Thanks in Advance

If any of you can direct me to good Christ-centered help with dealing with addicts, I would appreciate it. Books, websites, organizations…I want to learn all I can. Thank you.

Ammo Stacks Make Nice Furniture for Profiteers

Outdoor Marksman has Federal 9mm ammunition for $11.95, if you buy a scant 20 boxes. Not too bad. To me, ten bucks a box is reasonable. We are getting closer to that point. Sellier & Bellot is down to $13 per box at Natchez Shooters Supplies.

It seems like commodities prices aren’t the problem. Copper is getting more expensive, in spite of the bad worldwide economy, but ammunition prices keep dropping. That leads me to suspect that profiteering is the big problem. Obama created an artificial ammunition market by threatening our Constitutional rights, and the people who make and sell ammunition may have been cheating us since it began.

I know there has been a lot of profiteering, because only a fool would believe there was any market justification for a $30 box of FMJ 9mm rounds or a $50 box of primers. But can it really be that greed is responsible for most of the price increases? People are basically evil, but ordinarily, they exhibit some restraint, especially when bad behavior offends their customers.

The folks who tried to corner the market seem to be starting to bleed. I see GP11 480-round battle packs selling on Gunbroker for $259. That’s only $30 above the market price. And a search of completed auctions shows GP11 is not selling. Great. I’m all about capitalism, but cheating people in a time of national upheaval is wrong.

Let’s see what else I can learn.

Hornady 17 HMR V-Max is failing to sell, at $10/50. That’s good news. That would have been an okay price before the Obama crisis.

I’m checking 9mm prices. The prices are a shock to the conscience, and I haven’t found one lot that has sold.

I’m checking 7.62x54mm 7N1, and apart from some sucker paying $285 for a case, it’s not selling.

Maybe the vultures are finally getting caught with excess inventory, as they deserve. Who on earth would pay $15 for Sellier & Bellot? This stuff is one step above throwing rocks. I’ve never had any problems with it, but it’s among the cheapest factory ammo around.

Gunbroker is such a ripoff. It’s virtually useless.

In other news, I had an interesting thought this week. I was thinking about the strange freedom God has given me from overeating, and about my church’s request that I get involved in making food for their cafe.

Back when I was working on my cookbook, I had extraordinary luck with recipes. It seemed like one dish after another was a startling success. I made some stupid things that didn’t work, but I had bizarre victories. For example, I made my coconut flan recipe up in one try, with very little experience to go on. I don’t like baked beans all that much, but I put together a recipe so good, I couldn’t quit eating them.

I got fat, especially after I got pizza under control. I could not stop making and eating delicious food. I couldn’t take the weight off.

Then God took away the compulsion to overeat, and the weight started coming off by itself. I can even resist pizza. And suddenly, my church needed help with their kitchen.

We always want God to give us stuff, and I’m sure he wants to do it. But would he be a good god if he gave us things that hurt us? Of course not. If I had been asked to work in the cafe before I got power over what I ate, it would have been a real problem. There is no way I would have been able to resist stuffing myself. But now I can go in there and cook anything they want, and I know I won’t get fat.

I got the blessing, and I was spared the danger inherent in getting what you wish for. That’s a big deal.

It makes me think about other things I’ve wanted, as well as things other people have wanted. I look at these things and see how they could cause harm if they were suddenly dumped on us.

I strongly suspect that God changes people, through the Holy Spirit and miracles as well as through work and scripture, so that when they get what they want, it will only bless them. I think God is cleaning me up so the good things I want can come my way, without making me rebellious or proud or ungrateful or fat.

We are told that he will give us the desires of our heart (Psalm 34), and that he only gives good gifts (Matthew).

I suppose, then, that if you want a thing, you have to want the power to avoid being harmed by it. If you want money or possessions, you have to want to be freed from greed and covetousness and selfishness. If you want power, you have to want compassion and generosity and gentleness. And if you want to cook for God, you have to want the ability to eat moderately. God doesn’t want to give us new idols or new masters. Doesn’t that sound plausible?

I’ve noticed that the less things control me, the more I enjoy them. I enjoy food a lot more, now that I’m not shoveling it down at every opportunity. I enjoy the things I own, now that they aren’t as exciting as they once were. I wonder what’s next.

The more you surrender, the more you win. That’s how it seems to work.

Maybe this is why many people who give to ministries and charities have little money. They overspend, they default on debts, they borrow at outrageous interest, and then they expect God to give them cash because they max out their credit cards to support missionaries and charities. How can God possibly repay them in kind, before he makes them fit vessels? Would you pour water into a reservoir with holes in it? And besides, what if these people gave money God never asked them to give, because they didn’t ask for his guidance? And if you give to a ministry while you cheat a creditor, whose money did you give? Not yours; that’s for sure. You stole from another person in order to give to God. Is he supposed to encourage that?

I think the charismatic “word of faith” crowd needs to think about these things. I don’t doubt that God wants to do stuff for us, but you shouldn’t ask him to be an enabler.

So once again, I have more to be grateful for than I realized. That’s the bottom line. If you can’t be grateful for discipline and instruction, you are utterly lost.

Handouts Welcome

Thanks to all who prayed concerning the thing I was working on, on Wednesday night. God came through, and it went as well as could be hoped. I wouldn’t say I had a giant victory, but that wasn’t a likely outcome anyway. What I got was the absence of a loss. Can’t explain beyond that.

Today I have some free time. I can’t decide what to do with it. I hope I don’t squander it before I figure it out.

I’ve been dealing with things for the church and my family, and I’ve had a few little problems of my own, and it has added up. Yesterday my dad pointed out that I never had any time for myself. That surprised me, because I’m not spending any time working on my career, and you would think I’d have tons of time on my hands, but he was right. I want a career in Christian books, and maybe Christian songwriting, but that won’t happen while I’m doing household repairs, getting bogged down helping with my sister’s illness, and being less than optimally selective in my church volunteerism.

My sister mentioned a book by John Bevere. I can’t recall the name. He’s a teacher and evangelist. He said something you probably know already if you’re a Christian, but he articulates it in a very clear way.

There are two books in heaven. The first is the Book of Life. You get into this book by accepting salvation. You confess your sins, you ask for salvation, you acknowledge that Jesus paid the price, and you get in. Great. But then you have to deal with the second book. That book lists your works. If they’re in good shape, you get rewards in heaven. Don’t ask me what the rewards are. I know the Bible mentions crowns, which don’t sound all that great, but I’m sure there is other stuff, and whatever it is, you want it.

If my sister related it correctly, John Bevere says a lot of people will get to heaven and find out that they have zip in the second book, even though they’ve done many, many good things for God. Why would this happen? Because they did things God did not want them to do. Maybe you become an evangelist, when God wants you to be a corporate CEO who has the gift of giving money and goods to the church and the poor. So you get little or no credit for the souls you’ve helped save. That’s the idea.

I think this makes perfect sense. Jesus talked about people who would come to him at judgment, citing the things they had done for him. He said some would cite miracles and works using God’s power, such as casting out demons. His response? “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

I think many people interpret this to mean that these individuals go to hell. I find that hard to swallow. Jesus saved a thief as he hung on the cross. This was a man who probably never did anything good in his life, and who was dying when he was saved, so there was no hope he would do anything good in the time remaining. Jesus saved him anyway. I don’t think God would save a person like that and then roast a pastor who was born again yet screwed up afterward. I don’t think “depart from me” means “fry in hell for eternity” in this case. I think it means something more like, “Are you kidding me? You never listened. You did what you wanted, not what I wanted. And now you expect a reward?”

The remarkable thing is that sometimes, God–apparently–permits people to use his power, even if they’re doing it stupidly. Jesus referred to this when he was making his point.

The high priest back in OT times wore a garment that had pomegranates (fruit) and golden cymbals attached to the hem. Some Christians believe these symbolized the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit, which would manifest themselves in the New Testament, via the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The fruit are character traits God puts in us through the Holy Spirit. They include things like love, compassion, and self-control. The gifts are supernatural powers, like the ability to pray in tongues and the ability to see spirits.

Paul talked about the importance of a righteous character. We are to be renewed on the inside, purely by God’s grace and power, so we are good in our inclinations as well as our actions. Some think that in 1 Corinthians 13, he was teaching the importance of acquiring the fruit of the Spirit–good character–as well as the gifts, and that he actually referred to the ornaments on the priest’s garment. Without the fruit between them, the cymbals would bang against each other and make a cacophonous racket.

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Look what he is implying. You can do things that unquestionably require God’s power, without pleasing God! This notion is found elsewhere. The Jews mention things like this in the Talmud, and the Orthodox view is that Jesus’s miracles were performed in rebellion, using the tetragrammaton, or the name of God. Some ancient literature says Adam had a first wife, Lilith, who disobeyed God and flew away from Eden, using the name of God for power.

Have you ever wondered how a pompous or arrogant evangelist could end up with a multi-million-dollar-a-month ministry while appearing to be completely and transparently consumed with greed and a desire for attention? Maybe this is the answer. Gifts without fruit.

The 37th psalm says, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way.” And the Bible calls our own interests “vanity,” which is a word that refers to things that have no lasting value. The word “vanish” comes from the same root. It seems reasonable to conclude that if we do what we want instead of what God wants, our efforts are vain, because at judgment, the rewards will vanish. The things we thought were permanent will turn out to be passing illusions.

So it looks like it’s possible to turn your own version of God’s plan into an idol. You can be deep in rebellion while serving the church full-time, as hard as you can. You’re not supposed to find something you want to do and then do it for God. You’re supposed to use the Holy Spirit to find out what God wants, and you’re supposed obey while evincing Spirit-imbued good traits such as love and patience and generosity. You’re supposed to know God personally and communicate with him every day, and you’re supposed to pray constantly, asking for help and guidance even in the smallest things. You’re supposed to find out what he wants you to do.and then get him to do most of the work, through power he puts in you. And then you get the credit! It may sound selfish to pester God relentlessly and ask him for things, and it is selfish. But that’s how grace is. We have to humble ourselves and admit we are asking for much more than we deserve. We’re like Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, eating his unwanted, undeserved doughnut not because he earned it, but because he doesn’t deserve it.

We are welfare cases. We are not supposed to earn. We are supposed to beg and take and be grateful and a little ashamed. That’s what I think. If you earn, you have a right to be proud, and you can say you deserve your blessings. That isn’t consistent with the New Testament. You have to make an effort, but you have to acknowledge that your effort is not what gets the job done. Like it or not, “the battle is the Lord’s.”

That’s how I see it, anyway. I want to take a look at John Bevere’s book and see if that’s his position.

Grace is a wonderful thing for the enemy to attack, because it sounds so lazy and selfish. “God helps those who help THEMSELVES!” “I’m not worthy to ask God to help me!” “I’m so pious and unselfish, I wouldn’t dream of asking God to clean up my mess!” “I can’t ask God to help me all the time; he has better things to do, and I caused my own problems.” How righteous those things sound, when the enemy sends brainwashed people to put out the fires grace lights. When he sends them out to protect his doomed kingdom from destruction and blight. It sounds so reasonable; no wonder it has been so easy for people to kill evangelists who taught it, while the murderers believed they were serving God. But the message of self-reliance is evil, and the message of taking handouts from God is righteous.

Speaking of handouts from God, yesterday I dropped down to the fifth notch on my new belt. I know eventually I’ll get the same kind of progress in every area of my character, and I’ll do a better job handling things like anger, unforgiveness, impatience, and so on. I do what I can on my own, but I know that when I see success, it will come from God, not my sad efforts.

Yesterday I tried to remember what it used to feel like to feel compelled to gluttonize. I tried to recall the sensation of compulsion, pushing me to take another bite. I couldn’t do it! That amazed me. I have an incomplete memory of it. I recall part of the sensation, but not all of it. I can’t explain that. It would be nice to get that effect with my other shortcomings.

Let the earners get what they can earn. I’d rather get what has been set aside for me as gifts. It’s humbling to realize that, but then humility is a gift, too.

Ultrasound of 12-Week “Fetus” Exposes the Lie

Today I came across the Huckabee interview of the Planned Parenthood executive who quit after watching an abortion on ultrasound.

It’s amazing that anyone would object to forcing abortionists to show ultrasound videos to potential clients. It’s illegal to sell a candy bar in the United States without printing the ingredients and nutritional information on the label. What possible rationale can we have for failing to provide a mother with full disclosure when she is contemplating abortion?

Here is a three-inch-long baby. It’s an ultrasound someone posted on Youtube. This is what three months looks like. Obama wants to abort babies at 9 months. He voted to let babies die of starvation and cold when they survived abortions. Imagine killing this tiny creature with a suction tube, and then imagine how much worse it would be if it were several months older and lying naked on a stainless steel table, groping for an embrace that would never come.

How can any woman abort a baby without fear of God? How can she think he won’t see what she has done, or that there won’t be consequences? Is adoption really so traumatic that it’s worth taking a chance on God’s wrath? Surely not.

Bad acts bring curses, and curses last up to four lifetimes. When we do wrong, we may bring punishment on our great-grandchildren as well as ourselves.

I don’t care if the video upsets people. It should upset them. If it helps someone make the safe and moral choice, a little offense is justified.

Help is out there. Here’s a link to Care-Net. They help pregnant women who want to do the right thing.

Bring me More Free Stuff

I got appalling news this morning.

I got up and got on the scale and got a very pleasant reading. I weighed myself again a few minutes later to confirm it, and I got the same reading. Before getting in the shower I removed everything I was wearing and weighed myself a third time, expecting a slightly better result. The weight shot up seven pounds! I reset the scale and tried again. No difference!

Looks like my scale is crazy. I have since weighed myself on a balance scale, and it looks like I am seven pounds fatter than I believed. So my recent weight loss has been merely fantastic. Not shocking and extreme.

I can live with that. Fantastic is not bad. I may have to amend my weekly McDonald’s breakfast order, though. I don’t care. It doesn’t mean what it used to mean to me. The good Lord has made portion control extremely easy, so I guess I can do whatever I have to.

Time to toss the electronic scale. I thought they were more reliable than that. Seven pounds is a huge error.

It’s wonderful to know I don’t have to worry about rebound weight gain. For the first time in my life, I don’t have to think about that. What happened to me is better than having the weight disappear instantly. If that had happened, like virtually every dieter who ever lived, I would be a fat person who was temporarily thin. Instead, I was permanently cured of fatness. That means that now I’m a thin person who is temporarily fat. That’s incredible. Once the fat is gone, it can’t return unless I invite it back.

I was thinking about grace this morning. What a hard message to preach. For centuries, we’ve been telling people they were bad because they did wrong, and we’ve been condemning them and even wishing punishment and failure on them. And we thought we were right. “God helps them who help themselves”; isn’t that what we’ve been told? It sounds evil and self-indulgent to say God will fix your behavior for you. But it’s absolutely true.

Think about it. How did Adam live? He was the first person God created, so presumably, his lifestyle tells us what God intended the rest of us to have. What did Adam do for a living? Did he plant corn? Did he slop hogs and cut hay? No. His job consisted of reaching up and picking fruit off trees God had grown for him. That, quite literally, was his livelihood. God did not want him to work, in the sense that we “work” today.

We are not supposed to earn things. We’re supposed to cooperate and obey and have faith. We’re supposed to go to school and get jobs. We’re supposed to try to be good. But it’s not supposed to be drudgery. The work of our flesh is not supposed to make heroes and martyrs of us.

If you earn things, what does it mean? It means you don’t owe them to God. It means you did it yourself. If that describes your belief, what are you? What word describes you? “Righteous”? No. “Proud.”

On the other hand, what if God gives you the strength to behave, and he gives you peace, and he allows you to prosper without working yourself to death? How are you going to feel? Grateful. Unworthy. Somewhat ashamed. What word sums that up? “Humble.” Doesn’t the Bible tell us over and over that God likes humility? Is there anything it condemns more than pride?

God would rather give us things and have us humble than make us earn them and have us proud. I’m sure of it. How else can you explain the crucifixion? God could have given us tasks that would purify us, but he didn’t. He insisted on making it a gift.

God wants us to have his nature. That’s why he wants us to give all the time. God has a compulsion to give. Generosity is a fundamental aspect of his nature. No sane Christian would deny that; it would be blasphemy. If that’s true, aren’t we obligated to humble ourselves and receive? How can God give if we won’t take?

Am I saying God would spoil us? No. What you give people doesn’t determine whether they’re spoiled. Their attitude determines that. Abraham and Job were obscenely rich. Were they spoiled? I wouldn’t dare say so; it would be a slander. On the other hand, we have poor people in America who are horribly spoiled. They wait for the eagle to fly instead of going to work, they do nothing for others, they vote for people who give them other people’s money, they indulge every unhealthy desire they have, and they still say the system is unfair to them. You can’t hurt a humble, grateful person by giving him stuff and doing things for him. On the other hand, an ungrateful, proud person can only be hurt by gifts. That’s why God often withholds things from people he cares about.

I don’t deserve to be thin. I don’t deserve the other types of deliverance God handed to me free of charge. I will never deserve these things. I have sometimes felt that I had to respond to these gifts by trying to be worthy of them, but that’s stupid. I can’t be worthy of them. I still have to be good, but the purpose isn’t to earn anything. It’s to show my gratitude and to acknowledge that sin and iniquity (evil inclinations) can bring these things back on me.

I am a charity case. I am not a hard worker who earned a just wage. I am receiving welfare and food stamps from God, because I am incapable of taking care of myself. I have nothing to be proud of.

I’m politically conservative, but you could call me socialist in my religious beliefs. Man’s socialism, imposed by governments, is evil. It’s a vile mimicry of the pure, right socialism of the kingdom of God, which is based on voluntary participation by individual believers motivated by the Holy Spirit. I resent giving money to wasteful government programs that addict the poor to handouts and teach them to be proud and weak. I am grateful for the opportunity to donate to the church and religious charities. The money is not the issue. The issue is whether a charity is secular or God-guided. The second type is a fountain of blessings. The first is a money toilet.

Look, Jesus said his yoke was easy and his burden was light. Was he a liar? Seriously, would he lie to us about that? Am I supposed to go on pilgrimages, crawling up and down the streets with bloody knees and a cross on my shoulder? Should I abstain from marriage? Should I beat myself with a flagellum and wear a hair shirt? I don’t think so. I think actions like those are rooted in pride, regardless of how they may look on the surface. I think I’m supposed to be thrilled with what I received and that I should try to help other people receive it. I’m supposed to enjoy the good things I get, without letting them become more important than the one who gave them to me or the other people he wants to help.

If we spend our time yammering at people who misbehave (as I have), telling them how awful they are, we hold ourselves out as superior, which is wrong and counterproductive. The way they are now doesn’t matter. It passes away when they accept Jesus and get filled with the Spirit and begin to get free of their demonic bondages. We need to be telling them that their problems are caused by sin and lack of faith, that they are surrounded by invisible enemies much stronger than they are, that they can be fixed right here on earth, and that it doesn’t matter what they’ve done in the past.

The Bible compares us to unfired pots that have been marred. You wouldn’t throw one out; the clay can be reshaped. It’s stupid to fixate on the defects, because they’re curable and have no relationship to the quality of the final product. And when the repair process begins, you don’t get upset over setbacks. You don’t worry that it takes time, and that it’s a gradual process. You know it will work, so it doesn’t matter if it’s not instantaneous. These things are true, so how can condemnation be a good idea? Warning, sure. Condemnation? Probably not.

It’s so easy for the enemy to fight this message. Our consciences agree with him. They tell us we can’t expect to be spoon-fed and pampered. It feels so righteous when we claim we need to work real hard and bleed and suffer and deny ourselves. But there’s nothing righteous about it. It’s evil. You are not supposed to obey your conscience. It makes mistakes. You’re supposed to obey God.

Many times, God commanded the Jews to ignore their consciences. He forbade them to pity the people he had selected for death or punishment. Under Joshua, the Hebrews had to slaughter children and pets and old people. What you think is right isn’t what matters. Fortunately, we don’t have to do things like that any more. But we do need to give up the idea that we have to earn things from God, using our own strength as the primary means. God is like power steering. We provide a little bit of strength–in faith–and he provides the rest. Admit your faults, repent, fast, and pray. Fight your demons God’s way. They will lose, and you will change.

The enemy hates this message because it provides acceptance and hope, and because it’s based on the reality that evil spirits exert control over most people, not just a few. We can run these spirits off and experience greater self-control and happiness; then we’ll be able to help others do the same things. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Jesus told us to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. If you’re casting out demons, you’re overthrowing Satan’s kingdom. It’s a revolution, and Satan is being deposed. He’ll do anything he can to shut this message up, and he has pretty much succeeded for almost 2000 years. I believe we are now seeing a reawakening, and that grace–God’s unearned help–is going to set hundreds of millions of people free from sin, disease, and curses in the coming years. I think the war has resumed in earnest.

One test of the validity of a doctrine is the anger it stirs up in well-meaning Christians who cling to error and live in failure. If you don’t make the blind guides furious, your message is probably just making things worse. The enemy has always killed and persecuted those who told the truth. He doesn’t usually crucify his servants. He loves opposing the truth from within the church. Many prophets have been killed by believers instead of heathens. Believers tried to push Jesus off a cliff on the first day of his ministry. The Romans had no interest in him until some of his own people demanded that he be killed.

I can see why the Bible predicts increased persecution toward the end of the age. This message is getting more popular, and it has always drawn a violent response.

New Milestone

Yesterday I felt like McDonald’s was getting an unhealthy grip on me. I decided to forgo my usual Saturday McMuffin breakfast. I felt led to do that. Today I got up, and THREE MORE POUNDS WERE GONE. I’m down over twenty.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. I can’t believe it! Don’t even try to tell me this isn’t supernatural. For months, I’ve been losing weight because I’ve had the God-given willpower to eat like a normal person instead of a food addict. But yesterday, the fat just plain fell off, with no explanation. I’m within TEN POUNDS of my goal. If I can take another five pounds off after that, I’ll be almost as thin as I was when I boxed.

I don’t know why I talk in terms of goals. I’m not doing this in my own effort. I don’t know where it’s going to stop. But I have a weight I hope I reach.

Everyone thinks I’m a kook, so I’ll continue being honest and adding fuel to the fire. I think uncontrollable weight gain (the kind most fat people have) is imposed on us by demons. I strongly suspect that a typical fat person has more than one spirit working against him. And I think they depart in stages. The toughest, meanest one is the one that puts the first twenty pounds on you. That one is nearly impossible to get rid of. You can overcome the other ones in your own strength, but the primary one will stay and fight, and it will beat you over and over. When it beats you, the others come back, and they like to bring new friends. I seriously believe that. I think this is what Jesus referred to when he talked about a spirit returning to a clean house and bringing seven spirits worse than itself.

When you get what low-carbers call a “whoosh,” which means a sudden loss of several pounds, it probably means one of your enemies just gave up and left. This is warfare, and warfare works that way. When you lose, you give up positions one by one, until the enemy is in your country. Whatever has been oppressing me is losing, and I am taking ground in steps. Like the Hebrews under Joshua. First Jericho, then Ai, then the rest of Canaan.

I think these things get power over us because of the way we and our ancestors act. We say horrible things. We do horrible things. Demons get permission to afflict us, and God doesn’t listen when we ask for help, because we haven’t repented. Then we and our kids end up with persistent, seemingly hereditary problems like alcoholism, food addiction, divorce, failure in business, and violence.

If you decide a little bit of sin is okay, and you carve out a place for Internet porn, gluttony, drunkenness, greed, anger, workaholism, vanity, arrogance, self-righteousness, or some other failing, you leave the front door open, and you don’t know what will come in. You can’t say, “I’ll be 95% pure, because that’s pretty good.” That’s like trying to stay six weeks pregnant forever.

I have control over what I eat. I have sexual self-control. I have also been delivered from unjustified anger, although it keeps trying to get back in. My deliverance wasn’t just a fat thing. It’s not a mystery illness. I don’t have cancer. It hit several areas. Please don’t try to tell me I did it, or that I lost weight because fasting days dropped my average daily calorie intake. That wouldn’t explain sexual self-control. Those explanations are all filthy, stupid lies. I could not do all these things for myself. I don’t know how. I wasn’t particularly upset about being fat. I wasn’t lying on my face praying about it all day. God picked this time to deliver me, for reasons of his own. It came as a complete surprise.

And it’s going to spread to even more areas. Hopefully, it will spread to other people.

Every morning, I take communion, and I search myself for bad acts (sin) and bad attitudes (iniquity), and I confess it and repent and ask God to drive it out. I think this is the correct purpose of communion. It’s not really the blood of Jesus. It’s not really his flesh. There is no miracle change. Come on; flesh and blood do not taste like crackers and wine. Jesus was not a cracker. The miracle–which truly is miraculous, because the means is supernatural–is deliverance from problems you and your ancestors have imposed on you through rebellion and ignorance. This is why communion can bring physical healing. Illness is often the result of sin and iniquity. God does punish people physically. He did it in the Bible, and he does it now. Why would he change?

I am not stating all of this as fact, althought the parts supported by the Bible are definitely true. This is how I see things now. I am no authority, but my experiences bear out these observations. If it all rings true to you, take it up in prayer and see if you get what I’ve gotten.

This week someone tried to tell me these good things happened to me because I was special to God. I corrected that revolting lie in a hurry. It’s not because I’m special. It’s because he’s special. Anyone can have what I have.

Here’s what I think you have to do.

1. Accept salvation, properly, giving yourself completely to God.
2. Get baptized in water, to acknowledge your salvation before other people.
3. Get baptized with the Holy Spirit.
4. Pray every day with your mind.
5. Pray every day in tongues, as much as you can make yourself. The Bible says this builds you up, and I have found it to be true.
6. Take communion often, searching yourself for sin and iniquity, confessing and repenting on your own behalf and on behalf of your ancestors, and asking God for deliverance. Never stop. Never decide you can tolerate a chronic sin or a bad inclination.
7. Fast and pray often, and when you fast, make sure you spend a good deal of time praying for the things from which you need deliverance.
8. Give to ministries and the poor, and to help the Jews and Israel.
9. Try to be good.

If you can do all that (pretty easy), I think you’ll have such a powerful foundation, the rest will take care of itself. I know there is more to Christianity than this, but I found that doing these things got God working in my life, and that caused the other things to get done. I found myself reading the Bible, going to church, listening to good teaching, reading helpful books, and so on.

If you can’t do it all, do steps 1-5. If you blow a day, start again the next day. If steps 1-5 are too much to ask, you are beyond help, because you won’t help yourself.

Think of this as your fallback position. Your base camp. This is as far back as you will let the enemy push you; you will always do this much, even if you don’t do anything more. If you can hold this line, you will end up taking ground sooner or later. You will end up doing more and seeing blessings in your life. I really believe that.

Use a timer to make sure you spend enough time in private devotion. You can spend three minutes a day praying in the Spirit, surely. You can spend five minutes praying with your mind, and five reading the Bible. Start with what you can do, and later, you’ll have the character to do more. Start with a mustard seed and water it daily. It will get bigger. Don’t expect it to happen instantaneously, although sometimes you’ll get huge, instantaneous leaps in progress. Your direction is more important than your location. Never forget that. At one point in Columbus’s first trip to the New World, his ship was three feet from a dock in Spain. That’s the nature of a journey. It shouldn’t discourage you. And it shouldn’t bother you if you get pushed backwards once in a while. That happens to everyone.

Jesus told his disciples to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. These were the right things to do two thousand years ago, and they’re the right things to do now. If believing him makes me a kook, so be it. I will be a thin and healthy kook, and lots of Christians who disagree with Jesus will be fat and miserable.

Reaping

I got a nice email from Robert Morris. I used their contact info to send a message saying how much I had enjoyed and agreed with his work, and he emailed me personally and said this blog post (I had sent him a link) was “great.”

That was a good outcome. He didn’t call me a heretic or anything.

I’m reading his book on the power of words right now. Very sobering stuff. Things like gossiping, complaining, and criticizing can cause real problems for us. When you do these things, it’s like planting poison ivy in your yard. Problems arise later. If I can’t gossip, complain, or criticize, it almost amounts to a total ban on communication. I might actually forget how to write and talk.

He also noted that James advised us not to become teachers. The problem is that God holds teachers to higher standards. This is disturbing. I try to write about my testimony all the time, but it’s nearly impossible not to veer into amateur teaching.

Please forget everything I have ever written.

I don’t know if that will get me off the hook. It was worth a shot!

I keep thinking about fat Christians. I was afraid that I would come off like a judgmental kook, saying obese people are under bondage, and that where one bondage exists, others may be present, and that this might be a good reason to avoid accepting teaching from fat preachers. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s right.

Addiction isn’t physical. It’s a mental illness. A cigarette smoker will say things that are just as crazy as the nonsense that comes out of moderately messed up mental patients. “The studies don’t prove anything.” “Some people can smoke forever and never get sick.” “I can’t quit until I get through this stressful problem I’m dealing with.” This stuff is pure idiocy. Fat people say, “I know how to lose weight. I just don’t do it.” “All men put on muscle after they hit thirty.” “I have big bones.” The dumbest thing they say is, “I’m on a diet.” If you’re on a diet, obviously, it’s a temporary solution. Fat is a permanent problem. Temporary can’t defeat permanent. You don’t need a diet. You need to not be a fat person any more. You need to have the fat person drive removed.

If food can make you think stupid things about food, who is to say something else isn’t making you think and say stupid things about religion?

So I am still leery of obese preachers.

Today I was watering my plants, and I realized I had to harvest some more peppers whether I wanted to or not. Here is the result.

The big ones are limes, obviously. The branches are from my gigantic prig ki nu bush, which I had to trim to save the habanero gold bush.

Here’s how it goes, in clockwise fashion. Yellow peppers: yellow habaneros. Next, habanero golds (hot, sweet, and delicious). Then Trinidad Scorpions. Then Tobago Seasoning peppers. Then assorted Home Depot cayennes and habaneros grown from seeds taken from Publix peppers. I didn’t harvest any prig ki nus other than the ones still stuck to the branches. There are a couple of Fatalii peppers in among the limes.

I throw limes out these days. I can’t keep up with the tree. The limes get ripe and start to rot before I notice them.

Is this the law of sowing and reaping, at work? Dunno. I gave the church offerings of every pepper you see here except for fataliis and Publix peppers. I gave limes, too. And here I am, with this pile of produce. My banana trees have two bunches on them, and a third just started growing. One of my plantain trees now has a bract starting. My nam wa banana trees aren’t fruiting, but the biggest one now touches a power line, and it has lots of pups.

Here’s news that will make a tingle run up your leg. I’m giving the church pork chops! Long story, but I have eight pounds of frozen pork chops I need to get rid of before they get freezer burn. If giving the church peppers helps my pepper harvest, and giving the church limes helps my lime harvest, what will happen if I give them pork? Paradise, I suppose. Yards and yards of country hams, ham hocks, lechons, and maybe even Slim Jims.

I’m not saying it works that way, but I do have a whole lot of peppers.

I’m trying to give a considerable number of these peppers away. If I can’t do that, I have to freeze them or something. Or–hey!–time to start canning! Oh, man. That would be just sick. Power tools, a big truck, guns, frozen Costco prime beef, and to top it off, jars and jars of marvelous exotic canned peppers.

But for now I just need to get these things off the table.

New Level

I came to a surprising realization last night. Over the last few years, I’ve turned to God chiefly to get my own problems fixed. By and large, that result has been achieved. Things are going extremely well for me, and they’re going to go even better in days to come. So what am I supposed to do now? I know what the answer is. I have to help other people get what I now have.

My health is great. I’m not worried about financial survival. I’m making lots of wonderful friends. My lifelong overeating problem is history, as are some other bad habits. My inner life is vastly improved, and it gets better every week. There isn’t that much left to do. This all came about through power which developed as I grew. The power is still there. Now it needs a job. With my own problems shrinking and disappearing, the best viable targets are other people’s problems. It’s either that or sit around in comfort, waiting to die.

I think hooking up to God’s power is a little like reacting to a pressure loss in a plane, when you’re traveling with a kid. When the oxygen mask drops, you don’t put it on the child. If you do that, you pass out and die, and then the kid rips the mask off, and he dies, too. You put your own mask on first. That keeps you conscious so you can take care of the kid.

I have at least two prayer sessions a day. The first one is about me and my family. I don’t worry about other people until the second one. I think that’s wise. The more stable and serene we are, the more we will be able to do for others. If you don’t get yourself functioning before you direct your attention outward, you will be a blind guide. You’ll have a beam in your eye, while you’re telling other people about the dust specks in their eyes. You may become legalistic. You can get so frustrated with the stupid things other people do, you spend time criticizing and offending them when you’re supposed to be showing them the way out of their troubles. I’ve had a real problem with that; I still fight it. It’s not all that subtle.

If I understand the New Testament correctly, the biggest virtue you can have is a heartfelt concern for the well-being of others. It’s one of the fruit of the Spirit. It is not something I was overly burdened with from birth. When I joined my church, their questionnaire asked what things I thought I needed to work on, and I listed this. I don’t want to be a crab all my life, kvetching about other people’s errors instead of empathizing with them and improving the world.

I used to see the stuff of my morning prayers–my family’s needs–as my primary focus. The things I took up later in the day, I took up mainly because I knew I was obligated to do so. Obviously, I cared about other people, and that entered my thinking, but obligation played a bigger role in my daily motivation than empathy. It’s tough to see past your needs and your family’s needs while you’re heavily engaged in battling to meet them. Now I think I’m going to have more bandwidth to devote to others. Within my own family, I’m going to have more bandwidth to devote to my father and my sister, since my own problems take up less of it.

It’s a shift in focus. Like winning in Iraq and turning to Afghanistan (not that I’m suggesting the US is doing a good job of that).

The Bible says perfect love casts out fear. If I understand it correctly, in the context in which that verse appears, it means you can’t beat anxiety and fear without turning your attention to other people. “He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” I don’t know why it works that way, but it seems to be true, and I do not want anxiety in my life.

It’s not an obvious truth, so it’s worth pointing out to other people who want inner peace and don’t know why it evades them. Check out 1 John 4 and see what you think.

It’s working for me.

The Belt of Truth is Too Big

Today I have to go shopping. I have to give up on my size 34 Old Navy cargo shorts. They are too danged big. They’re going to charity.

They’re not really 34″ shorts. I would guess they’re more like 36s. Retailers know fat people like to pretend to be smaller than they are, so sometimes they put misleading labels on their clothes. Still, I am swimming in these things, and it’s getting on my nerves. I also need to replace my aging Abercrombie & Fitch 34″ belt. I’m on belt loop number six, and there are only seven. A couple of months ago, I was on three. Now the loose end flaps around when I walk. On top of that, between the belt loops, the waistbands of the shorts are sneaking out and wandering around because they don’t fit where they used to.

It’s all God. I haven’t done much of anything. I don’t have the old craving for carbs and grease, so now I can choose what I eat, without fighting an addiction every time. I still want food, but when I have a choice to make, the ratio of willpower to desire is much, much higher than it used to be, so I win consistently.

I think there are stages of iniquity and bondage. If you weigh 800 pounds, it’s pretty easy to get down to 300. It’s harder to go from there to 200. If your proper weight is 170, the last thirty pounds will be impossible to lose, or nearly so, and if they come off, they’ll jump back on in one month of backsliding.

This stuff is spirit-driven. I have no doubt of it. Jesus was referring to diet rebound, among other things, when he said that when an evil spirit leaves a man, it wanders, returns, and brings seven worse spirits with it. I seriously believe this is why there are plateaus in weight loss. The really stubborn enemies keep the final pounds on you. The wimpy ones are not hard to beat.

I don’t care who thinks I’m crazy. Bondage is bondage, whether it’s cocaine or cheeseburgers. Don’t tell me people get up over 400 or 600 or 800 pounds simply because they’re lazy. When you let something that terrible happen to you, you have a major, major problem. If it were just a laziness issue, in most cases, the sight of the blubber in the bathroom mirror would be sufficient to motivate people to change. I’m sure there are some people who are too sorry to care, but lots of fat people live in utter misery and would do almost anything to fix themselves. At my worst, I’ve probably been 55 pounds overweight, and it drove me up the wall.

I brought the bondage on myself. I ate like a pig, and I had other problems, like self-righteousness and unforgiveness and selfishness and general backsliding.

My big problem now is that I eat so little, I tend to eat a higher proportion of unhealthy food. Last night I came home from the prayer meeting, and I decided I absolutely had to have a Coke. So I got one, and I drank it, and I ate half of a big Hershey bar with almonds. In the morning, I ate a small bowl of fiber cereal that tasted like fiberglass insulation, and in the afternoon, I had a Granny Smith with some peanut butter. Those things were okay, but the Coke and the candy were not optimal choices. It happened because I didn’t fix dinner; the prayer meeting got in the way. I need to plan better.

My blood pressure is going to drop. I’m going to feel lighter. My gall bladder and digestive tract will be healthier. My blood sugar will not be an issue. My knees won’t be stressed. Doctors will consider my visits a waste of time. I’ll be able to move without my gut getting in the way. If I ever had circulatory issues, I can forget about them now. I’ll look a whole lot better. This is an astounding gift. Surely you can forgive me for writing about it all the time.

It would be great if I had a dramatic story about being deaf and blind for twenty years and then suddenly being healed. It would be wonderful to be able to say I was delivered from a meth addiction after living behind a dumpster for a decade. I know fat isn’t as exciting. But this is magnificent! There are no words big enough to express my gratitude and amazement. I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t earn it. It was dropped on me like a pallet of airlifted MREs.

I wonder if I’m going to be able to help anyone else get this, or something like this. I wonder if anyone will be impressed enough to listen. If it will work for fat, shouldn’t it work for lust, greed, drugs, booze, violence, compulsive spending, chronic anger, racism, and other types of bondage? Why not? Fat is a pretty tough nut to crack. Getting over it is no joke. People die from gluttony every day, and they don’t want to. It’s a powerful thing.

I think I know why I’ve had so little success in talking to other people about God. The main reason is probably that I was such a phenomenal idiot, I made an unacceptable representative. But now that I’m cleaned up a little, he seems to be bringing people to me. Maybe I’m less embarrassing than I used to be. And the fat thing is a tremendous selling point. Nobody wants to hear from a Christian whose life is messed up. If it hasn’t worked for you, why would I expect it to work for me? Now I have a triumph to point to. In fact, I have a number of things. I haven’t listed all of them here. If I have something that will make people jealous, maybe they’ll be more inclined to try to get it.

I would have serious doubts about listening to a preacher who was obese, or who smoked cigarettes, or who routinely said mean things, or who had a mountain of debt. Anything like that. If you can’t win, how can you teach other people to win? If you don’t realize you have a problem, how can you identify other people’s problems? On the other hand, I would not want to hear from a guy who was born perfect (with one obvious exception) and who had a trouble-free life. If you haven’t been oppressed, you don’t know what other people go through. And your skills for fighting oppression may not be strong. Some people who have no major problems are in serious trouble. Their problems exist. They just haven’t manifested themselves yet. When people like that crash, they’re probably like bubble kids without immune systems. Like Nebuchadnezzar, who went insane and grazed like a cow for seven years.

Mmm…cows…steak.

I guess one cheeseburger won’t hurt me.

Stupidity is not Faith

I got all excited about Jentezen Franklin’s book on fasting, and I wrote about it, and then I got this comment:

Reverend Franklin also hops on a private jet after his services on Sunday mornings in Gainesville, GA (20 minutes from me) and flies to Orange County, CA for some preaching there.

I think the guy isn’t so much motivated by the Holy Spirit as he is the Almighty Dollar. But that’s just my opinion, and I am generally skeptical of mega church pastors.

I’m not dismissing what Franklin has to say about fasting, but I just caution you to be a tad more critical of preachers such as him.

This is always the problem with charismatics. I don’t know why it doesn’t hit non-charismatics so hard. They’re just as subject to temptation. But somehow, you don’t see Catholic priests with their own jets, or Baptists with fleets of luxury cars. If there are examples out there, I don’t know about them. The Pope has pretty spiffy digs, but he can’t control the wealth of the church the way an independent preacher can.

I took a look at Franklin’s website, and he was asking people for a “seed” of one thousand dollars, to get God moving in their lives. I just can’t buy into that, no matter how much I liked the book. I think preaching prosperity and health is fine, and I think these things are linked to giving, but if I were doing the preaching, I would just say “give” and leave out the phrase “to me.” The Bible talks a great deal about giving to the poor. It doesn’t mention a single prosperity preacher, to my knowledge. It says we should give tithes and quality offerings, but I can’t think of anyone in the Bible who was asked to give a “miracle seed gift of fifty shekels” in order to receive “a hundredfold return.” And I’m pretty sure the people who received the tithes and offerings weren’t living like kings.

I like Perry Stone a lot. He has an informative, interesting show. He believes in prosperity and miracles and so on. But he refuses to beg. Every show has a commercial for a DVD or something. That’s fine. Air time costs money, and I think he really believes his products are helpful. But you never see him whining about how the devil is about to repossess his Bentley because the old grannies on Social Security aren’t sending him enough money. You never see him say “Give me x, and God will give you y.” He claims God will not permit him to ask for money. Corrie ten Boom said the same thing.

Gamaliel said it was a bad idea to oppose the Apostles. He said that if God wasn’t with them, they would fail, but if he was with them, the Jewish authorities would find themselves fighting God. Doesn’t the same sort of idea apply to ministries? Would God tell you to start a TV ministry and then require you to moan and cry for money? If God is with you, presumably, you’re going to win. If you lose, doesn’t that mean he was not on board?

I thought things were improving in the charismatic churches, and they are, but there is still a ways to go. I much prefer Robert Morris’s approach. He preaches about prosperity all the time, but he does not ask for money. And he never says he’s the person you should send your money to. Now that I think about it, I have no idea how he pays for air time. I wouldn’t know how to donate to him if I wanted to. I received his book when I joined my church, and I watch his show as part of basic cable, and my sister gave me some of his DVDs. Now I’m starting to feel sorry for him. But he has a big church with an astounding, world-famous music team.

Another point in his favor: he doesn’t claim “prosperous” equals “rich.”

If he keeps this up, he’s going to offend a lot of religious broadcasters.

I think you’re supposed to give where you see a need. Does a rich TV preacher need my money? You can give a relatively small amount to a Christian charity and immunize a whole brigade of kids for life. After you’re dead, you will still be blessing them. You can move an Ethiopian Jew from a filthy camp to Ben Gurion Airport. Change his life forever. Isn’t that better than paying to upgrade the silver faucets in some preacher’s mansion? If they showed that they were doing something worthwhile with the money, I’d be more understanding, but it looks like it all goes into their businesses and their salaries. Many charities give over 80% of their gross to the needy. That’s not bad.

I still like the fasting book.

Can’t Keep Up

I am going through one of those times when you have to remind yourself that you will eventually be rewarded if you are treated badly.

As usual, I can’t give details. I find myself in a position where I’m being punished for trying to fix someone else’s mess. Barring divine intervention, it’s going to get much, much worse before it gets better. That’s all I can say. Remembering that someone is keeping accounts makes it a lot easier.

I am here because I wanted to put this up, regarding Heather’s mom:

Penny’s kidney function has deteriorated to 15%!
Her blood pressure has been up slightly today as well.
Please ask for her kidneys to healed.
Thanks & God Bless,
Heather

Reader Ruth says:

I have a prayer request for a friend of mine. She was just diagnosed with stage 4 lobular breast cancer. A devious one that is not seen with mammograms. It has spread to lymph glands and bones. Not a good prognosis.
I hate to lay another cancer on your prayer lists. but here it is. Her name is Sharon W. Her attitude is either denial or complete acceptance, I think the latter and she has a cheerful heart.

I didn’t want to put these up on or near a weekend. No one reads blogs on those days.

Today I’ve been putting lime juice up. The trees will not leave me alone. I put up a cup of key lime juice and over a cup of Persian lime juice. I freeze it in vacuum bags. I don’t know what to do with it.

I read something interesting last week. I forget where. Maybe Robert Morris. In the Bible, Jesus criticized certain people for tithing on things they had grown, like herbs, while forgetting things that were more important. I had not noticed that Jesus approved of the business with the herbs. He said something like, “this, you should have done.” Look it up. All I have ever noticed was the part about ignoring the weightier things. So it seems to me that it would be a good thing if I could give away some of the stuff I grow. I have given some away to the only person I know who can use it, but I am probably pulling 20 limes and a dozen key limes every week, and it piles up. I’m thinking of suggesting my church set aside a place where people can bring excess produce.

I also have enough rosemary to stuff a couch. And oregano. And thyme. And I don’t even want to talk about peppers. My banana trees are threatening to bury me in fruit over the next few months. You can only eat so many bananas without going insane.

I have to do something with the prig ki nu peppers I picked. I think I’m going to go to the store and buy a gallon of white vinegar. I have read that it prevents mold, unlike the lime juice I used to soak peppers in. Maybe I can get away with putting peppers in the fridge in vinegar and salt.

The dragonfruit is trying again. The fruit keep falling off. I hope this latest bud amounts to something. It might help if I took a shotgun and blasted the weedeater out of the yard guy’s hands.

I have papayas coming out of my ears, but they just don’t taste good. I should let the Salvadorans clean off the trees the next time they cut the grass.

Man, I miss the mangoes.

I’m off.

More

I had two bags of prig ki nu peppers. I had separated the red from the green. I just hit the grocery and brought back a jug of vinegar. I mixed it with salt, and I stuck the peppers in separate squeeze bottles and added the salted vinegar, plus some garlic. I didn’t have enough red peppers to fill a bottle, so I went outside for ten minutes and picked 0.0001% of the peppers on the prig ki nu bush. Now I have plenty.

I have a ton of Tobago seasoning peppers and habanero golds that are going to go to waste if I don’t do something, so I’m going to freeze a bunch of them.

Now all I have to remember is that I can’t put my hand anywhere near my eyes for two weeks.

Plus Thoughts on Giving

Ammunition is starting to reappear in stores! Hooray!

Don’t you wonder how much money the ammunition and firearms makers raked in because people stocked up after the Marxist Messiah was elected? I hope they piled up huge profits they’ll be able to use for R&D, retooling, and lobbying.

Some people claim wars were a big cause of the shortage. Hogwash. I admit, I haven’t sat down and added up the number of conflicts going on at the moment, but things haven’t changed much since the Bush era, and there were plenty of bullets to go around back then. This shortage was caused by the election of a leftist with “Potential Dictator” stamped all over his forehead.

You can actually buy small pistol primers now. And they don’t cost $60 a box, either. They’re back down to 30 or so. I’ll bet they go lower. A saturated market is not good for prices. There are profiteers and neurotics out there whose houses are packed full of guns and ammunition they will never use. Even relatively reasonable people stocked up to some extent. I won’t need small pistol primers for at least three years, and I have no gun purchases in mind, which is amazing, for me.

I paid $600 for my Saiga 12 shotgun. Last time I saw them for sale, the price was $500. You can once again buy Wolf AK-47 ammunition for 30¢ a round. Even 9mm is starting to show up. I’ve seen it for $14 a box, which is still insanely high, given commodity prices and the economic slump. I’ll bet you can buy it for $9 in three months. It is conceivable that I may be able to get more Swiss GP11 ammunition at a reasonable price. I never thought that would happen again.

I wonder what it’s like to be in the firearms industry right now. They must be on their knees every morning, thanking God for their amazing luck.

If there is one silver lining to the country’s tragic willingness to elect unqualified, immature Marxist egotists, it is that we are not nearly as willing to give up our guns. This is one area where leftists aren’t making the headway they hoped for. I have said that I think God is behind that, and I still think it’s true. I think he’s willing to punish this country for greed, cruelty, abortion, sexual sin, and abortion, but I don’t think he is ready to disarm individuals yet. There are too many people here who serve him.

I am hoping to use my machine tools to improve my guns. I need to fix the scope mount on my K31, for example. It’s skewed to one side, causing it to shoot about 6″ to the right at 100 yards. And I have to put all the aftermarket doodads on my Saiga, to turn it into an ergonomic, laser-guided living-room sweeper.

My dad’s concealed carry permit arrived this week. I paid for his course, as a birthday present. When he announced the card’s arrival and showed it to me, instead of saying, “Look at this,” or “Guess what I have?”, he said, “I’m putting you on notice.” I told him I’d watch my back.

Concealed carry is great, but it can be a pain. I get tired of the weight of the gun, but I force myself to do it every day, because it’s a great privilege and blessing, and because safety measures are worthless if you don’t use them. A seatbelt you don’t wear can’t save your life when you need it.

When I joined my church, they gave me a copy of Robert Morris’s The Blessed Life. I’ve been reading it this week. It’s somewhat self-serving to provide new members with this, because the book is about giving, which includes tithes and offerings. And I am extremely wary of greedy preachers and overblown “name it and claim it” prosperity preaching. Still, it’s a wonderful book, and I believe the fundamental message is right. It is true that we are obligated to give generously; not just monetarily, but in all ways, and not just to churches, but to people in need. And it is also true that withholding generosity will cause your life to be cursed. I believe those things wholeheartedly. I don’t believe every Christian can have a private jet, but I believe we are supposed to have “shalom,” which means a very general type of success. Good relationships, good mental and physical health, spiritual growth, and more than enough wealth to cover our needs. A perfect life? No, but a good life which always moves forward toward better things. A life for which each of us can’t help but be grateful, in spite of the challenges.

This is a very tough message for churches to preach, given the shameful and disgusting excesses we have seen in this area. The distinction between valid teaching on generosity and self-serving teaching intended to stimulate gullible people to make preachers rich is slippery, and it will be lost on many Christians, especially those who were victimized in the past. The crooks and psychopaths who took us in didn’t just take money; they poisoned the well against godly teachers who would come later and remind us of the power of generosity. Stealing money is bad. Stealing another person’s willingness to do right is much worse.

The neat thing about this book is that I keep seeing little confirmations of things I came to believe before I read it. The Holy Spirit teaches us, and it’s always amazing and humbling to see how our “brilliant” conclusions have already come to other people.

Pentecostal churches are still going a little heavy on God’s promises to us, and maybe a little light on our obligations to him, but I think they’re headed in a better direction these days. I bailed out about twenty years ago even though I thought they were mostly right about God. I don’t want to repeat the mistake of refusing to go to a good church because it appears imperfect. And I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression. It’s not like these churches are packed with fools who only show up because they think God will fix all their problems and give them big houses. The people are wonderful, and they are very concerned with doing what is right.

One of the things I like about the book is that it defines “covetousness” as setting your heart on things. This is something I’ve thought about a lot, although it opened my eyes to see it used as a definition of that term. We have natural, normal, righteous desires in this life, such as sexual desire, a desire for wealth, and a desire for food. It’s sick to starve those desires. God never intended for us to do that. It’s sick to call them “lust,” “greed,” and “gluttony,” no matter how they manifest themselves. It’s not wrong to have desires. What’s wrong is overindulging them, serving them, and allowing them to cause you to sin. Fundamentally, it’s wrong to see the things you desire as replacements for God. They become idols. Contentment comes from God, not from sating your desires. It’s okay to see someone else’s house and think it would be nice to have one like it. It’s wrong to resent that person, or want him to lose his house, or set your heart on having his house or one like it, regardless of what you have to do. And it’s wrong to think a house will fix your life. That’s idolatry. It’s the error that keeps socialism alive. Expecting blessings only God can give, from things other than God.

Desire for sex isn’t automatically lust, and desire for wealth isn’t automatically greed, and so on. Stupidly equating all earthly desire with sin leads to warped, unhealthy, self-righteous asceticism. We’re not supposed to be free of these things. We’re supposed to be in charge of them. That’s how I see it.

I think money moving into and out of a person’s hands is like electricity moving through a circuit. It passes through, and along the way, it’s used to do good things. But if charges get stuck in the circuit and accumulate too much, you end up with a destructive disaster. The key is to avoid bottling it up. Or you could think of it as food going through a warehouse. If you shut the “out” door and stop distributing it, it rots, supports rats, causes harm, and benefits nobody. If you shut the “in” door, you have nothing to give others. If you get used to giving and denying your impulses, you learn not to set your heart on things, and they become less dangerous to you.

Living right is complicated. You have to be generous. You have to be responsible. You have to control yourself and be logical. You have to know when to rebuke and when to suffer other people’s faults quietly. You can’t sum it all up effectively in a paragraph or learn it all in a day. Jesus gave a very brief summary of the law and the prophets, but he never suggested we rely on that summary and throw the other stuff out.

Morris gave an interesting interpretation of the confusing verse reading, “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.” He believes it means we are to help others in this world with our money, so that in paradise, they will greet us in gratitude.

It’s a pretty good book. I recommend it.

By the way, World Vision now has a special area in their Gift Catalog, listing gifts that carry matching funds. You donate X to some cause, and they get 3X or 10X or whatever in matching funds, so it’s almost as if you donated much more. Very neat idea.

I am Wearing my X-Ray Specs

This morning I found myself thinking about a strange trait which is common among human beings. When you try to help them, very often, they respond by attacking you. You expect gratitude, and instead, you are treated like an enemy. This is why we have the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” It reminds me of a great lesson my mother taught me. She said to avoid lending money to friends, because they would end up resenting me! Sounds crazy when you’re young and you haven’t seen much of life, but she was absolutely right.

Sometimes in prayer I ramble about things like this, and today while I was doing that, I found myself asking who I knew who had had this experience. And I felt stupid when the answer came to me. The answer was God. This is what he deals with every day, and in the past, he has had to put up with it from me. Seems like every time I think about a particularly exasperating human failing, I immediately realize I have been guilty of it.

Observant Jews avoid putting young single men in positions of authority. Why? Because their knowledge is incomplete. People who have raised kids and dealt with spouses and provided for families know things cloistered, subsidized virgins don’t. In a recent comment, Aaron said this:

Interactions with people are frequent temporal opportunities to improve one’s relationship with God. Judaism, in requiring things like minyans and numerous communal requirements, is opposed to living like a hermit. We don’t have monks or nuns or gurus on mountaintops. There’s a saying “a tzaddik in daled amot”, “a saint within his 4 cubits”.

I tried to think of respected Biblical figures who were hermits, and I drew a blank. John the Baptist had disciples, and he attracted large numbers of people for ritual immersion. He didn’t sit alone in a cave all day. Some say he was an Essene, and the Essenes were atypical Jews who practiced celibacy and asceticism, but rumor isn’t fact. You can find references to the wives of Old Testament prophets. The priests married and had kids. Peter, who is considered the first Pope, was married. Jesus was constantly around people, except when he set himself apart for short periods. Paul had so many friends, he never shut up about them. Greet this one with a kiss. Send my love to that one. It’s half of the New Testament.

Some of the prophets ended up isolated at times, but I don’t know of any reason to believe that was how they normally lived. Maybe I missed something.

What does this have to do with helping people who are hostile? The answer is that parents do it all the time. One of the purposes of parenthood must be to teach us how to love people who don’t deserve it. And by “love,” I don’t mean “have affection for.” We often act against the best interests of those for whom we have the most affection. Consider stalkers. I use the word “love” to describe concern for the well-being of others, which is probably the only accurate definition. John 15:13 confirms this. You can love someone you dislike, and you can love someone while you’re angry at them. God himself gets angry.

I have been ungrateful and stupid, so I can’t let myself feel cheated when others give me the same treatment. This is the job we were created for. It isn’t always fun, but it always brings us blessings.

I guess nobody goes through life without changing a few dirty diapers. Parents get the worst of it, and I think they learn the most, but just about all of us find ourselves cleaning up after others at one time or another, and expecting thanks is just plain dumb. If you do it for gratitude and admiration, you are going to burn out fast.

God promised to give us wisdom, provided we asked for it. I ask. You may know Ronald Reagan’s anecdote about the kid who tunneled into the pile of horse manure, looking for a pony. I guess wisdom is what allows you to see the pony before you start digging.

May we all have good luck with our manure piles today.

Vigil Starts

I want to thank everyone who is praying for my sister. I take it very seriously. Elijah prayed, and God sent fire from heaven which completely consumed a slaughtered bull, the wood it lay on, and the water that had been poured around it. A negative result on a biopsy is a much smaller order, and I know your prayers and mine can get it done. Human efforts, on the other hand, can’t accomplish it.

Ordinarily I think it’s wrong to let people know when I fast, but on this unusual occasion, I think there is some benefit to be had by acknowledging it here. I know of three things I used to fail to take notice of when I needed an answer to prayer. One is the need for repentance, the second is fasting, and the third is the wisdom of making an offering when you receive what you need. I never pray for anyone to be healed, without praying that they will examine themselves and turn from anything that could impede their recovery, and recently I learned that it is good practice to follow up with some kind of offering or alms, when a prayer is granted. This is good information to have, so I’m presenting it. I’ll be fasting until the lab results come in.

I don’t know what else to do. I’ll be going to church tonight, and I’ll get them involved. I’ll pray on my own. Other than that, I guess I’ll go on with life as usual.

But You CAN Win

Baldilocks has been giving her take on what “lucky” and “unlucky” mean. I agree with her when she says she doesn’t like describing life in terms of luck. God exists. So does Satan. So does free will. And then there are the countless spirits that affect our lives for good or evil.

I see life in terms of blessings and curses. The curses are more controversial than the blessings. A lot of people–even Christians–get mad if you say misfortune is sometimes caused by sin, or that God sometimes punishes people severely. There is a bizarre movement these days to portray God as Santa Claus. All blessings, no punishment. And of course, that’s silly and utterly wrong. God and his angels killed thousands upon thousands of people in the stories of the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit–yes, the Holy Spirit–killed Ananias and Sapphira dead as hammers, and that was in the New Testament. God gave people tumors, leprosy, blindness…he drowned the entire population of the world, except for eight people, and if memory serves, seven of the eight were spared only because of God’s regard for Noah. He drowned the Egyptian army. He burned the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to death, and that includes women and kids. He caused terrible problems for his entire nation, because David took a census. Go ahead and tell me God wouldn’t give you VD or cancer or bankruptcy or whatever you want to name. That may be what Oprah believes. The Bible says otherwise. And like Ralph Richardson said in Time Bandits, God is “the nice one.” Bad behavior leaves you open to attack from less-friendly beings.

I believe your spiritual health consists of a certain number of blessings and a certain number of curses, and a lot of it can be traced to the things you or your ancestors have done in the past. Some people succeed at most things they do, even if they make a poor effort. Others can do everything right and fail time after time. Some highly disciplined people are fat. Lots of irresponsible, weak people are skinny. You can do a lot of things right and fail, and you can do almost everything wrong and succeed, depending on what you have in the spiritual bank. That’s what the Bible tells us, and it’s true. So you should always make investments in the bank. Pray, do alms, try to behave, tithe, find out what sins are closely associated with your family and repent of them, and so on. Sooner or later, the seeds will have to bear fruit. And presumably, the bad seeds you’ve planted in the past will eventually peter out and stop sprouting.

I sometimes find I’m doing bad things my parents or grandparents did, even though these are things of which I disapprove. They sneak up on me; they may take forms I don’t immediately recognize. I am doing my best to drop these practices as soon as I discover them. I don’t want this stuff bearing fruit five years from now.

I suspect that when the Bible says “charity shall cover the multitude of sins,” it means that charity can prevent many of your bad seeds from sprouting. Maybe you can spare yourself some punishment here on earth. Take a look at the 41st psalm and see what you think. The Greek word translated as “charity” is “agape,” which means a benevolent, selfless sort of love, so presumably, what we call charity qualifies. If the 41st psalm is correct, by helping the needy, you can literally make yourself lucky. This is what “he shall be blessed upon the earth means.”

Most Christians worry about going to hell, but they don’t think a lot about leading a blessed life. That’s unfortunate, because it means we end up accepting God and then going on with our lives almost as if he didn’t exist. Missing out on the blessings we were intended to have right here on earth.

Oddly, many of us think God owes us a good time. Most of us don’t tithe or pray regularly or try to avoid sin. Most of us do little for charity, which is remarkable, given the endless opportunity; I don’t understand why I did so little in the past. We do whatever we please, and then when bad things happen, we think God has cheated us, and we ask, “why me?” It would make more sense to look at the good times we haven’t earned and say, “why not me?” A lot of people refuse to believe in God, because they think life would be perfect if he existed. It’s amazing how many of us think we deserve perfect lives, just because God could spare us all unhappiness if he wanted. Apparently God is supposed to be a genie who does whatever we tell him, without requiring us to grow up. And if you love your kids, you’ll let them eat banana splits for breakfast, and you won’t make them go to school. Same thing.

I am trying to make myself more “lucky,” and it’s working. And I do not believe in Oprah Claus.