Friday, January 30, 2009

No Immortality For The Wicked

Luke 14:26-33 discusses the cost of being a disciple of Jesus, verse 28 is:

28"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?

This never made sense in light of the idea that YHWH will torture people throughout eternity for not following the Son! "Flee from the wrath to come does", but not an admonition to count the cost before we accept him.

Immortality is existing, living, forever. An eternity of torture is still immortality and immortality is only given to followers. The wicked are burned up, destroyed, no longer existing, dead, not alive and screaming in agony forever!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

All Safe Now


We have the babies!


Would You Die To Find The Truth? Review of Ted Dekker's Book "Kiss"

Ted Dekker's book Kiss frustrated me! The story is of a woman (Shauna) who was in a coma for weeks after a car wreck and dealing with amnesia, then faces strange repercussions that she doesn't understand. People are furious at her and blaming her for the accident. She accepts that though she doesn't understand how she could have done what they said she did; it's claimed she was doing drugs. She had never been a drug user but for some reason believes it, that annoyed me. Of course, she has lost six months of memories and is totally disoriented. People around her are lying about so many things, she just gets more and more confused.
The problems worsen when she starts to remember things that don't fit, especially when people start dying! Then she has memories that she finally realizes are not her own. Now she has people trying to ensure she doesn't remember the truth because of their culpability, others that are trying to protect themselves, some are trying to protect her. What frustrated me were all the instances when people gave her cryptic hints and answers to her questions, I wanted to say, Just SAY it already!
Another annoying part is that the christian faith angle of the story, something I always expect in Dekker's books, seemed to be missing for the most part. It seemed that a couple of christian references were "thrown in" to be sure they were included but really had nothing to do with anything. That actually would fit into the storyline, the woman had lost any faith years ago and only occasionally considered what her mother had taught her so many years before, only occasionally did she mourn the loss of the comfort she remembered from childhood.
I suppose one thing we're supposed to consider is how much we are or are not willing to use others for our own needs. Shauna was "taking" memories from people - she could actually access a memory from someone else which was then no longer in their own memory. There were things she needed to know to save her own life but she constantly had to fight with herself to decide if it's right to steal them from someone else.
This book did not leave me feeling as if I had been shown something profound but it was a good fiction story. According to the cover, the point is "Is dying for the truth better than living with a lie?" That idea is interwoven throughout the story and is the main thought we are to ponder. Perhaps I mostly missed that because it doesn't occur to me to just accept what I know is a lie because it's safer. Would I do that if I really was facing death for truth?

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Still Good Advice - Be The Change...

This post is probably why I have the blog site Woo-Woo Wisdom saved in my favorites. The post is old, from October, and the author is planning not to even blog anymore but I really like this post. It reminds me of the saying to be the change you want to see.
It's here: Providing Value To The World. Here's one line I particularly enjoyed reading:

When you are being peace regardless of what activity
you are doing, you can bring peace to the world.


And I definitely want to check into this research:

Research has demonstrated that crime rates and accidents decrease when even a small percentage of the population of an area meditates (the Maharishi Effect).
Who did the research, what were the parameters, what was being tested, etc. I almost always enjoy reading results of research into spiritual effects and neurobiology.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Hard To Say

The plot thickens - baby D did not escape or wander out on his own. He was found with his jacket zipped up and proper boots on. He can't even reliably put his jacket on and he certainly can't zip it himself. He was wearing his own boots, if he had dressed himself, he would have had bright pink boots on because his sister's boots are big and loose and he can put those on by himself. That would have been a sight, wouldn't it?
The police do seem to have tried to be the heroes and rescue him. Stories from the mom, the babysitter, and the police don't match up very well, and little A isn't talking. We still don't quite understand why my son is required to wait for a judge to give permission for him to get his own son, he isn't even allowed to see him. They're admitting it's not normal routine, that my son normally could get him but that since he didn't know about the baby missing until the mother called us several hours later, it's "too late".
It seems an obvious no-brainer that we should have laws that protect children from "bad" parents but how far does that go? It seems the default is that children belong to the government and that's TOO far. I'm trying to think what it was like when children had no government protection, it was horrible but is it really better now? It seems it must be but I'm not sure, I've known so many abused children, what have all these laws really done? Why did we give the children over to the state again?

Friday, January 23, 2009

This World's Government

In the previous post, I meant to link this from Daffodils and Dragonflies because it's along the same lines really. How much of our lives is our government supposed to control? So many people yell "Wake Up America" as if we are ignoring the signs but even when we see them, what are we supposed to do? The media certainly isn't giving objective facts, where shall we get our information? I know there has been a lot more I could have done and still be doing to determine the best person for political positions but I don't see that any of the 'facts' put out are true anyway. We aren't given the choice in many situations - how many of our current laws did we actually agree to?

Does The State Own Our Babies?!

There's a guy on Eliyah.com who writes about the legal aspects of a marriage contract in the U.S. I believe he's the one who mentioned that there is a difference between marrying with only you, your spouse, and YHWH and marrying with the legal sanction of the state. It makes marriage a contract that gives rights to children ("Fruit of the contract", is it really the word fruit?) to the state.
Baby D, my grandson, just got taken last night from his mother by the state and 'they' refuse to return him. He got out of a babysitter's house and wandered away. After several hours he was found so he's apparently safe but what happened to police rescuing a lost baby and being heroes for returning the baby to a hysterical mother?! Instead some government bureaucracy claims the "right" to keep the baby and determine if she's good enough to have her baby???
And my son isn't allowed to go get him either until a judge gives permission??!!! Why was my son not immediately called if 'they' didn't want to give him to his mother? And who said anyone has a right to keep him from Mommy in the first place??
Did our heavenly father bless governments with littles or us?

After this, I clicked on the Faith Lifts button to the left on my blog and read:
“I have not given you a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and of love…” 2 Timothy 1:7

Thursday, January 22, 2009

All Jews By The End

As a small part of a discussion with Tom Usher on Real Liberal Christian, I quoted the verse about being grafted into Israel - all the covenants are made with Israel and we become 'children of Abraham' and heir to the promises of the covenant as well. Tom disagreed that we are to become part of Israel, many others take that to mean spiritually because we're not necessarily physical descendants and because scripture tells us that's not the sole criterion.

BUT

Isn't it likely after all the "Jewish" persecutions and dispersions, scattering, emigrations and immigrations, that we all by the last days will have Jewish blood in our line somewhere?

Bad Link?

Someone told me my site links to youtube by itself, is anyone else having that problem? I don't know how something like that can happen, he said the whole background seems to be linked to youtube and that it's from JavaScript cursor. I don't know what a JavaScript cursor is but I'm afraid to put any links to other sites on here now. I was going to try to link some sites I read but I don't want to pass on any problems. The only new thing is the link to Faith Lifts, it's likely I did something wrong.
I DID go to youtube and watch videos after being inspired by a site with Saturday Songs (Casting Crowns, Kutless, etc), also when my friend was over, we watched country videos that she likes plus an Animaniac song that the kids liked. Now I can't get the Animaniacs song out of my head!
Anyway, I will try to figure this out.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Questions About The Kingdom

“Malchut” is the Hebrew term for kingdom and kingship reign. The Sages of the faith compare the kingdom to the Shekinah, the glorious manifest presence of Yahweh. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance says this word means “a rule; concretely a dominion: —empire, kingdom, realm, reign, royal, inceptively to ascend the throne...” It can be seen as the active rule and reign of Yahweh. The Malchut is not a place but a status; it is not a time but a rule, not for the future and political but present and powerful. “Who is the king of glory? Yahweh strong and mighty, Yahweh Tzvaoth,” Psalm 24:8.

This is from Emet Ministries and reading through the rest of it (you have to scroll way down) shows that it's supporting a view of the kingdom of Yahweh being right now. It says the kingdom is manifested where ever people submit to his rule in their lives here and now on earth as well as in the future afterlife. Yeshua did say the kingdom is (among?) you.
This reminds me of Ted Dekker's book, Blessed Child, about a child who walked in the presence of the Almighty just like Yeshua did, just as we are called to do. I really liked that book, I'm about to receive, read, and review another one of Dekker's books so it's on my mind.
Anyway, it's difficult to believe that the kingdom even CAN be here now but I guess I've seen it. It's hard to imagine living that way all the time, your perspective on people, love, life, everything is so different. It shouldn't feel so foreign and frightening, it's not frightening at all while you're in it. It's the looking back from a normal perspective that makes it so overwhelming. We really do have to die to the flesh for it to be with us.

Do you think it's meant for now and later? Or only for later? How do we live that way in this world now? But we can, it's just that it's not about morals and being loving to people when we don't want to. It's the spirit being in us and that's so different! It's not about "trusting" that He will provide what I need, it's not even about accepting it when for some reason He doesn't. It's about Him being so close that everything else is irrelevant.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Links and Widgets?

I want to put links on my blog to other blogs but I want to use their widgets instead of just words. I saw Adgitize discussed on a couple of sites, perhaps that's how? Social networking, right?

All I really want is to quickly and easily access blogs whose most recent posts I want to keep up with. If I find a way to do that, will it be rude if I only leave them on for short periods of time? I may follow a discussion on someone's blog for a while, then find another when that's over. So far, I keep them in my favorites or have email sent but then I forget to go to them again or just TOTALLY LOSE THEM, that's why I need widgets right on my blog. I like widgets.

EDITED: This looks simple, don't know if it will work but I can do the changes right from my layout. I've tried a couple of things before that didn't work but if I keep this blog, I'll try again.

What We Believe or THAT We Believe?

Faith - Belief, maybe it's more for us than we really know. It's better for our health, our relationships, our lives. Sometimes I can't tell if it's more important what we believe IN or the having of belief and hope. No brainer, right? But what about 'better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all'? Is that true? Different for each of us?
We can believe people and the world is horrible, plenty of evidence to support it, but does that help anything? We can believe our heavenly father is watching over us and doing all for our good but when everything goes bad, does that mean it would have been better to have never believed it? I want to only believe things that are true...but I don't have all the facts that exist.

A few days ago I read a book I picked up from a used bookstore, it's called Mortal Memory by Thomas Cook. The story is about a man who was the sole survivor of his father's murder spree of his own family; evidence showed the dad had waited for two hours for the main character (a little boy at the time) to come home from school. The boy was spending the afternoon at a friend's house and that was what apparently saved his life. But what kind of life? He grew up, married, had a child, lived a normal life until some woman writing a book on family killers that tried to escape instead of making it a murder-suicide showed up with questions. She ended up taking this guy back into this horrifying memories until the guy started going crazy himself. His fury and hatred of what had been done to him and the strangeness and also the normalness of his childhood was always run through this defining trauma.

Nothing about that is strange but the way it turned out made me really think. Once the man started living in the past and constantly reviewing these memories, he started seeing his current life and family differently, started feeling like his father must have felt. It was hard to tell if he was going to do the same thing, if he had been part of it as a child or what.
It was sad to see him looking at his life so differently as he was led into deeply considering how his father could do such a thing, made me want that woman author to go away and leave him alone! And then the real shocker was: his father hadn't done it after all.

This man spent all this time thinking he had started feeling what his father had apparently felt, believing he had no real hope in life either, let his life fall apart and lost everything...for nothing. It was all because of what the situation looked like to the police and the extended family and therefore what the little boy grew up believing.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

At The Mercy Of A Whimsical God?

At Sharpening Iron, back on Dec. 3, he asked if we would still have faith if hideous things were happening, like being attacked by soldiers and tortured, watching our family be slaughtered. Faith that what? That God would intervene? He doesn't always. I haven't seen that our having faith forces God's hand. He isn't "up there" looking down and seeing people with immense faith and saying, "Oh, he believes entirely that I will fix this for him, I'd better run over and take care of that."

What are we having faith about? Faith in?

That He exists? Scripture says 'even the demons believe, and tremble'. Faith that all will work for our good? 'In this life you will have trouble'. Faith that He loves us? The Bible says yes, but how is that relevant to our daily lives?

He's working out a plan (a science experiment?) with people and the earth, I can easily see that this plan encompasses the overall good of the human race. Even if now what we see is how things work out when YHWH is NOT making us all do things His way, it's understandable that we will look at the earth and ourselves at the end, then be shown what would be (or currently IS in a parallel universe? I just saw a new article about that in Scientific American) if He had been micromanaging. I realize that we are seeing the contrast but what does that mean for us now?

No, it's not whimsy perhaps, but do we really have to do this?

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Psychological Analysis of Messiah











Think and Make It Happen by Augusto Cury is basically a self-help book with a slight twist. It includes something I've never seen before - a psychological analysis of Jesus - brilliant idea I think.
Cury offers twelve steps/techniques to take charge of your thoughts, putting yourself on the stage of your life instead of in the audience watching and just letting your life happen. He brings his own unique psychobabble to the book but he does explain what he means; one idea is "editing your memory windows". He points out that our negative experiences are constantly dredged up - triggered in a myriad of ways - which leads to reacting the same unhelpful way over and over because of the negative spin we put on each new situation. He shows how to recognize that happening, then what steps can be taken to edit that memory or at least edit the effect it currently has on one.
After each step, he shows Jesus as the model of living out these practices, demonstrating that Jesus was the most psychologically healthy man to ever live. Cury examines Jesus' way of dealing with horrible situations, his way of dealing with praise and acclaim, and how he deals with, helped, and encouraged others. Cury's steps are explanations of what Jesus did and how that will look in our lives now, how it can be applied practically. Loving one's neighbor for example, something we hear we should do - Cury discusses not what to do to be loving, but how that comes about internally.
This book comes across to me as a blueprint for working with the renewed spirit the Father gives us instead of concentrating only on constantly fighting our selfish nature. He advocates positive action and response as opposed to instinctual reaction.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Should Have Done This By Now

By now I should have posted my book review on Think and Make It Happen; it's hard to decide what to write. Parts of it I felt I was slogging through, other parts were brilliant! I meant to take notes as i went through it so that I could remember to post certain points but then I never did - I just kept reading and thought I would come back to it. Time to truly do it for real now.

Some reviewers have hated the way this author psychoanalyzed Jesus' human self, I find it incredible. Another thing about it is that I was expecting the subject to be less of a self-help for attitudes and one's mental life than it was. That's what it SAYS it is right on the cover but I was thinking more along the lines of a study on changing things outside of oneself. I'll post the review in a little while, it really can be quite a helpful book.

Friday, January 9, 2009

LOL!

This is great!
I read a post from December 18th on irritablereaching.blogspot.com about Christmas. He/she says:

"One way or another, however, we are barraged with diatribes berating us for forgetting the "reason for the season."
The part I totally love? His or Her next sentence:

The real reason for the season, however, is that it's so damn dark.

LOL!!!!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Truth and Reality - ALL AS ONE

Often I'm comforted to know that my belief, disbelief, certainty, doubts have nothing to do with what is true and real. I may feel it's urgent to know exactly what truth and reality are but don't have to worry that I can somehow screw it up.

BUT THEN

I realize humans may create reality. We affect things by our actions and likely by our thoughts. Our unity or disunity may increase or disrupt reality.

Do we affect our own reality or REALITY? We're exhorted to be as one, in unity, one in Christ, one with I AM as Yeshua is one with him. Perhaps when we manage that (will that ever happen?!), that is when reality that is truly real will be here.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Edited To Finish

So far I don't see anyone but Paul saying to quit following the laws given in the OT. Some of the laws don't make sense now because we don't live in a desert, tribal culture. That makes it seem that they don't apply at all but Jesus followed them. He fulfilled all the requirements and told us to do the same and more. More?! But that's what he said, that he was out of time but his followers should be doing greater things than he did.

It's difficult to separate the things that were actually commanded from the things that were set up in the religion that just made it more difficult. Like Jesus not ceremonially washing his hands before he ate (I have to add ceremonially because thinking he just didn't wash his hands at all seems rather gross, but the ceremony was the part he objected to); was there a commandment in the OT for everyone to go through some ceremony like that? And the sabbath, he kept the sabbath obviously but he refused to do all the heartless religious soul-sapping parts that were expected by then. Healing and doing good on the sabbath, was that ever proscribed before?

The OT law was given to show what a life of love for YHWH looked like and a love for your neighbor (fellow man/woman). I can easily see how people could start "doing the law" instead of letting it be the guideline and proof it was set up to be.

Edit - Studying Paul and doing word studies show he wasn't "authorizing" such a radical rewriting of God's laws anyway.
Something else I always think of is, if someone now is given a wonderful revelation, we tell everyone what we were shown, does that suddenly mean that every thought we have and every word we speak from then on comes directly from YHWH? No. So why do we do that to Paul?

Monday, January 5, 2009

Is This What He's Doing?

The Bible is a crazy book. Sometimes I see it as people writing things they saw and understood through their perspective and current knowledge. Some parts are direct revelation.


Some parts seem to be directly from the Creator saying, Look people, this is how to do it if you want your individual lives to be right, your society to work well, the entire human race to function properly.

Then when people didn't listen, he said, Fine, try it like this but at least always remember this, and don't EVER do this.

Then he got to, You insist on doing it all a different way than I told you? I've warned you, I've shown you, but all right, try it. And in the end when you realize where it led, I'll be here to fix things for you but you realize, don't you, that I'm going to let you get so far that there's NO DOUBT left what the problem was. Because I will rescue you, yes, then show you again how it was supposed to be. You'll look at what you did, look over here where I had it all set up like I told you, and the difference is just so obvious.

Maybe that will knock some sense into you!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Personal and Progressive Revelation; too theological a name for this post

I was just commenting on a blog but had to stop. I was getting way off track of the original conversation because I realized something. Loving people has always been hard for me, for everyone I suppose, are people "worth" love? Seeing people's self-centeredness, rudeness, cruelty, indifference, lack of the hallmarks that are what supposedly makes us human, makes it really hard to see the good. Why are we told to concentrate on the good?

A few blogs and forums are out there by people who used to believe and now don't. I can totally understand that, when you devote your whole life and being to something and then can't reconcile it to reality, what can you do? It's like freeing yourself from shackles (not that I've ever been shackled), from "working up faith to continue". When I was commenting, I remembered like I was re-living when I AM showed me. "He" was there, here, WITH me. Not in some soft little way, he was EVERYWHERE AND EVERYTHING. If He doesn't do that to/for everyone, how can they know anything?! I've been so scared to experience anything like that ever again but I know that's the whole point. And that's what I realized when I had to leave that blog I was reading.
I understand yet another reason to love people because of those experiences I had. Not just for their sake but for our own! Because:

You have to be wide open to other people when the Spirit of the Holy comes in you strongly or you will explode!

==========
Even more, now I understand what scripture meant when it said "For in him dwells all the fullness of the godhead bodily." Same thing, Jesus was so open to loving others that the spirit flowed into and through him to everyone. Then it says we're made full that same way, kind of scary. We ARE made full or we CAN be?

Death and Resurrection

There's something I don't understand. On Real Liberal Christian Church, there's a debate (not too friendly) between the host and a Roman Catholic man. One thing the RC man said to me was that RCs do NOT pray to Mary in the way others think of praying - that it's asking her for intercession with the Father. This was in response to my saying I've heard people pray TO Mary. So perhaps the official doctrine is not the same as people do but people do pray to her, asking her to save them from peril, etc.
What I don't understand is praying to dead people in the first place or asking them to intercede for you. If we're supposed to believe the dead saints are alive now then why are they waiting for the Resurrection? Why would there BE a resurrection? All through the Old Testament it's made quite clear that the dead are DEAD.
The New Testament tells of Yeshua saying, "I say unto you today you shall be with me in paradise," to another man on a cross next to him. No comma so where does the today go? Then there's “According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.” (II Thessalonians 4:15) Also, the dead in Christ rise first.

It comforts many to think of those they've lost in this life in heaven with Yeshua now. But scripture doesn't say that, they're peacefully "sleeping", it's not a long terrible time for them. The next moment they know will be the resurrection. Besides, Yeshua saying "today" must go to "I say to you" (Old English, I need to check the Hebrew but of course, there was no punctuation anyway) because he didn't go to paradise that day! He was dead and when he DID ascend, first he saw the woman and told her not to touch him because he had not yet ascended to His Father.

All the crucifixion and resurrection accounts differ, some I assume because of what people saw from where they were positioned. But what about the righteous dead coming out of their graves and appearing to many? That's listed nowhere else and it would have meant Jesus was NOT the first resurrected from the dead and therefore not the firstfruits as he is. I also wonder why nobody recognized him - if he was so different, why? They recognized something about him after being with him, was he disguised?