Rage.  Rage at the machine, the Government, My Sister, the neighbors, the roads, the sky, the sun and moon.  Overwhelming, inexhaustible, screaming revealed passion, broiling over from this vessel, agonizing over everything in entropy.  Father, this sin is our fault, thank you for waiting us out to accept the only available cure.

Lord God, I am at loss as to what to do with this turmoil in my heart and head.  Thank you for your peace that surpasses this global evil having apparently supplanted justice.  If it weren’t for Your teaching Father we would have no frame of reference for Truth.  I guess we would just accept this polluted era as norm.  Thanks be to God that You have provided an alternative to the obvious outcome that confronts humanity.  In fact it is so corrupted that those who would be emperor cannot even admit our approaching demise and keep buying trinkets as if this ship will be righted, rearranging the deck chairs for the party following calamity.

Father, I have Christian Brothers who cannot stop looking upon the naked images of women on the internet, hoping somehow that this will solve the relationship problems with their wives.  There are Pastor’s who have convinced themselves that everything will be fine if the flock just gives X + Y dollars, X being the tremendous amount dedicated to fixed Church Costs and Y what will be used for presently inadequate discipleship programs.  My Family hates me because I refuse to tell them what they wish to hear about our moral decay and unwillingness to surrender to Christ Jesus, as they return to the their bottle, girlfriend or video game.  I have friends who practice the same old experiment, knowing confidently that this time it will somehow deliver a positive outcome.  I continue to rage, although I have gotten better at internalizing it, the same old brawling spirit shows its contorted visage when I fail to get my way.  Death craves the living, pestilence seeks escape from captivity and war rears its endless, consuming maw, threatening the sum of history.  What am I to do with this roiling gut full of acid when the nightmares are real?

Father, how long will Your Name go mocked by the lips of the wicked and disobedient?  How long will the souls of martyrs remain by Your side crying out for revenge?  How long will these propped up, false kings be allowed to represent Your Authority?  What must we do to call the willing to penitence?  How shall we honor You when we are dedicating to our own glory twenty four by seven?  What is to shake us from this stupor as we stand paralyzed on the walls watching enemy advances?  Father, take me if she would but be spared this agony of daily despair.  Show her joy, let her know love exists, so that hope may follow.  I am powerless, yet I serve a God who holds the foundations of the world in his palm.  Hear my prayer Father, hear my prayer, won’t You please.  In Jesus’ Name.

There has been no shortage of good ideas for programs to “jump start” the Church.  Teetering from shrinking coffers and growing costs of doing business, Church Leadership teams are constantly trying to “change it up” in order to bring in the apathetic host of disinterested believers.  Maybe if we don’t do hymns anymore, how about shortening the sermon or switching to worship times that consistently assure parishioners will be home in time for the big game.  We need larger daycare of Friday night football/basketball gatherings to hopefully capture the interest of young people and somehow pray that we can slip in a little info about Christ.  What have we become, luxurious buildings with latest technology and sound systems, to worship a God who humbled Himself for our salvation?

We cannot get anyone out onto the streets to disciple, which if I remember correctly was the basis and duty of “EVERY” Christian.  People arrive in fifty thousand dollar cars, briefly leaving their million dollar homes all to come and receive the Word, then drop a buck into the basket.  How is this  synonymous with God’s heart.  I constantly must counsel myself about placing expectations upon my Christian Brothers and Sisters to come out with me to the local homeless shelter or Spirit filled worship center to see the fire being set by the Holy Spirit.  Yet they spend thousands of dollars on vacations to this or that place just so they can pamper themselves and garner pats on the back for how hard they work all year.  The most amazing factor is that never have a shortage of recommendations and judgments regarding how “other people are so messed up and need to find Jesus”.  How do we expect them to find Jesus if we as the designated ambassadors for Christ will neither demonstrate His love for them or tell them How to find Him through the Cross?

I give you the Book of Jude, a Brother to Jesus Christ and ask that you evaluate our collective behavior.  I do not wish to judge, but in truth when colleagues refuse to do the work set before them we must eventually make them take an account for their poor or insufficient performance.  What would you have any of us do who are doing our best to obey God and remain separated from this poisoned fray?  Shall we remain among the un-Godly acts of those who call themselves by the name of Jesus yet refuse to do the work for harvest?

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,

To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for^[a] Jesus Christ:

Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings. ⁹ But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct—as irrational animals do—will destroy them.

Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error; they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion.

These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. ¹³ They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.

Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.

 But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.

To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

I pray with every fiber of my being that those who have been saved awake themselves to the importance of the moment in which we are found.  This is the time leading up  to the return of Christ Jesus.  Please do not find yourself outside the closed door, weeping, gnashing your teeth because you thought yourself worthy.  Remember, Jesus Himself told many to depart from Him that He knew them not, calling them doers of iniquity.  If there is no evidence of the Holy Spirit in your walk with Jesus then you should have a sudden rush of fear when reading this challenge.  Remember the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord and we are told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  What about having and displaying reverent fear of God do we not understand.  If you think that you can accept salvation and then not be changed into a new creature by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God then you are sadly mistaken about salvation itself.  Remember it is the Holy Spirit that seals believers for eternity, without evidence of “baptism by Spirit, there has likely “never been salvation”.

Lord God open our eyes to what it is you would have us do in these wicked days.  Let us not look to our own will and fulfillment but rise to do that work that was prepared for us before the founding of the world.  We love you Lord and await your return.  In Jesus Name.

Weeds and chaff, wheat and grass, goats and sheep, faith and mockery.  Hostility is taking shape as the norm.  No longer fostering peace, protestors now cry for blood, scapegoats and ill gotten gain.  Politicians breed contempt as a tool to keep the struggle feeding the perpetuity of power.  Churches, closely define their doctrine as differing from their denominational, Brothers and Sisters down the street to assure no cooperation in healing, appealing and kneeling for the Lord our God.  In the midst of hateful paralysis the world spins tilted toward a chaos of our own making.  Will we cry out to the Father for intervention on behalf of all, not just the few?  I wish that all would come to the Knowledge of God, but the Bible clearly states this is not to be the case nor the outcome for humanity.  That does not prevent us from mourning the fact that a huge swath of humanity will find themselves eternally separated from the God who loves them.

I am tired of hearing the stories of Church Body wounds, delivered by parishioners, staff and trusted/tested elders, eliminating the opportunity for success in the Body of Christ.  Town’s people are starving, fighting for a leg up in the struggle with a brutally inclined humanity, yet we stand ill prepared to aid them.  The innocent suffer at the hand of those who would control their bounty, yet we stand idly because we cannot let loose of any of our tithe, instead sequestering to pay mortgages on multimillion dollar buildings.  Poisoned hearts, turn their ill intentioned gaze at anyone appearing minutely to differ from their selfish Church rules and regulations or wealth parameters.  Hateful glares penetrate the spirit of any young man singing too loud, in joy and jubilant worship, to the God who saved him.  What then authentic is left for the poor, lost, sick, blind and hungry?  Where is the power that was given us by baptism in the Holy Spirit of God?  This is not serving God, but clearly service to self.

I call upon the pastors and church bodies of this and other towns to put aside the differences associated with politics and buildings.  Stop fighting to keep the right number of sheep in your flock, leave that to God.  GO and find the LOST, bringing them into the fold as Christ demanded.  Stop, fattening up the flock, force feeding them wickedness and division, instead of the everlasting joy of Gospel LOVE and FORGIVENESS for all who will repent and believe.  I don’t care if you are Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist, Lutheran, Christian, Apostolic, etc….. I care that you believe in the Work of  the Lord Jesus Christ upon the Cross to set humanity free from  sin and death if they repent and believe.  Beyond that let us go help those that need it and share the Good News of Gospel.  And by the way if your church has a program that feeds the poor, helps people quit drugs and alcohol, or cares for widows, orphans and indigent then sign me  up to support your efforts.  We will only be an effective body when we work together to bring the love of Christ to this chaos inclined world

I don’t care that you wear a suit, jeans, a motorcycle jacket or have a hanging cross around your neck.  I care that You Love God and that He loved you enough to save you from the prison keeping you from redemption.  I care that you have heard and obey His command to make disciples of men, teaching them to spread the Good News of Christ, doing the work of the harvest.  I care that you love people so much that you have surrendered your personal wants and desires to serve the greater need of God’s Will for this planet.  I love you and wish that the Lord Jesus Christ would remove the devil’s deceptive veil, keeping us from seeing that we have always been the same family.  I care that we don’t just loosely use the Powerful Name of Jesus Christ the King as a descriptor when we have never even known Him.  Belief and faith create action, without it as James so aptly proclaimed, our faith is dead.

Come do the Work while their is still light remaining for soon the night shall come.  Praise Jesus Christ.