WAS YOUR CHRISTMAS SEASON HORRIBLE?

     If your Christmas season has contained or been overrun with bad events, stay positive by finding a blessing within the event(s). God often hides his greatest blessings within horrific events. Don't judge a book by its cover or a person by his clothing or looks. Look inside to find the beautiful gift hidden within. How often I have made the mistake of seeing only the bad in an event or person to have it or them turn out to be a tremendous blessing. Let's be positive to follow the example of our Lord Jesus.

     Who in ancient times would have thought torturing and then nailing our Lord to a cross would turn out to be the greatest life-changing event, the gift through faith to live forgiven and know personally our God, that mankind has ever witnessed?

     Tragedy, turmoil...? You cannot examine an unwrapped gift. Give it time to be unwrapped and examine it more closely before you jump to conclusions. In the interim, you may need to ask God for a stronger back - a gift every Christian could put to good use.

A VICIOUS WEAPON

     I went to the Bible searching for a vicious weapon to destroy those dastardly atheists that are like poison to a Christian. The weapon I found was love. Love a weapon? Think about it before you scoff. Let's make atheists our best friends and love them. Let's be a living-loving example of Christ around them. What good are we doing in this world hanging around and befriending only Christians? After all, they already have the Good News. Let's hang around some bad-to-the-bone people, let's hang with some outcasts, and let's find the good beneath that facade they put around themselves while piercing our learned assumptions. Those people were created with great love by the same God that created you and me. Those dirty and awful-looking people on street corners are scary - love them.

     Do you see how far this crazy love thing is taking us? We started with atheists and ended with homeless people. You see, some people want to play God, while missing and not practicing the greatest attribute of God - unconditional love, his nuclear bomb.

     "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even the pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."   (Matthew 5:43-48 NIV)

      See how far God wants you to take this crazy love thing of his. That revolutionist-carpenter son of his just tears at the fabric of societal values. Want to be a revolutionary? Want to be out there and really different? Want to do the opposite this upside-down so-called civilization surrounding you so often does? Then - love - love everybody you meet. Love everybody in the whole-wide world. Love and see it begin to change the world around you. Love and see the ripple effect over life and feel it as the waves of love pour back over you - the same love that you spread is coming back over you a thousand times more powerful than when you first sent it. Love! You can live on it.

     And you newbies thought God and that wild son of his were boring and oh so main stream or establishment. You had better put on your seat belt and prepare yourself for the most thrilling ride of your life if you choose to become a follower of our loving and wild God that loves all unconditionally. But never think you are or will be asked to do it alone. Our God leads and died as a mortal by example. Don't worry, he came back to life three days later just like he promised. Told you he is exciting. But through it all, he just loves us. Thank you for you Father.

WHICH PERSON DO YOU WANT TO BE?

Some people only look for the bad in others - and always find it.

Some people only look for the good in others - and always find it.

So, which person are you? Which person do you want to be? Which person enjoys life more? Which person best exemplifies our Lord Jesus? 

And last - which person would you rather be around?

FELIZ NAVIDAD - MERRY CHRISTMAS

FELIZ NAVIDAD - MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

This blind singer's song, Feliz Navidad, really has an intense Christmas Spirit to it in the way he sings it. Let's all take some of this spirit in ourselves and give it to the world in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

 

 https://youtu.be/xMtuVP8Mj4o

CHRISTMAS - ALL ABOUT GIVING OR RECEIVING?

     Is Christmas about giving or receiving? The answer is both - God gave us his only son and we received the greatest gift ever. So lower the ME part and raise the JESUS part and everything will be just beautiful. Merry Birth of Christ Celebration. Throw out the trash of hate and put on your best Christ-like attitude and thinking - and do this all in His name.

     I recently asked an eight-year-old boy that was extremely excited about Christmas, "Why does Christmas make you so excited?" He replied, "Everybody is so happy and giving gifts to everybody, even those they don't know. This Jesus must be a wonderful person to make people do such things" The boy is a Muslim from Saudi Arabia. And many question the value of being Christ-like in action and appearance.

WHAT DOES GOD THINK OF MY HATE FOR ISLAM?

     I prayed for wisdom concerning my hate of Islam and the terror it is spreading worldwide. The following is what God has revealed to me. The time you spend hating Islam could be better spent working toward becoming a living-loving example of Christ to influence the followers of Islam fleeing the acts of terror done in the name of their belief that has been shaken and made vulnerable.

     When followers of Islam flee that terror, their very faith in that belief is being questioned and therefore opens them to THE WAY, our Lord Jesus Christ. God sends us opportunities. Is this not our mission as Christians, to be a living-loving Christ-like example to those opportunities sent to us?

     So, is our hate of Muslims productive as Christians? Any time we spend hating is time taken away from loving. Learning to be a living-loving example of Christ to even our enemies is only difficult when we live and think in worldly terms. As Christians, let us take advantage of the unprecedented opportunities God is presenting us with by softening the hearts of so many of our enemy and literally driving them into our open arms for His glory.

     Surely, we fear the hidden terrorist among them, but there will be losses in this greatest of battles for the souls of mankind. Islam has been striking hard against Christianity for some time, but our Lord has struck them a mighty blow by deflecting Islam's violence against its own faithful. Like Joshua, let us rejoice in the limitless strength of our Lord and his divine wisdom in its use. Our Lord is showing to Islam and the world that no sword is mightier than his sword of love. In his name, let us show the world that love is not a weakness but the mightiest weapon of them all.

As our God turns our enemies hate and violence against them, let us strike them with his most-mighty sword of love. 

Great is our lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.  Psalm 147:5

I HAVE NOTHING BUT...

     I have no will but that of God whose will is good and loving. I have no fear but the fear of God, creator and ruler of all. I have no possessions but that given by God and therefore his to give as pleases him. I have no hate or evil in my spirit for my spirit is from God and God's spirit is filled with love and good. I have no compassion or patience but God has limitless compassion and patience, and, through my faith, God fills my spirit with his compassion and patience. I have no God but the one true God, father of my Lord Jesus Christ. I have nothing without God, but with God I have everything.

     Turn the sun off, drop the moon out of sight at night, do away with manmade electricity, tear my eyes from their sockets, remove fire from the picture but with God I have eternal light.

     Grow the trees and plants through all the highways and roads but my Lord is the way and he has given me a path that will never be overgrown nor impassable as long as I live, and that is forever through faith in him.

     Make unreachable all the food and liquids that nourish my body but I shall not pass away for I am nourished by the love, mercy, and grace of my God who is in a spirit that is eternal and not bound by this physical world.

     I hope you understand that I am made and sustained by God and not by man or his things. So am I free of the fears and stresses of a physical world corrupted by man's lust for power and his greed to possess something that he has no power to possess, God's loving-limitless spirit.

PLANK EYE

     How many times have I looked at other people and been critical of their appearance and/or actions? My, my, my, how perfect I am and qualified to judge others. I went to the doctor and found out I have Plank Eye Disease, a common affliction among mankind and one that Dr. Jesus had a cure for. He said, DON'T JUDGE OTHERS YOU HYPOCRITE. As always, he had diagnosed the problem correctly and prescribed the correct cure. 

      The time I spend judging could be better spent loving. A non-believer commented that the non-judgmental attitude was just common sense. Right, common sense because Jesus said it and made it the rule, not the exception.

      Please, join me in making it a common practice to replace judgment with love. We have enough stress from our bad actions and appearances are subjective. After all, God forgave us and could care less about our appearance. For God, it's all in the spirit, and none of us make a connection with the person's spirit we are judging. Otherwise, we would just love them immediately because they were created with divine love by God.

     A friend of mine who is a retired Minister asked me this question concerning judgment causing me to ponder it for several months before I could write this last paragraph, "We must make judgments of people everyday in order to carry on our lives and businesses. Are we going against God's command? This is the answer I received through pondering and prayer: judging another person for hiring as an employee, to purchase an item from, to vote for in an election, etc is judgment of a person's skills, knowledge, political leanings, etc, whereas Jesus' judgment is of the person as a creation of God who loves them without condition and sees them as worth every effort to save even at the sacrifice of his own son. 

     So you see, the person may perform bad actions, but God separates those actions from the entity of his Holy Spirit that dwells within. We must throw aside our dislike and disapproval of a person's actions to get to the Holy Spirit of God alive within that person and love them for that very indwelling of God's Holy Spirit. Bad or what we call evil cannot destroy God's Spirit, though the evil may hide the spirit from our judging eyes.

   

     According to the Greek definition, sin means that one has missed the mark. All of us miss the mark on a daily basis, but that doesn't destroy God's spirit within us, it merely hides it from our worldly or physical vision. Love without judgment and you will hit the mark and put a smile on God's face and begin the process of whittling away at the facade hiding God's Holy Spirit within the person. In the end, you will be healed of Plank Eye Disease.

LIST OF THINGS I WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE

THE COMPLETE LIST OF THINGS I WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE

1) Put on clean underwear

2) Make sure my socks don't have holes in them

My mother was adamant about those two items. I couldn't go anywhere until I had done those two things. It would be devastating if the things people remembered about you were that you died with dirty underwear on and you were wearing a pair of socks with a hole in them. I definitely wouldn't want to be laying there in my casket with all my family and friends walking by saying, "Did you see that? He had dirty underwear on and his socks had a hole in them." How embarrassing would that be?

By the way, I came up with this tidbit due to God telling me the things I am fretting about today aren't worth the energy that I am putting into it. Chill out - God is in charge and taking care of the important things and the small things aren't worth worrying over. So, God replaced the worry with a piece of life's humor. Now, I can start all over in a much more relaxed manner. Thank you, Father.