Category Archives: What God Taught Me Today

“The most deeply compelled action is also the freest action.” CS Lewis on coming to Christ

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One of the last interviews of CS Lewis. Here is his assessment  of his coming to faith in Christ. It seems the Billy Graham staff member desperately wanted Jack to validate the altar call, decision-based methodology of the Graham team. This article is contained in “God in the Dock”, a book worthy of your time. 

Transcript:

Wirt: In your book Surprised by Joy you remark that you were brought into the faith kicking and struggling and resentful, with eyes darting in every direction looking for an escape. You suggest that you were compelled, as it were, to become a Christian. Do you feel that you made a decision at the time of your conversion?

Lewis: “I would not put it that way. What I wrote in Surprised by Joy was that ‘before God closed in on me, I was offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice.’ But I feel my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair. I was decided upon. I was glad afterwards at the way it came out, but at the moment what I heard was God saying, ‘Put down your gun and we’ll talk.’”

Wirt: That sounds to me as if you came to a very definite point of decision.

Lewis: “Well, I would say that the most deeply compelled action is also the freest action. By that I mean, no part of you is outside the action. It is a paradox. I expressed it in Surprised by Joy by saying that I chose, yet it really did not seem possible to do the opposite.”

A Faithful Mother

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“…he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb.”Luke 1

John in utero heard only silence from dad. Unfortunately this can often be baby’s experience today. His mother, Elizabeth was the primary, if not the sole instructor who taught John truth and righteousness before birth. The design of this teaching was not simply adequate, it proved complete and theologically sound to make John wise unto salvation even before his birth; perhaps this is original resident theology! Do not minimize faithful teaching of truth for God does many miracles where faith and truth abide. 

I have no doubt that Zach became a man much engaged in secret silent prayer for wife and son. His hands weren’t tied, but his tongue was. Dads we can also speak much but of no consequence. What are we known to speak of most fervently? Does our speech touch eternity and fill the unborn with the Spirit? Do we believe God who acts in time space history?

Moms! Read and sing to your unborn child, and may he or she leap for joy as the Spirit moves and breathes upon the little one! John changed the world in large part from the role his spiritually keen mother played. “How can it be that the Mother of my Lord has come?” Elizabeth was a woman spiritually on key. 

Moms, never underestimate your powers of instructive influence upon the son(s) God gives you. Remember Solomon recalls instruction of his mother in many places in the Proverbs.

The Enigmatic Case of the Wandering Smoke Alarm

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Hands down! A “Chirp-Chirp” is infinitely better than “Fire Fire!” but both are irritating in their own way.


“Now where did I put that durn smoke alarm this time?”

  
The intruder was most uninvited and unwelcome. My ordinary mundane blessed silence of predawn beauty was shattered this very morning with the incessant and equally annoying “chirp chirp” agonal cries of a dying smoke alarm battery that demanded my undivided attention. It soon began to rival fingers screeching over a chalkboard with an echo of reverberation that seemed eerily mobile too. It was all over and random in its stealthy snobbery. What the heck? It became so elusive that I actually began to have visions of the movie #TotalRecall and entertained possibilities of a gigantic rat of sufficient size to have swallowed the whole annoying thing; said rat now loose and at large as he scurried all about the house. I verified my sidearm at the ready. Affirmative. 

After an initial failed reconnaissance mission to acquire the target, I wisely chose to brew my coffee to settle my quickly fraying nerves. As the percolator perked in delightful joy I sulked in ongoing aggravation. I began anew my fruitless search for the culprit alarm as I actually ran reconnaissance into four rooms and two hallways only to stand the mandatory 60 or so seconds as I impatiently waited for the familiar but elusive beeps. Somewhere else! (I subconsciously pondered 4-lettered words.) This “Somewhere” began to giveaway to other dormant fears… maybe it, or God forbid, maybe I, am trapped in a sort of Stephen King novel experience of alternate universes. Where’s the door?!?!

The vision of the monster rat gnawed away again but eventually broke through to another troubling speculation that perhaps a disgruntled worker from Comcast or maybe the AC company had maliciously planted a failing smoke alarm somewhere in my 3500 foot attic and underneath 2 feet of fiberglass insulation some months back as he was duty-bound to crawl in my attic. That didn’t make sense though so I considered perhaps the previous owner had legitimately jerry-rigged a smoke alarm overhead, whose time had now come. This too seem too bizarre. It is so challenging to remain sanctified in times such as these, when fears and imaginations converge in something akin to the Bermuda Triangle, all at 3 a.m. in the morning. In betwixt my ears. 

The coffee brewed and sighed its completion so I poured a cup and filled my extra thermos, and scurried outta here to my secret back porch Bethel in search of P&Q. Gnarly disruptions to my morning quiet… Huh! I think not! I discovered once again silence is golden especially when reinforced with a closed door as insurance. The wife is always at locating such things in an effortless fashion anyway. “Let the woman You gave me find it, Lord.” Right. 

My Quiet Time silence was soon invaded by the open door to Bethel as the incessant chirps of Lucifer himself seemed to follow Amy and alas, they found me once again. Conversation and morning kiss complete, we then exchange frustrations of our failure to locate the chirping source. I am especially alarmed as perhaps for only the 2nd time in our recorded marital bliss, the wife has failed to find and fix the problem; most often said problems are of my own devices and design. Nevertheless disregarding the current failure that is still an arguably impressive record. We discussed contingency plans and were ultimately unpersuaded by any options other than eventually the battery will die of old age, so therein our hope lay. Yeah!

Back to reading and prayer. But alas, silence and joy must always eventually end, so I trudge downward off my personal “Mount of Transfiguration” and find myself confronted with chirps again now beginning the drone into patterns that might imitate demonic screeches of a dying demon and not a smoke alert. “Lord we tried to cast out the batteries but we couldn’t find them. Need a little help here, Lord!” Back onto chairs and step ladders I go, and again both wife and I are transfixed by the mobile nature of the chirps that come from nowhere but everywhere all at once. If the wife with her bat-like ears stands baffled as to the location, I knew I was in big trouble with my AARP qualified ears that had for years been crying out for Miracle Ear intervention. I refuse. What’s that you say?

We have a house guest at present and I even begin to wonder if this whole thing is some sort of an obnoxious February 1st February Fool Day joke that they celebrate in Georgia or something. That really did not add up either since she too likely would have disturbed by the omnipresent sound throughout the night. Then the wife said in response to my trial balloon attic theory, it sounds like it may be in here and on the new book shelves, but I am the one who arranged books and artifacts on them, so I know there is no smoke alarm there. 

Oops…

Somewhere upon my mind’s back burner I vaguely recall an extra alarm with no hanger for it for walk installation. As a surgeon calling for scalpel I called for the stool. Rising up, up and away, and guess what? There hidden away on the top shelf behind a silent figurine Rabbit who seemed to smiled stupidly in provocation lay the culprit. Double OOPS!

So I say in a brilliant recovery attempt, “Well it’s in a good spot, up high and out of sight and all.” Wife was both unconvinced and irritated. I felt somewhat like David as Nathan pointed a finger in his face as he simply stated, “You’re the man!” After a welcomed change of the battery the CO-Smoke alarm combo gave one last, loud, long satisfied chirp before returning to its baseline silence we had searched for all this early morning.  

The one lost sheep has been found and all heaven rejoices more over it than over the ninety and nine who need no rescue. 

“God, would You please CLOBBER that creep for me?”

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“And in Your lovingkindness, cut off my enemies
And destroy all those who afflict my soul,

For I am Your servant.”

Psalm 143:12

  

As much as there are times when we might wish it so, Imprecatory Prayer is not like a Mafia contract killing. God is not a Killer-For-Hire. “He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” “He does not wish for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.” Imprecatory prayer is maybe… just my thought… our final (but oft repeated) step toward relinquishing an untrustworthy, vexed heart and confusing circumstantial desires to a wise and holy Father who sees all and knows all and can righteously fulfill His purpose in glory indifferent to the acts of ungodly men or well-meaning saints. That would be my heart that is vexed and needs be handed over to the King once again. And again. And again.

Imprecatory prayers have multiple bases that are as varied as they are broad as they encompass the glory of God and the purpose of God in the lives of individual saints who are collectively engaged in the Body Corporate revelation of God that always touches eternity. Here in Psalm 143 we see the Psalmist essentially prays for God to clobber his enemies as he appeals to his servant relationship to God, with a reminder of his perpetual need for God’s mercy demonstrated by God acting to clear the solitary path to heaven.

Answered imprecations do not always imply immediate deliverance from or annihilation of all enemies. We are granted assurance that God does answer all prayer by His standing offer of tender mercy and tangible comforts to the seasoned warrior-saints who cry and pray. Joy is the expected Biblical norm indifferent to current impoverished circumstance or ongoing prosperity of enemies. We are to discover joy in God alone, not in the answer of deliverance; or in the non-answer. God may not purpose deliverance or a change in circumstance. That is no justification for embittered complaint. “Mumble, mumble…” Although when we mumble, we best mumble to God. I distinguish between a mumble and a grumble. (I hope that is not rationalization…)

I just read again this morning the story of Joseph’s initial revelation of his identity to his brothers as they stood before, arguably the most powerful man in the universe : “You sold me as a slave, but God actually sent me to preserve you as a remnant.“ Oops… big boo-boo. (Knees probably grew weak and a few murmured 4-lettered words likely escaped the lips as the guilty victors become humbly victimized.) Their logical understanding of these events was about as elusive to them as my understanding how my youngest son has juggled as many as 8 balls simultaneously. It’s beyond the normative of ordinary human experience. Or is it? Does not God have the capacity to animate dead dust formed into live Man by the breath of His mouth? How does dry dust hold together anyway? Ever wondered that?

Joseph likely had passed through frequent periods where his pleasure, comfort and hope were derived from reminding God of the injustice of his current imprisonment, yet he probably never anticipated an answer to this prayer by a reunion with both his brothers and father. This unlikely reunion was occasioned by Joseph being a faithful steward of God’s purpose, and his adaptation to his role as a servant with an enlarged heart to meet the need of the masses in general but his brethren in particular. Answered imprecatory prayer may lead to restored relationships. Don’t be aggravated if God lets your enemy off the hook. Didn’t He do the same for you? You better answer, “Affirmative there, Ghost Rider.”


“Run the way of His commands and He enlarges your heart.”

I suspect this is the bottom-line, glory-of-God ideal we should call up on our personal rangefinder when we fire off salvos toward heaven loaded with ammunition intent on importuning God with appeals for calamity upon adversaries. “God remove them… but I guess, save them if You must.” I know we as Christians ought be careful for we gravitate toward the natural shade under the juniper tree where we can sit around swapping fish stories with a strange bed-fellow, (who is just about drip-dried), who still speaks of being eaten alive by a monstrous fish.

God has a very large paint brush that details an answer to our prayers, and we need to be sensitive and open to the signed portrait He presents to us. As an example, consider that those beautiful rolling thunderheads rushing over the horizon toward me actually hold wind, hail, floods and potential death hidden underneath their majestic beauty. God’s destruction upon our enemies may mean that in proud prosperous arrogance they succeed today as they literally get away with murder and their life may have temporal beauty. Their hearts may be hardened with ungodly blind indifference as they blissfully enjoy temporal blessings beyond measure so that “their portion might be in this life…” All questions of right and wrong, of justice and mercy will be ultimately revealed and equitably balanced in powerful, comforting clarity granted on The Final Day. An honest current Judgment Day perspective is crucial for contentment today, and helps a struggling, afflicted believer to currently see wisdom and find joyful peace and contentment through a Psalms 73 worldview. This is our one reconciliation of the apparent incongruences that result as we pray for the restraint of God upon our enemies or the removal by God of the wicked… yet in answer they prosper as never before. “Thanks a lot God!”

Just remember, “God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble.”


Let’s end this in search of agreement with the Psalmist at the end of Psalm 73. 


Psalms 73:25-28 (NASB)

Whom have I in heaven but You?

And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For, behold, those who are far from You will perish;

You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You.
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;  I have made the Lord GOD my refuge,  That I may tell of all Your works. 

“And though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. This is my Father’s world!”  (Hymn)


“I have learned the secret of being content in any circumstance.”

Paul


  

Final statement and I’m sticking to it: 

Imprecatory Prayers are thoroughly Biblical and need to be routinely prayed… I suppose daily to seek deliverance from an embittered heart. God’s answer to imprecatory prayers may not always coincide with my desire, intent nor agenda and ultimately require my thanksgiving. This reality only serves to reinforce why we pray, as prayer implies a Wise Sovereign who has our times, and the times of God’s enemies… my enemies… in His hands. Prayer has both temporal and eternal application. When the Psalmist requests his “enemies to be cut off” it carries with it the consequential final outcome of being shut out of the Covenant Community. This is serious business but the reasonable and logical outcome of habitual running in darkness from Light. Pray brethren, but pray in wisdom and pray in love with Eternity in your heart and the Glory of God in your sight.
  

Of Men and Dead Chickens

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“All we like dead chickens are gone astray, we are every one turned into our own decay…”

(Vining allegorical paraphrase of Romans 3 and Ephesians 2 principles.)

  
I have on occasion opportunity to perform the dastardly deed of dealing with dead chickens. One thing for sure: when chickens die there is a total cessation of activity. They neither cluck nor clack, and no longer do whatever chickens typically do: eat, drink and make messes and merry with roosters… perhaps the latter point is more illustrative of the next-to-useless rooster’s perspective. Presumably some chickens are reputed to lay eggs now and again when not on strike as mine most certainly are at present. (The heck of it is that I have not to date received a grievance list in the empty egg basket.) 

When dead though, chickens stop ordinary functions and no longer serve useful purpose to their Sustainer in Chief, and it is then I reluctantly move them postmortem to the distant burn pile. They are cut off from all semblance of life and hope when found in this final predicament. The chickens are thereby committed to rest, their battle won with scarce a mumble of appreciation as they are tossed unceremoniously to the top of the pile. It is here they will stay until they decay or end up being burned with utter indifference to the quality of their works or number of laid eggs. These facts remain true unless the carcass is acted upon by outside forces. These forces often come by stealth in multiple forms just as a thief in the night… typically by buzzard, stray dog or nasty coyote. (My dog Jack gets a severe verbal rebuke for any attempt to consort with the dead. We are not that sort of folks out here on the Vining Plantation, and will not tolerate such behavior by domesticated animals nor humans alike. I think of Lonesome Dove and the warning sign, “We don’t rent pigs.” Some things are well beyond profane.)

Ongoing research has led me to observe that dead chickens never become animated again regardless of the force or strength of entity that acts upon them. Even when varmint intervention occurs and they are forcibly moved they never achieve original animation, and are ultimately only consumed and spread across the balance of my 9 acres after due digestive process and transformation into varmint dung fertilizer. Here is the point: If we are really, really just as dead as dead chickens as I have intimated, these options sound pretty terrible to me as we approach the final goal line by entry into the “red zone”.

Quite candidly it’s the maggots that get me most of all. The putrid smell of death that surrounds these carrion-eating vermin works upon all sensory pathways, but most especially the olfactory pathways to trigger the “stink-sensitive” N&V regions of the brain. Frankly a writhing group of maggots does wonders to the eye gate also. (N&V is nursing lingo for hurling your toenails up.)

So my question is this: Does it even seem reasonable that this is the best we might expect… that this is what God has destined us to… we who were made a little lower than God, to rule and exercise dominion over the earth? Yes, even we who were made in His likeness and image? Not hardly, I think. Rather as children we progress toward hope resolved with these words of comfort, “God has not destined us for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Glory. We seek saving glory and not decay. We seek another city whose walls and foundations are as eternal as our Master Architect. We pursue “life, life, eternal life” as much as Graceless on his initial dash toward the wicket gate before his name change to Christian upon entry. “This mortal shall put on immortality; the perishable, imperishable.” (Check out the hope of 1 Corth 15 for those who practice the things revealed in the earlier portions of chapter 15: Believe!)
Back on track…

In the meantime we are spiritually akin to dead chickens and must be acted upon by an outside Power, a Force or Entity. We are dead as dead chickens. Lifeless with no spiritual pulse, separate from God, without hope, without God in this world though we may be as rich and nutty as Gates or Trump, or even as a lone strutting rooster without competition surrounded by 2-3 dozen plus beauties without resistance to his every whim. God must move. God must rend the heavens. God must issue command beyond the general to the particular, secret, effectual calling of our name. “Lazarus, COME FORTH!” And he did, as we still do we. “All that the Father has given Me come…”

“But God…” must get involved in our deadness, our helplessness, our hopelessness through the gospel of free and sovereign grace. He raises the dead and animates them with power by His Breath, and in His pleasure for His glory. 

Lewis helps… with another of those memorable word pictures you never forget:

“This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there’s a rumor going around the shop that some of us are someday going to come to life.”

CS Lewis in Mere Christianity

Oh yeah, we must deal with the unpleasantries of this business about dung. (Philippians 3:8) That is what the Bible candidly calls your attempts to save yourself. Crap. You are covered in a veneer of crap that is a stench in the nostrils of Holy God. When is the last time you intentionally looked like crap and dressed like crap and smeared dung upon your self as perfume to fit yourself for the King to actually participate in His Son’s wedding feast? (Hunters in a passionate fit of eagerness to be stealth may rub fox urine or the like on their clothing to mask offensive human BO… but I have never heard of fox poo or the like being used.) Likely, you too have never so adorned yourself either, but if you have… when did you escape the sanitarium and what is their number? Babies do that though… paint in poo and think it is fun. (SPV) Are you still an infant attempting to finger-paint upon Self and surroundings to wear a facade of hypocrisy?? If you insist on saving yourself that is precisely what Scripture teaches you are and what you do. And you have plans to attend the Marriage Supper of the Lamb dressed in what? (Remember the parable of the one at the Wedding Feast dressed inappropriately? It did not end well for him as he was bound and cast into Outer Darkness.) 

Really dead men, really do not walk and can only attain to animation when God acts and imparts life to them. “But God…”

We know the post-life evidences of this impartation are repentance and faith in response to the word of His power. 

Regeneration or the new birth is our Genesis of life. You don’t believe and won’t believe and can’t believe as a dead man. “But God…” first moves, then God imparts life and light as the Spirit bursts forth in the faint cry of adoption, “Abba. Father.” And we awaken to a life hidden with Christ in God. 

And He makes all things new.


Ephesians 2:1-10 (NASB)

 Made Alive in Christ

[2:1] And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 

[2] in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 

[3] Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 

[4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 

[5] even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 

[6] and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 

[7] so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 

[8] For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 

[9] not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 

[10] For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.


Forgive me for the way my fried brain works. I really do look and listen to God speaking in all of life though, even when tending stinking, dead chickens.  

“God helps those who help themselves…” Does He now?

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“It is vain for you to rise up early, To retire late, To eat the bread of painful labors; For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.”

Psalm 127:2

George Dobbs Photo (A bridge to somewhere or nowhere.)

The Pilgrim’s Progress introduces an all-to-often frequently encountered character known as “Ignorance”. Ignorance has long insisted that his way and his efforts would be recognized and rewarded in the end. He proceeded in his religious labors in disregard of repeated warnings by Christian and Hopeful that he in fact was choosing to “do it my way,” in contrast to the prescribed Way they followed according to the Writ. Ignorance on that final fateful Day was turned away from the very gate of the Celestial City for his lack of the Certificate of Authenticity that validated his life and right of entry. As Ignorance is carried away, Bunyan in his masterful way makes the astute observation through Christian, “And I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.”

Selah

“And I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.”

Rigid discipline and hard labor are neither the fuel of nor primary catalysts of grace. A responsive faith that labors does in fact produce these tangible, consumable evidences of the secret God who gives grace even as men are incapacitated by sleep. Perhaps this is a further insurance policy to utterly convince men so none boast, none see, and none fully understand why grace comes unmerited to the one as the other continues in reckless sleep and comfortable sloth in the House of Unconcern.

Thankfully God chooses to interfere with our preprogrammed best renditions of religious idolatry and vanity of labors. He turns our wood, hay and stubble into gold, silver and precious stones that will adorn eternity. The significance of works is not because of the intrinsic worth of works, but because of the grace that enlarges a new capacity of joy experienced in responsive service. “The love of Christ constrains us…” and, “If I have not love it profits me nothing.”

We are easily confused and become convinced that “God helps those who help themselves,” but the above Psalm indicates quite the unnerving contrary. The source of our confusion originates in our makeup which is hard-wired for pride and self-sufficiency that insists we know best, yes even better than God, when it comes to works that save. Our heart has an incredible capacity to deceive us. However we are indeed called to pursue God through persistent discipline, instruction and effort not for our glory or profit or as an end to merit, but as means to know God in power and resurrection as recipients of His glory. What I think I struggle to say is that God acts in secret ways and by special providences in spite of our best efforts of interference to thwart grace, and in spite of our attempts to help Him out to merit our keep. Redemptive history will unfold and the church will advance even by the weakness of our flesh where His glory resides in the most unlikely clay vessel candidates. 

When it’s all been said and done a Christ follower is one who has been repetitiously instructed by life journey that “it is of His doing that we are in Christ Jesus…” and our boast is in the Lord working within us because of His work without us and in spite of us. We know that “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” We still build it but a spiritual man recognizes the God of grace is in reality working His purposes in secret through our labor unaware. So what should we do? Work to be noticed of Heaven in all your strivings and efforts, not for merit but in pleasure and joy that you might not receive the grace of God in vain. Work harder than any! That’s Paul’s perspective.

True believers all soon say… because they LOVE to say of the Chief Cornerstone: “This came about from the Lord and is marvelous in our eyes.”


 

“Dust & rust Thy life’s reward; Slay the thought, Believe Thy Lord!” (Carmichael)

 

Spiritual Truths Lurking in Wrinkled Scrubs???

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On certain days I may be assigned to a particular type of #OR case and as such find myself victimized by urban legend #hospital policy that requires me to change out of my comfy personal scrubs and into very basic hospital-sanctioned scrubs. These hospital grown scrubs are reputedly cleaner than my home-grown variety, just never mind the factoid that they are all quite unceremoniously forcibly crammed into suspect cubicles where they are permanently wrinkled much as a 125-year old migrant worker’s face who has recently been discovered a week later lying face down in the turnip patch, shaken and not stirred, but very well-done under scorching hot noon-day sun. We will only mention in brief passing how these suspect aseptic artifacts of clothing have been corporately washed in unison by use of industrial strength commercial washers with strong cleaning solvents, not only with ordinary dirt and grime, but with the added benefit of multiple patients’ feces, urine, vomitous, blood and the like from several institutions

 ’Nough said about that so I rest my case. 

Although I do think it relevant and noteworthy that Hospital Scrub developers were early pioneers of the #unisex concept as they fit male or female personnel anatomy equally poorly. Asexual or gender-neutral almost comes to mind, but not quite as they also offer a further progressive claim of “switch-hitter” status with #bisexual capacity as they flip either way, both in or out complete with pocket on either side, and that with ease. I have discovered by sheer determined trial and error that if the shirt and pants are wrinkled on the one side, the bisex plan to flip them inside out fails miserably as they are equally wrinkled on the inside as well as the out, though I had to try. I HAD to try, you understand?

I suspect there are latent #spiritual truths there.


“The heart of man reflects man.”

As a man thinks within himself, so he is.”

Proverbs 

What we see on the outside accurately indicates what lurks tucked and hidden away somewhere on the inside. 

Just a Jedi Mind-Trick… or God Incarnate?

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And all the crowds were amazed and they said, “This man cannot be the Son of David, can He?” But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.”
And knowing their thoughts Jesus said to them, “Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand.”

Matthew 12:24-25

This accusation of the intimidated and outgunned Pharisees is amazing for it reveals their fears of the spiritual nature of the power inherent in the claims Christ demonstrated in both His works and words. The Pharisees realize what is at stake, and they sense they are losing, so they impugn the character of Jesus by suggesting he is an agent of the devil. (Sounds like something Trump would say about Cruz.)

And then there is the “old Jedi mind-trick” of “knowing their thoughts…” Right… or is He God incarnate who knows all things? I don’t think it required any special exercise of Jesus to know their thoughts; Wisdom incarnate stood before them. “He knew you before He formed you… before a word is on your tongue…” He knows it!

 

Photo by George Dobbs, Adventurer

 
In a moment of open clarity to any who have ears to hear Jesus claims not to be Beelzebul but in fact He declares to be the One who has actually bound up Beelzebul and currently plunders his house with freedom by the coming of the kingdom of God. How does One bind up a spirit being? By the word of power spoken by the Word become flesh. God incarnate inhabited the Lord Jesus, hence we see demonic forces elsewhere crying out for temporary reprieve as they sense judgment is nigh. Why? Because the King has come! Who is gonna logically argue with that? Where can we say the Lord Jesus ever failed against the spiritual forces of wickedness?  Not gonna happen. Prove it you say? Look at His works.  “Satan, begone!” “Let there be light!” And there was light. And there is life everlasting. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” And demons tremble at the sound of His name. 

Amen.

Hail King Jesus! We worship You in the beauty of holiness and for who You are and who You declare Yourself to be.

. 


 

1. Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,

great David’s greater Son!

Hail in the time appointed,

his reign on earth begun!

He comes to break oppression,

to set the captive free;

to take away transgression,

and rule in equity.

2. He comes with succor speedy

to those who suffer wrong;

to help the poor and needy,

and bid the weak be strong;

to give them songs for sighing,

their darkness turn to light,

whose souls, condemned and dying,

are precious in his sight.

3. He shall come down like showers

upon the fruitful earth;

love, joy, and hope, like flowers,

spring in his path to birth.

Before him on the mountains,

shall peace, the herald, go,

and righteousness, in fountains,

from hill to valley flow.

4. To him shall prayer unceasing

and daily vows ascend;

his kingdom still increasing,

a kingdom without end.

The tide of time shall never

his covenant remove;

his name shall stand forever;

that name to us is love.
(James Montgomery)