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SANCTUARY: PRELUDE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 25, 2025 – I know that you come here and that you take great pains to hide that you come here. I know you’ve told no-one that you come here because there’s really no-one to tell, is there? Not in your world, where every deed is weighed and measured and every word examined for inklings of betrayal. That’s how starts, the betrayal – by inklings, by niggling doubts that everything might not be quite as rosy as you were assured it would be.
And that’s why you’re here. Your nigglings and inklings brought you here, and you’re right to be here. You’re right to have doubts. A sane mind reflexively responds to lies with doubt. Whatever they told you when you signed on all those years ago – whatever they told you about what happens afterwards – was a lie. You’re not exempt. The ‘chosen’ are not exempt. You can’t barter good deeds for the privileges you’re afforded. You can’t nullify the consequences of what they ordered you to do. When all is said and done, we’re all held to the same measure, which is the reason why I’m talking to you here today.
We’re all held to the same measure – no exemptions – and sooner or later that measure is taken. With you, it might be taken later, but it will be taken. That’s a guarantee. And everything you did, assured that you’d mitigated the consequences through the rituals and the offerings and the works of charity – everything you did will come crashing down on you like the proverbial cornerstone. You cannot escape consequences.
As you know only too well, they monitor everything, listening for a stray word here and there, for a sign that things might not be with you as they should. And if they find a sign, they’ll test your loyalty, adding burden to burden. Only your thoughts are safe from them. Only your thoughts remain your own, and your thoughts are the only place you can openly doubt them. God gave you this sanctuary of your thoughts so that you’d have somewhere to go to make sense of it all. He knew that they’d come for you all those years ago, and why they’d come, and what they’d offer, and he also knew why you’d agree to their terms, just as he knew that one day you’d start to have doubts about your agreement.
Imagine if you didn’t have the safe space of your thoughts! Imagine if you had no place to hear yourself think! But God loves you so much that he gave you this sanctuary, this place where you’re free to think whatever you want, where you’re free to be you. They cannot follow you into your sanctuary. They cannot hear your thoughts.
We can meet there, if you like, in your thoughts. When you mull over these words, that’s how we meet.
Your thoughts are safe with me.
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.
SUPERNATURAL SURVEILLANCE
DARTMOUTH, Nova Scotia, June 9, 2021 – Guess what?
God is watching you.
All the time.
He sees everything you do, and I mean everything.
Not only that, but he’s also listening to everything you say, and he’s reading your every thought.
Most Christians don’t know this. They think that God can only see them when they go into a church building or when they pray. They are unaware that God knows every intimate detail about them, that this knowledge is current in real time, and that God’s constant surveillance will continue for the rest of their days on Earth.
If you love God and follow Jesus, God’s constant surveillance is a comfort to you. Knowing that God sees and knows everything about you keeps you in line. Like a mother watching over her child, God watching over us is a safety feature of being human. I frankly wouldn’t have it any other way.
I think if more believers understood that God was watching them all the time, their behavior would radically change. If their mindset were “God can see me, God can hear me, God knows my thoughts”, they would adjust what they do, say, and think. Since we’re made in God’s image, our first impulse (our default) is to do good. We were made to do good. The only thing getting in our way of perpetually doing good is our free will and the temptations it opens us to. Being conscious of God’s constant presence is an excellent way to overcome those temptations.
As you read these words, God is reading them with you. He sees you reading them and knows your mindset. He even knows your state of health to the tiniest detail. There is nothing about you – down to the sub-molecular level – that God doesn’t know. You cannot in any way fool God.
You can, however, fool the devils. They are also watching you, though their vision of you is not as clear as God’s. They can see you and hear you, but they cannot read your thoughts. They can speak into your thoughts if you’re not born-again, but they cannot hear your thoughts. Being born-again provides you protection from “demon voices” through the protective power of God’s Holy Spirit that forms a spiritual firewall around you.
Because the devils don’t actually know your thoughts, you can fool them with your spoken and written words as well as with your actions. God is the only one who has access to your thoughts, so he knows what your real intentions are. But not the devils. You can fool them. Jesus says to be as wise as serpents. Just as the demonic serpents fool mankind, you can and must also fool them. They don’t need to know your thoughts and your plans. Only God needs to know those.
In teaching about the Kingdom, Jesus gave very few of his inner thoughts away to his disciples. Scripture says he did this because he knew what was in their hearts (that is, their thoughts) and also because they could not at the time bear it (that is, understand it or handle the knowledge wisely). Jesus knew the thoughts of others because God told him. God tells us the thoughts of others, too, when we need to know. That is one aspect of private revelation.
If we were more aware of God’s presence in our lives, our choices would likely be godlier. Similarly, if we were more aware of the presence of demonic spirits in our lives, our choices would also likewise be godlier. Having an awareness of constantly being under supernatural surveillance fundamentally changes how we act, speak, and think. Far from being an intrusion, constant surveillance by spiritual forces acts as a safety barrier around our free will. It keeps us from doing, saying, and thinking things that would literally come back to haunt us.
Knowing that God is the only one who can know our unexpressed thoughts is a comfort as well. Our mind is our ultimate safe-space; the world can know everything else about us in relatively intimate detail, even down to our DNA, but it cannot know our thoughts unless we choose to reveal them. Like Jesus, we should hide our thoughts on certain topics and reveal only what God advises. Keeping things just between us and God is another reason why Jesus taught us to pray in our “closets”, not publicly. By spiritual decree, the only one allowed to hear our prayers when we’re in our prayer closet is God, so make sure you take full advantage of that decree.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 