I am writing this as a testament of my own faith but also as a place of understanding that I understand where you are at. I have not forgotten the place from which I fell from my thoughts or my ideas. I do not enjoy sometimes the sadness that RELIGION can bring over peoples lives and I know that there are some amazing people who serve in their religions and do great and mighty things. This is not to denote what they have done or ever will do. For you I applaud only that you have survived living a life of Righteousness on your own. God knows how long it will last and my prayers for that continual grace as you move forward is with you.
However now that we have cleared that up I have a deep confession to make. I don't like church. Seriously i don't. To do like doing the same things, standing and sitting and singing hymns. I guess I am a bit bad when it comes to that. It's not that I don't think they have their place. I do. Its just I think there is so much more to this whole GOD thing than just well singing and listening to messages. It burns inside me that it is. I will confess i go to church and I rather enjoy it so I am not saying it does not have it place it does. I am just saying something has to happen for Church to actually mean something.
YOU GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY
in the late 60's Dylan wrote you gotta serve somebody in his meeting with Christ he got a little open on his notorious album "Slow train coming" Some called it a train wreck others a masterpiece. Today it goes down into history as one of the most amazing Albums Dylan did. So much they even did a documentary about it. Well Dylan knew that you had to serve somebody. The bible speaks about it which is where I would assume he got his inspiration or Donovan that showed him. Either way he realized that what he did was about SERVING someone. Sadly we do know where that all goes and for Dylan maybe that is a relief at least for the time being. But either way the point is well taken that at some time we are Serving something or someone and who we choose to serve makes a difference.
Serving is the Greatest way to Grow in your FAITH. There really is no faster way. I believe personally.'
There is more to this Rant that hopefully someone might find and my daughter herself might find and read. Alot of things I failed to put into practice at a young age and now I am ..regretting it. God is great and merciful and this Journey is not over yet.
So in all this I ask you what else is there.
OUTSIDE THE DOORS IS THE MISSION FIELD
The hardest part about being a christian who chooses not to wear his or her faith on their sleeves is this. You cannot effectively minister. There is no way you can stand for something if you can't stand for something. You can not effectively help people if you are ashamed, afraid or even fearful of sharing with people your thoughts, ideas beliefs etc.. This goes for your faith as well as AVON don't believe me ask the AVON lady talk to your friend who works at the Local Car dealership if he is a little tipsy about his solidity of the car he is showing if he gets a sale?
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Is Religion is the appearance of GREAT things. To ignore all that is important. It is a frightening state of affairs that more people are falling into the deception of the world. As an ATHEIST (I once was) I can first hand tell you this.
I don't care what you believe.
I don't care what you stand for if you don't respect what I stand for.
I am willing to talk about anything as long as there are no absolutes and my ideals are given respect. As soon as you tell me wrong or there is only one way. Our conversation is over. (sadly sounds kind of like a kid huh. Now that I look back it really was)
At some level this all seems great. It makes sense. But it is also SELF serving. It plays to myself as saying I am willing to move forward and grow as long as I don;t have to change. It is a reality that most intellectuals will find themselves. They cannot let Go of who they are to become who they want to they deny the existence of something greater. In short they have become spiritually and intellectually lazy. Unable to move in fear they are going to have to change their set of beliefs and actually consider other alternatives.
Pretty much everything in Life has absolutes. To say that our Spirituality does not is a cry of denial. It a sad state of affairs that will leave us barren and dry. Wither we accept it or not there are absolutes and this rant is not to share that there is this absolute and it is Jesus. No this is about choices. About our thought process and to really look at ourselves in a OBJECTIVE way and think to ourselves what if I am wrong? Its to not hold to close your chalice of information and really look at the world around you and see if it fits in this box of intellectualism you have created.
More often than not you will find depression, fear and even a bit of pride. It happens..It does. I have been here and walk here many a times. I am not afraid to admit it. The moment I feel I am away from that is the moment I will fall from it. Being on guard has given me the ability to trust only and God and not in myself and often more than not I realize I have painted a better picture of myself than reality and then later find out that GOD painted the greatest masterpiece with my foolish mediocrity trusting more than he did when I thought I knew what I was doing. Read it again..you'll get it. Essentially Without this understanding and frankness of who I am.. I cannot achieve anything because my prideful self says I already have or am. I am humbled in knowing I have much more to go, much more to learn and more to love.
I know I started with the Heart of the Matter - Sometimes I get off a bit. My apologies..But I am on topic..It can be a little difficult but as you read you will see that I really am being very candid and frank about myself in these blogs. I have realized to talk to people we cannot spew scripture. I have to immerse myself in it so my words share the wisdom of the word of God.
THE THOUGHT PROCESS
Wither you believe you have accepted or rejected a thought process or ideal is really no need to do that. We all have a belief system of some kind and we all place our faith in various things at certain points the question is does it serve you or do you serve it. Something I realized quickly when serving in the Kingdom of God is that I served it but also it served me well. Not personally but the rewards of joy and grace, love and family in the church brought me wondrous joy. I know others do not always have such a great experience and perhaps I am looking through rose colored glassed. We all have our bad times and sometimes its going through the most difficult to get to the better that makes all the difference. You will see in my writing it is VERY conversational. I want you to understand that I am and have seen it from your end. The God who is not there. The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I know it all. I studied it also and can tell you the joy I get from reading God's word of comfort is not comparison to the dry self serving feeling I got from filling myself full of information.
INFORMATION BY ITSELF IS DEATH
Don't believe me ask a man who builds a pipe bomb with just enough information to build it but not diffuse it. Or a doctor who just got out of med school working on his first surgery alone. No-one who is intelligent will do it alone. Some people think independence is a sign of intelligence I will tell you it is like a mule. It is stubborn and stupid. I said it stupid. The big S word. Sometimes you have to say it the way it is. It is not a good thing to be filled with information. It is no better to fill yourself with information than it is to fill yourself full of science but have no spirituality or vice versa we need a balance of both. We will find in our Journey that Science proves this puzzle is far more miraculous that we can conceive.
THE FINALITY OF THIS.
The finality of all of this is amazing. Its like this. You cannot achieve spirituality by becoming more spiritual. You have to accept that which is SPIRIT first. To understand GOD you need to read his word. To understand faith you need to EXERCISE faith. to Understand LOVE you need to choose to love and know his word to LOVE like he does. Ultimately we are SELF-SERVING not serving others if we depend on ourselves. If we place others behind us and not in front. If we only want to be encouraged but never encourage do we really think life will come from this? Sadly the simplicity of this cage is that most of us want peace, want true love and want to have happiness and Joy. God is called "The GOD OF PEACE" - God is the God of Love - The GOD of JOY and surely this will serve our needs. He is also though a GOD of SACRIFICE. There is this circle you may be in never having an answer or having peace but never having it fulfilling or joy that is short lived. Its my ideal at this point to point you to the LOGICAL answer. In math we have absolutes in the world as we see the absolutes are RIVETING yet when it comes to faith love and GOD those seem so sadly out of touch. There is a world full of caged individuals who want to you room with them. The cage can be lonely and when there is not people fighting to get in or stay in they have to convince themselves they made a bad choice. So they in turn convince you there is no better answer. What if there was? What if there is? Where is this LIFE we call life? What ultimately is your purpose and have you or will you ever feel true JOY? I don't know.. I hope you have read this as this is a very candid writing...very little was edited and perhaps to my loss it might not be received. I don't think that is case but all I can do is put my trust in God that my heart was in the right place when I wrote this. A place of desperation, to stop playing church, stop ignoring a GOD who is evident. and move forward. I never want others to hurt or be hurt it is my lifes goal to see the ENEMY looses. That what he has planned for your life fails and if my fingers bleed to tell you what is on this burning heart of mine then so be it. I am willing to take that menial sacrifice in comparison to his. The question is are you willing to commit intellectual suicide by not asking these questions and truly seek a answer?
However now that we have cleared that up I have a deep confession to make. I don't like church. Seriously i don't. To do like doing the same things, standing and sitting and singing hymns. I guess I am a bit bad when it comes to that. It's not that I don't think they have their place. I do. Its just I think there is so much more to this whole GOD thing than just well singing and listening to messages. It burns inside me that it is. I will confess i go to church and I rather enjoy it so I am not saying it does not have it place it does. I am just saying something has to happen for Church to actually mean something.
YOU GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY
in the late 60's Dylan wrote you gotta serve somebody in his meeting with Christ he got a little open on his notorious album "Slow train coming" Some called it a train wreck others a masterpiece. Today it goes down into history as one of the most amazing Albums Dylan did. So much they even did a documentary about it. Well Dylan knew that you had to serve somebody. The bible speaks about it which is where I would assume he got his inspiration or Donovan that showed him. Either way he realized that what he did was about SERVING someone. Sadly we do know where that all goes and for Dylan maybe that is a relief at least for the time being. But either way the point is well taken that at some time we are Serving something or someone and who we choose to serve makes a difference.
Serving is the Greatest way to Grow in your FAITH. There really is no faster way. I believe personally.'
There is more to this Rant that hopefully someone might find and my daughter herself might find and read. Alot of things I failed to put into practice at a young age and now I am ..regretting it. God is great and merciful and this Journey is not over yet.
So in all this I ask you what else is there.
OUTSIDE THE DOORS IS THE MISSION FIELD
The hardest part about being a christian who chooses not to wear his or her faith on their sleeves is this. You cannot effectively minister. There is no way you can stand for something if you can't stand for something. You can not effectively help people if you are ashamed, afraid or even fearful of sharing with people your thoughts, ideas beliefs etc.. This goes for your faith as well as AVON don't believe me ask the AVON lady talk to your friend who works at the Local Car dealership if he is a little tipsy about his solidity of the car he is showing if he gets a sale?
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Is Religion is the appearance of GREAT things. To ignore all that is important. It is a frightening state of affairs that more people are falling into the deception of the world. As an ATHEIST (I once was) I can first hand tell you this.
I don't care what you believe.
I don't care what you stand for if you don't respect what I stand for.
I am willing to talk about anything as long as there are no absolutes and my ideals are given respect. As soon as you tell me wrong or there is only one way. Our conversation is over. (sadly sounds kind of like a kid huh. Now that I look back it really was)
At some level this all seems great. It makes sense. But it is also SELF serving. It plays to myself as saying I am willing to move forward and grow as long as I don;t have to change. It is a reality that most intellectuals will find themselves. They cannot let Go of who they are to become who they want to they deny the existence of something greater. In short they have become spiritually and intellectually lazy. Unable to move in fear they are going to have to change their set of beliefs and actually consider other alternatives.
Pretty much everything in Life has absolutes. To say that our Spirituality does not is a cry of denial. It a sad state of affairs that will leave us barren and dry. Wither we accept it or not there are absolutes and this rant is not to share that there is this absolute and it is Jesus. No this is about choices. About our thought process and to really look at ourselves in a OBJECTIVE way and think to ourselves what if I am wrong? Its to not hold to close your chalice of information and really look at the world around you and see if it fits in this box of intellectualism you have created.
More often than not you will find depression, fear and even a bit of pride. It happens..It does. I have been here and walk here many a times. I am not afraid to admit it. The moment I feel I am away from that is the moment I will fall from it. Being on guard has given me the ability to trust only and God and not in myself and often more than not I realize I have painted a better picture of myself than reality and then later find out that GOD painted the greatest masterpiece with my foolish mediocrity trusting more than he did when I thought I knew what I was doing. Read it again..you'll get it. Essentially Without this understanding and frankness of who I am.. I cannot achieve anything because my prideful self says I already have or am. I am humbled in knowing I have much more to go, much more to learn and more to love.
I know I started with the Heart of the Matter - Sometimes I get off a bit. My apologies..But I am on topic..It can be a little difficult but as you read you will see that I really am being very candid and frank about myself in these blogs. I have realized to talk to people we cannot spew scripture. I have to immerse myself in it so my words share the wisdom of the word of God.
THE THOUGHT PROCESS
Wither you believe you have accepted or rejected a thought process or ideal is really no need to do that. We all have a belief system of some kind and we all place our faith in various things at certain points the question is does it serve you or do you serve it. Something I realized quickly when serving in the Kingdom of God is that I served it but also it served me well. Not personally but the rewards of joy and grace, love and family in the church brought me wondrous joy. I know others do not always have such a great experience and perhaps I am looking through rose colored glassed. We all have our bad times and sometimes its going through the most difficult to get to the better that makes all the difference. You will see in my writing it is VERY conversational. I want you to understand that I am and have seen it from your end. The God who is not there. The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I know it all. I studied it also and can tell you the joy I get from reading God's word of comfort is not comparison to the dry self serving feeling I got from filling myself full of information.
INFORMATION BY ITSELF IS DEATH
Don't believe me ask a man who builds a pipe bomb with just enough information to build it but not diffuse it. Or a doctor who just got out of med school working on his first surgery alone. No-one who is intelligent will do it alone. Some people think independence is a sign of intelligence I will tell you it is like a mule. It is stubborn and stupid. I said it stupid. The big S word. Sometimes you have to say it the way it is. It is not a good thing to be filled with information. It is no better to fill yourself with information than it is to fill yourself full of science but have no spirituality or vice versa we need a balance of both. We will find in our Journey that Science proves this puzzle is far more miraculous that we can conceive.
THE FINALITY OF THIS.
The finality of all of this is amazing. Its like this. You cannot achieve spirituality by becoming more spiritual. You have to accept that which is SPIRIT first. To understand GOD you need to read his word. To understand faith you need to EXERCISE faith. to Understand LOVE you need to choose to love and know his word to LOVE like he does. Ultimately we are SELF-SERVING not serving others if we depend on ourselves. If we place others behind us and not in front. If we only want to be encouraged but never encourage do we really think life will come from this? Sadly the simplicity of this cage is that most of us want peace, want true love and want to have happiness and Joy. God is called "The GOD OF PEACE" - God is the God of Love - The GOD of JOY and surely this will serve our needs. He is also though a GOD of SACRIFICE. There is this circle you may be in never having an answer or having peace but never having it fulfilling or joy that is short lived. Its my ideal at this point to point you to the LOGICAL answer. In math we have absolutes in the world as we see the absolutes are RIVETING yet when it comes to faith love and GOD those seem so sadly out of touch. There is a world full of caged individuals who want to you room with them. The cage can be lonely and when there is not people fighting to get in or stay in they have to convince themselves they made a bad choice. So they in turn convince you there is no better answer. What if there was? What if there is? Where is this LIFE we call life? What ultimately is your purpose and have you or will you ever feel true JOY? I don't know.. I hope you have read this as this is a very candid writing...very little was edited and perhaps to my loss it might not be received. I don't think that is case but all I can do is put my trust in God that my heart was in the right place when I wrote this. A place of desperation, to stop playing church, stop ignoring a GOD who is evident. and move forward. I never want others to hurt or be hurt it is my lifes goal to see the ENEMY looses. That what he has planned for your life fails and if my fingers bleed to tell you what is on this burning heart of mine then so be it. I am willing to take that menial sacrifice in comparison to his. The question is are you willing to commit intellectual suicide by not asking these questions and truly seek a answer?
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