Embrace the Within no. 28

“Anxious care is out of place in a heavenly Father’s presence.”

• Kenneth Wuest

“Biographies of bold disciples begin with chapters of honest terror. Fear of death. Fear of failure. Fear of loneliness. Fear of a wasted life. Fear of failing to know God.

Faith begins when you see God on the mountain and you are in the valley and you know that you’re too weak to make the climb. You see what you need . . . you see what you have . . . and what you have isn’t enough to accomplish anything.”

• Max Lucado, Fear Not For I Am with You Always

"Jesus has so incomprehensible a love for us that he wills that we have a share with him in the salvation of souls. He wills to do nothing without us. The Creator of the universe awaits the prayer of a poor little soul to save other souls redeemed like it at the price of all his Blood."

• Therese of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun who died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four, writing to a friend.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”(Galatians 5:22-23).

Fear should be reserved for God and not for anything else in life. I spent a lot of my time in the beginning of these fourteen days, which I am likely to stop referencing soon since it appears all BUT a few staunch statists are moving away from worry and fear about that whole Rona thing, when I felt like the world was out to get me. And guess what? The world is out to get me BUT just not in the way I had thought in the beginning of this story.

I was consumed with temporal problems. How was I going to feed my family? What is going to happen? How can I solve this now? And I was so consumed by the moment because that was where I was living my life back then. I was center of my universe. The sun arose and set on me and my life. My philosophies, my thoughts, my knowledge, were going to be enough to get me through all of this. And, don’t get me wrong, those ideas were working on getting me somewhere. They were just getting me somewhere that I wasn’t planning.

There is no need to fear because God always has a plan. I was too busy worrying and working my plan that I failed to think about God’s plan. God’s plan was no where on my mind or my radar. And even though I wasn’t consciously working out God’s plan, three years later, here I am right in the middle of God’s plan.

So, my fear, my worry, my work, did nothing BUT get me further into God’s plan. And that is what the plan was all along. That wasn’t my plan. BUT it is my plan.

I never knew where this journey was going to go and I still have no illusions that I am in any way in control of the journey. BUT I no longer need to fear where the path is leading. I no longer need to worry about all those distractions. I no longer need to be concerned about the temporary situations of life because there is a constant God there. And all sorts of things in my life will change. I will encounter new diseases, new taxes, new regulations, new laws, new social movements, new ideas, new government tyranny . . . BUT through it all, I have a constant God that is with me. I am not alone and I need not fear.

Folks are out there right now worried about the next thing that the organized fear squads are pumping into our consciousness BUT we don’t have to be afraid. There is nothing they can invent that God has not already allowed. There is nothing that can happen that God doesn’t already know. There is only one way this all eventually ends. And that is the way God intends.

I am going to choose to live abundantly. I am going to choose to live a life of love and grace. I am going to choose, “. . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” in the face of everything. I am not alone and I need not fear.

Peace to your home. Bless your being. The reign of God is now. Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyNepheshMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin

Embrace the Within no. 27

“Living by grace means liberty, not bondage…depending on the Spirit…not the flesh; living for others, not for self…and living for the glory of God, not for man’s approval.”

Warren Wiersbe

“Even if a king had the best-equipped army,

it would never be enough to save him.

Even if the best warrior went to battle,

he could not be saved simply by his strength alone.

Human strength and the weapons of man

are false hopes for victory;

they may seem mighty, but they will always disappoint.”

Psalms 33:16-17 TPT

The Fate of Cynics

For the Pure and Shining One

A song of instruction by King David composed when Doeg the Edomite betrayed David to Saul, saying, “David has come to the house of Ahimilech!”

“You call yourself a mighty man, a big shot?

Why do you boast in the evil you have done?

Yet God’s loyal love will protect me and carry the day!

Listen, O deceiver, trickster of others:

Your words are wicked, harming and hurting all who hear them.

You love evil and hate what is good and right.

You would rather lie than tell the truth.”

“You love to distort, devour, and deceive,

using your sly tongue to spin the truth.

But the Almighty will strike you down forever!

He will pull you up by your roots

and drag you away to the darkness of death.”

“The godly will see all this and will be awestruck.

Then they will laugh at the wicked, saying,

“See what happens to those great in their own eyes

who don’t trust in the Most High to save them!

Look how they trusted only in their wealth

and made their living from wickedness.”

But I am like a flourishing olive tree, anointed in the house of God.

I trust in the unending love of God;

his passion toward me is forever and ever.

Because it is finished,

I will praise you forever and give you thanks.

Before all your godly lovers I will proclaim your beautiful name!”

Psalms 52 TPT

Today I was physically well enough to commit to the full routine of morning and wasn’t relegated to only push ups and crunches. I am not going to say that my knee doesn’t and didn’t hurt throughout the process, especially the jumping jacks, BUT all things considered, this is a much better situation than a week ago. So, praise God for nurses and healing.

Today I woke up thinking about delusions. Mainly I was thinking about this because it was a main topic on one of the psychology podcasts to which I listen and we are spending a lot of time in my classroom talking about human intelligence over the past week and the weeks to come.

I am a big fan of psychology and how the brain works and, more importantly, where it doesn’t work to our benefit. And from psychology,I have learned the power of using delusion and influence on myself and others for the basic reason that it works on our simple little lizard brains. As complex as our brains are with 100 trillion synapses capable of relaying information, there are many things we struggle with when it comes to mental health. We don’t even know how our thoughts appear in our minds. And some of us struggle with controlling those thoughts after they appear. If you think people struggle with physical health, it is only that we don’t see their brains and only their bodies. BUT physical health can be an illusion just the same as the illusion of mental health. There are plenty of folks walking around that look thin on the outside and are fat on the inside from the SAD (standard American diet) way they treat their bodies.

Don’t let anyone fool you. We are all broken. BUT we can all be free. And it only takes one choice from us to deliver us from bondage. That choice of accepting Christ and then moving forward in love and worship for God and love for one another. Nothing I do other than choosing Christ is as important in changing who I am. I can look like happy, I can look skinny on the outside, I can show up to church every Sunday, I can look healthy, BUT without that change in my life, nothing is going to fix the brokenness. I am still broken. That brokenness is just covered by God’s grace and Christ’s sacrifice.

It’s your nephesh and your choice. If you want to be physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy, they are all related. God wants to fix not only our spirits BUT also our bodies and minds. What’s the point of being a third of the person you can become? You can become 100% of that person through God.

And that is going to mean caring about yourself, loving yourself. You can’t love others if you aren’t loving yourself first. You have to take care of all of your body, mind, and spirit. You can’t feed yourself spiritual junk and be spiritually healthy. So stop feeding yourself mental junk and physical junk. You are what you consume.

If I want to grow closer to God, then I read scripture and pray. If I want to be physically healthy, then I eat food, drink water, and exercise. If I want to be mentally healthy, then I think positively, control my thoughts, and avoid negativity. We don’t have to be out of shape in any aspect of our nephesh because God will take care of the ends as we work on the means. Nothing we do is ever going to make us free. Only Christ can set us free. BUT there are many things we can do to keep us broken and enslaved.

Peace to your home. Bless your being. The reign of God is now. Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyNepheshMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin