Author: watchstandpray

176 – Jesus the Compassionate Healer

Jesus never game money to the poor. Of course, he recommended it, but not as a solution to poverty.

A rich man wanted to have a great place in the Kingdom and Jesus said, “Liquidate everything, give it all to the poor, and follow me as my disciple.” Giving it all to the poor would have been the most honest way to dispose of his assets so he would be free to follow Jesus.

When Judas wanted to sell perfume poured out on Jesus’s feet and give the money to the poor, it was actually so he could embezzle some of the money for himself. Jesus’s rebuttal to Judas’ “greedy charity” was that poverty would never be eliminated.

Jesus that whatever we do to the poor we also do to him, which will come back to us for reward or punishment at the Great Judgment. In this, Jesus describes clothing, food, and water, not dolling out great sums of money to be spent on anything.

In Moses’s Law, God tells Israel’s farmers to leave the corners of their fields unharvested and to not comb over the fields a second time—but to leave this extra for the widow, the fatherless children, and the foreigner. This was God’s plan for social justice, to be a little sloppy, to be charitable with the poor, to return a cloak left for deposit by the end of the day, to pay the poor and foreigners by the end of every day, and to never twist laws to make them complex and unfair for the poor or the foreigners. If Israel would obey this, there would be no poor among them.

Jesus’s compassion campaign is ingenious! It provides a social structure where everyone works and no one slips through the cracks. His plan was strategized in his wisdom as a merchant, administrator, judge, and king.

When Jesus healed people it was from compassion. After Jesus’s left, his disciples didn’t give money to the poor—they gave them much more: healing.

Even when religious leaders condemned healing on the Sabbath, Jesus didn’t care. Miracles demonstrate some power, but Jesus healed people because healing was part of his great campaign of compassion.

Exodus 22:25-27, Deuteronomy 10:18-19; 15:1-6; 24:14-22, Matthew 10:42; 25:31-46, Mark 9:41, John 12:1-6, Acts 3:1-10

175 – Hypocritical Hypocrisy

The hypocrite is the one who accuses someone of being a hypocrite for trying after a fall. In the Bible-centered moral worldview, everyone is a sinner, everyone has fallen, and everyone needs redemption. The message therein is one of hope: Knockdown is not knockout—game over, down for the count—just because someone messes up. It’s not true about you nor anyone else.

Jesus’s message is that we each have a future, no matter how much we mess up. The one who see a future, seeks forgiveness, seeks to forgive, gets up keeps going, and doesn’t lay down to die just because of the past—that person grasps the point of the Bible.

How then can Bible-believers claim that anyone is a hypocrite for pressing forward and encouraging others with hope?

Too often, the unspoken rule of “Churchianity” is presumed, permanent, prerequisite perfection. But, we don’t reach perfection in this life. Cannibalization of proven mistake-makers proves whether a Sunday morning religion prays to a false god, not the God of the Bible.

Silas Sheffer said, “If I was going to have a view as controversial as ‘Earthly Perfection’ I would have kept it to myself.”

I myself don’t claim to be any kind of moral authority. I know that I’m not perfect, but I want to be. So, we have a litmus test that divides the morally upright from the posers: Is a moral value something one keeps perfectly or something one strives for, knowing that one can never measure up? Bible-based morals don’t tell us to pretend to have arrived, but to continue on until we have. Nothing will get in the way of your journey in Jesus as much as judging others—either for their mistakes or judging others for judging others.

The only true hypocrite is the one who truly thinks he is not. The accusation of “hypocrisy” is an old tactic of the “Churchianity” leader who protects his own position by maintaining a group think mob mentality, publicly lynching anyone who errs. It is also a tactic of non-Christians in public forums who loudly reject Jesus, accusing Christians merely because Christians are their enemies. These are the biggest hypocrites of all.

Titus 3:3-10

174 – Our Need to Lead Ourselves

Everyone needs to lead, mainly lead ourselves.

You don’t need people telling you how to be you and you certainly don’t need people telling you how to be them. When people give you flack for doing things the way you do them in your life, the answer is to get them out of your life decisions and somehow help them to focus on leading their own lives.

No one knows how to be you better than you, God notwithstanding. While achieving the never-before-achieved, every achiever has friends who moonlight as naysayers saying, “You can’t do that,” and, “it’s not done that way.” Actually, they mean, “It’s not failed that way.” Achieving what’s never been done requires doing what’s never been done and doing those never-before-done things in a way that’s never been done that way.

People who’ve never done it haven’t figured that part out yet. So far, they have only “done”, not “done never-before-done”. They began with questions, learned to do things they way other people had already been doing things for a long time, sprinkled a couple pinches of “new ideas” atop the frosting, and decided how every master chef should invent a new cake recipe. The world does, indeed, have many people who need to learn what’s already been learned—including you to some extent.

But, doing what’s already been done didn’t bring us where we are. At some point, we need those one-in-a-million weird-o types, the trailblazers, the pioneers, the people who boldly go… anywhere they feel like. Trailblazers always take flack from friends who think that leveling new paths indicates a mental illness—and that they are the ones to treat it.

Think of yourself as a time traveler. Going back in time—to the situation where you are now—to the situation where people have never seen what you have already seen in your mind’s eye. Don’t try to argue with history and certainly don’t start any time paradoxes. Just shut yer trap, work, talk only with people who contribute to the controversial effort, and tell your other “volunteer therapist” friends trying to fix you, “I’d rather have you show me what never-before-imagined work only you could get done.”

173 – Professional Lazyboys

Lounging around is healthy and vital, but it’s no map to successfully helping, teaching, and leading other people. The professional lazyboy is sneakier than the professional naysayer and, in his own lazy way, he can be much more dangerous. Call him out—of his comfortable seat, that is.

He lounges in his office. Laziness is his answer to everything. “That’s easy, no problem,” he answers as if on cue. Some things are, in fact, very easy, but he confuses easiness as a strategy unto itself.

The way to stay big is to be big, but the professional lazyboy has no strategy to become big. He sits atop a brilliant structure someone else built, but he gives no credit for the building and only takes credit for managing the decaying momentum from the pioneers who already left.

If business were a train, he would think the engine the biggest problem. Momentum is a given, to be taken for granted, never the resulting indication of good stewardship strategy. Therefore, in his mind, the engine is just a silly gimmick to fool those unpolished, badly-dressed, uncooperative fools who founded the organization that he perfected. Though the money and customers are dropping, that’s from the economy, stupid! If he hadn’t sold-off the engine to get rid of that obnoxious noise, the organization would be in worse shape because no one can read with that annoying whistle blowing and the dirty engineer hauling coal around the train!

Never learn and understand the inner workings of your company if you can just pay someone to do it for you. The way to innovate for the future is to follow the proven strategies widely published in periodicals, reviewed by journals, old enough to have made their way into college textbooks, and implemented by college graduates who studied those strategies half a decade ago. That’s cutting edge! Never do anything that everyone else isn’t already saying to do, otherwise you’ll never find your niche.

Find the formula. Pay for bulk production en masse. Money can solve all your problems, but never say so. It’s an easy formula, after all. People have already been doing that for years. Don’t change what works. Laziness triumphs!

Proverbs 26:1-16

172 – Jesus the Prayer Warrior

Jesus prayed constantly.

He woke early in the morning to pray and would go off by himself to pray more. He references prayer often and casually, as if it ought to be considered a normal thing. And, for Jesus it was normal.

In the desert, while being tempted, Jesus fasted as a form of more intense prayer.

When the demon possessed boy could not be freed from the demon—not even by Jesus’s disciples—Jesus drove out the demon, even then through convulsions. Jesus had given the disciples authority, so they assumed they would be able to drive out the demon.

When the disciples asked why they could not drive out the demon, Jesus said that some demons only come out by prayer and fasting. This refers to people with a lifestyle of prayer and fasting, not merely praying and fasting one time for that one demon. This is obvious because Jesus neither prayed nor fasted when he drove out the demon and his disciples knew exactly what he meant. Prayer and fasting were an evident part of Jesus’s life, his disciples knew this well because they had to go looking for him while was praying. They even asked him how to pray because they knew he knew.

One does not develop a lifestyle of prayer by memorizing pre-written “prayers”. Such prayer is like a conversation. As a human, son, brother, and friend, Jesus is not praying in some mysterious way that other humans can’t. The way Jesus prays was the same way we all can pray, which was why he taught us to pray.

When Jesus taught prayer in his Sermon on the Mount, he said not to act impressive or pious, but to be simple and pray for daily bread, forgiveness of sin, deliverance from evil, and to bring Heaven to Earth.

Jesus grants us his authority, but we only walk in it by prayer.

Prayer is not a show, it is a conversation with God. Everyone has a direct phone line to God, you included. The more you talk on that phone line and the more you listen, the more you will understand Jesus because the more you will be like Jesus.

Matthew 6:1-15; 14:23; 17:14-21, Mark 1:35-37; 9:14-29, Luke 4:1-2; 6:12; 11:1-4; 18:7; 22:31-32, John 17, Hebrews 5:7

171 – Professional Naysayers

Naysaying is normal and expected at times, but never as a profession. Quickly identify the professional naysayer. Call him out on it just as quickly.

Give him no room, no concession. Do not negotiate. Do not concede. If he’s right then he’s right about a 100% different topic than he professionally says, “Nay,” about.

They professional naysayer will impress unwitting victims who will give him their votes, their friendship, their trust, their patronage, and their money. When you call out the professional naysayer, you protect the many would-be victims.

He sits in his office in comfort and luxury. He hears word of a disgruntled employee who was there since the founding. Should he heed? Nay! He makes more money than the old employee, so he obviously knows more.

He receives a suggestion for a new business strategy. Should he consider it? Nay! Someone already did that. He lists one hundred and one companies who did something similar, but not quite the same. But, he doesn’t know that the new strategy is indeed new because saying, “Nay,” is his profession.

The loyalists complain and the founders have all left. Should he be concerned? Nay! Their time is past. Fans and customers, business and audiences, sales and purchases—those things are fixed and guaranteed. His organization is too big to fail. No one can make it fail and no one can stop it when the time for failure comes. So, forget the loyalists and the fan base, they couldn’t make a difference anyhow.

His competition sets out on a plan that could prove him wrong and open a new way of business altogether. Should he reinvent? There’s only one thing to do with the competition: Say, “Nay! Nay! Nay!” Say, “Nay,” on television. Print, “Nay,” in the newspaper and vote on a non-binding resolution. The only reason the competition would succeed is if the masses believed the competition could. So, dissuade the competition’s loyalists and fans—no one is anything without fans after all. Advise the competition how to defeat you the “real way”.

If you say it will fail enough, then it must. If you can “nay” everything into failing, you’re sure to stay on top.

Matthew 19:26, Ephesians 3:20-21 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

170 – Lift

Troubles come from a variety of sources. Some troubles come from our own stupidity, others come from outside forces we cannot control. When you see someone else caught in too much trouble, don’t add to it.

Help everyone; it doesn’t matter where their trouble came from. Helping people out of trouble that they made for themselves is not an irresponsible thing to do. In fact, it shows people that there is a better and higher way of life on Earth. They already regret their difficulty, they’re likely too embarrassed to say so. When you see someone evidently in distress, nothing says that you know they caused their own problem like proving that you know just how to help them out of it.

When someone tries to apologize, but their effort might seem to be only half of a full apology, just accept their apology as it is. “Um, maybe I was not quite right about half of the things I might have said yesterday when…” Just interrupt the person and say, “Apology accepted. I completely forgive you. Let’s move on.” That will deal with the issue much more effectively than putting them on the witness stand, demanding a full confession in open court. It will address any lack of sincerity, avoid unnecessary shame, and grow your friendship at the same time.

Do not make people fully confess their wrong before you personally forgive them.

Western children understand seeking forgiveness. Good parents demand a full apology from their children to train them to be honest. But, as adults, we must mature beyond our acquired appetite for fully fledged confessions from others.

Love conceals a sin. This does not mean that you have become an accomplice by not shaming and publicly scorning everyone for every transgression. By granting merciful shadows to hide in, you allow people to search their hearts and resolve to be better people without making it impossible to show their faces in public.

If you can help people in distress from their own folly, then you can help anyone in distress. So, what caused other’s problems isn’t your own problem to solve. Just offer a friendly boost wherever you see a boost is needed.