Dreams may be romantic, but romance is not a dream
II Corinthians 5:7-21
“Dearest,” said the wife, “Let’s stop arguing and compromise. I’ll admit I’m
wrong if you say I’m right.”
“Okay, Sweetheart,” said the husband, “But, I don’t believe in compromise. And since
I’m a gentleman, you go first.”
Then the wife said, “Ok… I admit it. I’m wrong.”
To which the husband replied, “You are absolutely right!”
Then the wife responded with, “But, you just said I’m wrong!”
“No, Darling, suggested the husband, “You, said you’re wrong. I said you are right.”
The wife replied, “Well then, that makes us both right!”
To that, the husband said, “Yes! If only we had realized that before.”
The wife then said, “Before what?”
“Before the vase was broken,” the husband said.
The wife replied, “It’s really only a vase, and better to have lost such a wonderful vase than to
have had nothing to lose.”
“I have you. Vases can come and go, but there is only one you,” the husband replied.
“Then, we were both wrong…” the wife said.
“Yes,” the husband agreed. “We both care to be right and are sometimes wrong in how to go
about it. That is why we need our Father in heaven to guide our steps.”
“Thank you! You are so wonderful!” the wife responded.
To that, the husband said, “And you’re the most beautiful woman that ever walked the face of this
planet!”
Then the wife said, “When you’ve said that before, I really never understood what you meant …”
“I appreciate your modesty,” the husband said.
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Everyone lives in a dual ‘nature’ where we have a permanent spiritual
body that resides in a flesh body. Originally, people were created by God to
live wholly in their spiritual body. But, because of the fall of mankind to
demonized influence by an attack from the adversary, God’s divine will of
choice to have things properly His way was stolen. Stolen was the naturally
created difference of priority of respect a man has with his wife where they
are married to each other in flesh companionship by legal declaration; and are
married with, or of, each other in spiritual companionship by faithful
assurance.
To reestablish life over death, our heavenly Father saw fit to place our
spirit bodies in flesh bodies to relegate rebellion to an earthly arena where
opposition to life and living can follow a plan of reconciliation to Him and
His perfect Truth of genuine honest wholeness.
So, as people’s spirit bodies are interned in flesh bodies for the purposes
of accepting redemption, while satan and his fallen cohorts are finding their
just judgment as a consequence, a man’s makeup of being consists of two parts
spirit body and one part flesh body while a woman’s makeup of being consists of
one part spirit body and two parts flesh body.
The three overall aspects of soul/flesh existence are: Awareness, Will,
and Instinct – both men and women have their awareness drawn from the spirit
body; man has his will drawn from his spirit body while a woman has her will
drawn from her flesh body; and both draw their instinct from their flesh
bodies. This is true proper alignment, but as we understand confusion and
upside-down-backwards worldly wisdom, the alignments of Awareness, Will, and
Instinct are mixed up and motivating people against their created positions,
alliances, and responsibilities with regard to each other, others, God, angels
(messengers), and angels fallen like-kind (perverted lying self-willed
self-serving messengers).
The Bible says that all things are in, of, and by the Word of God. God
spoke and out of nothing came into being all that is. There is a Tree of Life,
Jesus Christ, Who produces the fruits of God’s desire for Creation. Adam and
Eve, married by God, lived in harmony, trust, and respect with God in the
Garden of Eden. The fall of humanity to adversity against God’s design and
desire in the Truth of His Word came through an intrusion of a gossiping
anti-word of jealous envy expressed in Satan’s lying words to Eve: “Yea, hath
God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”
Here, Satan spoke to Eve addressing the same matters of life and death
that God had addressed with Adam and Eve through a conversational word. God’s
intent of heart is directly transparent in the speaking of His Word. But, the
adversary’s intent in his pandering to people’s instinctual emotions is hidden.
Since a word of knowledge contains the intent of the heart, Eve was deceived by
her trust that Satan was speaking from a legitimate position of authority.
What may on the surface seem to be an honest witness of God’s own Word
to Adam and Eve is Satan’s exploitation of the respect in Authority God had
with Adam and Eve, and the respect of authority Adam had with Eve to God.
Challenging her to challenge God’s Authority through disrespecting their
obedience to God through Adam, Satan prompted Eve to respond to him through her
own sense of indignation with: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the
garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God
hath said, ‘Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.’”
In this, Eve gave up her respect to Adam’s authority through her initial
attempt to counteract Satan’s disrespect to God. Through Satan’s appeal to her
curiosity, he thus undermined Eve’s dependence to rely in Adam, for God’s sake,
by tempting her pride of personal protectionism in defending herself (which was
actually of Adam in God). Satan then took authority directly from Eve’s
independently expressed will by responding with the direct lie: “Ye shall not
surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Satan’s ulterior motives through gossip, the stolen attentions of the
Word of living, was to use a host of compliance between Creation and his desire
to have things his perverted way. People no longer had direct communication
with their Creator, so God established a Temple where a faithful high priest
would stand in for them unto and to God. Thus, the arranging and sacrificial
compensation for people’s fallen-ness was provided via God’s particular
presence of Authority transferred to the people through the priests.
The “limited” availability of God’s will through the Temple necessarily
required leadership by the priests in the stead of God’s leadership in direct
communication with a man and his wife together. But, in their controlling pride
of self-protective dishonesty, God’s presence at the Temple was used as a backdrop
for many people’s indignation against others’ failures, to serve the mind's
eye. Resulting in a haughty “me first” typing of others, especially ones we are
most accountable to and most accountable to us, into compartmentalized
perceptions about who is accurate, and who is inaccurate.
In this, faithlessly rejected is the Word of Living Gospel unto
Salvation God supplies, by rejecting people who do not suit the status quo.
However, Jesus Christ’s ministry on earth, and His fulfillment of Victory over
humankind’s Fall into the knowledge of good and evil, re-established peoples’
abilities to properly and directly communicate with God the Father – by and
through their communications with their married partner, and with respect to a
couple’s authority in Christ over their children to guide them into Christ’s
leading in their own lives.
This is why the veil to the Holy of Holies in the Temple was torn in
two. In Christ’s Authority there is no longer a need for people to find God’s
presence at the Temple (the denominational church organization), through
pastoral leadership; to realize the life He has for them to live. Leadership is
reinstituted by marriage, in Christ, the way God created it to be. The central
message for all living from God, as witnessed to in the Bible, is He does not
desire to be taken for granted. Seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall be
given…
As people created in His image (‘image’ being the representation of His
Truth of being in Christ the Word), we are to be respectfully asked to do what
we can do in honor of our very living existence unto God. Taking people for
granted who are in responsibility to us in marriage, family, and wider social
situations, as if they are somehow obligated by existence to comply with
automatic self-directed service to others, rejects the same principles of
integrity Satan used to violate Eve’s respect in rejecting Adam’s authority
from God, and thereby Adam’s respect for God.
The Word of Truth of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, is the tree of life
and living as all things of our Father in heaven are of His righteousness in
creation. The false word of obstinacy, the seed of gossip and self-importance,
is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the antipathy of wholeness who
is the militaristic communal integration of fallen entities possessed wholly
within the bonds of satan. The first man Adam’s subjugation to the seeds of
false Gospel was ‘formed’ by the adversary’s clever assignation with Eve.
Lucifer left his place of God given authority to guard Christ’s mercy
seat by transferring his gifts of prominence to the realm of human beings where
those same gifts of praise and honest adoration are functionally inappropriate
in their application to human endeavors. The ‘right thing in the wrong place’
became the ways and means of people in their attempts to socialize their senses
of importance in the face of mortality. Thus, peoples’ survival/continuation is
caught in the unbalanced need for livelihood, self protection in the distance
away from God’s full and open natural protection, as opposed to giving up life
itself so that further generations may have their place.
In order to wisely reestablish His righteousness through Adam with Eve
over satan’s stealth and debauchery, God provided an avenue of respective
authority in His promise to satan, I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou
shalt bruise his heel. Genesis 3:15. This divine sentence pronounced against
satan after the fall of humankind through Eve/Adam was also a prophecy,
embracing all mortal times to the close of time; signaling the great conflict
through all conflicts to indwell all the races of men who should live upon the
earth.
“I will put enmity…” God declares. This enmity is not created to
naturally be entertained. When man transgressed the divine law, his nature
became evil, and he was in a ‘love/hate’ catch-22 harmony, and not mindfully in
opposition, with satan (“What will ‘they’ think, say, or do about me if I do,
say, or think this or that?”). Through his instinctual will of intellect there
exists no enmity between sinful humankind and the originator of sin. Both
became evil through apostasy – as satan’s method of rebellion against God
became his likeness, so became man in his ambitious approach to gain an
advantage.
The renegade unredeemed to God in Christ person, both religious and
non-religious, is never at rest, except as he or she obtains sympathy and
support by inducing others to follow their example. For this reason fallen
angels and wicked people unite in desperate companionship; deceptively
intentional by demonic entities and unwittingly deceived by worldly entangled
people. Had not God expressly punctuated His will, satan and man would have entered
into an uncloaked defiantly direct alliance against heaven.
Instead of treasuring enmity against evil, the entire human family would
have been united in opposition to God. But, people are born with an inherent
yearning to seek God through the natural measure of the gift of faith for
living He plentifully supplies. Satan tempted and tempts men and women to sin,
as he had caused angels to rebel, that he might thus secure a league in his
warfare against heaven. There was no dissent between hisself and the fallen
angels who were absorbed into his influence like sugar is dissolved into water.
Dark angels, demonic entities, operate the courses of cohesive chaos ‘in
one accord’ as a reverse of God’s Kingdom unity, together, as regards their
hatred of Christ - because they wish to be most like Him without being of Him
to usurp His place; while on all other points there is necessarily unlawful
discord, they are firmly united in opposing the authority of the Ruler of the
universe. However, they are intrinsically bound to satan their supreme leader
who heard and hears the declaration that enmity should exist between himself
and the woman, and between his seed and her seed.
He knew and explicitly knows that his efforts to deprave human character
are ultimately interrupted; that by some means man, for the sake of his woman
for God’s sake, is enabled to resist his power. Satan’s enmity against the
human race is kindled because, through Christ, they are the objects of God’s
love and mercy. He desires to thwart the divine plan for man’s redemption, to
cast dishonor upon God, by defacing His handiwork; he would cause grief in
heaven and fill the earth with woe and desolation. And he points to all this
evil as the result of God’s work in creating mankind.
But, satan’s fury was (or, is) put to an end before Adam and Eve were
ousted from the Garden of Eden. As God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning
and the end, all time is enfolded into His hands. That means, in the realm of
eternal thoroughness, all events of the eons of mortal earthly time are
happening at once like a series of all-encompassing interactive fluctuating
layers of faith-active attentions. Furthermore, the covering God covered them
with, Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and
clothed them. Genesis 3:21, was in actuality the sacrificial Body of Christ
God’s Word of Truth of the finished work of Christ, Himself.
As Jesus Christ is God’s living Word of covering of graceful mercy over
the very sedition satan deceptively thrust upon His created peoples, the
purposeful intent of the Gospel’s function, in and of the witnessing example of
marriage between a man and a woman can be realized, And so it is written, The
first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening
spirit. I Corinthians 15:45 It is the expectant grace that Christ implants in
the soul which creates in man enmity against satan and his wiles. Without this
converting grace and renewing power, people would continue in the captivity of
satan - servants ever ready to do his bidding without realizing it is his
bidding.
The new confidence in the soul found through authority over instinctual
disrespect for who anybody is in Christ creates conflict with worldly knowing
where hitherto had been peace with attempts at self-realization. The power
which Christ imparts through properly shared trust in Him enables a man with a
woman to together resist the tyrant and usurper of households and
neighborhoods. Whoever is seen to abhor the sins of indulging gossip and
meddling into other’s affairs, instead of loving it; whoever resists and
conquers those indignant self-righteous religious passions that attempt to hold
sway within and without, displays the operation of a standard wholly from
Above.
The antagonism that exists between the spirit of Christ and the spirit
of satan is most strikingly displayed not in the world’s reception of religion
or the church, but of Jesus Christ in the moment at anytime, anywhere people
properly honor their familial commitments. His humble example to the masses for
true prosperity in living is not so much because He appeared without worldly
wealth, pomp, or grandeur that the Jews were led to reject Him. They saw that
He possessed power which would more than compensate for the lack of these
outward advantages.
The purity and holiness of Christ called forth against Him the hatred of
the ungodly, not because He threatened their wealth, but because He threatened
the reasons behind their purposes for obtaining and holding their wealth. His
life of self-denial and sinless devotion was a perpetual reproof to a proud,
sensual people. And, again, it wasn’t that their pride and sensuality was sinful…
because naturally created appreciation for life awareness (honorable pride) and
hearty pleasurable satisfaction (festive joyful intimate togetherness) are
created by God in Christ for men and women to properly partake.
It is the using of others for one’s own advantage at the expense of
those other’s with disregard for the dignities and respect the bonds of vows
produce through honest faithful trust. The evoked enmity against the Son of God
is through misappropriation of attentions with and to anyone who does not have
an acknowledged authorized agreement with those whom they are responsible to be
sharing an agreement. It has nothing to do with social standards, community
expectations, local or national laws, or any self-defensive excuses one or another
may have to deny their promised partner their due course of knowledgeable
intercession with God through Christ.
No matter how small or large a situation, it is the forthright and
honest ‘spirit’ of the matter that matters when attitudes, considerations, and
expectations find difficulties with concealing intentions, and/or desires
and/or activities. Satan and evil angels join with evil men and women, making
them evil, not in producing traditional sinful acts of behavior, those things
are simply symptoms of misapplied decision making. And, again, it is not
whether the decisions themselves are right or wrong as the world thinks of
decisions to do or not do what one does, it is why a decision is made and with
who.
All the energies of apostasy, the twisted and disoriented Gospel message
of ongoing salvation, conspire against the Champion of Truth. The same enmity
that is manifested toward Christ’s followers, the church in a man or woman’s
heart, as was manifested toward their Master when He walked the earth before
His crucifixion. Whoever sees the repulsive character of inordinate affection,
and in strength from above resists temptation, will assuredly arouse the wrath
of satan and his subjects.
Hatred of the pure ethics of truth in Christ through faith in promises,
and reproach and persecution of advocates for proper family structures as
designed by God, casting aside devotion’s for a whim of fancy as if cheating is
just retaliation for ‘having been wronged’, will exist as long as sin and
sinners remain – as long as this earth keeps turning in the present age of
mortality. The followers of Christ and the servants of satan cannot harmonize,
but the power of redemptive representation is the one beneficial blessedness
God provides to those who respond to His call to live the life He gives
abundantly in appreciation for His having provided that life.
At all times, as long as anyone draws a breath of air, there is always
an avenue of reconciliation with a loved one who one is promised to. The secure
and resolute benefit of longsuffering for Christ’s sake for one’s mate is the
witness of His presence in the natural world that, no matter what, there is
someone who upholds marriage in the power of faith in Christ no other reality
can touch. To those who follow popular media ministries founded in extorting
God’s promises for personal prosperity, God knows who those ‘Reverend’s’ are
and He knows who you are. (Matthew 23:16-17) One must always remember that
satan loves to play God, so if the prosperity principles are misapplied… to
whom goes the glory?
2 Timothy chapter 3
As a day goes:
In the order of creation, all any man has is his word. Anything else
that is of a man is manifested by means of God’s grace for natural living
subject to a man’s word. When a wedding brings a woman into contract as one
with a man, her word unites with his in God’s Word of life giving power of
faith action. Under their shared name a man establishes his word by promise to
his wife and she becomes him, his word, as he becomes her, her word – their
shared inspiration. Together, they constitute the central focus of reason
material existence is being brought to life day by day, by God for His glory.
Hebrews 11:3 says, Through faith we understand that the worlds were
framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of
things which do appear. When a person is bent upon putting themselves first in
order to make his or her contribution to others and society, there is a using
of anyone who happens to be convenient to personal causes and concerns. The
result brings casting out people who are not “useful” and including people who
provide a form of function by compartmentalizing levels of thought-to-be
beneficial suppliers to support materialistic ideologies.
It produces a collector’s zeal formed by experiential positive
sensations used in efforts to fill the emptiness from denying “undesirables”
due respect in Christ. This false faith inversion of God’s leading, as a
religion, takes on a personalized deification of products, events, and time to
serve emotional/intellectual desires, at the expense of denying God’s plans and
purposes in His fashioned structures for honoring marriage, business, family,
and society. When a man is being robbed, his wife is being robbed the same;
along with everyone and anyone else who are involved with and in their lives.
Living through a day is a procedure, a practice, of responding to a word
of purpose in actualizing who we are in accord with our loyalties. Prayer,
combined with our efforts, is the answer to all things. Prayer is the humbling
of the whole of oneself before God where we give to Him our resentment He
changes to confidence. Whether people remember to respectfully cooperate is
another thing since we all have complaints. When we feel our prayers are not
answered or are ignored - rest assured God knows and considers.
His priority is our eternal place in Him and our earthly cares and
concerns are on His 'back burner' of sorts. One of the devil’s names is
‘Misery’ and misery ‘loves’ company in stealing away time, success, and thereby
companionship. Our habitual complaining is about conditions of mortal living.
Many people go to bed at night complaining and get up in the morning
complaining to fight their way into using others to get what they feel they
must have. It is like a crying baby holding his or her care taking parents
responsible to do what they are already doing as best they can.
Many people are scattered in their attentions because they do not have a
proper and stable focus. The times when we think or wonder why He doesn't
protect our interests, it is because He respects everyone's will to do as they
wish in this life. Confusion about our desires rests in trying to find a trust
in others to validate our whims when others are doing the same. Innocence is
not something of our wholeness we lose through education and experience.
Innocence is obtained as a gift, through faith, from God.
Clearly thoughts and emotions (our changing moods) can exist whether we
are living in God's will or not. So, when we choose at any given time to be
obedient to what our conscience tells us is right, no matter how we or others
feel, in the long run we and they will think and feel in a more appropriate
way. This life is not a self improvement journey. It is about respect for God’s
holiness through His plan for redemption. Our togetherness is a sharing of
God’s will of design instead of a building of ourselves according to the will
of our personal intent and pride.
Happiness is not the goal of life as most people assume. Gladness is the
joy of realization God brings to us through our trust of faith in Him to follow
His ways and patterns of life for His sake. What is shared by two people, heard
by a third person, will mean something completely different. At all times,
everything is dependent in, from whom we want to listen. Marriage is working
and building, sharing and creating, of a life together in faith.
Well meaning sensibility about shared living isn’t waiting to be married
until everything is “just right” or holding off a wedding until a man and woman
are sure in their securities about each other. Meddling by others in a man and
woman’s personal affairs is precisely where liars and thieves take advantage of
our magnanimous choices to extend grace and appreciation by manipulating
circumstances in purposely forcing acceptance of wrongs to control behavior to
their advantage.
Overprotective habits of older parents with their adult children are
honed to an art of matter-of-fact repression and oppression concerning their
son’s and daughter’s living arrangements because of their parent’s fears of
stepping heavenward. Especially among the elderly, attempts to ‘own’ the
dynamics of married privacy between a man and his wife are designed to overcome
holding onto independent and shared self-willed mortal living.
Through vicarious demands centered in need by working emotional
obligations against loyalty, these people utilize and many times cause;
derision, conflict, and infighting between spouses. Some will employ any real
or imagined means with ‘blood is thicker than water’ excuses that undermine
life and living exactly where Christ and His redemptive Gospel speaks to His
wholeness in respect for liberty through faith in thankful expectations for
young, and not so young, marriages.
Nice does not make right. Only God makes right. Our Creator reveals to
us our purpose for being as we live our lives but we lose His way continually
trying to find our own. Many times in our search for Him we are searching for
ourselves through His principles with the belief that His principles will lead
us to Him. There is a common misconception that being a Christian is to be nice
and compliant – considerate, yes, but true Christians are necessarily tough and
rugged people, averse to gossip mongering.
The grace of security and protection in privacy God provides for us as a
people is in the sanctity of the marriage bond – it certainly helps relieve
peer pressure temptations. Any acquaintance who speaks and acts contrary to
respect for conscientious family loyalty is no friend. The only situations in
life we may properly be completely open about personal matters is a man to his
wife, a woman to her husband, and minor children to their parents.
This is where love is usually misrepresented by tradition, folklore, and
religious socialism. All too often love is thought of as a state of being in
associated attachments – an emotional owning of self-validation from others and
things. Love, though, is doing. Not a doing of empowerment that makes something
one’s own that another has, but a doing that arises from acts of will. That is
why our personal will(s), aligned with Christ’s will open the doors of God’s
creative loving works.
As it is His will of love to lead and guide our hearts of plenty, it is
our direction of will in agreement with a spouse that gives a steady direction
of protections. Much human expressions of emotional intensities called love –
in reactions to sensational stimulations – is actually selfish in nature while
true committed love exemplifies God inner love in our volition of being.
Worldly love wishes to make itself richer by receiving gifts which some other
can give. True godly intimate love wishes to make another richer by giving all
that it has.
Thus, desire to acquire interpersonal knowledge of private family
matters is not in the influential field of relatives, friends, or acquaintances
since those circumstances involve a diversion (and thereby a division) from
reaching out to our Source of life in faith. Sound decision making comes from
honoring our God given structures with respect to our position(s) in the
family. A “too close to see” simplicity is found in people’s intentions in
their directions of attention. Absentmindedly, parents, communities, and
governments use people in their enthusiastic generosity as the ball in the
battles of fielding their games; scrambling for advantage.
Still, the artificial advantage becomes
loss. When a man or woman is self attentive in their pursuits he or she looks
to obtain interrelations that will ensure attention is received. This using of
others to feed one’s craving desires for selfish attention causes the others to
lose who they are into giving attention to one who is giving themselves
attention through their attentions. Because a ‘one way street’ like this cannot
sustain itself, the attention seeker looks for anyone or everyone who will
provide reinforcement for one’s own self attention giving.
When a man’s main concern is in giving attention to his woman and a
woman’s main concern is in giving attention to her man, both receive and give
the proper attentions necessary to maintain togetherness and thrive in their
undertakings. Therein lays the foundation of long term prosperity – the real
strength of any society’s communities, commerce of business, and the various
departments of government of service to the people without unwarranted
overstepping across personal and private family boundaries – and neighbors are
less suspicious of their neighbors…
Everybody has needs and everybody has something to offer of God’s gift
of life service to others. Nobody can be everything to everybody – only Jesus
Christ holds that office. God is a ‘first things first’ Creator who asks us to
put Him first. Since His Word was in the beginning, is now, and will be after
the end, our word honors Him by putting always first that accepted one with
whom we are married. If all any of us has in time, energy, health, resources or
abilities and talent enough for just one person, then God is pleased with our
work in life for His sake in tending to our marriage.
The vital difference between Social Individualism and Godly Reality is
that productivity to avoid fear of retribution in worldly wisdom is
productivity for thankful appreciation that one has a life worth defending,
with God’s assistance for His glory, to share with one’s mate, children,
extended family, neighbors, and so on with respect to who each person is
according to their commitments of promise.
God’s power over adversity and His bounty of blessings in our lives are
His promises to us in Christ. When a man and woman carry their joint faith
together as priority, their children have God’s natural active witness of the
Gospel of the way of salvation in Christ. It is true the time honored saying,
“The family that prays together, stays together.”
As we understand our heartfelt compassion for anybody we know needs
assistance, reaching out to others is always subject to whether a couple has
the capacity to do what they can to help. Ideally, if each man and woman lived
by God’s ‘first things first’ order of respect in Him, the entire world would
be specifically and personally naturally supplied.
Matthew 6:14-34
The paradox of appreciation: All trees
generally behave as trees. But, each of the variety of trees behaves
differently from the next.
Matthew 5:12-18
Rejoice and exult, because your reward is great in the heavens; for so persecuted they the prophets who were
before you.
Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt become tasteless, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for
nothing any more, save being cast out to be trampled on by men.
Ye are the light of the world: it is impossible for a city to be hid, on the top of a mountain, lying.
Neither light they a lamp and place it under the measure; but upon the lampstand, and it gives light to all
that are in the house.
In like manner let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who
is in the heavens.
Do not think that I came to pull down the law or the prophets; I came not to pull down, but to fulfill.
For verily I say unto you, until the heaven and the earth shall pass away, one least letter, or one point, may
in nowise pass away from the law; till all be accomplished.
Frustrated? Depressed? Confused?
Consider, for your betterment for God’s sake, that emotionalism is not spirituality:
Reducing confusion about conflicting emotions and mixed up thoughts
starts with, and continues with, intentionally putting effort into realizing,
as one encounters the moments of a day, that the why of matters matters more
than the what of matters while the who of matters is the reason for the why.
When what is kept first, the who involved that makes up the various differences
with the what of things pushes out the why into oblivion.
Selfish pride causes what to become why, and who, also, gets stuffed
into what. That is how idolatry rears its ugly head in ideas as actuality where
intelligent aptitude is misinterpreted as from the same source as clever
neglect. In order to keep order in being released from emotional bondage into
responsive feeling, and being freed from knotted thoughts into sensible
satisfied awareness: who is kept first, why is second because of who, and what
naturally follows why.
In our imaginative desires to be wanted and fulfilled, we define ‘hope’
as wishing instead of trust, ‘faith’ as expectation instead of evidence, and
‘love’ as experiential sensation instead of dedicated devotion. When we place
ourselves in God’s hands, He gives to us the knowledge to understand our
thoughts and emotions are our natural reactionary aware-nesses to living and are
not who we actually are as people with a higher purpose.
Without trust through faith for who we and our loved ones are in Christ
our mind cannot tell the difference between yet to be realized realistic goals
and unrealistic dreaming. In God’s reality, as we respond to His leading, our
soul person comes to our light of awareness (born again: out from ambiguous
physical instinctual compulsions and into spiritually decisive responsiveness)
and we realize we have authority over our environmentally driven emotions and
thoughts.
When a person believes in their thinking drawn from emotional import,
that person is bound to their emotions and believes their thinking is who they
are. Since everyone realizes corrupt thinking needs to cast off its corruption,
they assume that education trains the thoughts to bring their emotional well
being into alignment with better ways.
Fact is, the process of manipulating and managing thoughts to alter
emotional stirrings is where the confusion comes from in the first place. This
is why people will speak differently than they think to get what they believe
should be; where the pressures to present (or control) an acceptable persona
causes one who is confused to cover what he or she is actually thinking.
Emotional thinking that arises from recognition of one’s shortfalls, in
comparison to other’s appearances, causes ideas of inferiority we hope to hide.
“They will look at me!” “I will make a fool of myself!” attempts to hide fears
relies in self-righteous shyness that is assumed makes up part of our “the
world against me”. We fear what people will think of us, and they think of us
less because we are playing to what we think they may think.
Then, we contrive ways to justify our self-doubt with compensating
expectations drawn from our mastery over events and others involved in those
events. To search for God’s leading from a point of view found in our ideas,
dreams, and emotionally changing responses to our and others influences, causes
a false spirit of control over circumstances, at the very moment where God is
with us to guide our hearts with His loving-kindness.
He certainly does not want us to slander our commitments to marriage and
family in what we allow. But, He is with us even then, to guide our wrongdoing
into doing what we do for the right reasons. When we do what is right, because
it is right, what we do will be different from what our emotional thinking
tells us is right. Commitment to attitude has no sense of consideration that
attitude founded in commitment enjoys. So it is that all the nuances of
courtship’s outward expressions are God-disigned to be relished in their
fullness without embarassment or shame.
“Everybody wins!” scams are theft scenarios that give the impression of
being the dealings of godly fairness. However, the most valuable God given
commodity everyone has is passing time. Our daily time of living is continually
thwarted by satan, using circumstantial delays by demonic sway, through
adversarial bound people. As privacy up-builds trust in distinction separate
from public opinion, what we believe we must conceal from our mate is precisely
their business to know and no one else’s business for conjecture.
There is no “Meant to be…” in what people consider punishment for “not
measuring up to expectations” since we are given the gift of choosing to
follow, or not, the will of God in respecting victory over evil. We put forth
our efforts in living by using a “what pleases me” sense of wisdom, instinctual
intuitive impulses, to improve ourselves with an ever increasing belief that
what we accomplish in experiences is who we are.
As we collect and discard what we feel is and is not of who we believe
we are, we gradually become less of who we are created to be. When we turn to
religion to overcome our errors of understanding, we impose our accumulated
self-purpose into and onto the message of transformation because we are
ignorant to relinquishing our personal vision formed by the world’s perpetual
rollercoaster of trauma drama. For points of focus we nail to soap boxes the
feet of those we place in roles that exemplify an outcasting of our
self-perpetuating grief.
Dramatic presentations such as movies, television, music, and sports are
designed to take a person through emotional reasoning that attaches one’s
ideals of right and wrong with social expedience. This, in turn, causes a
person’s dealings with ‘real people’ in ‘real life’ to pivot round a screen
play where others are categorized into roles associated with representations
displayed in a melodrama. There comes an impulsive demanding to mold others to
fit roles one views as fitting in their fantasy schemes of experiential
validation and advancement.
And, out of context overdriven accumulation of volatile intensities
drives out sensibilities beyond their capacity and leaves an increasing
emptiness that screams to be further filled. Untoward demanding such as this
antagonizes the actual realistic working identities of who we and others have
within us to be. Common is belief in a vague (but often forceful) fatalism
people use to explain away out-of-hand issues and situations we find our
abilities unable to understand and/or overcome.
Statements like, “God allowed it, so it must be His will”, “They don’t
care”, and “They got what’s coming to them” are not from the wisdom of God
through His grace and mercy in response to our faith in Him to overcome those
same out-of-hand issues and situations. God is not the author of the evil
underlying schisms, betrayals, and all the various ills of our people
throughout the ages. People cause the problems because we are slack in allowing
His Authority through our will of effort to override dark, subversive, inhuman
forces.
The unknowing blindness most people
experience is the use of others to fight ourselves. When we work to have others
think well of us it causes us to ignore our shortcomings rather than working on
being less selfish.The Bible says God has difficulty forgiving us if we do not
forgive ourselves. But, we must not forget where we tend to use others by
putting them down to build our own defenses. To avoid seeing false hope as
faith, work to eliminate emotionalizing your living through past/future,
light/dark, and right/wrong switching in your mind.
While we are saved not by works, but by
grace through faith, it reasonably follows we are not condemned by our works –
our separation from life in Christ is by fear through doubt.When our thoughts
bring emotions in response, our thoughts respond to our emotions and creates a
cycle of fantasy of living unto ourselves that does not react to the reality of
who God created us to be with respect to our various places with others in the
moment of moments as each day progresses.
Living in the false wisdom of right and
wrong through emotional thinking is a manifestation of the knowledge of good
and evil - the fallen nature of the world.Growing into healthy faithful living
is not the procedure of focus in letting go of recognized wrongs, it is in
recognizing and actively accommodating choices based in a word of promise.
Feelings are not emotions. Feelings are our honest and natural reactions and responses
to the world around us.
So, we need not worry what someone else
will say or think about our convictions and beliefs - about what we want to do
or do not want to do. If we have something to say, we should feel free to say
it.If we have something to do, we should feel free to do it. The light of life
and its fullness in expression should never consider another’s emotions – while
we are respecting who each and everyone else is, unto us, in Christ unto God.
What He has prepared for us is
different, and more gratifying, in ways that what we expect to receive from Him
is not and cannot be.Most people do not know that God has a particular plan for
them, so they do not trust the moments unto Him as He has promised to guide the
faithful as they live. Waffling indecision is the mistake behind the fear of
making mistakes and dwindles the precious moments of life away.
Trust God to know what He is doing to
bring His witness through our activities.This allows us the freedom to
encourage and assist others in their strengths rather than working against
their difficulties because of our annoyance over the wrongs we and others are
bound to. It is worldly wisdom, not faithful obedience to God, where people use
complacency and self-satisfied posturing in touting “positive progress through
the school of hard knocks”.
Again, feelings are not emotions. Feelings are our natural reactive
responses to oneself, others, one’s surroundings, and God. Emotions are our
physically mortal instinctual reactive responses to internal and external
stimuli while feelings are motivated by our immortal soul knowledge awareness.
Without understanding the difference through trusting in God in faith in the
Gospel of Christ, it is very difficult if not impossible, to keep the intensity
of emotions from overshadowing our feelings.
To take personal authority over the fears associated with folding into
peer pressure, only decide to do what you want to do at any given time; no
matter what another or others want. If what you decide to do is in agreement
with others’ desires, then all is well with the understanding to be
matter-of-fact honest with your mate about anything that arises from choices
with others. If you do not want to do whatever it is you do not want to do that
another or others want, then simply and honestly abstain from compliance no
matter any consequences.
This is another area where God’s design in matrimonial vows has His
power of Authority through the joint authority of a man and woman in marriage
to hold any others to respect and dignity. Emotions rely in comparisons between
the past and the future, both of which are never now, and feelings rely in
trusting the present in response to actuality through faith. Appreciating
feelings, rather than being driven by emotions, lets us more securely stay in
the moment and do as we wish with less confusion about why we do what we do,
whatever it is, no matter what anyone outside the marriage thinks or does about
it.
God says He would rather us be hot or cold because if we are lukewarm
(two faced) He will spew us out of His mouth. Through practice, we learn to
help others where they need help instead of identifying with their difficulties
and conflicts. Living through the emotions of ‘what was not’ and ‘what should
be’ while holding others responsible for their own failures is an attempt to
stabilize our expectations. It is easy to be honest about what is right we
choose to do.
Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to be honest about what is wrong
we choose to do, so we bind ourselves to separate and additional wrongs in
various ways to hide our wrongs as if they are right – most often by making
wrong of the right of others. Obligations are inherently never based in
presumption because obligations, by their nature, are declarations of promise.
The vows of matrimony supersede all other accountabilities, so there is a sense
of defensive esteem involving a married couple that does not ignore, but
upholds, other’s rights to respect their grace of detachment.
Overlook who people believe they are to trust God and His grace and
mercy. Being in the now by responding to exactly what we wish to do in all
circumstances allows destructive processes of the cycle of emotions and
thinking to fade away and be replaced by the joy of life in the reality of
God’s goodness. Experiential and fulfilling warm emotions come and go dependent
upon circumstances. Love, however, is an all encompassing commitment – not
dependent upon have and have not.
With respect to Christ’s resurrection, and the ongoing promises of
emotional/spiritual harbor within a marriage, Jesus became our “garbage
dumpster” (the term ‘garbage’ has a root meaning: worn out old clothes) on the
cross and we become the same for our spouse – knowing that our responsibilities
for each other in Him provides intervention. Philippians 4:13 says: I can do
all things through Christ, which strengthens me. The more difficulties anyone
has in living, no matter what the situations are, the more help they need to
overcome their separation(s) from dignity with whom they are dedicated.
There are only three God blessed authorities in human living where He
designed people to honor Him in making decisions for (do the thinking for) any
other human being(s): A man who is a husband to his wife, a woman who is a wife
for her husband, and parents for their underage children. Steadfast
self-sacrificing dedication, in response to God’s promises regarding loyalties
and devotions to our loved ones, is often seen by self-serving situational
opportunists as a pathetic blind obsession. A man and woman, their marriage,
and God Himself, cannot be much respected with anyone in the background
“calling the shots”.
We have the moments of a day to be thankful for the vitality of our
awareness as God, by His Son through the power of the Truth of His Word, the
Holy Spirit, is alive and vibrant through our being. Let God be God through our
efforts. He knows better than we do the reasons for the tasks and experiences
He has for us to accomplish. Traditional wisdom says, "Where there is a
will, there is a way." Christian wisdom says, "Where there is a Way,
there is a Will." With no hidden motive, we realize hope is not an
imagination. It is where to be glad is better than to be happy.
Marriage, according to the Gospel, represents the two edged sword of the
Word of Christ. One edge condemns our revealed wickedness of the heart on the
Cross, while the other lifts us up into the Resurrection of the Glory of God's
Wholeness. Thank God for your husband. Thank God for your wife. Thank God for
their challenges because each of us is a challenge. In all situations and
conditions help your mate help you, with God’s help, work through strife into
victory.
Zechariah 8:1-12
"One
of my major shortcomings - I'm vindictive. I don't know why that is, Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back.
It's a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened." ~ Andy Rooney
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