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LET’S CHANGE “BE SAFE” TO “GET ‘ER DONE!”
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 27, 2022 – We’ve all had a long hard couple of years. When uncertainty and fear dominate the public discourse, people tend to reduce their conversations to platitudes as a way to spoon-feed each other verbal comfort food. That’s not to say that platitudes don’t have their time and place (to soothe those in mourning, for instance), but the continued overuse of phrases like “Be safe!” has me screaming into the crook of my arm rather than sneezing into it.
I don’t even know what “be safe” means.
I get that people don’t want to get sick. No-one in their right mind wants to be sick. But what am I supposed to do when people constantly bray at me to “be safe”? What precisely is it that they want me to do or not to do?
I’ve scoured scripture for a phrase that is similar in meaning to “be safe”, but I’ve found nothing. The notion of moving through life with safety as a top priority doesn’t exist in the Bible. It certainly didn’t exist for Jesus during his time on Earth. Jesus was all about faith, which is generally the opposite of being safe. Faith, by its very nature, requires taking risks. Following Jesus requires taking risks. People used to exhort each other to “Go with God” in faith and boldness, knowing that being a believer in an unbelieving world implied danger right out of the gate. We were to face the danger head-on and deal with it by the help of God’s Holy Spirit, not run and hide from the bogeyman.
When we tell each other to “be safe” and prioritize safety over every other mode of being, we shut down that very thing that makes us alive – our innate desire to grow, expand our reach, and explore. We shroud ourselves in a dark heavy pall that muffles the sounds around us and restricts our vision. We can barely move from the weight of other people’s fears. It reminds me of David when he was being readied to fight Goliath. He was decked head to toe in heavy armour that was so cumbersome he could barely move. So he decided to throw it all off and go into battle armed only with a sling and a few stones. I doubt that as he stood facing Goliath, David was thinking about being safe. I think the notion of being safe was the farthest thing from his mind.
No-one conquers anything by prioritizing safety.
And there’s the crux of the matter – when you make safety a priority, you leave no room for the more noble human attributes of courage, self-sacrifice, fearlessness, and “get ‘er done”, the latter of which is my favourite of all human attributes and once upon a time characterized the region I grew up in.
Jesus was King of get ‘er done. Nothing swayed him from his mission. If there was a storm, he stilled it. If the sick thronged him, he healed them. If his enemies surrounded him, he calmly maneuvered through them and prayed for them on his way out. He didn’t run and hide to “be safe”; he didn’t avoid conflict to “be safe”. Where others cowered in fear against the demon-possessed chain-busting man in the cemetery, Jesus walked up to him, exorcised him, and then clothed and spent time with him. There was nothing that the world threw at him that Jesus didn’t simply respond to with “let’s get ‘er done”, including his crucifixion. If God puts a challenge in your path, he will surely help you through it. Jesus knew that, and we need to know that, too.
So I propose that we replace “be safe!” with “get ‘er done!”. I propose that instead of being afraid of everyone around us, we walk among them the way Jesus walked among the crowds, undeterred by their close proximity. I propose that instead of relying on the world for guidance, we rely on God, modeling our choices on the choices Jesus made during his time on Earth.
I propose that we face the world fearlessly, aware of its dangers, but choosing to be bold rather than cautious. We can be bold because we know that God has our back, and that whatever challenges he permits to come against us, he’ll help us to overcome, one way or another.
I propose prioritizing faith over being safe.
I propose prioritizing living life the way God intended us to live it – the way Jesus lived it.
I propose throwing off the shackles of “be safe” and moving forward in the spirit of “get ‘er done!”
And I propose we start doing that today – here and now – and continue doing it until the day we die.
Let’s get ‘er done!
Amen!
INTERDIMENSIONALITY IN THE BIBLE AND IN THE WORLD
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 26, 2022 – I spend a lot of time on his blog talking about God’s Kingdom. That should be no surprise to anyone, as the Kingdom has been my spiritual home country since my rebirth 23 years ago. People like to talk about their home country. Mine just happens to be invisible.
But its lack of visibility doesn’t mean it isn’t there. As Jesus said, the Kingdom is within us and all around us. It forms the interface between the eternal realm and the mortal realm, that is, between timelessness/infinity and time/space, respectively. Born-again believers, while yet on Earth, live spiritually in the Kingdom and physically in the world.
On occasion, we mere mortals are blessed with very visible visitors from the eternal realm, like God’s holy angels or Moses and Elijah. These are interdimensional visits. Sometimes the visitors appear in physical form and sometimes as apparitions. The angels who visited Lot for the night and then dragged him out of Sodom just before its destruction the next day were not apparitions. They had physical form and were able to eat and drink. Jesus, after his resurrection, also appeared in physical form. In fact, because he appeared so suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, the disciples initially thought he must be a ghost. He ate with them and drank with them, and even invited them to touch his wounds, so that they would know he had a physical body and was actually there with them.
I’ve had some dealings with interdimensional visitors from the eternal realm, though at the time God kept their identity from me. He knows I’m such a big-mouth, I’d be screaming to everyone “Look! It’s ANGELS!”, or alternatively I’d be so freaked out, I wouldn’t know what to do, no matter how many times the angels would try to reassure me with “Fear not! Fear not!” So he sends his angels to help me when I need a particular kind of help, but he only lets me know well after the fact that they’re angels.
One interdimensional rescue mission took place a few years ago when I was traveling across Canada for two months on the train. I was nearing the end of my journey and was frankly worn out. I was in Toronto and wanted to get back to Halifax ASAP, but time and the train schedule were against me (or so I thought). Here’s an account of the encounter the day after it happened. I still didn’t know at the time of writing the article that I’d just had an interdimensional intervention:
God leaves breadcrumbs for us throughout the Bible and in our own lives about the reality of interdimensional visitations. It doesn’t require knowledge of quantum physics to figure out: we just have to open our eyes and ears and heart; to see, hear and feel. God interfaces with me every day, all day, through his Spirit, and Jesus comes along for the ride. That was Jesus’ promise to us in the book of John – that he and God would come to live with us, through God’s Spirit. And like God, Jesus always keeps his promises.
Bilocation and appearing/disappearing are also evidence of interdimensionality in the Bible. Even before his resurrection, Jesus had a habit of appearing or disappearing, depending on the circumstances. When he made a sudden appearance, it was usually to help someone; when he suddenly disappeared, it was usually a form of escape.
My helper at the train station both appeared out of nowhere and disappeared into thin air. I should have realized at the time who I was dealing with, but God hid my understanding until later.
Interdimensional visitations are sometimes confused with time travelling. I am not a believer in time travel, and in fact I don’t think it exists, unless by “time travel” you mean interdimensional travel between the eternal and the mortal realms – that is, from the realm of timelessness to the realm of time. Having knowledge of the future can easily be explained by the difference between these two realms. Jesus (and other prophets in scripture) knew what would happen in the future either because God told them, or God sent someone from the eternal realm to tell them. Neither Jesus nor the prophets time-traveled or had any reason to do so; they simply received information, either directly from source (God) or indirectly (through messages or visions, also sent from God). This process continues today. It’s called revelation.
As welcoming as I am to God’s holy interdimensional visitors on Earth, I have no desire to try to break the time and space barrier and return their visit. I’m happy to wait until it’s my time and I get my one-way ticket home, if and when I do. I think that people who attempt to bridge the interface on their own volition (that is, without God’s grace) end up communicating with demonic spirits, who are only too happy to give them the illusion that they’ve somehow managed to time travel.
A lot of fringe and even mainstream films and books are based on the premise of time travel and alien contact. There is a profound lack of knowledge about God and interdimensionality in these works of science fiction, so much so that obvious demonic entities are framed as friendly beings who are here to help. (Satan’s tactics, as he first debuted them in the Garden with Eve, haven’t changed a whit over the millennia.) While time-travel remains elusive, contact with interdimensional beings can be made from the mortal realm, and sadly quite easily. I’m not going to go into details about how to do that, other than to say you’re best to stay far, far away from it all. Nothing good can come from communicating with evil.
As a final note to this topic for today, it’s useful to remember that the entire Bible itself is evidence of God’s interdimensional communication with his people through revelation. Without interdimensional communication occurring between the eternal and mortal realms, there would be no Bible. It’s the revelations from God that make scripture holy; otherwise, the Bible is just a history of a certain people at a certain time, and we know that the Bible is much more than that. We know it’s God’s Word. But God lives in eternity and we don’t, so he needs to communicate with us across the dimensions, through his Spirit directly to us, or through his Spirit acting on his prophets and messengers.
I hope you take some time to think about interdimensionality and how you experience it in your everyday life. Because you do experience and engage in it every day, whether you’re aware of it or not. Paul says that we in the mortal realm can see into the eternal realm as “through a glass darkly”, but the eternal realm can see into ours quite clearly, like a one-way mirror looking into an interrogation room. The more aware you become of the constant interdimensionality of everyday life, the more likely you’ll be to act accordingly.
Knowing that God’s always looking over my shoulder (and taking notes) sure keeps me on the strait and narrow.
May your day be blessed by the presence of the Holy Spirit of God and his holy messengers.
CHOOSE
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 25, 2022 – What choices will you make today?
You’ll choose what time to get up.
You’ll choose what to wear.
You’ll choose what to eat for breakfast (or to skip breakfast).
In between these choices, there will be others that involve your hygiene, your message monitoring, your information gathering.
If you work outside where you’re living, you’ll choose how to get there and how to interact with anyone you meet during your commute.
When you get to your place of work, you’ll choose how much effort you’ll put into your work today.
And all along the way, you’ll choose which thoughts to entertain, which plans to solidify or to dismiss, which information to gather or to ignore.
Our lives, even sometimes during our sleep, are a series of choices. Jesus tells us that everything we do, say, and think we’ll be held accountable for at the judgement. Most of us, although aware of that line in scripture, put that information to the back of our mind. How can we live always conscious that everything we do, say and even think is being recorded, perhaps to our ultimate condemnation?
How can we live knowing we’re always under a microscope?
If you love God, you love that your every waking and sleeping moment is being monitored and weighed. It keeps you on the strait and narrow. It helps you make the right choices, knowing that in order to get the consequences you want, you’ll have to make the right choices – that is, the choices that are right in God’s eyes. God’s constant monitoring presence, through his Spirit, is a gift. You hold it tight and thank God for it.
If, on the other hand, you don’t love God, the thought of being constantly monitored by him (or those he delegates to do so) is anathema. You loathe that there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide from what you see as his all-seeing eye. You loathe that even your thoughts are known. None of this is a comfort to you; on the contrary, you feel violated. You feel powerless. It makes you angry. You might even deny that it’s happening or even possible.
I love God. I thank him every day, all day, that he and Jesus are right here with me through his Spirit. I want all my words and actions to be weighed by him, I want my thoughts to be known to him, because then he can guide me away from the words and actions and thoughts that will lead me away from my heavenly reward. My whole purpose in doing what I do here on Earth is to solidify my plan to make it home to Heaven. God delegates us, his born-again children, to learn about him and his Way so that we can teach others about his Way, who will then in turn teach others, and so on and so on to the end of time.
Along with being the Messiah, Jesus also had the mission to teach others about God’s Way during his ministry years. We don’t have to be the Messiah (that mission is over and done and fully accomplished), but we do have to teach others about God’s Way.
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What choices will you make today, knowing that you’re being watched and recorded? How will that thought affect your thoughts? What will you do to teach others about God’s Way?
I hope you’ll make good (godly) choices and enjoy the good consequences that come from them.
I hope you’ll do what’s right in God’s eyes.
I hope, that when it’s your time, your choices will be weighed in your favour and you’ll get to go Home.
And I hope that if you make it home and I make it home, we’ll meet up in Heaven and share in each other’s rewards.
Mine is full of my grandmother’s brown sugar fudge, as a start. You can have as much brown sugar fudge as you want when you come for a visit, because there’s a never-ending supply, and it always tastes perfect.
What rewards are waiting for you? Did you know that as much as you get to choose your words, thoughts and actions on Earth, you also get to choose your rewards in Heaven, bearing in mind that nothing evil can get into Heaven?
If you haven’t yet started to choose your rewards, I recommend that you do so. Choose your favourite scenery, your favourite food, your favourite trees and flowers and animals – make it personal. Make it entirely you. Make it all the things you love and treasure. Make it things that have had a hard life here but give them a better place in your heavenly home. Jesus tells us to store up our treasures in Heaven, so store them up. Be generous. There’s no limit to what Heaven can hold.
Yesterday, I saw a stand of trees hundreds of years old be cut down. With them, went the homes of generations of birds and other wildlife. Some of the trees even had nests in them. I couldn’t stop the destruction, but I could pray to God for the trees and all the lives they had sheltered to be part of my place in Heaven, and that’s where they are now, waiting for me. My heavenly home has gained a beautiful stand of birch and pine trees, along with innumerable birds and squirrels and foxes and deer and insects. This is how we choose our Heaven.
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What choices will you make today?
I pray that you make the right ones.
I T I N E R A N T
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 24, 2022 – Jesus was an itinerant teacher and preacher during his ministry years.
Most people tend to leave out the itinerant aspect when they talk about Jesus’ ministry, as if being itinerant were something undesirable. But I think the fact that Jesus wasn’t rooted in a single location is one of the reasons for his success. His itinerancy was integral to the work he needed to do.
Moving around is good for your soul: it keeps you mentally, physically and spiritually on your toes. We know, as born-again believers, that Earth is not our home; Heaven is our home. Jesus told us that he’s going there to prepare a place for us, and the place he prepares will be our permanent address. On Earth, we have no permanent address, just a series of places that we move through on our way home.
When you’re NFA (no fixed address) on Earth, it frees you to move around. It’s not a limitation to be NFA as a born-again believer; it’s a blessing and a freedom. It’s also, I believe, a necessary freedom.
When you move from place to place, you stay mentally and spiritually mobile. You’re adaptable. You’re flexible. You make do. You get more creative with your resources. You meet more people. And most importantly – you rely 100% on God. Being itinerant is good for faith-building, and we know that without strong faith, we’ll get nowhere, least of all Heaven.
Certainly, it was only logical that Jesus would be an itinerant preacher, as moving around was the only way he could reach most people – by making himself physically available in their location. But his itinerancy, I would argue, was baked into his success. I don’t think if Jesus set himself up in one location and made everyone come to him that he would have succeeded in his mission. In fact, I think he would have failed spectacularly.
One of the biggest flaws of mainstream Christianity is its near total lack of itinerancy. A building is considered the church, rather than the people who attend it. And so the flock flocks (or doesn’t flock) to the immovable building, week after week, wondering why they’re not getting much out of it. “Going to church” becomes a duty or obligation rather than an ongoing state of being.
When you’re born-again, you’re always in church, meaning that you’re always before God through the presence of his Spirit in you. You don’t have to go to a certain place to “be in church”. Jesus said that we would no longer have to go to the temple in Jerusalem to worship God, as we could worship him in Spirit and in Truth, which is the kind of worshipers God’s looking for. That’s how Jesus worshiped, and that’s how we worship, as his born-again followers. We don’t need to go into a building or build an altar to worship God; we can worship him anywhere and at any time, because our body in the temple of God’s Holy Spirit, and collectively we are the church.
I know a woman who, during the pandemic lockdown, would drive her car to the church building that she usually attended on Sundays and sit in the car in front of the locked doors, praying. I don’t say this to ridicule her; I say this in sadness. Many people have the same misguided notion – that they have to go into a building to be near or talk to God or, worse, talk to him only through a priest or minister. This is not God’s doing, this level of misinformation; this is the devil’s doing.
Jesus’ itinerancy was a way for him to get close to people – not to impose himself on people, but to make himself available. It also elevated the sense of urgency around his message, the sense of “now or never”, because Jesus was always on the move; if you didn’t say “yes” to him when he passed through your village, you might never get that chance again.
Born-again ministers and pastors preaching and teaching the Word today need to turn their ministry into an itinerant one. They need to blast out of their comfort zone of a “home church” and get on the road permanently. Paul’s ministry was, in large part, as successful as it was because Paul was also an itinerant preacher and teacher, modeled after Jesus. If you sit, week after week, in the same location preaching more or less to the same people who are likewise sitting in the same place, week after week, you’re all just spinning your wheels. You’re accomplishing nothing but putting a smile on the devil’s face.
I’m speaking to born-again believers here. Christians who are happy to have their faith only as a Sunday morning pastime can keep doing whatever they want. They aren’t our concern. (We’ll use their buildings as a resource tool, thank you very much.) But born-again believers need to get moving and keep moving. They need to look carefully at the itineracy aspect of Jesus’ ministry. Being itinerant wasn’t something Jesus was forced into because he couldn’t afford his own building; being itinerant was what Jesus had to be in his ministry, and so it’s also what we need to be in ours.
YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 24, 2022 – If you’re a born-again believer, the only purpose of your life is either to prepare to preach and teach the Word (like Jesus was doing in Nazareth), or to be preaching and teaching the Word (like Jesus was doing in his ministry years). There is no other reason why you’re here.
The devil will do everything he can to prevent you from doing this. In particular, he’ll work through people to sidetrack you and keep you from your mission. He does this first by not letting you realize your purpose in life, and then by throwing temptation after temptation after temptation at you. These come in the form of jobs, relationships, money, ambitions, hobbies, and other “cares of this world”. God’s mission is to get us to come to him and rely on him and to equip us to guide others to him, while the devil’s mission is to get us to reject or sideline God, to rely on the world, and to get us into a state where we’ll be unable to guide others to God.
Look at your life now. Are you either preparing to teach and preach the Word or actually doing it? If not, why not? Who or what is stopping you?
The truth is, if you’re neither preparing to preach and teach the Word nor actually doing it, the only one stopping you is yourself. The devil can only tempt you; he can’t force you to do one thing or another.
Time can either be your best friend or worst enemy. If it’s your friend, it’s working on your side to support your efforts either to prepare to carry out your sole purpose in life or to actually do it. You’ll know time is working on your side when you don’t have a sense of panic that you’re running out of time. You’ll instead have a sense that everything is right where it needs to be, that you’re right where you need to be, and that everything is unfolding as it should, in God’s time.
When time is your enemy, you live in a perpetual state of panic, always feeling as if the day is too short and the mountain of tasks ahead of you too high. You can’t see over it. Your panic usually manifests as a sense of frustration. Think Martha, when she was petulantly demanding Jesus to tell Mary to help her with the housework.
Think Jesus’ response.
We have only one mission in our lives as born-again believers – nothing else should matter to us, and nothing else should take our time. Either we should be like Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet and learning about the Kingdom, or we should be like Jesus, preaching and teaching the Word.
Which are you?
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 22, 2022 – I have to laugh a bit at Christian preppers.
They’re usually the same people who stand every Sunday with arms outstretched, palms upward, loudly reciting the so-called Lord’s Prayer, which includes the line “Give us this day our daily bread”.
And then they go out and buy a 5-year supply of MREs at Walmart, and they don’t see the irony in it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Prepping is anti-christ. Jesus never prepped, other than for his spiritual tests. He was King not only of Israel, but also of the quick get-away and traveling light. When he taught us to pray to God to give us our bread daily (that is, our food), it was because that’s how he lived. He didn’t say one thing and then do something else; he was no hypocrite. He taught us to pray to God to give us our bread daily because that’s how he lived and how he knew we should live.
But Christian preppers appear to know better than Jesus when it comes to food. Even as they pray to God to give them their bread on a daily basis, they hoard enough beans and rice and Spam to last into the next millennium. And they don’t see any contradiction there, because the words they mouth at church don’t really mean anything to them.
It’s classic lip service.
Did you know that when you buy more than what you need at any given time, someone else won’t have enough?
The fear-driven food hoarding that’s been going on for the past few years is not from God. The recent spike in fear mongering over a forecasted famine is also not from God. All you need to ask is “Who benefits?”, and then you’ll see who’s pushing the panic button to get you to spend all of your disposable income on food and other preps.
I don’t need to show you statistics about how the globalist businesses have made off like bandits since the start of the “pandemic”. You can see it for yourself. Meanwhile, small and micro-businesses are daily dying the death. It’s almost as if the lockdowns and restrictions were imposed solely to destroy the Mom & Pops and further enrich the globalists. But they wouldn’t do that, now, would they? ;D
We born-again believers need to ignore the siren call of prepping. We need to follow Jesus not just spiritually but also in physical matters. When he told us not to worry about what we’ll eat or what we’ll drink, he meant it. When he said that unbelievers worry about those things but we shouldn’t, he meant it. He wasn’t just filling up his followers’ heads with words; he was teaching them how to live. And what he taught them was that God will provide for his children in ways that we cannot even imagine, as long as his children remain faithful to him.
If you’re a born-again believer and you’ve prepped beyond having a few things in the cupboard that you could leave behind without a second thought, you need to stop. You need to refocus on God’s Word and actually listen to what Jesus is teaching you. You cannot call yourself a Christian and at the same time have months’ or years’ worth of food squirreled away. That makes you a hypocrite.
What you do with all the food and supplies you’ve prepped thus far is between you and God. But if you’re reading this and you still go out tomorrow or the next day or the next and buy more than what you reasonably need over the short-term (that is, until your next anticipated grocery shopping trip), you’ve got some serious soul-searching to do.
And don’t get me started about the “Christians” who are stockpiling years’ worth of bullets to put in their guns to use against anyone who tries to take their food. This is reaching absurdity levels of hypocrisy that I’m sure even Jesus hadn’t thought possible.
The only kind of prepping that is Christian is spiritual prepping.
Everything else comes from the devil.
THE PARTING OF THE RED SEA, THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, AND OTHER MIRACLES
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 21, 2022 – Passover is the most exciting time of the year. As well as celebrating the exodus from Egypt, it commemorates the two most celebrated miracles of all time – the parting of the Red Sea and the resurrection of Jesus the Christ.
Both miracles show the strong hand of God directly intervening in human history.
We read about these miracles in scripture, but for many people, they are just a story, perhaps even just misinterpreted natural events that through primitive eyes took on a supernatural hue. For these people, the story never leaves the pages it’s written on. It never comes to life.
But for me, as a born-again believer, I not only celebrate and commemorate these miracles, I pray to God for a deeper understanding of them, to see them through the eyes of the people who witnessed them first-hand.
Because have no doubt – it was people just like you and me who were there and lived them.
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I have experienced many miraculous escapes and rescues in my life that were for me like my own personal parting of the Red Sea. At the time, I didn’t recognize them as miracles because I wasn’t a believer. It was only after I was born-again that I understood God’s direct intervention in my life.
I also had my own personal resurrection – my spiritual rebirth. I died on a beach an atheist, and I came back to life a born-again believer. If that wasn’t a resurrection, I don’t know what is.
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The parting of the Red Sea was an escape miracle. The children of Israel were hemmed in by the sea on one side and the full force of the advancing Egyptian army on the other. They could see no way out because there was no way out, not in the natural order of things. They hadn’t gotten themselves into the predicament on purpose; God had led them into it.
When God leads you into situations that put your life in danger, he does so to give you a miraculous escape. He gives you the miraculous escape for two reasons: one, so that you’ll know he exists, and two, so that you’ll fear him. There can be no genuine faith without fear of the Lord, and no one-on-one relationship with God without faith. The parting of the Red Sea was God kick-starting a one-on-one relationship with the children of Israel, so that they would trust him and heed Moses, his designated minister, for the 40 years of their wanderings.
When God performed his miracles for me, as an atheist, rescuing me from what seemed like impossible situations, I was like Jesus’ mother Mary, tucking all these mind-boggling experiences away for another day, as I couldn’t at the time explain how or why they’d happened.
I’m sure the parting of the Red Sea affected the Hebrews the same way – they had no idea how it could be; they just knew that it was.
Jesus’ miraculous resurrection had the same effect. Although no human (that we know of) was present when Jesus rose from the dead, several of his followers arrived at the gravesite soon after and witnessed that it had indeed happened. They saw him alive and well and walking around. He spoke with them. And then, over the next 40 days and nights, he walked and ate and spoke with them some more on several occasions and at several different locations.
Of course, he didn’t look like Jesus anymore (his body was in the process of being glorified, which means he was in the process of being physically perfected) and he had the unnerving habit of showing up out of the blue or disappearing into it, which made some of his followers initially doubt it was even him. But as soon as he spoke familiar words to them, they knew beyond a doubt that he was Jesus.
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We all experience miracles every day of our lives. God is with us all the time through his Spirit. He also sends his angels and other ministers to help and guide us and direct our course. He sends me to you and you to me; he uses each of us according to our willingness to be used: Most of the time he uses us without our even knowing it.
We are surrounded by miracles because we are surrounded by God. As a believer, I look back on my impossible escapes as an atheist and they don’t seem impossible anymore, because I know (Jesus told me) that nothing is impossible with God.
I have no doubt that the Red Sea parted as described in scripture, and I have no doubt that Jesus rose from the dead. I have no doubt that the miracles described throughout the Bible happened not only because I have myself experienced miracles, but I am one. Spiritual rebirth is a miracle, and the being that emerges from the rebirth experience is a walking, talking miracle, like Jesus was.
I am a walking, talking miracle. I don’t speak my own words; I speak God’s Word. Anyone who knew me prior to my rebirth and knows me now, knows that words like these never left my lips before, and that the only time that I spoke the names of God or Jesus were as part of a curse. Some think I’ve gone crazy, while others think it’s just a phase that will pass, yet here I am, 23 years a believer, and still going strong.
But underneath, they’re not really sure what to think. I can see it in their eyes. They’re squirreling me away for later, as they cannot process who or what I am: it doesn’t fit into any of their understandings. They’re doing to me what I did to God’s miracles when I was an atheist: putting them to the back of their mind, filed under “???!!!”.
And like Jesus, I will just keep on walking and talking until my time is up, until the parting that divides this world from the next one opens up before me, and I can go home.
THE ECSTASY OF FORGIVENESS
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 21, 2022 – For God, forgiveness is miraculously instantaneous. When he forgives us, he does so perfectly, and we are miraculously healed.
For us, however, mercy is a process that unfolds over time.
When we forgive, that isn’t the end of the process. It’s just the beginning.
A true act of forgiveness continues for the lifetime of the person doing the forgiving.
It has three main steps.
STEP 1: MAKING THE CHOICE TO FORGIVE
Forgiveness is not a feeling, at least not initially. Many people drag their heels on making the choice to forgive, as they “don’t feel like forgiving” or they say “I can NEVER forgive him for doing that!” But for born-again believers, forgiveness is not optional: It is a command. There is no time and no circumstance when you can righteously choose not to forgive.
Forgiveness is first and foremost a decision of the will.
In other words, it’s a choice. It’s a decision you make of your own free will.
You CHOOSE to forgive, you don’t always necessarily feel like forgiving.
You make the choice to forgive, and then the process of forgiveness begins.
STEP 2: FOLLOWING THROUGH ON THE CHOICE TO FORGIVE
I watched a video a few months ago posted by a pastor who claimed to have forgiven his wife for having an affair with his father. I’m not naming the pastor (to protect the identity of his wife and father), but the whole thing blew me away. It was essentially a textbook case of what NOT to do after you make the choice to forgive. It was clear from the video that the pastor was still hurt and angry about the affair and was still pointing fingers of blame. The anger and the pointed fingers are clear indications that no genuine forgiveness has taken place. I find this deeply saddening for everyone involved.
After you choose to forgive, you don’t talk about the grievance anymore, not even as an example. I can’t stress enough how important this is. You don’t say “Oh, I chose to forgive him for what he did to me, even though it nearly destroyed my life”, you just simply say (if anyone asks) “I don’t talk about it anymore, thank you”. And people will ask, trust me. The devil will prompt someone every now and then to remind you about the grievance. Don’t give into the temptation. Similarly, if the grievance pops into your mind (as a test or temptation), simply dismiss it with “I’ve chosen to forgive”, and say another prayer for whoever it is you’ve forgiven. And thank God for his love and mercy.
That is how you follow through on your choice to forgive: You don’t talk about it anymore and you don’t choose to think about it anymore, even when you’re tempted and tested to do so.
It’s also critically important not to put yourself in a position to be hurt again. Your decision to forgive the person who hurt you doesn’t require their repentance. Of all the people in my life I’ve forgiven, none have come to me with an apology. I don’t expect an apology. Their apology isn’t required for me to forgive them. However, I also will not put myself in a position to be hurt again. To do so would not be using the brain and common sense that God gives us all. Forgiving does not mean to look past the physical or emotional danger and pretend it doesn’t exist; forgiving means stopping blaming someone and refusing to think or talk about it anymore. But it NEVER involves putting yourself into the position to be hurt again. That is not part of the forgiveness process.
STEP 3: HONORING THE CHOICE TO FORGIVE FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
The decision to forgive is just the start of the process. You must honor your choice for the rest of your life. Just as in the short term you’ll be tempted on occasion to remember and relive the grievance, you’ll also be tempted to do so over the long term. The temptation to blame will likely not leave you until the day you die. Your response should be the same regardless of the time that’s elapsed between your choice to forgive and the test or temptation to resurrect the grievance: You simply say that you don’t talk about it anymore or think about it anymore, thank you very much. And then you say a prayer for the person you’ve chosen to forgive, and you thank God for his love and mercy.
The best and most representative example of how to forgive is Jesus’ final prayer just before he dies on the cross. He simply states: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” In this statement, he doesn’t name the grievance, he simply indicates his choice to forgive while at the same time praying to God to forgive them. This prayer of Jesus is, hands down, the best example of how to choose to forgive, regardless of the extremity of the circumstances.
The three-step process of forgiveness outlined above I have used myself for the past 23 years (and counting) since my rebirth. I have tested it on numerous occasions, and I guarantee you that it works 100% of the time.
THE MIRACULOUS HEALING OF FORGIVENESS
The miraculous part – the part where God gets involved – is when the choice to forgive turns into the feeling of forgiveness and then the ongoing desire to forgive. When God knows that your choice to forgive is genuine, he then effects the feeling of forgiveness in you. That means, he certifies the forgiveness with his own personal seal of approval. When that happens, you feel God’s mercy flowing through you, directly from God.
There is no greater feeling on Earth. It’s God’s love, straight from the source.
God’s love straight from the source was in fact the first feeling I felt when I was reborn 23 years ago.
When we make the genuine choice to forgive (and God knows whether or not it’s genuine), God then forgives us whatever sins we’ve accumulated. The feeling that results is the feeling of God’s grace and mercy interacting with our soul.
It’s healing and feeling all at once, giving us a taste of divine ecstasy.
And once you’ve tasted divine ecstasy, you want more and more. You don’t want it ever to stop.
That’s when the directive to forgive becomes the desire to forgive and you cannot imagine not forgiving.
But remember – God forgives us only to the same extent that we forgive others. That is the fair exchange that Jesus spoke about when he gave us examples of prayer topics. For one topic, he advised us to pray the following: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. In this request (which is actually a formula), we are to forgive first, and then God will forgive us to the same extent and at the same time as we’ve forgiven others.
My advice is always to forgive entirely, holding nothing back.
And rush to forgive. Don’t drag your feet – RUSH TO FORGIVE.
And God will rush to forgive you.
I WILL NOT COVER MY FACE
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 20, 2022 – The marketplace is supposed to be neutral ground. It’s supposed to be an area where everyone can buy and sell, regardless of their beliefs or opinions, race or gender, age or fashion style, socioeconomic status or nationality, or physical or intellectual abilities. That’s why every town throughout the ages has had a market square or commons or bazaar: it was a designated zone where everyone was welcome, because money has the same value regardless of who’s holding it, and money is what the marketplace is all about. The marketplace is supposed to be entirely neutral, meaning that it’s not supposed to advertise or promote identifiers that would prevent anyone from participating for any reason.
The neutrality of the marketplace has recently been heavily compromised by government policy in Canada. I was effectively shut out of most stores in the country for nearly two years because I could not/would not cover my face. I’m still shut out of not-very-aptly-named public transportation for the same reason: I cannot fly, sail on an inter-provincial ferry, or take the train. For someone like me who’s never been able to drive, this has become a major barrier to getting around. So I take taxis and buses instead, but I’m still goaded by taxi drivers to cover my face. Legally I don’t have to, so I don’t. I give the drivers the option to refuse me service, but they all relent. When push comes to shove, my money has the same value as that of customers with covered faces.
Yet I’m still prompted by signs on the door of every business I enter, including banks and hotels, to cover my face, despite the masking mandate having been dropped. The face coverings are, according to the signs, “recommended”. Even without a government-imposed masking mandate for the general marketplace, most people in Nova Scotia continue to cover their faces. The glowering looks I get for not covering my face are a sight to behold. I do not feel welcome in this marketplace because I am not welcome. My bare face is considered as much of a cultural affront as it is for women in Muslim-majority countries. After only two years of being mandated by government edicts to cover their faces, most people in Nova Scotia have adopted face coverings as a cultural norm.
A compromised marketplace that either shuts out certain people or dissuades them from doing commerce is no longer a genuine marketplace. It’s a populist propaganda center that rewards and welcomes those who comply with popular majority opinion while shunning everyone else. I have backed away from criticizing government policy because it’s the business of the worldly government, and the business of the worldly government is not my business as a born-again believer who lives in the Kingdom. But the marketplace itself has been set up by God to be a neutral zone that’s open to all. It’s a place where everyone should be able to do business.
Absent government-mandated restrictions that were born of the state of emergency that existed in Nova Scotia from March 2020 to March 2022, no-one has the right to interfere with free commerce in the marketplace. The current populist-imposed restrictions of glares and rudeness, of “Mask Recommended” signs at the door that say to me “Go Away!” instead of “Welcome!”, are an affront to me and to my God-given right to participate in the marketplace. If the worldly government no longer demands face covering, then neither should the marketplace.
It’s that simple.
I will continue to live and breathe and shop and take local public transit with my face uncovered. I will smile at the glares. I will offer to leave if my bare face is too upsetting.
But I will not cover my face.
FLOATING THROUGH THE UNBELIEF
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, Nova Scotia, April 19, 2022 – The world is a hostile place for believers. Everything we go through and experience, Jesus went through and experienced before us, including living in an unbelieving world. Yes, many people were slavishly religious (at least on the surface) in Jesus’ day, but there was precious little genuine faith, any more than there is today. Had there been genuine faith, more people would have known, by God’s Spirit, that Jesus was the Messiah. As it was, very few knew, and of those who claimed to know, some still doubted.
In fact, the conditions that Jesus lived under were uncannily like the conditions that Moses lived under, which were uncannily like the conditions that David lived under, which were uncannily like the conditions that Elijah lived under, and those which Isaiah lived under, and Paul lived under, and so on and so on, all the way up to now.
In other words, nothing much has changed spiritually in the world. The ratio of genuine believers to religious believers has remained pretty much stable over the millennia, with a few minor peaks and troughs. However, Jesus warned us that, at the very end of time, there would be a precipitous trough that would bottom out, never to rise again. Thank God we’re not there yet.
Thank God there’s still time.
But that’s not to say that believers don’t have a hard run of it these days. For the past several decades at least, across former Christian nations, fewer and fewer people identify as believers. That puts Christians in the minority in those nations. Of those who do identify as Christian, most have very little knowledge of the Bible or even of the Ten Commandments. They have a vague notion of the importance of being “charitable” or forgiving, but otherwise their lives resemble the lives of those in the world in nearly every regard – they marry, divorce, remarry, have children, get a job, get a mortgage, worry about money, worry about their kids, worry about their health, support the troops, etc. They may or may not attend church services, and if they do attend, they may or may not actually want to be there or to pay attention to the sermon. In fact, many claim to be Christian based solely on their weekly attendance at a church service. Otherwise, they live the life of the world, never wanting more.
Yes, I’m generalizing here, but my experience over the past few decades bears me out. Genuine born-again believers are a rare commodity, and even of those, few live their lives according to the example set by Jesus. Even sadder, very few express a desire to live like Jesus and his disciples. They dismiss that lifestyle as an historical relic that has no relevance in the 21st century. Walking away from your job and your family and everything that ties you to the world is crazy talk, right? Right?
Wrong. Jesus’ example of how to live and move through the world is as valid today as it was 2000 years ago. And just as he and his disciples were thought crazy for choosing to live as they did, we, too, are thought crazy – even by Christians – for believing that we should be living as Jesus did.
I’ve spent the better part of the past two years living in isolation out in the country for no other reason than I felt driven to be there. Now I feel driven to be back among the unwashed hordes. It’s been a culture shock of sorts. I’d forgotten how deeply anti-Christ mainstream Canadian society is. That’s not to say there aren’t pockets of light among the gloom. That’s not to say I haven’t encountered unusual kindnesses in unexpected places. But it still takes some getting used to that hotels don’t as a general rule put Bibles in the night tables anymore. It takes some getting used to that saying the name of Jesus in a public place draws sneers (and in some cases growls). It takes some getting used to that the only time God’s name comes out of most people’s mouths is as a curse. It takes some getting used to that crosswalks are now synonymous with multi-colors, even in the smallest of small towns.
This is the world. I was insulated from it for a while, and now I’m not. Even so, I feel like I’m moving through a parallel universe that is in the world but separate from it. No, thank you, I don’t drink. No, thank you, I don’t smoke. No, thank you, I don’t do drugs. No, thank you, I don’t date. Yes, I’m a Christian. I feel like I should get a card made up, like the gypsies in the Paris subway. I could flash the card to people so they’d know upfront who and what I am and could either dismiss or engage me. I’ve taken to wearing a simple gold cross necklace that may or may not have belonged to my great-grandmother (it’s passed through too many hands and stories to know for sure) as an identifier. Yes, I’m Christian. Yes, I really am a Christian. Yes, I believe that how Jesus lived is how his followers should live. No, thank you, I don’t date.
The world is a hostile place for believers. It might even be ever so slightly more hostile to female believers. Certainly, the Marys in scripture were perpetually getting psychologically back-handed by the male disciples. Jesus had to defend them on more than one occasion. True to his promise and true to form, Jesus is right here with me now through God’s Holy Spirit, protecting me as he protected the Marys. I never feel alone or vulnerable. The world may be hostile, but the Kingdom wraps around me like a warm and soft bubble with the toughest of outer sheaths. Nothing evil can penetrate as long as I, like Jesus, remain loyal to God.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 