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352 – Prayer Is…

Praying connects us to God Most High. It gives us fellowship with Him, we can listen, He speaks back to our particular situations and needs we often don’t know we have.

Praying puts you on the speaking platform to appeal in Heaven’s courtroom. When you make prayer requests, include reasons why, defensive arguments, explanations of fairness, why your request is so important to you, and why it should be important to Heaven. God is the Judge, hearing your request in His courtroom; He is also your friend. In prayer, you do legal business with the best friend you ever had and ever could have for all Eternity.

When you pray, angels and demons see your body change different colors, flames lick upwards off of your body that can only be seen in the spiritual realm, and smoke rises up off of your head, arms, and legs like incense, bellowing upward toward the sky.

When you pray, Heaven gets an invitation to do things Heaven’s way in your life and in the space around you. Miracles are more likely because they are more welcome. Understanding, knowledge, wisdom, strength, insight, hope, and peace are all more probable because those are the things you are probably praying for—they are the things you had better be praying for.

When you pray, angels watch this great miracle in the natural world that spiritual beings can’t understand—that a human with a physical body performs the spiritual action of prayer to the only real God, Who is invisible in the natural realm. Why would a human do that, all by faith? Angels just can’t understand because our prayer fascinates them so.

When we pray together, all of our powers are multiplied by ten. One praying person can stand against ten demons, three can stand against a thousand. Praying together brings unity in our hearts and amplifies our prayer requests like logs joined in a fire. Pray with others as often as you can and for Heaven’s sake, don’t only pray in the same building only once a week.

Pray everywhere you go because you want the blessings of Heaven to go everywhere with you. Be a walking Heavenly flame: Pray.

1 Chronicles 16:11, Ephesians 1:15-23; 6:18, 1 John 5:14-16

351 – Don’t Wait to Shine

God has a plan for great and glorious things. Our brains aren’t capable of imagining how good things can actually be—even though we can imagine things being much better, if we would only open our minds to the possibility. Things will be unimaginably amazing in the future, in the next lifetime that will last through Eternity. But, things could be much better now. It’s all about what level of happiness we are willing to settle for.

Several things hold us back from being better off, whether shame or amusement.

We often get distracted by mediocre entertainment, thus robbing ourselves of a much happier life. Most of the world’s problems—including pollution and abuse of natural resources—wouldn’t be possible if people refused to settle for amusement as their solution to boredom. But, too many “sheeple” are satisfied to crawl out of bed, go off to a job or school they hate, and return home to a hypnotic video screen until they are tranquilized into sleep, just to do it all over again the next day. If no one in the West was addicted to videos, games, and video games, there wouldn’t be starvation anywhere in the world.

Whose fault is it that children are starving in India during an age when private companies launch their own space ships? It’s the fault of the teenager who won’t look up from his mobile phone and study something that can make a difference—who grows old, but doesn’t grow up to set a good example for the next generation. It’s the fault of the adults, mentors, parents, and teachers who don’t welcome each other’s help to figure out how to get it through to young people that we were created by God for bigger and better things, not just to be entertained.

For those who aspire to more in life, the giant in our path is “Shame”. We don’t want to sing unless we are the best birds in the woods. But, to humankind, all birds sing beautifully. Shine your little light now. Give hope, especially proving we don’t need to be perfect before we begin; we need to begin in order to make the world perfect.

350 – We Need Judges So We Can Be Fair to Our Enemies

God’s morals are for God and God alone to enforce. He gave His morals in clean and no uncertain terminology. But, no one becomes a judge above his fellow man by knowing God’s moral law anymore than by being a law school student. God alone writes the laws that govern Life’s course and God alone judges each and every one of us for how much life we cultivate by complying with His laws.

In society and family, even in business, we need judges to navigate us through murky waters toward justice. We need someone to speak with authority to pronounce a verdict and exact a punishment. We need injustice brought to finality so wrongs may cease and discussion may end rightly. Judges do not only condemn, they explain through “opinions of the court”.

Without judges, society, family, and business break down. Judgment is so important that courts are often the first branch of government society raises up in regions of anarchy. It was the first office in Israel, even before there was any king.

God calls everyone to exercise “good judgment”—not to appoint ourselves judges above our peers, but to practice and improve methods of giving justice and fairness to those around us. When God judges us at the Great White Throne Judgment, ushering in Eternity after, He will judge us individually by our ability to be “unofficial judges” in the small things of day-to-day life with each other. We will answer for our morals, for our choices, for our love, and for our ability to exercise good judgment.

Jesus considered it a matter of justice when he said, “Love your enemies.” He meant that we should have affection and positive emotion for our enemies, but he also meant that we must give justice to our enemies. While God has rules and morals we try our best to understand and conform to, it is the duty of the Christian to give justice to others without making God’s moral code a prerequisite to receiving justice.

Justice is fair to those who aren’t fair. “Justice” is no excuse to strongarm others into obeying any moral code. Giving justice includes being fair with everyone you deem immoral.

349 – Four Seasons in Christian Life

There are many seasons of Christian growth. It would be ridiculous to attempt to number them since they would be different for each person and could arguably change multiple times each day. Generically, there are a few seasons we must expect, some of these are celebrated by most Christians, some are rarely taught about, some are even scorned by the majority of Sunday morning Bible teachers.

When a person first comes to grips with the reality of God and Jesus, there is a basic learning phase. This includes becoming familiar with the Bible, godliness, and Jesus’s command to love one another as we love ourselves. This season is exciting, energetic, and comes with “bratty”, bad manners and daily “epiphanies” (that other Christians already know). In a sense it’s like being a snot-nosed child all over again. Enjoy it while it lasts for you; be patient and excited with other people while it lasts for them.

Another season is “dryness”, when we don’t seem to feel God at all—at all. CS Lewis wrote “I have never for one moment been in a state of mind to which even the imagination of serious pain was less than intolerable.” Medieval Christians called this season “The dark night of the soul”. It’s normal. Mine lasted about 15 years. In the end, it became nearly impossible to make me sad.

Less celebrated is the season of solitude, when God takes a Christian away from nearly all—if not absolutely all—other Christians. This can be imprisonment, persecution, or difficult life circumstances. “Established” Sunday morning groups will usually scorn these people, basically invalidating their own legitimacy since their purpose is to help people learn about God, while some lessons require absolute solitude.

The last phase listed here is almost unheard of: “Sending out”. The Church—all Christians everywhere—is unhealthy if Christians stay put forever. At some point we need to travel, visit, write letters, somehow reach to others over distance. Too often, “travel” is misinterpreted by Sunday morning establishments as “rebellion”, but if those congregations celebrated the desire to have wider fellowship, Christians in this phase would be able to lead the overall Church to more maturity and happiness.

348 – God’s Word Is…

The Bible is best known as “God’s Word”. The WORD is the Son and spoke Creation into being; Jesus is the WORD made flesh. God’s “words” are messages from God to us in prophecy and life.

God’s Word was inspired by the Holy Spirit through the writings of godly men addressing the matters of their day, containing their personalities and language styles, but because the Holy Spirit “inspired” those writers, God’s Word is perfect in its ability to supercharge your heart for an optimally effective life.

God’s Word might be compared to an operating system of Heaven, written for us, in the human language of history and literature. Poetry is code—the code of the human psyche—and God’s Word is written in that code. We are best able to understand Heaven’s ideas for helping us on Earth by reading ancient history, ancient law, ancient poetry, ancient prophecy, and ancient correspondence. God’s Word is a window back in time to the pivotal points in human history, interpreted through the worldview of our Creator God.

Concepts of “software updates” belong to our human progress in technology, not God. God’s Word updates our “software”, the “update” does not need updating.

Our DNA structure, human patterns, basic survival needs, and nature as the Image of God has not changed at all. The operating system we need today is neither more nor less able to suit our needs today than it was with Adam and Eve. We do not need any “update” to God’s Word since our hardware has indeed not changed. To say that we have “improved” to any point of needing an improvement on God’s Word would suggest that God didn’t know what He was doing, that we were partially an accident, that we were partially incomplete and imperfect when God made us.

God Most High’s instructions for us cannot be improved upon. To say so denies that God is Most High.

By taking in God’s Word daily, we steadily progress a supernatural transformation—beyond the metaphysical existence of our minds—giving us wisdom and virtue to make us strong for every other area in which we hope to improve. Only God’s Word makes self-actualization even possible.

Psalm 33:4; 119:130, Matthew 4:4; 24:35, Luke 11:28, 2 Peter 1:21

347 – Be Hardy, for Too Much Help Insults

Few social gestures say, “You can,” like turning someone down from help. The message isn’t always received, but there are fixes for that. If you need to, say it outright, “I’m not going to help you because that would imply that you can’t do it on your own. You can do this. I did it under similar circumstances,” and make sure your statement is true.

To be hardy at the right time you must have been through hard times. You are only able to encourage people who go through hard times as easy as your most difficult times. If you’re serious about life and want to be an encouragement, hard times are coming. But, that’s okay. You’ll get through them. I did.

The social implication of Jesus’s crucifixion says it all. He doesn’t only “try” to understand—though sympathy is virtuous—but he truly empathizes with our levels of difficulty. He saw the demons, angels, sin, wisdom, folly, and disease, yet he was perfect, ridiculed, loved, and ultimately crucified. His patience alone (not yet considering the beating and crucifixion) needed to endure such a wide distance between his own perfection and the wickedness of his enemies. That earned Jesus first place in the competition of “who has been through harder times” (which every human secretly yearns to compete for).

Since Jesus went through worse, I can finish today.

Don’t insult or spew degrading words. Don’t be cynical and describe only the air in the glass. Just say, “Oh, you’ve got enough water in the glass to get through this.” If someone needs help, give just enough so that they can still claim their own victory.

Don’t do everything for children, students, or subordinates, lest they never learn to do things on their own. Doing something correctly requires doing it oneself. Coaching requires patience. Failing strengthens muscles, which empower capability. When a toddler falls on the floor, best to act like nothing happened. Babies are born with extra padding and adults to make sure they don’t fall down the stairs.

In America’s version of chivalry, hardiness was the vital virtue long forgotten for the new obsession with pretentious piety. We badly need a resurgence of hardiness.

Job 2:11, 2 Kings 2:2, Proverbs 14:4; 18:24; 24:5; 27:5-6, John 16:33, Philippians 3:10-11; 4:13

346 – Render to Caesar

Pay your taxes.

Jesus was clear about the need to pay taxes, as is the rest of the New Testament and even the Old Testament. Governments—however immature and corrupt they often are—provide for overall peace and oversee basic functions of leadership. Even wicked and evil leaders will provide basic structures for society, such as Mussolini, who made the trains run on time. This is no moral endorsement, but structures need funding. Notwithstanding, whatever doesn’t pay taxes might not be ethical.

If taxes are too high, find a legal way around—give away your money if you must! Another way is to incorporate—a “corporation” is just a piece of paper, not some ginormous conglomerate as a child’s guess might suppose.

One big problem of our ever-smaller-after-all world is tax turf; nations can’t agree on who owes taxes where. When you visit a country more than 30 days, you probably owe high-rate income tax to the country you visited on your personal earnings, but your home country may also demand normal rates, effectively leaving you with only a quarter of your own hard-earned income. There is no need for this, one simple law solves it all: “When any of our citizens are present in another taxable territory and they thus owe personal income tax to that authority for that time beyond our borders, all income so taxed shall be exempt from taxes here.”

If childish countries play tug-o-war with your bread and butter, earn nothing to pay nothing. Ask your employer to suspend your salary, pay you early, late, quit, or find another way. Or, incorporate, restructure the papers so the governments like the pretty picture it makes on their desks, live below the poverty line, sleep in a box, and keep re-investing your “corporate” money like a good financial steward.

If you must find ways to survive, still find a way to pay taxes. Drop some deductions so you can “owe” income and keep government funded. Donate what you would normally pay if laws were actually normal.

Don’t live fat and lavish, paying slim or zero tax. Structure your accounts responsibly, but keep the roads and bridges funded. That’s also part of stewardship.

 

Numbers 31:25-31, Ezra 4:20, Matthew 17:24-27; 22:15-22