2/26:
I might well have been wealthy, as in upper middle class American and how wealth is defined in our times. I don’t say that to be vain, but simply to bear witness to truth. The Lord is truth. If we have abilities that He’s given us, but there are impediments to us displaying them, then we might need to tell people about them, just so people know help is available when it might not be apparent.
My family became destitute and fell out of the upper middle class, and I had a lot of difficulties holding me back, but all in all, due to the intelligence, understanding and perseverence God gave me, I might have done quite well if success in this world had been my first and primary focus.
Nevertheless, I’ve been financially poor and insecure my whole adult life. The ultimate factor has been that I’ve put following the Lord and the Kingdom of God first, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. That greatly hindered me towards re-entering the upper middle class. Poorer people especially need “breaks” from people in power, and in the last few decades, more often than not, those people in power have looked unfavorably on Christians. Before they started opposing them and trying to push them out of society, the first step was to prevent new Christians from coming in.
Putting spiritual things first made the most sense to me. It was also as Jesus said: building a house on a foundation of stone, rather than sand, as the house on the sand would be destroyed in a great storm.
I’ve stored up treasure in Heaven, and grown rich there, but in today’s world, where godliness is being abandoned, I have struggled just to have a home and the very basic necessities of life.
Despite all that I’ve gone through, there is no question to me that, when it comes down to choosing the Lord or the world, choosing the Lord is the best and only decision one can make, and leads to true contentment and happiness, especially in the next life. But even here, if one chooses the Lord, he or she can enjoy life even in the midst of trouble and suffering. The Lord gives me purpose in dong what matters most to Him: genuinely trying to help others spiritually, to direct the lost people of this world towards Him, and being willing to sacrifice worldly things for the sake of helping Him in His work.
Over the years, the Lord has been showing me more and more that He made me a rather unusual person in many ways. I would have wanted to fit in better to society and likely have a family myself, but He’s made me live a more solitary life, and over time I’ve begun to see that this has been His will for me and He’s had His purposes for it. Mostly, that I can commune with Him and have the time and energy to intimately learns what’s close to His heart and work on those things. I’m so thankful that God blessed me with a good deal of wisdom and understanding, and a heart for His values and for others in order to do that work. I didn’t deserve it, but He blessed me with those things so I could use them for what He’s given to me to do in this world.
Very early on, material things grew quite unimportant to me. And the Lord has been turning me away from worldly living, and towards godly living, ever increasingly over the years. In Him only do we truly find the fruit of His Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” The “joy” to me means enjoyment, including pleasure, challenge and fun. Everything children dream about when they think of the future, and everything they hope for and enjoy in play and when they anticipate receiving gifts.
The Lord has been leading me away from much of today’s very worldly, ungodly society for many years, one step at a time. An important step was when I read the whole Bible for the first time. In recent years, it’s become more apparent to me that this time we’re in shows a strong resemblance to the End Times revealed mostly in the Book of Revelation, including the possibility of a worldwide “mark of the beast” becoming required for any buying or selling of goods. That is well in the works right now.
In the Bible, technology is revealed to play a prominent role in the End Times, and a symbol of that, which also appears present in Revelation, is the nuclear age, which is our modern age. Most prominently, it is alluded to in “Wormwood.” The modern and the nuclear go together, along with the beast and its system. The modern, nuclear age breaks the old ways and old relationships, and builds itself into the Tower of Babel. All humans are to be united under the Beast, and work and live under the close supervision of this false god. And the Beast — 666 — represents man. But it is the devil — the serpent — that is spiritually in power over both the beast and the false prophet of Revelation.
In these times that increasingly resemble the End Times, the devil increases in power, due to human sinfulness, rebellion against God, and self-deception, and the world increasingly resembles Hell as a result. Even so, many of the deceived, only seeing what they can see and what they want to see, actually look at it all, superficially, and believe they see “progress.” In truth, there have been tradeoffs, and most have not been truly beneficial.
The End Times are a strong hint of Hell. The things of God, such as truth, become increasingly suppressed. What satisfies is traded for what seems to satisfy, but doesn’t. God works with what He’s already done in the world, and also is always creating new and working everywhere in His divine, holy ways. He does that by working with faithful people. If there were none, then no one could perceive what He was doing, especially at intimate levels of understanding. But in the End Times, as in Hell, the new works of God, the new godly things, are prevented much due to the lack of faith. It isn’t that God couldn’t do them, but that He must instead turn to judgment and He won’t override people’s free will to choose what they want, and whether to want to please Him or not. The End Times, and Hell, are both of His sovereign will — not His desired will, but His permissive will.
2/27:
Although I didn’t end up becoming a parent myself, the Lord gave me a strong parental sense, to look out for and help others. That pairing wasn’t a misfit or a mistake. I’ve had to adjust to and accept how He directed my life. It wasn’t typical, and took me on something of a lonely path, so I would learn to look to the Lord alone for my security. He would work through other people, but they are only people, not God. Over time, I’ve come to know He made me parental in order that I can better serve the Body of Christ.
Because of all the problems and difficulties I’ve had throughout my life, I often found myself looking to the Lord for help in desperation as there was no other help really available. When I was young, I’d often think, “Why me? Why do I so often have unusual difficulties and so many obstacles and hindrances in the way of me just securing the basics of life?” Not only was I overweight, for example, but a hormonal problem had affected my femininity. Many overweight women still had quite a bit of attractiveness. On the other hand, the hormonal issue even seemed to have affected my shape somewhat, including where I put on the excess weight. It was hard for me even to get professional-looking outfits that fit right. Such problems weighed on me, but the Lord kept me persevering. Over time, over many years, I’ve come to appreciate the difficulties as different sorts of blessings. They were part of the Lord’s means to shape me and my life according to His plan for me.
From a young age, I understood the Lord to be perfect love, and a perfect parent. His wrath didn’t contradict that. It represented that He needs to punish human thoughts, words, and deeds that harm others and damage the life of perfect love that He desires for us.
I’m thankful that I became dependent on the Lord in a time and place where wealth and modern technology can easily make people feel rebelliously independent of Him. I’m thankful He gave me thankfulness and loyalty to Him. He made me as I am. He developed my relationship with Him so that I wouldn’t look to merely use Him for when I was in trouble, but then forsake His concerns when things were going better. As He helped me, I’d want to serve Him better. And for Him, that means being parental towards others. What else could I do but follow Him along the path He was creating for me?
3/2
More and more as my life has gone on, it’s become about living to please the Lord.
That is truly the only thing that makes sense in life. After all, He is God. And clearly, we humans are not.
Starting from my earliest years, the Lord was giving me a heart for what matters most to Him: everything that’s good. Love. Justice. Mercy. Faith. True happiness and contentment. Heavenly perfection. The salvation of souls. The fruit of His Spirit.
He often revealed Himself to me in various ways, supernaturally. But if all I had to go on was intellectual arguments, then I can still believe that it is most logical to believe in Him and treat Him as Lord.
This whole universe didn’t just make itself. It just didn’t accidentally order itself. That’s a contradiction. And it would have taken innumerable “fortuitous” accidents to produce this world. And then, to top it all off, the most unbelievable collection of “accidents” would be that we human beings exist with abilities that are just perfect for deeply experiencing existence in this universe.
All in all, I know God exists, and that I’m not Him. It makes sense, more than anything else does, to learn to please Him. To make our life about pleasing Him. That’s His will for us. Because if we do that, we end up also being just as pleased as He is. We end up with all that’s good.
As I wrote recently, the Lord also gave me exceptional abilities. And He’s also given me some exceptional experiences — supernatural revelations from Him.
The more we truly seek to please the Lord, the more that we do. And the more that we do, the more He makes us representatives of Heaven.
As representatives of Heaven, and being Heavenly minded, we see with ever better vision what’s so good and perfect about Heaven, and what’s so deceptive and destructive about living for this world.
Living for this world means living according to our sinful human nature. If we don’t properly and constantly tune in to God, we will be drawn to Hell. Its innumerable deceptions are very attractive to us. And make sense to our fallen nature. They start to seem like life itself. Even familiar and comforting. And providing security. The ways of God become the road not taken, and not known, and less than desirable. To those taken captive by the world’s deceptive attractions, the Lord’s way looks, with every passing day, more and more like a barren, inhospitable desert where there is only sacrifice without any pleasantness.
It’s so simple. Jesus asked a sick man, “Do you want to get well?” Do we truly want to be truly happy? Do we really want that?
Well, we should! It’s just basic logic. Who wants “worse”? We want “better”! Starting from our most basic physical needs, we want comfort and pleasantness. It’s easier to be happy and love others when we have them. That’s what Heaven promises. Then we move on up to more mental experiences — such as love and sharing experiences with others. Interesting things to see and do. Fun, exciting and pleasurable things to see and do. Meaningful things to see and do. Heaven has them all. And it’s all unruinable, because we are reconciled to the Lord. Heaven runs by faith in Him. With a perfect place and absolute trust in Him, love for Him, and intimate knowledge of Him, we will never sin despite still having our free will. We will feel ourselves too rich, and know ourselves to be, to ever consider sinning.
But Heaven does require our faith, so that we follow the Lord and become one with Him in mind. If we don’t settle our hearts on learning to follow Him along the narrow way, to the best of the ability He’s given us, then there are innumerable ways along the “broad way” that leads to destruction that we will follow instead. All these ways “seem right to us,” and even worse than that, we give our hearts over to them if we aren’t willing to take the Lord’s correction.
Today’s technology, while having its advantages, ultimately makes the allure of the broad way much more powerful, and nuclear in its potential for spiritual destructiveness. Technology tends to have an attractiveness that mankind can’t be refuse. If we can put cameras everywhere in public places, then shouldn’t we? Isn’t it irresponsible not to? If technology offers some tradeoff, shouldn’t we take it? If we can edit people’s genes for better health, shouldn’t we?
Up until the past couple of decades, there was a lot of public talk about the perils and even immorality of “playing God”. Now, that danger seems to have been largely cast aside and ignored by most of society. It has to be, though, that playing God will increasingly displease the actual God. While the world — at least in places — seems more glittering and impressive and powerful than ever, it is also more spiritually dysfunctional than, perhaps, ever. Perhaps since mankind’s earliest days, going back to the fall in the Garden. Science and Technology have been enthroned as false gods for many in the world’s wealthier countries.
The Lord once showed me a very large construction project, and how the individual workers, despite the size of the project, just worked on their own little part at any given time. The size of the project didn’t matter. It was in the hands of the master builder. For the individual worker, he could only do his tiny part of the whole each day. And even the human leader of the project knew so little of it. He couldn’t know everything the workers knew, or all that God knew about that project — what had transpired on the same grounds for thousands of years beforehand, and what would happen there going forward. So all I needed to concern myself with, He showed me, was my little part. His orders for me. I could only begin to imagine how it fit into the whole. He taught me to remember that I don’t really know, or understand, or “see” anything, because my knowledge, understanding and sight are so limited and faulty. And by relying on Him, and in faith remembering that He is the most important worker in the world, I’m able to work with Him on my own small part with as much contentment and peace as are possible in this still imperfect world.
3/4
From an early age, I began to fear the Lord. We had a children’s Bible which I would look at a lot.
I didn’t understand everything. But I believed the Lord was good and that His ways were right. I saw enough in what I did understand to recognize His goodness, and that it infinitely surpassed the goodness of humans, although He was also a bit scary to me.
I’ve believed throughout my life that God had spiritual purposes for everything in my life, both the pleasant and unpleasant. And He gave me a strong sense of purpose, so I tried to respond to every setback as best as I could, to make the most of my situation, whatever it was. All the good things He’s given us, His mercies, made a strong impression on me. Even before I’d heard of them, I treasured the “Fruit of the Spirit” — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control.
In recent years, God has brought a couple of well-known verses on being yoked to my mind. The first is when Jesus says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
The second is 2 Corinthians 6:14: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?”
The Lord showed me that we spiritually yoke ourselves together with people and things, including idols. These yokes can be weaker or stronger, too. The more we yoke ourselves to the Lord, firstly, and then to people and things that please Him, the better we are for it. When we do the opposite, however, we make our lives worse, and also endanger our relationship with Him. If we mostly yoke ourselves to what displeases Him, can we truly believe we have a good relationship with Him? As we go through life, we can change who and what we’re yoked to. Inevitably, in many cases, we will, as life changes. And the Lord will patiently try to direct us to make choices that please Him.
I’m so thankful to Him for showing me to be yoked to Him, and to seek to spiritually yoke myself most strongly and often to those people and things which please Him. I simply want to spiritually be with those of all times and places who have feared and loved Him, and truly wanted to serve Him. And also, to help others to see they should do the same.
Faith Presses On 