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!

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!

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)