Ptooey

Peculiar events are taking place at my old church, and I think it has reached the point where I need to do anything I can to put out the fire. A friend I respect–someone who is a strong believer in the Holy Spirit and the power of tongues–called me up and gave me a word, and I think this person is right. I believe God gave him an answer for us.

Nobody reads this blog any more, and nothing I put up here can have any serious consequences, but I’m concerned that things I’ve written here and elsewhere have veered into the carnal realm. The center of my life is my belief in the power of God. The funny thing is, you can end up using the flesh to promote God’s power, and that doesn’t work. Such carnality is the thing that disappoints me about modern charismatic churches, so I shouldn’t let myself fall into the same trap.

No one is going to be persuaded by criticism that stings too much. So I’m going to go back over things I’ve posted, and I’ll take down anything that seems counterproductive.

I don’t think people at my old church get up in the morning and ask themselves what they can do to mess up the kingdom of God. I think they could do a lot better, but so could I.

I’ve been trying to let this drop, as I noted yesterday. The future is my home. I don’t want to get dragged backward in a petty squabble over nothing. I am concerned about the people I left behind, but I can do more for them by praying and being an example than by using persuasive words.

I am not going to quit glorifying God, and if that means saying good things about my new church, that’s what I’ll do. My old church taught us to get on the Internet and tweet and Facebook like crazy. They can’t teach that and then tell us not to do it for other churches. But I’m going to try to avoid putting anything up which they will see as targeted at them.

Steve Munsey…hmm. I sincerely believe it would be a sin to sit by and say nothing about his awful doctrine. It can do a lot of harm. But maybe I’ve made my point with the things I’ve already said. And ultimately, the thing that will expose him is closeness with the Holy Spirit. People who pray in tongues receive understanding. The best solution would be for God to get Munsey himself to repudiate his claims.

A church is its people, and by that standard, my old church is incredible. I hope they begin to reach their potential. I hope they start to receive everything I’ve received, and more. They don’t need me; they need the Holy Spirit.

I think I should put one rumor to bed, before I stop writing. I didn’t instigate anything. A whole bunch of people left the church BEFORE I did. They surprised me when they took off. And they’re not all going to my new church. On top of that, many people have told me–with no prompting–that they are unhappy, or that they’ll be moving on. Truly, I am not the problem. I didn’t cause it, and I can’t fix it.

When I got to New Dawn, friends of mine were already there. And they NEVER recruited me. I pried information out of them, and I liked what I heard, so I checked it out. And the other people who left…I don’t even know where they went. I should call them and see how they’re doing.

I reached out to two or three people, because I thought they really needed a new spiritual home, but there is no secret drive to lure people away.

Anyway, I’m not going to be Satan’s Rock ’em Sock ’em Robot. I’m all done. Let change and healing start.

Dr. Munsey Says So

I must take a moment to comment, again, on Steve Munsey’s disturbing ideas.

Munsey says “the Jews” (doesn’t say “men”) went to Jerusalem three times a year, for Passover, Pentecost, and the Atonement. The Hebrew names for these holidays are Pesach, Shavuot, and Yom Kippur, in that order. He says they brought their “very best offerings.” He says that, in exchange, God gave them “seven blessings,” which he has gathered from various corners of the Pentateuch.

I always thought this was funny, because only Jewish men went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage days, and they didn’t go on Yom Kippur. And of course, there were no big cash offerings, and there were no lists of rabbinically approved blessings which God sold the Jews.

It gets even funnier. Well, sadder, really, I suppose I should not laugh. Elijah got smacked down pretty good after he ridiculed the false prophets.

I thought Munsey was confusing Yom Kippur with Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles. Sukkot, not Yom Kippur, was the third pilgrimage (at least in the Gregorian year; don’t get me confused). It turns out it’s much worse than that. He’s conflating Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Rosh Hashanah (the Feast of Trumpets).

You really have to see this. It’s precious. Here’s a picture from Munsey’s website. As you can see, he says “the Atonement” is “the Feast of Trumpets.”

Click to read it.

I don’t know what’s in this guy’s heart. I’ve met him. He seems nice enough. But it looks bad, doesn’t it? If he were preaching this stuff in conjunction with a request for prayer or an instruction to read the Bible, it might not be so fishy-smelling, but he’s doing it in connection with a request to give HIM a big pile of MONEY, not once, but THREE times a year.

It’s always troubling when people make “errors” that work in their favor.

Anyway, you would have to be a fool to give money to a Seven Blessings drive. And I have done it, so I know what that makes me. I didn’t know this stuff came from Munsey, and also, I guess I was stupid. As a Christian, you get used to opening your mind and your heart, and that’s a good time for an enemy to shove something in.

Or Not

I have a dilemma.

I want to move on with my life. I am about the future, not the past. This is one reason forgiveness is so important. It’s why Jesus told us to turn the other cheek. If you get embroiled in conflict with people who disagree with you or who have wronged you, you necessarily focus on past events, and it’s tough to move into future blessings. I know that. But it’s hard to extricate myself completely from negative involvement with my former church.

I know people there are talking about me, and not in a good way. I mean, some are talking about me in a good way, but others, not so much. I feel silly saying this, but I am learning that some people over there actually took me seriously and respected my opinions. Those people are disturbed that I left, and some of them are voicing concerns that I voiced while I was there. And not everyone is happy to hear it.

Apart from that, I am probably getting way more credit–“blame”, really–than I deserve. I am not the first person to complain about the positive-thinking, Holy-Spirit-suppressing, instruction-rejecting ethos. But because I’m one of the few people who had the guts to be honest about my misgivings, it may be that I’m seen as the source of the plague.

I feel like Mr. Roberts. When he got transferred, the captain of the ship thought his problems were over, but then up popped Ensign Pulver. The problem wasn’t Mr. Roberts. The problem CREATED Mr. Roberts. And it created his successor. The problems at my church gave rise to my complaints, and they will give rise to complaints from other people now that I’m gone.

Anyhow, I know people are saying bad things about me, and I am not interested in having a fight. I have moved on. They can put up posters criticizing me and call me Goldstein if they want. I have to go forward. But here’s the problem. There are a whole lot of people I care about back at that church. What do I do? Pretend they don’t exist? Tell God I’m not their keeper?

On top of that, I think the Holy Spirit has told me to be more confrontational and honest about the horrendous carnality in the modern charismatic church. I think he told me I wasn’t annoying ENOUGH. So I feel compelled to put his little lessons and revelations on Facebook and Twitter, not to mention my blog.

Example: Steve Munsey. The man is a disgrace. Am I supposed to ignore the way his insane, self-serving doctrine is staining churches? Of course not. I’m going to take a shot at him occasionally. And he’s royalty at my old church. So anything bad I say about this cloud without water will be perceived as an attack on the church. And to some extent, it is. They’re hawking his goods.

I know so many good people who could be powerfully connected with God, if someone would talk straight to them. Am I going to be silent in our future interactions, while they get herded off a cliff? NO. That would be sin. I can’t do it.

So while I plan to avoid mentioning the church and its leaders in the future, there is no way I’ll be able to avoid offending.

I’m tired of talking about the place. I’m not going back. I owe it nothing. There is nothing there that belongs to me or requires my attention. I hope my interaction with it in the future will be minimal. But there is a limit to what I can do.

I admit, I’ve recruited a few people for the new place. I knew a guy who was really abused at the old church, and I knew he loved the Holy Spirit, so I invited him to New Dawn. This guy busted his hump as a volunteer, and he was treated disrespectfully. When I got to church today, 25 minutes early, he had been there for 50 minutes. He knows the pastor! His nephew is an usher! He had relatives all over the place. It was like he had come home, and I suppose he had.

I know someone else who is about to snap, so I’ve recruited him heavily. I’m sure my efforts would be frowned upon back at the old place, but they should thank me. I might keep someone from getting punched. Maybe I should wait until someone gets a fat lip.

Generally, though, I have no plans to mount an insidious campaign of luring worshipers.

The service today was astounding. A buddy of mine showed up with his family. After the service, the pastor called them up, and he told him God had seen his service, and that he was not to give up. People prophesied over him, saying he and his wife were going to have a ministry helping marriages. They didn’t know this couple already had plans to write a book on marriage. The wife was sobbing. It was beautiful.

The pastor taught about bearing fruit. At one point he said that if you can’t bear good fruit under one man’s ministry, it was time to pack up and move on. I looked across the room, and my buddy’s wife was looking right at me, and I was sitting with the other guy I had recruited. We all knew God was talking to us. All of us had been shut down or pushed aside in the past, in spite of our best good-faith efforts. We were never insiders, and weren’t destined to break in.

The presence of the Holy Spirit, within me and moving through me, was so beautiful. You have to go back to the well once in a while. You have to. There is no way for you to sustain yourself. My prayer life at home is off the charts, but it’s not enough. I needed this.

I hope my reign as Public Enemy Number One is short. My life is going to proceed according to God’s plan. I don’t want to mud-wrestle over past ignorance.

I Don’t Even Need a Pass!

I’m out.

I had an email exchange with the pastor of my former church, and I expressed the following concerns, among others:

1. I don’t trust Steve Munsey or his methods. The “seven blessings” stuff came straight from Munsey’s imagination.

2. The congregation suffers from “astonishing” ignorance, because we get them saved and then don’t follow up. I put quotation marks around “astonishing” because I used that word. We are focusing on salvation and ignoring everything that comes after it.

3. The presence of God is no longer perceptible in the church, as it used to be.

4. The secular stuff–positivity and so on–is taking over. Well, let’s be honest. It HAS taken over. We hear about God’s miraculous power to reward burdensome cash offerings, but we don’t hear about the other things he claims he’ll do.

The response can be distilled, pretty fairly, into this:

1. If you are upset because you don’t sense God’s presence, you’re following signs, which is wrong. You should have faith anyway.

2. Lots of rabbis back up the “seven blessings” stuff.

3. Salvation is really important.

I quit the Armorbearer team last night, and I’m done with the church. As always, the church member’s opinions are wrong, and everything the church is doing is just, well, not even “right,” but NEATO! NIFTY! WOWEE!

I am reminded of a hilarious cartoon I will probably ruin via description. There are three glasses of water, filled halfway. The first has a caption: “The Pessimist.” A word balloon says something like, “The glass is half empty.” The second says, “The Optimist,” and “The glass is half full.” The third says, “The Publicist,” and something like, “OH MY GOD THE GLASS IS SO FULL IT’S OVERFLOWING!!!!!!!”

That’s my church.

Former church.

Check this guy out. This is Steve Munsey, the man who invented the “seven blessings” doctrine. Really, you have to see it to believe it.

This man runs a church we’re fervently imitating. We haven’t heard, “Jesus wants your tax refunds,” yet, but I guess it will come. After that, “Open wide so Jesus can have those gold teeth. How much you got on you right now? You holding out on Jesus? Jesus wants his money, man. Oh, you got money for gas, but nothing for Jesus. So it’s like that. You PLAYING Jesus. What’s this? What’s this? Deacon D-Pain done found a twenty in your shoe! I guess you forgot! Now it’s ON. Jesus gonna make an example out of you!”

Sorry, I get carried away.

I leave you to judge the “seven blessings” stuff for yourselves. I think you can handle the mental challenge. For some things, you need the Holy Spirit, but the wrongness of this mess should be obvious to the unaided mind.

Here’s how I would address the points that have been raised (or evaded).

1. God’s presence is EXTREMELY important, and when it leaves, you should know you have a major problem. Christians tend to think the Jews didn’t get much supernatural activity out of God once Malachi was done, but that isn’t true. The glory of God lit up the Holy of Holies every year on Yom Kippur, and the red thread on the temple door turned white. The showbread in the Temple stayed hot and fresh for a week at a stretch, and one pinch was as filling as a meal. Even when the Jews went through a dry spell, God confirmed himself as a matter of routine.

God was present in the Ark of the Covenant, and the Jews carried it into battle, and provided they weren’t in bad odor with the Almighty, God gave them victory. When the Ark was captured, it caused horrible problems for the Philistines.

God’s presence rested on Samson. When he left, Samson was blinded and enslaved.

It’s kind of astounding that anyone could suggest that God’s presence isn’t important.

Also, I do not follow signs. They follow me. There’s a difference. You shouldn’t follow signs, but if they’re not following you, you’re doing something wrong.

2. Rabbis do not back up the “seven blessings” stuff. That’s a crock. There is no point in saying it more respectfully. We have never been under the Jewish law, and even had we been, Gentiles were never required to give holiday offerings, and were that not true, the offerings were not cash offerings, and there were no lists of blessings associated with them. The “seven blessings” doctrine is a desperate ploy to squeeze money out of people who are not feeling the unction of the Holy Spirit because their churches are a mess.

3. Salvation is important, but Jesus made it clear that he doesn’t want a church that does a half-assed job. He criticized a big, rich church for being lukewarm. A lukewarm church will attract lots of people, and it will get people saved, so what was his problem? His problem was that a generation of lukewarm believers will not do much to get the next generation saved. He called his body a temple, and he called us his body. A temple is made of bricks or stones, and we are those stones. One layer has to rest on the layers beneath it. If the lower layers are weak, the upper layers will collapse. This generation isn’t just a harvest. It’s the seed corn for the next generation. Ignorant Christians are not going to produce a lasting church.

This is all obvious.

Look at Eli’s sons. They were seeker-sensitive. They were inclusive. They were lukewarm. Like the sons of many pastors, including my former pastor, they were handed jobs in ministry. God killed them and took the priesthood away from them.

What I take away from this is that all the things I did not want to believe about my church and my pastor are being confirmed. Over and over, people will tell you what they are and what they believe, if you have ears to listen. I am beginning to believe what my pastor has been telling me about himself, and I’m starting to accept my church’s self-incriminating testimony. I believe in the supernatural power of God, and that it is available to every believer. It seems pretty clear that my pastor doesn’t feel that way. I doubt he even believes we’ll be rewarded financially. The church is always in debt. How can you believe the prosperity gospel, if it doesn’t work for you?

I think he believes in salvation, but that’s about it. I think the church’s theology is about like that of a mainstream church in 1950, only with a pile of prosperity teaching added.

The fortunate thing about all this–one of the many fortunate things–is that now I can speak my mind with confidence. I want to be humble, and I want what I say to be productive, but if I was critical before, I will be ruthless in the future. I’m tired of seeing good people march over a cliff.

Whither Thou Goest, I Will Go

Let me run some new stuff by you.

People like to tell us that a good Christian will put up with endless abuse. If people treat you like dirt, and they do not listen, you should stick around and suffer. Because Jesus suffered. Right?

As you know by now, I have doubts about that.

The book of Proverbs says that if you answer a fool, you may become like him. It says it’s better to live on the corner of a roof than in a big house with a brawling woman. Paul told us not to associate with wicked people. Obviously, you have to spend a certain amount of time with them in order to reach them, but that doesn’t mean you connect permanently. He said we were not to be unequally yoked in marriage. That should tell you something.

A few days back, I wrote about Matthew 10. Jesus told us that if a place would not receive our peace…our “shalom”…we should leave, and our peace would return to us. By “peace,” he meant our blessings, not just serenity.

I now think God abides by the same rules he teaches us.

In 70 AD, the Romans sacked Jerusalem and spoiled the Temple. Before this happened, according to Jewish history, the doors to the holy place in the Temple opened by themselves. This was in 30 AD, at around the time of the crucifixion. The Talmud says those present were alarmed by this event.

I believe this was God, shaking the dust from his feet and leaving, taking his shalom with him, just as he has advised us to do.

God had done this before. The ark was once located in Shiloh, but God abandoned Shiloh and permitted the ark to be captured by the Philistines. This happened during a time of spiritual decay. The high priest Eli had two sons who were fools, and they lived in rebellion. Through Samuel, God told Eli how displeased he was, and that he would remove his seed from the priesthood. When Eli heard that the ark had been taken, the shock killed him. So much for nepotism.

There is also the example of the Babylonian invasion. Nebuchadnezzar was permitted to sack the Temple in 586 BC, and some speculate that the golden items from the Holy of Holies were used as vessels and for lighting at Belshazzar’s feast.

I have prayed about my own church. We now teach Steve Munsey’s crazy ideas, encouraging poor people to make special holiday cash offerings which have never been part of Christian or Jewish tradition. We teach secular self-help doctrine that has its roots in EST and the Landmark Foundation. We suppress the Holy Spirit. I’ve prayed that God would raise up a prayer army to cleanse the place. But the funny thing is, instead of fighting from within, he seems to be moving his army out. He may be shaking the dust off his feet and leaving.

People I respect keep coming to me and telling me how upset they are with what has happened to the place. They tell me people are being mistreated and used. They say the doctrine is wrong. They’re leaving, one by one. One was asked to leave. Others are just drifting away. Some who are still there are either planning to leave or strongly considering it. People I thought were 100% on board are shocking me with their tales of discouragement and disappointment.

When I pray for God to move the foolish out of the church and clean it up, I feel faith telling me it will happen. But what I see at this point are spiritual people, leaving.

We have monthly volunteer meetings. Hundreds of people are required to show up. They give us prizes. It’s a nice gesture, but after a while, it seems cynical. If you love us, why not treat us like you love us every day, instead of making us sit through award ceremonies at the dinner hour? If I work for a ministry, and the leader insults me in front of others, and if he has no gratitude and no humility, and if he won’t admit fault or try to fix things, how much is a trophy going to help? And anyway, they take the trophies back after a month, so really, it’s not just an honor. It’s an added responsibility. That trophy has to be back in time for the next meeting.

I’m getting off the point. I went to a meeting on Wednesday. People split off into groups, depending on where they worked in the church. The Armorbearers gathered in a side room. I looked around, and I realized only one of the old faces was there. The two older men who used to run the group were gone. The guy who succeeded them is at the new church I’m going to. Another no-show will probably be at that church Sunday. Others just plain stayed home. All around me, there were kids and newcomers. People who don’t know the job and who have no spiritual foundation.

Our leader was the leader of all the church’s volunteers. He was an Armorbearer, but he was also the pastor’s right-hand man. He led about 800 people. A few weeks back, the pastor asked someone how this man was doing. Clearly, he hadn’t been in touch with him for a while. For several years, they were inseparable. It amazed me to learn that the bond was broken. I haven’t seen him in weeks.

While I was typing this, a young man called me to tell me he understood my problems with the church. He started telling me all the disappointing things he knew about the place. His list was the same as mine, only longer. What does that prove? It proves I’m not the issue, and that the other people in the church aren’t suckers. They know what’s going on, and if I shut up, they’ll still be unhappy.

He said I had affected a lot of people, which surprised me. People are hungry for talk about the Holy Spirit, and they hear it from me. I wish they were hearing it from the stage.

He’s going to leave. He says he wants to stick it out, but he left his last church because he felt God’s presence at my church. If he did it once, he’ll do it again. Trust me. The sheep know their master’s voice.

Today I tweeted my feelings about the “seven blessings,” essentially saying it was bunk. Someone high up in the church surprised me with a Twitter message. He said I should talk to him, and that he knew I was unhappy. But he also asked, “Why bring division?”

That’s disappointing. I think the healthy thing is to ask, “Why are people leaving the church? How did we get here?”

I wasn’t sure about changing churches, but in any troubled relationship, there is an instant when you realize the deal is sealed. When you’re accused of bringing division, it’s a pivotal moment. A suspicious person would say I’m being put on the defensive, in order to avoid the issue.

The “division bringers,” if we have to have a name, are frustrated because the church is packed with people who are ready to know God. One good sermon could change hundreds of lives and spark a revolution. It’s not their fault they’re ignorant. They would just as soon go the right way as the wrong way. But if the leaders of the church think they’re doing everything right, what reason do they have to change direction?

I mentioned the tweets to a person who is not a Christian. He said I had hit them “in the pocketbook.” I can’t read anyone’s mind, but it’s a perceptive and troubling remark, right or wrong. I don’t usually get responses to my tweets. That much, I know.

I feel bad about abandoning all the good people I’ve come to know and care about. But I’m not a pastor. I didn’t go there to teach. I went to learn. I can’t run around in someone else’s church, without authority, telling people that half the stuff they hear on Sunday is wrong. I can’t sit on the truth, either. So where does that leave me?

What’s going to happen to all the kids I’ve gotten to know? Who is going to be there when they need help or guidance? I guess I shouldn’t worry. I’m not God. He managed to take care of people before I was born. I shouldn’t think too highly of myself. On the other hand, the Bible makes it clear that God will not solve the world’s problems directly. He expects us to do it, with his help.

If I’m not there, and someone falls unnecessarily, who will be judged? Not me, I hope.

If I leave this place at his urging, I can’t be judged for what happens after I go. That I am sure of. And if the new church helps me strengthen my faith, I’ll be able to do more in prayer than ever before. Prayer is more important than what you do with your hands and your mind. Unlike many religious leaders, I actually believe that. So I suppose everything is okay. When people move from Mexico to the US, they prosper, and they’re able to send stuff home. Maybe that’s how it will work if I move to a more powerful church.

Interesting day.

Oh, Right. CHURCH.

Today I tried a new church. New Dawn Ministries in North Miami. A buddy of mine–a fellow armorbearer–has already moved there. He was there to welcome me. I was permitted to pack heat in the service, so right away, things were headed in the right direction.

I’m tired, so I don’t want to write a lot, but I can tell you I’m going back next Sunday, and I’ve told my church’s armorbearers I may be leaving.

Critiques: the service was WAY long. That’s fine when you can account for the time, but sometimes a service will have long periods where nothing much is going on, and someone needs to wake up and make a transition to the next thing.

Actually, that’s the only critique.

Positives: these people really believe in the Holy Spirit. They don’t just say they believe, while pushing positive thinking and stuff taken from motivational speakers and corporate trainers. The preacher taught from the word, not Dale Carnegie. The Holy Spirit clearly guided him; the lesson he taught was something I really needed to learn, and it came at a very appropriate time. The church is insanely clean, and you don’t see crazy problems like broken chairs and doors that don’t work. The music ministry is freer. The pastor has time to talk to people, and he is serious about serving. They don’t nag about money. They didn’t lay a guilt trip on the congregation for not doing enough for the church. I felt bursts of supernatural faith going through me in the service, to the point where my head actually hurt a little, and this has continued since I left. Parking is very good. The drive is shorter than the drive to the other church.

Here’s a big positive: no Steve Munsey craziness.

The church is tiny; I would say two hundred people were there, in sanctuary maybe sixty feet square. It goes without saying that they don’t have a restaurant, a dance studio, an ice rink, a movie theater, and all the other time-wasting, money-wasting, secular junk you are likely to find in a megachurch. That makes me happy. Like Jesus said, you can’t serve God and Starbucks.

People spoke in tongues onstage. That was nice. They didn’t stand up there and ramble for no reason, but a few spurts came out from time to time, and I consider that very healthy. If you’re ashamed of the Holy Spirit, you are in real trouble. My church tends to suppress manifestations of the Holy Spirit, which is pretty odd, considering it’s Assemblies of God.

Until today’s service was over halfway done, I did not realize how fatigued I had become at my church. I felt as though a great weight were sliding off my shoulders. I was actually getting something from church, instead of giving, giving, giving, GIVING. I felt like a sled dog being given a bowl after going a week without water. It was the exact same sensation you get after ending a major ordeal that has sapped your strength. If you’ve ever settled a lawsuit, you know how I felt on the way home. I felt like sleeping! Tension had left me.

Sometimes you can be under stress and in great need without realizing it. I had expected to continue at my church for several months, and I wasn’t really disturbed by the prospect, but now that I know I don’t have to, I feel overwhelming relief. I realize I have to go back to New Dawn, and if my perceptions are confirmed, I have to stay. I have to get a friend of mine to go, too. I know a young man who is so fed up with my church, he’s about to snap. I don’t want to be a recruiter who tries to gut one church in favor of another, but I’m going after this kid. His need is too great to ignore.

I learned that New Dawn has armorbearers, and they would probably want me on the team. Sounds okay, but right now, I just want to go to church again. For months, I’ve been spending my church time working or shooting the breeze with friends. I want to sit there and soak it in.

I feel like a refugee. Really. It surprises me.

I saw a couple of blog posts I wrote a few years back. I see that I was much more supportive of my church’s policies and actions back then. The Holy Spirit has really opened my eyes, and on top of that, the church has deteriorated spiritually. A lot of the more sincere Christians are complaining or leaving. We are seeing a power shift from a sixtyish pastor to his thirtyish son, and the emphasis is headed in the MTV direction. Increasingly, youth is exalted, and ignorant, worldly young people with zero humility and zero judgment are getting more prominence. People like me are not appreciated. It’s okay to spend a limited amount of time in an environment like that, for a good reason, but like I said last week, Jesus told us to shake the dust off our shoes and take our blessedness elsewhere. No matter how I try, my church will not let me bless it. Maybe this one will.

Ask Lot

I had an interesting revelation today. I hope it was from God and not my own imagination.

There are basically two types of people. Givers and takers. Builders and destroyers. If you’re a Spirit-filled Christian, and you’re trying to improve your own life and the lives of others, you’re a builder. If you’re a carnal believer who has no understanding and no maturity, and who mistreats builders, you’re a destroyer. Churches are full of destroyers.

If you’re full of the Holy Spirit, and God helps you and listens to you, you are an asset to any organization. God will bless a group to which you belong, for your sake, and you will bless others by sharing your faith, praying for them, and doing things for them. We can see this in the example of Lot. Sodom and Gomorrah couldn’t be destroyed while Lot and his house were in the area.

A builder will bring what the Bible calls “peace.” In Hebrew, this is “shalom,” and it means more than lack of conflict. It means health, success, abundance, and contentment. In the New Testament, we see the Greek word “eirene.” In Greek, this means “peace,” but from the context, it’s pretty clear that it’s the same thing as shalom.

Here is what Jesus said, in Matthew 10:

Now whatever city or town you enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and stay there till you go out. And when you go into a household, greet it. If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!

Here is what I take from that. This is my revelation. If you go somewhere, and the people treat you badly, leave and take your prosperity and God’s blessings with you. Such people deserve to fail, and failure may bless them by opening their eyes to their own stupidity.

If you think on the Bible, you will recall many examples of blessed people hitting the road. Abraham left Ur. Jacob left Laban. Moses left Pharaoh. Jesus left a whole bunch of places and spoke ill of some.

I believe this is consistent with the admonition to refrain from casting your pearls before swine. Fools will waste your time and take your peace and joy, and they won’t learn a thing from it. If you wouldn’t waste time speaking pearls of wisdom to them, why would you live or work among them? There are plenty of receptive people out there. They’re the ones you should be dealing with.

I am thinking about this in connection with my church. I was asked to make pizza for the cafe, and God gave me tremendous success. The pizza was incredible, if I say so myself. I was starting a ministry with young people, teaching them to cook and trying to help them advance in God’s kingdom. My pizzas cost $3.00 each to make, and we sold them for $12.00. They made the church money. But the pastor in charge of the cafe was a self-described hothead, and he made my job impossible by refusing to cooperate in observing basic professionalism in the workplace. He also treated me me more disrespectfully than any employer ever has, and he did it in front of other volunteers.

I quit, and the next time I was in the church, I walked to the cafe for the purpose of shaking the dust off my shoes there. I literally did that. Since then, the cafe has gone to pot. It’s so bad, it’s hard to understand why they haven’t closed. Well, they have closed, actually. At the moment, it’s open again. The food is pretty bad. Wings and chicken nuggets. People keep asking me why I’m not working there.

They wanted me to sell two types of pizza, plus rolls, from a single pan in a steam tray. Meanwhile, they were using several trays to serve several types of deep-fried Sysco chicken which were virtually the same. They refused to commit to keeping my work area clear, so when I came in at 8:00 a.m. or earlier, I could expect to find boxes and equipment piled several feet high on the pizza table. The pastor and manager screwed up the food orders over and over; sometimes I had to wait until 10:30 for ingredients, because they didn’t bother to get them during the week. I couldn’t get a key out of them, so when I did the shopping myself, I couldn’t get in the cafe until I found someone to let me in. When I finally got a key, they installed a new latch a week or so later which prevented the door from opening, even after I opened the lock. There was a lady chef who threw out things I stored in the freezer, perhaps out of jealousy. It was like working in the Bizarro world from DC Comics. They seemed to be busting their humps in a determined effort to fail. And they succeeded. At failing.

I don’t even want to get into the mouse problem they failed to address. The last time I cooked there, I had volunteers clean out several drawers full of silverware (hundreds of totally unneeded pieces, unused), which were covered in mouse feces and urine. We had to bleach everything. I would say it’s a wonder we never made anyone ill, but the fact is, we probably did. How would it be traced back to us? It wouldn’t.

How hard is it to get rid of mice? You clean everything ONCE, with BLEACH, and then you put down traps and poison. Get a crew of eight people. Do it in four hours. Obvious, right? I would gladly bet a hundred dollars the mice and the feces are still there today. The manager’s young son used to have mysterious fevers of something like 106 degrees. They weren’t mysterious to me.

If I had stayed, I would have been getting up at 6:00 in order to sell two pizzas, in a dangerously filthy kitchen where I was supposed to teach kids while being undermined and insulted by the staff and management. While working for NOTHING. And because the people I was dealing with were unbelievably proud and sure they knew it all, there was no way to change them.

They were hopeless. True stupidity is something you can work with, as long as it’s coupled with humility, but how do you teach someone who is completely incompetent AND has absolutely no respect for the opinions of others? I have a law degree and a physics degree, and I couldn’t get basic respect from people with very little education and no business sense, who were indisputably, publicly, notoriously failing at what they did. I don’t mind being treated as an equal, but how can an uneducated person talk DOWN to me? In a law office, none of these people could make it, even as paralegals. Surely they should have realized I deserve to be heard.

When I quit, the pastor treated me like I had been unreasonable. Like I was a girlfriend who had flown off the handle because he looked at someone else at the mall. He tried to get me to come back. No apology. No hint that anyone other than me had done anything wrong. He clearly wanted me to say I was wrong. A person with management skills like that couldn’t get hired anywhere, except in a church or a socialist country.

My experience at the church has been disappointing in other ways, too. I’m a lawyer and a writer, but they put me to work as a security guard. I’ve enjoyed it, and I’ve gotten a lot out of it, but I think that says more about my attitude toward the job than the wisdom of giving it to me. At one point I was doing writing for the church, but they hired someone who lacked professionalism and did not appreciate what I could do for them, and that person was put in charge of me, so the whole thing fizzled, in spite of my efforts to cooperate. This person gave me projects on short notice, and I never complained. This person insisted on conferring by cell phone while driving, which is a very poor way to collaborate on writing. This person could not stick to a project or define goals, which is very sad, since I can meet any writing goal extremely quickly, once I know what it is. This person was irritable and unpleasant, regardless of how accommodating I tried to be. Now the pastor has no books, the magazine they tried to publish died after one issue, and not one stage production has had the benefit of my help. I never write anything for them, and if I did, they wouldn’t have any idea how good it was, and they wouldn’t be grateful.

Does the head pastor know anything about this? I don’t know. He’s so busy, it wouldn’t matter. He’s always on a plane. I’ve taken problems to him in the past. Nothing happens.

Anyway, when I quit the pizza job, one person told me he had been “treated like a dog,” too, and that I should stick it out and pray. He’s a good man, but he’s mistaken. Jesus said one thing, and this man said another. Jesus was right.

If we were listening to the Holy Spirit and doing things God’s way, the church would run well. The church does not have God’s blessing, so it’s chaotic and unsuccessful. Trying to help them is like running on a treadmill. Lots of work. No progress. When God puts holes in a bag, there is no point in trying to fill it.

The church is starting to feel like a cult. They keep pushing us to do more, yet they don’t provide for us. We’re not getting counseling, prayer, or good teaching. We have no lounge for our hundreds of volunteers. We often have to bring our own drinking water. People feel used. I keep hearing disturbing things about the demands they make on people. And when you point out a problem–even a problem which is going to hurt the church leadership–you may be criticized for speaking “negativity.” The prophets and Jesus were extremely negative, but we’re supposed to pretend everything is fine.

On the other side of the coin, I have many rewarding relationships at the church. I know a lot of the kids, and I have been able to encourage them and give them guidance, which came as a surprise to me. I have wonderful friends with whom I pray and talk. I build amps for the musicians, and I fix their equipment. If I move to the new church I’m trying out, I’m going to feel like I’m abandoning people.

There are so many people at my church who could be powerful in faith and prayer, if they only had someone to tell them the truth. But I can’t do it, because I don’t have the platform. And neither can the current crop of pastors. They seem to have more faith in Obama money and Steve Munsey’s wacky offering doctrine than they do in the Holy Spirit. If you’ve never been to a place, you can’t guide someone else.

I am secure in the knowledge that it’s okay to leave, and that there is no future in the work I do there now. We have a conference coming up, and they’re going to expect us to pay for tickets AND work, commuting to Miami Beach in the process. I don’t think I want to be on the team when that conference starts.

I guess we’ll see what happens Sunday. My friends who have already moved to the new church say good things about it, and I have a lot of respect for their judgment, so I am hoping for the best.

Relief is in Sight

As usual, too much is going on to write about.

First of all, I finished the JTM45 clone I was building for my friend Joe. The JTM45 is a Marshall amp which is a pretty faithful copy of the Fender 5F6A Bassman. The version my friend chose uses KT66 tubes, which are fundamentally similar to the Bassman’s 6L6s.

We had a number of problems. He bought a Mojo Tone chassis, and it didn’t fit the Classictone transformer he chose. I’ve been getting help from amp builders, and they have convinced me that Mojo is not a good place to get chassis. The cutouts and round holes are not well thought-out, so you can end up with things that don’t fit.

To make the power transformer work, I had to enlarge and move the existing opening, and I had to machine (from scratch) an aluminum spacer to connect the transformer to the chassis. This was a lot of aggravation, but the result was beautiful. Looking at the amp, you would never know the transformer didn’t fit. I’ll repost a couple of photos.

I also had a problem with one of the power supply capacitors. The JTM45 is a box of components that sits in a wooden cabinet with a flat bottom. The box is supposed to rest directly on the wood. But Mojo predrills holes that situate the capacitor below the box. It projects down out of the box about half an inch. This is just crazy. There is no way on earth to make it fit the cabinet (which Mojo makes). Last week I got the amp running, and Joe brought me the cabinet. I had never seen a JTM45 cabinet before. I just assumed there was a way to make it fit. But incredibly, there was not.

We looked at the chassis for a while. I loosened the screws holding the cap, and I swung it up out of the way. It fit perfectly. Here is the mystery: why didn’t Mojo drill screw holes that put it in this position? I thought there had to be a reason, but I couldn’t see it.

I got out a punch, and I made two dimples on the inside of the box. Then I used my Jobmax right-angle drill, some WD40, and a nice cobalt drill bit to make two new screw holes. We screwed the cap in place, and everything was fine. What a relief. If it hadn’t worked, we would have had to use different capacitors, or I would have had to undo a bunch of wiring and move the cap across the box.

We put the amp together, and Joe fired it up. The sound is incredible. Maybe as good as the Bassman. It’s clear. It’s pretty quiet. It’s sweet.

We had some noise problems at first, and that scared me, but it turned out the JJ 12AX7 in V1 was the issue. Evidently these tubes are inherently noisy. Joe put a Tube Amp Doctor 12AX7-SC in there, and the noise dropped, and the amp also sounded better. It had a sweeter, creamier tone, somewhat like a 12AY7. Lesson learned.

Here are a couple of photos I took that day.

The other guy in the photos is Zach. He’s a blues guitarist. He wants to build a Trainwreck clone.

I’m not totally sure what my next project will be. I want to build a Bassman-based amp with 4 6BM8 output tubes. A guy who calls himself “Da Geezer” designed a 6BM8 amp called the Little Wing, and it’s based on the Bassman, but it lacks the second channel and added inputs. It’s limited to 7 watts because it only has two output tubes. He says I can put the Bassman front end back and add extra tubes so I can have more juice when I want it.

I’m also looking at a wrecked Fender “The Twin” red-knob amp. This is a 100-watt amp with a switch that cuts the power to 25 watts. They were not popular, but they’re very good amps. I found one on Craigslist for $200. It needs about $320 in parts to get it working. I’m considering offering $50. I don’t think anyone else will buy it. It’s too messed up.

It’s nice to be able to rebuild and redesign basket-case amps. It really doesn’t matter what I buy, because I can turn anything into a good amp.

I’m also considering moving to a new church. One of my buddies–the head Armorbearer at my church–had some issues he had to address. His wife is a very nice lady, but she felt my church was too cliquish. She couldn’t really connect, even though her husband had a position of prominence. This is not a big shock. Our church tends to promote young, good-looking, hip people, as well as people who make money or have connections. There is a big concern with what’s cool and trendy. And it also helps if you can do something the church really needs. I don’t think she fit in the desired categories. She’s not an MTV type. So she may well have been excluded.

She found another church, and she started attending, even though her husband was still volunteering at Trinity. I started hearing good things about it. Lots of prayer during services. Focus on the Holy Spirit. No yammering about self-help and money. I envied my friends, but I thought the church was near their home, up in Coral Springs. I was not going to drive that far. Also, even though I’ve become completely disconnected from the teaching at my church, I have strong attachments to the people, and while I wasn’t receiving much from the church, I felt fulfilled with regard to giving and interacting with others.

Now my buddy is done with Trinity. He’s cutting ties and moving. And this weekend, he told me the church is in North Miami. I was shocked. How could I have been unaware of this? It’s a shorter drive than the one I make now. When I heard that, I felt like a weight slid off my back and a door opened before me. Maybe God had been preparing this place for me during the months when I was praying for a better church.

I had assumed that God wanted me to stay at Trinity for at least a few more months, and I was content with that. I love the people. It’s not like I’m miserable there. But it’s wonderful to know I may be able to get out sooner. I’m visiting the other church this weekend. I have very high hopes.

Ending a relationship is funny. Until you make the decision to quit, you may not realize how much you’ve wanted out. I still remember dumping a maladjusted girlfriend when I was in law school. Before the breakup, she didn’t seem all that terrible, but after I pulled the plug, I realized what a mess she was, and how annoying her nasty side could be. I had stifled those thoughts when we were together, in order to make it work. I guess the same thing happens when you leave a church. You realize it’s okay to feel relieved, so the stress just melts out of you without warning. Suddenly you feel like you’re standing straighter.

I can tell you what I look forward to.

It will be nice not to have to hear Steve Munsey’s self-serving money-based doctrine. There are no authentic lists of “seven blessings” associated with giant cash offerings at Passover, Pentecost, and Yom Kippur. That’s something he made up, and we hear about it all the time. Jews never had to give big cash offerings on the feast days, and they were never promised “seven blessings” in return. If your church is in debt, the answer isn’t manipulation, legalism, Judaizing, and gimmicks. The answer is to please God and obtain his help. My church can’t get prosperity the way we’re supposed to, so we’re trying to do it the Munsey way. And it doesn’t work. We still have debt.

It will be nice to be able to talk. Kids run our sound and media department, and a young, headstrong pastor is in charge of them. That means we hear obnoxious disco music even between services. It drives people crazy. Many, many people complain about it. People come to church and leave on the first visit because of it. It’s probably killing our growth. The new place has loud music, but they shut it down after worship, the way you’re supposed to.

I look forward to having my freedom back. If I were doing what was demanded of me, I would be serving at two services on Sunday, attending a Saturday service, attending a volunteer “DNA” meeting once a month, attending a 6 a.m. Armorbearer training session once a month, serving several days in a row at our yearly Rendezvous conference (for which I would be expected to buy a ticket), serving extra days when asked (with short notice or no notice), and cooking on demand. That’s too much. We’re told we have to tithe our time. Well, I pray two to four hours a day. That’s 14 hours right there, minimum. I guarantee I spend at least 16.8 hours a week with God. So anything I give my church is above the tithe. And prayer is much more important than anything I do at church.

I’m hoping I will never have to hear the word “VIP” again. It’s disturbing that I ever heard it in church. We reserve seats for holy people like Luther Campbell and Tim Hardaway (a basketball player). We chauffeur visiting speakers around, and it’s understood that we’re not supposed to talk to them too much, because…they’re VIPs. Which makes you wonder what we are. I call us “VUPs.” Figure it out.

We have actually had secure areas for VIPs, with special food other people can’t have. Aren’t VIP areas for strip clubs? Am I crazy? Why would you have one in a church? I can understand having a place for people to put their feet up and collect their thoughts. But that’s not the same thing. We have never had a lounge for volunteers, even when we worked 15-hour days.

I hope I’ll actually be able to talk to a pastor once in a while. And I don’t mean talking about volunteer work. I’d like to KNOW these people. Right now, I don’t talk to any of our pastors. They’re busy. Half the time, they’re on planes or staying in other cities. And they have no interest in talking to me. They say hi and so on, but when I go home at the end of a service, I know for a fact that I won’t have any communication with a pastor for seven days.

I would like to know that I won’t be badgered for money. Christians talk a lot about tithing. Here’s a terrible secret: God doesn’t require us to tithe. Preachers hate hearing that, but it’s true. Tithing comes from the Jewish law, which does not apply to us. It’s a good IDEA to tithe. But really, you’re supposed to develop a relationship with the Holy Spirit, and you should give (or withhold) as he directs. I am really tired of being goaded. Every Sunday, we put a pastor on the stage to give a pitch, and they tell us God will give is a big ROI. I realize we have a lot of cheap people who need to learn to give, but if we introduced them to the Holy Spirit and helped them grow, the giving would come naturally. We wouldn’t have to jawbone them like reluctant car buyers.

I want to hear about the Holy Spirit, and I want to experience his presence in church, as I do at home. I’m tired of backward self-improvement nonsense masquerading as doctrine. I can’t believe we let Brian Klemmer come to our church and teach the same stuff they used to teach at EST seminars. Find that in the Bible for me. I’ll give you a hundred years to look it up.

I guess this is a horrible thing to say. Brian Klemmer came to our church (selling expensive secular self-help seminars), and he told us he had a 500-year plan for his life. As a Christian, he had plans for what he would be doing hundreds of years into the future. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but can anyone seriously believe that right now, he’s working on that plan? He died from a torn carotid artery a while back. Is he really in heaven, carrying out a plan his tiny human brain made, in a place he could not understand when the plan was made? Is anyone stupid enough to believe that? But we sat there and lapped it up.

I know there are no perfect churches. But not all churches are sick. There are ministries you can support and be part of without feeling like a sucker.

The main thing that bugs me about my church is that I can’t recommend it to people. New people come in, and I’m glad they’re trying to get to know God, but I know they’re headed for some serious disappointments if they stay. I have friends who get discouraged. I can’t tell them to stick it out. Not in good conscience.

I’ve been praying for the church to change, and my faith has been telling me it will, but I still think I’m leaving. I think a bunch of us will leave. Two Armorbearer families are gone. I’m on the way. If it works for me, I’m going to go after my friends who are discouraged. Maybe the heart of the church will leave, and that will provide a much needed wake-up call that leads to restructuring under new leaders.

Man, I look forward to dropping the loads I’ve been carrying. I want to be in a church where I can support what they’re doing. I don’t want to bite my tongue all the time. I don’t want to have to tell my friends what they’re hearing is wrong, or that they’re right to feel used or mistreated.

I told the Armorbearers I would not be in church next week. I have learned not to ask permission. I informed them I would not be there, and I said it would be nice if someone filled in. One of the young guys volunteered. I’m covered. At our church, there’s a lot of pressure to show up and work, as if it were a job, so we really feel like we have to get approval to take time off. I managed to get over that.

I may not be able to wait for Sunday. There’s a Tuesday night service. While the kids at my church are dancing to secular music and trying to hook up, I may be at a normal church service.

Here it is, the week after Passover, and I may be on my way from a place of profitless servitude to a place where I can work for God. How appropriate.

A Mighty Fortress is My Garage

The Garage of Blues has undergone yet another metamorphosis.

I could not deal with my old Clausing lathe, so I started shopping for a new lathe that actually worked. I got tired of shopping, and I prayed for God to send me a good lathe at a good price. The next day, I got a sudden email message advising me that a reputable seller had knocked thousands off the price of a machine, and that it had been equipped with some stuff I like, and that stuff I did not want had been removed.

SOLD.

I took some photos while the riggers were moving it in. They gouged it slightly, but having seen what BAD riggers do, I was still satisfied. Here it is.

That thing is a 16 by 40. It can swing a part almost 17″ wide. It’s not packed with features, but the quality is very good, and the construction is heavy. It only has 12 speeds, but the range is nice: 20-2000 RPM. The motor is 7.5 horsepower, which is insane. The threading options are a little limited, but change gears can be had. The ways are a foot wide, the castings are Meehanite. It came with a neat light and a DRO. No complaints here.

Og told me to get a 12 x 36, and he was probably right. He was right when he told me to get a Grizzly instead of the Clausing. But come on. This baby has a 2″ bore. I can part stuff that would otherwise require a saw. You know I needed that.

I actually wanted a 14 x 40 with variable speed, but the seller I had in mind would not give me a quote. He kept saying he’d get around to it. He said he sent it, but it must have gotten lost in cyberspace. After two months, I gave up on him. I think the smaller lathe would have been fine, and it would have had a big bore on it, but I can’t hold people at gunpoint and force them to do business with me.

I could not get him to sell me the smaller lathe I wanted, and once I had decided on the big lathe, people told me not to use a VFD, which is the cheapest way to run a big lathe on single-phase power, without derating and other potential issues. They told me I needed a digital phase converter, which is pretty ridiculous. They cost a lot. I was determined to get a VFD, but over time, I decided to bite the bullet and do it right. So now I have the phase converter on my wall. Right now it’s only connected to the lathe, but if I feel like it, I can add the mill to it and bypass the existing VFD, which does absolutely nothing except provide three-phase power. I can also put up sockets and run whatever three-phase stuff I get later. This is advantageous, because a lot of great three-phase equipment goes on the market for low prices, and it’s generally better than single-phase machinery.

I went with Gator chucks. Ordinarily, the lathe would have come with no-name Asian chucks, but they were not included, so I got to pick my own. Gators are made in mainland China, but the company has a very good reputation. I got an 8″ adjustable 3-jaw chuck, which is practically my fiancee now, and I also got a 10″ 4-jaw which I haven’t even tried, because the 3-jaw is so great. I can’t measure the runout on the 3-jaw, and so far, that has held true on diameters of 1″ and 1.5″, so it appears to work well, at least within that range.

I was going to get cheapo Chinese carbide holders, but I got yelled at when I mentioned this to actual machinists, so I found a great deal on two Kennametal 3/4″ holders, and the seller threw in 10 inserts. Very nice. Super rigid.

The lathe isn’t leveled yet. I was going to use the famous “Rollie’s Dad” method, but research led me to conclude that it wasn’t really that great, so I reluctantly ordered a good level. I went with Tools4cheap. I’m hoping the level lives up to the hype.

The lathe is a DREAM to run. It scared the crap out of me when I first got it going. I accidentally started the giant chuck spinning at 2000 instead of 500. But it does what it’s supposed to do. The repeatability on the 3-jaw chuck is a wonder to behold. The worklight is bright and very easy to position. The controls work MUCH more smoothly than the ones on the Clausing. It just does what it’s supposed to do. I don’t fight all day to make the tool work. It’s just like my gorgeous milling machine.

I finished up my 304 stainless garlic press. It works great. You stuff it with garlic and whack it with a hammer, and pureed garlic poomps into a little chamber. Then you pump the piston again, and the garlic pops out on your cutting board. This is the first decent garlic press I have ever seen. And I’m improving it. I’m making a big base that includes the pulverizing holes and the chamber for the crushed garlic, and it’s going to thread onto the main housing. It will come off easily to go in the dishwasher. I love it. It’s so cool I can’t stand it.

After this I may make a nutcracker. I don’t need one. I just hate nutcrackers. They’re wimpy. They slip and shoot nuts across the room. They break. I’m going to make one that will open a golf ball, if that’s what turns you on.

Today I used the lathe to bore out a 1 1/2″-wide piece of stainless, for the garlic chamber. I saved my old 1/2″ Albrecht chuck from the Clausing, and I got an adaptor sleeve to make it fit the new tailstock. I drilled the work with three bits, creeping up to 1/2″, and then I went to a boring bar that would fit in the hole. Then I put it on the mill and flattened the bottom of the bore. Going back to the lathe, I turned on the DRO, put in a bigger bar, and set the bottom of the bore as zero. After that, it was a simple matter to open the bore up until the walls were about 3/16″ thick. The bar screamed like hell–nothing I do seems to change that–but the finish is really nice, so I guess it’s okay.

I have to figure out what to use for the internal threading on the end that joins the press body, but other than that, this will be a cakewalk. God willing.

I wonder if cooks would pay for stuff like this. It would be pointless to make these things for less than thirty bucks. But they would last forever and work like nothing else on the market.

I love the garage more every day. I have a guitar amp out there, which I’m halfway done building. I have my tools set up in a nice ergonomic way. I have peace and quiet. I have air conditioning and comfy chairs. I have hundreds of albums on the MP3 player. And I have the ultimate place to pray. I generally do at least an hour and a half out there in the evening.

I have been asking God to tell me what my job is. Crazy as it sounds, I think he answered. I think prayer is my job. Some people go to Calcutta. I go to the garage. It suits me to a tee. Prayer is the most powerful thing anyone can do, even if no one appreciates it. And if you’re in God’s presence every day, for long periods, good stuff is going to happen to you, regardless of whom you pray for. It’s a little like being God’s treasurer. You’re distributing his supernatural wealth. Some of it is going to stick to you.

I believe God has given me a fortune, and the substance of that fortune is faith, which is much more valuable than money. If God gives you a fortune, you have to share it. So, unless I’m wrong about what he wants me to do, this is going to be my primary function for a while. Pray for others. Pray for the country. And of course, pray for yours truly. Come on, man. I need a little piece of the action. You can’t muzzle the ox that treads out the corn.

Life has changed a lot. Things work better. Things that used to cause me stress are turning into blessings. Even the collection calls from student loan servicers and collection agencies are kind of pleasant now. I executed a release, so they can never get another dime out of me, but they still call from time to time and ask–very courteously–if I know where they can find the borrower. Now I feel I can relate to them, instead of seeing them as relentless sources of aggravation.

If you’re a cosigner for someone who won’t pay, for God’s sake, ask about executing a release. Not a settlement. A “release.” Trust me; this advice is gold. I got my freedom. Get yours. They will negotiate. You may lose some money, but thereafter, you will sleep well while the person who took advantage of you has to worry about things like wage garnishing, lawsuits, and debts bankruptcy doesn’t affect.

I don’t think I’m going to be here too long. My faith tells me I will find a better place to live. I don’t want to budge until I get a clear indication. I truly look forward to kissing Miami goodbye forever. My family endured so much sorrow here. I don’t need to look around me and be reminded. My life is in the future, so I don’t want to be wrapped up in the past. I think God has given me the Garage of Blues so I can have a little comfort while I wait.

I think my dad is coming around. He sees how I am blessed. That has to have an impact. My sister…another story. Some people are extremely hard for God to teach, so they go through shocking trials. I’m not worried. I keep asking God to do specific things to bring her around, and he keeps doing those things. Whatever happens, she will have the best shot prayer can provide.

I have to go work on the amp. I can’t wait to hear it!

MORE

People are asking about the garlic press. I have really bad photos. The end result is what matters, so here are two photos of the garlic on its way out. This should give you an idea of what it does to the garlic. The press is one inch in diameter, to provide scale.

The garlic may look solid, but that’s because it was mashed into a cylindrical space. It has passed through several 1/8″ holes.

New Lathe Falling Into Place

I am sitting here waiting for the new lathe.

I didn’t know if I should get a new lathe. Sometimes I feel like I spend stupidly. Other times I feel like I don’t spend enough. A month or two back, I felt like God was telling me to let GO already. When I wanted or needed something, I scoured Ebay and Craigslist. I bought used stuff. Sometimes I went without stuff that would have made life easier, or I bought tools that were one size too small. I felt like God told me, “You are praying for stuff I already gave you. Just SPEND THE MONEY.” I felt like I was serving my money, instead of it serving me.

I had that silly Clausing lathe. It wasn’t small by home shop standards, but it wasn’t big enough to be versatile and convenient to use. I couldn’t part long stock bigger than about 1 1/2″ in diameter. I couldn’t find rests for it. I couldn’t do a single metric thread. I thought I should give up and get a Grizzly in a comparable size or bigger, and I looked around and checked out models.

I found that you had to spend some dough to get a 2″ bore, which is a big convenience. And I learned that good used lathes were so expensive, it was hard to get anything bigger than a 25% discount over new. You can get stuff other people consider too old to use, and it’s cheap (like the Clausing), but it’s not the same as a new machine.

I got fed up with shopping. I prayed for God to send me a good deal on a new lathe, and the next day, I got a surprising email from a seller. I’ve written about this. New machine. Thousands off. Lots of good added equipment. Things I didn’t want to buy, removed. I had to jump on that. It took two days to get my nerve up, but I prayed about it and bought the machine.

Now it’s about to be delivered. I thought I would have to change some wiring to make it fit. I have an interrupt box and three 220 sockets in the area where the lathe will go. I thought I would have to move everything three feet to the right and remove one socket to allow for a phase converter. I took a few screws out, took down my air hose reel, and looked at the lathe measurements. It turned out the lathe is not tall enough to obstruct the wiring. In fact, the wiring, which was not really in the right place for my old setup, was exactly where it needed to be for the new arrangement. How about THAT?

I screwed everything back together and went in the house.

God prepares you for stuff, when you don’t even know it’s coming. He’s like Mr. Miyagi. One day you’re doing “wax on, wax off” ten thousand times. The next day, you’re using what you learned to wipe the smirk off some punk’s face at a karate tournament.

I have some work in front of me. I have to wire up the converter, and I have to move all the other tools in the garage (except for the mill) after the lathe is moved in. I have to put a cord on the lathe. I have to find a place to put the hose reel. But that’s about it. I probably won’t even sweat.

I have been praying for God to help me organize the garage. I came up with a surprising plan which is going to make life much easier.

Yesterday I opened up the garage floor and moved the Clausing out of the way, all by myself. All I needed were some pieces of conduit and a crowbar. I won’t have to pay the riggers to move it. They should be out of here in twenty minutes.

It will be a week before I can turn the lathe on. The converter people are VERY slow to ship. But I’ll be able to lean on it and turn the dials and go, “VROOM VROOM” all I want.

Don’t let anyone tell you prayer in tongues won’t order your life. It works, and it’s amazing. And it does other stuff for you. I sit out there in the evenings and pray, and not only does God give me faith, he gives me different flavors of faith. He gives me faith that rushes through me like water under pressure. He gives me a type of faith that feels like a mountain of lead falling on my doubts. It’s so strange. I never expected it.

Now if someone will just buy that Clausing. I’ll have my garage back, and I’ll be able to use my tools instead of working on them all the time.

Skip the Sideshow and Enter the Big Tent

I have been trying to gather info on the Jewish feast offerings, because my church is promoting Steve Munsey’s “seven blessings” craziness. The idea is that you give your church a pile of money on Passover, Shavuot, and Yom Kippur, and God gives you seven blessings as a result.

So far, only one Jewish source I’ve contacted has responded. I leave it to him to identify himself in the comments. The Jewish law concerning offerings and feasts is very complex, and it would be pointless for me to try to learn all of it and try to explain it, but I can give you the highlights, with considerably more authority than the “seven blessings” guys.

1. Gentiles did not take part in Passover, Shavuot, or Yom Kippur.

2. Munsey relies on Deuteronomy 16:16-17 to justify asking for money, but that passage refers to “gifts,” and it means things like excess livestock, not cash.

3. It is unlawful to bring produce (fruit, grain, etcetera) tithes or firstfruits as offerings, if they come from outside Israel.

The New Testament teaches us that we are not required to obey the Jewish law. It also says that if we rely on part of it, we have to practice all of it in order to be saved. Clearly, we are not doing that. Steve Munsey can’t even get the holidays right; he confused Yom Kippur with Sukkot. There was no gathering of Jews on Yom Kippur. It makes no sense to try to put us under the law, and even if it did, it would make no sense to do it incorrectly.

I have heard other Christian teachers talking about this kind of thing. Larry Huch is famous for it. He says we should wear prayer shawls and have shabbat dinners and so on. Totally wrong. The New Testament makes it clear that we obey the Holy Spirit, not the Jewish law. Paul rebuked Peter–a Jew–for pretending to follow the Jewish law and for trying to make Gentiles follow it. What more does a Christian need to know?

Jews believe our ideas are completely wrong, yet even they agree that we are not required to live under their law. If the Jewish law says Gentiles don’t have to obey the Jewish law, why on earth would we want to live under it? To pretend to live under it is to ignore it!

My church is also telling people to pay “God” (the church) before paying their electricity and car bills. I asked my Jewish source about this, and here is what I was told: “[I]t’s utterly inappropriate to donate if one has debts. That’s using the property of others. Better to pay off a debt than to bring an optional offering. This refers to unsecured debts. Someone who carries a balance on his credit card has no business making donations.”

This is exactly what I figured. If you take money you owe Macy’s and give it to your church, Macy’s should get God’s blessing.

Why be so critical of this silly teaching? So what if people want to give money to their churches? Won’t God bless them for it, even if they’re wrong? Won’t it be a blessing to others? Won’t it go to the poor and to good causes?

First of all, I don’t think God will bless you for giving stupidly, especially when the truth is easy to learn. Jesus told us he approved of people who searched the scriptures to test the teachings they heard, and the Bible is full of examples of well-meaning people who were punished for trying to please God in the wrong ways. See Saul and Uzzah. Second, if your church is teaching craziness, is it really a good thing to endorse and facilitate it? Third, a church that teaches greed-based doctrine is not too likely to use its money in ways that please God. I would not count on seeing your misguided donations reach good causes.

Those are comparatively trivial concerns, though. The main reason to criticize is that this nonsense distracts people from God’s power and help. The only way you’re going to get help from God is to pray, a LOT. Daily. This is the single most important thing you do. Everything else flows from it. If people believe they’re pleasing God by funding Steve Munsey, what motivation will they have to pray and humble themselves and get to know God? None. In fact, in their minds, the wrongheaded things they do will justify living apart from God and ignoring his commands. As long as you make your pointless offerings, you can go to the clubs, fornicate, smoke weed, and live it up, because God is going to make you rich!

Jesus told us misguided leaders would not only miss the point; they would prevent others from finding the way. That’s what the church has been doing since about 300 A.D. God wants us to get baptized with the Spirit, pray, and be transformed. The church wants us to do everything BUT.

The old churches told us we were not smart enough to read the word and deal with God personally, so we had to go through priests and saints. The Protestant churches told us we were to sit around suffering and losing until we died, and that God wouldn’t do much for us, and that it would be made up to us in heaven. The charismatic churches teach us God wants us to have perfect lives here on earth, and that it all revolves around money. This stuff isn’t “second best.” It’s not even acceptable. It comes from Satan himself. God wants us to know him personally and to live by faith, with his power and character flowing through us into the world. This other nonsense prevents us from living that way. It cripples the body of Christ. It’s not a small problem. It’s THE problem. Churches are actively blocking people from becoming what God wants them to be.

I don’t participate in the wacky offerings. My faith keeps increasing, supernaturally. My life gets better and better. My character keeps improving. I get more and more answers to prayer. I spend more time in prayer every month. I am healthy. I have no debt, except for the debt I owe God. I have no mortgage, and the properties I stand to inherit have no mortgages. It seems to me that my way works, and that it came from God. Meanwhile, my church has crushing debts, internal strife, and plenty of godly people who are looking for other churches. I believe the evidence shows that what I believe is better than the “seven blessings” mess. I got it for nothing. I do give, but the real giving was done 2,000 years ago. That’s when the price was paid.

If you’re a charismatic, look around you. I promise you, you know people who give to ministries and still fail financially. What does that tell you about the empty promises of the TBN preachers? I know someone who gave a great deal and ended up destitute. Maybe instead of giving money to Kenneth Copeland, she should have paid off her gigantic student loan, which she ignored. I wonder what Kenneth Copeland’s phone operators would say if she called and told them she was indigent. My guess: they would not offer to send her a check.

The body of Christ must surely be like any other body. Surely it expects its parts to obey the brain. If you’re not in line with the will of Jesus, why would you expect him to make you strong? If you had an arm that did as it pleased, and you knew you could grow another one, you’d have the first arm amputated. You wouldn’t look for ways to increase the blood supply.

I guess it seems like I do nothing but criticize, but so much is being lost, and there is no good reason for it. The land of milk and honey is right in front of us, but we persist in walking in circles, in a dry place where nothing satisfies. Our leaders are like the ten spies who kept the Jews out of Canaan. They have no faith, so they can’t teach faith to anyone else. And they have no vision. When there is no vision, the people perish. Proverbs 29:18.

People think I’m not a team player. That’s a huge lie. I’m on the Holy Spirit’s team. The other day I realized God is the only authority I’ve ever been able to trust and to give myself to without reservation. If you’re waiting to exhale, God is what you need. But if you follow him, powerful men who don’t know him will argue with you for the rest of your life. Fortunately, they will lose.

Everyone else can sit on the deck of the Titanic and listen to the band. I’m going to stay in the lifeboat. I may be a fool, but I know the difference between salvation and doom.

They DID Exist

This is an interesting day.

For a long time, I have been criticizing Steve Munsey’s “seven blessings” doctrine. He claims all the Jews went to Jerusalem on Passover, Pentecost (Shavuot), and Yom Kippur (not Sukkot) and brought “their very best offerings,” which means money, and that God gave them seven blessings (Exodus 23:20-30) as a result. He says Christians have to do the same things, except for the Jerusalem part. We have to give God money three times a year, and he will give us seven blessings.

My church is doing this now. They’re asking us to sign offering pledges. I know vows were big in Judaism, but Jesus told us not to swear unnecessarily, so I will not sign one until I find a scriptural basis for doing so.

It’s pretty disturbing. We are being told to give our money to the church before paying our electric bills, car loan bills, and other just debts. Steve Munsey is known for this kind of thing. He told his church God wanted their tax refunds.

Of course, paying for blessings does not work. The blessings of Exodus 23 don’t appear to have any direct connection to offerings. Read it for yourself and see. And Munsey got one of the holidays wrong. MALE Jews (only) went to Jerusalem on Sukkot, not Yom Kippur. That, alone, should tell you what you need to know about the solidity of his doctrine. If you can’t tell the difference between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, why are you teaching about Jewish holidays?

Still, today I learned that I was wrong about something. Or that I may have been wrong. I’m checking it out, and I don’t have all the info yet. It turns out there WERE “gifts” at Passover, Shavuot, and SUKKOT (not Yom Kippur or “the atonement,” as Munsey teaches). I studied this stuff a lot, and I asked Jews, but I missed this anyway. The Bible says that at these feasts, the Jews had to bring gifts, in proportion to how God had blessed them (Deut. 16:16-17).

So now I’m trying to find out what the nature and size of these gifts were. I know the offerings of the ancient Jews were not always monetary. A prayer is an offering. Animals were sacrificed constantly, as offerings, and then eaten, which is something money-hungry preachers don’t talk about. I don’t think they want people to realize the Jews sometimes benefited directly from their offerings. People would bring buckets of chicken to church as offerings and then eat them in the parking lot.

There were monetary offerings, but were Jews expected to give big sums of cash on these holidays? I don’t know yet. It seems to me that “as God has blessed you” means you give what God has given you, or maybe a sum reflecting that. But I’m no rabbi.

Interesting questions: were Jews required to give offerings after the Temple was destroyed and the people were scattered? Were Gentiles allowed to give at the feasts?

As far as I know, the Jewish laws governing giving NEVER applied to Gentiles, and some only applied to Jews while they held Israel and had a functioning Temple to support. But there were Gentiles known as “God-fearers” who were involved with Judaism without becoming Jews. I wonder if they gave at the feasts.

I believe the Holy Spirit tells Gentiles when to give. We have never had sacrificial laws or a schedule of offerings. I think tithing is a good practice, but I do not believe anyone has ever shown that it’s mandatory. I think that if you listen to the Holy Spirit, you’ll end up giving more than the tithe, so it’s somewhat counterproductive to tell people tithing is required.

I also believe alms are extremely important. Charismatic preachers RARELY talk about giving to the needy, except through their ministries. That’s because they want control of the money, so they can take what they want before passing it on. Sorry to say it, but that’s the obvious truth.

You can’t be like God unless you give, so you should give as he inspires you. But giving mechanically, based on laws that aren’t found in the Bible, to ministers who may or may not use your money to help the poor…that seems stupid to me. And it takes the human contact out of giving. There is a big difference between giving to someone you know and swiping a credit card at your church. I believe God wants us to have that connection from time to time, because he has it every time he gives.

My church doesn’t do a whole lot for the poor. We have a sister charity, but it gets government grants, and it’s really a referral service. I know a guy who went to them for help. He said they send you to other organizations. We give away things like frozen Thanksgiving turkeys and free toys for Christmas, with lots of fanfare, but if you go to my church on a quiet Thursday and ask for help with your rent, they probably will not pay it. So the church and the charity are not my vehicles of choice for getting help to the needy. I think this is a major problem, but as long as we are spending money we don’t have, we are going to have bills to pay, and that doesn’t leave much for the poor.

Steve Munsey is almost certainly wrong about the “seven blessings.” He is wrong about Yom Kippur. And I’m 98% sure it’s wrong to tell people not to pay their bills. It seems to me that if you cheat your landlord to give your church money, and a blessing follows, your landlord will get the blessing, and God will give you a boil or something. But I want to cross the T’s and dot the I’s. If God wants Gentiles to give cash offerings at Passover, Shavuot, and SUKKOT, I don’t want to get in the way. And I don’t want to come across like someone who opposes supporting churches.

I want to be honest about my mistake. Still, the “seven blessings” business seems legalistic, scripturally wrong, and greed-based. I’ll post more info if I get it.

Let Yourself be Machined

Yesterday a rigger came by. Riggers are people who move big machines. I got a very good rate on shipping my new lathe to Miami, but I can’t have it shipped directly to the house. I had to ship it to a commercial address with a loading dock. It will be unloaded there and moved to another truck, and that truck will bring it here.

It has to go to a facility with a loading dock because freight trucks don’t come equipped to lower two-ton loads three or four feet, from their beds to the pavement. You have to have a forklift and maybe some other stuff, like pallet jacks and things called “skates.” So the easy way to deal with this is to ship your stuff to riggers. They put it on the ground and slide it into your garage for you.

The rigger sent a guy over, and he looked around and essentially said they were going to shove it in there in one move and go home. He did not seem intimidated at all. I guess they’re used to moving things like 20,000-pound turret lathes, so a comparatively tiny manual lathe must seem like a joke.

I listed the Clausing for sale. I don’t know if it’s going to move without an Ebay ad. I may have to do that. I don’t know how to put it on a pallet. That will be great fun, I’m sure. I found places that give pallets away, so I should be able to come up with a fair amount of free wood.

Yesterday the 3-jaw chuck arrived. This is kind of interesting, if you’re a tool person. It’s Chinese. Not Taiwan. Mainland China. The land of sand-filled castings and pot metal screws. But it’s a very good chuck. The brand name is Fuerda. Their chuck line is called Gator. Ask anyone who uses one. They have a great reputation. They’re not as cheap as other Chinese chucks, but they beat the pants off Bison and Toolmex, who manufacture in Eastern Europe.

Fuerda and Phase II both make good tools in mainland China. I think we’re going to see other brands moving in behind them. Even the Indians are making some good stuff.

I decided to go with an adjustable chuck. These things have screws that let you move the chucks until they’re very concentric with the spindles. It’s a little bit like having 4-jaw accuracy with 3-jaw convenience, except that you don’t adjust them for every part you chuck. As I understand it, it’s not qoing to be quite as good as a 4-jaw chuck, but it will be considerably better than an ordinary 3-jaw of comparable quality.

It also has two-piece jaws so I can turn the jaws around for big parts or remove them to use soft jaws. When I started looking for a chuck, I thought adjustability was the most important thing, but people corrected me. You want those 2-piece jaws (just like that cowbell). I thought they were just for holding bigger stuff; you don’t have to take the jaws completely out and reverse them, because you can turn the upper parts around. But that’s not the whole story. If you have one-piece (“solid”) jaws, you can’t screw anything to them. The screw holes that remain when you remove the top parts of two-piece jaws allow you to attach other things, and soft jaws are the primary examples. You can make special jaws to hold unusual parts and to give you good repeatability (I think).

The chuck looks good, and the jaws move well. The machining is nice. Not perfect, but I think it’s more than adequate. My big complaint is that there was grit on the adapter plate that allows you to put the chuck on a D1-6 spindle. I think it must be grinding residue. It’s greasy and gritty and black. When I tried to put the cam pins on the plate, the grit prevented them from going in all the way, so I had to clean the plate with brake cleaner, hose everything with Eezox, and start over. It looks like there are some grit spots that will never go away, but they won’t interfere with the chuck’s functions.

I got myself a couple of tool holders and some 1/2″ HSS blanks. The tool post on this thing will accept 1″ carbide holders, and I was afraid that meant I had to buy everything in that size. Then I found out 3/4″ tool holders were fine, and I could use 1/2″ blanks. There are a lot of Kennametal holders (with extra inserts) out there for good prices, so that’s what I got. The ones I bought don’t have clamps to support the inserts, but I am told they should be fine if I’m not an idiot when I use them.

I truly look forward to using the lathe. The Clausing was a huge compromise. I couldn’t find tooling for it. It was worn. It had no metric threading. It’s fine for people who are more worried about saving money than getting things done, but I wanted to be able to use my lathe. The new one has very nice rests, good threading options, an insanely heavy bed for rigidity, and good speed options. It has a clutch and a brake, a feedscrew AND a leadscrew, and a DRO. I can already sense the relief I’m going to feel when I use it. So many frustrations will be things of the past. I won’t have to stick indicators on the lathe to find out where I am. I won’t have to take tiny cuts. I’ll be able to machine thin stuff with the follow rest. If I have a metric thread to do, I may actually be able to do it without shopping for dies. It should be just like using my mill. I’ll concern myself with machining, not with clever ways of making dubious tools work.

The garage’s existing wiring will power this thing. I’ll have to use a machine to provide 3-phase, but I won’t need an electrician. The motor, truthfully, is way bigger than I will ever need, and I should probably put a smaller one in, but it will run without major surgery on the house.

The Garage of Blues is getting weirder and weirder. I feel like I have to get out there and pray in the evening, or nothing is going to go right. God manifests himself to me there, more powerfully than anywhere else. When that happens to you a few times, you get to the point where you have to have it. Maybe this is why so many early Christians, who greatly exceeded our familiarity with the Holy Spirit, were so willing to die rather than renounce the faith. The more of God’s presence you get, the more value it comes to have. Jesus said the kingdom of God was like a pearl of great price which a man bought after selling everything else he had. No matter how great the value of eternal life is, the promise of salvation will not give you the inner strength to face execution. Daily intimacy with God is probably where that kind of determination comes from. When they offer you a choice between the axe and renouncing God, it’s like asking a junkie to quit cold turkey.

Sometimes I have strange sensations when I’m out there; partly physical and partly spiritual. I can literally feel the Holy Spirit doing things in my body. Sometimes I feel a strange pressure in part of my skull, as if something is being moved. It’s very odd. I don’t understand it.

Very often, I’ll feel God’s power lifting me up, like a stimulant. I’ll go in there feeling down and lethargic, and something will rise up inside me and make me sit up in the chair. It doesn’t come from me. I can’t tell when it will come. Usually, it starts to happen after about twenty minutes of praying in the Spirit.

I can’t handle stimulants any more. I can’t drink a cup of coffee or smoke a cigar. I’ll stay up all night. I can drink Coke and tea, in limited amounts, but that’s about it. Something inside me is making me alert and energetic. It’s as if the Holy Spirit is a drug, and he doesn’t want other drugs taking his place.

I was right when I started to believe that Christians do not emphasize the supernatural enough. We talk about character and hard work, but that’s stupid. Heathens can have character and do hard work. If these things were what mattered, Asians would be the most spiritually advanced people on earth, but they’re not. Christianity can’t break 2% in Japan. The Bible doesn’t tell us how hard Jesus and Moses worked. It tells us that God did powerful things through them by supernatural means. Not as a reward for what they did, but for what they believed.

The other day I was reading the Gospels, and I noticed that Jesus defined God’s work. He said, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” That amazed me, even though I had surely seen it before. Obviously, you have to try to do good things, but the real work is done by your faith. To this day, all man’s technology and effort can’t part the Red Sea and dry the bed, but the faith of Moses did it in an instant.

Christians hate this message. We are just like the ancient Jews. We LOVE talking about how hard it is. We love tightening up our little pinched faces and wagging our fingers at people and telling them nothing comes easily. We love citing the passages about the persecutions that will come to us. What a great way to persuade people to run from God! Give up everything you like doing, hang out with stiff, uptight people, and live in constant defeat! Who wants to sign up?

We act this way because we’re arrogant. We want to think we do things for God. Secretly, we want to think he owes us. We love thinking we’re better than THOSE people…the ones who don’t sacrifice and pray and do. But Jesus said we would come to him at the end and point to the good deeds we had done, and he would tell us he had never KNOWN us. He wants us to take on HIS projects, not ours, and he wants us to succeed at them by HIS power. That only comes through the Holy Spirit.

Think about Samson. What did he do to deserve his strength? Let’s make a list. He chased heathen women. He violated his Nazirite oath by handling unclean things. He married a woman who worshiped Dagon. Yet God gave him the strength to kill a thousand men in one fight. God remained with him until he voluntarily gave up the source of his supernatural power. If God only gave power to people who consistently did right, he would glorify us and not himself. Over and over in the Bible, we see God giving assistance and power to people who forsake other gods and admit they need his help.

God resists the proud but gives success to the humble. How can you be humble if you think you’ve earned God’s help? Seriously, now.

So anyway, things are getting stranger and stranger, and I am seeing more power and change. I only wish I could put other people on the same track. I keep a diary of things I think God has said to me, and the other night, I felt that he had told me this: “I no longer have needs; I only have desires.” I think that’s true. My health is good. I enjoy life. I have things to do. I am not worried about money. God heals me. He gives me his help every day. Usually, when I pray for something for myself, it’s something I really want to have, not something I actually need. That’s great, but it seems to me that if I’m stabilized, I should be able to devote considerable strength to helping other people who are still in trouble.

The biggest obstacle I’ve found is people’s insistence that they already know the way. Nobody wants to hear that God wants them to believe more and do less. Some people want to drive. Others derive a perverse pleasure from pushing the car. “Look at me, pushing the car in the hot sun, all sweaty and holy! I’m so wonderful! Thank you, God, for making me so great!” Personally, I would rather admit I’m a nothing and enjoy the air conditioning.

I have some friends who listen. The worst thing I can say about them is that they’re just like me. They develop a good routine of praying in the Spirit, and their lives improve fast. Then something distracts them, and like a manic depressive who forgets his lithium, they stop praying. And things go downhill. Then someone has to remind them how it works, so they’ll get back to prayer. It’s frustrating, dealing with people who are no better than you are.

God compares us to bits of clay on a potter’s wheel. That’s funny. If you think about it, a potter’s wheel is actually a lathe for clay, and the cutting tool is the Holy Spirit.

I hope I haven’t offended anyone, but I probably have. I hope the people I haven’t offended will take this and run with it.

Meet God, Over by the Band Saw

The Garage of Blues is turning into a real sanctuary. I opened it up and made it a place where I can work and even just hang out comfortably, and now I find myself going out there in the evenings to pray.

I keep telling people to pray in tongues. I keep telling them it will build their faith and change their lives. Every once in a while, a little voice tells me I might be wrong. But it keeps WORKING and WORKING and WORKING. Maybe it only works for a few years in a row!

I thought the garage would be a place where I could use my talents and spend time with friends. That was not the real purpose of the place. I keep my hideous camo backpack chairs out there, and I listen to Julie True and Grace Williams, and I pray for long periods. I am drawn to it. Finally, I feel like I’m spending enough time in prayer. And over the last week or two, amazing things have happened. I’ve felt power running through me. Faith has poured through me like water through a fire house, and I know it didn’t come from me.

I haven’t written much about the ridiculous lawsuits I faced a couple of years back. I am not interested in stimulating the plaintiff further. But I can tell you one interesting thing. I knew they weren’t going anywhere.

When I looked at the first complaint–I am not going to insult the plaintiff’s skills here–all I am willing to say is that I did not see it as a threat. As a lawyer, I saw nothing there that I thought was worthy of concern. Read into that what you will. The same thing is true of the complaint in the second suit.

Strangely, though, I went through periods of anxiety. I was sure I had nothing to fear–intellectually, I was sure–but sometimes I was worried anyway. It drove me to pray. It helped motivate me to find a church. One day, I was driving home from the grocery store, and I decided to pray about the latest lawsuit, and suddenly I felt faith gushing through me. I grabbed the center console of my truck, because I felt as though I would be swept away. I had to hang on in order to keep my balance, even though I was sitting.

My faith told me I was in the clear. It was a shocking experience. It was strange and unexpected, and I knew the power didn’t come from me. And it turned out my faith was right. In fact, God answered some very specific prayers about this situation later, and he did it in front of my father, whom I have been trying to reach for God. It was nothing less than astonishing.

Why tell you this? Because it demonstrates what prayer in tongues does. It’s like putting air in a compressor. Faith isn’t just belief. It’s a supernatural substance. It leaves you and goes to do its work when you pray, just like air powering an air tool. When you pray in tongues, you build up a supply of faith, or maybe you just widen the channel through which it travels. Then later, when you pray with your understanding, that faith is on tap. It will come out and surprise you. It will bully your doubts and fears. You have to experience it to know what I mean.

It may not happen until you’ve been praying in tongues for months or years; you shouldn’t expect to get it the first day. But it does happen. And now it’s happening to me several times a week, in my garage. It actually scares me sometimes. I want it. Don’t doubt that. But it’s unnerving when God manifests himself boldly. It’s rewarding, and it’s also humbling, because it reminds you that there really is a God up there who sees the stupid things you do.

I’m getting a new lathe. The old Clausing isn’t cutting it. So to speak. The search has wasted a lot of my time. I get obsessive when I have to spend a big sum, and I shop a lot. I was tired of being caught up in the quest. Last week, in the garage, I prayed for God to bring me the machine I needed, at a good, but not predatory, price. If you believe in the Golden Rule, you should not go out of your way to pay people as little as possible. I finally realized that a few weeks back.

A lathe is an insignificant thing. It’s not a new leg or relief from blindness. It’s something that brings me pleasure, like a new pistol. I don’t really need it. You would not expect God to be highly motivated to bring me one. Nonetheless, I got that same blast of faith as I was praying. It shook me; literally.

That was Thursday. On Friday, I got a surprise email from a machine salesman I had been talking to. For some reason, his company had knocked 10% off the price of a lathe that interested me, and they had removed some stuff I did not want, and they had added things I did want. Not for me. For the general public. They put it on Ebay. The salesman found out after the fact. I knew this was the best deal I was likely to see for months. It was much better than it sounds, because of the expensive accessories that were added and subtracted. I prayed about it, and I felt like I had the go-ahead, so I pounced.

I have no idea why they cut the price. They could just as easily have sold it for full value.

If God will send faith through me to help me find an extravagant toy, what will he do when I have a real problem? It’s pretty exciting to think about it. We don’t understand how good God is. We can’t help but underestimate him.

I don’t have time or a good enough memory to list all the other improbable things God has done for me after sudden bursts of faith, but believe me, it’s more than lawsuits and machine tools.

During my time in the garage, he has sent faith through me for some other things, so I am waiting and watching.

I should not be surprised that God helped me out with something I didn’t need. My church has its faults, but our pastor was right when he told us this: God responds to faith, not need. Think of all the Jews who cried out to him during the Holocaust. Who could have needed him more? Yet they were not saved. How many children die of cancer every year? How many rapes are permitted to occur? Think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were full of women, old people, pets, and babies.

God is the personification of compassion and justice. If need were what counted, the world would be a much safer place. The Bible tells us faith, not need, is accounted to us as righteousness. I can’t defend it or explain it. I am not God. But because I am not God, and I know my place, I will not criticize it.

I get things I don’t deserve, and God withholds bad things I do deserve. That is the reality of my life. I am not gloating. I’m stating the remarkable facts. Over time, it’s becoming more consistent. I don’t claim I’m immune to adversity, but he truly does take extraordinary care of me, and I believe he will do it for you, if you do what I do. It’s not a matter of permanently ceasing from sin. It’s not a matter of doing great numbers of good deeds or of being exceptionally virtuous. Those are all wonderful things to aspire to, and you should try to be good, but faith is what makes the wheels move.

People tell me I’m wrong, and that life is not supposed to be easy. But Jesus said his burden WAS easy. Christians will encounter persecution and mistreatment, but we get victory. Look at Jesus himself. He was persecuted all his life, and people tried to kill him on a number of occasions. Until the time when God was ready to give him up–for his own purpose–he was safe, and he had inner peace.

I don’t think I’m wrong. I think this is the way I’m supposed to live. Maybe one day God will let people who hate me take a hand in sending me to paradise, but I don’t think I’m going to live in defeat and suffering in the meantime. I think I’m going to win when I should lose.

Of anyone who would offer to correct me, I would ask, “What is your testimony? How many healings have you had? How many visions? How much peace do you have? How often does God’s overwhelming presence–not a mind-manufactured feeling of peace, but his supernatural, palpable presence–come to you in a week?” If nothing supernatural is happening in your life, you’re not living in God’s power. You’re trying to do it on your own. You’re living on pride and portraying it as a deep understanding of how undeserving you are. The fact that you’re undeserving does not mean God doesn’t want you to have it. What if he took that attitude toward salvation?

If it makes you happy to make pilgrimages on your bloody knees, and to live in poverty, and to talk about all the things of which you deprive yourself, so be it, but you should know that you’re really saying God owes you. God doesn’t owe me a thing. I get things I don’t deserve, all the time. I can’t be aware of more than a tiny fraction of the things he does for me, but even that fraction is overwhelming. I am a charity case. A trust-fund baby. I am only too glad to say so. There is no way I can earn this.

Why do you think the angels and the dead praise God incessantly? Because they were told to? Because they’re afraid? Of course not. It’s because you can’t be near him without being blessed. We say God is good, but do we really know what it means? It doesn’t just mean he never sins. It means he never stops doing good things for others, and he always does far more than we deserve or expect. The God who ordered us to go the extra mile goes the extra light year. If he didn’t, he would be like the teachers who laid heavy burdens on people, yet refused to touch them with their little fingers. He would be a hypocrite. Does that sound like God to you? If he asked anything of us, it’s because he was already doing it for us, himself.

Try it yourself. Try it for a week. No charge. Nothing lost. I won’t give you a money-back guarantee, because money is not going to change hands. Just do it. If it doesn’t work, go be an atheist. I’ve been getting results, and so have other people who have listened to me. I don’t think your experience will be any different.

Get With the Program

I haven’t written in a long time. Sorry. Back in the dim past, I thought this blog might be my ticket to a writing career, and apart from that, I just enjoyed the work. I got to know a lot of interesting people. I got myself on national TV. I felt that I had a voice. That was swell, but I no longer feel drawn to sit here every day.

I may be having too much fun in real life to allow me to devote myself to blogging. I’m getting to do so many things I’ve always wanted to do; I can’t tell you how wonderful it is.

Things I used to fail at suddenly work. Doors are opening. Problems are fading. My hope keeps increasing.

I keep seeing the answers to my prayers, as they materialize. It’s very odd, but I’ve learned that I have to pay attention, because very often, God will give me exactly what I asked for, but because I couldn’t anticipate the form it would take, I won’t recognize it immediately. You have to recognize these things and thank God and glorify him, if you want them to keep coming.

I had a dream–not the kind you have when you sleep, but a hope–that I would some day have a big garage-like room where I could put my tools and my musical instruments, and I wanted it to have seating space. I wanted it to be a place where I could do the things that I do. Creating things. Fixing things. Playing music. Socializing with friends. One day not long ago, I looked around my garage, and I realized God had already given me a small version of it.

The garage used to be out of control, and there were things I could not get to work right. The milling machine had some problems I couldn’t figure out. I couldn’t find a decent air dryer for the compressor. The lathe lacked tooling and threading options. I enjoyed the garage, but it didn’t work as it should have. I prayed for God to help me organize it and to help me get the tools working as they should.

Suddenly, the clutter is disappearing. There is space to work. I have an air conditioner. The air dryer is installed. Both compressors work, and I have a hose reel on each. The table saw and router are ready to go at a moment’s notice. The drill press and band saw are on wheeled bases so I can use them whenever I want. The workbench is positioned where it should be, so several people can work there at once. The mill is fixed. I’m working on choosing a better lathe. The scrap pile, which was like a beast I could not tame, is about to be subdued. I couldn’t get this stuff going on my own, but now it’s happening.

I’m also having barbecues. My friends and I have great food and good times, and we spend time in prayer and talk about God. It unifies us and helps us.

I think I have the guitar figured out. I’m using fingerpicks now, like Freddie King, and I’m even playing the banjo to get my picking skills back.

The guitar I started last year is finally nearing completion. Look at this.

It’s going to be really beautiful, not to mention unique. I couldn’t get it done on my own. All it lacks now is shellac, nitro, and hardware. I already have the HVLP guns to finish it. It’s moving right along.

I don’t believe in the TBN prosperity gospel AS PREACHED. I do not believe we’re all supposed to be rich, or that God gives us money in exchange for paying off Kenneth Copeland. I don’t believe the self-help gospel, either. There is a big difference between a man of faith and a man of positive thinking. But I know–I KNOW–that God will give you good things if you get into his will. He DOES heal. He DOES open doors. He DOES give you the desires of your heart. Not because you wrote checks to Benny Hinn or Steve Munsey, but because you prayed in the Spirit, helped the needy, fasted, stood on the word, and put God first in your life.

This life is not supposed to be miserable. Your body is supposed to be an embassy; a piece of heaven itself. Heaven’s laws, not earth’s laws, are supposed to rule your life. You’re going to have a certain number of problems, because the earth is a battlefield, and you’re a combatant. You can’t live here without being affected. But you are supposed to live in victory. That, I’m sure of.

For me, all this has flowed from praying in tongues. It put a foundation under my life, and everything else grew from it. It may not conform to your doctrine. I’m not talking about doctrine, though. I’m talking about what my God has done for me. There is a ton of support for it in the Bible, but you pretty well have to be full of the Spirit to see it, and if you choose, it’s very easy to deny it. At the moment, I don’t feel like writing a term paper to support my observations, but if you try what I’ve done, you will see whether or not I’m right.

God told me about this over 20 years ago, and I still walked away. I paid the price. I should have been married and doing something fulfilling by now. Instead I wandered in blindness. I got involved with a completely inappropriate and hopeless woman who would have ruined my life (she gave it a good try), had God permitted the relationship to continue. I fiddled with career moves that were doomed for lack of blessing. But now I am fortunate enough–sufficiently blessed–to see redemption in the time I have left. There is still quite a bit of toothpaste in the tube, and God is making the most of it for me.

I won’t complain. I caused my own problems. And things are going extremely well now. I feel like a young man. I have energy. I don’t have pains. I have no prescriptions. I don’t wear glasses or sweat about what I eat. I can lift the things I need to lift. I don’t get back aches or sore feet.

I don’t sit around wondering if this is all there is or why I should go on. Every morning is Christmas morning. Life is a succession of undeserved gifts.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m gloating. I’m not. I’m just amazed at God’s power and generosity.

God is going to take me out of this place. My faith tells me I’m headed north, to a place with a Garage of Blues bigger than this one. It will be dedicated to him, as my current garage is, as will the rest of the property. The whole place will be a sanctuary. A place of peace and rest. Wait and see.

This weekend I’ll be cooking again. I’m smoking a Boston butt, and I’ll be making fries fried twice in beef fat. I’ll also make cole slaw and a mango cheesecake. The cheesecake is beyond description. I use my own mangoes, which I freeze. You can’t get mangoes like this in a store.

Friends will come by, and we’ll start the day with the blues and good conversation. Later on, we’ll have Christian music and prayer, and we’ll let the Holy Spirit lead. It should be great. It’s really God’s party, so I am counting on him to make it work.

I better get up and do something worthwhile. I just felt like providing an update. If you like what you see, try it yourself. I will help if I can.