The other Sunday, I listened to a very interesting sermon about GOD's Will, and it got me thinking, where I was heading to listening to GOD's will for me in my life.
I'll start off with the story...
There was this man that was ready and willing to GOD's will, he was sick and tired of doing things for himself, and was ready to do whatever GOD had planned for him. So one morning praying to GOD he said you know what I am done with my old ways, I am here ready to do your will no matter what it is, I am ready for it. So GOD replies back, I can truly see that your ready so here it is... You see that boulder over there. I want you to push against it everyday and don't stop, that's all you need to do. The man thought that this was pretty odd. but he didn't care he was ready to do GOD's will not matter what. So the next morning he got up early and started pushing on that boulder excited to do GOD's will. He kept up at it for months pushing and pushing for GOD. One day Satan comes around and notices this man pushing the boulder and comes up to him asking him why he is doing this. The man replies, I am doing GOD's will, he asked me to push this boulder and so here I am. Well Satan says, well that's great you have been very faithful, but I have one question to ask you, what have you accomplished pushing this boulder? The man looks up at him and replies: What do you mean by that? Oh nothing, I just see that you have been pushing for quite some time and this boulder hasn't moved a bit. What's the point in pushing it all...it's not going anywhere. The man said you have a point, I wonder why he wants me to push this boulder? Satan replies: Look, you don't have to bother with this. You have done your best. You won't succeed at this. Accept that you have failed. It is useless. Then just take it easy and do the least amount of work you can.
So the next day the man gets up a little later than usual thinking, that boulder's not going anywhere. Days go by and soon he stops pushing the boulder all together. He decided to pray. He prayed and prayed and prayed. "God, I have done what You asked me. I have been very faithful. Every day for hours I have been pushing against that rock, but I have not budged it an inch. GOD replied I noticed you haven't been as faithful, and stopped pushing, let me explain a few things to you: I asked you to push against that rock, and you were obedient. I never asked you to move it. I asked you to push against it."Because you have pushed faithfully and diligently against that rock every day, notice how strong your arms have become. Your back is brown and sinewy, your legs are massive; you are in such better shape now than you were. You have learned a lot because you have been faithful and obedient.
Then God said to the man, "You have trusted me. It's my job to move the rock." I just asked you to push it nothing more.
So what am getting at... good question. Well I have been sort of struggling with my Call from GOD lately, wondering what his will is? Thinking I need to be doing more than what am doing already. I ended finding myself doing less than I was before. So here I am back to where I started accepting the WILL of GOD no mater what the task is small or BIG. I will not try to rush him, I will take whatever he gives me and do it with all my heart and soul, I will keep on PUSHing just like he told me to do and let him do the moving.
YOU ARE LOVED!
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
A simple prayer...
I just received this e-mail today, and I it had me thinking about our perspective on prayer and life in general.
I really do struggle when people pass e-mails around, about do this and do that and please don't break the cycle, and I actually refuse to do so, because it is just the technical version of a chain letter. The what if e-mail. What if I don't send it will I miss out? What if I do will it really happen? I feel that faith is definitely being abused and cheated in these e-mails, and the extra e-mails that it produces is just but another e-mail. But I wonder if there is something to it, especially when prayer is involved.... I proceed by posting the e-mail...
=============
A small request: All you are asked to do is keep this circulating. Dear God, I pray for the cure for cancer. Amen
All you are asked to do is keep this circulating even if it's to one more person. In memory of anyone you know that has been struck down by cancer or is still living with it.
=========
My heart strings are definitely pulled, and who hasn't been touched by someone they know, or by a personal experience. Cancer is definitely a defining Disease, of this era.
A beautiful prayer to ask, and yet I wonder if people are missing it all. Why aren't we praying to have people come to know Jesus more. There is a key prayer at stake here and it is for all men and women to be able to truly come to know Jesus personally, amidst all this suffering and pain, and a big skip for Joy as we enter into a new life eternal in Christ! I was at Church this Sunday and the lesson was key, to this prayer exactly for freedom in from Dis-ease.
I don't know why people suffer, get sick, and die, but I do know Who can get us through all the suffering that can and probably will affect us at some point in our lives. If we trust in Christ and seek to have a personal relationship with Him. That is to truly seek to understand Him, not just know that he existed and died for us, but to truly have Him Live inside of you with a Love so real so freeing that we can manage any storm that the sea of life has to throw at us. Like Peter walking out to meet Jesus in the sea, we must realize how crazy and helpless it is out there, and start to sink for us to truly see how much we really need Christ to keep us afloat!
I really do struggle when people pass e-mails around, about do this and do that and please don't break the cycle, and I actually refuse to do so, because it is just the technical version of a chain letter. The what if e-mail. What if I don't send it will I miss out? What if I do will it really happen? I feel that faith is definitely being abused and cheated in these e-mails, and the extra e-mails that it produces is just but another e-mail. But I wonder if there is something to it, especially when prayer is involved.... I proceed by posting the e-mail...
=============
A small request: All you are asked to do is keep this circulating. Dear God, I pray for the cure for cancer. Amen
All you are asked to do is keep this circulating even if it's to one more person. In memory of anyone you know that has been struck down by cancer or is still living with it.=========
My heart strings are definitely pulled, and who hasn't been touched by someone they know, or by a personal experience. Cancer is definitely a defining Disease, of this era.
A beautiful prayer to ask, and yet I wonder if people are missing it all. Why aren't we praying to have people come to know Jesus more. There is a key prayer at stake here and it is for all men and women to be able to truly come to know Jesus personally, amidst all this suffering and pain, and a big skip for Joy as we enter into a new life eternal in Christ! I was at Church this Sunday and the lesson was key, to this prayer exactly for freedom in from Dis-ease.
I don't know why people suffer, get sick, and die, but I do know Who can get us through all the suffering that can and probably will affect us at some point in our lives. If we trust in Christ and seek to have a personal relationship with Him. That is to truly seek to understand Him, not just know that he existed and died for us, but to truly have Him Live inside of you with a Love so real so freeing that we can manage any storm that the sea of life has to throw at us. Like Peter walking out to meet Jesus in the sea, we must realize how crazy and helpless it is out there, and start to sink for us to truly see how much we really need Christ to keep us afloat!
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Lost in transition...
Have you ever felt like you were losing yourself? Well these past few months I have felt exactly like that. I have just recently moved my family closer to our immediate families, and found my self wondering what the heck was I thinking...don't get me wrong I don't regret changing jobs or anything like, that, this move was the best thing for my sanity, but for my spiritually I don't think so. This has a been huge forging part in my life. I have been submerged in a pool of disbelief, and find myself gasping for life. In my new work place there are a few people that are completely disbelievers in Religion and God, and I am not the first person who is going to try and argue a point, but they too know where I stand in my belief system, of salvation, and faith alone in Christ, not religion... so you will see no sides taken here on religion...faith in Christ and his gift of life for us through his Blood is the only truth I cling desperately on too, but I found myself faltering, falling into my questioning of what is truth, what is the reality of life, a made up system of belief to control a savage society known as humans from wiping themselves off the face of this planet. I am even caught up with pondering thoughts of what is there after we die...even if I should know better, that there is Christ and life eternal...can I trust these promises.... a million plus believers can't be wrong or mislead could they be? I can't believe it, but I feel so caught up in this mundane world of emptiness, nothing out of the ordinary or special, and I wonder, how did I get to this place again. I truly believe that by not being in a Church family for this long period of time, has left me vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy and has allowed him to get me actually start listening again(not literally I don't hear voices : ) ) other then my own thoughts. I just wonder how I can get the courage to live my life for Christ completely to be able to trust in Him completely to have a relationship with him, not just the knowledge of him and what he has done for me and all of us.
I want to know him personally each day, and I wonder how to go about doing that to the fullest.
I need to feel connected again, instead of swept away in this current of life. Someone throw me a rope...
I want to know him personally each day, and I wonder how to go about doing that to the fullest.
I need to feel connected again, instead of swept away in this current of life. Someone throw me a rope...
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Battle for the mind... continued
I have been mulling over a few things that have happened to me recently, and the topic of the battle of the mind came to me. I have been blessed recently at being able to partake in some mind opening heart cleansing. I never realized how caught up a person can get in his own false beliefs. There is a saying if you think you can, you're right, if you think you can't you're right too!
Before I headed back to 'Toon town, for the next chapter in my life, I was given a gift from God to do a little soul searching, and lot of weeding in my heart! The turmoil of that is still leaving me with some aftershocks, but the soil in my heart has been broken and is now ready to take in deep root, new shoots for the harvest.
I was able to take part in my own Freedom in Christ journey and did not realize what had been keeping me so locked up in side. Something so obvious, something right in my own eye that I just kept looking through all this time. Every event in my life had been filtered by this veil, that had me suffocating in it's grasp. This false belief had been so ingrained in me that it was like a second skin, a layer of armour, dragging me down keeping me from pushing onward. I was so accepting of this label put upon myself, that all I did was make a joke of it, the inevitable unbeatable false truth that my family and I kept dragging around with us like a ball and chain weighing us down from true Freedom.
You wonder what sort of horrible lie this thing was that I allowed myself to believe was. It is something that not many people would see as something all too bad, but something some would call just dumb luck. I was raised with the label that my family was destined to be screwed. To be useless, a failure, not much good for anything, second rate, never first Destined to be always last or maybe if you were lucky second place at best. This is something I have hung on to for way too long, believing that nothing could really change, and that I had to do my best to protect myself from this, to work as hard as I could to erase this label, and show it who's boss. I had something to prove, and at times, I did beat it, but that label kept raising it's ugly little head, every time I was doing good. Just like clockwork, I would find myself flubbing it all up, and having to start from scratch, never able to be consistently good at anything. Never able to really trust anybody to help me with anything, for the fear that it would all get messed up and I would at a loss yet again. Always capable but never the best at anything. I think that is way I am so eager to try something, new, I am always in search to find something that I am the best at. That is where failure was always sure to intervene. Because I was running from this lie imposed on myself and my family... I found that instead freeing my self, by trying to further remove myself from this demon, that I just kept running deeper into it's trap. Instead of confronting it and not allowing it's power over me, I kept reinforcing it's lie deeper and deeper in my soul. My focus was always on escaping this label, this curse as it may be called. I found myself focusing more and more on defeating it and found that it had a deeper hold on me than I ever thought it could. I found myself always being the victim, finding blame in others for my circumstances never owning up for my life. This label has been my crutch for way too long, always the excuse for the bad things that happened to me. I was always on the look out for when it would strike next to screw me over again. The sad part about this, is that I could never trust myself or others, I always had this veil over me skewing my life experience with this hesitation, this mistrust in life, for the fear of been screwed over once again. I even carried this into my marriage, always worried, how my wife would like to take advantage of my good will yet again, always worried, that I would miss out yet again. I wanted control, I like being needed. I longed for love, and satisfaction in my wife. I looked to her to complete me. That is where I faltered. I was looking for my identity in my marriage, in my career, in my Church family. I was not looking to God for my identity. I was allowing myself to look to things of the world to give my life meaning. That is where the lie kept me, looking for approval and success in things of this world. My identity in Christ is what matters now. This life ends up in death and nothingness in the end without Christ. Failure is what my identity in the flesh was. Now I am no longer a failure in Christ. I am a new creation, God's Child, God's beloved. I am Free, and no longer a slave to the failure's of the flesh. The lies of the enemy have no power over me now!
That was why I had problems with keeping close relationships. I just couldn't let myself get too vulnerable for the fear of being duped, or being taken advantage of again. I still have this radar on now till this day but I am not listening to it's lies anymore. I have blessed just recently to this wisdom.
There has always been a glimmer of hope in all these situations, God has always been there by my side, waiting for me to turn to him for Strength. The bridegroom has been waiting for me to ask for his hand to lift my veil and reveal to me in Him the new life, the freedom found in Union with Him. The veil of my old life has been lifted away, to enter into a new light of freedom. A new journey to be free to live life and relationship. Now that I am free of that veil that blurred my vision of my true identity in Christ, I can clearly see this lie. I am blessed to be able to remember what believing that lie has cost me, in order to not fall prey to it again. I am in the vine now, a new shoot of life, ready to be pruned, and in order to grow new life.
Now I wonder, what is in store for me with this new realization. What is the next step...well I guess that's up to me now... it's up to me to be willing to let God do his work in me, and not try to jump blindly ahead in fear of the unknown. There is some wisdom in the realization that God is a patient God, and that he is slow to anger. We see in that verse, that he is not rash, he does not rush. I can be confident that if I do stumble or mess up in my journey he will no judge me harshly and that I have nothing to fear. I have to be still to hear him, I must not rush, or try jump ahead thinking I know what God wants for me. He is God, and I cannot box Him in.
Before I headed back to 'Toon town, for the next chapter in my life, I was given a gift from God to do a little soul searching, and lot of weeding in my heart! The turmoil of that is still leaving me with some aftershocks, but the soil in my heart has been broken and is now ready to take in deep root, new shoots for the harvest.
I was able to take part in my own Freedom in Christ journey and did not realize what had been keeping me so locked up in side. Something so obvious, something right in my own eye that I just kept looking through all this time. Every event in my life had been filtered by this veil, that had me suffocating in it's grasp. This false belief had been so ingrained in me that it was like a second skin, a layer of armour, dragging me down keeping me from pushing onward. I was so accepting of this label put upon myself, that all I did was make a joke of it, the inevitable unbeatable false truth that my family and I kept dragging around with us like a ball and chain weighing us down from true Freedom.
You wonder what sort of horrible lie this thing was that I allowed myself to believe was. It is something that not many people would see as something all too bad, but something some would call just dumb luck. I was raised with the label that my family was destined to be screwed. To be useless, a failure, not much good for anything, second rate, never first Destined to be always last or maybe if you were lucky second place at best. This is something I have hung on to for way too long, believing that nothing could really change, and that I had to do my best to protect myself from this, to work as hard as I could to erase this label, and show it who's boss. I had something to prove, and at times, I did beat it, but that label kept raising it's ugly little head, every time I was doing good. Just like clockwork, I would find myself flubbing it all up, and having to start from scratch, never able to be consistently good at anything. Never able to really trust anybody to help me with anything, for the fear that it would all get messed up and I would at a loss yet again. Always capable but never the best at anything. I think that is way I am so eager to try something, new, I am always in search to find something that I am the best at. That is where failure was always sure to intervene. Because I was running from this lie imposed on myself and my family... I found that instead freeing my self, by trying to further remove myself from this demon, that I just kept running deeper into it's trap. Instead of confronting it and not allowing it's power over me, I kept reinforcing it's lie deeper and deeper in my soul. My focus was always on escaping this label, this curse as it may be called. I found myself focusing more and more on defeating it and found that it had a deeper hold on me than I ever thought it could. I found myself always being the victim, finding blame in others for my circumstances never owning up for my life. This label has been my crutch for way too long, always the excuse for the bad things that happened to me. I was always on the look out for when it would strike next to screw me over again. The sad part about this, is that I could never trust myself or others, I always had this veil over me skewing my life experience with this hesitation, this mistrust in life, for the fear of been screwed over once again. I even carried this into my marriage, always worried, how my wife would like to take advantage of my good will yet again, always worried, that I would miss out yet again. I wanted control, I like being needed. I longed for love, and satisfaction in my wife. I looked to her to complete me. That is where I faltered. I was looking for my identity in my marriage, in my career, in my Church family. I was not looking to God for my identity. I was allowing myself to look to things of the world to give my life meaning. That is where the lie kept me, looking for approval and success in things of this world. My identity in Christ is what matters now. This life ends up in death and nothingness in the end without Christ. Failure is what my identity in the flesh was. Now I am no longer a failure in Christ. I am a new creation, God's Child, God's beloved. I am Free, and no longer a slave to the failure's of the flesh. The lies of the enemy have no power over me now!
That was why I had problems with keeping close relationships. I just couldn't let myself get too vulnerable for the fear of being duped, or being taken advantage of again. I still have this radar on now till this day but I am not listening to it's lies anymore. I have blessed just recently to this wisdom.
There has always been a glimmer of hope in all these situations, God has always been there by my side, waiting for me to turn to him for Strength. The bridegroom has been waiting for me to ask for his hand to lift my veil and reveal to me in Him the new life, the freedom found in Union with Him. The veil of my old life has been lifted away, to enter into a new light of freedom. A new journey to be free to live life and relationship. Now that I am free of that veil that blurred my vision of my true identity in Christ, I can clearly see this lie. I am blessed to be able to remember what believing that lie has cost me, in order to not fall prey to it again. I am in the vine now, a new shoot of life, ready to be pruned, and in order to grow new life.
Now I wonder, what is in store for me with this new realization. What is the next step...well I guess that's up to me now... it's up to me to be willing to let God do his work in me, and not try to jump blindly ahead in fear of the unknown. There is some wisdom in the realization that God is a patient God, and that he is slow to anger. We see in that verse, that he is not rash, he does not rush. I can be confident that if I do stumble or mess up in my journey he will no judge me harshly and that I have nothing to fear. I have to be still to hear him, I must not rush, or try jump ahead thinking I know what God wants for me. He is God, and I cannot box Him in.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
A new leaf turned
Well, I did it, I am moving yet again, another stepping stone in life has come my way and I am taking the plunge.
I have accepted a new job, and will be taking my family closer to home! I wonder what God has in Store for me there. Now it is time to find a new Church Family and see what God has up His sleave for me there.
I wonder how that will go, I am not sure where God is pulling me too, and I hope it's him, that is doing so. Not my own needs and desire to escape this crazy rollercoaster I have ridden for the past two years. Ups and Downs and I wouldn't have traded it for the world. God had his part in it all and it is time to head for a new ascent another journey into the unknown.
Alas I will be uprooting again, and hopefully finally able to set down some deep roots for good!
We shall see. As I red in Habakkuk, I will praise the Lord no matter what, even if I don't see the fruit yet. My faith is in the Lord and I trust in Him that he will use me where he sees fit. I pray that I will not miss it when he shows me!
I have accepted a new job, and will be taking my family closer to home! I wonder what God has in Store for me there. Now it is time to find a new Church Family and see what God has up His sleave for me there.
I wonder how that will go, I am not sure where God is pulling me too, and I hope it's him, that is doing so. Not my own needs and desire to escape this crazy rollercoaster I have ridden for the past two years. Ups and Downs and I wouldn't have traded it for the world. God had his part in it all and it is time to head for a new ascent another journey into the unknown.
Alas I will be uprooting again, and hopefully finally able to set down some deep roots for good!
We shall see. As I red in Habakkuk, I will praise the Lord no matter what, even if I don't see the fruit yet. My faith is in the Lord and I trust in Him that he will use me where he sees fit. I pray that I will not miss it when he shows me!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
battle of the mind.... who get's your attention?
You must be wondering with a title like this, what I am going to talk about and for good reason.
I have been struggling lately with attacks of self doubt and where I need to be taking my life.
Do I push through this rough patch and keep going in my current state, or do I take a different fork, and take a risk into an uncharted course full of unknowns?
I've been struggling with the fact that I more than likely have ADD in the inattentive type, and I started to wonder if that is just a cover up for something deeper, something more. I started to go down that rabbit whole of my past and I wondered if quite possibly that was the reason to all my anxiety and stress in my childhood. I think I have come to a different understanding of what I have been plagued/blessed with! I find that all my life, I have been a little odd, a little disconnected from this world, and I know it has something to do with my calling to follow Christ more deeply. I find myself wandering off thinking of things not of this lifetime, not of this world. I am thinking of God and the bigger picture! No wonder why I seem so inattentive to what's going on in this world. No it's not disillusionment, but it's something, that I keep thinking of, I keep weighing in my mind during my everyday duties in life. I keep using those thoughts of the spiritual world and my role in that place, and I use those things to check and balance my decisions in this life. Doing this I find myself being a little disconnected and bored by the mundane needs and desires of this world. Oh don't get me wrong I still love to get things and dream of things. I still wonder what it would like to have that nice truck or a little more money in the bank. The difference is, that I get over these thoughts a little more quickly than most. From the outside world they perceive me as this out of touch disconnected individual that just doesn't fit in. It's just that I don't get attached to ideas or things for too long, I experience it, I enjoy it, and then I get bored of it and move on. That's it, there's nothing complicated to it. I just seem to rush through things quicker than most, trying to experience as many knew things as I possibly can and then move on. I find that I am lacking in the attachment department! I just don't get attached to things, I don't know why, but I don't.
That's why when I enter into a new experience, I jump right in and try to experience it to it's fullest. I get that initial rush of wow this is cool, amazing, or that is weird! Then when the initial rush is over, I move on to something else, leaving the past experience to fade away in time, as a brief memory, a road marker in my life.
The biggest thing that I struggle with is the fact that I seem to fall prey to this in my spiritual journey. I seem to live my life spiritually in ups and downs. It's like I have to have a life crisis before I get all revved up and feel reconnected again. I am fine for a while and then I am bored and numb again.
To explain this better, I like to think of it like one's sugar level in their body. When the body is functioning properly the levels remain constant and level. In the the body of a diabetic, the sugar levels spike and crash without some kind of assistance. Well this is how my spiritual life feels like lately. I have these peaks and I have these valleys, and now I am searching for the insulin, and learning what the proper dose is.
Well to start with, I have found the cure, Jesus Christ, but now, I am trying to integrate him into my body, trying clean out the old crap and to bring in the new blood. I am going through a spiritual transfusion. I am learning to return to him for new life daily, searching for that balance, to help me to remain constant in Him. There are days and weeks, that I forget to go back for renewal, and I find myself lapsing into a low again!
I am struggling trying to find out why I continue to doubt. There is something, that I am missing, I have plateaued. It's like my body which has just been given a transplant is trying to build antibodies to reject it. I need an intervention, I need to get past this layer, to be able to move deeper and deeper into this relationship with Christ. I am just stuck! There is still some left over crap, left over beliefs, that is stopping me from growing spiritually. My Mind is still in bondage by something. I still want control over my mind! There is a deep fear that if I let go of that control, that I will be helpless, and an utter mess. There was a point in my life that I had to take control of my mind, to control my passion, that seemed to have no holds barred. I had fears of many things in my mind, haunting me, scaring me! I took that fear, that access to the other side, and locked it up.
When you allow the spiritual world access to your mind, you get the good with the bad! The war of the mind is a two sided thing. When I was younger, I was in constant attack by the enemy, for my zeal to want to follow Christ! Back then I was immature, lost, alone! There was no one that I could share my passion with or answer my questions(or that I had the guts to ask those questions). I used to be visited by presences in my room(sometimes not just something you could just dismiss) or nightmares, that would scare me to death. I would find myself praying for a long time after a visit like this. The disconnect happened one night probably between 9-12 years old. I had a dream one night, that keeps haunting me to this day... It was this dream that started me on my downhill slide. My fear was so great, that something in my subconscious, went "red alert" and the force field went up. From that evening, the dreams and the odd feelings, just went away! I never remembered a nightmare again, and the scary feeling of a presence in my room went away as well.
The one thing I didn't know yet, or fully understand was that, the enemy really had no authority over me, they were just scare tactics, to veer me away from GOD. The attacks worked unfortunately, they caused me block off that access to the spiritual world, I cut the hard line. Well the day has noe come that I am almost ready to reconnect that line with Christ's help.
The unfortunate part out of this, was that by doing so, I disconnected my direct communication with GOD as well. One thing that I didn't realize was that the Holy Spirit still had access to me through the physical world, through the Bible and other people that still had their hard lines connected to GOD. I have been taught that in Christ, I am truly free and forgiven. I know that in HIM, the enemy has no authority over me. Only Christ has authority over me. In Him I can rebuke them, and regain, my connection back to GOD. Christ is my life line back! Praise Him for that.
Now I need to start pealing back the layers that I have put up as barriers in my life, preventing me from being all that I can be for GOD! There is a big fear here, because I will have go through that door yet to give up all control! I have to put all my trust and faith in CHRIST to guide me through these storms, and walk me through the steps of taking down my shield, and trust that HE will be my shield and strength from the flaming arrows of the evil one.
I am afraid to go there, but I know it's necessary to be able to get back in touch with my creator! I have to tear down the walls!
I have been struggling lately with attacks of self doubt and where I need to be taking my life.
Do I push through this rough patch and keep going in my current state, or do I take a different fork, and take a risk into an uncharted course full of unknowns?
I've been struggling with the fact that I more than likely have ADD in the inattentive type, and I started to wonder if that is just a cover up for something deeper, something more. I started to go down that rabbit whole of my past and I wondered if quite possibly that was the reason to all my anxiety and stress in my childhood. I think I have come to a different understanding of what I have been plagued/blessed with! I find that all my life, I have been a little odd, a little disconnected from this world, and I know it has something to do with my calling to follow Christ more deeply. I find myself wandering off thinking of things not of this lifetime, not of this world. I am thinking of God and the bigger picture! No wonder why I seem so inattentive to what's going on in this world. No it's not disillusionment, but it's something, that I keep thinking of, I keep weighing in my mind during my everyday duties in life. I keep using those thoughts of the spiritual world and my role in that place, and I use those things to check and balance my decisions in this life. Doing this I find myself being a little disconnected and bored by the mundane needs and desires of this world. Oh don't get me wrong I still love to get things and dream of things. I still wonder what it would like to have that nice truck or a little more money in the bank. The difference is, that I get over these thoughts a little more quickly than most. From the outside world they perceive me as this out of touch disconnected individual that just doesn't fit in. It's just that I don't get attached to ideas or things for too long, I experience it, I enjoy it, and then I get bored of it and move on. That's it, there's nothing complicated to it. I just seem to rush through things quicker than most, trying to experience as many knew things as I possibly can and then move on. I find that I am lacking in the attachment department! I just don't get attached to things, I don't know why, but I don't.
That's why when I enter into a new experience, I jump right in and try to experience it to it's fullest. I get that initial rush of wow this is cool, amazing, or that is weird! Then when the initial rush is over, I move on to something else, leaving the past experience to fade away in time, as a brief memory, a road marker in my life.
The biggest thing that I struggle with is the fact that I seem to fall prey to this in my spiritual journey. I seem to live my life spiritually in ups and downs. It's like I have to have a life crisis before I get all revved up and feel reconnected again. I am fine for a while and then I am bored and numb again.
To explain this better, I like to think of it like one's sugar level in their body. When the body is functioning properly the levels remain constant and level. In the the body of a diabetic, the sugar levels spike and crash without some kind of assistance. Well this is how my spiritual life feels like lately. I have these peaks and I have these valleys, and now I am searching for the insulin, and learning what the proper dose is.
Well to start with, I have found the cure, Jesus Christ, but now, I am trying to integrate him into my body, trying clean out the old crap and to bring in the new blood. I am going through a spiritual transfusion. I am learning to return to him for new life daily, searching for that balance, to help me to remain constant in Him. There are days and weeks, that I forget to go back for renewal, and I find myself lapsing into a low again!
I am struggling trying to find out why I continue to doubt. There is something, that I am missing, I have plateaued. It's like my body which has just been given a transplant is trying to build antibodies to reject it. I need an intervention, I need to get past this layer, to be able to move deeper and deeper into this relationship with Christ. I am just stuck! There is still some left over crap, left over beliefs, that is stopping me from growing spiritually. My Mind is still in bondage by something. I still want control over my mind! There is a deep fear that if I let go of that control, that I will be helpless, and an utter mess. There was a point in my life that I had to take control of my mind, to control my passion, that seemed to have no holds barred. I had fears of many things in my mind, haunting me, scaring me! I took that fear, that access to the other side, and locked it up.
When you allow the spiritual world access to your mind, you get the good with the bad! The war of the mind is a two sided thing. When I was younger, I was in constant attack by the enemy, for my zeal to want to follow Christ! Back then I was immature, lost, alone! There was no one that I could share my passion with or answer my questions(or that I had the guts to ask those questions). I used to be visited by presences in my room(sometimes not just something you could just dismiss) or nightmares, that would scare me to death. I would find myself praying for a long time after a visit like this. The disconnect happened one night probably between 9-12 years old. I had a dream one night, that keeps haunting me to this day... It was this dream that started me on my downhill slide. My fear was so great, that something in my subconscious, went "red alert" and the force field went up. From that evening, the dreams and the odd feelings, just went away! I never remembered a nightmare again, and the scary feeling of a presence in my room went away as well.
The one thing I didn't know yet, or fully understand was that, the enemy really had no authority over me, they were just scare tactics, to veer me away from GOD. The attacks worked unfortunately, they caused me block off that access to the spiritual world, I cut the hard line. Well the day has noe come that I am almost ready to reconnect that line with Christ's help.
The unfortunate part out of this, was that by doing so, I disconnected my direct communication with GOD as well. One thing that I didn't realize was that the Holy Spirit still had access to me through the physical world, through the Bible and other people that still had their hard lines connected to GOD. I have been taught that in Christ, I am truly free and forgiven. I know that in HIM, the enemy has no authority over me. Only Christ has authority over me. In Him I can rebuke them, and regain, my connection back to GOD. Christ is my life line back! Praise Him for that.
Now I need to start pealing back the layers that I have put up as barriers in my life, preventing me from being all that I can be for GOD! There is a big fear here, because I will have go through that door yet to give up all control! I have to put all my trust and faith in CHRIST to guide me through these storms, and walk me through the steps of taking down my shield, and trust that HE will be my shield and strength from the flaming arrows of the evil one.
I am afraid to go there, but I know it's necessary to be able to get back in touch with my creator! I have to tear down the walls!
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
It's been a while... nice to hear from you!
I think of this sentence and wonder if God sometimes tries to call out to us and wonder why his child hasn't called in while.
I have been thinking about prayer, and spiritual zeal these past couple of months, and this topic of GOD's calling donned on me, that sometimes he's just waiting and listening too!
Maybe it's time for me to start calling and probably more than maybe, I needed to learn not to be so hard on myself, wondering what should I be doing to be better what do I need to do now?
Things seem to come at you at the right time and right place for very specific reasons, and I can't remember if it was at Church or reading in scripture, where it was brought to my attention about gifts from God! I was reading Romans from the translation the MESSAGE. There were some key things in there that GOD wanted to remind me of and one of them was the key difference between just payment and GIFTS. Those great feats of faith and what make men, men like Abraham, Noah, David, Moses, and all the great prophets, it had nothing to do with what they did and who they were, but that they trusted what GOD promised he would do through them. They heard God's promise made to them and they obeyed! They had faith in God's TRUTH as a promise(not a contract)
I struggle with this at times, because we are living in a time of a kept promised from GOD that of Salvation. I wonder, what is that kept these men so trusting in GOD...the faith of Child...and I wonder how lost we have become in this worldly knowledge of science, and ideology where everyone is right about everything and that we shouldn't say this, or shouldn't do that, but this can be said and that can be done, freedom, has been taken for granted for too long. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression and life style. All our world has taken this freedom trip on a crazy topsy turvey ride, that freedom has become the opposite of what it was meant and designed to be. Freedom is now more commonly know as suppression! Now everybody thinks freedom means you have the right to say and do what you think is right! Well what is right in our own little bubbles? Our perceptions are so skewed and perverted by our own individual experiences that there is no way out of this spiraling mess unless we revert back to the real TRUTH of it all!
Why are we on this planet? To fullfill our own selfish desires? eek Look at where that's gotten us. WAR torn, debt ridden, diseased, and to sum it all down nicely...just plain sick!
Reading through Romans 7, Paul spoke of sinful flesh warring within us trying to keep us doing the things we wish not to do. I find that SIN has taken on a new target to attack other than the LAW, which it has done for a millenia of years until Christ came that is. Now in it's dying last breaths, SIN is grapling with and trying to marr and mutate the very meaning of FREEDOM that came from Christ's gift to us. It never fails that SIN tries to find new ways like a virus to infiltrate itself into our human existence, trying drag us back into the murky darkness, clawing to try and get as many souls as it can before even SIN cannot hide much longer in the shadow of freedom! I hate this because this freedom lie, attacks at me daily, which I know it attacks at all of us! Well you know you're free, start thinking about yourself, oh that isn't that bad, or what about your needs(I fall into this one way to often). Or the biggest one of all is the what's the point no one cares what you think or it doesn't matter what other people think.
If you keep on respecting the truth of others you will find yourself compromising your own truth eventually, and how do we know if our truth is the real truth? There are so many different religions dealing with so many different cultures, that we can find ourselves so mixed up in it all that we find ourselves just completely lost in the thick of things.
I just look at my own situation with Catholicism and Christianity as a whole. Why can't we just get our acts together and follow the one truth...but what is the ONE truth.
First Question of Truth is: Are we creations of design or that of fluke.
Then we have to ask ourselves, can we trust ourselves enought to be able to make this decision.
The first part of creation by design comes up the fact that there is Creator.
So then we ask ourselves who is our Creator? Is it another being, like men from mars?
Then you have to ask yourself, so if other living beings created us then who created them... and we find ourselves back to the beginning question of it all.
Are we creations by design or a fluke creation of the universe.
And we are back to asking ourselves, well where did the universe come from.
Is there something separate from the universe that created the universe, how did this big BANG! come to place to start off this crazy, complex, dangerous yet beautiful existence!
The age old question how did we come to exist...evolution is definitely part of the equation(pardon my french I can't think of how it's spelled in English)
Where did language come from how did this consciousness this knowledge of self(hmm I think the tree of knowledge enters stage left), this awareness come from?
I don't know about you but the Bible sure has done a pretty good Job of informing us how we came to be! Albeit there is a lot left to debate for many people if they wish too, but there is not lot of ground to stand on, when someone tries to disprove anything that is written there. The accuracy of the ages, the land, the migration and sepration of the people. We do have to look at the fact we are basing our decisions on translations of ancient languages that have many words that can have very different meanings
I just wonder, if we can really put faith in ourselves and what we know. We only know what we are told, and what we learn, through experience. That experience is exponentially small in ones life compared to the grandeur of life, that how can even one believe that we can make such an ostentatious statement, or be stuck in our own ways and beliefs, when in our extremely short lives we don't even scratch the surface in comparison to the grand scheme of things.
That's where faith comes in, and that is why I make my belief decision, I believe, that it is very possibly and highly likely, a Creator(GOD) created me. I also from what I have taught and by the people I trust and put faith in that trust that GOD loves me, that he want's what's best for me. I also believe that there is another force at work, that doesn't love me and that doesn't love God either and it want's the worst for us, but this force is more impersonal less caring. This force is solely dedicated in one thing only and that is to cause pain and to strike at the very heart of GOD. The only way can strike at GOD is through his children for the time being. We were deceived in the beginning lured away with the thought that we too would know all and be equal to GOD. We fell and there was no way out on our own to get back up. Since well there was no way as fallen being as GOD by his HOLY beinf like a light into the dark would always apart from lest we be destroyed! There was only one solution and that was to make the ultimate sacrifice and to create in His Holy image an intercessor a bridge that could reach out to us at our level and relate. When that sacrifice was made that union of Blood and Spirit joined together as one and ultimate Gift and ultimate reconnection to GOD through one being, that of CHRIST JESUS himself and through HIM we are able to in communion once more. We are able to see our father's face and cry out ABBA!
I don't need to know or question every single detail(although I catch myself wanting to do this way too often). The only thing that I can base my life experience on is that of the Holy Scripture! I think there will always be a time and a place where I will need to make adjustments and tweaks to my belief system, when new information is revealed, but we do need to make a decision and go on from there and stop guessing. If don't make a decision then we are just stalled and not gaining anything from it. I think the key thing is that we need to be open to possibilities of what TRUTH is!
You just can say I was told this and that is what is and I won't accept anything else. Well if you live your life that way A: you just might be alright or B: you could be completely wrong.
Weigh out what you know to be true right now in your life and base any new information given to you off of that truth! I don't know any other way! Also make sure that your truth bear's weight. Truth must always be checked and balance. Truth is always skewed by our filter's in our lives. We have to find our own truth and live it out to the fullest!
These are just my spewed out ramblings for the night and things may be adjusted as the days and weeks go on! So take it all with a grain of salt and filter out how you wish because we will all have a different view on this and that is just how it is. We are unique, and beautiful in our own ways, through each decision in life we make, through each new experience life, we are molded and changed, and that my friends will always be how me make our decisions and find our Truth in Life! There has to be an outside force a template to measure by! The only thing so far that I have come across has been the Bible, so I am sticking to it, and if I have to learn greek to gather more insight than so be it. The quest for Truth will continue on long after I have gone. I just hope that In my brief time here, I have been able to help reveal another little unique glimpse of Truth!
I end this blog with this statement from Christ to Pilate:
Jesus said, "To this end was I born, and for this came I into the world, to bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth hears my voice. Pilate then said unto him, What is truth?" (John 18:37-38)
I have been thinking about prayer, and spiritual zeal these past couple of months, and this topic of GOD's calling donned on me, that sometimes he's just waiting and listening too!
Maybe it's time for me to start calling and probably more than maybe, I needed to learn not to be so hard on myself, wondering what should I be doing to be better what do I need to do now?
Things seem to come at you at the right time and right place for very specific reasons, and I can't remember if it was at Church or reading in scripture, where it was brought to my attention about gifts from God! I was reading Romans from the translation the MESSAGE. There were some key things in there that GOD wanted to remind me of and one of them was the key difference between just payment and GIFTS. Those great feats of faith and what make men, men like Abraham, Noah, David, Moses, and all the great prophets, it had nothing to do with what they did and who they were, but that they trusted what GOD promised he would do through them. They heard God's promise made to them and they obeyed! They had faith in God's TRUTH as a promise(not a contract)
I struggle with this at times, because we are living in a time of a kept promised from GOD that of Salvation. I wonder, what is that kept these men so trusting in GOD...the faith of Child...and I wonder how lost we have become in this worldly knowledge of science, and ideology where everyone is right about everything and that we shouldn't say this, or shouldn't do that, but this can be said and that can be done, freedom, has been taken for granted for too long. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression and life style. All our world has taken this freedom trip on a crazy topsy turvey ride, that freedom has become the opposite of what it was meant and designed to be. Freedom is now more commonly know as suppression! Now everybody thinks freedom means you have the right to say and do what you think is right! Well what is right in our own little bubbles? Our perceptions are so skewed and perverted by our own individual experiences that there is no way out of this spiraling mess unless we revert back to the real TRUTH of it all!
Why are we on this planet? To fullfill our own selfish desires? eek Look at where that's gotten us. WAR torn, debt ridden, diseased, and to sum it all down nicely...just plain sick!
Reading through Romans 7, Paul spoke of sinful flesh warring within us trying to keep us doing the things we wish not to do. I find that SIN has taken on a new target to attack other than the LAW, which it has done for a millenia of years until Christ came that is. Now in it's dying last breaths, SIN is grapling with and trying to marr and mutate the very meaning of FREEDOM that came from Christ's gift to us. It never fails that SIN tries to find new ways like a virus to infiltrate itself into our human existence, trying drag us back into the murky darkness, clawing to try and get as many souls as it can before even SIN cannot hide much longer in the shadow of freedom! I hate this because this freedom lie, attacks at me daily, which I know it attacks at all of us! Well you know you're free, start thinking about yourself, oh that isn't that bad, or what about your needs(I fall into this one way to often). Or the biggest one of all is the what's the point no one cares what you think or it doesn't matter what other people think.
If you keep on respecting the truth of others you will find yourself compromising your own truth eventually, and how do we know if our truth is the real truth? There are so many different religions dealing with so many different cultures, that we can find ourselves so mixed up in it all that we find ourselves just completely lost in the thick of things.
I just look at my own situation with Catholicism and Christianity as a whole. Why can't we just get our acts together and follow the one truth...but what is the ONE truth.
First Question of Truth is: Are we creations of design or that of fluke.
Then we have to ask ourselves, can we trust ourselves enought to be able to make this decision.
The first part of creation by design comes up the fact that there is Creator.
So then we ask ourselves who is our Creator? Is it another being, like men from mars?
Then you have to ask yourself, so if other living beings created us then who created them... and we find ourselves back to the beginning question of it all.
Are we creations by design or a fluke creation of the universe.
And we are back to asking ourselves, well where did the universe come from.
Is there something separate from the universe that created the universe, how did this big BANG! come to place to start off this crazy, complex, dangerous yet beautiful existence!
The age old question how did we come to exist...evolution is definitely part of the equation(pardon my french I can't think of how it's spelled in English)
Where did language come from how did this consciousness this knowledge of self(hmm I think the tree of knowledge enters stage left), this awareness come from?
I don't know about you but the Bible sure has done a pretty good Job of informing us how we came to be! Albeit there is a lot left to debate for many people if they wish too, but there is not lot of ground to stand on, when someone tries to disprove anything that is written there. The accuracy of the ages, the land, the migration and sepration of the people. We do have to look at the fact we are basing our decisions on translations of ancient languages that have many words that can have very different meanings
I just wonder, if we can really put faith in ourselves and what we know. We only know what we are told, and what we learn, through experience. That experience is exponentially small in ones life compared to the grandeur of life, that how can even one believe that we can make such an ostentatious statement, or be stuck in our own ways and beliefs, when in our extremely short lives we don't even scratch the surface in comparison to the grand scheme of things.
That's where faith comes in, and that is why I make my belief decision, I believe, that it is very possibly and highly likely, a Creator(GOD) created me. I also from what I have taught and by the people I trust and put faith in that trust that GOD loves me, that he want's what's best for me. I also believe that there is another force at work, that doesn't love me and that doesn't love God either and it want's the worst for us, but this force is more impersonal less caring. This force is solely dedicated in one thing only and that is to cause pain and to strike at the very heart of GOD. The only way can strike at GOD is through his children for the time being. We were deceived in the beginning lured away with the thought that we too would know all and be equal to GOD. We fell and there was no way out on our own to get back up. Since well there was no way as fallen being as GOD by his HOLY beinf like a light into the dark would always apart from lest we be destroyed! There was only one solution and that was to make the ultimate sacrifice and to create in His Holy image an intercessor a bridge that could reach out to us at our level and relate. When that sacrifice was made that union of Blood and Spirit joined together as one and ultimate Gift and ultimate reconnection to GOD through one being, that of CHRIST JESUS himself and through HIM we are able to in communion once more. We are able to see our father's face and cry out ABBA!
I don't need to know or question every single detail(although I catch myself wanting to do this way too often). The only thing that I can base my life experience on is that of the Holy Scripture! I think there will always be a time and a place where I will need to make adjustments and tweaks to my belief system, when new information is revealed, but we do need to make a decision and go on from there and stop guessing. If don't make a decision then we are just stalled and not gaining anything from it. I think the key thing is that we need to be open to possibilities of what TRUTH is!
You just can say I was told this and that is what is and I won't accept anything else. Well if you live your life that way A: you just might be alright or B: you could be completely wrong.
Weigh out what you know to be true right now in your life and base any new information given to you off of that truth! I don't know any other way! Also make sure that your truth bear's weight. Truth must always be checked and balance. Truth is always skewed by our filter's in our lives. We have to find our own truth and live it out to the fullest!
These are just my spewed out ramblings for the night and things may be adjusted as the days and weeks go on! So take it all with a grain of salt and filter out how you wish because we will all have a different view on this and that is just how it is. We are unique, and beautiful in our own ways, through each decision in life we make, through each new experience life, we are molded and changed, and that my friends will always be how me make our decisions and find our Truth in Life! There has to be an outside force a template to measure by! The only thing so far that I have come across has been the Bible, so I am sticking to it, and if I have to learn greek to gather more insight than so be it. The quest for Truth will continue on long after I have gone. I just hope that In my brief time here, I have been able to help reveal another little unique glimpse of Truth!
I end this blog with this statement from Christ to Pilate:
Jesus said, "To this end was I born, and for this came I into the world, to bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth hears my voice. Pilate then said unto him, What is truth?" (John 18:37-38)
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