5.12.2015 It is the motivation of Love to lift the burden of those who hoist the white flag of surrender, and persuade those who have not yet abdicated their fortifications to come home singing the songs of returning to God.

8.4.2015 It is the truth, there is no point in going to a funeral until someone has died, even so, there is nothing wrong with rallying the wagons to circle BEFORE the Indian’s show up.

8.22.2015 There is no dying without death, just like there is no living without life. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Without Christ is dead, with Christ is alive. We need the living to step into their place, for as long as we allow the dead to govern, we are all doomed.

8.31.2015 “2Cor3:5, She started rubbing her two fingers in front of my face…i wondered what in the world? Then she sez, “The Holy Spirit is SOOOO close to us, He gives us ideas and we think we thought of it.” Evelyn Whitaker

09.05.2015 Jesus is the answer, He is always the answer, and there’s never a time He’s not the answer, which is why all things come to rest at the feet of the Son. The love of God, as demonstrated by Jesus, is the crown of everything. His love is universe changing, demon defeating, earth re-polarizing, disease healing, and relationship repairing, Jesus is love and love is the answer of all answers, Both noun and verb altogether.

Titus 2:11-15, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Training us to say “No” to conduct which holds God’s standards and preferences in contempt, “no” to worldly passions, “yes” to practicing self-control, upright honest and transparent lives in this present age. These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage, examine, and convict with all authority. Do not let anyone dismiss you as someone to be ignored.” My paraphrase.

Grace teaches, we train, as we train we go out and practice, practice, practice, putting into action what grace has trained us for. Grace disciplines and inspire s our dedication, but never strangles or throttles anyone into submission. Being trained by grace also includes having solid boundaries. Too many want to sing “i’m ok, you’re ok, we’re all ok”, sitting around the campfire singing Kumbah-yah, doing what ever we want because it’s just grace, grace, grace. Nooooo, that’s a picture of an untethered boat adrift on the water, swept where ever the wind blows. That’s not grace, it’s permissiveness avoiding any possible conflict. That’s being good with whatever happens as long as it doesn’t happen to me. God’s school of grace teaches a very different curriculum.

Israel had to shift from an agricultural nation to a nomadic nation which was good at war. They had to shift from using plows to swords, and once they were trained to make swords out of plows, then they had to be trained in how to use the swords, which speaks of a process and not instantaneous  knowledge on how to be effective at war. No one wakes up in the morning and they are suddenly filled with all the biblical knowledge concerning being effective at war.

It occurs to me that if we are trained by grace we will be graceful people, if we’re trained by arrogance and greed, chances are very good we too will be arrogant and greedy, and of course that’s not always true for there are very few things in this life which are always and never. The following is not ALWAYS true, but i believe it is generally true: Graceful and kind parents typically generate graceful and kind offspring; manipulative and subversive parents typically generate manipulative and subversive children; children easily catch the character content of the parents due to simply being in contact with them. We are contagious! Don’t you know that we can give away what we’ve got even if we don’t know we’ve got it, we can give it away, and that would include our condition of abnormal functioning as well as our normal functioning. Our children are our mirror in that they reflect our attitudes and habits even when we don’t realize our attitudes and habits. As parents we are always teaching, even when we aren’t purposely, consciously teaching, and our children are always learning, even when they aren’t purposely, and consciously learning.

Are we trained by grace, or simply employing what we were born with, trained in light or trained in darkness?

If grace is not your trainer, then who is? Are you good with only your natural born talents, you know, the characteristics you were born with which are easily exploited by satan who’s will is fully set against us. Are you good with that cur dog being your mentor and trainer? i realize that many seem to think they have everything they need without including God in all they do, but seeing as how the Bible is the universal, one-stop resource for morals, ethics, principles, conduct, and character, i think it would be best to choose the Bible as our standard and see what God has to say. Indeed, this world of fluid and mobile boundaries needs a standard higher than itself, wouldn’t you agree? i heard a man say recently that if you were lost in an immense forest but you only had a compass which points to yourself, then you are doomed.

According to the Bible the greatest ability of our flesh and uncrucified mind is … wrongness of character, our inclination is iniquity from the start. i believe everyone is born with certain capacities and giftings, but above that, the unredeemed mind only knows the unredeemed life style with all it’s inclinations, or what the Bible would call the “works of the flesh”.

What are our natural inclinations, trained by the world under our slave master called sin, which gladly bruises our conscience and gives power to our flesh over our spirit? Paul speaks to that in Romans 1 where he goes through a list of wrongness that is natural to those without Jesus. Our natural talents include every kind of moral distortions, twisted ethics, twisted principles, along with greed and depravity. We are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. Our natural born talents also include gossip, slandering or casting shadows on others, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful. Naturally, we have a talent for inventing ways of doing wrong, seeing no good reason to even obey our parents, and in that we become senseless, faithless, heartless, and ruthless, not thinking it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, refusing to even think in the Lord’s direction.

Many would probably say, after hearing that list, “Well, it’s not all THAT bad, you know. i’m not really like that and i don’t know anyone who is. i’m a good person and i only hang out with good people!” Hmmm, really? If God and His word are the standard, and believe me, in the end He is conclusively, and finally the End-All and Standard, then if God says there is no good thing in me, then i think it absolutely prudent to take Him at His word. Romans 7:18, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

Even if we understand the good things to do, without Christ we are trained and practiced in the ways of the world, we don’t have the where-with-all to do Godliness. Now that should upset more than a few who still believe they’ve got what it takes to make it on their own.

So, i’m going to use myself as an example. i’m going to cut loose with a list of my natural, flesh born skills, that is – Without Christ-type skills.

These things i know of myself: In and of myself, all on my own, i’m a superior failure, a good and veteran failure. Without Christ, even my victories are hollow achievements. i do failure VERY well.; i’m good at it! i don’t have to learn how to successfully fail; i arrived in this world well trained at it and all i needed to do was practice, afterall, practice does makes perfect. Without Christ, everyone is a perfect and bestselling failure. When i am tempted and fail at resisting, is it acceptable when i can do it comfortably? Some say failure is when we hit rock bottom, but i say for Christians, it is not failure as we measure failure, but it is where the real digging begins. Many people fail to imagine !anything! because they can’t get past the way things are. i prefer to imagine something, though it might fail, than to fail to imagine anything at all. Maybe, just maybe the only REAL failure is failing to be who God has envisioned us to be.

i’m good at not telling myself or anyone else the truth, no training necessary, all i need is a medium to practice in. By the grace of God i see my ugly and understand my long history of it. Hell regularly reminds me of my disqualifications, my past rebellious behavior, and my past disingenuousness. i didn’t have to take any classes to learn to do stuff badly, no training necessary. i didn’t have to learn to quit. i’m a talented and natural quitter. i’m good at shifting the blame so i don’t have to be responsible. i’m good at calling myself horrible names and then believing it’s the truth. i’m a natural at running away, sometimes i think running away is one of my gifts. All by myself, i am the consummate victim and dedicated controller. Sadly, those are a few of my natural talents. But here’s the best part of it all: Jesus lifts me above my natural talents and breaths life into me to live life abundantly, trained by grace, not according to someone else’s idea of what they think i should do. i’m the one standing here, i’m the one standing in these shoes, and i’m the one who is responsible, and through Christ alone, indeed, i DO have the power and authority to be different.

We are being taught, trained by either Heaven or hell! Who or what are your trainers? And yes, i realize these are polarizing questions, possibly irritating, but we are all constantly at a crossroads of right and wrong, hovering between deciding to go to the left or right.

So, how do you know you are being trained in righteousness? Ephesians 4:22-24 “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

In the previous scripture, Ephesians 4:23, Paul uses a word which i think needs a little clarity: it was the word “attitude”. Attitude speaks to the pitch, roll, and yaw of our heart, how we lean in our heart towards God. For a better understanding of that scripture, i’m going to insert the definition of attitude, so then it would read like this: “to become renovated and renewed in how you lean toward or away from God in your hearts;” That means, in Christ, we have an entirely better set of skills, all we have to do is allow the Holy Spirit to train us.

Our skill set developed in the school of grace, as given by God, is not born of our flesh or intellect, instead He brings it from a place much deeper, beyond our luke warm assumptions of conventional wisdom, found in a place known only to the Lord, quite beyond our expectation. When we wake up one day to see what the Lord has done in us, it is breath taking in beauty and magnitude.

God purposely gave us an option of either being trained by righteousness or by sin. Romans 6:13-14, “…offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.” Did you get that? Sin shall NOT be your master, through Christ it shall not shall not shall not.

Did you hear that? That is incredibly wonderful!! Paul said, “For sin, your bruised conscience and alienated mind, shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.” Through the blood of Jesus, we take to ourselves a new trainer who trains us in grace.

When we spend our time participating with God, going where He goes and doing what He does, it is easy to see that we are being trained by grace.

Hear what i’m saying here, catch the vision: There’s two sides to the process, someone teaches, and someone learns.  i propose a good question is  — what exactly is grace teaching us? What are we learning because we are constantly learning, so we must take the question seriously, what ARE we learning?

i am confident it would be simple to show that grace teaches us to be temperate, meaning to have power over ourselves, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. i want to add though, honestly, no one has ever suggested to me that i be “more temperate” ….  so i looked it up and it means to be sound in mind, to be sober in opinion or passion. Temperate sounds pretty antiquated to me, and i can’t say i’ve thought to myself, “i must be more temperate,” OR “i must pray to be more sober in opinion.” The use of the word “temperate” suggests we exercise our personal power and authority over all things which influence us. Learn to ask yourself, How does what you’re putting in your eyes and ears line up with the word of God? Do your actions rightly represent God’s preferences and standards? For me, i don’t want to be like a catfish, a bottom feeder which mucks along the bottom, consuming anything which could be ingestible.

i also think it important to say why i spend time looking up meanings of some words. Well, the truth is, some biblical words i’ve never been able to relate to, and i figure if i can’t relate to it, then there’s a lot of other people who can’t relate either. i also want to add that many many times English doesn’t do Greek, Hebrew, or their translation any favors, so it is to our benefit to dig into discovering God’s intent and purpose. It’s part of being trained in Grace.

The Handbook of Bible Application says we need to “depend on God to train our conscience. How can you hold on to a good conscience? Treasure your faith in Christ more than anything else and do what you know is right. Each time you deliberately ignore your conscience, you are hardening your heart. If we deliberately ignore our conscience, over time our capacity to tell right from wrong will diminish.”

The training of Grace teaches us the value of truth, not just facts, but the truth; we learn from grace — kindness and a preference for doing the right thing, not just leveraging the facts to facilitate the advancement of our agenda. Did you catch that? “Not just leveraging the facts to facilitate the advancement of our agenda.” Sounds a lot like criminal thinking and the modern news or media agenda, doesn’t it? Grace teaches us diligence and perseverance, even when we’re in the long night of a storm. Grace emphasizes over and over the importance of a sound conscience. Here’s some sticky words so listen: Without a conscience, conviction has no foothold, making condemnation the only other option. Convicted or condemned, you choose.

Let us hold character and conscience in Christ above the values of the world!  As you walk with God, he will speak to you, letting you know the difference between right and wrong. Friends, it’s always the right time to do the right thing. Think. Take care to read or hear ALL the words, not just the title, the first and last sentence to get the idea, that is a life-long-lesson in the school of Grace. Be sure to act on those inner tugs to do what is right — the training of grace is because of the everlasting love of God. The school of Grace and good boundaries is God’s idea. It’s a kindness, and kindness leads us to repentance. Participate with Jesus and let grace train you, the training of grace is for an eternity with God. Think about it.

Ephesians 4:12-13, “to train Christians in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.”

2 Timothy3:16, “Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way.”

i like that, “training us to live God’s way”, no longer slaves to this world or sin. That is wonderfully attractive.

This has been Outposts, a semi-live broadcast from the late night cascading banks of the Ockluhwahhah River, where the trees gently lean over the rivers’ edge, and every evening is pleasant.

Knuckle down and determine to participate with Jesus, let yourselves be trained by Grace. You’ll never regret living life God’s way.

Until next time, tell the truth, love Jesus, yourself and your neighbor. Don’t be a nitpicker, it’s a worthless endeavor. Be blessed my friends, be blessed!

“Pay more”. And we circle on the wings of guilt, paying and paying and paying. When will we have bled enough to have paid enough? If we think, through the eyes of our guilt and depression, that Christ didn’t quite bleed enough or suffer enough for us, and we must continue to bleed and suffer for our sins, then the next logical question would be, when will we have suffered and bled enough to cover it?

And who is going to decide when we’ve bled enough, what ultra-righteous man will decide this question above God? Is anyone worthy to make that decision besides God? God said Jesus already paid the price … i say, No, no one but Christ was able to pay, and no man but Christ did pay. But in our own minds, when we’re alone in the late night, when will we have bled enough to cover our own transgressions? EVER? Do we actually think we have enough blood to satisfy the debt?

How long will we allow the enemy to keep us slaves to what God has washed away and remembers no more?

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

Psalms 103:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

Rom 6:10 “For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”

Heb 7:26 “For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; 27 who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.”

Isaiah 54:10, “For the mountains may leave and the hills be removed, but my grace will never leave you, and my covenant of peace will not be removed,” says Adonai, who has compassion on you.”

And that’s just a very few verses.
Did Jesus die enough for you?
Did Jesus suffer enough for you?
Did Jesus bleed enough for you?
Was His sacrifice and resurrection enough?

And if the answer is “Yes”, then it is also true for our neighbor and we must let our offenses go. Open your hands and let it go. Empty your pockets of religious contempt and allow that dead stuff to fall from your hands.

i met a women who was incarcerated (again) for yet another infraction of the law…..she was always weeping-couldn’t talk to her without her weeping. i asked her why, and she proceeded to tell me 17 years ago, a babysitter for her only child had neglected and abused him till he died. The other woman, who was disabled, did no time nor paid any restitution. She said for 17 years she had felt so ashamed and guilty because she felt she should have been there instead of at work, there was nothing but suffering for her. She said she had been praying, multiple times/day that the other woman would endure catastrophic suffering for what happened. i asked her how that was working out, and she said the other woman was actually prospering. i suggested, seeing as how all her cursing didn’t work, maybe she should try asking the Lord to bless the woman, pray the Lord would give the other woman peace. As the weeks went by her mind set began to shift, the weeping stopped, and her demeanor changed drastically. i asked her finally if she thought Jesus died and bled enough for her, wherewith she replied the death and resurrection of Christ was sufficient for everyone. i encouraged her to consider, that if that was really the truth, then He died enough for the other woman, regardless of the wrong she did. It was a defining moment to say the least. Think about it.

O.T. law says the judgment was greater than the sacrifice. N.T. says the sacrifice was greater than the judgment. Christ is more than sufficient and His grace is super-abundant to cover anything that goes on with us, not that we should ever tread the grace of God down in presumptuous sin. Show me one man whom Jesus didn’t die for and i’ll lay my Bible down.

Do you feel your eyes see things in you that God’s eyes can not? If so, how is it your eyes are so much more powerful than Almight God? If the Lord says we are forgiven, then we are forgiven. How long will we allow the enemy to make us slaves to our past?

We hear the world around us, even people who are hearing impaired have a sense of hearing in a way, they may interpret it differently than those of us who hear, but it is a perception of sound in some capacity or another. How many of us stop to hear? Do we sit in silence and listen to what is in our spirit, in our heart? Maybe some of us practice so much of such introverted listening, we are the only voice we hear.

Hearing is first mentioned in Genesis 3:8 “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” i have wondered, what does God sound like when He’s walking in the cool of the evening, at the time of the evening breeze? Either way, Adam and Eve knew who they were hearing. Not only did they hear, but they listened and identified accurately what they were hearing. God was coming to talk to them! They heard Him before they saw Him, oh and don’t you know they knew well the sound of His footsteps! He who has an ear…let him hear.

To “hear” is a verb meaning to give an ear or to lend an ear, discern, to perceive. The value of hearing God above all things seems to have become devalued in the world today, it seems unimportant to most people. Even to people who want to hear God, they’ve become convinced they can’t hear Him so “hearing God” has become a low priority seeing as how, in most people’s mind it seems, the probability of hearing God seems minimal, as a result the idea and hope of hearing Divinity is at the bottom of their list of important things.
On the contrary, of all the voices in the universe, hearing Jesus is a necessity above all necessities in life. His voice IS life, as His presence is life, as His dreams are life, there is life infused in all which comprises the person of Christ. John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.”

Every word from the mouth of God, therefore, teaches us the fundamentals and deep things of God and faith. “He that has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Many people lend their ears to “commerce and media” and fill their heads with unfounded doubt and leave no room to hear that “small, still voice’. …and if they’re not pouring the effluent of the main stream media into their heads, they’re filling their ears with political talk, words of their work-a-day world, pornography, or just the common foolishness that comes in from the cable network. It’s no great wonder that people are so frightened when we tell them we “hear God”. Metaphorically speaking, many live in that “septic tank” that I compare “commerce and media” to. Think about it… IF we’re inside that tank, we can’t hear anything outside. We have no contrast. We only know when somebody “flushes” and when you hear the plumbing “rumble”, you anticipate the flow of effluent. But you don’t know that there is an entirely different world just a few feet over your head … just a few feet of dirt and a concrete slab dividing you from the brightness, fresh air, and the presence and voice of God. But it seems many have chosen to live in a “tomb” and they’ve been there so long that things which should be common between them and their God are now unthinkable to them.

What will it take for us, as humans, to be interested in hearing God’s voice again? For me, even if God comes to chastise me, i would rather hear the voice of the Lord who loves me and died for my sins, than to not hear Him at all. Jesus said in John 5:24 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Where it says “word” is the word “logos”, meaning “the sayings of God” as in what is “uttered by the living voice”. Personally, i really need to hear Jesus. Not just want, but need. It makes sense that the Living One speaks Living Words that are Life Giving for those who are without life that they might have Life if they would hear and listen to the Living One who speaks Living Words. He who has an ear…let him hear.

If we can’t hear God, just what do we hear? If we aren’t listening to God, who/what are we listening to?
David prayed in Psalm 51:8 that the Lord would ‘make him hear joy and gladness’. We should pray the same thing. Oh, and let us all be assured with all confidence that God hears us. Psalm 65:2 states that God is the one who “who hears prayer”. Not only is Jesus a speaking King, He is also a listening King…. Not only does God hear us, but we hear Him. Some say God doesn’t speak to men anymore, i say if that is so then there was no point in the words of Jesus in John 10:3-5, and this is important, so please listen, “To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

The Lord has a mouth and speaks, we have ears and can hear, i say, “Why shouldn’t He speak to us?” Where the word “voice” is used it means, “uttered words, speech”. Voice means exactly what it says and not some alternate means of perception. God said “they hear my uttered words, My speech”, and He meant exactly what He said. i hear God, i have friends who hear God, so i’m compelled to ask you, Do you hear God? If not, would you like to? He’s speaking a lot these days, can you hear Him?

Isaiah 32:3 “The eyes of those who see will not be dim, And the ears of those who hear will listen.” There is another place in the Bible where hearing and listening are used in the same sentence, and i’m mentioning this for the sake of those who might think “hearing” and “listening” are the same. Isaiah 42:23, like Isaiah 32:3 use both words, and there is a difference. If we give attention to God and incline our ears to Him, which is to hear, according to Isaiah 32:3 and 42:23 we can will also perceive His words and grasp His intent, which is listening. Believe me, if God wants you to hear and understand, He is entirely capable of making Himself known and getting His point across. And it’s not like He “tries” to speak to us, as if He would fail. The point is not whether God is speaking, but are we hearing and positioning ourselves to understand?

Like in 2 Chronicles 20:17 “…Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the LORD, who is with you…. Do not fear or be dismayed …for the LORD is with you.” Put yourself in position to hear and listen to God. God will gladly give to us the riches of His hands, but we’ve got to make an effort. We can’t just sit back in our lawn chairs in casual repose, drink our mint juleps, and expect God to make all the effort. The heart of the Lord is that we would participate with Him in our own salvation. i fully believe the Lord wants a running dialogue with His people. These are the days that if we are brave enough to ask the Lord, He will answer … the catch is we need to actually be interested in hearing Him. Position yourselves, stand still, turn down the volume of the world in your head and in the world around you. Ask the Lord, He will answer, i assure you. And when He does, listen! The word “consider” in the Bible means to “incline you’re heart and focus until you have understanding”.

God does speak, and we can hear. The date is today, the time is now, and forward is the way we’re going. Can you hear the Lord? Would you like to? Now is the time, position yourselves and incline your ears to Him! He will answer.
i pray our ears will be opened and we will hear the life giving words of the Living God.

Open your ears, position yourself to hear God. As the days get darker, i believe the voice of the Lord will become more prevalent. Can you hear Him, He’s there and He is very interested in speaking to you.

To “press hard after God” is to follow him closely, like someone who is afraid of losing sight of something very valuable, following Him in season and out, whether it’s convenient or not. To “press hard after God” means we’re hot on His trail, we’ve got our nose to the ground, ears fully engaged, looking near and far for the indications of His presence and direction.

When David was in the wilderness of Judah, Psalm63 reveals a man who thirsted after the Lord. Psalm63:1, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” David had a choice, he could just lay down and die letting Saul kill him and be done with all that chasing around, or he could set his eyes on the Lord and call to the only one who could actually help. Jesus knows how to help you find your second wind!

If you have stepped, purposefully or mistakenly, if you have stepped into a situation which wounds your conscience and causes you to lose your relish for righteous things, don’t hide yourself away. Run, i said, run to Jesus and tell it all to Him. It’s not like He doesn’t know and doesn’t see, He’s just waiting on you to bring it all to His healing place. Don’t think for a minute you can just hide it away in your heart … as if in the long run you think it doesn’t make any difference. Everything matters. Hidden sin will eat your lunch…maybe not today, but undealt with junk is just that, undealt with junk. Run to Jesus and tell Him all about it, never let it hide. Reconciling and resolving our wounded conscience and bad choosings should be to God’s glory and our testimony of His delivering power, not a shame to us which drives us indoors to shut our blinds, drawing our curtains, becoming isolated and alone in the dark. i can say from experience, when left to ourselves, alone with secrets, isolated and in the dark with shame to keep us company …. we are in bad company.

When viscious circumstances occur in our lives, and they will occur, that is not the time to hide away, that is the time to turn up the heat, pedal to the metal, being in hot pursuit of the Lord, calmly, methodically, with focus and all power….run to Jesus.

Matthew 22:39, “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself”; as read from Leviticus 19:18, “… but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

How do we love ourselves? i don’t mean a twisted perception of self-appreciation, thinking more highly of ourselves than we should, or being arrogant and proud, acting out all sorts of self centered-ness, but to those who think they are dogs or even less. That verse doesn’t read “you shall loathe your neighbor as your loathe yourself”, but “love your neighbor as yourself”. It appears to me, for much of my life, i’ve loathed myself instead of loved myself, beating myself long after God and others had forgiven me.

Did Jesus die enough for you?
Did Jesus suffer enough for you?
Did Jesus bleed enough for you?
If He did, then take it all to the next step …
Did He die enough for your neighbor?
Did He suffer enough for your neighbor?
Did He bleed enough for your neighbor?
If He did, then… you’ve got to let go of the burdens of your heart.

Who is it which keeps reminding us of all the things we ever did, or of all the things our neighbor did? It seems that for many, no matter how many times we confess to God our sins, we just can’t quite seem to find the washing of our conscience we so desperately need.

And who is it who continues holding up to our faces all our faults or our neighbors faults, long after God has tread the faults under and called them washed away? For us to keep bleeding about the past is to say…the sacrifice on Calvary made by the Son of God was insufficient. It is to say God can forgive others but He can’t quite reach me, and hell whispers through the cracks in the windows and doors of our hearts and says we MUST “PAY MORE”. For us to keep others bleeding long after the Lord has forgiven them, isn’t that not only calling the blood shed by Jesus insufficient, but worse putting ourselves in a god-position? “PAY MORE.” We who keep others bleeding, saying WE will decide when they have bled enough….i mean it was truly bad the other person did something terrible, but i believe it’s even worse when we point it out and stand over them, telling them to bleed until we are satisfied. “PAY MORE.” In Genesis 9 it was bad that Noah was naked and drunk, but it was worse that Ham pointed it out.

Did Jesus die enough, suffer enough, bleed enough for you? How about your neighbor? If He did, then let what constrains you go, open your hands and let it go.

By looking forward i mean not living hypnotized by the past, a life-style of always looking back. God had some hard things to say to Israel for pining about their past, whining about “what was” so much that it dictated their “what is”, and they lost sight of their “what will be”. God called it, “Hearkening back to a former time.” Let’s understand, i don’t mean never looking back, but i mean to let the past be past and not give the past anymore power over our lives than it already has. Looking forward, ask yourself: where is my life in the now? Where is life happening for you? Is God driving with His God-directions and God-purposes, or, maybe, like many of us, we really have no clue, or we answer “Yes”, but really mean “i wish”? You know, if we’re always looking back it’ll give us a terrible neck ache. We can’t drive forward if we’re always looking in the rear view mirror. Going forward is nearly impossible if we’re watching behind us.

Almost, pretty much, just about, for the most part, if, maybe, might have been…yea but, yea but if… …if… if only… Might have been… Might have been if only.

In the things we sow and reap, There are the sowings of things that, never in this life, would we wish to grow at our feet. But yet, more and more often, i see the seeds of regret that grow around our feet like vines that tangle us and cause our attention to shift from important matters to spending more and more time untangling ourselves from these “vines”, strangling vines, ropes impeding forward momentum, vines of distraction and the more we are distracted the more we are distracted. Many people like to wander in the cemetery of past errors and old wrongs, rereading old headstones and epitaphs of the things we think we have “reckoned dead”, moaning over old wrongs saying over and over, “Oh, i so wish i hadn’t done that,” but never really dealing with what’s in their heart and letting it all go. Regret often paralyzes hope, corrodes the connection between vision and purpose, and becomes a dead weight to our forward momentum. This is not healthy; it is what i call a chronic gastrointestinal turbulence of the soul.

In the silence of late night, the gray place between awake and asleep, we play the video of what “might have been”, but when it plays in a constant loop it makes us weak because it over-emphasizes the past at the expense of the present. How expensive is your present? Would you trade “now” to go back to “then”? Do you really think “then” would be all you remember it to be, or is it just a group of selective memories?

A man said to me once, many years ago while weeping over his life, “Sometimes, i seem to spend the bulk of my time wishing God would do something other than what He is doing.” For me, his words were such a profound idea to ponder.

Years later, i think of Israel, in the desert, the wilderness, a place of amazing miracles, a season of walking with God, and over and over they hearkened back to a former time, seemingly spending the bulk of their time wishing God would do something other than what He was doing. Israel was in what i call the “Season of The Golden Calf”, and i wonder if maybe we, in America aren’t living out a giant repeat of the story of Israel in some odd fashion. Looking back, always wishing we were anywhere but here, unbelieving of God’s promise of tomorrow, bitter about today.

OH, and the colors….the colors of “might have been” are always so brilliant! The reds, and blues, the crimson and purples, the yellows & pales…the white sails of distant ships are always full and whiter than our own, and the green of far away hills are always greener. Might have been always looks SOOO good from a distance.

We need to refocus. But what, or who will we refocus on? i think what Paul said in Philippians 3 is the supreme focus, “… forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal to win the (supreme and heavenly) prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.”

Let us go OUT of the graveyard of “might have been” and “if only” to go forward. We are not people of our history, but people of our destiny. As best we can let us take seriously what we sow; let us leave the graveyard of old things where regret grows around our feet … let it go; let the dead be dead and let us catch our breath in a new direction. Don’t just turn in a new direction, more better, come home! Refocus to be forward thinking, forward moving with forward momentum. Love the Lord you God with all your breathing, all your thinking, all your feeling, and all your forward momentum. And at that, i say: Selah, my friends, think on it.