Category: godliness

Prayer is meant to have a constant presence with every human. Your body is the wick, prayer is the flame, and the oil comes from good, daily deeds, Bible study, and responsible choices. The flame may grow more and less intense, but it should never go our. Your spirit should be in a constant state of prayer—even while you sleep if possible. Even in your dreams, you should maintain an awareness that God is near with His love as you love Him back.

When prayer is a constant thing, it will form a kind of “cloud” around you. Circumstances that would normally harm others won’t harm you. Doors will open up which everyone else thought to be impenetrable walls. The quiet “nudging” from the Lord will hint at which roads you should take, often times avoiding disaster or delay that you may learn you avoided. You may even have small thoughts leading to your own discover of home cures for small illnesses, if for no other reason than for God to verify that you hear Him somewhat accurately. This “cloud” doesn’t make you ignorant of the world, it allows you to go everywhere in the world without the normal harms.

A life of prayer will also lead you into higher waters and deeper hardships, but it will be with you through it as you grow to understand the hardship of others—hardship one half of society might never understand about the other half. But, you will understand that hardship because your prayer cloud led you into the hardship that taught you.

Many governments across the world have unfair laws that cannot even be obeyed by their own people. These governments feel sad for not being able to govern effectively. Even mid-ranking Nazis often turned a blind eye to Jews and American soldiers. Remember America’s underground railroad. Prayer will also navigate you through those times, without fear, without giving up on all legal compliance, and without facing trouble.

Learning to navigate from inside your cloud of prayer is a skill. You make mistakes, but keep going and learn how the trust, work, and His direction all work in concert. Constant prayer supplies wings to soar.

There are no different levels of sin. People throughout society frequently bring up questions about specific sins, “What about this sin?” or, “What about people living this lifestyle who say they love God?” The Cross of Jesus Christ redeems us from all sin. It does not condemn us for sin. It does not pick and choose its favorite sins like we tend to. The Cross delivers us from all sin.

The presumption of the Biblical-moral worldview where sin is concerned is “equal need for redemption”. Whether something is or is not sinful or immoral, the Bible’s final message is not that we are condemned, but forgivable. Immorality is presumed to be self-condemning.

Fleeting passions and dishonesty do not quench the soul’s thirst for fulfillment. They are ungratifying—all of them equally. To even consider certain sins as being above or below, more or less severe, than other other sins is a sin itself since it falls short of the Bible’s view that the Cross offers us redemption from things that harm us and leave us empty and dry.

People who live in continued immorality or dishonesty, yet say they love God, actually and only love their misunderstanding of God. To some extent, they have contrived their own moral code and invented their own version of a god who prefers that moral code.

Whatever we need delivered from is not our choice. Few people choose their addictions in advance. Both morals and help to obey them must both come from above. If we determine our own morals, then we are our own greatest power to fulfill them. But, when we bend the knee to an all-powerful God Most High—Who alone can determine a moral code—then we can walk in a power greater than ourselves.

We can only come to God on God’s terms. You life will skyrocket when you let God determine your morals and help you back on your feet when you fail to measure up. Someone who persists in any sin, dishonesty or immorality, yet claims to love God, may very well love God, but still has room to love God much, much more. By definition, that includes every one of us.

God holds each of us to a higher standard than everyone else does. At times, other people around you will get away with terrible choices, but you will be scrutinized for the smallest, simplest, pettiest errors. When it seems that you are held to a higher standard, you are. God is holding you to that higher standard.

It may seem to others like they are held to a higher standard than you are. Their struggles and the small things they notice may be different from the things you notice. But, in some things, the standard of what God expects from you is indeed higher than what He expects from others—for those specific things, and vice versa for other things.

Then, there are people that God does not hold to those standards because, sadly, they have inwardly chosen to throw away any chance of even considering God’s morals and the higher, more enjoyable results that they lead to. Perhaps they never heard of God’s higher road of morals and enjoyment, but they never cared to go looking for any higher roads either.

Once a person learns about a higher road, a better life, sees someone “choose” happiness for the first time, or recognizes any evidence that life can get better—then pursues and chases after that better life—everything changes. God will instantly send that person both useful advice and added trouble that needs the useful advice. That person is now held to a higher standard because that person wants to be held to a higher standard. So, God is glad to oblige.

Your potential cannot be explained by the lives, skills, and results of those around you. If your potential could be understood by observing other people, we wouldn’t all be unique. When life seems hard, don’t complain about the unfairness; be thankful for it!

It is indeed, quite unfair that God honors our choice to seek a higher standard, which He then holds us to. Life dolls the same sun, rain, reward, and winter, yielding whatever is sown, and standing before God, none of us measure up. But concerning your uniqueness, God’s higher standards will make you become more than you though possible.

Neither Job nor his friends had much Bible background to go on. Based on what little knowledge the Book of Job demonstrates about God, Job’s main source of information about God was the Book of Enoch, where he heard about God in the heavens with the “hearing of the ears”, but had never seen God Himself. Abraham likely learned “righteousness” from Job’s example.

Job knew what it meant to be a “righteous man” and he sought to be “righteous” himself. But, until Elihu rebuked Job and his friends, and until God showed up, neither Job nor his friends understood from personal encounter. Throughout most of the book, Job and his friends develop their own self-made ideas about why God does what He does and, of course they accuse Job. Job’s error was his indignation. Job’s friends’ error was their accusation against Job, becoming “accusing satans” themselves. The truth they all missed was their need for guidance from above.

People may try to impose their self-made moral code onto you—partially dismissing morals from above, partially imposing their contrived morals, always accusing you of both intolerance and immorality. Don’t join them. Don’t help them. Speak up, represent yourself, don’t quietly agree to be agreeable.

If others want a moral code for themselves, that’s their business, their choice, their results, and their prerogative; but so is your choice of a moral code.

One of the most shameless impositions of proven-to-fail, man-made morals is the outlawing of basic spanking to discipline children, yet at the same time spending public funds on government programs to help children behave better when they grow up. Another imposition is the social taboo of being naked for simple bathing purposes in public bathhouses, but encouraging evermore sexual encounters with multiple people under the mask of “liberation”. Spanking is not abuse and being naked with like kind is not strange, but as societies confuse and reverse these, crime increases, immorality and related diseases spread, and birthrates decline.

You don’t need to criticize the evident results of self-made morals, but you don’t need to hail them either. Job prayed for his friends who criticized him with their self-made standards. Follow his example as Abraham did.

Desire for anything allows that thing to control you. Respect is no exception. Drop and abandon all and any cultures, gestures, customs, rituals, signs—any method of “respect” that you revere. If a motion, word, or hand signal means something “offensive”, eradicate such concern from your mentality and concern. Don’t use any custom to offend others and don’t recognize any custom as offensive to you.

Choose which battle you plan to fight. Will you play the game of “expecting respect” or will you “win”? Will you ask everyone to pretend that you don’t need to learn or will you ditch your pride so you can learn from everyone? Will you seek recognition or will you recognize what you seek? Will you lay down and cry when your rights get snubbed or will you lay down and snub your right to cry?

Respect yourself always, but remember that self-respect includes not caring about respect returned to you. Respectable people know that respect is to be given, not sought. There is a difference between someone who makes disrespectful gestures toward others and someone who genuinely disdains others. Respectable people know the difference. Disdain is the problem.

A person who makes disrespectful gestures is no threat. There is no reason to confront or “keep pride” merely because someone smacks your face or challenges your turf.

However, people who harbor disdain will often outwardly display a perfect choreography of “respectful” gestures. Their disdain surfaces when it’s time to trust other people’s testimony, give others the space to make their own decisions, behave as if accomplished people are competent people, and remain silently seated while other people handle their own affairs. People who harbor disdain will make autocratic demands or toss out provocative taunts. They genuinely believe that they are better than others and if you slight their great honor, they will throw a tantrum like a brat.

“If you’re so good, why don’t you do it already?” is a taunt. “Just do it and don’t care what other people think,” is an encouragement. Notice the difference.

Don’t fear those with disdain, but beware of who they truly are, don’t become what they are, and by no means covet them.

We are saved and redeemed by a King, not a sissy, not an overlord—a King! This has many ramifications, among them self-respect. The more you understand that you have been redeemed by a King, the more respectable your life and your choices will be.

God’s forgiveness is vaster than the widest ocean. But, that doesn’t mean we will be happy if we create regrets and make more messes in our lives that need cleaning up, just to “experience His forgiveness” all over again. In those moments where we lapse and create regrets for ourselves, we don’t have a “theological” problem; we have a maturity problem.

Making a mess while claiming “God forgives all” is a cry for help, not an abstract theory about which big words we ought to argue about, just to fit God into a box small enough for us to fully understand in an afternoon read. Our theology affects our view of ourselves and good theology begins with this: God is a King, our King.

The truth that God is a King marks yet one more beautiful thing about Him. It explains much of His relationship with us. Any king prospers only as much as his people prosper. Every king has close ties with all people of his kingdom.

God forgives us of every foolish thing we do, not because He doesn’t mind His kingdom being made a mess, but because He wants all of us to prosper.

You were redeemed by a King. Act like it. Walk in wisdom rather than as the angry child destroying his own life just to get attention. Don’t be the old fool who seeks to beat the angry child. Instead, return to your King every day. Search for orphans and bring them back to their King. Teach others to live with kingly respect. When someone acts unkingly, remind them of who they are. Remind yourself of who you are.

The one thing that makes Jesus unique among other kings is adoption—we are all sons and daughters of the King. We all have the rights of heirs. Stand up and live with dignity. Grow God’s Kingdom—your Kingdom—both in number and in splendor.