...HAVE A JOKE ON ME!

Just a little joke to break up the monotony:

A new pastor was visiting the homes of his parishioners. 

At one house it seemed obvious that someone was at home, but no answer came to his repeated knocks at the door. Therefore, he took out a card and wrote "Revelation 3:20" on the back of it and stuck it in the door. 

When the offering was processed the following Sunday, he found that his card had been returned. Added to it was this cryptic message, Genesis 3:10." 

Reaching for his Bible to check out the citation, he broke up in gales of laughter. 

Revelation 3:20 begins "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." Genesis 3:10 reads, "I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid, for I was naked."

HOG PENS ARE A GOOD THING

When God created the world and all that's in it, He created man with free will but He wrote His word upon the hearts of men that we may know Him if we seek Him. Jesus never knocked and asked for entry, He was always sought and given a seat at one's table. The same thing applies in our lives today. Same concepts. We still have free will, we can still know Him if we seek Him, and He still doesn't force His way in.

My friend and I were discussing someone she knows who has been saved but seems to be enduring the "trials and tribulations" the Lord warned us of. My friend felt that she had the answer to what ails the young woman and her opinion was that the young woman just needed to get in church and be with other believers. I agree that she needs to surround herself with believers but I didn't agree that she'd necessarily find peace or resolve in church attendance. After I stated my opinion, I questioned myself, 'why would I think that?' God told me why, shortly after our conversation had ended.

God opened my memory for a while and allowed the things I did, places I went, and people I hung around to flood my mind. I remembered meeting Christ as a child and growing up with sparse interactions with Him. Mostly, I'd be forced to go to church when I stayed the night with a friend whose parents were church goers and those were the house rules. The thing God wanted me to see the most was that I wasn't meant to get saved and stick to His side like a scared untrusting child. I was meant to live my life.

Once I was the Lord's, "nothing could pluck me from His hand" and my time to wander into the world and make my mistakes was upon me. The entire point of knowing God but having an earthly existence is to live, learn, and make mistakes so that you learn to build your faith...to lean on God. 

I myself ventured out and lived in the "hog pens" of the world. When God called me back for restoration (like the prodigal son), He found me chin-deep in the hog pens. What that meant for others around me who would be struggling the same as I had was a testimony of miraculous change for which they could rely on as a God-given truth, an encouraging word to let them know there's hope, the realization that God never leaves us, nor does He refuse to forgive. I was meant to acquire my testimony so that I could share it for good reason at the right time, just like I heard someone share their's for good reason and at the right time for me.

My friend and I talked a bit and I told her all of this, to which she listened attentively and thoughtfully. We changed the subject thereafter but I knew my friend understood that her friend would have to venture into the world, fall into a few hog pens, get very dirty, but once God's plans for her life had been accomplished in that, He would reach in and pull her from the pit, clean her up, and set her before others to share of the miraculous things He had done for her. Possibly at a time when she thought she was unforgivable.

We have to let one another make mistakes. We have to trust that God is building the faith of our brothers and sisters through their trials and tribulations and that the motivation should never be us trying to tie them to a church bench and expect that to keep them from suffering. We're meant to suffer with Christ. We're meant to use those times to build our faith in God. We're meant to find, through our trials, that God never left us nor forsook us and that He forgives His foolish children, like any good parent would.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

This is not at all what you'd expect from a man with a violin. He's very talented, very diverse, and the music he makes will make you want to close your eyes and float to somewhere you can find laughter and love! Enjoy

THE MAN WHO LOVES GOD!

Leonard Knight, a man who found Jesus and was changed so profoundly that the next 47 years of his life have been dedicated to sharing one simple message, "God is love and it's not complicated, keep it simple, He loves everyone, you don't have to complicate it." [paraphrased]

This is a really good 9 minute video showing his Technicolor Mountain, also called Salvation Mountain. He's been working on it all his life, alone in the desert, just for God! How amazing is that?

THE DEATH OF FAITH

So, I have a dilemma so I decided I would search a place on my social site called "communities" for a community of Christians and find someone to discuss my dilemma with. What I found was so sad. I found community after community with the word "Christian" in the title but the member count for each was mostly between 1-6. I did find some with 26 and one or two communities with more than that number but I don't believe I found one community created by a Christian that had 100 members in it. It's worthy to note that the headings were things such as "Fundamental Christians", and "Christians Following God", and "Country Christians," "Compassionate Believers", things like that, but none of which had more than a few members at any given time. 

It's fair to point out that the people who create those communities are usually men in the social network who have very few people following them in their circle count so that means invitations usually don't reach too many people and most people ignore them when they get an invitation to join a community. But if you look through the communities on cat lovers, techies, or LGBT, they're 1000s strong. But do you know what community I found with the highest number of members? Islam. 10,000 members.

The second thing disturbing to me were the subtitles of those Christian communities wherein the moderator or creator of the community would announce that his/her community was a "place to connect" or "a place to share ideas" or "be one in the Lord." But guess what I found in each and every community I opened to look around in? Comments were ALL disabled. Every single person who posted something had disabled their comments. How's that connecting? How do Christians expect to connect with one another that way? 

It's also worthy to note that we're talking about millions of people from around the world so somewhere in there the Christian faith is turning into something that nobody wants anything to do with and those who still are a part of it don't really want to connect. 

I'll now weigh in on that and give my personal opinion based on what I feel myself and what I see. Religion is destroying the faith. The faith is not a heart thing anymore, it's a Bible thing, a church thing, a religion thing. Christianity is no longer the faith in God it was initially meant to be and taught to us by Christ himself, but rather something people practice in their flesh and if you practice God in your flesh and not in your heart, then you're not a Christian, you're a religious zealot who has no Spirit of God in them. Religion will not save you. Bible thumping won't save anyone. All the church services in the world are doing nothing for people. They're using the religion to grow further into their own "good deeds" and further away from simple service to God in the form of love and truth and benevolence. We're not to act in the flesh as Christians. Quoting scripture does little more than show the world you've memorized some words. Even I am turned off by the quoting of scripture. One or two verses that you know have meaning and when you say them it's because the Spirit compels you, is one thing. Quoting scripture to every thing that happens around you and using it as a shield to hide your true self behind isn't what it's meant for.

Religion has all but destroyed the faith. It's clear to me that the devil has gotten into the church and he's working diligently at destroying Christians from the outside in. They see and believe, they hear and believe, but they don't know and believe based on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who comes at the moment of salvation and makes us to know the truth, which immediately should set us free from the practice of religion. Remember the scribes and pharisees folks, remember what Jesus said about them and you'll know.