Tag Archives: faith

Do You Worship Chaos?

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Thought process:  Warning, the following may be tough on your brain.  

Sitting all night in Chicago. Yeah in Chicago. The O’Hare oasis as a matter fact. The Lord brought me to a parking spot just before rush-hour. Unless you’ve tried to do that with a 53ft trailer, you have no idea what a miracle it is. Thank you Lord Jesus.  


Why would anyone seriously choose to live here. I break it down to the elemental things, it has to do with distractions. They prefer a busily entertained life to following cows around in the pasture.  

Warning leap of thought:

God is not a distraction.  


(That would be the reason why most of the billboards around Chicago have to do with sex, luxury, gambling or alcohol. Oh yeah, there is the occasional “make you feel guilty” billboard. Hospitals, oh yeah, hospitals are a Big thing. And I can’t leave out the governmental mandates to be happy. Apparently God’s not allowed to be the God of Chicago. It beats me to death to figure out how a city, that has to be so well organized, can worship chaos.)


He himself, in Jesus, is life. Religions are distractions. But Jesus is the center of every religion.  (just leaping from one rock of thought to another.  Following me this morning takes a little bit of agility.)


This is not to say that every religion recognizes or worships the living God’s holy son. But Jesus provides life. Man’s interpretation of Christ’s sustaining is called religion.  


A thought I had earlier:


You can tell someone that Jesus is the son of the living God. They might nod, meaning they understand. But learn to spend quality and dedicated time in prayer with him and the meaing changes exponentially.  He is no longer just an invisible figurehead, he becomes the source of your very life. Gladly our personal religion gets tossed out the window. In its place comes a living faith.  


(here’s a bit of a rub for you: The living faith I’m talking about is not based on opinion. It is based on the words of the Bible and constantly compared to those holy words. If it weren’t, it would be no different than any other religion; filled with opinions of Man.)


There are fanatics of every distraction, from religions about God to football 🏈 🙃, and every conceivable aspect of life in between. But the true fanatics of Jesus know what I’m talking about. Once he touches your soul personally, you never forget it. You don’t have to memorize a personal religion anymore. You’ve arrived at the place that surpasses them all.  


Sorry if this is disjointed. I didn’t intend to write a 300 page book. But to explain all this would surely take at least 300 pages. The mind can put things together in a much smaller space.  


Happy assembling.  

Spiritual Mark on the Doorpost

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​Every human being has a religion.  Religion is Man’s obedience to his version of God.  It is good then to obey the constructs of our religion.  But it is better to employ the trappings of faith.
     Every once in awhile, when the time seems right to you, put your religion in a box and leave it outside your room of Prayer.  Dress yourself in nothing more than faith.  Then go to God in truth.
     Once stripped of what you think is righteous obedience, you will find yourself humbly and woefully inadequate before the Living God.  But when you leave the room of Prayer, and recover all your trappings of religion, they will seem far less important.  You will have grown a smidge or two.
By His Grace 

The Reason for Faith’s Necessity

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2 questions:
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1. Why do we need faith?

2. What does the voice of God sound like?

Beginning with the second question:
The voice of God is life.  When the Israelites were released from bondage in Egypt, God displayed his voice in a thunderous noise from the mountain.  But this was for the sake of the people, that they may worship Him and obey.  As he spoke with Moses, however,  he used no such voice.  Rather, God treated Moses as a friend.  (What does that say about those to whom he spoke as a thunderous noise?)

The voice of God requires faith to hear.  God is thoroughly life.  Everything he is, everything he says, everything he does, is life.  Ask yourself then what does life say, what does life sound like, what does life look like, what does life feel like?  Look carefully at the situations and things that come to you. 

Please don’t consider that God is like a man.  The life I am speaking of is Purity, Holiness, Righteousness, Justice, Mercy, and in the end Grace to us through sustaining toward the same things.

He would prefer that we gain his wisdom to perceive with our eyes and ears, mind, heart and strength.  Isn’t this why the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength and with all your soul?  Then you will begin to hear his voice.  How do I know this?

Romans 1:20 tells us how we know this.  “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

(And we have the testimony of those who do hear his voice through faith.  The one who writes this testifies.  And some who read this testify.  The voice of God, one may say, also comes from those who know him.  Perhaps better said, those God knows in Jesus His Holy and Righteous Son.  The people would find advantedge listening to the words of such people, instead of pre-judging them as worthless.)

He speaks to us from what we can say “IS”.  Because life “IS”. 

And we must inject another slice of information here.  God does not demand too much, for he gives us everything we need to accomplish his Holy will in our lives.  To say he does not, is to join with satan in the primary accusation that has caused creation of this place of testing in the first place.  We find the second slice of information in the following scripture.

5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do. (James 1)

Rejecting this promise is a sincerely precarious place to choose to live!  For if we do not receive his wisdom, that God is so willing to give freely, we will surely lack precious gifts. (Even, perhaps, finding death in the end.  For not a single one of those who of those who heard the Thunders from the mountain receive the promise of God.)

Having read this, it is now your responsibility to act.  Though having said that, (it sounds like a threat) the Wonders that God is willing to give to any man is far worth the struggle to suppress our rebelion (That which is crouching at our very door, desiring to have us. But we must master it. [Taken from Genesis 4:7])

Think about this deeply:  we need faith because it will never cease to be necessary.

Go and see if what I have said is true.

P. S.  The voice of God is called Jesus.  Think about that for the rest of your life.

Home?

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The Lord, The Sovereign Lord, the Source of life, ever-present Righteousness, Glorious mercy and justice.  He has all things, doesn’t he?  He lacks nothing, how true.  That’s what Sovereign means.

But let me speak to the rich man.  Let me speak to the perverted drunk.  Let me speak to the beautiful woman.  Let me speak to the greasy whore.  Let me speak to all those who have a place among Man, whether glorified or horrified; those with clean hands and those whose hands are covered with blood.

God has all things for he is all things.  Yet what he does not have, he has poured out his life to gain.  He does not have your love.  He does not take first place in all your days, though he is first in all eternity.  All creation honors His Holy Name, except here.  His name is Jesus the Christ, look into it.

“You ask too much of us!  You sit in your religious Chapel, carved of pure Ivory, and judge us.  You have forgotten the demands of life that are far more then we can bear.  We cannot put God first we must defend our home!”

Your home?  Your home is a soleless pair of old shoes.  Your home is a worn-out pair of jeans filled with holes, and leaving your buttocks bare.  Your home is an umbrella missing it’s purposed fabric.  Your home is a cave filled with Wolverines and poisonous snakes.   The floor of your home cannot be cleaned!   Why can’t you smell the stench of your household enemy’s feces, which lay in the crags you can’t reach?  Precious place, isn’t it, this place you call your home.  The place where you fear even in what you call solace.  You light a lamp, but still darkness pervades.

8 “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.”  (Micah 6)

He is your potential friend.  He is your potential Guardian.  Already he provides what you call your home. 

Who causes the lava to harden?  Who plants the seed of a tree in its craggy niches?  Who brings the beautiful erosion to cause a paradise?  Who gave you this place?  Who dressed you with skin?  Yet you would fear and keep him far from you?

Trust him and do the things that belong to him.  Then you will have a home that is not filled with stench and death.  Your home provides you no pact with death.

The Rocks Will Cry Out

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I wake to consider the things of the Living God’s Holy Son.  No matter where I look among the things of God’s Holy wisdom, I find no fault.  Yet why should this amaze me?

To the things of man I look, and I find no righteous faithfulness.  And isn’t this the cause of my amazement?

Consistency abides in the Living God, toward life and all things good.  Consistency abides in the camp of Man’s horror, toward rebellion and all things wicked.

What has God done but we should despise him so?  What has Man accomplished that we should revere him in fear? 

How is it that the people who call themselves Christians suppress the beauty of the One who offers them life; those who give God praise in secret yet seal their mouth when they walk among the dead.

“I have riches”, they say.  The faithfulness of God in his promise is that sure, yes.  But don’t the rocks along the Way of Glory also have the blessing of God to lay unmolested?  There they are lay, prepared to do his will. And surely if the people had not given praise to the Living God’s Holy Son, the rocks themselves would have cried out the words.  Are we no better than rocks strewn along the path of life?  Are we like rocks which adorn a valley of death, fruitless and simply a nuisance ( dressings which mark the barren land).

“If God will touch us, we will serve him.  If God will drive back the wicked we will speak and walk among them.  If he will drive them back beyond a stone’s throw, we will proclaim the words of life.  As long as there is no threat we will be brave.  Yet if he will not cause the wicked to recede, we will continue to praise him in secret.  I will leave the fearsome work to those who desire to die.”  Is this what we say by our actions?  Will not God protect those the march ahead in faith?

But clean yourself.  Primp and prune your feathers.  Lining every hair in its proper place.  let every thread of clothing be presentable and immaculate.  Let your life be dressed with all the things that cause Man to nod in appreciation.  If you hide the Light of Christ,  you are no different than the rocks along the Way. 

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Is it too much to ask? 

Is it unjust to require us to join Jesus in his suffering?

Is the shame of righteousness too much to bear? 

Is the Cross of Christ too heavy to share? 

Then what can possibly be our lot? 

When we appear before He by whose Blood we are bought?

Living Mystery

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Billions of things I can’t explain or understand.  But the most mysterious are those things that are in our hand.

I look at myself, I look around at all the people, I listen to my heart, I listen to the fears of others.  The mystery rises up when I look at those who call themselves Christians (even in myself).

Someone needs to explain to me why those who believe in the love of God in Christ to save us, fear so many things.  We fear sickness.  But didn’t he sustain his people for forty years in the wilderness?  Curiously, they perished for their unbelief, yet we seem to carry on their tradition.

We fear economic loss.  But didn’t he command Peter to go catch a fish, that he may pay the tax?  And didn’t the widow of Zarephath find that she had plenty to eat for her and her son while she gave residence to the Prophet?

We fear our sins and failings of the past.  Yet a single drop of the Holy Lord’s blood heals the sins of billions.  How much more his dead body?  And didn’t he say that as far as the east is from the west our sins are cast from the memory of the Living God?

What is the power of Christ if those who say they believe refuse to receive?

Yes, of all the things I can’t understand, the greatest lay our unwillingness to believe.  It is as if we say, “You will get no glory from me!”