The wounds we deliver - Parenthood

The words of Henri Nouwen, a Jesuit Priest remind me today of words that I have spoken often to my fellow parents that our kids are strangers in our house. We have been given these children to help them find God’s purpose for their lives. What I want to call your attention to is the wounds we give our children that we might not realize we inflict upon them. My own experience is that the greatest wound we can give to our kids is to treat them as our property. When we treat them as if we own them, it brings out own insecurity and lack of faith that God will work out their lives without our control and manipulation. The foundation/covenant of God’s love and therefore ours too is to love. Foundational to love is freedom; a freedom to make decisions as to what is right(towards God’s will) or wrong(away from God’s will). Controlling our kids breeds great anxiety in them by fostering a fear if they do make their own decision and it results in a failure that we might not love them or judge them; judgment is a withdrawal of love.

I have seen and experienced firsthand the lifelong damage that controlling parents have had on their grown children. The results of this judgment and control breed insecure adults who are unable to deal with how hard life is, so they turn to coping mechanisms like alcohol, drugs, materialism, and sex. These coping mechanisms let them feel good temporarily and in the end due to the guilt of the cover up sins, it compounds the original defeating issue resulting in furthering to decrease their self esteem(worth less to God or anyone feeling). Insecurity is really a lack of feeling loved and when we are not loved the burn of loneliness creeps in. A wise psychologist said that these life forces rule our every decision in life; fear of abandonment, need for autonomy, and the need to be connected. Funny thing is this sounds like the basis of love and it came from a non-Christian therapist.

I know and have been guilty of trying to control my kid’s by telling them what do and think in hopes they will not make a mistake. We as parents need to realize our mistakes made us who we are today. Most of you I know well enough to somewhat understand your wounds. It is the healing of those wounds that has made each of us into beautiful works of God and why I enjoy and learn from each of you. God literally broke/killed His only Son in order to give us life. So, I plead with each one of you today to let your kids make mistakes and not control them, so they too can know Jesus and understand that we like Him, love them no matter what they do. My job is to share my experiences with my kids and to create a safe loving environment by which if they do fail/fall that they can come to me and God for comfort and further guidance. If we take the vantage point of controlling them, they will seek someone other than us or God to bear their mistake which is usually not a good thing.

Don’t take my word look at your friends who had controlling judgmental parents. I will bet most of them have issues that are apparent. Take a minute to read the excerpt below. I know you will and especially your kids be blessed by Henri’s wisdom.

The Great Gift of Parenthood
Children are their parents' guests. They come into the space that has been created for them, stay for a while - fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years - and leave again to create their own space. Although parents speak about "our son" and "our daughter," their children are not their property. In many ways children are strangers. Parents have to come to know them, discover their strengths and their weaknesses, and guide them to maturity, allowing them to make their own decisions.The greatest gift parents can give their children is their love for each other. Through that love they create an anxiety-free place for their children to grow, encouraging them to develop confidence in themselves and find the freedom to choose their own ways in life.
These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

Christianity is:

I think we each should ponder William Wilberforce’s quotes below at to what Christianity is about especially his third statement. William was especially jealous to keep clear the right relationship between good works and justification.

Wilberforce said, "Christianity is:
1. a scheme "for justifying the ungodly" [Romans 4:5], by Christ's dying for them "when yet sinners" [Romans 5:6-8],
2. a scheme "for reconciling us to God"—when enemies [Romans 5:10];

3. and for making the fruits of holiness the effects, not the cause, of our being justified and reconciled."

Justification is the doctrine that God pardons, accepts, and declares a sinner to be "just" on the basis of Christ's righteousness (Rom 3:24-26; 4:25; 5:15-21) which results in God's peace (Rom 5:1), His Spirit (Rom 8:4), and salvation. Justification is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ apart from all works and merit of the sinner. Wikipedia

Holiness defined as being or the process of being separated unto God.

Or maybe I can put this into my own words that Christianity is bearing fruit(expressing inward and outward joy in loving Jesus) by letting(given up control) Jesus bare our sins(those things that we do/did not Glorify the Father) that through His gift (no anything we gave/give) of Grace which is a call that we hear in our hearts. The result shows the world around us we love Him. When you truly love someone or something it cannot be helped from being noticed. It is why telling someone you love them doesn’t work as well as the action of loving someone with a hug, kiss, a look and/or just being satisfied or well pleased pleased with them. A good example is that when I am most satisfied in Dean a huge smile comes across his face. This is how God must feel when we are satisfied in His Son.

God is most glorified, when we are most joyful in Him. So our life's purpose is to find JOY in knowing Jesus; He takes care of the rest(fruits).

The Cup of Loneliness

Today Lord you have burdened my heart and mind to grapple with the misunderstood theme of loneliness; our inescapable call to solitude. This call to solitude is best described by Moses in the account of Adam in the creation story, when Adam realized he was different from all the animals of the world (Genesis 2:20). Adam realized his uniqueness made him feel intensely alone. However, God knew Adam and understood his loneliness and deemed it was not good for Adam to feel this way (quote). Adam needed a helper (Genesis 2:18). This Helper He called Eve. The New King James Bible describes Eve’s role as a “help meet”. I understand this to say, a woman is made to “help man meet” God. Eve is God’s crowning of His creation; the last activity God did before He rested on the seventh day. God designed her to reveal the glory and power of His creation; in her strengths, beauty, and most important ability to bare His children. Eve in her greatest relationship capacities beckons Adam to be in relationship with creation and God. Eve’s image reflects God’s heart; creative, beautiful, graceful, and nurturing. It is God’s love for us that is best shown in the power of a connected, innocence, open hearted woman. This Godly woman is rightly defined in Proverbs 31:10-31. She completes God’s triune Love; man, woman, and God all in one relationship. This triune relationship entirely glorifies God when He is the focus of a man and a woman coming together. God did not intend for us to remove Him from equation. God gives us this relationship as a tangible, earthly, experiential gift for us to use while in our temporary physical lives. Yes, we will only need marriage while here on earth, that in heaven we will not need marriage (Matthew 22:30).

The story of Adam and Eve in the garden shows us how our original parents took upon themselves to remove God from this Tri-union. They thought they only needed each other as a way to escape their loneliness. What they soon learned is their union could only temporarily and partially suppress the loneliness. Marriage is not in itself a true escape from loneliness. It is easy to see how the two-in-one union that was so powerful in the early days of the relationship soon fades and loneliness again sets in to stay until one acts in defiance, in order to break the grip of loneliness. This gets filled in many ways but mostly by self activities or busyness.

This feeling of loneliness is a result of our lack of understanding that God made us to be in a relationship with Him, whether we are married or single. All of us are made unique for God's purposes; this uniqueness gives us each a feeling of aloneness and separateness. He made us to be separated to Him and by this we cannot truly experience true joy unless we stay separated to Him. Most single people find it easier staying separated to God, but for most of us He calls us to marriage. Marriage does not replace being separated to God but calls the union of the man and one in a one flesh covenant to make Him a part of this union. God loves to work in threes as in the Trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Marriage covenant is not to make us happy, but to make us "holy" by which I mean it give us a better understanding who God is. We must make God the focal point in our marriages, if we expect them to prosper, let alone survive. The greatest expression of this union is when a man and woman unite in sexual intimacy. This joining of the flesh restores our unity even if it only lasts for a few minutes it still has a strong capacity to quenches our loneliness. Sex when done rightly, is a Glorification of God’s covenant of marriage, thus glorifying the perfection of His original design of sex. Sex does such a phenomenal job at satisfying loneliness. It is easy to how our culture has perverted sex's power. However, this is not the goal of sex but a bi-product of the temporary union. Sex in triune fashion creates and deepens the male, female bond for life.

Let me end these thoughts with what I intended to chase down today in the first place. We all yearn for communion with someone or something greater than ourselves. We are all so desperate to be in communion that we try to fill it with anything we can. There are thousands of things we do in this life to try to remove this feeling of which keeping busy and numb top the list. I will submit a solution, one that will be exceedingly contrary our intellect; that we need to befriend and embrace the pain of our loneliness. As we embrace this pain, it begins to point us back to God as our one true source of life; the one who gave us our hearts. Can you imagine the loneliness that Jesus felt going to the cross? No, but He did it out of the will of His Father and His atoning sacrifice for us; the elect, who chose to believe. Can you fathom what it would be like be on death row just hours to your death? As we approach our death, the unknown of what lies for us on the other side, knowing we cannot take anything with that gave us comfort in the material world or can we take anyone with us. It is this ultimate loneliness where God showed us how much He loves us by killing His one and only Son. The pain of loneliness in this world gives us an opportunity to believe in Jesus; promise to give us life especially when we feel like we are dying in our loneliness. In the end God can only satisfy our loneliness, whether single or married.

My hope is you drink this cup of pain as Jesus did knowing that as your drink of Him. He will restore your heart; a good heart, a new heart, a heart for relationship that includes Him. This loneliness we all have in common, every one of us. It is a place we all understand. It is a place to meet and give your gift to the world. Be lonely my friends; drink as much as you can in those times. It will strengthen you and provide you a passionate heart to love.

Mocking His Marriage Covenant

My Friends-

We call ourselves men and women who love Christ but we fear not the wrath of Him who will judge us. We take His laws and covenants and make a mockery of them my disobeying them. God gave us the covenant of marriage as a gift and to protect us from evil. He gave us the 10 commandments because He loves us and new we need rules to keep us safe and closer to him. Covenants, like the laws are to protect us from evil and to make us pleasing to God. We have answered the question "Why we are here?" for it is only and truly only to glorify our Jesus. Yet we take these laws and covenants and break them as we see fit to make ourselves happy. We rationalize our the circumstances that surround our disobedience and justify our breaking of His laws/covenants. How would it go over in a court of law if we explained to the judge that “Judge, I was just speeding 120 mph in a 65 mph zone because it made me happy and felt good.” The Judge would laugh and say “Son, the laws are in place to protect you and the good of all. I don’t care it made you feel good. I find you guilty of breaking the law.” I say to you “is not Jesus going to judge us rightly for those laws and covenants we broke?”

There are two separate judgments outlined in the Bible. We will be judged at the Judgment Seat of Christ (Romans 14:10-12). Every believer will give an account of himself/herself, and the Lord will judge the decisions he/she made—including those concerning issues of conscience. This judgment does not determine salvation, which is by faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-9), but rather is the time when believers must give an account of their lives in service to Christ.

God gave us the covenant of marriage as a gift. The gift was given to us for God knew we were lonely and we needed a helper (Genesis 2:18). You and I have taken this gift and have done things with it that has made God very angry. We have defiled and used this gift for our own pleasures and sometimes at the expense of another person’s judgment day. I am referring to having sex outside of marriage. Sex or better put becoming “one flesh”(Mark 10:8) was a sign or an ongoing ratification of the marriage covenant. Nowhere in the bible does it speak to sex as a gift for our enjoyment outside being married. We must avoid all fornication(sex outside of marriage) 1 Corinthians 4:2 and it is the only sin we can do against our own body(1Corinthians 6:18) which is a temple of God. So therefore you sin against God who made us in His image (Genesis 1:27).

The following passage in 1 Corinthians 6:12-15 from The Message paraphrases the Bible so well. “12Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims. 13You know the old saying, "First you eat to live, and then you live to eat"? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that's no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body! 14-15God honored the Master's body by raising it from the grave. He'll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master's body. You wouldn't take the Master's body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not.” The Message

My fellow brothers/sisters in Christ in order to please and glorify God I submit and demand we can no longer in good conscious disobey God and break His covenants and laws blatantly in the name of personal fulfillment or in thinking we are helping that other person know God. Let me add that sex with another person outside of marriage does not heal our own wounds of past relationships or prepare us to be better lovers in the future.

I end these words to back up my warnings for they are scriptural and are spoken so well in 2 Timothy of why God gave us scripture which in lies His laws and covenants.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”- 2 Timothy 3:16-17

So I ask you this day are you willing to hold each other and ourselves to higher standards, the one’s our God laid out for us? Will you save the gift for your last lover so that your body is as pure for that person as it can be?

Come on just listen to His voice that one that speaking into your heart by ways of guilt or irritations. Quit it before He starts yelling and the gift box becomes tattered and worn.

A Heart Which Grows Younger

Jesus calls us to be child like to know the Father.
Matthew 11:25-26
"At that time Jesus said, 'I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.'"

This is a beautiful prayer by a young woman who died at the age of 24. The wisdom God imparts to those that free their minds of this world and learn to hear His call.

Pray with me-

Lord give me the open heart of a child,
Let me come trustingly to You not afraid to ask for Your love,
Deliver me from the belief that I am self suficient,
Show my need of You,
Give me the grace to reach out to you,
Give me a child's simplicity and sense of wonder,
May my enthusiasm for you never dim,
Let me hasten to converse with you in the intimacy of prayer,
Give me discernment to realize there is no detail of my life to tiny for Your concern,
Help me to perceive your glory and the helplessness of the cross,
Son of God for my sake took on dependency of childhood,
Help me to accept the readiness of the Fathers grace.
Amen
Saint Theresa of Lisieux

I am Dying In Front of You

Do not worry about me my friends for the things I write/speak about are a glimpse of the battle between my spirit and my flesh. For by the grace of God does my flesh die little by little with each tribulation in my life. Part of me that you know dies right in front of you and I know when some of you see this somehow you feel the pain in your heart too. For when we die to this world we truly live. FaceBook Status Post


From KO - The only real truth we have in this world comes from the Good Book. We try to make up or rationalize our own based on our own wants/ desires yet it never seems to fit what God wants for us! Oh the human condition what an affliction to try and fight everyday! Why do we do that???
September 6 at 11:39pm

Not Between PLEASE

One day joy will visit again yet only for a short time and in joys departure I will come to know God more. If you find me numb and not passionate please wake me, share with me a struggle or wound so that I may return quickly to realizing Life needs/is pain. Without pain I cannot recognize or fully appreciate the fleeting moments of pure joy. I would rather be crying in pain and crying in joy then be in between.

Simone Weil was right; there are only two things that pierce the human heart: beauty and affliction.

The Work Between

My life is defined better by what I am not. I am not my mistakes and I am definitely not my successes for those are the sounds of a gong. I am sort of working who God wants me to be in the between. Its the between where the numbness and forgetfulness of the works God wants us to do there.

JB on June 23 at 4:49pm
...you're not how much money you've got in the bank. You're not your job. You're not your family, and you're not who you tell yourself.... You're not your name.... You're not your problems.... You're not your age.... You are not your hopes.


AS on June 23 at 7:36pm
The life in between part is the best of all. I can vouch.

SM on June 23
hmmm... interesting. But isn´t it a lazy way of trying not to define who you really are? If your are 40 years old, for example, that is a better picture of you than saying that you are not 39, or 43, or 74, or 89, or 95.... no?

Email Teaching

Here are some of the quotes I have used over the last 2 years at the bottom of my personal emails. Just my way of sharing the light.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein

“PRIDE is a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” C.S. Lewis

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! II Corinthians 9:15

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. James 2:18

"The Desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but deep people." Richard Foster - Celebration of Discipline

We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain— money, position, the approval of others, or just absence of the discontent itself—it’s not worth it. “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matt. 16:26). Journey of Desire by John Eldredge

"Children need two basic messages when they are growing up: You are loved more than you can possibly imagine, and, You are not the center of the universe." Way of the Wild at Heart by John Eldredge

A man wants to know that he is truly a man, that he could be brave; he longs to know that he is a warrior; and all his life he wonders, “Have I got what it takes?” A woman wants to know that she is truly a woman, that she is beautiful; she longs to know that she is captivating; and all her life she wonders, “Do I have a beauty to offer?” Waking the Dead by J. Eldredge

16Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4 NIV

Finding Eve, Finding Adam - sermon

What Our Parents Should Of Taught US

What I am about to tell you comes from deep in my heart. It is from years of experience and how if I could do it over I would do it differently. I want you to have an unbelievable life filled with Love. In a way I know you will make a lot of mistakes like I have in trying to find love. I just hope I can make a difference and show you some of the pitfalls to avoid. I hope you know you too can find love. I pray you don’t miss it like some many people have and die without finding your true Adam/Eve. You can choose here to numb up, give into what culture is teaching you or you can embrace a different way of life. One that Jesus came to tell us about living and loving from our heart. This is the life God intended you to have. Here is what I tell my daughters and son. At the end I have written some honesty letters I hope you will use as you purse finding love.

I would do it differently but no one told me these things I am telling you. I think we as parents are afraid if we tell you our mistakes you will want to make the same ones! I doubt that. You will make different ones. I want to equip you with wisdom and tools to help you navigate life. This is really important for most of us the pain in life is from making poor choices about love because no one taught us these relationship skills early on it our lives. We just had to figure this out by trial and error.

(FOR MEN)

Young men you have tremendous power and influence over young women. They seek and want your approval which causes them to want to please you. This wanting to please you sexually is not out of love but out of the need to be accepted by you. So remember when you ask her to have sex with you that you are taking something very precious from her. You are taking part of her heart, her gift and you are trying to fit that missing rib piece. You cannot give it back to her through words or any deeds. You take a small piece of her flesh, her spirit. In my experience I live with the thought of everyone woman I have had intimate relations with and today that does not feel right in my heart.

As men we find ourselves pursuing woman with all sorts of energy and charm. We romance them. We treat them like gifts they are. This courting process is very intense and the women love it. Why do they love it? They soak it up because this is what their hearts dream about to be treated like a princess. The problem comes when we do capture their hearts, we become intimate with them then soon after when the chase is over and thrill of the capture is over we lose interest. We have conquered them got to know them intimately then something in us loses interest so we dump them. The women feel used for they ask why did he pursue me so hard then to have sex with me then he left me. Why I don’t understand I must not be good enough pretty enough, not sexy enough!! Why did we lose interest? I will submit to you all that what drives us to find Eve, to woe her, get to Know her is that innate drive to find our missing piece. I don’t care how old we are 16 or 50 this drive also about us not wanting to be truly alone. We mistakenly call this a sex drive and therefore seek to satisfy it by just a physical act. What I want you to understand that just satisfying the physical desire by using women will cause you and her much harm. You will find out that the physical act done alone with love and commitment creates a bigger need. Lust takes over you will look for more and more experiences to fill this unquenchable desire. This will lead you to high risk sex and porn. Porn will destroy your ability to be truly intimate with a woman. Porn does not require intimacy it doesn’t require you to be a man. It is false sexuality and a sin. Everything around from movies to main stream media to your friends have deceived you by telling you sex is selfish and about gratification. Seriously men this where we get our hearts into lots of trouble, this is not the way to find meaning in life. We are conditioned and rewired to have sex before we develop love and intimacy and commitment. For the most part woman have not be rewired to the extent by culture like we have. They still understand their hearts much better than we do and seek commitment, intimacy and love prior to sex. But they give in to your constant pressure because they fear they will not be like if they don’t and culture is also making them think it’s ok to give in even though their hearts and intuition cry out “NO, I don’t even really know this guy.”

Men you have a huge task in front of you and that is to rewire yourself to control your impulses, to discipline your sexual desire and energies and focus those in other places, hopefully to advance God’s kingdom. You don’t have to conquer women to be a man. You have to be careful with you strength for this ability has been give to use to not find many women but to find that ONE WOMAN your EVE. Save as much as you can for that one. Then when you have found her give her all you got. Give her the Gift of You for a life time, better yet how about for an eternity. I know I know this is a huge sacrifice I struggle with this myself. But I believe and there are men who have done this and the payoff can be more joy than you can believe or you can do it like most of us WRONG be unhappily married, unfulfilled, stressed out and miss out on finding your true EVE. She is out there just don’t settle and don’t give up until you can SAY as Adam said “this is bone of my bone flesh of my flesh”. Her are some signs you found her when your friends all say you are stupid for not marrying her soon. Then you know you have found the right one! J If your friends and family don’t like her beware. Also listen to God he will definitely help primarily through irritations. When you don’t heed the irritations God has shown you then you are doomed for troubles trust me I ignored way to many!

THE HONESTY LETTERS for men – If you could ask each new love interest you encounter after the first date to write you a letter this is what each might say. We’ll put a spell of absolute truth on them so they really tell you their thoughts. I don’t think you will need a spell but a simple pray of discernment might help. These are three letters the first from the HURTING SARA, the second the POPULAR JANE, the third from SWEET HEART let’s call her your Eve. I hope these help you identify the right men to date.

Letter 1

Dear Adam:

I am HURTING SARA. I have a lot of problems and I am depressed most of the time because the mistakes and choices I have made early in my life. I don’t feel safe or right if I am not with a man. I go from one relationship to the next. I hate being alone. I had sex when I was 14 with a guy that was 18. He dumped me after he had sex with me. He said I was too immature. I like to party and drink vodka, it takes away my worries. My parents don’t understand me and pretty much leave me alone. They don’t care when I come home at night. Most of my problems are not my fault. I really don’t enjoy sex, but I will do it to please you, so you will stay around. I wear sexy cloths to get attention. School is a drag. I am not involved in much it just a waste of time. I hope you think I am pretty because my self esteem is really low. You need to tell me I am pretty all the time. Sometimes I think I don’t want to live. Please don’t ever leave me, I don’t know what I would do without you.

Sincerely, HURTING SARA
Letter 2

Dear Adam:

My name is POPULAR JANE. I am so busy that I may not have much time to spend with you. I am captain of the dance team. I play soccer on two teams and I take piano and I am in honors everything. Forgot to tell you I am in two after school clubs. I have lots of friends who admire me for how beautiful I am and that I have a new convertible. I want to be upfront, life is about me and what you can do for me. So you need to be the perfect boyfriend and make me look good at all times. I expect you to be romantic especially in how you ask me to parties. I want all the others girls to be jealous of me, how you show me you like me. I love gifts especially jewelry. I don’t like your friends their stupid, so don’t expect me to hang out with you and them all together. I go to church with my parents and church is cool, but I just don’t get it, however it's great place to hang out with friends and be seen.

If we are to someday get married, I will be very expensive to take care, so you should want to make a lot of money. You know I am my daddy’s little princess. I really don’t want to work that is for other people. And one of my pet peeves is that you are not to roll down the windows in your car when I am with you because it will mess my hair up that took me 2 hours to straighten this morning. Oh, I almost forgot I love to talk on the phone, but don’t go deep with me I hate that and that is not what life’s about anyway. Got to go, lots to do, people to see and talk to!

Lots of Love, POPULAR JANE

Letter 3

Dear Adam:

My name is Eve. Our first date was amazing I have never talked to man like you. You are so honest and open. It was so cool you took me to that lookout tower to see the city lights and just to talk to me and get to know me. It was nice on the 2nd date you asked to hold my hand. I just wanted you to know, I really want to wait until I am married to have sex. If that bothers you I understand most boys dump me when they hear that. I kind of think that’s all young men want these days. I hope you’re different. I am very active at church and volunteering my free time at the homeless shelter once a month. I want to study psychology in college so I can work with kids who have mental disorders. My parents are pretty cool and are proud of whom I am. My Dad is really protective so beware. Also, my brother’s look out for me, but I asked them about you and they said you were ok to date. Trust is a big deal for me in a relationship. I will always tell you the truth. I have a lot to give to the man I love. I want to make sure we are friends even if this doesn’t work out between us. I look forward to getting to know you. Thanks for the great first two dates.

Love, Eve


(FOR WOMEN)

I need you to be careful for you hold a power over men you might not understand today. Most of you know this already. God created you as the crowning touch of His creation giving you beauty not only physically but in your whole being. You can stir in men a deep desire for union, for sex. Be careful how you stir them. The clothes you wear the things you say and the touches you give them. These are all signals men process without you knowing it. I don’t think you realize they want more from you than I think most of you want to give. You are equipped differently than men. You are much more in tune with your heart. You sense the Holy Spirit presence in you. Some call it intuition. It is that knowing at a different level than that of the mind. Your inner wisdom and life experiences are just not enough to deal with the longing and desires of your heart. This is what makes your young age so dangerous to your heart. I have seen the most deep and life altering wounds come to women when they are in their teens and early twenties. This is the time when you need to seriously guard your hearts. Most often than not these wounds come because your hearts lead you to what you thought was love and commitment and it wasn’t it.

When love is new it is intoxicating. It feels like nothing could ever go wrong with this. Your right it is beautiful, it is freeing, it is how God wants us to love him and the way He loves us. He gave it to you for a reason to draw you closer to your Adam. However, to develop real love and intimacy it takes time not 2 weeks 2 month but most often years. Not only does it take time, it takes work to know someone intimately. Trust is core and we can only trust another completely as we see how they act, how talk, how these men treat you. A woman friend said to me something that is so true, “everything will be found out sooner or later.” Meaning we need time to know someone deeply before we commit our secrets to them.

Let’s talk about what a good man is about. Let’s set the standards high, for the quest is for your Adam. No halfway, no substitute, no giving in! First a man is about the truth. No half truths no white lies. He is only as good as his word. If he can’t keep his word to you or others get rid of him. This you should not budge on. This is the basis for trust in a relationship. Next is loyalty. He is with you completely or no relationship. If he constantly looking around at other women and not focused on you then this one has to go. Hear this YOU CANNOT CHANGE A MAN OR DOMESTICATE HIM. NOT your job let a half dozen other women take a try at. Let them realized whose really in control that is God. Advice: A man’s mission in life is not to make your life easier. He and you will need his mission in life to be something bigger. He needs the freedom and encouragement to give and make this a better world and push the Kingdom forward. Let him go fight the war then come back to your love. Give him a safe place to rest from his mission. Encourage him and he will prosper and provide you more love if let him do this.

Why we like bad boys!!!

God will communicate and guide you in this adventure to find your Adam. God’s communications will always be there to assist you. You just have to learn to listen. He loves to help primarily with irritating you. When something bugs you, causes pain your heart or just doesn’t feel right this is Him telling to open your eyes and act. If you ignore His help then for sure you will suffer. Sometimes you might have to suffer in the short term to avoid a major heart break later on. I can tell you I missed countless communications from God and rationalized those irritations away pushed them down to only have them re-appear later as catastrophes.

God has given you beauty, given you the ability to give life, He has given you a heart to share with the world. The world needs you in your full capacity. God made our bodies for one other person to give as a gift to each other as way of expressing love. Sex is the means by which we ultimately express that love. It is a giving up of our most inner secret and gift. It is the total expression of who we are. It is a tying of our spirit to another person. It is an act of rejoining not only with a man but with God. It is a place where you reveal your heart totally. Sex without love wounds our hearts it reduces this love act to physical release robbing your heart of its true need and that is being so connected to another man it creates a temporary heaven on earth, a safe place that no one else can enter no one else can destroy that no one else can understand but you two. It is truly life’s meaning and secret. Please contemplate in your heart before you give this gift to a man. Before you give him your gift for it is not much of a gift you have given the same thing to a handful of other men. I know deep in your hearts that you want to save and protect this for your Adam, your last lover.

THE HONESTY LETTERS for women – If you could ask each new love interest you encounter after the first date to write you a letter this is what each might say. We’ll put a spell of absolute truth on them so they really tell you their thoughts. I don’t think you will need a spell but a simple pray of discernment might help. These are three letters the first from the BAD BOY, the second the SELFISH JOCK, the third from GOOD YOUNG MAN let’s call him your Adam. I hope these help you identify the right men to date.

Letter 1

Dear Eve:

My name is BAD BOY. I graduated last year and I am not sure college is right for me. I am a lot of fun. I like to push life to max. I am dangerous. I take risks I probably shouldn’t. I really can’t stand my parents they don’t understand me. I like to get drunk and sometimes smoke pot. Again I like to live life to the fullest. Sex is important to me because its fun and feels good. I hope you like sex because I expect it and the sooner the better. I have had lots of girlfriends some call me a player. I am popular and good looking as you know. Life is about what I can get from it. I have a fast car in which I like to push to the limits, probably not so safe at times. I really don’t want to meet your dad but if you make me I will. My friends will say bad things about you if you try to make me no fun. I will tell you what I what you want to hear so I can get what I want. I don’t like your friends, they talk too much. Why do you like your parents? You’re too emotional. So it’s really about me you should know that and as long as I get what I want I will keep you around. Love who needs love lets just have fun and not be serious.

See you Saturday night, meet me a Ben’s party. I will get some alcohol for you. See if you can spend the night at a friend’s where you can stay out late! Your parents are too strict. Got to go!

Bad Boy
Letter 2
Dear Eve:

My name is SELFISH JOCK. I am the stud running back on the football team and I lettered when I was a sophomore. I live in that real expensive neighborhood just down the street from the school. You should come over to check it out. I got a new porche for my birthday last year because I got better than a “C” average on my report card. Let’s get things started right in this relationship. I want you to look good when you’re with me. That’s right I have an image to up hold. I only date the pretty most popular girls. Don’t be embarrassed if I tell all my buddies about our relationship and especially the sex part. Man they love to hear how good I am. My parents think I hung the moon and that I do nothing wrong. I like to drink but not during football can’t risk a MIP, coach would bench me for sure. I will meet your dad and act like a gentleman so you can be rest assured too that your mom will love my charm, my nice guy approach always works. Why do you talk so much? That bugs me a lot. I don’t like prudes are you one? Why do you spend so much time at church? Isn’t it boring? Do your parents make you go? Don’t ask me to go I will feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to get to serious, just serious enough to have sex with you. My friends are more important than you. If I start blowing you off and not paying attention to you then that’s a sign I don’t want to date you anymore. I am trying to let you down easy so you will not be hurt. I have a hard time being honest and I am not sure what I want in a woman, so if I change my mind you will have to guess.

See ya soon, SELFISH JOCK

Letter 3

Dear Eve:

My name is Adam and I had a great time with you over the past two dates. Our conversations were amazing. I love that you go to church and are passionate about helping people. I like your smile it lights up the room. I can listen to you talk all night, sorry about the late night calls but it so nice to go to bed knowing that I met a really cool girl. I have to be honest having sex is really risky you know with pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases! If any of that happened it would really change my life. I really hope you want to wait too. I really want to give you a kiss so when you’re ready please let me know. It was nice that your dad is so worried about you when he talked to me before our first date. What a good dad you have that is awesome and makes me feel better about who you are. Your mom invited me to dinner next week that sounds like fun to get to know them better. I hope your brother likes me. I am looking forward to getting to know you. If I ever make you feel upset or something goes wrong between us I hope you know that you can tell me anything and I will not judge you.

As you know my work, school and my passion for soccer are important to me. But I want you to know you are important too. I would really enjoy you watching me play and I so want to see you dance. As I told you on the first date I am a pretty private and trust is important. You are amazing thanks for giving me a chance to get to know you.

Sincerely, Adam


Can you tell the different perspective on life each of these young men have? See how the focus should be on you? Do you feel the heart of the Adam letter? I pray that God gives you the ability to discern with your heart the truth. Let us remember the words Paul used in letter to the Corinthians about Love. If there is a passage ever to keep with you it is this:

1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. (1 Corinthians 12 The Message)

It is also important to know what love and life is not so we turn to Galatians 5:

16 So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. 17 The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. 18 But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.

19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, 21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

I want to leave you with a challenge. Your parents have been through all this themselves. Maybe not the exactly the same way you are going through things but I bet if you seek their knowledge and wisdom they will open up a wealth of wisdom that you can surely use. I know it’s difficult to talk to them about these things it may be tough to start but be persistant and keeping an open heart will help you develop a new rapport with them. Remember something in them doesn’t want to tell you the mistakes and bad decisions they made because they think it will be a license for you to make those same ones. Because they drank at an early age doesn’t give you the right either. They probably don’t want to tell you all the icky details of their mistakes either just don’t judge them for their own mistakes it has made them who they are and that’s why you love them. Most young people I know don’t want to make the mistakes of their parents. They want to be better people to have more joy and love and less pain.

We all learn best from Story. It is why the bible is a collection of thousands of stories otherwise called parables. We all have a story to tell even at your age. In the end the choices you make are yours to live with forever. The ones you make now will affect you the rest of your story. The question is what story do you want to tell your kids in the future good ones or bad ones?

I Go By Way of the Heart

A few things came up in my talks with God I wanted to share. Sometimes He put things on my heart I don’t quite understand until a series of events or His communications are put together. Last week He said to me “Test him” did know what that meant but I said bring it on. What I realize know is Saturday night and Sunday were a test for me to see if I would truly go with my heart and not the rational mind I so depended upon in the past to make big decisions in life. I wrestled thru Sunday called out for help from friends who gave me their rational thoughts. Not one of them put themselves into my life to feel what I feel to truly understand the pain of my heart. I cried out that my heart was breaking. I didn’t need rational thoughts I needed someone to just show me some compassion that I was hurting. So God knew what I needed a friend who understood where you were and I was to truly help me. Thank God he sent an old friend to counsel me. My friend gave me her story for it is what my heart needed.

As you know I was heart sick for several days. This test was really big for me for I am learning that friends and even ones I trust want to provide cultural rational wisdom to help. In dealing with Love, sorrow, pain and those things of the heart we need to be less rational and more compassion to try to truly swallow those situations those feelings into our own heart. From there ask God and the Holy Spirit to give us words or a hug or just be silent to the other person.

Lord please help me give less rational advice. I also need to rely now more on my heart and God’s. He gives me much better advice and counsel then my friends.

God is strengthening me for the Kingdom I know to so to live the Kingdom way. I am learning so much being feed on a daily basis. I know God is with me. I know He is doing more than I can comprehend. He is guiding , teaching, loving, and preparing me for His needs.

This God gave to me yesterday but I read the verses around it and it is what he was trying to teach me this week. His Wisdom is for me to trust the Holy Spirit that resides in me. Maybe I should of said my Holy Spirit was manifesting itself as physical sickness be it wanted me to not do what my rational mind was doing!!!

Corinthians 2:6-15 (The Message)
6-10We, of course, have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it's not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so. God's wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don't find it lying around on the surface. It's not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. The experts of our day haven't a clue about what this eternal plan is. If they had, they wouldn't have killed the Master of the God-designed life on a cross. That's why we have this Scripture text: No one's ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it— What God has arranged for those who love him. But you've seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.
10-13The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along. Whoever knows what you're thinking and planning except you yourself? The same with God—except that he not only knows what he's thinking, but he lets us in on it. God offers a full report on the gifts of life and salvation that he is giving us. We don't have to rely on the world's guesses and opinions. We didn't learn this by reading books or going to school; we learned it from God, who taught us person-to-person through Jesus, and we're passing it on to you in the same firsthand, personal way.

Numb

No longer numbed by culture and my own ego I find the movement of my heart tough to bear. The energy and pain it takes to follow Jesus is much more than I ever expected. The church does not tell us the reality of this and they go so far as to tell us that Christianity is full of bliss and reward; the easy way. Maybe that’s numb Christianity, the so called DOING Christianity they are referring to. Numb meaning I shied away from any type of pain or sorrow. I avoid any sort of situation where compassion was needed. It felt awkward when someone told me they were hurting. I did not know what to say or do. Funerals no way! I looked for any excuse not go. I remember a good friend of mine died in college from a tragic car accident. His funeral was so unbearable to me. So I did life with an unreal positive outlook and convinced myself that if I was just positive enough nothing would go wrong. People that had problems just had bad karma from not being positive. How wrong I was, how dumb, how insensitive I must have been. In short I thought I was a little god that I controlled my world. Well in a way all that pain and sorrow built up in me stored in my heart and then over time I cracked. God started the process of cleaning me out. He took it all my marriage, a successful business, and all my materials thing after that he called my name and gave me my heart back clean and opened up. Now I can feel my heart again the numbness gone but not forgotten.

There is almost a guilt I feel when I tell people about my faith and love for God. Guilt in that I am telling them if they choose a life like I have (God chose me to have) they will no longer be numb and without the numbing medication of culture and their ego life will be painful. The pain I feel is seeing so many people losing their hearts and living for their own neediness and self satisfaction. I see the effects that anger and pride have on those they love. The harm this causes their wives and kids is hard to bare. I see through them into their brokenness; of the wounds their loved ones inflicted on them over the years. I see people walking around bleeding and in silent pain. I pray Jesus heals them; stops the onslaught from the devil on their hearts. Only thing that quenches this pain is love. Love of a woman, love for my kids and family. This only gets me back to feeling even, far from the joy the church promises. It is loving God that gets me above and beyond the pain.

So I tell you my friends that my life of old was like comparing a black/white TV when we had the old rabbit ears and most stations came in a little snowy/fuzzy to that of our modern color LCD flat panel TV. However, I am not seeing the Kingdom in high definition. I ask God every day to give me the eyes, ears, and heart to see His Kingdom. Lord will you give to me high definition for I want to know You more? I cannot go back to old way of life, no way I would rather die. In a way I am dying. In this process of dying to things of this world, I no longer find a need to acquire material things, conquer woman to make myself feel like a man, keep up with the Jones’, needing to make myself look good in the eyes of others, or worry about the judgments’ of others. I look forward to dying and my soul being released to be with God and loved ones who have passed before me. I look forward to eternity with those that I love.

My Salvation

I am being conformed to the image of Christ through God’s Grace. This Grace is the calling from God for me to follow His will not mine. His will for me was set before I was conceived. This Grace is brought about through the complexities and experiences of my life. The choices, events and circumstances of my life are all a part of the process of forming me to the likeness of Christ, His one and only Son He sent to us in the flesh so we could have a tangible teacher to show us the way to God our true Father. God provides this Grace and path to me for the sake of God’s Kingdom and the world around me. I experience God molding transforming me in the innate driveness inside me that is never content that I am always striving to be a better man and now that I have heard His call a holier man. What Jesus has taught me is both and accession but also a sense of losing myself or better put a dying to my own will (self actualization or self fulfillment). As I pick up my cross I learn to live not for myself but for the Father.

Interweaved through my life is the constant presence evil. A counter spiritual presence that wants to keep me from God’s love and will. I know deep within me there is something set against me trying to prevent my relationship with God. I understand I am living in a fallen world, one of intense evil and good. Good things happen and so do bad things. What I have come to experience is God makes good out of those times when I do succumb to evil and fall away from his Grace. For God understands the evil one is so adept to getting me to go the opposite direction from God’s love. I also know that God gave me a choice to choose His good or the devil’s fallen way. Choice is the foundation of Love. For God’s knows that Love is not something born out of any kind of force or coercion. I must understand there are two realms to the world in which my soul and body reside. One is the world of what I can see that is tangible this where my body resides. The other realm is that of my spirit. This spiritual realm is much like the physical world in that it has an order and a process to it. The major difference is that the physical world is bound by time where as the spiritual world is timeless. Both worlds invade each other or better put they are intertwined. God uses both realms in order to conform me to be in His image (don’t be conformed to the things of this world).

One of the biggest dangers that evil uses against me is to make me believe is the absence of a spiritual world. This lie is the foundation of the fallen world or as we call it culture to a great extent. For evil teaches me only to believe what I can physically see and what my human rational mind can validated. This is where God’s calling comes into place in my life. He nudges me and if need be He invades my life with His presence to bring me a reminder that I was created in His image to be more than I being. These nudges and invasions if not paid attention to go unheeded by me sometimes for years and years. I can recall now so many nudges and invasions by God in my past. I just did not know how to listen or understand what God was saying to me. Most of the time they came in the form of irritations; broken relationships, failures, and more often just sadness and depression feelings of something is not right with my heart. It is for me that looming thought “I am not where I am supposed to be.” As if I want to say out loud “Mike stop go the other direction.” This is to me is what repent means. I am learning to respond to God’s call more often. As I let God into my daily life He begins to purge those things in my life that have gotten in the way of knowing Him. I see life differently now. I have begun to have a deep personal relationship with Him. He has grown to be my best friend, my confidant, and my ultimate power. I love Him more than life or anything in it.

Now that I am listening God is always purging me of my old ways. He is now my General my true Father. I do nothing without Him. I have a passion to follow Jesus and to learn how He lived how he brought the Kingdom to Earth. So I see life differently and do things differently. I am trying to become of servant to the world just like Jesus did by giving up my wants and needs so I can serve others with my skills, talents, wisdom and most importantly with the love in my heart. This pouring out of myself often empties me. I become worn out, burned out on life and religion. I must therefore go back to the well of the Lord to fill up. The only way I find to fill up is to spend time with God; to BE with God to seek is His company and to speak with Him, to let Him put things upon my heart. As I spend time with Him, He pours into me his Grace and love. It fills my heart and soul so that I can again pour out to others in my life. This pouring out illuminates me, it shows me the Kingdom and I experience in my heart God’s true love for me. I feel on purpose, alive like I have never felt before. I now have the eyes, ears, and heart to experience how I was made to be; a Kingdom builder!

Being with God requires activities that put me in a place to recognize and receive his Grace which means the way he communicates to me. These activities are contained in my survival kit which consists of fasting, a letting go of or dying a little, removal of things in my life so that I can focus without distraction on God. I am learning to silence the world around, so that I hear His still small voice, that heaviness on my heart. I seek solitude to find Him then I sit back and notice what He is doing in and around me. My priorities are to remain in Him, loving all God’s children, and bearing witness to God’s goodness to all that will listen and watch in me.

In order to stop the onslaught of evil in my life I must be disciplined and I must take up the battle against evil. I need to train, practice, and go to war in order to maintain my relationship with God. He has provided me the spiritual disciplines as weapons and tools to keep his Kingdom in my life. It is this regular practice and training that always me to win the war and to work out my salvation for the good of God. I ask God my Father for the heart, soul, mind and strength to do His will. Lord I am yours do what you will with me. Save me from evil. Let me see the Kingdom. Take me from here to be with you.

Pain

Why is there so much similarity in the pain of pure joy the one that brings us to tears and the pains of failure, losing a loved one, and those wounds of our heart that our closet loved one’s inflict. Love is at the foundation of this pain for our brokenness which is really our failures and loses that having led us away from God. However God uses these to change and move our hearts close to how God wants us to be. Joy is having found God’s Grace in the midst of this painful life for we were made for something greater and we know that deep within ourselves, we were made to be hero’s and lovers. Take a close look at the joy you experience I will bet it wasn’t about any material thing but about an experience where we found our true selves in loving someone else and/or loving ourselves not in an ego self centric way just that feeling I like who I am for that moment.

We find it difficult to love our closest friends and family because this is where we get most of our pain. However we still love them and it is this love contrast of joy and painful wounds that allows us to understand that love is so painful. Why do some of us strive for the middle ground that place of numbness where there are no highs or lows, no tears of joy, no wounds to be had? I would say most of us strive to cut out the bottoms the place where we are wounded. We avoid situations where there is risk of failure or rejection of our true self. But in reality those wounds and rejections just happen even those we avoid them at all cost. This cost is that numbness or middle ground. This is where we find ourselves most of our lives numb, busy and terribly unconnected to our hearts. If we slow down, get quiet and pear into our own hearts we discover the lack of Joy and there is so much pain in that because like I said above we were made for much more, we know it. We need to take the time ask God to give us the eyes and the ears to experience the real contrast of His Kingdom. For God’s is in all the pain. Blessed are those that get to experience the complete pain in the tears of joy and also see God’s redemption in the most painful failures and loses. God knows that if there was no pain that we would not notice Him. So he uses pain for our good. It’s the way he shapes us to His purpose. Pain is necessary and no one is able to avoid it in their lives.

Pain moves us to action. Yes sometimes it moves us to the middle ground but that is good. This is God’s way of protecting us from too much or better put he give us the middle ground as a release valve. He does not want us to stay there but soon after the pains and wounds we usually get a choice to experience joy and redemption this is God’s way of filling us up and making us whole. This where we say “God is Good”.

Let’s get back to Joy and why it hurts. Joy hurts because we know it is fleeting, so temporary for most of us that the middle ground feels like joy to us. Wounds are different those last. They lie under the surface and stay there sometimes for a life time. We bury them in the numbness because we have not let God have them. This numbness and burying is the work of the devil. He uses this as a form to keep us under his reign. This is one of the devil’s main strategies just to keep us numb and lifeless. He knows his kingdom will increase just by shear accumulation of wounds.

However, when we abide in God’s grace we have more opportunities for joy but make no mistake there will be plenty of pain. All pain forces us to change to let go of something for God’s purpose. He uses it to change our hearts. Jesus was very clear about this when he said “Take up your cross and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). What he meant was die to your ego self live for something else. This takes the pain off of us and gives to God. No longer do we bear all the burden of our pain. God is the pain. He wants us to experience with Him. Look for God in the Joy and the wounds. He is there!

When God Wants To

When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part;

When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!

How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him

Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!

How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And which every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendor out-
God knows what He's about.

--Unknown Aurthor

Just thought this poem was so perfect! It so desribes our Salavation and God conforming us to His will.

Breathing

This is a continuation of my thoughts on the divine breath. I was so taken back by God as he unveiled the following to me over a sermon and video from Rob Bell pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan. So I continued on a did a little more research using the Net Bible. If you have not used this tool it is awesome to look at the Greek words and definitions. Enjoy for it brought tears to my eyes and how good the Lord is to me.

DEFINITION and Greek translation the English word LORD= yeh-ho-vaw' (it is the sound when we breath try it say it slow a few times:)
Spirit in Greek is the word Pneuma who’s root word is Pneo which is defined as; to breathe.

Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Luke 23:46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And after he said this he breathed his last.
John 20:20-22 20 As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! 21 Again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” 22 Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

The lyrics from the song : This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence
Living in me

When we breathe each other “in” we are experiencing God’s life giving force, His spirit that is living in us, in every breath we take. In the act of making love of sharing this intimate time of connection, the pure love of God is strong and evident. The breathing of each others spirit ties our hearts and souls together which makes us one with God sharing in His life given force which is pure “love”. This breathe (God’s Love) is linked to directly to our sexuality or better put our complete intimacy with Him. This is why a sex act without love violates the spirit inflicting wounds at the deepest sense of our lives. Rape incest, pornography, lust, and sex for the sake of sex are all acts outside of Love and rob ourselves of God’s breath and in the true sense leaves us empty inside when done.

GOD DOES GIVE and TAKE OUR BREATH AWAY.

Kids: "We Are At War!"

There is an unseen world that exists around and within us. A world inhabited by God, the author and Father of all creation, His son Jesus the Christ, His Holy Spirit, angels, and demons. There is an order to this unseen world, just like in the seen world we inhabit. There is war in the unseen world, just like in our world. There are times of peace, but where there is free will, there is good and evil, and where there is good and evil, and there will always be war. There is only one created being that can and does exist in both worlds; us. Humans. We are souls who “temporarily have physicality”. Our primary state of existence is not our present physical state, but our future spiritual state. The knowledge of the eternal existence of our souls is a primary instruction for living out our physical existence. If we truly believe that God exists and that we have both physical and spiritual natures, then we will live and love differently than someone who believes in only the physical, being slaves to our appetites and emotions. Differently too from an animal who understands only the physical and reacts in fear and instinct to the world around it.

As Christians we believe in this dual nature of mankind and that God, through His Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit seeks out His elect and speaks to us through the scriptures, through His creation, through our hearts and through other people. God speaks to us in joy and pain, life and death, work and play. The gentle wind of His Spirit. The peace which surpasses all understanding. A kind word spoken or written at just the right time. He speaks to us in silence. The silence that requires of us faith, "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."The silence that calms our hearts and minds to sense His presence deep within our own souls.

Now our biggest challenge as parents is not teaching about Jesus, but teaching of this "unseen world" inhabited by a triune God: The creator, the savior and the counselor. But also inhabited by messengers and warriors, princes and dragons all locked in battle for the elusive, eternal souls of man. If a child can believe and understand that this seeming fantasy, this mythology, is true, real and urgent, then all of a sudden the entire landscape of their lives will be transformed and the quest for hearing God's voice changes from an "ought" and "should" to a "need" and "want". Knowing the savior becomes a soul-searching need to find our king rather than a story told for fifteen minutes after crafts on Sunday before brunch. The world fits with this story.

The world can be understood through this story. This story is bigger than us. Bigger than our comprehension. Bigger than science. Bigger than the grandest ideas of history. Unless our kids understand the whole story; the hard parts and easy parts, the logic and paradox, the difficulties of faith and free-will, good and evil, pain and fear they will never be fully committed. They need to know where and how they fit into this TRUE story, and what they will be up against, who they are following and why. They need to be taught how to follow Jesus, how to pursue Him, how to be with him and how hear the Father's voice like He did. Only then will they be prepared to do the will of The Father which is the purpose of all of creation. Only then will they truly, truly believe.

Notes and Ideas:

We have grown so accustom to seeing and hearing evil that we dismiss it as a normal part of life.
This paradox the physical world and its issues are just hard tangible version of what is going in the spiritual realm. However, we must fight the spiritual war much different than how we fight in the physical world. Jesus spent much of his ministry teaching us how he fought the physical world with spiritual weapons of love, forgiveness, truth, repentance, healing, casting out demons, and most importantly asking the Father for instructions our supreme commander.

Hearing God’s voice and will for us is an absolute if we are to be true followers of Christ. My life is now: I HAVE to talk to God. I HAVE to know what my next orders are! I HAVE to be trained. I HAVE to be reprimanded by the LORD. I HAVE to be healed of my battle wounds. I HAVE to follow Jesus for God sent his One and Only SON to teach us reality of being warriors for God and for the SAKE of building/defending his Kingdom.

Thank you to my great friend PH for being a such a source of the light for me helping me write this so clearly.

A Sense of Heaven

There is a phenomenon that God lets us experience that give us a taste of what our senses will experience in heaven. This overwhelmingly intoxicating experience is truly a divine gift. This experience starts with gaining a deep sense of intimacy with each other. Really opening our hearts to each other becoming totally vulnerable, totally connected, totally naked, a place where there are no secrets.

We begin settle into a very holy place. A place where the heavens meet this awful world. God comes to meet us with his unsurpassed Love. Here He lets us experience co-creating with Him in this divine act of totally coming together. As our talks deepen we feel drawn to touch each other, we begin to kiss. Our lips touch softly we look into each other’s eyes wanting to know each other’s soul secrets. In this closeness the world around us disappears, we have arrived in this place where our souls and hearts can join together that rib God removed to make Eve is replaced and we are made whole once again.

This is not sex but making love, big difference. As we continue to kiss and breath we notice something different. Each breath through our nose and mouth draws in something peculiar yet familiar. It's not a smell but a stream of energy which when processed through our lungs and nose enlivens our connection to each other drawing us deeper into each others souls and hearts. It is so powerful it makes each of our physical bodies sing with an aliveness. Again its not a scent but an energy, a force. It give us what I call love fuel it fans the fires deep within each of us. The energy is so strong at times I think it will suffocate me.

This must be what heaven will do to our senses upon the death of our bodies. Maybe this is a brief glimpse of what eternity with Him will be like, so intense, so beautiful, so good, so amazing, so worth all the pain of this world. May you breath each other in, may you experience the Love of God in Worshiping Him through this gift.

Where I am at today!

A letter to a friend this week reads:

All is well in the war over my heart and the hearts of my family and friends. I still listen to both Piper and Boyd. I enjoy the two points of view. I love Greg Boyd for his view of the Warrior Jesus who came to save us and show us how to fight the real battle for our hearts and how evil so is present in our lives. I love John Piper for his solid theology and reverence. I don’t get too caught up in any one preacher. My faith is not based upon any preacher, pastor or priest. These are men with their own beliefs and take on God’s word. I find little comfort in religion or denominational churchs. I find my relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit much more grounded in the Word and in talking, praying and watching God at work in my life and in those around me. Life to me now is much different; it is all Spiritual, it is all about evil and good(love) nothing in between. I don’t DO Christianity, I walk with God and try to do what he ask me to do. I try to live like Christ somehow and read how he said to do life, to do life from the heart and build his kingdom. I find no value in rational thinking, I find value in love. Where that takes me I have not a clue I just try to live differently as did Jesus.

In Service for God!

Sex Part II: A Divine Rejoining

Do we not experience a profound deep sense of a rejoining when having sex/making love to a women? This all came to me in what Moses and Jesus taught us about “becoming one flesh”. Moses explains this to us in the creation story in the Bible.

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 2:19-24 NIV)

Jesus reaffirmed Moses in Matthew 19:4-6
4 "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' 5 and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (NIV)

In the act of sexually worshiping each other we get to experience the rejoining of that missing piece that God withdrew from each on of us men. As we unite our flesh in this pure act of worshiping our creator, God lets us go back to how he created us in the beginning, taking a piece of Adam(us men) to create Eve(you women). Making love to each other gives us the opportunity for a moment to replace the missing piece within us, thus completing what was once lost long ago. We get to relive part of God’s creation story in the intimate act of sex. Ths missing piece may be the root of our internal sexual drive not only to create new life but to replace this missing piece. How else do we describe where this urge or need comes from? We don’t know what drives us so passionately and strongly but this need/urge does not go away until we have been reunited with our own Eve, who holds our missing piece. Our hearts long for each other to dive deeply into the purely intimate sexual act of rejoining and becoming one again with each other. For God wants this union to be a special one, one out of love, commitment, and joy.

This rejoining is so deep, it does produce laughter but brings on a feeling of holiness, of gratitude, and amazement or better put ecstasy that something so wonderful could feel this good. Webster’s dictionary defines ecstasy as “rapture from the contemplation of divine things”. Don’t you think our divine creator God wants us to have a divine contemplation of the eternal life with Him? Maybe it’s through this uniting of our hearts in the act of sex that God whispers into our hearts this secret that not many of us fail to hear. Once you have really listened to Him and have heard the secret you so would love to tell everyone, but you just cannot find the human words to express it to the next person. It is such a big secret God wants us to keep it safe within the context of marriage and not to share it with just a random person. It is so deep and profound, to share it with an acquaintance or friend would be reducing sex to a physical act of pleasure much like drinking a glass of water when you’re thirsty. Is not sex so so much more than just satisfying a bodily function or control need? See Part I: A Divine Gift