Accounting is my Passion

I said I eagerly awaited the day when I could honestly say I liked Quickbooks; it looks like that day is here.

I have had to take over most of my dad’s responsibilities, and I’m aware that the percentage will approach 100 asymptotically in the near future. Every weekday I put time in, entering old checks and payments in Quickbooks. I deal with people who fix his car and work on his house. I watch to see if he’s doing anything wrong, so I can step in.

Using accounting software is not exciting, but along with the other new responsibilities, it’s paying dividends. When I’m only responsible for myself, I don’t have a lot of motivation to do things well. Now that I’m responsible for another person, I cut my own excuses short and get things done, and the mindset extends to my own affairs.

I’m developing the habit of scheduling things and setting daily goals. This is more helpful than you would think. As I’ve said before, if you sit down to work on something and you have no specific goal, you don’t know when you’re finished. When you quit, it’s because you’re tired, not because you accomplished something. You think about the rest of the task for the remainder of the day instead of putting it out of your mind.

When you set goals, you know when it’s time to get up, and you can be at peace while you do other things.

This all comes from my prayer life, which goes better and better with time. I have started making a point of asking God to help me give 100% of myself and my wealth to him. That’s very important. We are generally taught to give him just enough of ourselves to make our lives run well, as if we’re tipping a waiter or paying the IRS. Prosperity preachers teach us to pay God to help us and then go away. The old covenant taught us to give him 10%. That stuff doesn’t work now. You have to trust him completely, and when you ask him to help you do that, you find that part of you is very reluctant.

It’s not natural to trust God completely. That makes sense, because we are selfish, we are used to doing what we want, and we are used to being cheated by just about everyone we deal with. I don’t trust people; do you? I don’t even trust the people I trust. There are people I’d trust with my house keys, but there is nobody I’d put on my bank accounts. I wouldn’t trust anyone to tell doctors whether they could start passing out my organs. My trust has limits.

It’s hard to think of a single person who hasn’t let me down, and I have let others down. A lot of people have gone beyond being untrustworthy; they have worked to destroy me, for no good reason. They have stolen from me. They have slandered me behind my back. I’ve been lied about to judges.

God is the only person who is completely trustworthy. It’s no wonder I come to him with the habit of limiting what I give to people. I’ve never known any human being I could rely on, because such people do not exist.

So anyway, asking for help with complete trust and submission has been helpful. And it makes sense that it would help. Why should God help people who aren’t his employees? You don’t see Burger King giving uniforms to the kids who work at McDonald’s.

Peace and success keep increasing in my life. It’s absolutely great.

This morning I thought about the churches I used to go to. I was so glad I quit going. I felt relieved, knowing that disgusting weight was not on my back.

I know there are people at those churches who think I’m lost. They assume things are going badly for me now that I’ve “touched God’s anointed” and criticized “the prophets.” They are waiting to hear a bad report, and to see me crawl back to church full of regret. Fat chance!

I know they mean well (some of them), but they couldn’t be more wrong.

The Wilkerson family, at Trinity Church, is a horror to deal with. The place is a cult. They treat people like slaves. They put the dumbest, trashiest, most worthless teachers imaginable in front of people (most of whom are poor), and these people and the staff preachers persuade the crowd to go into debt to give the Wilkersons ridiculous offerings. The Wilkersons run people down to their friends. They interfere with relationships. They scheme behind people’s backs. Attending that church was like sharecropping. No, it was like being in a Nazi death camp. You work until you’re used up, and then someone replaces you.

Rich Wilkerson, Sr., asked for an offering at a funeral! No lie.

The last church I attended wasn’t great, either. The pastors had crazy, inflated opinions of themselves. They thought they were always right. The head pastor actually scolded the volunteers because they didn’t honor him correctly on his birthday! We were supposed to honor his adolescent son, who is nothing but an angry brat. He posted a photo of Jesus on Instagram, clutching a gigantic marijuana leaf. Under it, he announced that he was an atheist. He was nasty to older people. He was uneducated, by choice. But we were supposed to honor him!

They broke up relationships. They were incapable of listening. They were childish. They made a confused man their “house prophet.” They expected people to listen to the crazy things he said, and to rely on them when they steered their lives. The church never grew when I was there, and it’s still in a little rented room. Every time God started to move, pride stopped him in his tracks.

I don’t have to fool with that mess any more. I’m free. I talk to God personally all the time. I don’t need to talk to his crazy, manipulative personal assistants.

I have much more control over my mind, heart, and flesh than I used to. I have more success. The thistle hedges God put around me when I was in rebellion are coming down. I keep getting correction and supernatural improvement. It’s wonderful. If I had listened to the slave drivers and tiny pharaohs, I would still be walking in circles treading out their grain.

It’s great. I love it. You can have it, too.

I’m also glad I’m off Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media sites. I don’t have to turn on the PC and groan, knowing I’m about to see backward garbage posted by friends who claim to love God. I don’t have to see half-naked pictures, Only Black Lives Matter propaganda, prosperity gospel filth, or posts about how hard Christianity is and how we have to save ourselves through effort.

I miss people, but I would rather have what I have and be without them than have what they have and be with them.

In my prayers, I keep telling God I’m going to keep going forward and doing well even if every other person on earth dies in defeat and goes to hell.

That sounds bad, I suppose, but it doesn’t mean I don’t care about other people. It means I will not let my desire to please them or be accepted drive me to accept the chump change they’re living for. The devil pays them off in trinkets, so they’re happy to remain as they are. Not me (not any more). I want to keep growing. I don’t want to peak in this life.

I hope everyone I know grows and improves, but if they don’t, I will keep walking, and I will never look back. Never. It’s unthinkable.

Sometimes I sit and focus and try to feel the way I felt six months or a year ago. I remember the tension and worry. I remember the sensation of defeat. Things were pretty good back then; they were way better than they were in 2007, when I first decided to go back to church. But today I feel ten times as good. As pleasant as things were in 2015, I could never allow myself to sink back to that level.

I realize the kingdom of heaven isn’t about feeling good. God is not my life coach or massage therapist, with a purpose of making things swell for me. But when you align yourself with God, you can’t help being blessed. It can’t be avoided.

The things I’ve been talking about on this blog work. They are correct. It’s not my imagination. It’s revelation. It never stops working. It never stops getting better. I make little errors here and there, but fundamentally, it’s right. I don’t regret buying into a single part of it.

After all this, I almost look forward to attacking Quickbooks today. And if God can turn Quickbooks into a blessing, what can’t he bless?