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I THINK, THEREFORE I AM…OPEN TO TEMPTATION
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 8, 2024
How are your thoughts?
Are you thinking things maybe you shouldn’t?
Are you as charitable about people in your thoughts as you are in your spoken words?
Or are you a holier-than-thou fraud (like the hypocrites Jesus regularly upbraided), walking the walk and talking the talk while your mind oozes venom….
Scripture tells us that Jesus knew the hearts of the people around him. That is, he knew what they were thinking; he knew their thoughts. The reason he knew their thoughts is that God was reading their minds and giving Jesus a summary of the contents.
God reads our minds, too. All the time. Not just some of the time – all of the time. At no point in time can we hide even the slightest inkling of a thought from God. Remember that he knows what we’re going to think even before we think it, so don’t waste your time trying to outpace God. You’ll lose that battle before you get your armour on.
I love that God can read my mind. I love that he knows every thought I think – he doesn’t direct my thoughts, he just monitors and records them. To me, this is a great comfort, because knowing he’s constantly listening to my thoughts makes me more aware of what I choose to think about, what I choose to dwell on, and what I choose to entertain.
Jesus taught us that for a man even to look at (that is, to think of) a woman in lust is already to have committed adultery with her (unless, of course the woman is the man’s wife). To clarify, Jesus obviously wasn’t referring to the drive-by thoughts that the devil sideswipes us with on occasion, to test us. We’re not responsible for the thoughts that come at us from our blind spot. We are, however, responsible for the thoughts that we choose to entertain, that we mull over and massage, that we hold up to the light (to better see through the skirt…). Those thoughts are what Jesus was referring to – the ones that you knead and worry, not the ones that plop into your mind and you dismiss.
I mention this today because I think even some born-again believers don’t take Jesus at his word regarding the danger we put our souls in by entertaining sinful and uncharitable thoughts. I think most of us are careful about our spoken words, careful about our written words, careful in what we do when we’re in public (and also, for the most part, in private), but we sometimes forget to be just as careful about what’s going on in our mind and what we’re entertaining as thoughts. We forget that what’s in our head is actually more important than our expressed words and deeds combined, because what’s in our head – what we entertain and roll with – is the truest reflection of the state of our soul.
Did you know that your thoughts can make or break your eternal reward?
As I said, I love that God can read my thoughts at all times, because knowing I’m being monitored keeps me honest not just in my spoken and written words, but also and more importantly in my head. I know, too, that if the devil does one of his drive-by’s, I can immediately ask God to remove the tempting thought, and he will. In the same way, I can ask God to help me remove thoughts that are starting to become a nuisance, either because they’re overly negative or veering in the direction of something I know I shouldn’t be thinking. All I have to do is ask.
It’s important to stress that God will not automatically remove thoughts on his own volition, like an anti-virus removes malware. It’s up to me to let him know that I want a specific train of thought gone, and then he’ll derail it immediately. He’ll never override my free will, but he might on occasion remind me that, for instance, something I’m thinking is uncharitable or a little bit too spicy and doesn’t (as my grandmother would say) “become me”. It’s God’s way of letting me know I can do better.
I hope these words bless you today. Most born-again believers are very careful about the thoughts they choose to entertain, but some of us (I’m staring right into a mirror here lol) – some of us need a little gentle reminder every now and then, to push us back into the very center of the strait-and-narrow before we wander off toward the edge. May these words be a little gentle push for those who need it.
THE TEMPTATION OF ROMANTIC LOVE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 12, 2022 – We are to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength. That is a Commandment. If we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, we don’t need romantic love. We have no room for it; we have no desire for it; we have no time for it. Romantic love is just another filthy worldly rag that we throw away.
Jesus said that if we don’t hate everyone except God, we’re not worthy of him. What on Earth did he mean by that? He meant precisely what he said: God and God only should be our focus. God and God only should have all our love.
God and God only.
In our all-consuming relationship with God, there’s no room for anyone else. That would be someone coming between us. That would be spiritual adultery.
Jesus did not have a girlfriend or a wife during his time on Earth. He also did not have a boyfriend. All his love he gave to God and God only. To be a follower of Jesus means to be like Jesus in whom we choose to love.
Born-again believers don’t form romantic attachments. That doesn’t mean we’re not still attracted to people or are not attractive to them. I experience both, as temptations. I have no intention of giving into those temptations. A romantic attachment has zero value to me. It’s like I’m standing on the side of a mountain, with the peak within easy viewing range, having reached that point with phenomenal effort over a long period of time, only to have someone call to me from the canyon below to come down and join them. It would be stupid of me to traipse down the mountain to join them, to give up everything I’ve learned and experienced and accomplished over the years for a few seconds of fluttery feels. I can’t think of anything less worth losing grace over than romantic love.
Listen carefully to the words of popular love songs. Imagine that instead of a man singing them to a woman or a woman to a man, demons are singing those words to God. Because that’s what popular love songs are – demons mocking God by claiming to be heartbroken over his rejection of them, and demons inciting people to replace their natural desire to love God with an unnatural desire to love others rather than God, to love created beings rather than the Creator who made them.
Love is only love when it comes from God, the source of all love. Otherwise, it’s fake love. It’s a sham. Most of what people call love is actually a sham. Real love never dies.
When Jesus told us we are to love God more than our family, he was basing his teaching on examples such as Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac and Aaron’s refusal to mourn his sons when they violated their priestly office and were killed for it. There are numerous instances in the Old Testament of people choosing God over their families or their people, even to the point of deserting wives and children. Regardless of the collateral damage, choosing God is always the right choice. It is never wrong to choose God, just as it is never wrong to follow the examples set by Jesus.
Jesus advised us to become eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake. With this, he not only promoted celibacy but the stage beyond celibacy, which is not the denial of sexuality but the dismissal of it. Sexual desire has no value to born-again believers living in the Kingdom, any more than gluttony has any value or coveting has any value. These are all appetites that we leave behind us when we enter the Kingdom. We will be tempted by them, certainly (even Jesus was), but it shouldn’t be any problem for us to overcome them once we identify them as temptations and then lean on God and his Word to strengthen us against them.
When we look to people to give us what only God can give us – perfect loyalty and unconditional love – we will fail in our pursuit. Romantic love is a cheap, imperfect knock-off of God’s love. It is often demon-inspired, and born-again believers have no reason to be involved in romantic love or to seek it out. Yes, romantic love will seek us out (we are lightning rods for the devil’s temptations), but we don’t need to give into it. There is no value for us in romantic love. It is a diversion off the narrow Way and a possible trigger for our fall from grace.
God’s love is all you need. The more you open yourself to God, the more he can satisfy you and fulfill all your God-given need for love. No-one can love you better or deeper or longer or stronger or more unconditionally than God, because God is the source of love. He is love. Love is what he does, and he does it perfectly.
Give God all your love and open your heart to him and him only, and you will have no need or time or inclination ever again for romantic love.
TEMPTATION
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, September 19, 2021 – They didn’t hide it from us. They told us outright that this would be the last generation. They even called it “Z”, in case they hadn’t made themselves clear enough. We have no excuse not to know, other than that we’re not paying attention, not watching, as Jesus told us to do.
This would be the last generation of humans, but not the last generation overall. What comes next is a new breed of humans, a human-machine hybrid that, over time, will become more machine than human. The capacity for pain and emotion will slowly be reduced until it seems to have disappeared, and with it the capacity for empathy, for sympathy, for love. It is easy enough to remove those capacities. It has been done already through shock treatments and lobotomies. But physically or chemically lobotomized humans also lose their ability to function beyond a vegetative state, and shock treatments are reversible. So these methods are inadequate for the task of creating new homes for demons.
Because that’s what it is – creating new homes for demons. Spirits are disembodied beings. They can only occupy souls that have welcomed them in; otherwise, they are permitted only drive-by possessions that last a few minutes or even seconds, but they can’t remain in their hosts unless they’re invited to stay. The new human-machine hybrid that has a near non-existent capacity for love or fear becomes an ideal vehicle for these beings, who then have full use of a fully-functioning body not for a few seconds or minutes, but for a life-time.
This is our future. We know that when the curtain falls on the age of Mercy, the age of Judgement begins. We also know from scripture that the age of Judgement is peopled for a time, and that there are two kinds of people – those marked by God, and those marked by Satan. Those marked by God can still fall (scripture says they’ll be tried, and some will fall), but those marked by Satan will no longer be able to convert. The time for God’s Mercy will be over.
We also know from scripture that many of those marked by Satan will possess superhuman abilities, including the ability to avoid physical death for a time. Those who are eternally beyond God’s Mercy will, by default, be vehicles for demonic spirits. When I say “demonic”, I mean all fallen spirits, including angels.
So as we enter the dawning of human-machine hybrids, we know that the age of Mercy is coming to an end and the age of Judgement is not far off. Injections of nanobots have been proven to reduce the capacities both for pain and emotion, while physical implants and prosthetics have been proven to increase human physical strength and endurance. The people who embrace these new technologies will be the new giants who will not only have a profound physical advantage over “mere humans”, but also a profound mental advantage.
Evil spirits used to be known as intelligences for their supernatural capacity to know things. When these spirits move into their new supercharged human-machine hybrid bodies and take control of them, they will be like gods.
But we born-again believers have one God, and we will not fall prey to the propaganda of wanting to have extended lives in a human-machine hybrid body with the intelligence of demons. We will patiently wait in our fully human mortal body with all its limitations and weaknesses – we will patiently wait for God to take us home in his time, where we will receive our glorified body. Even super-charged human-machine hybrid bodies with godlike intelligence are but filthy rags compared to glorified bodies.
The temptation to know more than we should, be more than we should, and live longer than we should is as old as humanity. Eve was tempted with these very same things in the Garden. The temptation hasn’t changed since then, other than to be glossily repackaged as science. But Satan leaves his fingerprints all over whatever isn’t from God, so we can clearly discern the devil in the details.
Be strong and stay true to God. Be grateful for your God-given natural body. Don’t hate it, don’t deny it, don’t shun it, and don’t mortify it; look after it as the temple of God’s Spirit. God has put your body into your hands to look after, so look after it the best you can: “Let your food be medicine and your medicine be food.” And then one day, if you stay true to God and keep to the path laid out for you by Jesus, you’ll receive a beautiful, youthful, God-given perfected body, and you’ll live in it in glory forever.
HEAVEN THREE
BEDFORD, Nova Scotia, October 22, 2015 – Whining as a born-again believer has to be the most ridiculous waste of time that any of us can indulge in, and yet we still do it. I stand as guilty of this silly offence as the next person. Whining is an indication that faith is momentarily weak, that we’ve forgotten that God is in control, and that things are as they are not because God is vindictive and wants us to suffer, but because we’ve either brought the ‘suffering’ on ourselves, or we’ve had expectations that were not to our benefit and so were nixed by God.
In other words, we chose against God’s will.
This is not necessarily the end of our or anyone else’s world, but it is a wake-up call.
Following Jesus means living more or less opposed to everyone who isn’t following Jesus. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s pretty much the whole world that we’re living opposed to, so it shouldn’t be surprising to us (and it certainly isn’t to God) that sometimes we’ll want what the world wants, not what God wants. Just call it peer pressure.
When that happens, don’t be too hard on yourself. Recognize it for what it is, and go to God for help. Yell at him if you want to (he’s got industrial-grade earplugs for moments like these), but remember who’s the source of all good. It’s not you, it’s not me, it’s not the government, it’s not anyone or anything but God.
Think of how Jesus lived. He was for all intents and purposes homeless. He had no money and no possessions beyond the clothes on his back. And yet other than for the odd time when he resorted to eating corn out of a farmer’s field or tried to eat figs from a fruitless tree (and then cursed it for its barrenness), he always had plenty of food and a place to sleep. He was healthy. He was physically vigorous and fully employed in God’s work. And he apparently had such a kick-ass cloak that the soldiers threw lots for it while he was dying on the cross.
This kind of life is where we’re all headed, if we’re true followers of Jesus. We won’t have a home to call our own, we won’t have possessions beyond the few we can carry with us (and I’m not talking U-Haul or RV here), and we won’t have any money beyond what we need for our ‘daily bread’. Our work will be fully for God and his kingdom, and our only friends will be those who, like us, love God and follow Jesus.
Needless to say, we won’t have many friends on Earth, but the one or two that we do have will be true friends, not facebook friends or fair-weather friends.
In any case, the only friend we really need is Jesus. He understands what we’re going through because he went through it himself.
“What a Friend We Have in Jesus” is not just a song. “Give us this day our daily bread” is not just a line from scripture. These are directives on how to survive in this world and overcome temptations. Whining is a temptation. Get past it. Many of those who followed Moses into the desert didn’t get past their whining and never made it to the promised land because of it.
Don’t end up like them. Next time you’re tempted to whine about something, remember: “This too shall pass.”
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 