Get me Out of Santeriaville

My house-hunting trip is over. I’m back at work, trying to get everything in order so a move can be worked out.

It’s a confusing time. There are a lot of tax angles to be looked at when you buy and sell properties. Real estate appreciates, so when you sell, you get hit with capital gains tax. You can get around that with a good accountant, if you can prove losses that offset the gains. If you sell rental property, you may be able to avoid paying the tax by putting the money into new rental properties in other locations. Sometimes one property may be eligible for both types of tax breaks, and you have to decide which one to apply.

When a person is my dad’s age, he also has to think about things like gift tax and the death tax.

I’m not sure what will happen, but I know this: it’s a lot easier to get hundreds of thousands of dollars by keeping it away from the government than by going out and earning it all over again.

Thank God for accountants. I can’t imagine a more dreadful job. It’s good that there are people out there who are willing to do it. They’re like morticians. They do a necessary job everyone else hates.

I haven’t written a lot about my relationship with God lately. I get distracted and write frivolous things. I stop focusing on what’s important. Also, I don’t want to write things that are half-baked and full of errors, just to have something to say.

Lately God keeps reminding me of the big lesson he tried to teach me in 1986: I have to spend a great deal of time praying in tongues. When I let it slip, it’s like coming down from a stimulant. Instead of feeling energetic and at peace, I feel crabby and worried. Things stop going well. It’s strange how one thing which requires so little of my own input makes such profound changes in my life.

I’ve also gotten very good results from daily communion. I know this, because I skipped it during my trip. I felt terrible yesterday. Returning to Miami is always a cursed event, but it was worse than that. I couldn’t find peace. I wasn’t able to resist temptation the way I should have been.

Today when I woke up, I didn’t have wine with me, but I went through the essentials anyway. Communion isn’t really about wine or crackers. I went down the list of things I was doing badly and compulsions I was yielding to. I repented and asked for help. It was like peeling filthy clothes off, one item at a time. Peace came back to me.

I think I’m going to do communion in the morning from now on, instead of waiting until late in the day. It’s like showering. If you’re only going to shower once a day, you should do it in the morning. It’s better to sleep dirty than to be dirty when you start the day. I suppose there is no reason why I can’t do communion more than once a day, though. I don’t really have to choose.

God’s big goal, apart from salvation, is inner change. The inside of a person is supposed to be as much like heaven as possible. It should be a place of peace, love, faith, joy, and humility. It should be a clean place. You don’t get that from churches where they teach people to sin all they want and ask forgiveness once a week. Prayer and communion are tools to get your insides ordered.

I often think about the disorder and filth inside me. I may be an okay person by the world’s standards, but I am not good. When I turned back to God, I was disgusting, like a house that has been turned into a crack den. He has improved me a lot, but there’s a great deal of work to be done. The job is overwhelming. I wish I were a better person. I wish I had not vandalized myself like this.

It’s very unfortunate that churches don’t teach this. They tell us God loves us as we are, which is true, but they imply that we don’t have to change. A serial murderer’s mother may love him, but that doesn’t imply approval.

They also don’t teach us this: power doesn’t come to filthy, unrepentant people. The Bible warns us about this, but preachers love money and high attendance, so they keep quiet about it. The Bible says idolaters, revilers, sexually immoral people, and so on will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. When you wallow in immorality and count on weekly church visits to save you, you don’t get the power Christians are supposed to have. Your prayers won’t be answered as often. Rotten people will get victory over you. Your problems will get worse instead of better. Most Christians don’t mind. As long as they get sexual immorality, pride, and rebellion, they don’t mind dying of cancer, living in lack, having no peace, or losing most of their battles.

I remember watching Steve Munsey give a terrible sermon at Trinity Church in Miami. For some reason, he was talking about sex. He had his people play the song “Single Ladies” while he danced around. It was quite a sight. He said, “It’s okay to look, but you can’t touch.” When he said “touch”, he grinned and held his hands out in front of him and made motions as if he were squeezing two objects. Don’t make me explain.

That’s the attitude most of us have. It’s okay to be dirty inside, as long as we don’t do what we want to do. Many of us go further: it’s okay to do whatever we want as long as we ask for forgiveness. Many go further than that: it’s okay even if you never admit you did anything wrong and you never ask for forgiveness, as long as you got saved when you were a kid.

Munsey is disgraceful. It’s not okay to look. It’s not okay to encourage yourself to be lustful, covetous, angry, gluttonous, and so on. When God has succeeded in changing you, you won’t be a leering, craving bag of useless flesh.

There’s a big difference between momentary temptation and deliberate obsessing.

I think good teaching would have sped up my progress. Unfortunately, I put myself in the hands of people who couldn’t help me improve because they didn’t want to be improved, themselves. They thought they were fine the way they were. They couldn’t teach what they didn’t know.

I didn’t deserve better teachers. I had turned away. I deserved continued decline and damnation. I brought Munsey and the Wilkerson family on myself.

There are certain things I know to do, which are easy and which bring powerful results. I just have to keep doing them. As long as I continue, I will grow stronger and have more success.

I look forward to getting away from Miami. This place is full of Cubans and Haitians who literally worship demons. No wonder things don’t go well for me here! What did I expect? I’m the enemy of the ruling spirits. Say what you will about most of America; most cities and towns don’t have hundreds of thousands of residents who practice voodoo. This is one of the worst places for Christians.

I believe that when I went on my trip to Ocala, I got away from a whole bunch of local spirits that hate me and work against me. I thought about this as I drove back, and it really bothered me. I did not want to return. Now I’m stuck here, and I have to keep fighting until I can get away again.

Miami is absolutely rotten.

What on earth was I thinking when I moved back here?

I plan to keep applying what I know. I believe God will deliver me from this trashy city just as he has delivered me from a lot of trashy people who mistreated me.

Maybe this will be useful to you. I hope you will think it over.