Tag Archives: Religion and Spirituality

A Letter to Freedom Lovers

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Election 2012 button

Election 2012 button (Photo credit: League of Women Voters of California)

You have petitioned for freedom.  How tirelessly you have worked to gain what you are not to have.

College

Jet Skis

Wide Screen TVs

Marvelous luxury in cars, houses, prestige, wine, liquor, beer.

Sports

Vacations

Happy family reunions in exotic places

Innovation upon innovation, medicine, electronics, gadgets of various kinds.

Sunday strolls with loved ones

Tolerance for every thought, expression, lie, or truth.

In short, you have petitioned for freedom to increase the work of your hands.  The regard for Holiness, godliness, suffering that you might learn obedience, reverence for everything Jesus, and locked down defense of God’s Gospel, have not been the central part of your petition.  Do you honestly think, with regard to the things mentioned above that God is slightly interested in allowing this generation to gain what they should not have?

All the while: Billions of His holy people have arrived in His presence void of the pleasures of this world.  They stand praising His Glory and waiting for the culmination of His work in the Saints still struggling today.  Through the Lord’s eyes: His word has been cast among us and billions have listened to the point of “Doing”.  Where is the “Doing” among those who strive to be free to seek all forms of pleasure?

All America poses along the fence of “tomorrow” waiting to see what will be granted to them.  “Freedom is coming”, they say with expectant eyes.  We will gain what we want by vote.  But the Holy Will of God is ignored among them.  Does a student gain a favorable grade by not completing the tasks the teacher grades her students by?  What is highly valued among men is abhorrent in the sight of God.  Likewise, what is highly valued in God’s sight, is abhorrent to seekers of pleasurable freedom.

To the Walls!

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English: Castle Wall Castle wall as seen from ...

English: Castle Wall Castle wall as seen from its walk Framlingham Castle Framlingham Suffolk. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

God’s wrath will certainly come upon the wicked of any age.  And there is a purification due all His people.  We read this: “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” (1 Timothy 3: 12)

These are two points worthy of consideration; that the wicked will suffer under the hand of the Most High God, and that God will purify His people.  I find it interesting that the wicked mock their prophesied suffering, and that many “Christians” ignore the promise of purification.  Rest assured, both are imminent!

Please, my siblings in Christ, consider our state of affairs today.  We enjoy a certain freedom to love God openly.  But we are not guaranteed that this will remain the case.  I do not pretend to know the mind of God regarding the things that will soon appear.  But by the testimony of our brothers and sisters who went before us we see that they were not held exempt from suffering for the name of the Lord Jesus.  Though this turned out to be a blessing to them, fearsome acts were sent against them.

We do not live in a place void of suffering.  And let us not forget what we have been told:

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” (Hebrews 12)

Let us not consider that we will be held exempt from suffering simply because we live among masses of men who keep their life of ease.  God is not blind to our situation.  And He is not a man that He should take certain pity in the way of worldly ease.  If this place was built to test the Son of God through suffering, how do we think we will fair?

About 4 years ago, when the Lord had come to again pick me up from horrible suffering, a saying came to me in the midst of prayer.  This saying holds a special urgency today, as it has for every generation of God’s people.  “To the walls!”  Let us climb to the top of our perceived fortifications and listen for the approach of what will certainly come upon us all.  Let us prepare to open the gates for the Sovereign One.

By His Grace.

Of Blessed Understanding We Join the Athletes of the Beginning.

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Eusebius of Caesarea may have continued the Li...

Eusebius of Caesarea may have continued the Liber Pontificalis into the 4th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Lord has blessed my heart by bringing an audio file to me.  He is more gracious than we can possibly know.  If all His people were to combine their testimony regarding the Glory of the Lord Jesus (and that to the Glory of the Father) all the melody of sound would still fall short of His eternal beauty.  So I thank you Lord Jesus for Your precious blessings that filter to us through our time in this place of testing.  May all Your people present great glories to You on the day You are revealed in Glory to all men!  Amen!

The audio file is that of Eusebius’ Church History.  The work spans the time from the beginning of the Church to about the year 350 or so.  Up to the end of his account the Church had weathered a few problems within.  But the account tells us that the Lord’s people were blessed to pretty much remain constant in their worship, brotherhood, and display of righteousness.

I suspect that as I finish this “listening” I will search out another work which deals with the subsequent years.  I fear those works that will follow, however.  For it isn’t long in Church history when we find compromise between Church and State.  The results of which attack the Lord’s people from a particularly tender perspective.

How my soul wants to encourage my brothers and sisters to regain, retain, and revitalize our purity and love for the Lord.  But I am at a loss this evening.  Perhaps the Lord will bless us all by words fitting to the surge of dedication this work of Eusebius has inspired.

Shades of persecution have come and gone.  Yet today seems the most hideous of all.  Silent compromise seeps into the very foundations of our identity as “sons of God”.  For the most part the Church has become useless and loved by the world, especially in America.  Each man and woman goes after their own tasks unscathed by physical or financial malnutrition.

One thought runs through my blood tonite, however.  A rather foreboding thought presses against my skin from the inside out.  Is the Church today ready if the impiant (as they were prone to refer to wicked men) one regains his footing against us as he did in the first 1000 years of the Church?  This question is not for me to either answer or speculate about.  It is, perhaps, for us to prove individually as what will be enters the calendar year of its own time.

One possible answer to that question is this:  Prepare in prayer, Truth, righteousness, purity, holiness, bodily control, and consumption of the Word, lest that day (if it indeed comes upon us) encamp around us from the very fringes of the woods which create our present clearing of “peace”.

Watch with all hope.  Hope with eyes that are not of man.  And stretch out the wings of “The Faith” as far as they will stretch.  Get ready to fly by the strength of the Holy Spirit, regardless the necessity.  Only then can we walk toward what comes with the great peace displayed by the millions who have worked in the heat of the day.

By His Grace.

“I Want to See Jesus”

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First page of the Gospel of Mark, by Sargis Pi...

First page of the Gospel of Mark, by Sargis Pitsak, a Medieval Armenian scribe and miniaturist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gordon rose from prayer.  He had been asking Jesus to appear to him.  He so desired to see the Lord, or perhaps even a manifestation of His presence.  But nothing happened.

Gordon looked through his soul seeking any sin that might be hindering his relationship with Jesus.  He was sure there was nothing.  And the Scripture was remembered:  “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.”

With a heavy sigh, Gordon resigned himself to quit asking for an appearance.  With his head down he shuffled to the couch and sat down.  Hanging his head for a moment, and closing his eyes, he simply let his soul rest in the peace of The Faith.

After a few minutes Gordon raised his head slowly and let his eyelids raise at the same speed.  And there, before his eyes, was the Bible on the coffee table.  Then it came to him more fresh than ever before: “All Scripture is God breathed.” “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me?”  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

It wasn’t a voice he heard.  It was a string of understandings that flashed in his mind.  Now he felt foolish for even asking.  And with a renewed effort, Gordon picked up the Bible and began to “see” his Lord and Savior.

A Holy Disorder

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A scene from Disorder in the Court.

A scene from Disorder in the Court. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Get educated and you will become useful.

Ok.  I did that and found myself useless.

Get popular and you will find happiness.

I did that and had to hide, popular apparently has a negative side.

Fit in and you will find peace.

But I saw where the masses are headed, who wants to plunge off the cliff?

What have I become with all that advise?

I am one who stands against all but Jesus.

Where I find Him I intend to remain.

And this is not of myself nor of the advise of others.

This is a gift of God, through given faith, lest any man should boast.

A Holy disorder has gripped me.

A rebellion to the ways of man.

May God’s mercy attack me.

So, when heaven appears I may remain.

 

By His Grace.

 

Endlessly Less

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Less is More?

Less is More? (Photo credit: leosaumurejr)

A man speaks, “There is no God.”

Yet the man “spoke words.”

A ball says, “I am not flying.”

While it unwittingly obeys the desire of he who threw it.

Another man says, “I will obey truth according to my own will.”

While “according” holds its own definition.

Better to accept that we are “less”.

That is to believe that there is “endlessly More.”

Worse to hope that our less is sufficient.

Death comes to all; decay appears regardless our words.

Why not embrace what does not fade?

Why not seek the help to hope for what we do not perceive?