Author: watchstandpray

85 – Know When to End Discussion

You have permission to end a discussion and move on. This doesn’t require walking away from a conversation, but at least change the subject, take action, or refuse to stay on the topic further.

Watch for people who want to keep pushing their point until they convince you—as if you need to keep listening to their arguments and defensive reasons until you agree with them. It’s a childish tactic to as, “Why?” as a way of changing the answer.

Explaining yourself can help other people to learn; to that end, be liberal in sharing the reasons behind your actions. Don’t be contentious or condescending. When someone asks you, “Why?” give your answer kindly, quickly, and matter-of-factly, all while you move on in your action. If you depend on compliance from the person asking, move on in other ways, making sure the person gets the message that you’re not waiting for them to agree with you.

In matters of opinion, where no immediate action is needed, move to declare the discussion at an impasse. All to often, the reason someone doesn’t agree with you is not because they haven’t listened to you enough, but because they don’t want to agree. Such contenders will likely think that you don’t agree with them because you haven’t listened to them enough. Don’t filibuster each other’s day. Either they are wrong or you are wrong, in either case drop it.

Never argue with a question’s answer. When you ask a question, accept the answer; don’t start telling the other person why the answer was wrong. You don’t know what someone else’s answer is better than that person. Just the same, no one else knows your answer to a question better than you know your answer to a question. When people ask you a question and try to argue with your answer, grab a stick and draw a line in the sand, right while they’re still talking: Simply repeat their question in reverse person.

“‘Why do I do that?’ Did I satisfy your curiosity?”

Perhaps you didn’t. If not, satisfy their curiosity, then you will be able to peacefully end discussion by happily changing the topic or smiling and leaving.

84 – God who Is Everywhere

God is everywhere. The theological term for this is “omnipresence”. This does not mean that His uttermost presence is uttermostly active in every micron of every universe. Rather, it means that every location is at His immediate disposal and access. There is no place for anyone to run from Him, no place of danger beyond His protective arm’s reach.

God’s “presence” can often be felt and Christians may often speak of “the presence of God” or “feeling His presence in the room”. This is not the same as God’s “omnipresence”, but a heightened level of God’s proactive presence. When we pray, we welcome His proactivity into our space and so His presence takes more action. God is in the continuous process of expanding His glory in all ways. Part of this includes creation.

His beauty and majesty are shown throughout the created universe. His justice expands into society and culture when people do the right things among each other. This is part of His work in and through us: to expand His glory in and through us.

As God expands His glory in many ways, He also expands His presence wherever we pray and worship Him. Wherever we are, when we speak the name of Jesus or call on the Lord God Most High, He shows up right then and there. He can because He has instant, immediate access to every location in existence.

Souls consigned to Hell and the Conscious, Eternal Lake of Fire will be out of His presence—His proactive presence. This will not empower them to plot against Him since He will still govern their very existence, but when they call He will not answer, when they pray, His joy will not visit them. Those who do not welcome God’s presence into their lives will one day get what they want most and there, in their lonliness, what they will find is Hell itself, the place where God has access, but where He does not visit with blessing because in those places He is not welcome.

Heaven and Hell themselves are what they are as they relate—whether welcome or unwelcome—to the ever presence of the God Who is everywhere.

83 – Growth from the Inside

All growth begins on the inside—viruses, health, psychology, emotions, temptation, intellect—the external appearance is only a symptom of whatever condition began quietly in the heart.

Look inward and ponder in your heart. Don’t leave your inner world in disrepair.

Temptation starts with simple thoughts which snowball into regret. Don’t even entertain dark ideas. Displace darkness with the light.

Secular entertainment may seem enticing and motivating at times, but it is not enough to nourish true growth. It is mere amusement with diluted images of a forgotten Heaven. If you want growth, you must set your mind on the actual, Eternal things of Heaven.

If you don’t think rightly about Heaven, you won’t think about Heaven. If you understand Heaven accurately, you will ponder Heaven, its wealth, its grandeur, its supreme power, and its immeasurable love for you—carrying Heaven in your heart as you go about surviving and thriving day to day. With Heaven in your heart, people who encounter you will bump you and a little Heaven will spill out onto them—and they will wonder whatever could possibly make you such an experience to encounter.

Perhaps someone inconveniences you, yet you respond with grace. A thief or hit-and-run might make flight, but you quickly catch enough of a description because you had the right mind to think on your toes. You might respond to a fool with wise words he deeply resents—but then those words stick in his mind for decades and eventually drive him to become a better person—and you’ll never find out in this life.

Heaven is not where we are going because Jesus is the resurrection. Rather, Heaven is our Eternal Citizenship and our source of love and power, but we come back to life and live on Earth. Anyone who simply believes in Christ Jesus has access to Heaven’s insight even in this lifetime. Heavenly thinking comes from conversational prayer and daily Bible exposure. Know and understand God’s relationship to you in all its fullness and you will begin to know yourself in the deepest ways available from the current mortal body. Bring Heaven to the world around you; it all starts in the heart.

Proverbs 4:23, Ezekiel 11:21; 16:30, Luke 6:45, Colossians 3:1-2, James 1:14-15

82 – Bullies & Geeks & Round It Goes

It often starts with the manager or super-educated type—a doctor, pharmacist, professor, dentist, engineer, architect, programmer, pastor, MBA, physicist, but for some reason not a lawyer. The geek was bullied as a kid and used his brains to build levers in his life to whack the bullies next time they walk in. That’s why educated white-collar types overreact to petty non-problems. The jock, farmer, mason, plumber, construction worker, truck driver, hunter, roofer, landscaper—his instinct is to hit back. It usually starts by one of the two bumping an old wound and the old-wounded bumpee deciding that the other guy did it on purpose.

When people rub us wrong and we have a reaction of going to DEFCON 1, don’t. It’s a trap. Whatever the instinctive response is, the devil knows it and so should you. The other guy has had people react that way to him before. You’re not the first person he has instigated a reaction from. He’s probably done that to people before and, wrong as it is, auto-reacting on cue won’t help either one of you.

We need to keep professional records and discipline people. Certain things can’t be allowed, while other things need leniency to allow people to improve. Police have discretion of when to enforce—except for small-town speed traps—a classic combination of geekery and bullery. Even then, laws and justice must be laid down.

A good reporter will expose the local speed trap. A boss needs to informally and formally warn rogue employees, circumstances depending. Parents and principles must discipline children and students. Christians have standards to must hold each other to. But, don’t react.

Reflexes exacerbate. Break patterns. Contemplate what in the world makes people act as crazy as they do; you may need a week. Find the way to confront someone without continuing the cycle. The recipe always includes finding one offense to forgive and another big offense to just not even care about.

Whether you’re the venomous geek or the bumbling bully—and we all end up playing each roll at least once in life—don’t react. You’re sentient; act like it. Wrong isn’t excusable, but forgivable. Forgive, correct, tolerate, encourage, and strengthen.

Matthew 6:38-42, Galatians 6:1-5

81 – Know Your Reason: Because I Want To

Take ownership of your choices. The best way to do this is to keep your reasons, proofs, explanations, and defensive evidence to yourself. The supreme proof that your choice is right comes in the resulting aftermath.

Those who keep their silence until the ending evidence has the last word—through slander, provocative accusation, gossip, doubt, even coup and impeachment—will be left standing after the dust clears. There’s a time to talk, especially to delineate decisions and implement action, but that is different from babbling on about the justification and rationale for what you do. Of course, a little philosophy about why you do what you do won’t hurt, as long as you’re not using philosophy to build a case in your defense or trying to prove that an idiot is an idiot.

Just talk as you need in order to finish the task at hand. Don’t fall for the trap of someone asking you why you did what you did as a way of convincing you to do something differently. If you are a fool and headed in the wrong direction, listen to the voice of wisdom, but don’t change merely because someone debated your reasons. If you should change, proof that another way will succeed requires no discussion about your reasons for the failed method. That works in reverse as you deal with other people.

Keep your eyes on your own path, never why another path is wrong—and never let others tell you why your path is wrong, but only why another path might be better. Once you’ve heard them out, make your decision and press on. Don’t explain yourself; friends don’t care and enemies won’t accept your reasons anyway.

When you reject “indefinite discussion until others agree with you”, those others will call you “unfriendly”, when the underlying issue is that you disagree. Stay on task. Actions speak louder than words, let them.

Get a reputation so people already know your answer when they ask why you do what you do, “Because I want the results that follow.” Eventually they will stop asking, then you can focus on your task. If you deliberate, it’s because you value discussion more than results.

80 – God with Us

Jesus was born so that God could be with us. In his first life on Earth, Jesus had to die for our sin at the Cross. But, he was with us the whole time. And, he did it so that he could be with us forever. God came down and lived among us so that God could come down and live among us.

He seems far off at times, even though His daily provision and creative wonder nearly drench us every moment of every day. Still, as much as we want to behold God’s face, He wants us to behold His face. But, first, we must know and understand Him, which we can do if we seek Him. This is a temporary process in our growth and development, not God’s permanent plan.

Very soon, likely within a few thousand years, God will show Himself to us directly and we will be with Him forever. He longs for this infinitely more than we do. Every moment until then prepares us for Eternity with Him. This is the meaning of “Emmanuel”: God with us. Jesus is Emmanual.

The Infinite, Eternal, Uncreated, Inapproachable God Most High is perfectly known in the man Jesus Christ of Nazareth. When he was on Earth, people could look at him and understand the personality and nature of God and His character—conversing with Him directly, not through a third party—when they talked to Jesus. We will do the same.

The Holy Spirit is Jesus’s Spirit, so we can have conversation and friendship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit, yet on a different level of reality. Through the Holy Spirit, who lives in our physical bodies, God is also with us in comfort and meaningful fellowship. The Bible is the Word of God with us, placed at our disposal.

Even simple events that God works through to help us and show us that He is near—even history, in a way, puts us in the presence of God. Paying attention, reading the Bible, praying, worshiping in deed and song, listening to God—all of these things bring us to a place where we interact with the Infinite God Who is with us.

79 – All Ends Judge Their Means

It is said that the ends justify the means; in fact they do, but only ultimately. Many short-term, narrowly-focused, greedy people exploit the wisdom of the end standing in judgment over the path that led to it. They also exploit the need to break eggs for the greater work of the omelet. When used wrongly, the principles still hold, but the application to their circumstance has been counterfeited. Like any counterfeit, the good concept is usurped for a false notion upon a dark purpose. Short term ends do not justify corners cut for fleeting results. But, in the End of All Things we look back and see that whatever road guided us to Life was worth its passage.

The destination of every journey will look back on whatever effort arrived at its result and there decide whether it was good or evil.

Not everything ends well. Dishonesty, theft, opportunism, fake ingredients, faulty materials, and any disingenuous shortcuts fail to produce; they only steal from tomorrow’s profits. Life is indeed a “zero sum game” in a world without morals and standards of equal, two-way conduct. In the End, the zero sum of the zero sum game renders the verdict against itself, that the means lacked the synergism that results from the mutually respectful conduct of a life of morals.

Doing harm in order to achieve some “greater good” doesn’t actually lead to that greater good; it at least detours from it and at most leads to an even greater evil mislabeled.

Levying bribes and shorting quick change don’t lift people from poverty, it anchors them there. Honesty escapes the “zero sum game”. Morals spawn synergy, giving lift to wings. The happy ending vindicates the hard road we traveled. It does not excuse selfish injury of others, but it rewards self sacrifice and delayed gratification, even when circumstances and parents force the fruits of patience upon us.

Glad endings don’t miraculously justify wicked means, but whatever end will stand in judgment over the paths we choose. The end will have the last word. When you live your life in preparation for the end to which you will answer, you set your destination straight and calibrate your conscience.