Give ‘em Faith and Time (Poem)

Here's a companion rhyme to the post,

Dancing on the Feeling Ceiling

Could there be somewhere between Heaven ‘n Earth,

Answers to prayers to which you never gave birth?

Prayers you prayed earnestly in times of need,

‘D-o-A’ due to instructions you failed to heed?

Instructions in Mark 11: 23–26 that Jesus laid out;

You know: ‘Have faith, forgive, speak and don’t doubt.’

Then there’s a really critical one to add to this list--

‘Believe you receive when you pray’; these are the gist.

Just between you and me, here’s one thing I’ll admit:

It’s usually the latter two that put me in a fix!

Perhaps we all may need help to find faith unwavering,

‘Believe we receive when we pray’ – Umm, how baffling!

So that our joy may be full, Jesus said, ‘Ask, then receive,

For only in My presence to full joy will you cleave.’

So be sure to fill-up regularly with this joy unspeakable,

Ensuring your faith to receive doesn’t become incapable.

If the black domino in this picture is God’s answer when you pray,

What role in this scenario could white, falling dominoes play?

These are precursors to your answer from God, you to bless.

Pre-conditions His angels must arrange, the answer to manifest.

Pray, then imagine what the answer’s precursors could be.

Could they be something God is trying to get you to see?

Or something He may speak to move others ‘off the dime’?

Whatever they may be, chill out, stay in faith and joy...

...give 'em all time. 

As God’s angels go to work, getting each precursor in line,

Devils track their progress, then seek your thoughts to realign.  

Then, as angels put on each precursor God’s ‘glory stamp’,

More and more 'noise' there will be in your enemy's camp! 

The voices of fear, doubt and frustration seem not to quell.   

You’ve heard them many times before and know them well.

Recognize them quickly; let them trigger you to ‘Stay…’

Stay in joy and rejoicing, to help you stay in faith!

This requires learning to stay in the presence of The Lord,

Which is done by keeping head and heart on His Sword.

In His presence, one-by-one, these voices will be sentenced!!!

For only there, will all these voices eventually...be silenced!

Pic credits: 
TrueJoy.co.uk
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/270356783856479270/

Dancing on the Feeling Ceiling

No mistake in the title, as you may presume.
 
Some time ago, Lionel Richie co-wrote and performed a hit song, "Dancing on the Ceiling", the chorus of which is a memorable couplet,

Oh what a feeling,
when we're dancing on the ceiling. 

Flipping this couplet upside-down by mistake, I realized every emotion (whether positive, negative or neutral) probably has an entry threshold level and also a ceiling -- a "feeling ceiling". For positive emotions, there's nothing quite like reaching, that is 'dancing on', its ceiling. I get this feeling when receiving something that was longed for. The sheer happiness and relief of its arrival triggers waves of good feelings. You've been there.
 
While it takes faith to please God, the idea of ‘dancing on the feeling ceiling’ (of positive emotions) could play an important role in our faith! Sounds strange, like nothing you have ever heard being connected to faith talk?  If disciplined and controlled in a mature heart and a renewed mind, these emotions could very well serve as an excellent faith catalyst and gauge in your life. "Say what?", you ask? "How could this have anything to do with faith at all, and how could they be simultaneously a gauge and catalyst?!" Stay tuned…
 
In Mark 11:24, Jesus lays out the simple, 5-step process for receiving God's answers to our prayers:

1. Have well-developed faith in/of God. (Start with, but go well beyond undeveloped seed faith -- according to His will.)
2. Forgive whomever for whatever, wherever, whenever necessary. (Practicing 'forgiveness in advance' may be the best way to do this -- according to His will.)
3. With well-developed faith, speak to mountain-size problems. (If we do not waver in faith while waiting, God's angels will get the job done -- according to His will.)
4. Don't doubt in our heart. (News flash: The heart and mind are well connected. Imaginations are the thoughts seeds of/in our heart, so guard them well.) 
5. Believe we receive (present tense) from God when we pray [according to His will], and we shall receive (future tense) ... afterward. (Since we live in a time warp, and everything, except miracles, works on the 'seed, time and harvest' principle, we need to have well-developed patience for God's angels to do their work, meticulously orchestrating in you and others all the precursors to His answers to prayers. See: Working With Angels (Series). 

Admittedly, the last two items on this list are my most challenging. How about you? Perhaps we all could use some help in the departments of remaining unwaveringly in faith, and believing we receive when we pray, not when the answer shows up! Both holy and evil angels must certainly have a well-developed ability to gauge faith (the product of Love) and doubt (the product of fear). Hey, what if we had such a gauge, and could help level the playing field, so to speak??
 
Would you start out driving across a desert range with insufficient fuel to get to the next gas station? Most certainly not. Similarly, we need enough of the right 'fuel' to make it across the seemingly dry, desert range of 'waiting for physical answers to prayers to arrive.' God knows this well, and has provided us with access to this fuel in abundance, as well as countless reminders in His Book for us to "fill up!"
 
This essential fuel is Joy, the emotion of keen pleasure or delight. How crucial is this fuel in our walk? Consider this:

• Joy ranks a whopping "Number 2" (right next to Love Himself!) in the list of nine varieties of The Fruit of The Spirit. (Galatians 5:22)
• During His most intimate and passionate time with His faithful disciples (His pre-departure time after Judas had been dismissed), Jesus reportedly mentioned the word, Joy, 7 times between John 13:31 and John 17:26. (Biblically, the number, 7, represents perfection and completion.)
• During this time, He thrice spoke of Joy being "full or ful-filled", underscoring the critical need for us to fill-up, and stay full of this essential fuel. (John 15:11,16:24, 17:13)
• The force or energy produced by the fuel of Joy is the verb, rejoice. This single word is cited 238 times in the Bible (179 and 59 times, respectively, in the Old and New Testaments, NKJ Version). Must be a pretty relevant word, I’d say!

Since Joy is a fruit of The Spirit, we cannot self-produce it. We can, and must, however, make ourselves available for Him to produce it in and through us. How? The Spirit produces Jesus’ joy inside us (John 15:11, 16:24), as the by-product of our continually abiding in His presence. (Psalm 16:11. See: As Long as I Abide (poem)) Fear and its by-product, doubt, cannot abide in His presence ,as His perfect love casts them out. Ergo, when we are out of His presence, we are ‘outside’ where fear and doubt reside. Read that again~ To win, we need to ‘practice His presence’ from moment-to-moment!
 
Consider this: The word, ‘abide’, and its derivatives appear 39 times in the Bible (NKJV), 29 of which are in the New Testament, and 27 times in (3 of 5)  New Testament books written by the ‘beloved disciple’, John. Since he was highly privileged to be the only disciple to write one of the four Gospels, and also to write the concluding book of The Bible (Revelation), John’s credentials must be impeccable, and his sage advice worth embracing with a vise-like grip!

So it’s a fairly clear choice. Like a magnet or compass, Joy is our faith gauge and catalyst. The more and closer we abide in/to Jesus, the greater and fuller our Joy. It enables us to ‘dance on the feeling ceiling’ when we pray according to His will, assured that He hears and answers, right then and there, and has dispatched His angels to begin patiently orchestrating and manifesting His perfect and loving answer, in accordance with His will. Our patience must match or try to keep up…with His and theirs! 
 
Rest assured, postponing being joyful or rejoicing until you see the answer to your prayer, pretty much guarantees you will be one unfulfilled, wavering soul, as far as faith is concerned. You will be haunted by the echoes of James, brother of Jesus:

…ask God… in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts
is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
For that person must not suppose that he will receive
anything from The Lord; he is a double-minded man,
unstable in all his ways.
(James 1:-7)

Find creative ways to stay joyful in The Lord~

Lights, Cameras, Action

Not that long ago, mankind thought the earth was the center of the universe.  How ridiculous that may seem to us today, given our accumulated knowledge and wisdom of "the way it is" compared to what we used to think was "the way it was".  Right?  We may be tempted to look with a pitiful eye on those who came before us as we consider their thoughts about "the way it was". 

But hold on a minute!  Our relatively ignorant predecessors may yet have some lessons to teach us in this matter. 

In His scheme of things, God has established two, clear focal points, main stages if you will, onto which He has spread out props, carefully arranged the spectacular lighting, readied His always-on cameras, and invited His guests (people like you and me) -- all to orchestrate and record the unfolding ‘music of life’ before Him.  These stages are His Heaven and His earth.  Heaven is His center stage, spiritually, and earth is indeed His center stage, physically -- the “center of the physical universe”, focally.

Consider this: The multi-faceted reason for the rest of the entire universe – the galaxies, solar systems, planets, moons, stars, asteroids, comets, black holes, etc., is:

…to divide the day from the night;

be for signs, seasons, days and years

(Genesis 1:14)

The sole object to which this multi-faceted reason points is earth, not to Heaven or some other central point of the physical universe.

Still feeling much smarter

than our predecessors, hmmm?

Mis-passed the Baton, Generationally?

It is curious how, in The Bible, the children of Israel are collectively referred to as “they, you, and we”, but in fact, are multiple generations of successors over eons of time. Several hundreds of years after the fact, God still addresses them: ‘I brought YOU out of Egypt.’ The ‘i-Generation’ in which you and I live might well respond, 

Who, me?  'I' scarcely know where Egypt is and 'I' have never been there for 'Me' to be ‘brought out’!

When reading of their stories, we naturally wonder why "they" didn't get it and learn the lessons.  Though God seemingly expected each generation to teach its successive generation to learn His commands and ways, each generation necessarily had to experience God (mostly His judgments) for itself before it would learn well; and many still refused to learn.

Like me, do you see yourself in the mirror of their stories?  We are just like them.  Having a righteous set of parents will not guarantee righteous offspring, because of the inherent "go my own way" rebellious streak so well ingrained in human nature. 

For those of us inclined to believe in evolution, I ask, why has this rudimentary aspect of human nature been so overwhelmingly consistent and has not evolved away, or at least diminished?!

For those of us inclined to believe the devil’s lie that there is no hope regarding the mistakes we made in passing to our successor generation the baton of our faith in Christ, there is GOOD NEWS on at least two fronts:

     ·   The ink on Proverbs 22:6 dried eons ago, and this promise from God has never changed, nor will it.  “Train up a child in The Way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  As noted in other posts, there is no promise respecting those rebellious middle years!  I had mine, and you likely had yours, too, so chill out and trust God.

     ·   Prayers have no expiration date!  Hallelujah!  They may well be eternal. (Revelation 8:3-4). If you’re still breathing, you should be still praying.  God is faithful, and He still responds to faith... activated.  

i-Unqualified

The more I learn about the qualities of God through Jesus and through His Spirit’s work in the lives of many others, the more I see how totally UN-qualified I am to become even a fraction of what He instructs and expects me to be!  This crushes my ole buddy, Ego, but in doing so, it produces perfume and glory to God.  As I see and understand myself as unqualified to ‘sit on the throne of my life’, Grace qualifies me to step down and bow down to Christ who is divinely qualified to occupy that seat! 

The Bible is the Book of Self-dethroning, and Christ-enthroning.  Recognizing and accepting the extent of my un-qualification, I can now read this book (which is really 66 books with one Author) with a diminished sense of pressure on me to “do and be” all it prompts me to be.  Rather, I read it as God’s extended love letter and invitation to allow Him to 'be all that He already IS'...in and through me.  The pressure is much more on HIM and His Grace than on me to perform in my puny ability.  What a relief! What Grace! 

Embrace His Grace to change your case~

Embrace His invitation to change your situation!    

Es-Tu Aussi Charlie?

Are you also 'CHARLIE?'

Perhaps like never before, the democratic world is being pushed in a corner to define more precisely the limits of our so-called democratic freedoms. The latest international assaults have been on the freedom of speech, climaxing in the slaughter of many in Paris who defended to their deaths their right to free speech.  Other targets have included the freedom of same-sex marriage, freedom to own guns, including assault rifles, and even freedom of our current U.S. President to use executive authority to help catalyze solutions and eventual laws to intractable/escalating social problems for which congress has demonstrated an inability to address.

“Freedoms, unlimited, unrestricted and unrestrained” -- from where did this notion come?  Is it one person's ‘freedom’ to trample the expectations and rights of others to be respected in a civil manner?  Is it ‘freedom’ itself that threatens to dismantle the cordial boundaries and supposedly sure foundations of our so-called "civil society?"  To where has the ‘civil’ in our civil society fled?

From Day 1, mankind has relentlessly pursued ‘freedom from’, starting with God and everything God-related.  Over the ions of time, we have dressed up this pursuit to be ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom of’, but don’t be fooled –

The root of our pursuit

And the fruit of this root

Shamefully remain the same

Alas, true freedom itself is not free, but disciplined.  Anything less is not freedom, but a devilish invitation and temptation to eventual anarchy.  And that is exactly what satan and his crew want, and exactly what sinfully-fallen mankind will get...anarchy.  This is the promise outlined in detail in The Book of Revelation.  The good news is that the upcoming upheaval in all world systems will both seed and usher in the birth of a new millennium of Christ’s iron-hand rule of planet earth and it’s persistently stubborn inhabitants, followed by an eternal age of peace.

Until then, the best advice I have found remains valid, even after a couple of thousand years:

If it is possible, as much as depends on you,

live peaceably with all men.

(Romans 12:18)

In light of this admonition, rather than being 'Char-lie', by faith and God’s Grace:

• Je suis Char-ity, which is Love (1 Corinthians 13)
• Je suis Char-acter, which is integrity demonstrated
• Je suis Char-med no more by, and un-chained from the shackles of unlimited, unrestricted and unrestrained freedoms

I invite you to decide who and what you are in this regard.  If you agree with me, with Godly wisdom and strength, we can fight to be free from being:

…‘Char-red’ in spirit on the hot coals of hate and intolerance
…‘Char-acterless’, devoid of the character traits of Father God
…‘Char-acterized’ as so freedom-loving that we care-less of others

Choose well...

            and carefully

The Weightier Choice

A friend’s avid reading habit has reportedly netted nearly 1,000 books – read!  wOw, what an incredible accomplishment, possibly one for the record books!  “Congratulations” was the only word that fell through my lips as words of his awesome accomplishment reverberated in my ears.

While reflecting on this news, I was struck by a persistent realization: 

The Bible is the world's only ‘living book’ -- 
the one in and through which God actually lives, breathes, and reaches out to mankind.

Sure, its stories are incredibly old, and the poetry a bit quirky by today's standards, nevertheless, they live and speak to our deepest part -- our spirit.  In fact, it is the primary, if not only healthy menu for feeding our spirit.

We tend to judge the impact of diseases by their death tolls and, in some cases, their socio-economic impacts.  Could the biggest, most impactful dis-ease known to man possibly be, not the black death (plague), small pox or such killer of the masses, but something as basic and simple as … a malnourished spirit? 

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” according to the iconic slogan of the United Negro College Fund.  This is true.  But a planet of well over 7 billion relatively malnourished spirits – who can imagine the impact of such?! 

Newsflash:  You don’t have to imagine; just open your eyes!

We were reportedly created body, soul and spirit – note the order.  The spirit is the essence of who we ‘are’, yet the world pushes us to have wildly obese souls (minds, wills, emotions, intellects and imaginations) and bodies, typically sidelining or ignoring our spirits for the most part.

God reportedly fashioned man’s body first, and only afterward breathed into him the ‘breath of life’.  Thus, God spirited man. (Yes, ‘to spirit’ is a verb.)  But, since it came from God, man’s spirit clearly pre-existed his body!  Ergo, when will we ever get the order right, namely we are first spirit, then soul, then body!  While his spirit may have been the last or final insertion into Adam’s lifeless body, it is that part of him that will last. 
It’s e-ter-nal…

…and it needs to be fed, properly.

Our Story

We have all heard the catchy phrase, "…the rest of the story", and many have shared “My Story” from their 2013 Facebook picture collection.    

Well, here’s the gist of OUR collective story:

~The guest of the story - YOU, God’s guest in the 'life' experience!
~The nest of the story - Our beautiful planet, Earth!
~The pest of the story - satan & co. pestering us with lies!
~The wrest of the story - Wrestling against Truth, God’s Word!
~The jest of the story - He who believes God and Jesus are dead!
~The test of the story - Whether you will likewise believe!
~The vest of the story - An opportunity to wear your good works! *
~The best of the story - Jesus' death sacrifice for you!

...All conspiring to get you to the "Yes" of the story,

YES to God's incredible, FREE offer of salvation through Christ.

----------

* See: Revelation 19:8

Gotta Believe Me (Poem)

There’s an old, familiar childhood song with a clear message:

Jesus loves me, this I know,

For The Bible tells me so.

Little ones to Him belong,

They are weak, but He is strong.

Though we are compelled to believe this true message, many don’t. To them say...

 

You've gotta believe me, hear what I say.

He really loves you, don't turn Him away.
 Please believe me, every word is true,

He loves you, He loves you, He loves you.

Yes, He so loves you.

Your friends may say, "To believe is uncool!"

Please believe me, don't join their ridicule. 
 You've gotta believe me, they don't have a clue,

They don't love you, don’t really love you, don’t love you.

No,they don’t really love you. 

You've gotta believe me, He's been waiting so long.

Please believe me, choose now, don't prolong. 
 Yes believe me, it's time to breakthrough,

‘Cause He loves you, He loves you, He loves you.

Yes, He really you. 

When you believe me, great Love you'll embrace.

You've gotta believe me, all you sin He'll erase.
  You'll be so glad your doubts you overthrew,

And learned He really does love you, 

Yes, He really LoVeS YOU!

Seeing the Unseen

Before the discovery and invention of modern investigative techniques, mankind had no idea of the physical causes of diseases. With insight, we now can peer into, understand and take ready precautions against viruses, bacteria, pathogens, etc., things that remain invisible to the so-called naked eye. Had we never discovered or invented means and protocols to "see" them, we would still be very much "in the dark".

While we have come a long way, in many respects, we remain in the dark ages of forces that "live and move on the earth". Battered and beaten by the consequences of unseen things, mankind has forged ahead in the fight to "see", understand and conquer the unseen and unknown. Unknowingly, this is in direct fulfillment of God's commission to the first man in Genesis 1:28 -- Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Bacteria, viruses and pathogens fit into the category of "living things in the earth".

On another plane, too many of us still remain largely ignorant and un-accepting of the unseen spiritual forces that 'move on the earth', and are mysteriously at the core of everything physical, much like a buried root of some kind is responsible for every fruit and vegetable we consume. With all our progress, we remain about as ignorant and un-insightful of these greatest "movers and shakers" on planet earth as our ancestors in Old Testament days! Consider the insight from this very simple data set, the number of times the following words appear in the Old vs. the New Testaments (OT, NT) of The Bible (NKJV):

Word          OT               NT

devil             0                 34

hades           0                 11

lucifer           1                   0

demon(s)     4                 78

satan          14                 40

hell              35                16

angel         105              175

heaven      405              287

Does this suggest to you that people in those days were pretty much clueless, just as many are today?

Beyond any other insightful discovery or invention of mankind, only The Bible may offer such a combination of a magnifying glass, microscope, binoculars, and telescope into this unseen, and generally un-denied world of forces that "live and move on the earth". Yet we writhe and wrestle with the consequences of their movements, much like a ship buffeted by unseen winds across the ocean!  

Because He is unseen, The Holy Spirit manifested as "a mighty roaring wind' when He re-filled earth's atmosphere on The Day of Pentecost.  His "filling presence" had been withdrawn from the earth when Adam and Eve sold themselves and the earth into satanic slavery. Jesus' death and resurrection was the price God paid to redeem (buy-back) His creation, and especially His beloved mankind, from satan's dominion and control. In this buy-back, God, in an extremely gracious move, decided to reinstate and retain man's "choice" of whether to follow and obey God, or not -- for man to 'choose his god', so to speak.  My, my, what a gamble! After Adam and Eve's flub-up, would you have taken this great risk?!

Like microscopic organisms, choice is often unseen, but it's consequences are lived and experienced.  This is the pinnacle of our problems on the earth -- people like you and me making the wrong choice, again, just like Adam and Eve, in favor of the wrong 'influencers'. The influencers are good and evil spirits, and the on-going battle they wage between each other, through us. What if we could "see" and understand these as well as mankind now sees and understands microscopic organisms?  How do you imagine such insight might impact the quality of life on earth?

Oh that we would more clearly
perceive and 'see' the unseen~