I don't think those who preach the Prosperity version of the Bible have ever really read it. Joel O. you forgot to read the Gospels of Jesus Christ who was born of a virgin, in a manger, poor, from podunk village, mocked, spat on, beaten, nailed to a tree next to thieves. murdered. Jesus said take up your cross and follow Me. He who loses his life finds it! See video Stop sending checks to Joel Osteen.
From JS - Podunk village?! Nazareth had some great foam parties and bustling rave scene during the first century!
September 17 at 11:01pm
From SM - Do people still send checks to preachers? C´mon !!! Bank xfers are so much easier...
September 18 at 1:52pm
From KO - I have always thought there was something fishy about that guy. Not sure I know enough about him. I am with u.
September 18 at 7:34am
From TV - more growth during pain, God talks to me when I am hurting and praying, when things are going along okay i tend to drift and God has to pull me back, right now I am in pain and praising God and it has been amazing, i still hurt but there is a comfort there knowing he is with me
September 23 at 10:18pm
Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
When Beauty Blinds
When you do find someone out...Oh why could I have not seen it back then? I guess my selfishness and beauty(physicality) so blinds me and hides what truly someone is about. Crafty is the father of all lies! One day I will out smart him and do it right with a lot of help.
AS at 9:32pm May 27
Good luck on the outsmart move. Let me know how that works out. It's not selfishness always that blinds, sometimes its optimism and hope for goodness in that person.
AS at 9:32pm May 27
Good luck on the outsmart move. Let me know how that works out. It's not selfishness always that blinds, sometimes its optimism and hope for goodness in that person.
PRIDE: Lying To Ourselves
I submit the more pride we have the more we lie to ourselves and others.
JP at 11:40am May 27
especially to ourselves...
TR at 12:49pm May 27
Hm. I think....the less self worth we feel, the more we lie to others initially and ourselves ultimateley --in the pathetic and transparent hope of portraying ourselves as proud or "worthy".
KO at 1:41pm May 27
I am soooo guilty of this SIN! I think I try to put up a fasod for fear of getting hurt by others. Vulnerability is difficult for me.
ME at 2:32pm May 27
Biggest lie is the lingering question that haunts us all..Are we good enough? The answer is YES if we are authentic (lie-less). So in short be yourself at all times and it will hurt because we are all broken.
TR at 2:41pm May 27
God made all of us, and He knows what He's doing, so the hurdle we have to overcome as human beings is to put our trust in Him, and TRY to focus on the things that truly matter (sometimes focusing more on others and less on ourselves!), and in doing so, learn to be comfortable with who we are, learn to love and accept ourselves -- our TRUE selves -- flaws and all -- like HE does! Big challenge!
JP at 11:40am May 27
especially to ourselves...
TR at 12:49pm May 27
Hm. I think....the less self worth we feel, the more we lie to others initially and ourselves ultimateley --in the pathetic and transparent hope of portraying ourselves as proud or "worthy".
KO at 1:41pm May 27
I am soooo guilty of this SIN! I think I try to put up a fasod for fear of getting hurt by others. Vulnerability is difficult for me.
ME at 2:32pm May 27
Biggest lie is the lingering question that haunts us all..Are we good enough? The answer is YES if we are authentic (lie-less). So in short be yourself at all times and it will hurt because we are all broken.
TR at 2:41pm May 27
God made all of us, and He knows what He's doing, so the hurdle we have to overcome as human beings is to put our trust in Him, and TRY to focus on the things that truly matter (sometimes focusing more on others and less on ourselves!), and in doing so, learn to be comfortable with who we are, learn to love and accept ourselves -- our TRUE selves -- flaws and all -- like HE does! Big challenge!
Saturday, December 13, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Yes or No Not "OR"
Have we lost the ability to tell each other YES or NO? It seems like we are so afraid of giving someone a definitive answer in fear of offending the other person or them thinking less of us. This is especially evident in the business world. The standard "great job, we'll get back to you." Then we spend the next few weeks with no answers either no or yes with numerous attempts and they don't even have the decency to return a call or email in fear of offending me with a "NO".
Jesus said "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one." Matt 5:37(NIV)
Take a look at your life. How often do you sit on the fence, blow people off just because you don't have the fortitude to tell someone the truth with a simple yes or no? The truth is "NO I am not interested". Then sometimes we say yes and then quickly figure out we should of said no in the first place but by then we have blown them off hoping they will figure out by our non-communication that it should of been "no" in the first place.
Yes, Jesus was right on spot and the human condition has not changed in two thousand years. Nothing good comes from not sticking to our commitments. Say no and mean no and let others go on their way and in the end we will all offend each other less and keep more friendships.
Jesus said "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one." Matt 5:37(NIV)
Take a look at your life. How often do you sit on the fence, blow people off just because you don't have the fortitude to tell someone the truth with a simple yes or no? The truth is "NO I am not interested". Then sometimes we say yes and then quickly figure out we should of said no in the first place but by then we have blown them off hoping they will figure out by our non-communication that it should of been "no" in the first place.
Yes, Jesus was right on spot and the human condition has not changed in two thousand years. Nothing good comes from not sticking to our commitments. Say no and mean no and let others go on their way and in the end we will all offend each other less and keep more friendships.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Longing
In our relationships and especially in our marriages there is a longing to be special to someone and most of us are severely disappointed when this longing for someone to know our heart is never pursued. Rare indeed is a women who has been sought after for who she is not because of what she can do, or what others can gain from her(money, sex, company), but simply for herself, for what God sees her as. Can you recall a time when a significant someone in your life sat you down with the sole purpose of wanting to know your heart more deeply? We wonder if there is anything in our heart worth KNOWING. If I am not pursued is it because there is something wrong with me, something when found out about me they will retreat even further away or not love me anymore or will it tarnish my outer beauty which is fading anyway. Fear rises to the surface and we suffice to tell ourselves it’s safer not to let others discover our true heart and we go on with the mundane busy life keeping things on the surface level. Then something huge interrupts our busy life like a death of someone close or a broken relationship/marriage do then realize that we wanted our heart to be known to them. Maybe them knowing it would of made a difference. Maybe it would of changed our relationship for the better. Maybe it would of ended a relationship that was doomed for failure before we both wasted years of over lives together. Maybe it would of saved their life or mine!
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Holey Heart
My first poem.
In the center of my heart lies a hole
It is not a wound
It is not a lonely feeling
It is not a scary feeling
It has not gone away by ignoring it
It has not been filled by material success
It has not been filled by marriage
It has not been filled by having children
It has not been filled by any amount of attainment
Culture says it has the solution “the American Dream”
I know this not to be the truth, tried it
I cannot tell you why this hole exist
I know it is really deep or even bottomless
I know my mind wants to fill it by being busy
I know God created this hole
I know it takes faith to live with
I know it takes dependence to exist with
I know it has everything to do with my purpose
I know without it I am a robot
I know it is to know God
I know I can always find Him there
In the center of your heart, is there a hole too.
Here is a quote by Blaise Pascal which describes the hole and its diagnosis.
“There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus”
In the center of my heart lies a hole
It is not a wound
It is not a lonely feeling
It is not a scary feeling
It has not gone away by ignoring it
It has not been filled by material success
It has not been filled by marriage
It has not been filled by having children
It has not been filled by any amount of attainment
Culture says it has the solution “the American Dream”
I know this not to be the truth, tried it
I cannot tell you why this hole exist
I know it is really deep or even bottomless
I know my mind wants to fill it by being busy
I know God created this hole
I know it takes faith to live with
I know it takes dependence to exist with
I know it has everything to do with my purpose
I know without it I am a robot
I know it is to know God
I know I can always find Him there
In the center of your heart, is there a hole too.
Here is a quote by Blaise Pascal which describes the hole and its diagnosis.
“There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus”
Monday, January 21, 2008
What Hurts
In my experiences the truth never hurts it’s the not knowing of the truth that hurts the most. The hurt is following the false cultural phenomenon and losing my hearts truth. That is true hurt.
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