Today was a good day.  How can you make that statement with no authority over its determination?  You mean it was only a good day because I determined, expressing my own authority to proclaim it so?  Let there be light!

We resemble the Lord, the Holy Trinity in so many ways yet we have enemies in self and sarcasm that continue to tell us how frail, palsied, finite, ugly, dumb, you get the picture.  This constant pressure, reminder and negative reinforcement causes to at some point accept that fate as our own.  I am what God says that I am.  Remember that.  Oh, you don’t know what God says that you are?  I am sorry let us look into that a bit.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:35-39

Friends just come and go, it happens in the show, before I let them go, I hope that they still know, how much I love them all and appreciate the call, but now it’s time to go so let’s get on with the show.

You see this life is short, no time for grand retort, if you did it all for sport, the regret all comes pre mort, but none will disagree that the greatest things comes for free, so if you count yourself quite wise, your heart will be supersize.

Free love and choices made, your granddaughter’s hair to braid, the wealth will often fade, when put properly in the shade, we won’t be counting our gold but the treasures that we sold and the lives it helped to mold.

Run away from it if you must we all return to dust don’t get so worried and nonplussed about the mysteries we’ve discussed, just turn your head with a big grin and watch each episode begin.

Or stay if you can stand the glory and the pain, for the stain left upon each our hearts shall forever remain and the tremendous experiences that we gain will make the sadness smaller still than the memories that we fill.

Are we so busy look at the impossible that we forget to do what is right in front of us.  Perhaps God’s Will for my life is to feed the poor, heal the sick and house the orphan and widow right in front of me.  Sometimes I forget that some of us had to be meant for the small things and that is not some glorious grand, out of Egypt, miracle that we are going to be expected to produce.  Some times the miracle is just living your life for Christ in a way that brings honor to Him in your family and your community.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t hope and pray for God provision of miracles because we certainly should.  It is just that if we get to waiting around for some grand, Will for our lives and forget to do what He told all of us to do, we might be missing the first step on the path to the miracle’s provision.  That being said, who knows that which God has intended for each of us.  Is it likely that we will find God’s Will for our lives sitting here on our duffs at home or perhaps down the street taking care of elderly.  Is it possible that going on a mission trip is the way to complete the mission? Is it probable that we will find the mysteries that God has planned for us by sitting in the same ol’ same ol’? Unlikely.

My Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  I think that is great because it is Biblical but I am astounded that our Father owns all the solar systems in all the galaxies in the entire Universe and the infinite application of dimensions within that paradigm.  How is that I could ever be bored imagining that my part of that Plan is somehow insignificant?  Shouldn’t I first learn contentment with that which I have in order to get something more grand?  This is what I’ve got, it is a lot and since I have the toolbox of God’s infinite possessions, power and wisdom at my disposal, only the imagination can dictate the possible, right here, right now.  It really is in the thinking isn’t it?

Unthinkable? I think not.

It is with deliberate intent I try and be gentle in relaying the material within my heart.  However, no matter how intently I endeavor to adjust or modify my grammar and word selection, there is always someone who takes offense to what I’ve written.  Forgive me, if I have said anything untoward, froward, impermissible or potentially heavy handed. Though it is not the intent, I do understand that there is a saying about paving the road to Hades with good intentions.  Please understand that often times I am writing from a place of spirit and can barely force my fingers to keep pace with the word disbursal from my brain.  I truly wish to live in harmony with folks.  In so doing I must also keep balance with the things that are being conveyed by the Holy Spirit and find it difficult to apply a governor to that relationship.

This world hurts, Christians should not be considered as those piling on to the burden already placed on us by this world.  I do not seek nor do I want to harm anyone.  If I have done so please forgive and I will repent and move on attempting once again to be open to the goodness, kindness and gentleness of God’s Holy Spirit.

I am simply trying to listen to the one Master each of us should have, that special relationship with our Creator who designed us for specific purpose.  Mine is to tell people about Jesus and to spread a general sense of urgency to get about the work that he prepared for each of us to do before His return.  People don’t want to hear it, they want to capture the energy that behind it or they simply want to label me some kind of simpleton who is not worth the listen.  Oh, but there are the few that are prompted by His spirit and get about the work.  That is okay with me.  I am done with false agendas. If you want something from me tell me what it is so that I can be honest with you right up front as to how I can assist or that I cannot assist in its achievement.  If you want glory, you want me to tell your story, you need some help with a project, pain or plan, then give me the respect of letting me know.  I am no longer going to tolerate manipulation if you want something then you have to tell me.  The first part of this paragraph told you my purpose and I pray that your agenda is consistent with that for if it isn’t I will recommend who to look to for help, especially because it won’t be me.

I have failed at relationships time and again because I have tried to fulfill them at the cost of my purpose.  I don’t want to be your friend if it means that I don’t get to wear the hat I was ordained to wear.  I don’t want to be your husband if it isn’t for the purpose of living together for the honor and fulfillment of Christ’s Glory.  I don’t want to be your pastor, your teacher, your com padre or your team mate if we aren’t working together for His Glory.  If you have some other agenda than that, I am not the right choice for whatever team it is that you are designing, in your head.  Let us be entirely honest, the enemy, you know him I know him uses those buttons in our lives to paralyze, dissuade, deny and destroy our efforts for the King.  Mine is love, mine is a bit of the sense of fear of abandonment, mine is lust for the intimacy of a good woman.  So, the enemy uses these, my “weaknesses” or access points if you will to effectively divide my focus and thus stop me from achievement for the kingdom.  Well, I will have you know that I have surrendered these to the Lord and they will be removed, deactivated or pull out by the roots if need be in order to make me more effective for His purposes.  I must deny self, it is after all the only way to gaining Christ.

For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.

Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

I get it that you need to make sure that everyone knows that there is great evil being perpetuated daily all around us.  I understand that you believe it is incumbent upon you to discuss all the tragedy and bring into the conversation every pain, train wreck, disaster, fire, murder, ritual and deluge.  It makes sense that people need to know what is going on around them especially as the children go missing for the lustful purposes of the wicked.  However, let us remain ever mindful of the Lord’s Direction.  The Light lives in each of us and we must speak His Word Bringing Him into the situation not sit there mesmerized by the wicked deeds of the dastardly.

Focus on Christ, walk on the water to join Him, forgetting the storm, forgetting your form held rigidly by the limitations of the world.  It is His sleeping form in the boat that should transfix our gaze.  It is His timeless purity that should capture every facet of my diamond hard focus.  It is within Him that I find deliverance, protection, holiness and truth, not in this corrupted world.  Don’t get so worried that the worry becomes your master.  Give praise to our Glorious God that we have that capacity to put aside the pain, suffering, sickness, pestilence and chaos of the war torn world and step away from our chat with God renewed in the Peace that surpasses this insanity.  Certainly be vigilant and diligent to point out wickedness that we may stay free from their snares and sinfulness, but don’t get so transfixed by their wickedness that you allow that impurity to capture your attention from Christ.

Go with God into a holy and righteous day, shining the Light of Christ upon the darkness to preserve, free and separate all that is good from the wickedness of the evil doers.  I pray for all good things for you and that these wicked deeds only capture your vision for long enough to reveal them in the light of day.  In Jesus’ Name.

Am I presume that I will be consumed in this process of fire, fury, lies and deceit?  Should I give in to the certain and sustained cries of “give up” or “you can’t do it”?  Shall I lose this barrel of joy because the fallen seek to devour all that is right, good and pure?  Or maybe I should laugh just to laugh, dance because I’m saved and sing at the top of my inexhaustible lungs to Praise My King. I will not go lightly when expected to whither and blow away, for I am made of the stuff that constructed the heavens, the Breath of Almighty God.

What then should I say to them who would be depressed, unforgiving and forgetful of the Mighty, Righteous, Omniscient God who calls us His?  Should I help you wallow in the miry clay of your own remorse or drag you through the sadness of past episodic nightmare?  Maybe I should agree with the fallen that you never could, should, would or have the stuff to rise above your own inadequacy? Perhaps I should encourage your tears, fears and watch as you consume beers to buy your way out of the reality to which you find yourself frozen?  Then again, NOT!

You my friend are heaven bound.  Yes, it sucks some times but this short test will end and you will be set free into a life without sin, pain, age or time.  What then of your suffering, your poverty, your filth and despair?  Should we honor it, dwell in it, perhaps place it upon the shelf in the living room that we never forget the cruelty of our past, that we might gather pity out of our victimization?  I am not making short of this world’s capacity to kick our butts, leaving us dirtied with tire tracks over both sides of our bright white shirt.  I am not forgetting, diminishing or belittling the damage or pain you have suffered, the road you have traveled or the misery you have endured.  I honor your pain, I honor your travails, your worries, hurts, disasters and loss.  I welcome talk of how much it used to hurt, but we have been healed and shouldn’t the discussion then turn to the joyous transformation and the joy we have found through Christ?

We must be born again to stand in the midst of trials beyond our own will and authority to conquer.  We have the Spirit of Almighty God living inside, we are imbued with power, RIGHTEOUS power, to move mountains and laugh in the face of certain destruction, because at that moment we would enter our true lives as Citizens of the Heavenly Realm.  This is the fight that we voluntarily entered when we accepted Christ’s payment on that Cross.  Now is the time to realize your true position in the Kingdom and stand in the knowledge that we belong to and are empowered, protected and provided for by the King of All.  What is courage, I don’t know but I think that should give us courage.

Lord I love you and am excited by my trials as they sharpen, empower and shape me for my real life with you.  In Jesus’ Name.

Surprised, heart racing, breath shortened captured by my fearful chest I tighten my grip, with gaze aloft, focused.  They moved my heart to the point where I remembered Christ and his tears for them.  Hosannah, Hossanah they cried yet failed to understand the portent of his arrival, the steel of his resolve or the pain of that week’s proceedings.  Could I carry that weight for you Lord, would that I had a chance.  I did not get that opportunity that I may carry my own now.  Lord, I can see a vision of you on that tragic surrounded by torrid sky, ground shaking, the Earth crying out at the death of the perfect Lamb. My clothes torn, soaked with my own tears as my heart was torn from top to bottom leaving nothing between it and You.

That pain motivates me to do those things beyond exertion.  Tomorrow resides around the corner of my perception, that point at which this world brings it to the material.  Does it exist in some realm, predetermined, written, cataloged for release into the now?  Or is material based upon choices made, the base tincture, the stem component determined, then brilliant colors fed as mix to create the emerging mystery? Or is it all chaos left to chance, happening as an infinite series of computations in probability?  What evidence have you but sense?  What word have you but that which has been given us over time?  What proof have you of the coincidence, the deja vous, the memory of the brief whisper of purpose?

Christ died, he didn’t need to, but gave his life on a specific day, at a specific pretold place at the appropriate time to complete a task that had been sitting around the bend of time awaiting his arrival.  He died which is evidence that he had to in order to set us free.  We know the truth of it, certainly each of us is free to explain it away in order to deny our need for surrender or ignore the upcoming judgment facing each man.  We all see the order in the chaos, that something is controlling the flow in to and out of this material dimension called life.  Whether determined, planned or happening instantaneously what faces each of us is always just around the bend.  Are you ready?

In Jesus’ Name.

What is Truth?  Do you know it, do you love it or do you play fanciful in its proper delivery?  Do people ask you to fill in the gaps for them or avoid you suspecting they may be led astray?  Do you believe something absolutely without doubt, without consideration, confusion or ponderance?  What has the absolute truth upon which you stake your reputation given you in exchange for that dedication? Oh you didn’t know that you received by believing in some absolute understanding?

What is achieved in salvation without belief?  Nothing, we answer resoundingly!  That’s it without a truth upon which we may confer our kinship there is no belief and we have just established without belief, there is no salvation.  So we must first establish our truth claims to provide catalyst for eventual reliance.  Without reliance there can be no sacrifice and without sacrifice there is no legal understanding, so the sacrifice must be the Truth.

Therefore Jesus was SACRIFICED.  That is the truth, and since a sacrifice requires a beneficiary who then was that person?  You.  That sacrifice bought you back from your slave master, SIN.  Okay so we must establish that you were owned by sin and that the sacrifice was adequate payment of your debt in order to establish the sacrifice sufficient to the requirement.  Romans 3:23 says that all have fallen short of the glory of God and have sinned.  So, in order for this statement to be adequate proof, we must establish the ABSOLUTE TRUTH of the Bible.  Is the Lord’s Word 100% true?  Would you stake your life on that, okay maybe not your life but your reputation, your wealth, health and friendships? Again with Truth there can be no belief without belief there can be no salvation, so, I ask again emphatically is the Bible True?

Cannot have one without the other.  To believe we must have truth upon which that belief is based.  What is that Truth?  Is it up to you to decide for yourself, it is your debt for which He was sacrificed.  Do You Believe or Just Pretend?  In Jesus’ Name.

Obedience to God is the greatest freedom and coincidentally demonstrates to him my overwhelming Love. The burdens I carry are typically associated with my unwillingness to follow God’s direction, let go of the things He has been asking me to forfeit or forgive those with whom I have reserved anger. Please forgive me Lord for constantly offering excuse when I knew all along what it was you wished of me. I love them and never wish to let them down but in that enablement I transfer the leadership of my life to people instead of You. I cannot follow two masters especially when so doing is adultery to God.

Lord help me with perspective, for it is the perspective that defines the day.  Leaving judgment to You, for it was never my job, allows me to see each day in a fresh perspective. I don’t know what is going to happen, but isn’t that exciting, isn’t that abundance?  Must I imagine difficulty, poverty, depression or divide? Am I discounting the capacity to imagine wealth, health, provision and prosperity? Truly the life dedicated to following your lead is the grandest probability available for it makes the impossible likely and the adventure certain. Embracing this truth is the freedom we seek.

Lead on Father, to foreign lands or language, to new ventures in building or reconstruction, to healing and the ensuing peace.  This mystery excites, it provides, confounds and forces, yet reinforces my dependence on You, My King.  What comes next?  I certainly do not know, but it will be well lived, leaning forward either with the fair winds or walking easily against the winds designed to build my resolve. At the end it is sufficient to know that whatever occurred will be absent regret for I lived fully dedicated to the purpose for which each of us has been created.  I am content with this life as You provide it for me.

In Jesus’ Name I walk this world in search of the person yet to hear His Word.

I have been struggling with telling the truth about the organized business called the Church.  Which is ironic as many of them have dropped the word Church from their names determining that it limits the breadth and depth of the marketing reach.  “People don’t like to come to Church,” they say, “People want to come to a community”.  I love you my Brothers and Sisters, but as Jude, Jesus’ step Brother clearly stated we have been infiltrated by men and women who have nothing to do with God, but with mammon.

For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.  Jude 1:4

The enemies of God are deceivers, deniers, dividers and infiltrators.  They join those righteous efforts sporting good intent but bring in the corrupting poison of lust for the world.  We were never meant to be non-profit, we were told to render unto Cesar that which is his.  Pay the taxes, do the world and wait on God to provide for our needs, but that wasn’t good enough we had to get special exception from the government of man.  What have we to do with the world, we are “the called out ones”, called out from what, the world of course?

But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.  These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.  But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep your selves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

The enemy has always determined that it is much more effective to join us to break us up than it is to persecute the Church, which continues to make it grow.  So, the enemy has come up with the perfect plan to make the Churches just like the world and have them comfort and complacent waiting for the injured to come in the front door seeking a salvation they know nothing about.

So, we can ignore the fact that we were told that the enemy would come in and nest in the mustard tree finding it comfortable or we can be vigilant, ware, prepared and spirit filled as the Lord told us to be.  You decide.  I pray my greatest prayers of hope, encouragement and protection for my Catholic Brothers and Sisters as in this time, this crucial time they are finding out the truth about their organization.  Many have written me and lost hope and faith in their denomination.  It is understandable as they have a long history of wars, sexual immorality, nefarious government relationships, greed, injustice and even now are being associated with the acts of the fallen.  This is not what the Lord intended.  Father shine your glorious light upon their wicked deeds that they might be seen in the public’s eye and have the opportunity to repent and turn their faces back to you before it is too late.

To those believers who have become jaded, don’t blame God for what men do.  Love Him with all that you are as He loves you.  He will deliver you.  Make some choices that are guided by the Holy Spirit in preparation for the King’s return.  Don’t waste your time, your precious time of harvest associating with false believers.  Share the Word of God and if they choose to remain carnal then stay away from them, remaining unspotted by this world.  The Lord will sort this all out, keep the faith, keep your eyes skyward awaiting His glorious return.  My comfort is a small sacrifice for the glory that awaits us in the Kingdom.  I love you so much and pray for you the strength of Almighty God, a filling of His Holy Spirit of Power and Truth through the Path of Jesus Christ our King.