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.
Today is ALL SAINTS’ EVE. It’s a day to celebrate the people who throughout the ages have faithfully followed and obeyed the risen Jesus with all their heart. If you’re tricked into settling for less, you’ll mess the treat of Christ’s love, power, and presence!
Today is REFORMATION DAY. It’s a day to celebrate the people who were courageous enough to break with religious tradition and explore out of the box ways to worship and obey the risen Jesus. Refuse to settle for less!
Halloween Is a reminder Of the unseen Evil that surrounds us. Reformation Day And All Saints Eve Are reminders Of the courageous And passionate Christ-followers Who overcame the evil Within them and around them By obeying Jesus The living Way! The thing is, All three are on the same day.
Human nature tends to prefer perception over reality. It takes courage to abandon your perception and replace it with aha moments of truth.
Aha! True freedom is The reception Of perception That aligns with Reality. Anything less Is a bondage To deception.
If I’m not open To revelation Of the deception Of my perception I’ll stay stuck in it.
You won’t perceive what you’re unwilling to see and to admit. Perception depends on the kind of person you are. An unkind person perceives threats. A kind person perceives possibilities.
First perceptions are often deceptions. Look deeper. An unmanaged mind will be full of false perceptions. Honest people realize that their perception has often been wrong in the past and will continue to be in the present and future. The limits of your perception are not the limits of reality.
Some people say, “Perception is reality.” The truth is that human perception is often deep deception that has abandoned reality.Perception is often a projection of a person’s thoughts, feelings, and desires that has little basis in reality.The false idea that “perception is everything” causes people to believe their feelings instead of seeking the facts.
Elon Musk said: “Perception will match reality over time.” The truth is that deception often lasts a lifetime (even millennia). I do some amazing illusions. (If you ever want a show let me know.) Those illusions prove that perception isn’t reality.
With mind management you can adjust your perception and align it closer to reality. By mind management you can control your thoughts. Without it your thoughts will control you and lead you into misperception.
Kind thinking is the kind of thinking that will make the world a kinder place. Train your mind to be kind both to yourself and to others. Whether prenatal or postnatal, unkindness and cruelty are not good things.
Jesus said to deny yourself because true perception has to humbly cast aside self-deception and meet with God. Religion often “masks the real absence of a true meeting with God.” “Predictable devotional patterns” do not guarantee a meeting with God. Humbly seeking Jesus first (with all your heart) “and moving in response to the presence of the Lord,” does. Shake off religious coziness and open your entire life to the awesome God of Mount Sinai.
Talk to Jesus. Don’t just listen to a weekly talk about Him. Listen to what He is personally saying to you throughout each day.
Crying cheater before an election is even finished is an attempt to intimidate people and to shift the blame for feared loss to other people. It’s very immature and selfish to try to destroy the trust Americans have in their 50 (one in each state) presidential elections every four years. It also put election officials and workers in danger.
No matter how hard you try to persuade someone, people won’t perceive truth that their mind isn’t open to receive. However, many people believe that arrogantly presented faulty arguments have a lot of power to persuade.
Causal religion offers little real hope. That’s why comfortable Christians can be unkind. However, when we have immediate awareness of the presence of “Christ in you,” we are filled with “the hope of glory.” Kindness is part of the fruit of the Spirit.
Immediate awareness of the presence of Jesus comes from personally experiencing the historical reality of His resurrection. I sense His presence throughout each day. That keeps me focused on, humbled by, and immeasurably grateful for the wondrous glory that He rose from the dead and now lives in me.
Whether prenatal or postnatal, unkindness and cruelty are not good things. Be kind to all of humanity!
Where hope goes Kindness grows And it shows In the way People act. Unkindness Is a sign Of hopelessness. It sees Christ As just a story Not as the hope of glory.
Here are statements that challenges traditional thinking and comfort zones:
The choice between prenatal care and prenatal cruelty is a personal choice. The government can’t force a woman to care about her unborn child.
Every prenatal human life is valuable, however, often they are not valued. No prenatal human life deserves to be disposed of like trash in a garbage can.
When Jesus spoke the truth both the Pharisees and the Sadducees were offended. When the truth is spoken today both sides will probably be offended.
To “do everything the Lord has said,” requires that we abandon our comfort zone. Now that’s a challenge that requires great courage.
When things are done in God’s order, they are often beyond our human comfort zone. Break out of your zone of comfort by seeking to follow and obey the living Jesus instead of your own thoughts, feelings, and desires.
Discomfort is a powerful blessing if you let it motivate you to improve your life. To repent is to go vice versa from your comfort zone inertia and to begin to move beyond the thoughts, feelings, desires, fears, worries, and behaviors that are keeping you stuck in familiar routine far away from the Christ-led zone. When people say or do mean things, it often means that they’re afraid and are desperately clinging to their comfort zone.
When church settled into being a comfort zone, Christianity lost its Spirit-led zeal. Comfortable Christians fear the Christ-led zone. However, if you’ll follow the risen Jesus off the exit ramp of your comfort zone you’ll begin to experience “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Amazing spiritual awakening occurs when people are willing to step into the Christ-led zone by opening their heart to His presence and obeying His inner promptings.
Your comfort zone is the place where the weeds of passivity, complacency, and mental vacancy are grown. When a crisis zone disrupts your comfort zone don’t stay there. Greatness comes when you let crises zones lead you to live your life in the Christ-led zone. Discipleship is to abandon your comfort zone and begin to daily live in the Christ-led zone.
Comfy zones Make us clones Who live like drones Staying lost In our phones.
To experience full-blown Spiritual awakening Be a yielded living stone, Built together in God’s love With others who daily live In the thrilling Christ-led zone.
If you keep your heart As hard as stone You’ll never find The Christ-led zone.
You’re never alone In the Christ-led zone. The risen Jesus Is always with you.
Since I abandoned My comfort zone I’ve gradually grown To learn to love The Christ-led zone.
The Christ-led zone Trains me to Always enthrone The risen Jesus As the living Lord Of my daily life.
Let the pain that’s sown When your peace is gone, When you’ve been thrown Into a crisis zone, Lead and guide you to The Christ-led zone.
If you’ve always flown Like a mindless drone Within your own Comfort zone You’ve never known The joy of Being shown The Christ-led zone.
When you feel alone And outside of Your comfort zone Open your heart To the risen Jesus And step into The Christ-led zone.
When you’re thrown Into the cyclone Of a crisis zone And begin to groan What you’re being shown Can lead you into The Christ-led zone.
The Christ-led zone Has to be found Outside of Your comfort zone.
Help is here! There’s a way out of the pressure of adulting that frees people up to be a kid at heart and gives them the freedom to spontaneously delight in wonder and goodness.
The body of Christ was designed by God to help (minister to) one another and to demonstrate the wonder of His reality, love, and joy to the world. However, the traditional church model hasn’t been very good at doing that because the work of the ministry isn’t designed to be done by one person in a congregation. Every member of the body of Christ is called to manifest, demonstrate, and spread His word, His love, and His presence.
When ministry is left in the hands (and mouth) of one person the Holy Spirit’s freedom to use and speak through various members of the body is quenched. Perhaps, like Jethro told Moses, “What you are doing is not good.” King David said: “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” Maybe we need to obey the New Testament’s 50+ one another commands that tell us to encourage, exhort, and comfort one another.
When Christ-followers gather to all listen to and be directed by the risen Jesus as their Head, the awareness of His presence fills the place where they are and brightly radiates from their faces. When Christians meet as “ekklesia” (the name of the Greek town hall meeting where any citizen could speak, that Jesus used to describe what He is building) the Holy Spirit begins to prompt people to speak up, and those gathered become conscious of God’s supernatural presence and leading. Let promptings from Christ’s presence be the path maker and pacesetter of your life.
First century Christians were thrilled about Jesus. Contemporary Christians are sometimes so bored that they joke about sleeping in church. Let’s shut down the snooze alarm! It’s time for the body of Christ to wake up to the reality of the risen Jesus and to all begin to daily demonstrate His presence and power.
Let God embolden you to go: Beyond pride to humility, Beyond fear to vulnerability, Beyond deception to honesty, Beyond defensiveness to compassion, Beyond self-righteousness to kindness, Beyond religion to being led by Christ’s Spirit. Beyond name-calling to “speaking the truth in love.”
Don’t just sit and listen to religious talks. Daily splash around in Christ’s joyous living water!
“Lord, I love the house where you live, the place where your glory dwells.” –King David in Psalm 26:8.
In David’s day the house where God lived and the place where His glory dwelt was in the Holy of Holies in the Jewish Tabernacle. Later David’s son, Solomon, built the Temple with its Holy of Holies and God lived there. The temple was destroyed twice, the last time in 70 AD and has never been replaced.
The reason is because now Christ-followers are God’s temple. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19.) “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27.)
Let Christ in you be your Bible commentary. Let the Holy Spirit directly speak to your heart and teach you as you read the Holy Book.
I woke up this morning with this poem developing in my heart:
If you read the Bible As a book of rules You’ll miss its many jewels And wonderful tools That can guide you to A beautiful life. But if you read it As a love letter From God’s heart to yours It points to Christ in you, The hope that matures As inexpressible Joy and glory.
The Bible isn’t merely a book of religious history, rules, and information like a textbook or a handbook. It contains living words that help us hear the still small voice of God speaking directly to our heart. When we approach the Bible analytically, we unintentionally put our mind above our heart, but when we approach the Bible with humility, poverty of spirit, and spiritual hunger its words will ignite the fire of God within us.
It’s hard to be “a foreigner in a foreign land,” especially in a land where foreigners are sometimes treated “arrogantly.” (See Exodus 18:1-12.) About a year and a half ago two families from southern Mexico moved next door to my wife and me in the small side of the duplex in the house beside us. Nine people moved into a two-bedroom one bath unit. We share a common driveway with them.
Our first impression was fear and worry. We had thoughts that I don’t want to mention. But then my wife had the thought to bake some muffins and to take them to them as a welcome gift. We obeyed that prompting. The two adult couples and their 5 children were grateful and delightful. Their new home looked empty except for one small table. We learned that they were all sleeping on the floor.
One of them could speak a little English, the rest only Spanish. (However, nine months earlier I had felt prompted to learn Spanish, so I had been watching videos in Spanish for at least an hour each day and reading my Spanish Bible every day and I was beginning to be a bit conversant in it.)
My wife and I went to our garage and gathered some kitchen chairs, some foam mats for sleeping, some food, some towels, and anything else we thought they could use. They were thrilled and repeatedly thanked us and hugged us.
A couple of days later we shared about them in a Spirit-led group that meets at the Cul2vate ministry in Nashville and my wife told a small women’s prayer group about them. The next thing we knew, people began arriving with amazing things: clothes, toys, food, fresh produce, beds, couches, kindness, and on and on. One young woman even ordered bunk beds for them from Amazon. In a flash they had everything they physically needed, but best of all they had love and many new friends.
That family is now like family to us and their children like grandchildren. My Spanish has gotten much better and one of them can now communicate fairly well in English, so we are able to have wonderful and joyous interaction with them. They are incredibly loving people always being kind to us. They love Jesus like we do.
Some of them cry when they talk about missing their home in the beautiful state of Chiapas in Mexico near Guatemala. They want to go back. They had to flee because a gang was repeatedly threatening their lives. They are a true treasure of great courage, hope, and dreams.
I laid in bed this morning with two short poems developing in my spirit:
Trash or Treasure
People who flee their homes Searching for a better life Are not the world’s trash. They carry the treasure Of great courage, Hope and dreams.
Jesus First
Make the choice To hear Christ’s voice And to rejoice In being led By Jesus as Your living Head.
America has a problem that an election won’t fix. One group insults and demonizes those who disagree with them. The other group calls the people who disagree with them “haters.” We need to respect people’s right to disagree with us and to stop trying to intimidate and coerce each other into silence. To say you believe in freedom of speech and then insult people or call them haters for disagreeing with you is inconsistent.
My favorite form of exercise is beyond physical. It is the exercise of my heart where I continually train my heart to surrender to the presence and reality of the living Jesus as I seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Christians have access to a supernatural altar, the altar of an altered and surrendered heart. Two men walking along the road to Emmaus had more than a physical altar. They had the presence of Jesus, Himself, walking along and talking with them, but they didn’t recognize Him. Yet as He spoke their hearts burned within them. When they remembered Him (recognized His presence with them) in the breaking of the bread, He suddenly vanished from their physical view.
Once those two men knew that Jesus was with them, they no longer needed to depend on their physical senses to be aware of Him. His invisible presence was so strong to them that they began to praise God and boldly and openly profess His name. They rushed back to Jerusalem to celebrate Christ’s presence and reality with the other disciples.
The book of Hebrews says that “We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.” We who have surrendered our life and our will to follow and obey the risen Jesus have so much more than a physical altar. We have the altar of the heart, the inner altar of a heart that is ever being altered (sanctified) by the ongoing presence of Jesus — “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
(I’m not aware of any Scripture that indicates that Jesus or the early Christ-followers worshipped at a physical altar. I’ve searched numerous Bible resources and can’t find anyplace that they did that.)
Because Jesus now lives within each one of His followers, Hebrews goes on to say: “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess His name.” I love that word “continually.” Christ doesn’t come and go. His presence isn’t tied to physical objects, to physical places, or to our feelings. He comes to stay with us continually and He calls each one of us to abide in Him continually. “And lo, I am with you always.” Lord Jesus, help me stay continually aware of Your presence in and through my life!
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 