365 – Page 43 – Watch. Stand. Pray.

295 – Times When Nothing Seems to Move Forward

Sometimes, life can act like the only options that work are sinful, foolish, or compromising of essential values. Sometimes, those values are Biblical and we must hold to our values. God is testing us in those times and if we hang on, following wisdom to the death, God will break through and deliver us at the last minute to something incredibly beyond anything we considered. But, at other times, our so-called “values” are in error and God requires us to adjust our understanding of morality to align our worldview with His Biblical teaching. It is very easy to confuse which of these two situations one is in.

Many people die of disease easily cured because they imagined that God would heal them supernaturally. Many people compromise their morals, claiming that “God wants us to be realistic”, thinking that God wanted them to do what they did, thus losing all favor with Heaven and failing this way. Most people who are on the wrong of these two paths have convinced themselves that they are on the correct path. The only way to see clearly enough to avoid confusing the two is through self-honesty and intense, life-long Bible study. There are no gimmicks or shortcuts or cramming books for this test.

There is also the matter of “vices” that slow us down like an anchor dragged at sea. These are things that we don’t think harm us, but they stop our progress and harm the ones we love. It could be a belief or a pet project you need to ditch or a kind of elbow grease you don’t want to employ.

Let go of whatever harms you and do anything that helps.

When you are in those seasons where, one way or another, your fields yield no harvest: Sow. The Law of Sowing and Reaping is one of your best friends in times of trouble—or your worst enemy for trouble you caused. Sow what is good—learn, initiate, help those right around you, research, move some of your projects forward, get random certifications, do research, practice skills. The more good seeds you sow, the more good harvest the rains will prepare for you to reap.

296 – Happiness is a Choice; So Is Love

When we have not grown up in a positive, purposefully-encouraging home, anger abounds and it is very difficult to fathom that love is a choice.

Love is a choice.

In the small, petty, angry state of frustration with the people around us, the smallest slight can easily offend.

Sometimes, uncontrollable anger can come from electrolyte deficiency or from toxins, like arsenic, stuck in the body from farming mistakes made down the road from your home a century ago. When it rains and floods, hundred-year-old chemicals that don’t rot spread around, even into the garden you eat from and the mud children play in. These things affect every person in every nation of the world, especially America, which developed technology before health and safety laws.

The first and most important step in addressing the toxin and nutrient factor is logic: Saying that chemicals or lack of nutrition could explain anger is never an insult—neither when others say it to you nor when you say it to others. Once you sink that truth into your heart, do your own research because it is a factor, though we always retain a free will in the matter of love.

Learning to love requires time and exhaustion, as with strengthening any muscle. Like a democracy, you must strive to keep your freedom to choose love. It is a constant, proactive, concerted effort. Everyone in the home must agree or else emotions will be toxic with hatred.

It’s not about preventing truthful words that “make waves”, but about recognizing venom injected into those words, not spitting venom back at people who use venom, and the belief that “counting your blessings” isn’t just propaganda.

Focus on the things that are good, helpful, encouraging, and provide a path forward.

Critiques are wonderful, especially harsh critiques; what marks the good and bad is whether the critique includes a way to solve every problem cited. Even when someone gives you a candid critique with no solution, your choice to love means you thank the person, genuinely search-out the blessing in the wrapping, and not silence the person in the name of keeping a “positive attitude”.

The contagious choice to love needs nutrition, not quarantine.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Proverbs 9:8, Philippians 4:8, Colossians 3:2, 1 John 4:7-8

297 – You Have Both More and Less Time Than You Think

Whether due to sin or some good design that God intended, our human gauge for “concept of time” usually registers both too much and too little.

When we don’t have a good work ethic, we tend to think we have much more time to be lazy and lax than we actually do. A good work ethic carries a healthy sense of urgency. But on the flip, when we work with that healthy sense of urgency, worrisome events can trigger false flags, making us think that things are even more urgent than they actually are. Busy people becoming worried results from a compound of two perceptions of urgency—the healthy sense of urgency of a good work ethic and the feeling of external pressure from our surroundings.

As you work and bustle to get out the door on time, something may slow you down. The sink may clog, the baby may vomit, the car might not start, the kids may start whining, or your personal gadgets might decide to suddenly stop functioning. But, then you arrive to find those you were meeting were also delayed, and it couldn’t have been timed better.

Frustration with things beyond our control indicate we are somehow “frantic”. Never make excuses for yourself to be frustrated over things you can’t control. You will be so frustrated, just never excuse it. God brought those circumstances to help you calibrate your own heart.

When we are thinking about time, we actually have more time than we think. When we aren’t thinking about time, we actually have less time than we think because we aren’t thinking.

As you work diligently, do not allow tragedies or global shifts or even local catastrophe to trigger that fearful sense of panic. This only applies when you are already working with a healthy sense of urgency. As you work to get things done, but then war breaks out or war is rumored to break out soon, remember that God is still in control. Keep plugging away, keep your Sabbath within God’s schedule for you, keep time to pray. Even an “unjust” traffic light might be a gift from the angels for a needed moment of some extra prayer.

298 – You Can Handle More and Less Than You Think

Due to both sin and God’s good design, we are in constant need of recalibrating our sense of our own strength.

Our ability to think is marred by sin, yet we continue to grow. Like children growing up, every day our bodies are bigger than they were the day before. Like mature adults, our bodies don’t always do what they were able to do before. As we grow and mature in our hearts and minds, our strengths and weaknesses also change every day. Know your new strengths and limits each new day and you will achieve things in life that no one thought possible, even with supernatural miracles.

Most of the time, we aren’t concerned enough about the right things and worry too much about things that aren’t a problem. Even when your heart gets its priorities in line—and you are more concerned about charity and looking for anyone and everyone ignored by society’s systems—little, tiny problems crop up that make us worry and we still tend to neglect things that matter. Take sleep for example, exercise, or the simple need to stretch our muscles. Reading Bible daily is minimum if you want a life that’s not a complete waste—any amount will do. When we neglect the little things that keep us healthy, it becomes easy to worry about scary monsters that can’t bite.

Even if a tsunami is headed right for you, the safest place to be is wherever God wants you. Maybe by standing at a certain place in the street, the water will pick you up, keep you afloat, and no debris will hit you. But, if you run to a building several floors above the water, the tsunami could collapse the whole building. What we think is safe might not necessarily be safe because we never see everything.

Only God sees everything. He knows where you are safe and where you are in danger. He knows your strengths and weaknesses on a level that you never can. With God at your back, you can walk through anything. So, when it comes time to walk your road, always get God’s opinion about what matters in the situation for today.

299 – I Need Help First

The world is full of semi-good people who help others. Semi-good is the same thing as semi-bad. So, put differently, the world is full of people who who help others while also hurting others. These “semi” people have enough goodness to gain trust, but retain enough ill will to harm people who need help the most once their goodness earns them status.

The truth that semi-good people never come to accept is their own need for help. They help others from perspectives of compassion and concern, the Good Samaritan, and shared love for everyone in the world. But, we all need help.

People who make the biggest difference in the world recognize that they need help just like everyone else. We don’t all need the same kind of help, for the most part, but we are all in desperate need of help and no one is an exception.

The man who helps others from the seat of benevolence and charity—but not from having his own need through which he identifies with those he helps—places himself above others. He sees himself as the demigod who needeth not, helping the lower, unfortunate “lessers” who are beneath him. We can only help others from pure goodness to the extent that we have received needed help ourselves. Any other position from which we purportedly “help” is for nothing beyond our own egos.

Christianity is a religion of pure help and need. It’s not about buildings and priests and liturgies. One can be a Christian without any of those things and many who have all of those things aren’t Christians at all, no matter how much they believe they are. The Christian God died because it was the only way to help humanity. The only One who needed nothing gave everything to help we who had no way of helping ourselves. He came as a baby named Jesus, no other. Acknowledging your own need for Jesus’s help is all it takes to be a Christian, nothing more.

Our universal need for help never ends. Even after receiving help today, we need more tomorrow. “Good” people are good because they help others, remembering that they also need help everyday.

300 – Law of Forgiveness

Forgiving doesn’t always feel like the responsible thing to do, but it frees us to focus on what we need to do, which is the responsible thing to do.

In some sense, forgiveness involves emotions, but it begins as a choice, just like happiness. Forgiving opens up doors, clears roadways, and dislodges log jams so that everything can flow smoothly. It doesn’t actually let anyone off the hook; because the forgiver ends up paying the price it simply changes who is on the hook. So, crime doesn’t go unpunished.

Neglect and apathy are dangerous, but forgiveness is neither. Forgiveness says, “That person doesn’t owe me anymore.” That is anything but apathy or neglect.

Soon, our minds start speculating, “What if I see that person again…” But, these speculations are never, never fruitful. Forgiveness starts a spiral of events so unpredictable that no aftermath can be forecast. Forgiving means not making those purportedly “responsible” speculations. Moreover, its unpredictable aftermath is another reason demons hate forgiveness so much.

Forgiveness is a Law that transcends the spiritual and natural realms. Those things which forgiveness cuts loose don’t only exist where we can see them; forgiveness on Earth looses Heaven to jump on the job when we simply forgive—it’s the Law. Once angels go to work, nothing will make sense anymore. After someone forgives, so many opportunities and anomalous events unfold, no one can write enough books to tell the strangeness of it all.

Sometimes people only get the punishment they deserve when someone forgives them. Unleash Heaven’s justice, surrender your “right” to give what puny punishment mortals can.

Forgiveness seems reckless because, in a sense, it is reckless to smash the dam and let the river flow. Whatever log jam you find yourself in just might be released with a little “reckless” forgiveness. Then, Heaven will get a little “reckless” in pouring out opportunity and help, even into your own seemingly obscure situation.

The Law of Forgiveness is one of the strongest. It was at work with Jesus’s crucifixion. Forgiveness is one of the greatest Laws feared by demons, who will stop at nothing to stop you from forgiving. Don’t buy their lies. Don’t help them. Forgive.

Matthew 18:18

301 – Your Friends Aren’t All Worthless

In Heaven’s Kingdom, God raises up our leaders from among our brethren. David was the runt of his litter. Joseph nearly was the same. Jesus’s family thought he was mentally ill.

For decades, God prepares someone quietly, secretly. The one being prepared may have a sense that the preparation is happening, but still can’t fathom how everything will play out. Even Jesus doesn’t know the hour of his own return to Earth. If Jesus doesn’t know when he will come back to deliver us from the evils on Earth, then there is no way in Heaven or on Earth that we could ever know who is and is not in the quiet fields of preparation for the Lord’s purposes tomorrow.

Everyone looks ordinary in person. Seeing a face on a billboard or movie screen makes a celebrity easy to recognize. But, in person everyone remains human.

Say Einstein were to deliver his theory of relativity to one of his college classmates. Or, imagine if Oswald Chambers had gone off on one of his rants as a student in Sunday school. They would be brushed off as annoying and self-obsessed. But, if either man were to sit down in a television studio and show the world how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the whole world would take notes.

That’s what made Oswald Chambers special to all of us: His wife took notes while he would rant at home. That’s how his famous devotional was written. He dictated off the cuff; she actually wrote it down. We have his words to read because his own family had the insight to value his words first.

Thomas Aquinas was called the “dumb ox” by his classmates because he was fat and soft-spoken. But, his teacher told the class, “One day the ‘dumb ox’ will speak and the whole world will listen.” That teacher recognized talent without needing a movie screen to determine whether his own student had a brain worth publishing.

Don’t assume that your peers can’t include the king God will anoint—that you could never be so ‘lucky’. Your friends aren’t all worthless. Learn to spot talent among your peers before the world does.