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TODAY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 4, 2016 – I spent the day with flowers and clouds and cool wet sand under my bare feet, splashing in tiny warm pools of ocean water left behind by retreating waves. The tide was out and the sun was high. The fullness of summer was all around me in the warm salt breezes. These are God’s gifts. He gives to all freely, whether they love him or not, whether they seek truth or not, whether they’re going to Heaven or not. Jesus said God sends his rain and his sunshine on the good and the bad alike. God does this because he loves us all the same.
Christians forget that sometimes, that God loves us all the same. They forget that God is the judge, and that our job is not to do his job but to treat all others as we want to be treated, even and especially those who treat us badly. Because we will be treated badly. That’s a guarantee. And the closer we follow behind Jesus, the worse we’ll be treated.
That’s one of the reasons why God made days like today. It’s not the only reason, but it’s one of the reasons. That’s why he made the flowers and the clouds and tiny pools of sun-warmed salt water, toe-deep and just big enough to fit a foot. He made these to comfort us. And to remind us what is waiting for us if we make it home. I hadn’t planned to be standing there today, surrounded by the glory of a Nova Scotia summer, but that’s where I found myself at high noon.
God said: Remember these things. Store them up. These are the treasures you can take to Heaven.
I have seen Heaven. It’s like Earth, only perfect. The memories we treasure come to life in Heaven and remain there forever. The beach I was at today is perfected in Heaven and waiting for me whenever I want to visit. The flowers that are about to fade retain their full glory. The breeze is never too brisk or too cool, but always just right.
I have seen Heaven. And I have caught glimpses of it here, like a rough draft or what art students call a “quick and dirty”. I caught a glimpse of it today in a seagull tracing a perfect circle against the blue sky, and in the whiff of wild white roses sweetening the salt breeze. God puts all these things here for us, to comfort us and to let us build our very own customized Heaven. We do that one glimpse and one whiff at a time.
Tomorrow, if I go back to that same beach at high noon, the tide will be a little farther out. Maybe the pools where I walked today will have dried up already and the sky will have more clouds than blue. Maybe the wind will be blowing a little harder, maybe a little colder; maybe the rose petals will have faded one more day’s worth. The near perfection of today will have turned into a memory and a few digital pics, but not in Heaven. In Heaven, the full glory of today lives on forever.
Go out and see the world. God made it for you. See the mountains and the flowers and the birds and the trees. See everything God made – not what man has made, what God has made. It’s all for you, every last bit of it. It’s for you to enjoy now, and to take with you if and when you go home.
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WHY LOVE YOUR ENEMIES?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 3, 2016 – What does it mean to “love your enemies”? Jesus was very specific about what this “love” entailed – he said PRAY FOR YOUR ENEMIES and wish blessings on them. He said if they’re hungry, feed them; if they’re cold, clothe them. He said to choose to forgive them. He was very clear on what he meant by “love”.
He also called these people our “enemies”.
Think about that.
You can pray for someone, wish blessings on them, choose to forgive them, feed and clothe them, and still mostly steer clear of them. The two positions (loving them and staying away from them) are not mutually exclusive.
You don’t hang out with your enemies. Why on Earth would you want to do something as stupid as that?
God gave us a brain and common sense for one reason and one reason only: To use them.
Loving your enemies does not mean hanging out with them or letting them walk all over you or dictate to you. Jesus never said to hang out with your enemies and let them walk all over you and dictate to you. They’re your enemies. Jesus said to love them, and then explained what he meant by “love”.
If you’re still confused by what “love your enemies” means, look at Jesus. What did he do? He had enemies aplenty, and the more he preached, the more enemies he had. He did not go where he was not welcome (i.e., enemy territory), but when he did, he didn’t mince his words or try to ingratiate himself. He called a spade a spade. Followers of Jesus should take their cue from Jesus.
Scripture is always very clear; it’s people who don’t read scripture and then try to preach it who make it unclear.
But what is the point of loving our enemies? What possible good does it do them? What possible good does it do us?
The truth of the matter is – we are to love our enemies for OUR sake, not for theirs. Our loving them (through prayer and blessings and forgiveness and not trash-talking them behind their back) aids our soul, not theirs. We unburden ourselves of sin when we choose to forgive. We bless ourselves when we bless others. Jesus famous cry to love our enemies was an instruction to us on how to heal spiritually and renew our spiritual healing every day through our free-will choice to forgive and bless. Only by forgiving and blessing are we filled with God’s holy spirit, as God’s spirit cannot and will not live in a place that harbors hate and unforgiveness.
Loving your enemies doesn’t mean you let your enemies constantly abuse you; loving your enemies means keeping your distance from them (THEY’RE YOUR ENEMIES, AFTER ALL –WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO BE AROUND THEM????) while all the while praying blessings on them.
If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if your enemy is cold, clothe him: but otherwise, steer clear of him.
You love your enemies for your sake, not for theirs.
Again – YOU LOVE YOUR ENEMIES FOR YOUR SAKE, NOT FOR THEIRS.
That is how you stay holy (that is, filled with God’s spirit), and staying holy is how you get home.
NO LONGER QUITE HUMAN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 2, 2016 – When you’re born again, you leave the human race.
You are no longer quite human.
Your focus is no longer human-focused endeavors, but God-focused endeavors.
You live somewhere between Earth and Heaven, not completely in either place.
This is God’s Kingdom on Earth.
The closer I grow to God, the farther I grow from humans. This is the natural progression of born-again believers. Jesus also grew farther and farther away from humans. We can see this in how he distanced himself from his family and village, and then from his religion and culture. During his ministry, he engaged with the world not as a fellow human but as God’s suffering servant. Ultimately, he distanced himself even from the so-called normal human response of self-defense. At his crucifixion, he willingly permitted others to abuse and debase him as if it meant nothing to him, because it actually did mean nothing to him.
At that point, Jesus was no longer human.
This is what we are all aiming for – to be no longer human, to get to the point where what people do or say to us no longer matters because we’ve moved beyond being human and responding as a human.
Stephen got there. He was stoned to death for preaching the Word. Just before he died, he saw a vision of God and Jesus. The ecstasy of God’s presence sustained him as his enraged executioners buried him alive under a hail of stones. It’s an excruciating way to die, being stoned to death, and yet like Jesus at his crucifixion, Stephen simply let it be done to him. He didn’t try to flee, he put up no fight, and he even prayed for those who were killing him.
Jesus did the same.
And we’ll be expected to do likewise.
Paul called this process of dehumanization as “dying to the world”. In dying to the world, our focus shifts from desiring the values of the world (buying houses, getting married, building a career, making money, having children, accumulating possessions, protecting our possessions, protecting our loved ones, etc.) to desiring the values of Heaven (mercy, compassion, truth, honor, self-sacrifice, etc.).
Ironically, the farther away we grow from humans, the more merciful and compassionate we become towards them.
This is a great mystery.
We are not hard-wired to understand this mystery, but we are able, with God’s help, to become part of it – to extend mercy to the unmerciful, compassion to the uncompassionate, truth to liars. This is the opposite of what we are hard-wired to do. Being born-again rewires us spiritually and enables us to do what we couldn’t do before.
This, too, is a great mystery but one that we born-agains can understand because we live the reality of our spiritual rewiring every day.
I do not pretend to know how it is, but I do know that it is.
If it were not so, I, a former atheist, would not be writing this to you.
If you are truly born again, you know what I mean.
You, too, are no longer quite human and are aiming to become no longer human at all, like Jesus.
When you get there, nothing will be able to touch you – neither stick nor stone – because you’ll finally see as God sees and you’ll love everyone unconditionally.
And then you’ll get to go home.
WHO’S YOUR DADDY?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 22, 2016 – The “Christian family” is a lie. Unlike criminal organizations such as the mafia, televangelists, and the Rothschild banking monopoly, Jesus didn’t choose relatives as his fellow laborers. He chose strangers whose sole qualifications were that they willingly chose to do God’s will, and were willing to follow him as the Messiah.
As born-agains, our real family is no longer the people we grew up with; our real family is those who do God’s will. That doesn’t mean that we should shun our relatives if they’re not born again; it just means we shouldn’t spend any more or any less time with them than we would with anyone else who doesn’t do God’s will. As born-agains, we are no longer bound by blood or culture. These are not the ties that bind us. We are bound to God spiritually as his adoptive children and to Jesus as sibling, follower, and friend. These are the primary relationships that define us, not our blood or culture.
Jesus was not a fan of family gatherings. In fact, other than for a few quick stopovers in Nazareth, he generally avoided his relatives after he started his ministry work. We need to stare that fact straight in the face. Jesus didn’t get along with his family after he “came out” as the Messiah. His mother thought he was crazy, and his brother James thought he was just playing at being a prophet. Jesus said our worst enemies will be those under our own roof, and his disbelieving family proved him right. Only after his crucifixion did his mother and brother come round and acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah.
The truth about Jesus’ rocky relationship with his relatives is rarely spoken about in polite Christian circles. Ministers like to wax poetic over the ‘holy family’ and urge their parishioners to mold their families after the supposed Christian model of a strong father, a supportive mother, and polite obedient children. But this model is not based on the New Testament. Jesus said that he came to drive a sword between blood relatives and their in-laws, and to turn family members against each other. He didn’t come to draw people closer to each other; he came to draw people closer to God. He also said that if you want to please your relatives more than you want to do God’s will, then you’re not worthy of being his follower and ultimately not worthy of Heaven.
At the same time, Jesus warned us not to marry. Paul reiterated the warning, saying that spouses are usually more interested in pleasing each other than in pleasing God. They also tend to lean on each other rather than to lean on God. That’s why Jesus urged his followers not to marry, and if they were married, to leave their spouse to follow him. All his married disciples left their wives. They didn’t divorce them; they simply lived separately from them and no longer had intimate relations with them.
This is another major fact that is rarely mentioned in polite Christian circles, especially by joined-at-the-hip televangelist husband and wife duos. Jesus and his followers lived celibate, making “eunuchs” of themselves for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake.
We are expected to do the same.
That’s right, folks – no nooky. We’re to live celibate not like Catholic priests but celibate like Jesus.
Genuine celibacy comes not from our own efforts, but from God. It’s a spiritual gift that God readily gives anyone who asks for it.
The notion of a strong patriarch and a supportive matriarch surrounded by a gaggle of offspring is Old Testament. As born-agains, we follow the example that Jesus set in the New Testament by living celibate and seeing our real family as those who choose to do God’s will.
COME OUT OF HER, MY PEOPLE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 20, 2016 – Jesus didn’t come to Earth to start a religion. He came to Earth to show us how to live by faith and to make his life a sacrifice for many.
His true followers today are few and far between, and growing fewer.
The buildings called churches are an abomination to God.
The preachers who preach for money are an abomination to God.
Those who call themselves “Christians” are, for the most part, an abomination to God.
You sit in front of the TV and absorb the world’s evil, and then replay it in your mind and speak it. You buy lottery tickets and dream of winning. You eat and drink food and water that you know is poisoned. You throw money at “charities” whose sole purpose is not to help those they say they’re helping, but to help themselves. You borrow money and live on credit, which is money created from nothing by the most evil of the world’s evil, and then you enslave yourselves to that evil by debt payments. You let yourselves be deceived, you let yourselves be poisoned, you let yourselves be entranced and enslaved by the world, and yet you still have the gall to call yourselves “Christians”.
Shame on you.
Go to the nearest mirror and stand in front of it and say “Shame on you.”
Did Jesus die so you could have a smartphone? Did he live a sinless life so you could have the “right” to carry a gun? You pledge your allegiance to a system that is corrupt to the core, knowing it is corrupt, and yet you still pledge your allegiance to it out of one side of your mouth, while out of the other you mumble a “prayer” that you memorized as a child, a vain repetition.
Shame on you.
Shame on you for holding Jesus’ life and sacrifice so cheap. Shame on you for thinking you could live as the world and still have a part in God’s kingdom on Earth and a bought-and-paid-for ticket to Heaven. Shame on you for embracing the same lies as unbelievers and living the same lives as unbelievers. Shame on you for calling yourselves “followers of Jesus” when in fact you show by your life – the fruit of your choices – that you are followers of the devil.
Shame on you, shame on you, shame on you.
When I first became a believer, I used to balk at the compliance of God’s holy angels to doing God’s destructive will. I couldn’t understand their calmness as they poured out the vials of plagues and drought and famine and war. I couldn’t understand how they could so matter-of-factly state, while pouring out these horrors over billions of people, that this suffering was earned and deserved. But now I understand.
In Ezekiel, God’s vengeance started with those in the sanctuary. The priests. The so-called believers. Those who claimed to be preaching his word but were in fact worshipers of Satan. After directing one angel to demarcate only those who were his true believers, he instructed the others to slay everyone else, regardless of age or sex or profession. He said to start in the sanctuary, with those who called themselves by his name but were not really his.
The cities of ancient Israel were destroyed because of the sin of the people living there. It didn’t matter to God that they called themselves his children; it only mattered to God that they lived as his children. And those who lived as his children were few and far between, just as they are today.
Do you think that the destruction of Israel and the horrendous slaughter of its people was a “one-off”? Do you think that the same God who destroyed “the Promised Land” is not preparing the same destruction for everyone who calls themselves by his name but are in reality not his?
He is preparing such a destruction. The news of it is all through the Old and New Testaments.
This is a reminder warning.
Those who live as the world will die as the world.
If you call yourselves followers of Jesus and children of God, then show it by your lives.
Unhook yourselves from the beast system. Stop being a tool of the devil. Give your allegiance only to God.
“Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto Heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.”
COME OUT OF HER, MY PEOPLE.
Do it now –TODAY – before it’s too late.
THE PAIN YOU FEEL IS THE PAIN YOU’VE EARNED
Therefore have I poured out my indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God.
Ezekiel 22:31
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 10, 2016 – Nothing gets most Christians and non-Christians more riled up than being told they’ve earned their pain. People prefer to see themselves and others as innocent victims.
But there has only ever been one innocent victim who suffered for something he didn’t do, only one who came into this world without the stain of rebellion on his soul, and that was Jesus
All the rest of us are just paying our dues.
I was born-again from atheism over 16 years ago. I was 36 at the time. I’d lived the typical life of a Western non-believing woman, which could pretty much be summed up with the word “sin”. For my deeds, I’d accumulated an immense amount of pain. Of course, as an atheist, I didn’t believe in sin and so I didn’t see my emotional and mental pain as being connected to the choices I made in my life. I saw my pain as being inflicted on me by others, and I intended that each and every one of them should pay for what they’d done to me, and pay big.
I didn’t believe God existed. I thought only idiots believed in God. I was born again after reaching the tipping point of what I now recognize as a spiritual crisis (every aspect of my existence, from finances to employment to personal relationships, had collapsed). I was in deep deep doo-doo and subsequently in the deepest despair of my life. Though I didn’t know at the time that it was God who had done it, I was given the very great privilege of seeing the horrendous state of my soul (which, like God, I didn’t believe existed, but you can’t argue with something staring you straight in the face). The knowledge so terrified me that I immediately ran out of the cottage I was house-sitting and down to what I thought was the only “safe place” in my little world — the seashore. In my tormented mind, I reckoned if I could just get to the water, the pain that was so all-encompassing that I could no longer breathe would stop.
So I ran down to the ocean (about a mile away) and collapsed on the sandy beach. There, without making a sound, I gave up. I simply gave up trying to figure everything out and trying to fix my own mistakes and trying to do everything by myself. I gave up. My will broke. And in the next instant, again without making a sound, I cried out for help from the bottom of my heart. I did not know I was crying out to God. I did not believe in God, even at that point. The cry for help came from some part of me that I didn’t even know existed, it had been covered up by sin for so long.
But God heard my cry, and God answered.
In the blackness of what I know now was my death, God gave me a choice between two options: I could choose to forgive someone who had caused me more pain than anyone else in my life, or I could choose not to forgive that person. I was shown that if I chose the first option (to forgive), all the pain would stop, but if I chose the second option (not to forgive), the pain would not only continue but worsen.
I was shown, by the warmth and brightness of a light shining on the choice to forgive, that it was the better of the two.
All of this was done in a series of tableau against a black background. Communication was not by words but by understanding. I still didn’t know it was God communicating with me. And solely because I wanted the pain to stop (not because I was some great humanitarian), I chose to forgive.
At that instant, God showed me that the pain I felt was the pain I’d earned. Nothing had been done to me that I hadn’t in some way done to someone else. God hadn’t punished me. He was simply letting me feel the full force of the pain that I’d caused other people.
And then God healed me.
The next thing I heard was the sound of a great rushing wind that seemed to go on and on. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the sand, facing the water. I could see only the sand, the water, the sky. I stood up and looked up. I had never in all my life felt so amazingly amazing. There are no words to describe this feeling; only those who have been healed from sin know what I am talking about.
I didn’t know what had happened to me. As a former student of classical literature, all I could think was tabula rasa — clean slate. I had no idea I was actually born again.
I didn’t want to leave the beach because I associated this feeling of extreme peace and euphoria with being in my “safe place” by the water. But God (even though I still didn’t realize it was God) assured me that I could leave and the feeling would come with me. So I made my way, slowly, slowly, back to the little cottage. There had been no-one on the beach at the time of my rebirth, but I passed a few people on my homeward journey. I felt intense love for them, strangers though they were.
When I got back to the cottage, I bee-lined for the Bible that the owner, Mildred, kept on a little table in the centre of the living room. I sat down at her kitchen table and opened to the page where it said “The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”, and I started reading it for the first time in my life. I read all four gospels in one sitting, and it was during the reading of the gospels that God showed me I was born again.
The pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned.
In the intense pain of my atheist years, God hadn’t done anything to me that I hadn’t first done to someone else, in kind. He was only exercising his perfect justice. He didn’t want me to feel pain, but he also couldn’t let me off the hook.
People who blame God or “circumstances” for their pain in life do not acknowledge that the pain they feel is the pain they’ve earned. Granted, that’s a huge pill to swallow for most people. As an atheist, I could never have swallowed it; I had lists a mile long of all the people who’d “done me wrong” over the years. Some of those people I’d sued, and some I was even in the process of suing when, thank God, I was born again, at which point I dropped all law suits.
In choosing to forgive that one person who had done me more harm than anyone else in the world, I’d in effect forgiven everyone for everything, so God forgave me everything.
Sure, what they’d done to me was wrong, but I had it coming. I’d treated so many people so appallingly, how could the pain I’d inflicted not come back to me, in kind? I say “in kind”, because God’s justice isn’t simplistic. If we cheat on our spouse, justice is not our spouse cheating on us in return, because our spouse cheating on us may not impact us at all. Justice would be when we feel the same degree of pain that we inflicted on our spouse (by cheating). This may manifest as getting fired from a job or having our child alienate his or her affections from us.
God’s justice is perfect. That’s why he tells us to leave the “vengeance” to him. He knows precisely how much is earned and precisely where to hit to make the right impact, keeping in mind that God, even amidst his justice delivery, is still trying to get us to turn back to him.
But at some point, time is up – for individuals, for nations, and for the entire planet.
Time was up for the geopolitical state of Israel when the Jews rejected Jesus at his first coming. Those who call themselves “Jews” are no longer the chosen people, and Israel is now the world-wide collective of born-again souls who follow Jesus. We born-agains are the spiritual Israelites who have inherited God’s promise. We live in his safe spiritual kingdom on Earth, constantly under the protection of his spirit, being fed, taught, guided, comforted and even punished (when necessary), as was promised to us through our spiritual brethren, the Old Testament prophets.
Someday, time will be up for each one of us, and what we’ve done with the time and talents God has so generously given us will determine where and how we spend eternity.
Time will be up for the planet, too, just after Jesus returns to rescue the last few remaining believers.
God’s justice is perfect. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
The pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned.
My advice? Don’t do anything to earn pain.
But if you do feel pain, always choose to forgive.
No matter how horrendous the deed done against you, always choose to forgive.
The world is in a fallen state not only because of sin, but because people have chosen not to forgive.
When you choose to forgive, God chooses to forgive you. God’s forgiveness is the only true healing and the only true peace.
You born-again person reading this – you are not of this world, so you should not live by the rules of this world (“an eye for an eye”).
You are of God’s kingdom, where the rule is to love your enemies.
The pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned.
Always choose to forgive.
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS: YOU ONLY NEED ONE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 2, 2016 – As surely as night follows day, ‘tis the season to be jolly turns into ‘tis the season to make resolutions.
Serious ones.
Well-meaning ones.
Sometimes even drastic ones.
The resolutions are usually written down in a format that resembles an uneasy alliance between a “to do” list, a bucket list, a wish list, and the Ten Commandments.
New Year’s resolutions are promises you make to yourself about improving your behavior. They acknowledge that you could do better, and now’s the time to start.
As a child, I enjoyed making New Year’s resolutions, mainly because everyone I knew was making them. Drawing up a list of my own made me feel as if I were part of some grand world-wide social movement. My resolutions were the kind that most children make, like doing my homework as soon as I got home from school and eating less candy. They stuck for a while, but by Valentine’s Day, after-school hours found me back in front of the TV, serenely munching on chocolates.
Oh, well. I’d tried. I never really felt much remorse over my failed resolutions. It was more a game to me than anything else, like betting how long you can stand on one foot without falling over. I knew it was just a matter of time before the main resolutions fell by the wayside, after which the rest usually followed in quick succession, like dominoes. But I’d just shrug off the massive failure, reach for another chocolate, and eagerly look forward to making my next doomed-to-fail resolutions come New Year’s Eve.
Fast-forward to today. I stopped making New Year’s resolutions a long time ago, but this year I’ve revisited the notion. There seem to me to be so many areas of my life that could use improvement, my combination “to do”/ bucket / wish / Ten Commandments list would fill a book.
What to do?
How can I possibly work on improving all the areas of my life that need improving?
I’m not a child anymore, so making a resolution actually means something to me now. It’s my word. I can no longer resolve to do (or not to do) something, and not follow through.
So should I just pick the really big problem areas and focus on those? Or should I maybe make a few baby-steps resolutions, and if I’m successful at those, raise the resolutions bar to more important levels?
Then it hit me – every improvement that truly needs to be made can be done by making just one resolution.
Just one.
During his time on Earth, Jesus was favored by God not because God loved him more than us, but because he always did God’s will. For this reason and this reason alone, God was able to bless and strengthen Jesus in every way that he needed to be blessed and strengthened. It was the doing of God’s will that brought Jesus God’s favor.
By that single resolution – to always do God’s will – Jesus was able to make it to his dying breath without sinning. Every improvement that needed to be made in Jesus’ life was made by God working through Jesus’ constantly compliant will.
Those things that did not need improving (because they weren’t relevant to the success of his ministry work) were left as they were.
As a born-again, I already know the importance of doing God’s will. But knowing and doing are two different things. This year, I resolve always to do God’s will. I won’t question. I won’t delay. I won’t try to barter or negotiate. I won’t sulk or throw tantrums. I’ll just heed God’s advice and always do God’s will, like Jesus did.
I’m the headstrong type, so this might be hard for me. But I like the elegance of reducing an almost incalculable number of issues down to a single resolution, and a doable one at that.
Always do God’s will.
If I keep this resolution, everything in my life that truly needs to be improved will be improved. And that’s a promise not from me to myself, but from God himself.
Amen.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 