Author: watchstandpray

134 – You Be You, Let Others Figure It Out

You can never please everyone, never. So, don’t try. Live an awesome life of love, excellence, fairness, compassion, happiness, patience, understanding, and kick your own butt. Whatever people like or don’t like, understand or can’t grasp, that’s all on them.

You are the Image of God. Every human is, but most humans don’t know it. This is something we each must be told, then we must accept. What exactly it means to be the Image of God—what all we are capable of and how we “should” act—is a deep question we will neither answer nor exhaust. The more questions you answer, the more questions you’ll have. The more you understand, the more you’ll tally how tiny your understanding floats in the ocean of all there is to explore.

So, when you encounter someone who has explored and learned what it means to be the Image of God, that person will naturally confound you, surprise you, irritate you, seem in need of your “fixing”, and do things that make no sense—to you. You’ll ask why, the answer will confound, surprise, and irritate you all the more. Expect this from people who know what they are doing and expect that you will seem the same way to others, the less incompetent you get.

Sunshine is healthy, killing bad things and creating vitamin D, but it will burn skin that lacks exposure. The sun would do no favor by not shining to avoid burning people. Don’t become foolish just so people can “understand” you. Stay steady and stay on target. The more stable and constant you are, the more people will anticipate what you do, the more they will understand you—all because your revamped worldview is spreading to the world around you.

There is great pressure to dumb down your standards and conduct—to stop living by financial smarts, shrewd stewardship, good chivalry, wise survival. People would rather you be dead—and them weeping at your funeral—than for you to not make instant sense.

Don’t give in.

Be charming. Use compassion. Elaborate when welcome. But, your life’s results are your best explanation. Living godly and strongly, even when misunderstood, is best for everyone.

133 – Formal Recruiting & Contentious Spirits

When you constantly feel that people are contending with you, and you can’t seem to “forgive” it, it could be that you are infested with a contentious spirit. It is a “thing” in the spirit realm that rests on people and makes them imagine that everyone is arguing with them so that they will hunger to argue back. This is especially common among groups that attend formal, regular religious gatherings; no matter the religion, the contentious spirit is the same and makes people behave this same, contentious way. It’s not a “religious” problem; it’s a “recruit people” formal structure problem.

Usually, recruiting religious structures recruit people because they are led by people with the same spirit, always hungering for more people to argue with. To mask this, the spirits make people feel homely among their group of other people with the same spirit, enabling them to think they are friendly when, actually, they are only friendly with their clique. Even among their own religion, they will tend to argue with other groups and people. If you have difficulty with arguments and you are part of a religious weekly meeting, this could likely be you.

I actually sat with a person from a religion different from my own and explained this. The whole time he shook his head, smiling, and said, “I don’t agree. We don’t argue like that.” It never occurred to him that he was being argumentative about being argumentative. But, I didn’t call him out on it because, frankly, I didn’t want to argue. I just said, “You’ve been told, do whatever you want with it.”

That urge to contend with someone will drive people to argue about things—whether to agree or disagree—in which they have neither say nor decision. The mere desire to have an opinion about someone else’s business is a flashing red light and loud buzzer warning that one has this problem. The reason a person wants to argue with things that don’t matter, which they have no vested interest in, is because the contentious spirit on them wants to argue with everyone.

Stay aware to notice “contentious spirits” and feel free to call people out on it.

132 – God the Potter

A potter works the clay, watering it, molding it, and shaping it as fast as it will be shaped. Clay has a will of its own, but it cannot shape itself.

Once the potter has shaped and re-shaped the clay beyond what the clay is capable of, the clay will quit, no longer able to hold any form. Once the clay quits, it must be reconstituted—first dried and ground into powder, then hydrated with water and prepared once again for the wheel.

God is the Great Potter who sits at the wheel of Earth, spinning us in His hands. It was no coincidence that the artistic poet, God the Potter, made Man from the dust of the ground. Just like clay, we have a will that wrestles with our Potter’s Hands. When we don’t sit how God wants, he tears us down. If we fight Him too much, He grinds us into powder before hydrating us with water.

All of God’s work with humanity—collectively just as much as with each individual—molds and shapes us into a beautiful masterpiece. We do become grand and glorious over time—not due to any effort of our own, but only our effort to cooperate with the guiding hands of our Potter.

As we grow, study, learn, sharpen, exercise, strengthen, mature, and improve ourselves, God’s guidance oversees everything. If God cares which continent we live on, we will be on the continent of His choosing. If God decides that He will make you fall in love with music, you will be forever smitten, but it’s up to you to practice and pursue excellence. The same holds for every career and skill.

Throughout the Bible, God shapes people through their circumstances. Consider Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Ruth, David, Daniel, Esther, Jesus’s disciples, and the Apostles.

When he became prime minister, Winston Churchill said that all his, “past life had been but a preparation for this hour…” He had indeed been prepared by God the Potter, just as you have been prepared—and are still being prepared—to become whatever vessel God wants you for. Your role is to cooperate with the Great Potter’s Hands while they do the shaping.

131 – Etiquette

When you first walk into the office, say hello before talking business. Never invite yourself, but you are expected to drop in unannounced where you are always invited. Even when you get home, announce that you’ve arrived. If you live alone, check in with friends often. Communicate. “Ping” your presence. If you’re not early, you’re late, but don’t knock before the meeting.

Inquire about meal plans when meeting within two hours of breakfast, lunch, or dinner. When inviting guests to a first-of-a-kind, tell them what you will be wearing so they can dress to the occasion. Even in the snow, take off your glove to shake hands. Nothing beats the gesture of going out of one’s way just to be friendly, even when it’s not necessary.

Always leave soon enough so people are hungry for more, it’s polite because it means you know your place. Don’t be too welcoming. Uninvited help is an insult except those rare moments when we can’t send an SOS. When taming a wild animal, let it walk all the way up to you to take food from your hand; if it’s a scavenger it will bite you anyway, if it’s a prairie dog or rabbit it probably won’t.

Always be kind and give respect, especially in the face of adversity. Do what it takes and then some. The older one should act like it, always act like you’re the older one. Don’t sweat the little stuff, it’s all little stuff. When traveling, be the first to wake, the last to sleep, and always help carry someone’s luggage. Leave everything better than you found it. Don’t mess with it if it’s not yours.

When you point your finger at someone, three point back at you. Good rules like this keep you on your toes in other areas. Learn them from older generations, especially people who have strong experience. Pieces of etiquette have roots in history and good ideas.

Don’t brush off wise traditions merely for seeming constraining or “unoriginal”. Write them down and keep training yourself. Read many more in the Book of Proverbs. Derive your own from the rest of the Bible as you read it daily. It’s called wisdom.

130 – Light Must Be Shared

Life can’t be hoarded, goodness must be shared. Spread your knowledge liberally with all who ask.

Evil tries to contain knowledge for power and so-called “ascension” into levels of life that God has made freely available to everyone. This is achieved by anyone merely through mediating on God’s Word’s words, understanding God as He describes Himself in God’s Word through the personalities of the writers, praying for requests and fellowship with God, and obeying God’s Word’s simple, useful commands for delayed gratification and self-control. Anyone can do this, so spread your knowledge freely.

The same applies to administration and leadership. Don’t hoard people, not even your family. Hold everything with an open hand. Professors lose free research labor when they allow a student to graduate with a PhD. Religious groups are notorious for leaders being territorial with their people, as are MLMs by definition of the LOS.

Whether hoarding knowledge or people, failure to share knowledge is a form of control. God is Light and He shines everywhere; it is up to each if us to respond to His light. But, hoarded light will kill you. If you want more of God’s light, you must pass on whatever light you have, otherwise God will put you in the shade, safe from His light, so you won’t get burned by hoarding. This is why so-called “leaders” and “mentors” who hoard knowledge and people hit a glass ceiling on what they can teach and achieve: They don’t pass on everything they know to all who seek. As with knowledge and people, share your money.

Give healthy tips—not too much, but better to be generous than stingy. Pay subscriptions for “premium” features, don’t only use a service that comes free of charge. You can’t pay for every single service you ever use, but if you pay for premium versions of the services you enjoy most, you will sow good chivalry that will come back around. When you pay for something, you respect it more.

Likewise, charge others for work, but share freely what you can give without cost. Pass on the light you have, encourage, drip teachings, then the Light will shine on you all the more.

129 – Case for Constitution

The Magna Carta was arguably the first Constitution of English law. The Mayflower Compact was the first Constitution of the Americas. These were “basic laws”, providing unanimous permission from all the people to create a government. All government would be built on this Constitution because all the people had agreed to it. Once a Constitution breaks, the powerful and corrupt few find a crack through which to slip if they fool the masses just long enough to seize power from the people.

The last line of defense between the people and those who seek to oppress them is their Constitution.

Hitler spoke kindly and calmly, only later in his speeches raising his voice after telling stories that cast a hypnotic spell of anger on his audiences. The tyrant—shrouded as a “savior”—demands limitless powers to “help”, his tone so kind that none suspect him.

Over-regulation is a classic tool to subtly enslave the people. Criminals get away with almost anything when they say that they aren’t doing precisely what they are doing, especially criminals in government. Aristocrats’ favorite method to enslave society is Socialism birthed as over-regulation. A Constitution limits the ability of the criminals to commandeer the government in the name of “helping” the very problems those criminal aristocracies create in the classic pulp fiction cycle of cops and robbers justifying each other’s existence. The people need police to regulate peace—a need easily exploited.

A Constitution is, essentially, the regulation of the regulation of the regulators. Socialism seeks to delegate safety away from the people to the government. Constitutional Capitalism retains all powers among the people, creating a super-slow moving government too tied down with regulations of the regulators to be worth a criminal aristocracy’s effort.

The solution to recurring problems of governance and society remains in the hands of a society where every individual takes responsibility to learn why things are what they are. Only the people can hold power over Constitutions, but even Constitutions will be taken from them if the people are not actively involved in thinking independently and learning from history as individuals, never relegating control of their Constitution nor preservation of their freedom to any centralized authority.

128 – God the Demolisher & Rebuilder

As Creator and Inventor of Everything, God is the Grand Architect and He never stops developing His Creation. God Almighty is also God the Developer.

God raises up and tears down however He wants, all according to His grand planning.

As an urban area sprawls, it needs different types of streets and passages for different population densities and to fit different levels of progress in technology. Before a people are able to generate electricity, they need the proper roads to move their materials, even in the construction process of building the wiring for electricity. Before underground piping can be made—still having only primitive tools—some form of sewer is needed to keep the city clean. Once pipes are in place, those old sewer trenches can serve other purposes.

Even an embryo starts as a cluster of cells which will eventually divide into specialized organs, tissues, and limbs. Scaffolding and molding go up early, but are taken down once the building is finished. In a sense, the building itself is mere scaffolding for project yet to come. Eventually, everything gets torn down; what doesn’t gets celebrated in a museum to remind us how young we are compared to the ongoing project of humanity.

Watching over and above all of this is God, who builds and plans components of human society that only He can engineer.

God shapes the courses of friendships and social habits. He raises up practices among His people, then he changes those practices to prepare for the newer, better things He has for us. In time, He will tear down those new practices as well.

As God constantly moves and shapes different organizations, kingdoms, cultures, and liturgies, He remains outside of them.

God will eventually tear down formerly useful structures, but nostalgia leads some people to cling to the past and its empty halls. We can become addicted and otherwise fixated on those temporary customs and practices themselves—often defending rigid institutions long after their usefulness has fulfilled its purposes. If we do not leave the condemned structure, it can be demolished with us still inside.

Never revere temporary infrastructure above the Eternal God who never stops tearing down and rebuilding upward.