I love to express what I feel called to say. Writing helps me to open up my heart and do that. I hope that what I write helps you in some way. I hope it makes you think, encourages you, or inspires you. If it challenges you or if you disagree, I hope you know that I respect your right to have a different point of view.
The love of three fellows
(Gandhi's, King's, & Mandela's) Overcame much hate. They were truly great. (Blessed are the peacemakers.)
Voters, it’s time for anger suppression. “Love one another.” Anger at how other people are voting is unpatriotic, and disrespectful of democracy. Democracy uses voting, not violence and anger, to determine and establish government.
One thing that makes America great has been the nonviolent transition of government. Please don’t make a mockery of democracy by insulting those who vote differently than you do.
Voting’s the exercise of nonviolence to determine government. Let’s keep it that way!
Think outside the ballot box. How you live matters more than how you vote. Presidential elections are easily exaggerated. No matter who wins, America chooses again in four years. One good thing about an election is that it’s finally over!
Attacking the integrity of America’s elections (with no proof) is unpatriotic. (Although, Thucydides said: “In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.”)
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” ―Martin Luther King Jr.
Let your spiritual condition grow beyond religious tradition.Religious tradition presents a short-sighted rendition of Jesus. Read the Gospels!
O, for the burning faith of the founders of Christian tradition, not just their memory. I love reading testimonies by historic Christians who followed Jesus, not tradition.Jesus wants to transform your spiritual condition, not pacify you with religious tradition.
Christian tradition, without God’s inner fire burning in human hearts, lacks power. Religious tradition’s often a roadblock to knowing the living Jesus, not a shortcut. It can be a fireplace with no Holy Spirit fire. Antiquated Christianity rumbles on, but the living Jesus invites you to soar!
Lifeless Christian tradition offers only legalistic answers to human problems. Tradition presents Christianity as something for spectators, not for agitators. Like a lazy river, tradition lulls Christians into sleep and a false sense of security. Tradition is a mixed bag, but the living Jesus can ignite the parts that honor Him.
Tradition looks back 2,000 years to Jesus. Mysticism hears and experiences Him now! Tradition doesn’t allow the living Jesus to change its forms and formats. Faith does! Personal relationship with Jesus outshines tradition like the sun outshines a candle!
The Pharisees saw the living Jesus as a threat to their religious tradition, so they turned to a politician (Pontious Pilate) for help. History shows that Christianity has often been intoxicated with the desire for political power.
Tradition is a form historical faith. We need the living Jesus not a hand-me-down. Religious tradition rests in the past, but Jesus calls forward to spiritual maturity.
If we don’t pay attention, we fail to notice many God interventions. Watch for them. The Good News of the kingdom of God, is that Jesus is personally available to intervene in your life and to forgive, heal, and set you free.
When life’s out of control, there’s healing in surrender to the rule of King Jesus! The rule of King Jesus begins inside you, when you align your will to His will. Let King Jesus invade your mind & heart & set up His kingdom there!
God’s interventions in the human heart are often ignored, denied, or resisted. To disobey the voice of Christ in you, is to rebel against the kingdom of God. There’s only room for one King in the kingdom of God (one Head of state). If we’re not being ruled by God’s kingdom, then we’re in the kingdom of darkness.
The kingdom of God isn’t a physical territory. It’s anywhere God is allowed to rule. When Jesus is allowed to fully rule in a person’s life, that’s the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God begins with the overthrow of self-rule and pride. Without repentance (personal surrender and realigning) Christ can’t rule in your life. To be in the kingdom of God is to continually manifest the fruit of the Spirit.
If you won’t let Jesus daily rule as King inside you, you’re avoiding His kingdom. When Jesus is ruling in people, their lifestyle demonstrates His presence and His will. Christ-followers are called to be ruled by the living Jesus, not by our human nature. To say, “Your kingdom come,” and then refuse to daily obey King Jesus, is hypocrisy.
Some people spend their life trying to avoid Divine intervention. I need it! (If you don’t want Divine intervention in your life, don’t read the Bible regularly!)
Jesus intervenes without force. He invites us to follow Him, but doesn’t demand it. If you have never allowed the living Jesus to intervene in your life, religious information about Him doesn’t do much good.
It’s grace that Jesus invites you to enter the direct rule of His kingdom. Being in the kingdom of God involves surrender to the rule of King Jesus! Leave the anarchy of self-focus and surrender your will to His rule.
Let “Christ in you” go beyond theology into obedience to His daily, inner, lifestyle intervention. That’s the kingdom of God! Invite the living Jesus to actively intervene in your life, then stand back! Prayer asks God to intervene. Obedience accepts His intervention in His way.
If your love for the living Jesus has diminished, you’ve quenched the Holy Spirit and resisted His interventions. Jesus doesn’t want your vote. He wants your daily obedience to His will. True greatness comes the rule of the living God, not from human governments. The kingdom of God has much more to do with your conscience than your politics. Jesus’ platform is the kingdom of God first!
The most important government on earth is the Kingdom of God. Let Jesus rule in you! Human nations and governments can easily become idols and distract your heart from Jesus. Citizens of the kingdom of God owe their full loyalty to the living Jesus. Country, party, race, or disagreement shouldn’t divide citizens of God’s kingdom.
Humans are full of inner, Divine interventions, calling us to good, that we too often ignore. Sometimes outward events are neither circumstances or consequences, but Christ interventions.
If we allowed the risen Jesus to intervene, He would disrupt our church services. The Pharisees didn’t want an interventionist Jesus. Sometimes Christians don’t either. But life’s not a waiting room for Heaven. It’s a battlefield for learning to obey Jesus.
Inner intervention:
In my soul night,
I received invisible sight.
The glorious Light
Of the living Jesus
Was suddenly revealed.
It’s humbling to write about pride. When I do, I see it in me.
Giving up pride is liberating! There’s no image to maintain. Pride and peace of mind don’t mix.
Pride confirms what you believe to be true. Humility searches for what’s really true. Self-pity is wounded pride nursing its pain.
Love builds bridges. Pride puts pricey toll booths and armed guards on them. Because pride denies its own pain, it lacks compassion for the pain of others. If we would learn to live on less pride and more humility, our lives would be better.
A proud person is full of excuses. Otherwise their pride would collapse.
Students in the school of pride believe they have nothing to learn. Feeling like you’re somebody doesn’t make you better than anybody.
Pride puts self first. Love puts others first. Pride fills us with self-concern and distracts us from the many joys of daily life. Wounded pride’s a chance to break free, but many people nurse it back to recovery.
In the end, pride counts for nothing. Reality and truth are what matter. Pride claims to be strong, but it internally collapses under simple disapproval. Pride is used to hide inner turmoil. It is an ego shout that continually tries to snuff out internal self-doubt.
Pride wants the credit, but humility is after results that help other people. Everyone has evil in them. Some learn to resist it and overcome it better than others. When inner freedom is illusive, many settle for the proudful illusion of freedom.
Pride doesn’t make people happy. It makes us guarded, defensive, and hard-hearted. Truth isn’t designed to bolster pride, therefore, pride avoids and denies truth.
Pride has a tiny comfort zone — being in the center of people’s positive attention. It thinks that people who disagree with it are either evil or not very smart. Pride highlights self, over and over again.
Think outside your pride.(It’s amazing what lies beyond it.) The bubble of pride is a deceitful guide. Like any bubble, it eventually pops. Truth is found outside the bubble of pride. (If you play your cards in the bubble of pride, your overconfidence will backfire.)
We can take pride and pull it down so that it doesn’t imprison us in self-focus. Pride and denial are good friends. Pride is confusing. It often boast about wrongful deeds. Pride is continually needy of more things to gloat and boast about.
Pride prefers words that proliferate it; not words that tell the truth about it. It’s only satisfied when it feels and acts like it’s better than and outranks others. Pride pretends to be self-sufficient, but it hides much woundedness.
Pride has trouble understanding and accepting anything that doesn’t build it up. It is deceptive. Many people are proud of things that they had nothing to do with. It’s irrational for people to feel proud (or guilty) of things things they had nothing to do with.
It takes a skewed view of self to produce pride. An honest view of self is humbling. Too much self-regard will make your heart hard. We have trouble hearing and understanding anything that wounds our pride. If you’re unwilling to try to understand what people are saying, pride’s in the way.
Pride blames other people for its own shortcomings. It justifies wrongdoing; it begins to say that wrong is right and that right is wrong. Pride self-censors words like, “I’m sorry,” “I’m wrong,” “Forgive me,” “My mistake.” It enjoys seeing people (it dislikes) humiliated.
Pride insists that it has nothing to apologize for. It says, “Don’t forgive people, but gloat over your supposed moral superiority.” Violence is extreme pride, the belief you have the right to physically harm people. To set pride aside and sincerely apologize, gives relationships a healing, fresh start.
Pride and conscience can’t get along. One usually pushes aside the other. Every sin is birthed through pride. A little pride casts a big shadow that hides much truth. “It’s not bragging if you’ve done it,” unless you’re using it to win praise.
Authentic greatness is hard to find. Much that we call great is pomp and circumstance. Seeking and embracing truth sets us free from the inner dictatorship of self-deception. Pride is the denial of the unpleasant realities about yourself.
Pride too often enjoys and celebrates other people’s humiliation. It often trounces on truth and justice. Pride can’t see anything that it wants to praise more than self.
Pride never dares to compare itself to perfection. That’s too humbling.
Pride is a threat to equality. It always wants to be better than others, not equal to them. Pride needs an audience of inferiors.
All pride is illusion. Honestly facing reality generates humility. Pride puts self first, but self-focus evades happiness because self’s never satisfied.
If it hurts your pride to let go of an opinion, it may not be based on facts. Pride and honesty seldom get along with each other. Weaponized pride can intimidate people and help you get your way, but recoil’s coming.
Pride flaunts its inflated opinion of self. A puff of suddenly released pride can proliferate a lot of damage. Pride demands respect, but any respect given as mere compliance is usually fake. Pride puts self on a fragile pedestal in order to admire and promote it.
Pride’s not a foundation of self-worth. It’s more of a bold mask for insecurity. People who don’t know their value as a human being, look for other labels to wear.
Pride basks and gloats in success, whether it’s real or fake. It surrounds itself with empty phrases and hollow words. Pride is an attempt to avoid owning up to our faults and misdeeds. It seldom minds twisting the truth to protect itself.
No amount of money, possessions, power, or fame can satisfy human pride. Pride or shame aren’t life’s only options. We can be forgiven and grateful.
Emotions can make you feel that what’s unreal is real. For example, by falling into pride, people think that they have risen and are unaware that they have actually fallen.
Pride demands a pedestal, but a damaged ego can learn the joy of humility. Pride would rather be praised for what it knows, than taught what it doesn’t know. It prevents accurate self-assessment. Pride believes that it has the privilege and right of superiority.
The Bible presents pride as a major sin. That’s not a popular point of view. Pride and total honesty can’t walk hand in hand. Pride has no room for the living, interventionist God and His truth.
Pride admits no need for forgiveness and thus perceives no need for Christ’s mercy. Our pride is the major source of our anger. If you pull down and dismantle your pride, you won’t have to protect it from others.
Pride can trick you into believing that you’re better than you really are. The more you experience God’s grace, the less room you have for self-righteousness. Grace wounds pride. Religion turns pride into self-righteousness.
Spiritual pride attempts to justify itself by claiming God’s favor and approval. Your love and humility can slip behind other people’s pride and help them open up their heart.
Pride that elevates your skin color over other skin colors, is racism. Pride is an idol, at odds with God — an attempted substitute for His inner peace. The idea of self-supremacy is dangerous. All humans are made out of the same stuff.
The sin of pride is sneaky. It usually disguises itself as noble and virtuous. Instead of following God’s way, pride hinders God by continually getting is His way. Pride flees an open, honesty, mutually supportive environment. Churches seem to, too.
Jesus doesn’t say ′′ love yourself.” He assumes that you already do. He says that you should love your neighbor as much as you already do love yourself. Nations cease to exist. People are eternal. Love them more than governments.
People enter the kingdom of God by abandoning pride and surrendering their will and obedience to the King of Kings — the living Jesus Christ.Jesus’ sheep listen to His voice and humbly let Him lead them. Do you?
It’s freeing to acknowledge that Jesus is number one, and to realize that you don’t need to be! The inner buoyancy of Jesus’ water wings transcends the self-effort of treading water.
Too many Christians ignore the living Jesus and focus on self. That’s backwards.
My way is seldom the high way. When I go low, Jesus calls me high.
Self is deceptive. When you align with self you miss much reality. Look beyond self.
Jesus often contradicts my will and leads me to go His way instead of mine. Jesus helps me sort thru my feelings and thoughts and then throw out the harmful ones.
People who think that they don’t need Jesus aren’t open to experiencing His reality. Who you let govern your life is vital to your mental health. Choose Jesus over self.
If you hate all the people who think and/or do evil, there’ll be no one left to love. When you really “know yourself,” you know you need mercy, forgiveness, and healing.
Pride misses out on the joy of having a good laugh at yourself. (If you won’t laugh at yourself, you’re missing out on a lot of good humor!)
Pride feels a constant need to impress. What an unnecessary stress!
Pride distorts and twists truth to make itself look good. The spin never ends. It usually hides a lot of important details.
Pride looks for equals to associate with, but often all it finds is other pretenders. It is a veil that hides what people really are.
Self is a narrow perspective. Pride keeps you stuck in it.
Following pride and following conscience will take you down two vastly different roads. To close your conscience and harden your heart is driving blindfolded. Crash is coming.
Pride wants to be thought right. Humility wants truth, even if it proves you wrong. It hides truth behind the ego where only honesty and humility can find it. Pride is tricky and illusionary, hiding much more than it reveals.
When pride tries to puff it up, humility rejects the hot air. Pride is easily offended at things that humility hardly notices. When questioned, pride gets hostile. Humility prefers to be hospitable.
If you set aside pride, you’ll see much beauty that’s been hidden from you. Pride says no to tender tears. Humility embraces their healing.
Pride boasts of what it knows, until it convinces itself that it knows what it doesn’t know. Pride often lies, but conscience will usually tell you the truth if you’ll listen.
Pride jettisons anything that doesn’t support it. It throws all distractions from ego, overboard. Pride refuses to humbly bend, but it does often break.
It’s hard to sustain pride when there’s nobody around to be impressed by it. Pride and shame are polar extremes. Truth is somewhere in between them.
Pride’s based on comparison and competition. It looks down on others. Humility looks up to God. To take pride in what God’s given you is to confuse an undeserved gift with your ego.
Pride usually thinks God agrees with it, but the Bible says, “God resists the proud.” Pride believes it has a right to make its own rules (and ignore God’s). Pride boast in nations, but the glory of no nation can compare to the slightest glimpse of the glory of God.
I find self-focus very discouraging, but Christ-focus extremely invigorating and enlightening!If self-love doesn’t look outward and focus on loving others, it becomes like stagnant water. It needs to flow out of us, not sit in a self pit.
Jesus never says “love yourself.” He assumes that you do. He says that you need to love your neighbor as much as you do self.Caring for your neighbor as much as you care about yourself is one of Jesus’ greatest (yet most ignored) challenges to humanity.
Shifting from self-love to neighbor-love isn’t easy. When I try to, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” self screams for attention.However, when I shift my love-focus from myself to my neighbors, I lose my self-focus in serving others and become much happier.
If you would spend your time focusing on serving others (instead of your own agenda) you’d enjoy life more.If “loving yourself” isn’t making you happy, try spending a day loving and serving others. It may surprise you how good you feel.
Forgiveness can’t be compartmentalized. If you won’t get past your self-focused hurt and forgive someone, it will be difficult for you to feel like you’re forgiven.
The more I know myself, the less I trust my own effort and opinions. My trust is in Jesus.I don’t want to be true to myself. That would cause a lot of pain and trouble. I want to be true to the living Jesus!
Self-will is based on insufficient data; on our feelings and desires, not on truth. When self-will prevails over God’s will for you, misery manifests.
A life, battered by self-will, is continually frustrated and stressed.The ravages of self-will reek havoc around the world, both in society and in the human psyche. Unrestrained self is devastating to individuals and to society. Unrestrained self-will isn’t freedom; it’s being continually chained to your own destructive tendencies.
Trying to impose self-will is exhausting. People won’t do everything you want them to (including you)!Ever since the Garden of Eden, humans have been stuck in self-will. Jesus came to free us form the tyrannical dominance of self.
Law and order tries to enforce the outward restraint of destructive self-will, but it can’t restrain self-will in the human heart.Politics can change laws, but the living Jesus can heal human hearts from the inside out. My hope is in Him.
The living Jesus wants to lead people to freedom, but guilt tries to condemn us and to keep us in our self-imposed misery. Self-will gets in the way & blocks us from dynamic intimacy with the living Jesus.Restraint of self, prepares the way for the living Jesus to have His way inside you.
Surrender to Jesus brings healing.People who are surrendered to the risen Jesus, don’t live like people who are given over to self-will. To be spiritually asleep in a self-focused haze, is a distorted way to live.
Goodness is a part of the fruit of the Spirit. Any goodness I have is from Christ working in me, not from my self-will.To “wait on the Lord” is to restrain from self-will — to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”
Self-will quenches God’s Spirit. A restrained self allows the living Jesus to freely work inside you.The living Jesus wants you to surrender your self-will to Him, so that He can freely mold you from within.Without a Spirit-activated conscience, self-will is easily deceived & stubbornly holds to its opinions.
When God wakes up your conscience, it’s called the conviction of the Holy Spirit. If you allow Jesus to activate and control your conscience, you’ll find Him gently leading you to recovery, healing and mental health. When Christians deactivate their conscience, the Holy Spirit is quenched. When Jesus asks if you want Him to activate your conscience, click “allow.”
People with an activated conscience are essential heroes in any human society.Self-will dislikes an activated conscience because it brings God’s inner restraint to self’s desires, deceit, and pride.
Be true to the living Jesus. Your heart may deceive you, but you can trust Him! Restrain me, Lord, from thoughts, feelings, words, and actions that ignore Your will and continually try to enslave me.
Insider Christianity burns in your heart and daily changes you from within. It isn’t the same thing as Sunday church-going.The great joy of insider Christianity (Jesus living in and through you) can’t be fully communicated with words. It must be experienced.
Without Jesus’ insider formation of my heart and mind, I’d be a mess. Insider Christianity starts in the heart and works outward.For many Christians, the risen Jesus is an outsider, but when you make Him an insider and let Him rule within, everything changes.
Insider Christianity is essential. Without it we only have a “form of godliness” that ignores “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”I’ve never much enjoyed formal prayers, but I find insider conversations with the living Jesus utterly amazing and life changing.
Insider Christianity isn’t based on outward organizations, lectures, or religious activities. It’s a spiritual fire in the heart!
Making the living Jesus an outsider to your heart and mind, subjects you to the turmoil of your own feelings and opinions.Many Christians do try to keep Jesus as an outsider to their mind and heart. They practice Christ-distancing.
Christianity is holy insider trading:Your worry for Christ’s peace;Your sin for His forgiveness;Your will for His will.
When you surrender and let Jesus live and rule inside of you, He will overcome the insider threats that are at work within you.For powerful insider point of view, listen to His voice in your conscience! Freedom from self-focus is amazingly liberating!
True ministry connects people to the living Jesus. It should never be a substitute for Him. For more on Insider Christianity, check out my book, The Joy Of Early Christianity.
The Resurrection events in the New Testament off a closer walk with the here-and-now Jesus to everyone. Unfortunately, Christians have too often rejected the biblical, foundational rock of supernatural revelation, for the gravestone of religious knowledge and programs.
The Bible shows how human government and religion teamed up to seal Jesus in a tomb, but He rose and broke free from both of them!“The chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate,” to “secure” Jesus’ tomb. Of course, their efforts didn’t work!
“The women hurried away from the tomb…Suddenly Jesus met them.” Leave the tomb and discover the risen Jesus!
“Who will roll the stone away?” “When they looked up they saw that the stone which was very large had been rolled away.” Look up!
“She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.” We need to recognize the risen Jesus.
As His disciples gathered behind locked doors, the risen Jesus “came and stood among them.” Jesus, break through our locked doors!
When Thomas heard the risen Jesus say, “Stop doubting and believe,” he responded, “My Lord and my God!” Will you?
The risen Jesus “stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.” Maybe you’ve seen Jesus and missed Him.
When an amazing thing happens, sometimes we need someone to tell us, “It is the Lord!” and motivate us to jump “into the water.”
Jesus gave His disciples, “many convincing proofs that He was alive.” He’s also convinced me! I love following the risen Jesus!
The Resurrection declares, “No more absentee Jesus!” Let the risen Jesus live in and through you 24/7/365!
Distancing from the risen Jesus has distracted far too many Christians and caused them to depend on religious programs and pastors.Hierarchies are backed up by spiritual “principalities.” That’s why Jesus told His followers not to set them up. Luke 22:25-26.
If we don’t read the Bible with our heart open to the voice of the risen Jesus, we tend to impose our own study and opinions into it. The idea that the risen Jesus isn’t present and active in the daily life of His followers is a false Gospel.Some people say it’s not safe to vote absentee. I say, it’s not safe to worship an absentee Jesus.
Biblical Christianity isn’t the passive experience of weekly group-think, but daily obedience to the living Jesus. Check out my handbook about experiencing the risen Jesus, here-and-now: The Joy Of Early Christianity.
The absentee Jesus leaves me Empty. Christ, living in me Releases inner glee!
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 