Take Charge

Time to get back to writing about God.

I had a big development during the last few days. I’m always learning things about God, and when I apply them, things happen. Sometimes I learn things and then I forget them and learn other things. Then God reminds me of the things I forgot, and I apply them along with the new things. That creates a synergy, so I’m better off than before. It’s better to do several things right than one thing.

A few years back, I noticed that people in the Bible gave commands to their minds and spirits. They spoke to them as though they were servants. You can see this in the psalms. The authors will command their souls to do this or that. I believe the soul is the conscious mind. Also, the Bible says the spirits of prophets are subject to them, and Jesus sent his spirit to God when he died, implying he had authority over it.

I have started commanding my spirit when I pray. I command it to believe, to submit to God, to love, to forgive, and so on. The results are startling. I feel movement inside me. I hear groans coming from within me. It’s very strange. It’s overwhelming.

I find that it works. I have much more control over what I think about and what I feel. Since I’ve been doing it, things have gone more smoothly for me. It seems that I dont have to exert much effort in my natural strength, as long as I cover the bases in the supernatural.

That makes sense to me, because the most blessed people in the Bible were not hard workers. The Bible doesn’t say Abraham was rewarded for his hard work. He was rewarded for faith. When Moses started working hard, it was not perceived as something to admire; it was a problem. God gave him helpers to fix it. Joseph wasn’t put in charge of Egypt because of hard work. His relationship with God did it. You can find example after example in the Bible, but you will never find anyone who won God’s favor by striving.

Over and over, in the Bible, hard work is equated with servitude and defeat. It was part of Adam’s curse. Samson was cursed with hard work. Esau’s sons were cursed with servitude. So were Canaan’s descendants. Freedom from hard work is shown as a blessing. One of the nicest things God promised people was that they would live in houses other people built and have wealth other people accumulated.

Some extremely odd and unlikely things have happened to me lately. Walls I thought would never come down crumbled so fast my biggest problem was adjusting. It’s hard to stay on your feet when you get a huge blessing.

I can give you some examples. Excuse me if I repeat things I’ve mentioned before.

Several years ago, I made a deal with my dad. I would not leave Miami without him, provided he bought a place somewhere else, big enough for both of us, and moved with me. All sorts of barriers rose up. We had problems with his real estate. We had to buy my sister out of the house he owned with her and renovate it. One contractor abandoned the job. The other was very slow and inept. The city held us up for months.

A few months back, my dad claimed he had never made any promise to me. I assume he forgot, due to his memory issues. I thought I was going to have to go alone and then have to deal with his problems and responsibilities from a long distance.

I don’t want to get into all the details, but since then, one by one, his objections have disappeared. I didn’t beg him or fight with him. His mind simply changed, overnight. He decided he would move, grudgingly. Then he decided he wanted to move, provided we got his Miami house renovated first, which was completely impractical. He started saying he couldn’t stand Miami any more. Then, very suddenly, he said we could buy a new place and move before fixing the house. On his own, he started feeling bad about making me work so hard to get this done.

I found places on the Internet. I thought small, because I didn’t want to shock him with a big expense. He asked if I was sure I didn’t want to get something nicer. He said I would inherit it, and if I got married I would want a nice place. I was amazed.

We looked at places in Marion County. The one I liked best seemed remote. I was concerned he might be bored. He was also concerned. He indicated he didn’t want to be so far out. I thought we would have to start looking again. Then out of the blue, he started saying he thought it was fine. He really liked it. He wasn’t worried about driving ten minutes to get to a drugstore or having a limited number of places to go to for lunch.

The game field keeps changing so fast I can’t steady myself well enough to plan firmly.

The place I’m considering has a 25-by-36-foot workshop with a concrete slab. It has never been used. It has a big three-car garage with a beautiful epoxy floor. It has ten acres of secluded, peaceful land. The shop contains a tractor, a bush hog, and a John Deere Gator that appear unused. It’s like someone prepared the place for me, knowing I was on the way.

Can I trust the blessings I’m getting? How do you cope with the change when you go from struggling and waiting to having things handed to you? I feel like one of the four lepers who looted the empty camp of the Syrians in 2 Kings 7. They must have looked around and said, “Is this really for us?”

I don’t know if I’ll get that place, but I’m getting out. That’s a done deal.

I feel very bad for the people I know from church. Just about all of them are stuck in the fake prosperity maelstrom. The Steve Munseys and Benny Hinns and Joel Osteens are bleeding them to death. They are either leaving church in disgust or staying and getting weaker and weaker. I wish everyone could come with me.

The things Jesus said about the crooked Jews of his time are true of Christian leaders today. They don’t know the way into the kingdom, and they keep other people out. They teach people poisonous garbage in order to turn them into slaves and get them to contribute obscene amounts of money, so the preachers can spend it on the kind of trinkets known to be appealing to common white trash.

In the battle for the Pacific, the Japanese came up with smart tactics. At first, they attacked Americans on the beaches of the islands they invaded. They sent waves of soldiers to charge American guns, and they lost thousands of men. Later they let our troops land with little opposition, and they hid in huge, bomb-proof cave complexes stuffed with food and ammunition. Our casualties went way up. This is why we dropped atomic bombs on Japan. They would have used the same strategy on a gigantic scale.

The money preachers are like the Japanese. Some of the devil’s sons go after people in porn theaters and casinos, where no one is even close to God. Other sons wait in their big concrete churches, and they let us come to them. Then they attack on their own turf. They wait for us like goaltenders in hockey goals. Churches are like choke points. A lot of seekers come in the doors, and preachers pick them off by the millions. They teach them lies and keep them weak. People fail just when they think they’re finally almost home.

If this move works out for me, it will be after a long period during which I haven’t given preachers one red cent. It will happen after I spent years of “touching God’s anointed,” criticizing the prosperity preachers and accusing them of serving the devil. What would they be able to say, presented with my testimony? “Just you wait. God is going to get you any minute now!” Right. Just like he’s always one service away from giving the slaves their thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and hundredfold financial windfall. I’ll be dead and living in heaven before they see that money.

Sometimes I almost wonder if it’s possible for anyone other than a preacher to get into hell, what with all the clergymen crowding their way in.

If you want to help, pray for God to guide me and help me end up where he wants. That would be a big favor. I can’t seem to do much for my friends, but maybe I can get out of here and put some space between me and the mess.