confession and professsion

A verse that intrigues me, always has perhaps, is the one about confessing Jesus before men, and He would confess us before God. Reason was that I never heard anyone confess anything directly before men about anything or anyone at all whatsoever. Churches, by way of ritual, freeze out vibrancy and life, by not making allowances for spontaneity and conversational interchange among the congregation.

Discernment Quite Popular
Among the Quiet and the Delicate
Evidence of the Holy Spirit is boldness. Whenever we get a chance to identify our spiritual gifts in the organized church setting, there are always those who say their spiritual gift is discernment. I wonder if they are discerning enough to see that they are putting themselves quietly in the corner because they are mostly timid rather than motivated by the Holy Ghost.

I have seen churches that actually believe that the ability to  draw, solely by itself,  is a spiritual gift. It may be a gift but it is more a talent than spiritual. I think the spirit within motivates us to quietude or to witness boldly.

So right now at this point in my trip through life, I will take the opportunity to say that I believe in Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, dead and buried, who rose again from the dead giving us healing by His stripes and eternal life through His final sacrifice. Accordingly the temple was rent from top to bottom allowing us to enter in before God without any permission from men.

Why, despite knowing about all this, no one else has tried as yet to duplicate this unique story is a telling circumstance. 

Defining terms

Where is that famous verse, now we see through a glass darkly? But soon we will see face to face, suggesting a clearer view in the spiritual now abstract world. This in turns suggests we are in an unstable dream. This in its' turn suggest a world of change, a seemingly concrete world where we are constantly fooled by time.

Then again how can we envision a world without time? How can we trust our impressions? I am thinking it is impossible. We are always engulfed about with a spiritual shell forcing us to decide by faith only, since they are based on so few facts.

Sea of Lethe

So many conundrums! Why is it that with each new facts we learn, each now problem we solve, that we end up with more questions than we started? Nothing can be ultimately proved. There is no assurance anywhere on the horizon. All our learning plunges us deeper into the awareness we are only educating ourselves as to our expanding ignorance. There are more true impressions in the spirit than in the letter of the matter. Opposites attract or interact? Meanwhile the spirit of the matter remains steadfastly more true than the letter.

defining the problem of suffering

First, I divide a question in two and define a key word representing the problem. Then I proceed intellectually to the emotional. Many people do the opposite. They don't divide anything and they begin emotionally. Tackling the problem of suffering I did the same, and so I am extending now my fourth effort to untangle myself.


Without emotion there is no energy to suggest any change, which is why I think of it as Energymotion.  But if you just jump into your subject and go, where are you going? I call those affairs just rants. I start with intellectually and power my intellect with emotion. Next I divide my problem in two. My subject, my problem, was why I was uncomfortable with the idea of picking up my cross and following Jesus. Why should we suffer when Jesus suffered for us? Looked like all they were doing was doing what Jesus had already done as if they were Jesus themselves.

Figuring out how I was wrong is a real can of worms. But Jesus' own words several times telling us to pick up our cross and follow Him, put a real hole in my position after I stopped to recall Him saying that. I was wrong somewhere. I started with the emotional rather than the intellectual. So went back to my proven methods. Suffering for Jesus seemed contradictory requiring another word to define, worship.

So I defined suffering but that definition led my to defining worship which cause me to stumble. So I am beginning again with my fourth try. The cross is the symbol of suffering and suffering onto death. If one lives long enough suffering often enters the picture, and eventually we die. It is not a pretty picture stumbling down the road until I found I was once a man but twice a child.

So I've already defined suffering to some extent and next I will define worship and put them together to define suffering the next time,

if God is in control then......

If God does not draw you to himself then you then you are left to your own devices. I am always conscious of this strange fact I've observed in other people. They take rather firm and firey positions based on definitely flimsy facts. If they are based on the Bible it usually turns out many were not aware their foundation did not include most of the information they already should have known. When I mention that God has to draw you first or you cannot not follow Jesus they often get highly irate. Many fell away in the Bible when they heard Jesus express this view and these folks apparently would themselves had they been there. Where is that in the Bible? Well it is there alright and if they did not know that then they can find it themselves. (I can get as uppity and anyone else they quickly discover if they hang anywhere around here very long ;-)

who is in control

Either our spirit controls our body or the body will control our spirit. 

where faith comes

My favorite book is John and I have to include Hebrews. There are many books and some a better than others comforting you in the middle of the night. I printed out several calling them Night Thoughts. 

When you are suddenly confronted with a severe threat to the body and your faith does not pick up enough courage in the doctor's office, these are the verses I will need. They must be reading in my pocket or my spirit within. Faith comes from reading these verses until they are part of my spirit, nothing doubting, nothing wavering. This is the only way to gain faith I am aware of in the Bible.

Another way, everyone should have their own, to gain more faith is to convince yourself you are dead in Christ already. We cannot gain faith from within that will remain. It must come from another source outside ourselves. Everything works in twos it seems to me. This what I did when I was a soldier defending my Group, considering myself dead already. This freed me from fears which confront everyone when they are at extreme risk.

When you are a soldier you are a team for the Group and you cannot question the team coaches or you will be totally ineffective. There is nothing heroic about it, you are just doing what is expected. It is also like playing a baseball game. I decide whether I am a player or an umpire. I can't do both, so this is the way I do not question Christ if something does not work out as I anticipated.

I do not decide anything did not work out as Christ expected, otherwise I would have ended my faith. The bedrock of faith is persistence, If I put a time limit on anything I am turning off my faith. Where persistence remains, faith does not weaken.

The faith chapter

Hebrews 5:14. Faith will be needed when our spirit is freed of the body, even if unexpectedly. Only faith pleases God. Some seem to think that faith means you agree with the pastor, or that you go along with the Bible. You will find how much faith you have when you are in the foxhole of fear and time appears to be disappearing. Thinking just does not happen to us, thinking is a conscious effort of reasoning originating within and not from without. This is the way it appears to me now.