Author: watchstandpray

99 – Embedded Human Powers

Deep in each of us, in our very nature, beneath our DNA, beyond our choices, in the common traits of each human soul, God placed an unrivaled flow of power. This flow is like an aquifer; it must be first tapped and then capped. It’s power is infinite, charged by the Power of the Living Creator God Himself.

This power is available to everyone, but God limits our access to it so we can prepare, training our skills and our character first. But, this power cannot be accessed by some gimmick or trickery. There are no shortcuts. The well leading to deeper and deeper levels of power is only drilled through the essence of the teaching from God’s Word.

This does not mean that quoting random Bible verses will help you tap into your embedded power. God’s Word has its own core, “essential” ideas that can only be absorbed, like a sponge, through regular exposure and drenching. These ideas of God’s Word are not any strange mystery that a pontiff must divine and unlock; it simply takes time and familiarity.

God programmed us with this power locked away inside of ourselves, then gave us the instructions on how to access it. Those instructions are encoded in events of history, letters, poetry, even ideas we get today while pondering what Moses’s Sacrificial Law meant for Israel thousands of years ago. While we ponder the contents of God’s Word, a well drills in our hearts, breaking through one impenetrable layer after another, reaching deeper and deeper treasures and sources of strength and power.

This power can give us insight, wisdom in the moment, innovative imagination that prospers, strength for unimaginable prayer and splendid miracles, even supernatural powers to heal and more. We don’t know what all abilities we have except that comic book superheroes don’t do justice to the powers we have buried inside each of us. The important part to learn is temperance and self control first.

God will unlock more and more abilities in your life as you improve your character. He won’t give a lightning rod to a child tyrant. Let God’s Written Guidance embed itself into your heart you will grow unimagined powers.

98 – Keep Problems to Yourself

There is a time to ask for help and share your troubles with friends. But, those times should be carefully selected with forethought and discretion. By default, it is best to keep your problems to yourself.

Publicizing your weaknesses, your lacking, your hurt, your faults with the world neither makes you a role model nor makes the world a better place. Show your humanity and mortality, show your natural frailty and normal mistakes—those things prove that you don’t place yourself above others. But, specific flaws and injuries should never be advertised.

Some people will tell how much they have been hurt in order to gain notoriety, sympathy, or even to guilt others into agreeing with them. Don’t use your injuries to blackmail others; it unnecessarily divulges information, which can always be used against you, also it will likely backfire.

It is not deceptive to advertise and promote your positive achievements. People don’t rise up to do the right thing from stories of foolishness. We are motivated by stories of people who set out to do something good and finished. Encourage people by your own life that good things can also be achieved.

Failure is in abundance, but goals reached are a commodity. Say something about yourself newsworthy, not tabloid-worthy. Sharing the gossip content about your own life is sets everyone off course. Focus on the good. Dwell on your strengths in your private thought life. Don’t let your mind wander to things you wish you could have done, but didn’t. Instead, dwell on the good things you are glad you did and your determination to do more. It begins in your thought life.

People who walk into the room and start spouting their inferiority, failure, faults, flaws, and can’t say anything good about themselves have just revealed much about their private thought lives, perhaps even their view of themselves. Someone who thinks he can’t can’t. So, the lesson here is not so much about how to put on a fake, happy face, but what to build up in your hourly mind time. What you say and what you dwell on that makes you say it would serve you best if it is good news.

97 – Know Your Limits

Everyone has limits and powers. Going up against someone who’s obviously stronger is just plain bratty. When someone does that, say so.

Work within your strengths. Know the line not to cross. Follow God’s leading because He knows your limits and strengths better than you do. Credit and blame Him for everything. Your authority and influence never came from you anyway, but all of it came from Him. So, talk and act like it.

When you confront someone, say that you’re not the one making the ultimate decisions, but that God is and we all must obey Him; there are no “favorites” where the need to obey God is concerned. By acknowledging that we are all subject to God, you can focus your efforts on the areas of strength God gave you.

By saying that you don’t make a decision, you remove the ability for others to contend with you. Just the same, when someone else has no power, bargaining chip, vested interest, say, or even influence in a matter—but that person seems to have forgotten and tries to contend with you—give a friendly reminder.

It is wise and morally good to know one’s own powers. Walking into a wolves’ den with neither protection nor plan, then being eaten alive, is foolish and does moral injustice to the people you could have helped by staying alive. In this, getting into a fight that you truly can’t win borderlines on being immoral if not at least setting a bad example by squandering time.

Now, a fight you can’t win is very different from a fight that you can win while someone taunts you with a lie claiming you can’t. In that case, it’s the taunting liar who is the fool for not knowing his own limits.

In light of God’s sovereignty, “might indicates who is right” because God upholds laws that give strength to people who work diligently and wisely. Strength and administrative “authority” are no indication of moral standing with God, but they are an indication of which battles God wants us to fight. Fight the battles you are prepared for; keep preparing so you can win more battles to give more justice.

96 – God the Time Transcendent

God transcends time. The theological terms for this are “infinite” and “eternal”, that God existed in Eternity Past and will always exist in Eternity Future.

When God tells us about the future, He neither guesses nor grants full disclosure. God’s foretold prophecies never spell out how all events will occur; they prepare us for the time when they will occur—to remind us that God knew it all along from the Beginning.

Time is a thing God looks at like a piece of paper. How specifically the time continuum works is not so important a question as the fact that God even holds Time in His hands.

In some ways, history unfolds so as to explain God’s methods as well as our own choices. Our childhood shows our youth, innocence, and honestly. Our adult years show our maturity, skill, and strength. Our old age shows our wisdom, insight, and experience. From God’s perspective in Eternity, we exist as all the same to Him just as He has all of the same in Himself. Those stages of life express parts of God’s character.

God’s eternal nature is connected to His infinite nature; they are arguably one in the same. When Jesus suffered on the Cross, because he was the Word of God in the flesh, all of God suffered. Because God is eternal, His suffering had eternal qualities, both past and future. Because God is infinite, His suffering was infinite in size and severity. So, because God exists beyond all Time and Space, those few hours on the Cross were more than an Eternity where God is concerned. God’s eternal nature is one more reason why Jesus’s work at the Cross is sufficient to cover all sin for all people for always and always.

The fact of God’s presence throughout all time explains His perspective, why He says many things He says, why He knows many things He knows, and why He does many things He does. But, this also brings us some comfort. Whatever situation we find ourselves in, it didn’t surprise God.  Through joy and sorrow, consider every moment of life through the eyes of the God who already saw everything before the Beginning.

95 – Growth vs Ascension

Don’t seek to “ascend”, but grow—not through favors or hazing, but “be ye transformed”.

We are God’s workmanship. We ourselves will be the greatest architecture in Heaven, not made in glory as the angels, but crafted, mastered, and worked into who we will have become in that day.

It’s not about “ascending” into a new location, but about growing to become. The Book of Enoch says that Remiel is over “those who rise”, and when they rise, they become stars and never fall from their places. This kind of “rising” is about much more than simply climbing a ladder or scaling a mountain; it’s about transformation from the inside out.

In the Biblical perspective, transformation from the inside comes from persistence against pressures from the outside. God must breathe on it, of course, or there won’t be any transformation at all. But, God uses difficulties, challenges, even tests that we pass or fail—either way—to mold and transform us. It works if we keep reading the Bible to download and install God’s thinking into our hearts and praying to keep our inner lives in good condition.

When Israel cried out to God in Judges about, His answer was to promise the birth of Samson. Samson would need to be born and grow up before he could help save Israel from the Philistine oppression and pagan [human] sacrifices during that occupancy. When God answers a prayer, His answer is to plant a seed that needs time to grow.

It’s wiser to pray for strength and growth before you need it, not waiting until you are hungry to plant a garden.

Likewise, growth into glory takes time. To grow into all God wants us to be, simple, inner, transformational growth must be our most frequent prayer request. Those Christians who are wise and patient and kind have prayed for wisdom, patience, and kindness in most of their prayer time. They didn’t start this morning, but they have prayed for those things for decades.

Mature status is not about being picked up or climbing up onto the top of a shelf to be displayed. It’s about being mature—growing into being—transforming through metamorphosis into glory.

Judges 13:1-7, 1 Kings 3:9-10Luke 22:40-46, 2 Corinthians 3:18, 5:17, Colossians 1:9-10, 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, 2 Thessalonians 3:16

94 – Be Calm in Confrontation

One secret about life is that people rarely judge others for doing what is wrong, but mainly for not using a smooth tone of voice. This is unjust and unfair and puts bad leaders in power.

People who choose smooth talkers enslave themselves. They did the same with smooth-talking, compassionate, “understanding”, sympathetic Hitler—watch his speeches. Wicked men infiltrate organizations by being calm at all times.

Never judge others based on tone, but try to hone your own at least to some degree. If you can avoid raising your voice when not necessary, you will be attacked by predators less often and wicked men will like you, meaning that they won’t take up as much of your time arguing.

Some spunk, fire in the belly, and real communication is a good thing. But, don’t think that pretending to be “cross” or “angry” equates to dignity. It doesn’t. Being angry or carrying a face ready to scold is an unclassy and uneducated way of pretending to be “serious” or “important” or “in charge”. It is as a child’s view of the adult world; it looks that way, but that’s not how things actually are. The attitude “I’m being angry and that means I’m serious and that means I’m doing a good, responsible job of leading” is one of the most detrimental things an adult can do to a growing child.

Just be calm when you want to be taken seriously. The masses don’t lynch people for being calm and well-mannered, but for becoming unlaced, losing their cool, getting frazzled, having their feathers ruffled. Sometimes you can’t help it, Jesus doesn’t judge us for calmness, he won’t rescind stewardship for being calm at all times, but he doesn’t assign stewardship for it either.

If you can be cool and calm, that is a good thing. If you can’t, at least wish that you were. If someone else loses their cool, never demean or correct them; that is equally undignified. Help others to keep their cool as well. One sign of a well-mannered person is his ability to spread his calm demeanor to others. So, technically being calm isn’t enough, it must be rooted in strong, contagious love.

93 – Know Your Expertise

Know when to refer. Know when you have a mere opinion with no related experience. Know the same about others and never enter meaningful disagreement unless everyone in the conversation understands what they’re discussing. If you know your expertise and refrain from opinion beyond your expertise, your expertise will increase. If you maintain opinions in your realm of ignorance, your ignorance will increase.

Know what you’re good at and know that you know what you’re good at and act like you know what you’re good at. It’s good to be confident about what your proven expertise. Arrogant pride is not properly placed confidence in expertise, but confidence misplaced in incompetence; the pridefully arrogant don’t know the difference.

Many people like to argue about politics because they understand just enough to argue, but they don’t understand as much as people who work with politics everyday.

For years, I have collected news stacks, written about news from the week before, and thereby explained what was likely to happen in the future. I have rarely been wrong, if ever. This is my expertise and I’m confident in it.

I don’t use politics to inject my “mission to save the world”. For me, political opinion is a skilled craft. Because it is my work, whatever I write about politics is more likely to be 1. accurate and 2. effective. I am calm in my opinions because my track record proves that I am competent. I don’t write about medicine. I know my expertise, as should everyone be confident in their areas of expertise. My confidence empowers me to be respectful and well-mannered.

Everyone has thoughts of grandeur to save mankind, projecting their opinions from any soapbox they can. But, if you don’t normally work with an expertise then don’t pretend. Make a humble blog post if you must, but know where your expertise lies and focus your opinions there. And, feel free to learn new expertise.

Limit your opinions to your regular skill set, to the place you work, to the seat you sit in right now. We don’t need more grandstanding; we need more people applying their moral and ethical—and very good—ideologies into their normal work.