Church is like speed dating: sit and hear a few generalities about Jesus and then quickly move on.
You can learn information about Jesus thru sermons,. You get to know Him by observing and interacting with Him through out each day.
Christianity needs to be more than a weekly hearing of Bible-based informational analysis.
Observe, Experiment, & Learn
Observe, experiment and learn how your mind and emotions work. Then you will know how to make them work for you, not against you. Look within you. Alter your thoughts, feelings, and desires until they produce continual joy, not ongoing pain.
Let Your Conscience Be YourTeacher
Anything that you allow to stand between you and your conscience will block it from view and lead you askew. Call it mindfulness or mysticism, learning to listen to your conscience and to improve your thoughts and feelings is life-changing!
Practice Observation Skills Right Where You Are
You don’t have to travel to see things you haven’t seen before. Look closely and you can see them in your own back yard.
Don’t Let Complacency Tell You People Don’t Matter
Complacency trains us to avoid people. Compassion teaches us to reach out to them with kindness.
Discover Amazing Inspiration
Words inspired by the living Word (Jesus) burn in the heart. Methodical words written in a preacher’s study tend to muddy the mind. A sermon that isn’t followed up by pondering and experimenting is quickly forgotten.
Practice & Train
Following Jesus Is like playing the piano. You can listen to lectures about it, But if you don't practice, You won't do it very well.
“Cruelty-free” shouldn’t just apply to animals, but to every stage of human life. Society tends to ignore intentional cruelty. In history it was slavery, Jim Crow, and genocide. Today it’s abortion.
To devalue human life because of skin color (racism) or location (abortion) is cruel. Devaluing any stage of human life or any color of humanity, devalues all human life.
The abortion distortion has twisted society’s thinking to proclaim and embrace the idea that one stage of human life has no value. Millions have been conceived and then relieved of life by those who were deceived to believe that prenatal human life is just tissue.
The conception deception boldly declares that prenatal human life doesn’t matter. No human life should be disposable! Be cruelty free to all humanity, as well as to animals.
On the right hand side of my blog there is a search bar, just below the Twitter information. For more post like this, type in abortion.
If greatness in American history Was measured by How well a person lived by "Liberty and justice for all," A lot of "great" Americans Would be demoted. Check out my Top 10 Greatest Americans by the standard of "liberty and justice for all."
Inaccurate observation creates many physical, social, relational, mental, and emotional problems. Seeing things more clearly can help us avoid problems.
Observation is the courage to see what’s really there, not just what you want to see. Inaccurate observation leads to faulty reasoning. Our human tendency to prematurely evaluate hinders our ability to clearly observe the what’s going on. Before you begin to reason, make sure you have correct information.
Most of us have been taught how to memorize and repeat, more than how to observe and ponder. It’s easy to memorize other people’s thinking, but It takes hard work to make your own observations.
If you seldom observe and ponder, you’ll wander thru life with little wonder in your heart. Jokes aren’t the only thing that’s funny. Everyday life is full of healthy humor if you’ll stop evaluating everything and begin to enjoy life moment by moment.
You can’t improve yourself if you won’t accurately observe the details of how you think, emote, and act. Self-improvement involves thinking and living better than you have been.
There’s always something going on inside your mind and heart. Observe those inner actions. Decide which to embrace and which to erase. If you seldom clean out your heart and manage the workings of your mind, you might look good on the outside, but you’ll be a mess inside
Your attitude is determined by how you use your mind and by your inner responses to outer and inner stimuli By watching your thoughts, feelings, and desires, as an interested observer, you can learn to manage them for greater happiness. If you learn to monitor the self-talk in your mind, you can begin to select the helpful and reject the detrimental.
If you pray with an honest, humble heart, you will begin to observe positive changes occurring within you. You can get to know the living Jesus more by observation than by reasoning. Talk to Him and then notice what happens in your heart.
Testimony is powerful. It lets people see how you’ve changed, instead of you trying to persuade them to change.
You’re in God’s image.
He’s creative!
So are you.
Observe and innovate!
Why just rotate
Thru life?
You can wish
For a fish
But you’re more likely
To catch a fish
If you go
Fishing.
Every Sunday
The plot’s the same.
We’ve made church so tame.
Church teaches Christians to listen to a preacher. Perhaps it would be more effective if it taught us to listen to our conscience. If a church isn’t empowering people to daily experience the presence of the living Jesus, it’s in decline.
Christianity isn’t about church growth. It’s about spiritual growth–people growing closer to and more obedient to the risen Jesus.
Christianity is about spiritual life. The more church tries to organize and control spiritual life, the more the Holy Spirit is quenched. Maybe church should proclaim the Gospel to people who haven’t believed, instead of claiming authority to control the spiritual life the ones who have.
Christians are capable of so much more than being a Sunday audience. Perhaps God is saying: “Let My people grow!”
Church is a distorted view of Christianity. The most accurate view comes thru reading the New Testament with an open heart (and without a commentary) and listening to God as you read.
The body of Christ needs no chain of command. Each member can be led directly by Jesus, the Head.
Church too often lets the program and the preacher distract people’s attention away from the presence of the living Jesus. But Christ is essential!
Step into the future of church. The living Jesus can restructure the Sunday morning church plot and fill it with power and life! Take a look at Beyond Church–An Invitation To Experience The Lost Word Of The Bible–Ekklesia.
If you allow pain to close your heart, you’ll never get what you were supposed to gain from your pain. Even when you can’t change your circumstances, you can choose whether to let them irritate you or polish you.
Excuses will never help you heal. But admitting where you’re wrong and asking for forgiveness, will. All people are mixtures of good and bad (to varying degrees). That’s the nature of our human race.
Personal growth requires truth. Falsehood hinders it. Our feelings aren’t facts. In fact, our feelings often contradict the facts. When you detach yourself from your desires, feelings, and pride, you can see truth more clearly.
Your comfort zone and your growth zone seldom overlap. If you are willing to be uncomfortable enough to notice, you might find a great thought drifting thru your mind.
The most important thing to filter isn’t your air or your water. It’s your thoughts! Involuntary thoughts don’t take away your freedom of choice. You can choose to retain them or to resist them.
History as it is written is usually cleaned up and sanitized. (It’s strange how people could call something that passed down institutionalized atrocities and systemic abuse for generations “the peculiar institution.”) As it happened, history was a smorgasbord of good and bad, just like the present is. However, after a country’s historians finish with it, history is tidied up to make their country look good.
The uncomfortable parts of history have been reworked. The bad has been polished up, and the really bad has been taken off the buffet and removed from view. Then that hidden history becomes a mystery that isn’t taught in schools or popular books, but must be sought out and discovered by interested individuals who are courageous enough to face it.
When a society ignores (and or down plays) the parts of its history that it doesn’t like, people never learn the lessons that those parts have to teach them. For example, in American history, most of the painful details of the cruelty that was legalized and supported by the government are left out and the incidents that are mentioned are played down and presented as very minor parts of the story, not really worth much time and consideration.
Unfortunately denial only hides the pain of the past. It doesn’t heal it. It doesn’t allow the people of the present to freely learn the pain of the past and discover ways to move beyond it.
Personally, I don’t want to believe and build my view of the present on history that has been altered to make the past look better than it was. I’ve searched American history for years to find, learn about, and try to understand the fuller story that the faint of heart are often unwilling to face. If you want more than altered history, check out what I’ve discovered.
Your “uncomfort zone” can be a place of great growth, if you don’t let it make you frustrated and angry. Knowledge learned but not applied is information that cannot guide.
Some people let problems inspire them to grow. Others run form personal growth like it’s the problem.
When we make life about knowing, it’s all in the head. When we make it about growing, the heart is nourished and fed!
What you know
Is less important
Than what
You let grow
In your heart.
Artificial plants
Don’t grow.
Neither do
Artificial people.
Using your freedom, To do wrong, Isn't a human right. It's an evil choice That transforms Freedom into guilt.
When you’re comfortable
Doing wrong,
You’re in a toxic
Comfort zone.
You need to see
Some inner light,
At least a bit
Of bright
And shinning hope.
Look!
Train the gray thing
You carry above your neck,
To live with joy
And not to wreck.
You can train
To learn to defeat
Demonic thoughts
That trample thru your brain.
No matter what people say about you, they can’t write your autobiography. That’s up to you.
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 