For all of those who suffer with depression and mood issues, this time of year can be the absolute worst. I wanted to write a brief note to all of you who suffer and find it difficult to manage life through the holiday season. The long hours of darkness and short daylight hours mess with everyone's mood and can create an imbalance of serotonin. Here are some ideas for the depressed.
1. Keep your environment lit up! If you sit around in a dimly lit or dark environment you're just making things worse for yourself. You don't have to rack up a high electric bill by leaving all the lights in the house on. Just make sure whatever room your in stays lit up well.
2. Laugh a lot. Watch funny shows and movies. Read funny books and stories. Spend time with friends that can make you laugh. Laughter is the best medicine, even better than Xanex!
3. Eat bananas
4. Eliminate or limit alcohol intake. You may feel like drowning your sorrows, but resist the temptation. Alcohol can have the opposite of your desired effect and actually make it worse.
5. Talk to a close friend or family member about your blah's. If it just gets really bad, share a cup of coffee with a trusted friend and unload a little of that negative emotion. Get it out of your system
I hope these tips help you get through a typically depressed time of year. Blessings to you and your's in Jesus, our newborn King!
09 December 2008
18 November 2008
A Love Note
I'll never forget the first time I laid eyes on you. I took you in my gaze, and unbeknown to you, crafted exactly what I wanted you to be. From the very tip of your nose to the end of your toes I took you in and sighed a deep breath of satisfaction. You were perfect, unflawed and distinct, unlike anything I'd ever seen. I watched as you exuded life and joy, as your body moved elegantly across fields of dewy flowers. The bright warm sun glowed on your skin and the dark of evening created mysteries with your form and beauty. I stared at you and felt transfixed on what a marvelous creature you were. And then you noticed me. Your eyes met mine and you took interest. You confidently strode to meet me and my heart leaped. You noticed me.
We talked and exchanged interests, asked questions and became very quickly connected. I was absolutely taken with you. I could not get enough of you. You amazed me and made my heart delight in my newly found treasure. We enjoyed the cool evenings together, walking side by side, at times hand in hand. I made promises to you and you received them with laughter and gratitude. It seemed that the more I pressed into you and challenged you, the more life and excitement would flow from you. I thought I was possibly going too fast or allowing you to be too close too fast, but the more I forged ahead the more interested you became. I was filled with your essence until I thought I might explode. You were a masterpiece, a finely crafted piece of art, a pleasing aroma, a true breath of fresh air.
I will also never forget the evening I came looking for you in our secret place to walk with you and enjoy you once again, but you were not there. My heart sank and I wondered what might have happened. Our love and joy had been growing daily and everything was just as it was supposed to be. Surely you had not forgotten me. I thought that what I longed for in you, you also longed for in me. Was I mistaken? Could I have perceived you amiss? I yelled out your name thinking it could be a game, a flirtatious match to create longing and desire. You did not answer. I called it out again and again, looking all around trying not to worry, trying with all of my strength to not think the worst. Finally, I heard you, yet all of the hope I had been carrying just to hear your voice was dashed in a moment. Your voice was not the voice I had grown accustomed to. There was the sound of shame, embarrassment, even death in your voice. It startled me and so I cried out again to show yourself and come to me. My mind reeled with the possibilities, my love has found another, my love has forsaken me for another. Surely not! This could not be! You came to me and as soon as I laid my eyes on you I knew. This once beautiful and majestic human being had been exposed as a fraud. You had given yourself to another and the stain of your guilt had overtaken all that once was flawless and perfect. I looked at you and all I saw was stain, darkness, deceit, filth. I asked for an explanation and all I got was a shifting of blame. The worst of it was that somehow you found a way to blame me. How could I have ever caused such devastation? Yet you stumbled through your ill-conceived words making me out to have some blame in this terrible tragedy. All I ever did was love. I gave you everything and withheld nothing of myself from you. My heart was unadulterated and unswervingly yours!
The romance had ended almost as quickly as it had begun. Yet I still loved you the same. Your embarrassingly poor behavior and rejection had not changed my mind about you. Even after you left me, I still could see a beauty and attraction in you that drew me to you, yet it was buried beneath so much ugliness and dark stains. It was hard to look upon you. I had to remove myself from you. I could not stand to be in your presence because the pain of my loss was too much to bear. I told you to leave and greatly increased your shame by forcing you from my home. But what else could I do? The pain of your rejection burned within me provoking my anger. I did not want to hurt you any further than you had already been hurt, but to be with you again or see you like I had was too risky. But even as I sent you away, I was already trying to find a way to reconcile our relationship. I knew I could not be without you forever, so I began to discover; no, create a way of reconciliation.
Because of the depth and magnitude of your folly, I knew in my heart that you would never again be the same without my intervention. No matter how much I wished you could have gone back to that place of unbroken love, I knew you had been striped of your dignity and perfection beyond your ability to repair. I tried to tell you that our love was a perfect love and that I would always give you all that you needed and more. I promised you day after day after day of all the new things you would experience, enjoy and discover because we were together. But you did not believe it and so the tension and barrier between us grew. In pained me, oh how it hurt, to see you like that. And the pain in my heart would not go away, because even though your longing for me faded, my longing for you never did. No matter the pain, no matter the difficult long road, I was determined to win you back.
As you moved on from me, from us, I would occasionally come by and watch you from a distance. Oh, how I missed you! I watched and remembered our love and what we once had. I watched as you stumbled and struggled without me there by your side. Darkness had enveloped you and your wretched appearance was worsening. Only when I could bear it, I would whisper to you in the night as you slept, or disguise myself and show up on your doorstep just to try and remind you of me. Sometimes it worked, but most of the time I walked away angrier and saddened by your continual rejection. I knew very early on that if our love was to be rekindled, reconciled, it would be my battle to fight. So, I continued to drop hints to you of my presence with you when you were unaware of me. I kept whispering to you in the night, watching you from afar, and I kept trying to point you back to when we were together and what it meant for the both of us. It seemed that the more I would try and come back to you and get you to remember the way it was, the more I would be rejected and worse, even ignored. I knew what you did to yourself was irreparable and would continue to devastate you, even beyond recognition from how I first saw you. I have never stopped weeping for you and longing for you!
No matter how much you continually denied me, I never completely left you. I may have hidden from you and kept myself from you, but it was for your own benefit. Had I revealed myself fully to you in your weakened and darkened state, your guilt and despair for seeing what you had given up would have done you in for good. I had to take my time and be delicate with you if I was going to have a chance at winning you back. Through all of my lonely nights as I would stain my pillow with tears and dream of you, dream of your nearness again, think of our once impermeable love, I became more and more determined to wait patiently for your return. Finally, the day came when my plan would be set in motion and we could once again share the love we once enjoyed. I showed up on your doorstep and came into your house, but not as the one you once knew. I came shrouded in your darkness and misery. I put a cloak around me that had been stained by your terrible betrayal of me. In total humility, I identified myself as the betrayer. I made you to believe I was one, like you, who had destroyed love and adulterated myself with another. But the truth is, I was still your first love, hiding behind your curse.
It tortured me day after day that you did not recognize me, the real me. All you kept seeing was one like you, a miserable tortured soul covered in filth and wickedness. I would say things to you that I used to say when we were together in love, but even that did not cause you to remember. I tried telling you stories of the beautiful places we had been together and the wonderful things that we experienced together, but I was so bound by my disguise, by this blackness that I surrounded myself in, your blackness, that you remembered nothing. Occasionally, I would see something in your eyes that told me you longed for me and my heart would come out of my chest with excitement. But it was short-lived and fleeting, and your darkness would once again consume you and blind you from me. It was absolutely unbearable, at times, living around you like that. What hurt the most was when you would speak to me and treat me like the one whom you left me for. I would watch as you helplessly gave in to your lust for that other lover and I would have to get away, alone and just cry. I wanted to give up so many times. The pain was unbearable and crushing. But my love never changed, even though your love was long gone. I continued to stay with you even while I was being crushed under the tremendous weight of my covering. I knew this weight of mine was carrying me to a hellish end. I kept seeing it come closer and closer as the days passed. My love for you was carrying me into the worst imaginable suffering ever known. Yet I knew that this suffering was my only chance of you returning to me.
The day came that I had dreaded for so long. All the whispers in your dreams, all of the unexpected interruptions of your life, all of the secret words and messages I had been sending you were pointing you to this day. I hoped for all I was worth that my final message to you on this dreaded day would wake you from your nightmare and bring us back together. I knew that decision was ultimately out of my hands, but even the smallest hope that you would return kept me steadfast in my quest for you. This day was the day that everything you did to me, your rejection of my kindness, your floundering about with other lovers, your trampling under foot my blessings was coming back on you to kill you. I had seen it coming from the moment I came looking for you in our secret place and you were not there. I knew then, that you were headed for eradication, non-existence, absolute misery in loneliness. Your new lover owned you the moment you turned from me and this deceiver was prepared to finish you off for good. But I still loved you!
This false lover came looking for you to finish you off, but I stopped that liar. This evil trickster knew I had been trying to win you back forever and nothing had worked to capture your attention. As this madness incarnate came to end you for good, I approached the both of you while you were together. You were standing there oblivious to the destroyer you called lover and even more oblivious to me, your true love. I knew it was coming, but did nothing to stop it. You came over to me and with deceit in your eye kissed me on the cheek. The searing pain in my heart with your nearness yet blackened and betrayed heart was unbearable. I wept and wept inside my cursed shell. You gave me to your lover, the destroyer. He had secretly told you that I must go and it was up to you to turn me over. Only you had that power to give me up and that is exactly what you did. You were the one that deserved death and yet you selfishly turned your death on me. I believe you knew it was me, but you could not let your heart be true.
I was tortured, beaten, mocked, humiliated and made an object of horror. I was stripped naked and bare, completely alone in this misery of death and blackness. I choose this for myself. This was your end, not mine, yet I could not let you be the one to be destroyed. I loved you too much! I struggled under the gravity of it all coming down on me. It was so tempting to throw off your wretched black robe, this shroud, and just walk away. I was the one who loved unconditionally and faithfully. I was the one who never gave up. Yet, I was the one who bled and bruised. Your deceptive lover had his way with me and was all too happy to destroy me. He knew the truth about us and our love and he knew the only way to have you completely was to get rid of me. And he convinced you to turn me over. So I bled and suffered. I gasped for air. You pitied me and offered to medicate my pain, yet I refused. I suffered completely alone and completely aware. I thought of all our times together. I thought of what could be, but was not. I thought of the painful rejections and avoidance. And I breathed my last!
At that moment, all I prepared for you, all that I had done for you, all that was good and right left in our love was gone. You knew it was gone. You hid in shame for your deceit and lies. You tortured yourself with regrets and what if's. You laid awake throughout the night wondering what you had just let yourself be a part of. The black shroud of your shame and undignified humanity clung to you even tighter. You realized that this deceiver that you lusted after and gave yourself to was going to destroy you the same way he destroyed me. You thought you had saved yourself, but all you did was remove me so as to make a quicker end of yourself. But I could not let that happen.
I removed the dark shroud and threw it away from myself. I had endured it long enough and I ended all that it stood for and all that it represented. All of your deceit and lies, all of your unfaithfulness and adulterous escapades, all of your evil and filth, all of your guilt, all of your stained soul was eradicated in that moment. Because I remained truthful and honest, I remained faithful and true, I remained good and pure, I remained innocent and unblemished, I had the power to throw off your guilt with mine. I put on a fresh garment, one stained with my own blood yet shimmering with white light and brilliantly fresh and good. Life, real life, came coursing back into this new garment and I came back to your house! I knocked on your door and when you opened it I hid myself, my true self, from you. I just wanted to look at you as you were, still in your filthy guilt-ridden rags, one last time. Because I knew once you saw me, the real me, there would be no end to our rejoicing. I could let you see me as I am now, because now I can remove your black shroud too.
Will you let me remove the shroud and step back into our love again? Haven't I given you every reason to accept my gift and be one with me again? Is there anything I have not done to bring you back to me? Yet, you must choose. After all, true love is chosen. Will you choose me like I have chosen you. If you will chose me again, if you will have me, I will come live with you and promise to prepare for us an even better place than the first. I will guarantee it by giving you a new spirit and a new heart just like mine. And once that place is prepared we will go there together and I will give you a new body to go with your new heart. We can be in love again like it was in the beginning. I love you! Love me too!
Yours forever and ever,
Jesus
We talked and exchanged interests, asked questions and became very quickly connected. I was absolutely taken with you. I could not get enough of you. You amazed me and made my heart delight in my newly found treasure. We enjoyed the cool evenings together, walking side by side, at times hand in hand. I made promises to you and you received them with laughter and gratitude. It seemed that the more I pressed into you and challenged you, the more life and excitement would flow from you. I thought I was possibly going too fast or allowing you to be too close too fast, but the more I forged ahead the more interested you became. I was filled with your essence until I thought I might explode. You were a masterpiece, a finely crafted piece of art, a pleasing aroma, a true breath of fresh air.
I will also never forget the evening I came looking for you in our secret place to walk with you and enjoy you once again, but you were not there. My heart sank and I wondered what might have happened. Our love and joy had been growing daily and everything was just as it was supposed to be. Surely you had not forgotten me. I thought that what I longed for in you, you also longed for in me. Was I mistaken? Could I have perceived you amiss? I yelled out your name thinking it could be a game, a flirtatious match to create longing and desire. You did not answer. I called it out again and again, looking all around trying not to worry, trying with all of my strength to not think the worst. Finally, I heard you, yet all of the hope I had been carrying just to hear your voice was dashed in a moment. Your voice was not the voice I had grown accustomed to. There was the sound of shame, embarrassment, even death in your voice. It startled me and so I cried out again to show yourself and come to me. My mind reeled with the possibilities, my love has found another, my love has forsaken me for another. Surely not! This could not be! You came to me and as soon as I laid my eyes on you I knew. This once beautiful and majestic human being had been exposed as a fraud. You had given yourself to another and the stain of your guilt had overtaken all that once was flawless and perfect. I looked at you and all I saw was stain, darkness, deceit, filth. I asked for an explanation and all I got was a shifting of blame. The worst of it was that somehow you found a way to blame me. How could I have ever caused such devastation? Yet you stumbled through your ill-conceived words making me out to have some blame in this terrible tragedy. All I ever did was love. I gave you everything and withheld nothing of myself from you. My heart was unadulterated and unswervingly yours!
The romance had ended almost as quickly as it had begun. Yet I still loved you the same. Your embarrassingly poor behavior and rejection had not changed my mind about you. Even after you left me, I still could see a beauty and attraction in you that drew me to you, yet it was buried beneath so much ugliness and dark stains. It was hard to look upon you. I had to remove myself from you. I could not stand to be in your presence because the pain of my loss was too much to bear. I told you to leave and greatly increased your shame by forcing you from my home. But what else could I do? The pain of your rejection burned within me provoking my anger. I did not want to hurt you any further than you had already been hurt, but to be with you again or see you like I had was too risky. But even as I sent you away, I was already trying to find a way to reconcile our relationship. I knew I could not be without you forever, so I began to discover; no, create a way of reconciliation.
Because of the depth and magnitude of your folly, I knew in my heart that you would never again be the same without my intervention. No matter how much I wished you could have gone back to that place of unbroken love, I knew you had been striped of your dignity and perfection beyond your ability to repair. I tried to tell you that our love was a perfect love and that I would always give you all that you needed and more. I promised you day after day after day of all the new things you would experience, enjoy and discover because we were together. But you did not believe it and so the tension and barrier between us grew. In pained me, oh how it hurt, to see you like that. And the pain in my heart would not go away, because even though your longing for me faded, my longing for you never did. No matter the pain, no matter the difficult long road, I was determined to win you back.
As you moved on from me, from us, I would occasionally come by and watch you from a distance. Oh, how I missed you! I watched and remembered our love and what we once had. I watched as you stumbled and struggled without me there by your side. Darkness had enveloped you and your wretched appearance was worsening. Only when I could bear it, I would whisper to you in the night as you slept, or disguise myself and show up on your doorstep just to try and remind you of me. Sometimes it worked, but most of the time I walked away angrier and saddened by your continual rejection. I knew very early on that if our love was to be rekindled, reconciled, it would be my battle to fight. So, I continued to drop hints to you of my presence with you when you were unaware of me. I kept whispering to you in the night, watching you from afar, and I kept trying to point you back to when we were together and what it meant for the both of us. It seemed that the more I would try and come back to you and get you to remember the way it was, the more I would be rejected and worse, even ignored. I knew what you did to yourself was irreparable and would continue to devastate you, even beyond recognition from how I first saw you. I have never stopped weeping for you and longing for you!
No matter how much you continually denied me, I never completely left you. I may have hidden from you and kept myself from you, but it was for your own benefit. Had I revealed myself fully to you in your weakened and darkened state, your guilt and despair for seeing what you had given up would have done you in for good. I had to take my time and be delicate with you if I was going to have a chance at winning you back. Through all of my lonely nights as I would stain my pillow with tears and dream of you, dream of your nearness again, think of our once impermeable love, I became more and more determined to wait patiently for your return. Finally, the day came when my plan would be set in motion and we could once again share the love we once enjoyed. I showed up on your doorstep and came into your house, but not as the one you once knew. I came shrouded in your darkness and misery. I put a cloak around me that had been stained by your terrible betrayal of me. In total humility, I identified myself as the betrayer. I made you to believe I was one, like you, who had destroyed love and adulterated myself with another. But the truth is, I was still your first love, hiding behind your curse.
It tortured me day after day that you did not recognize me, the real me. All you kept seeing was one like you, a miserable tortured soul covered in filth and wickedness. I would say things to you that I used to say when we were together in love, but even that did not cause you to remember. I tried telling you stories of the beautiful places we had been together and the wonderful things that we experienced together, but I was so bound by my disguise, by this blackness that I surrounded myself in, your blackness, that you remembered nothing. Occasionally, I would see something in your eyes that told me you longed for me and my heart would come out of my chest with excitement. But it was short-lived and fleeting, and your darkness would once again consume you and blind you from me. It was absolutely unbearable, at times, living around you like that. What hurt the most was when you would speak to me and treat me like the one whom you left me for. I would watch as you helplessly gave in to your lust for that other lover and I would have to get away, alone and just cry. I wanted to give up so many times. The pain was unbearable and crushing. But my love never changed, even though your love was long gone. I continued to stay with you even while I was being crushed under the tremendous weight of my covering. I knew this weight of mine was carrying me to a hellish end. I kept seeing it come closer and closer as the days passed. My love for you was carrying me into the worst imaginable suffering ever known. Yet I knew that this suffering was my only chance of you returning to me.
The day came that I had dreaded for so long. All the whispers in your dreams, all of the unexpected interruptions of your life, all of the secret words and messages I had been sending you were pointing you to this day. I hoped for all I was worth that my final message to you on this dreaded day would wake you from your nightmare and bring us back together. I knew that decision was ultimately out of my hands, but even the smallest hope that you would return kept me steadfast in my quest for you. This day was the day that everything you did to me, your rejection of my kindness, your floundering about with other lovers, your trampling under foot my blessings was coming back on you to kill you. I had seen it coming from the moment I came looking for you in our secret place and you were not there. I knew then, that you were headed for eradication, non-existence, absolute misery in loneliness. Your new lover owned you the moment you turned from me and this deceiver was prepared to finish you off for good. But I still loved you!
This false lover came looking for you to finish you off, but I stopped that liar. This evil trickster knew I had been trying to win you back forever and nothing had worked to capture your attention. As this madness incarnate came to end you for good, I approached the both of you while you were together. You were standing there oblivious to the destroyer you called lover and even more oblivious to me, your true love. I knew it was coming, but did nothing to stop it. You came over to me and with deceit in your eye kissed me on the cheek. The searing pain in my heart with your nearness yet blackened and betrayed heart was unbearable. I wept and wept inside my cursed shell. You gave me to your lover, the destroyer. He had secretly told you that I must go and it was up to you to turn me over. Only you had that power to give me up and that is exactly what you did. You were the one that deserved death and yet you selfishly turned your death on me. I believe you knew it was me, but you could not let your heart be true.
I was tortured, beaten, mocked, humiliated and made an object of horror. I was stripped naked and bare, completely alone in this misery of death and blackness. I choose this for myself. This was your end, not mine, yet I could not let you be the one to be destroyed. I loved you too much! I struggled under the gravity of it all coming down on me. It was so tempting to throw off your wretched black robe, this shroud, and just walk away. I was the one who loved unconditionally and faithfully. I was the one who never gave up. Yet, I was the one who bled and bruised. Your deceptive lover had his way with me and was all too happy to destroy me. He knew the truth about us and our love and he knew the only way to have you completely was to get rid of me. And he convinced you to turn me over. So I bled and suffered. I gasped for air. You pitied me and offered to medicate my pain, yet I refused. I suffered completely alone and completely aware. I thought of all our times together. I thought of what could be, but was not. I thought of the painful rejections and avoidance. And I breathed my last!
At that moment, all I prepared for you, all that I had done for you, all that was good and right left in our love was gone. You knew it was gone. You hid in shame for your deceit and lies. You tortured yourself with regrets and what if's. You laid awake throughout the night wondering what you had just let yourself be a part of. The black shroud of your shame and undignified humanity clung to you even tighter. You realized that this deceiver that you lusted after and gave yourself to was going to destroy you the same way he destroyed me. You thought you had saved yourself, but all you did was remove me so as to make a quicker end of yourself. But I could not let that happen.
I removed the dark shroud and threw it away from myself. I had endured it long enough and I ended all that it stood for and all that it represented. All of your deceit and lies, all of your unfaithfulness and adulterous escapades, all of your evil and filth, all of your guilt, all of your stained soul was eradicated in that moment. Because I remained truthful and honest, I remained faithful and true, I remained good and pure, I remained innocent and unblemished, I had the power to throw off your guilt with mine. I put on a fresh garment, one stained with my own blood yet shimmering with white light and brilliantly fresh and good. Life, real life, came coursing back into this new garment and I came back to your house! I knocked on your door and when you opened it I hid myself, my true self, from you. I just wanted to look at you as you were, still in your filthy guilt-ridden rags, one last time. Because I knew once you saw me, the real me, there would be no end to our rejoicing. I could let you see me as I am now, because now I can remove your black shroud too.
Will you let me remove the shroud and step back into our love again? Haven't I given you every reason to accept my gift and be one with me again? Is there anything I have not done to bring you back to me? Yet, you must choose. After all, true love is chosen. Will you choose me like I have chosen you. If you will chose me again, if you will have me, I will come live with you and promise to prepare for us an even better place than the first. I will guarantee it by giving you a new spirit and a new heart just like mine. And once that place is prepared we will go there together and I will give you a new body to go with your new heart. We can be in love again like it was in the beginning. I love you! Love me too!
Yours forever and ever,
Jesus
30 September 2008
We Are Americans
I'm listening to all the Representatives and Senators talk about this hot topic of "Bailout" or "Rescue Plan." Something I've heard today and I've been hearing for a long time is that these so-called Legislators keep referring to me as the "common" or "ordinary" citizen. I've had enough of it. I'm anything but "common" and "ordinary" as are my fellow Americans. There is an air of superiority and condescension when you read between the lines of what these oligarchs keep repeating. As they write law they develop an attitude that they are above the law. The lack of regulatory common sense law that these hand puppets have been avoiding has come back to bite them in the "you know what" and they continue to have the audacity to refer to us as "common" and "ordinary." Where is the humility of a public servant? Where is the integrity of those who can refuse the bribery and handout from Wall Street bigwigs? Why can't we find some "ordinary" citizens that can truly represent the interests of their constituent bosses? It is you and I, the backbone of American independence and productivity that makes this nation great. It is our long hours, ingenuity, honesty and sacred honor that drives the economy. How dare we be looked down upon by the power-drunken lawmakers as the poor regular Joe who has to be talked down to so we can understand this complex financial problem? We're not stupid kids and you're not our parents. You work for us, so you better listen up. You're about to be fired. The way we'll fire you is by voting you out. If that doesn't work, because we're not blind to the voter fraud schemes going on behind the scenes, than we can call for a referendum on each and every one of you, Republican and Democrat, from a grassroots effort. Bottom line - We are lifelong voters, concerned and aware citizens, hard-working Americans and we are the government. We will not be talked down to and we will not sit by and watch our country be auctioned off to the highest bidders. We are anything but "common" or "ordinary." We are rare and extraordinary. We are Americans!
18 August 2008
Why a Thorny Crown?
A thought occurred to me last night. I was sitting on my back patio
enjoying the cool evening and doing some praying and meditating. I
watched as the bright moon shone over the east horizon. I marveled at
the stars billions of light years away imagining the day I might be
able to travel there. I also began thinking about the extensive curse
of sin. All over creation, in humans, in the sky, in culture, in
technology, in the ground, in the entire universe, in everything there
is a curse. It is like a heavy, dense and pervasive dark blanket in and
on everything. As much as the cool air felt refreshing, the night sky
proclaimed God's glory, the birds and bugs chirped their praises to
their Maker - I kept thinking how distorted and distant it all was from
God's original plan for us. Then I remembered some of the things God
said right after Adam and Eve sinned and brought this curse on all of
creation. He said to Adam that the ground would produce thorns and
thistles making it difficult and irritating to work the ground. The
thorns poke and prick and cause bleeding and cutting. Thorns cause
irritation under our skin and can lead to infection and rash and all
sorts of nasty, unpleasant and annoying consequences. I love blackberry's,
but I hate picking them. Why? Thorns!
Now as I thought about all of this I asked the Holy Spirit to speak to
me and tell me what the importance is of the thorns. Why thorns? Why
these sharp, poison-tipped, irritations? He responded to me with a picture.
I saw in my mind the crown of thorns being thrust into Jesus head,
penetrating his flesh and skull causing a rush of blood followed by
swelling, pain, burning. The thorns were not piercing his hands or feet.
They were not scratching his legs or arms. They were not pushed into His
torso or back. They were pushed violently into his head. The head that
dreamed dreams and had wise thoughts. The divine head that spoke such
tenderness and hope. The mind of the Savior, Jesus, who had his eye on you
and me from before we were conceived. The mind of Jesus was pierced with
poison and pain from a terrible symbol of our disobedience and rebellion,
the thorn. He took on the mental anguish and torture that we humans brought
on ourselves. His death was sufficient to not only forgive our sin, but the
stripes of torture on his back provide physical healing to our bodies, and
the punctured thorns in his head provide mental stability and wholeness. His
mind was pierced and tortured for you. The poisonous thorns of sin's curse
satisfied God's wrath against us and our depravity, making a way for us to be
whole and clear-headed again.
So, it was not by coincidence that the thorn produced by our rebellion against
God was the same instrument used to contaminate and painfully wound the head
of our Redeemer. The head is the seat of knowledge, wisdom, function and
personality. It is the control center of our bodies. It is the storehouse of
memory and intelligence and the symbol of honor and dignity of the human being.And it is the same place where our Savior was violently and mockingly gouged for
our benefit. Because of this godly wrath upon Jesus, there is provision for our
mental well-being to be restored. For all who suffer with mental, intellectual,
personality disorders, the thorns of our disobedience have thrust upon One Man
all our insufficiencies and lack of mental well-being. And this One Man, Jesus,
conquered for all time our deformities of well-being and replaced it with a
renewed mind. Be encouraged and inspired by your King. He has won the day and
given it to you!
30 July 2008
I Don't Like The Word "Christian"
Yes, that’s right. I don’t like the word “Christian.” I have come to realize that this word means many things to many people and has been watered down to the point of having very little to do with Jesus, His teachings and what expectations are followed as someone who believes Him and has given up their life for Him. There are a myriad of meanings that may enter the mind of a person when I tell them, “I’m a Christian.” Let’s consider the possibilities.
“I’m a Christian” which could be code for I’m a right-winged evangelical pro-life crazy person that believes
“I’m a Christian” could mean I live in
“I’m a Christian” could mean I go to Mass as much as my schedule allows. I give money in the offering and go to confession at least a couple times every year. My family has been Catholic for generations and I think I may even have some distant relatives in the priesthood. I’m not a bad person and even when I do bad things I believe God forgives me because He knows I’ll try harder. Besides, if God is really love than He won’t send anyone to Hell anyway. Hell is just for the devil. I even watch the “Christian” channel on TV sometimes and actually like some of those TV preachers.
If being a Christian means any of these things than I am definitely not a Christian. I have stopped telling people I’m a Christian because I do not fit anywhere in the definition of what it means to be a Christian. I am someone who has had the privilege of hearing the good news about God and His son, Jesus. It is good news because I am convinced that the God revealed to me in the Bible is a God that I cannot approach because He is altogether Holy and Perfect and my sin - my bad thinking, bad behavior, bad feelings, bad nature - gives me no commendation to be accepted by such a God that is completely Other. Yet I am accepted by this God because this wonderful, holy, separate, perfect, just God became a human being and took upon Himself the punishment and wrath of my sin, my badness, everything that keeps me separate from Him and put to death, destroyed the barrier between us. Jesus is God in flesh. Jesus is my only hope for being restored and set free from a life of imprisonment to the curse of sin. And this Jesus, God-man, has invited me to come follow Him, to be like Him. And that is what I have decided to do.
I think the most appropriate way to identify myself would be a Jesus-follower or Christ-follower. The Christ is one identified as a Savior, one sent as a Mediator between God and man. I choose to follow Him. What He says to do, I do. Where He says to go, I go. Because my only other option is to try and work my way into a relationship with this Holy God, which I have discovered is a pointless frustrating endeavor. I have given in to grace and grace will lead me home!
01 May 2008
A Woman's Wardrobe Bigger Than Sex
“A survey of American women found that most valued their favorite clothes more than sex, and would gladly abstain for 15 months in exchange for an entirely new wardrobe.” (The Week 2/16/07)
I ran across this little piece of information recently and couldn’t resist sharing my thoughts and opinions on the matter. The first thing that popped into my head was, “what is wrong with men that we overemphasize sex so much that we can’t bear the thought of abstaining from sex for just about anything?” I also thought, “what are men doing wrong in the bedroom that so disinterests their wives that they could give up sex for something as material and trivial as some new clothes?” Only after these two thoughts did I consider that something may be wrong with women not wanting to have sex to the point of willingly abstaining for new clothing. As these thought were pondered in my mind I put my professional counseling skills to task to see if I could psychoanalyze this situation and see what might be the interest in such information. Here’s what I’ve come up with.
First I believe a man’s identity as a man is much more closely associated with his sexuality than a woman’s identity is associated with her sexuality. For this reason, when a man reads this information his reaction is somewhat astonished in that he cannot identify with much of anything that would motivate him to abstain from sexual relations with his wife. After all, when he’s sexually active he feels much more a man. However, a woman’s identity is not so influenced by her sexuality. Or is it? Maybe what I am really meaning to say is that a man’s identity is associated with his ability to have sex, not so much his sexuality. These things are different you know. We can be sexual without actually having sex. Is not a woman appealing to her own sexuality when she’s so highly motivated to seek out a new wardrobe? In other words, she is possibly discovering or at least seeking out something about her own sexuality when she is thrilled at the thought of wearing new clothes. New clothes bring out the possibilities of a new look, a new curve, a new accent that would attract the eye of the opposite sex. And why is a woman interested in being seen, noticed, should I even say desired by the opposite sex? Because she too is sexual and receives feminine identity from her sense of sexuality.
So even at first blush, reading that most women in
I cannot leave without giving the readers some practical application. What do we learn from this little piece of information that can help us as husbands and wives in our sexual relationship?
Men – pursue your wife. Don’t allow the ring on her finger and the fact that you share a bedroom dupe you into thinking she will always be yours. You must always continually pursue her. This means verbally praise her, how she looks, her beautiful eyes and hair, her voluptuous body, your favorite outfits, the way she smells. Let her know you are still pursuing her.
Women – be a pursuable object for your husband. Be proud that you want to look good for him. Take care of your body and dress beautifully. Be the object of his desire and protect your beauty from other men. Be satisfied with his stares and his pleasure in your appearance, not others. Let him know you are still worth pursuing.
01 April 2008
C.S. Lewis
“For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, pg. 27
I very much enjoyed this quote the first time I read it while sitting in my usual reading position - in the can. What strikes me first about the whole of it is his use of “modern educator.” If I were not careful, I would think the description would be of today’s educator rather than the British educators of which he speaks some 70 years past. Yet the criticism remains valid in
19 March 2008
FW: John Piper
Subject: John Piper
We are justified by grace alone through faith alone (Rmns. 3:28, 4:5, 5:1; Eph. 2:8f); and all those who are thus justified will be glorified (Rmns. 8:30) – that is, no justified person will ever be lost. Nevertheless those who give themselves up to impurity will be lost (Gal. 5:21), and those who forsake the fight against lust will perish (Matt. 5:30), and those who do not pursue holiness will not see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14), and those who surrender their lives to evil desires will succumb to the wrath of God (Col. 3:6).
The reason these two groups of texts are not contradictory is that the faith that justifies is a faith that also sanctifies. And the test of whether our faith is the kind of faith that justifies is whether it is the kind of faith that sanctifies. Robert L. Dabney, the nineteenth century southern Presbyterian theologian, expressed it like this: “Is it by the instrumentality of faith we receive Christ as our justification, without the merit of any of our works? Well. But this same faith, if vital enough to embrace Christ, is also vital enough to ‘work by love,’ ‘to purify our hearts.’ This then is the virtue of the free gospel, as a ministry of sanctification, that the very faith which embraces the gift becomes an inevitable and a divinely powerful principle of obedience.”[1]
Faith delivers from hell, and the faith that delivers from hell delivers from lust. Again I do not mean that our faith produces a perfect flawlessness in this life. I mean that it produces a persevering fight. The evidence of justifying faith is that it fights lust. Jesus didn’t say that lust would entirely vanish. He said that the evidence of being heaven-bound is that we gouge out our eye rather than settle for a pattern of lust.
The main concern of this book is to show that the battle against sin is a battle against unbelief. Or, the fight for purity is a fight for faith in future grace. The great error that I am trying to explode is the error that says, “Faith in God is one thing and the fight for holiness in another thing. You get your justification by faith, and you get your sanctification by works. You start the Christian life in the power of the Spirit, you press on in the efforts of the flesh. The battle for obedience is optional because only faith is necessary for final salvation.” Faith alone is necessary for justification, but the purity that confirms faith’s reality is also necessary for final salvation.
Excerpt from John Piper(1995), Future Grace,
[1] Robert Dabney, “The Moral Effects of Free Justification,” in Discussions: Evangelical and Theological (
What an excellent little piece the Spirit has given through the pen of John Piper. This marvelous thought on fighting lust and the ideas of justifying faith and sanctifying faith being the same faith need to be taught and preached throughout all churches and Christian organizations. How many people have I served as either a Minister or Counselor are in such desperate need of this teaching? I see constantly in the lives of the faithful a tendency, if not an all out heresy, to rely upon our own resources to attain a greater level of holiness or right living. For example, I hear the sex addicts proclaim over and over that they have to get their thoughts right, they must fuel their willpower energy to fight lustful thoughts that lead to lustful behaviors; they must weed out all of the sensual images around them. In other words, they must DO all this stuff to get to a place of purity. What John Piper is proclaiming in the authority of Scripture is that our lack of faith in believing that what God can provide will satisfy. He says over and over in his book, Future Grace, that we must be satisfied with nothing less that all that God is for us in Jesus Christ. What good is it to destroy, by our own efforts, the desires of our heart for belonging, intimacy, closeness, fulfillment, satisfaction and the like which is the expression of lust by way of looking at what is in humankind, if we do not fill those desires by the gaze of faith at Jesus? We end up relapsing into our sinful ways of behavior because nothing fills the empty heart if we do not put our eyes of faith on Jesus and the satisfaction He brings to our souls. Authentic faith truly is a faith that not only brings us to Jesus at our moment of repentance from sin and dependence upon Him for salvation, but is a faith that sticks in our gut as the only way of finding contentment in a way of life radically different from a world system of self-satisfaction and self-appeasement. We cannot work toward being better Christians! We cannot deny sinful passions and temptations without aggressively seeking out a God-centered passion that says I cannot be whole or complete without an all-consuming centralized focus on Jesus as not only Savior, but also Lord.
So, these are the ramifications for me of this marvelous thought. As a Christian Counselor, how much am I able to expect right living from clients with behavioral and mood disorders by only trying to remove, by human resource, sinful nature? I should likely expect relapses, if not frequently, than at least eventually. Ultimately, lasting eternal change can only come from a faith in Jesus as not only Savior, but as Lord and Sanctifier.
[1] Robert Dabney, “The Moral Effects of Free Justification,” in Discussions: Evangelical and Theological (
03 March 2008
Personal Acceptance
I am not in control of whether or not my church will accept other groups of people or other churches of different Christian faith expressions. I am also not in control of whether or not my church collectively accepts every individual. I am, however, in control of whether or not I personally accept another human being. And ultimately, it is this choice, the choice of personal acceptance without restrictions or requirements made by each individual in the Body of Christ that leads to collective acceptance of other groups and collective acceptance of individuals. It is wise to understand that energy spent trying to change others is not as productive as energy spent trying to change yourself. So be wise and be changed.
Richard Foster writes, “Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother.” Do you want to be more accepting of others? What if I were to ask if you want to be more accepting of others not like you? Let me take it a step further. Do you want to be accepting of others who behave badly, dress differently, smell differently or believe differently? What Richard Foster presents to us is not simply just a choice. It is not a matter of deciding one way or the other. It is very easy to say “yes” to any of the questions that have just been posed. However, go back to the beginning of this paragraph and read the quote again. There are a number of questions to ask of one’s self in response to Foster’s statement.
Am I horrified by others’ sins? Am I horrified by others’ sins that are egregious and appalling, such as child molestation, rape, murder, elder abuse, the rankest of sins? Let us undress the statement further. Can someone be horrified, appalled at the condition of sin without transferring the horrified feelings to the person with the condition? The answer to this question is at the very heart, the absolute core of personal acceptance. At the point when I fully recognize my own condition of sin and see the horror and repulsiveness of my own condition, and in that recognition accept God’s grace for me in that terrible condition, is the same point at which I can truly, unconditionally accept another, no matter the repulsiveness of their own sin condition. The ramifications of this idea of personal acceptance of anyone are very far reaching. So far, in fact, that God’s grace has been extended to the murderers, the rapists, the child molesters, the rankest of sinners and that grace extends through our hands. Our own hands of personal acceptance communicate grace and forgiveness to even the most hardened and defiled among us.
It would be wise to include the boundaries of personal acceptance when dealing with such a radical notion as grace. Even God’s grace includes boundaries that are in place for the benefit of the recipient. God disciplines those he loves and allows trials in our lives as a work of grace to us. It is in this discipline and in the trials that we find these boundaries. When we do wrong it is right to be corrected, to be disciplined. When we make bad decisions, whether they stem from sin or folly, or life simply deals us a bad turn, the trials we face produce godly characteristics in us that we need in order to sustain us and strengthen our faith. If this is God’s grace to us, then we, likewise, extend these graces of correction, discipline, and the working out of trials to each other. God never rejects us when we stumble, when we fall or fail. His acceptance remains steadfast. To extend this same attitude to our brothers and sisters, to the human family, is godly personal acceptance.
In practical terms, this personal acceptance means I have a twofold responsibility. On the one hand, I am to extend an unconditional attitude of acceptance to anyone, regardless of their sin condition, no matter how terrible. On the other hand, I am also responsible to maintain that acceptance while administering corrective discipline and allowing natural consequences to run their course. To the rapist, I make myself available for friendship and am responsible to treat him and behave toward him in a manner of full acceptance and grace. Yet, at the same time, I am also responsible to support the rule of justice upholding the legal penalty for the crime of rape as well as supporting appropriate discipline of such behavior whether through therapeutic treatment and/or societal restrictions on his freedom. This is the tension that is constantly observed in true personal acceptance without condition. It is a tension that we will all wrestle with until the day we are made perfect in and through the Son, Jesus Christ. The expectation, however, is to continue to wrestle with it. Continue to give yourself to unconditional acceptance and allow God’s grace to flow freely through you.
There is also one more reason why it is asked of you to take on this attitude of personal acceptance. Even though we are terribly marred by sin, we are disfigured and ravaged by this condition, we remain the only part of creation with the stamp of God upon us. It is in His image that we have been created and it is His resemblance that we bear. “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.” (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory) In a more real sense than we would like to imagine, when we reject each other we are rejecting the very God in whose image we have been made. It is, therefore, imperative that each of us grasps the power of the truth of who we are and who everyone else around us is. Personal acceptance is much more than a political catchphrase and it is much more than just a good idea for world peace. Extending unconditional acceptance is the only way many will ever experience God, because it was His unconditional acceptance of us that places us in His favor forever.
Acceptance begets healthy community. This community-building kind of acceptance includes collective acceptance between people groups, collective acceptance of an individual by a people group, and personal acceptance of an individual by an individual. Each level builds upon the others and supports an environment conducive to God’s presence and blessing.
Gabe Lett
Excerpt from Let’s Get Together: Building Community in the Church (2008, Tate Publishing) Chapter 8
Richard Foster writes, “Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother.” Do you want to be more accepting of others? What if I were to ask if you want to be more accepting of others not like you? Let me take it a step further. Do you want to be accepting of others who behave badly, dress differently, smell differently or believe differently? What Richard Foster presents to us is not simply just a choice. It is not a matter of deciding one way or the other. It is very easy to say “yes” to any of the questions that have just been posed. However, go back to the beginning of this paragraph and read the quote again. There are a number of questions to ask of one’s self in response to Foster’s statement.
Am I horrified by others’ sins? Am I horrified by others’ sins that are egregious and appalling, such as child molestation, rape, murder, elder abuse, the rankest of sins? Let us undress the statement further. Can someone be horrified, appalled at the condition of sin without transferring the horrified feelings to the person with the condition? The answer to this question is at the very heart, the absolute core of personal acceptance. At the point when I fully recognize my own condition of sin and see the horror and repulsiveness of my own condition, and in that recognition accept God’s grace for me in that terrible condition, is the same point at which I can truly, unconditionally accept another, no matter the repulsiveness of their own sin condition. The ramifications of this idea of personal acceptance of anyone are very far reaching. So far, in fact, that God’s grace has been extended to the murderers, the rapists, the child molesters, the rankest of sinners and that grace extends through our hands. Our own hands of personal acceptance communicate grace and forgiveness to even the most hardened and defiled among us.
It would be wise to include the boundaries of personal acceptance when dealing with such a radical notion as grace. Even God’s grace includes boundaries that are in place for the benefit of the recipient. God disciplines those he loves and allows trials in our lives as a work of grace to us. It is in this discipline and in the trials that we find these boundaries. When we do wrong it is right to be corrected, to be disciplined. When we make bad decisions, whether they stem from sin or folly, or life simply deals us a bad turn, the trials we face produce godly characteristics in us that we need in order to sustain us and strengthen our faith. If this is God’s grace to us, then we, likewise, extend these graces of correction, discipline, and the working out of trials to each other. God never rejects us when we stumble, when we fall or fail. His acceptance remains steadfast. To extend this same attitude to our brothers and sisters, to the human family, is godly personal acceptance.
In practical terms, this personal acceptance means I have a twofold responsibility. On the one hand, I am to extend an unconditional attitude of acceptance to anyone, regardless of their sin condition, no matter how terrible. On the other hand, I am also responsible to maintain that acceptance while administering corrective discipline and allowing natural consequences to run their course. To the rapist, I make myself available for friendship and am responsible to treat him and behave toward him in a manner of full acceptance and grace. Yet, at the same time, I am also responsible to support the rule of justice upholding the legal penalty for the crime of rape as well as supporting appropriate discipline of such behavior whether through therapeutic treatment and/or societal restrictions on his freedom. This is the tension that is constantly observed in true personal acceptance without condition. It is a tension that we will all wrestle with until the day we are made perfect in and through the Son, Jesus Christ. The expectation, however, is to continue to wrestle with it. Continue to give yourself to unconditional acceptance and allow God’s grace to flow freely through you.
There is also one more reason why it is asked of you to take on this attitude of personal acceptance. Even though we are terribly marred by sin, we are disfigured and ravaged by this condition, we remain the only part of creation with the stamp of God upon us. It is in His image that we have been created and it is His resemblance that we bear. “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.” (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory) In a more real sense than we would like to imagine, when we reject each other we are rejecting the very God in whose image we have been made. It is, therefore, imperative that each of us grasps the power of the truth of who we are and who everyone else around us is. Personal acceptance is much more than a political catchphrase and it is much more than just a good idea for world peace. Extending unconditional acceptance is the only way many will ever experience God, because it was His unconditional acceptance of us that places us in His favor forever.
Acceptance begets healthy community. This community-building kind of acceptance includes collective acceptance between people groups, collective acceptance of an individual by a people group, and personal acceptance of an individual by an individual. Each level builds upon the others and supports an environment conducive to God’s presence and blessing.
Gabe Lett
Excerpt from Let’s Get Together: Building Community in the Church (2008, Tate Publishing) Chapter 8
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