.  So, for as many whom have walked with me in discipleship know, there is no condemnation ever from Kris.  And I can join you in your frustration at our mutual failures.

Thanks to the miraculous stories we are exposed to, we have frustration because God did this for someone else and not for me.  (Though I have yet to hear a testimony of someone miraculous cured of pride....)  It always seems to be something flashy, whatever the culture's big evil is of the time,  So if we are not careful, we can be drawn to unrealistic expectations for God to perform a miracle!  Nothing wrong with desiring one but God works to His good, not ours.  Your failing may just be what is needed one day to witness to a lost one, suffering the same as you.  Or to keep you humble and remind you when you are before Him just how much you actually need Him.

And we can even blame God when we don't have that miracle or instant deliverance from our stumbling block in our spiritual life.  After all God is not to blame if I am such a miserable creature that He will not heal me of this!  I am just too weak in my faith, do not have enough faith, too immature, too carnal, too much me, too whatever!  Any of those could be true but if you are seeking to end your sin life - probably not.

It is the struggle we engage in which is the point.  To use my Sunday School class as an example, I asked them one morning what their greatest struggle was.  I did not expect them offer "internet porn" and then have unanimous agreement!  A level of honesty I rarely encounter.  So we went off script and had a great session discussing this entire subject, much as we are here.  The struggle we are in against ourselves and sin - is normal.

Christianity is a religion based upon the struggles of two millenia of sinners just like you and me.  From the very beginning, think of Judas and his failure, Paul's struggle against whatever plagued him, Augustine's conflict with this sexual abandon, Martin Luther's fight against the demons of his mind, and even me as expressed above.

At this point, I revert back to one of my early mentors, Bill Bright.  He had a concept of what he called spiritual breathing.  You sin, so you exhale your confession to God (your agreement with Him that you suck and failed again) and then breathe in His Grace (forgiveness of your state).  I always liked that example, easy to remember, easy to do.

Keep up the struggle! and remember we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with spirits and principalities, whom sole desire is to derail you and your witness.