With His arms wide open He rescued you and me; with His arms wide open…This line from a song rings in my heart much. When I was 25 years old He came and rescued me; from what? He rescued me from me. We fished off the sea wall on our breaks at work. Folks caught carp and cat fish and some of these grew pretty big. Workers gathered there to eat lunch. I cared not much for the fishing possibilities this day. “The Crack in the Cosmic Egg,” I had been reading a book called “The Crack in the Cosmic Egg,” I really lived cracked in my own cosmic egg is why I read this book. I liked the book as it came from the ideals of some far-out mystical religious teacher and captured my attention. He was teaching about Jesus walking on the water and how we can…
Healing at the Cross Posts
We find with Jacob’s story his challenge of handling his own value fluctuations —secondly, his forming of deep personal convictions. We find this even more than with the stories of Abraham and Isaac. Another way of saying it is; he was made to stand, in the midst of circumstances and relationships, while these pressed against his inward citadel, gradually forcing a determined-fight mentality in Jacob. He fought the war between belief and unbelief. For healing, Jacob gives us, uncensored, stark reality in living color. We have looked at the fallen nature of man worked in, now we look at the “reversing” plan of God; and it too, chiseled into a soul. Jacob’s adverse challenges arose from a flight of fear. Brother Esau had threatened to kill him, leading to a miserable tenure under uncle Laban. So, he is made to deal with his own insecurity and the deceit of Laban…
On this day 12 years ago our son Joshua went to heaven. Now, what do we want? To see him again soon. You lit up our lives for a short 25 years and we miss you today, Josh, and the wait seems long; but eternity is longer. Can’t wait! St. Augustine says: He that loveth little, prayeth little; he that loveth much, prayeth much. What do you want? Surprisingly we rarely visit this thought. What do I need, what can I eat, what do I need to do and what does God want, are statements more common. Christians say, “I lost my vision when things didn’t work out and now I am just meandering.” “What do you want?” When I dutifully focus on my Savior. He says “what do you want?” Some folks in the Bible got healed because when Jesus asked them “what do you want?” —they had an…
“…and that they were afraid was the essential consequence of the fact that they retrograded from Gods love and had therefore incurred Gods wrath.” Franz Delitzsch Conscience “a knowing together with God” awakens the terriblest. Every gritty body nerve, and every psychic sinew, in denial, dreads the dawning of conscience. It arrives as a wake up call on the level of a freight-train. It whisks us away into a clawing-out mode of life. Flat-out life-loathing attends it. We’re hijacked into bustle’s whims, all of which we vowed, would get consideration when hell freezes over. But no; we’re head-over-heels right now, hot-footed feet blazing. “My life slipped way out of sync, my true-blue supporters turned out miserable liars.” “Woe is me, I am undone, a man of unclean lips.” “Thou Art the Man.” cried Nathan” Conscience: confronts the willful infant coddle and screams “get the ‘h’ off your…
As a heart-changed Christian, I had long left the Catholic thing. Yes, the booths, the genuflecting, the holy water and my games were all sustained gone. Unfortunately, the 7 years (after-Cath and before heart-change,) allowed the monster of “me” to form and grow. This freak of nature, hair as long as any girl, donned size eleven platforms below the “bells” and became a herb smoking, “peace bro-ing,” concert grouping, “what’s-your-bag, man,” kind of guy. I was so happy to never have to confess any sins during that whole time. In fact, I considered nothing I was doing as sin, and really had no need for a priest. These were the sincere, tomorrow we die, “if it feels good — do it,” days. We were not pretending anything, just seriously partying and making a life of that. The phoniness of our prior trying-hard at life convinced us — life had no…
It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. Yet in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus are the Christians- and I am one of them St Cyprian Lets talk about the hows of getting things outside of us, inside of us. We do it all the time by accident but how on purpose? Well, God simplifies this for us. He enters us when we believe in Him, and brings all His endowments with Him. But is this enough? It is more than enough for now and forever. Also it champions a start to what is to come still in my remaining time controlled existence. Make…
God’s pure nature becomes the model for Israel in the Old Testament, and the model for healing today. With God’s re-established free will in man during Noah’s time as a basis, His faithful promise keeping with Abraham came next. Because of His commitment to His own people in history, from Mount Sinai comes the governing and protecting principle to be learned by them and us. God’s justice must be known for men to emerge healed. How does this work? Well, “justice and judgment are the habitation of God’s throne in Psalm 89 and all of His ways are judgment in Deuteronomy 4:32”. Whatever God does, it comes forth as an implementation of judicial fairness. How could it not? According to the Bible, God “is” Love and also God “is” Holy. Holiness refers to the purity of God. Fittingly, God cannot allow anything to dirty His nature that’s pure. Thus,…
New Mexico Scene “What is grace?” I asked God. And He said, “All that happens.” Then He added, when I looked perplexed, “Could not lovers say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms was grace? Existence is my arms, though I well understand how one can turn away from me until the heart has wisdom. ”St.John of the Cross Christ’s coming brought grace. The law came by Moses but grace and truth by Jesus Christ. O happy day! The subject of grace presents a vast topic but essentially grace means favor; a disposition to grant something freely. Christ releases the Father’s disposition to grant something freely, having died in our place as our representative man. Any “worthiness” aspirations by us to gain a thing, would eliminate grace. Self-merit can only conjure a wage. Grace earns no paycheck, neither becomes one; grace stands outside of this rationale as screened. A…
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, an intolerable waiting, a longing for another place and time, another condition. Theodore Roelhke Adolescence lives for experimentation, whether we like It or not. An in-between time, the age in which Abraham lived moves from childhood-identity to a trial and error of proving. Clinging to a hope of landing in a solid way, it seeks a not yet known ideal. Many Christian thinkers disagree with the term “adolescent;” however most would agree we don’t just jump from childhood to adulthood. How does this relate to soul healing? Let us start with unconditional love. Unconditional love reigns extreme, radical, and stands a direct contrast to the best love man can work up. Let’s not water down what it means. If we give our thoughts to meditating on it, we determine the best effort of love a human can make purposes loving,…
Earlier in the book we talked about the streaking racers that follow every person in their lifetime. Well, where did the other racers go; I mean the negative ones? Well they are not conceding victory yet, instead they hold a couple of “aces in the hole” which they pull out when someone gets near grace’s healing. The Law, the Old sin nature, and the Kingdom of darkness, may have lost ground as grace surged at Christ’s coming, but patiently these streakers ready for re-opportunity. So the answer to where did they go is simple; nowhere. One of the secret tactics of the negative racers is the effective use of certain cliched sayings. The first and biggest phrase goes this way; “you are using grace as a license to sin”. What is implied here is that if you use too much grace you will feel free to go out and sin…