Stuff That Has Worked for Me

Yesterday I pointed out that I was going to launch a big prayer offensive this week. It’s nothing radical. I’m setting time aside every afternoon for concentrated prayer. I fasted yesterday, but I don’t plan to repeat that unless an angel appears between me and the TV and knocks the doughnut box off my belly.

I am already seeing results. I wish I could go into details about the problems besetting my family, but I think that’s a bad idea. I can say general things, though. I am suddenly seeing more peace and compassion and cooperation.

I don’t think modern Christians understand prayer very well. I am trying to learn how to do it right. I can tell you some things that have been helpful so far. I think they’re probably sound, but I am no expert.

First, the more time you spend praying in the Spirit, the better off you will be. We are supposed to have the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, and if I read the Bible correctly, prayer in tongues acts like a weight routine. It somehow magnifies the power of the Spirit within you, the way watering a plant every day makes the plant bigger. I believe the first psalm refers to this metaphorically. Lots of Old Testament stuff which had a literal or a primary symbolic meaning to the ancient Jews has a secondary and different symbolic meaning to Spirit-filled Christians.

My morning prayer routine was getting to be a little bit of a drag, but recently, I got an idea that helped a great deal. I absolutely hate jumping out of bed when the alarm goes off, even if I feel good and have things to look forward to. And once I’m up, I can’t manage more than 15 minutes of praying in the Spirit. But if I start as soon as the alarm goes off, without getting up, I can go 30 minutes, easy. And during that time, my body comes to grips with the fact that I have to get up. I also feel strengthened and energized (better than coffee). Then later, during my regular morning devotion, I can omit this part, making things easier.

This isn’t costing me anything, because I used to spend this time trying to convince myself to get up.

Second, when you have a problem you can’t shake, it’s a great idea to set aside time and seclude yourself and hit it with prayer until you feel a breakthrough. And this is what you’re supposed to do when you fast. Don’t sit around watching TV, thinking God will help you just because you’re hungry and miserable. When I fast, prayer is the last thing I want to do, and I think that’s because something that fears fasting is trying to get me to ruin the experience by failing to pray enough.

Third, don’t make yourself crazy declaring a long fast in advance. Instead, fast until you get your breakthrough, and then quit. I think I’m going to start taking this approach instead of going 36 hours or 60 hours or 84 hours, which is what happens when you skip entire days at the table. Dinner to breakfast is roughly half a day, and then breakfast to breakfast is a day, and that adds up to a day and a half. That’s a long time, and it only makes sense if the misery is accomplishing something. If you get where you need to be by 2 p.m., why suffer until the next morning?

Fourth, use a prayer list. Praying without a list is like doing a different workout every day. It’s a very bad idea. You should keep hitting the same targets over and over until you get somewhere. Jesus said, essentially, to keep pestering God until we got what we needed. He said we shouldn’t get into “vain repetitions,” but judging from the rest of the New Testament, he was not referring to praying repeatedly about the same thing. He probably meant we should not babble rote prayers as though they were magic spells, without connecting to God in the process.

Fifth, try to have time when you just talk to God, without asking for stuff. Just relax and socialize with him in a respectful way. This seems to be very helpful. You will find yourself concentrating more on him and less on needs. Prayer shouldn’t always be a chore.

Fred Stone says that when we are told to “pray without ceasing,” it means to talk to God throughout the day. That sounds believable to me. The more I do this, the less I have to worry about finding that I have been far from God’s addictive and satisfying presence for too long a time.

Sixth, spend time praising and thanking God. Praise is a strange requirement, and it may seem forced at first, but eventually, you will find you have an urge to do it.

I can’t swear I’m right about all this, but it’s working, so I don’t think I’m far wrong.

Ecce Porcus

If the subtitle is wrong, it’s no surprise. I got a “D” in Latin.

This is a momentous week. One of the pastors from my church contacted me last night. They have a cafe, and because of the bad economy, they had to let the chef go. Guess what they want me to do?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. My campaign of global food domination is finally launched!

They need some people to show up and cook, and they need recipes. I’m somewhat afraid I will kill half the congregation with arteriosclerosis, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Mmmm…eggs.

All kinds of warped ideas are rolling around in my head. I have a few dishes that are so good they will bring people to church just for the food. Maybe I can get those onto the menu. If I can get Trinity Church to sell my cheesecake, flan, and pizza, I’m sure the people in the neighborhood will notice. There is no good cheesecake anywhere on earth, and good pizza is rare in Miami. Good flan is not that hard to find, but good COCONUT flan, which is what I make, is another matter.

The nice thing about desserts is that I could make them at home, at my convenience, and bring them in and leave them. You could sell a slice of my cheesecake for two bucks, and there are twelve slices in a cake. They could keep it in the fridge and bring out slices as needed. I don’t know if they’d make any money, but I’m sure they’d break even, and don’t even tell me the women in that neighborhood wouldn’t come back for more.

Oh, baby. Strawberry croissants. Maybe I finally have an excuse to use my recipe. Strawberry croissants and pain au chocolat.

I guess I would not be able to eat much of this stuff, but I would enjoy putting my curious gift to work for God. I am still losing fat, due to his generosity.

Because I cook Cuban food and Southern soul food, I know how to make a number of cheap but excellent dishes. That’s a blessing. I could make congri for pennies a pound. Maybe we could serve it with caja-china-style pernil, which is a pork butt roasted with mojo. I could brine it to take the stink out. It would be excellent, and you can get pork butts for a dollar a pound.

I wonder if they’d let me do ham hocks. I love ham hocks, but some black people have a thing about pork these days. “Slave food” and so on. Of course, most of the blacks at my church are from Haiti and the other islands, so maybe they haven’t gotten all stuck up about pork yet.

The church is putting on its three-part Christmas musical these days, so on Sunday, I brought food for the cast. Macaroni and cheese and my startling Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili. That’s what got me the call from the pastor.

This should be a blast. I better go meet with him.

My Plan

I just looked at the Rasmussen polls. Obama has a 53% disapproval rating. Perhaps there is hope for America after all.

Perry Stone thinks so. I received a copy of the latest Voice of Evangelism magazine, and he thinks the righteous remnant in the US is big enough to motivate God to spare us.

I’m not so sure. God’s judgment tends to work like the delivery of a baby. You get pain and rest, alternating. Eventually, the big bomb drops, or God chooses to spare the people, as he did in the book of Jonah. Here’s what I suspect: sometimes God shakes nations up temporarily so the righteous will get it together and be prepared when the big collapse comes.

Christians all over the US are frantically preparing for hard times. Others are saying, “This is AMERICA. We are the MASTER RACE. We are TOO BIG TO FAIL.” They think we generated our own prosperity and security, because we’re superior to other human beings. They don’t attribute our blessings to God.

Maybe the US will be okay. Or maybe God-fearing people who are preparing will be okay, and many of the rest of us will live in tent Obamatowns. God spares nations, but as far as I know, he only does it when the hearts of the people change, in significant numbers. People don’t seem to have changed much since 2007.

Stone is highly critical of Obama, as he should be. Obama personifies pride, he is the furthest thing from gracious or grateful, his positions on moral issues are disgusting, and he is not good to the Jews, except for the self-hating Jews he employs. Stone is taking chances with his tax-exempt status by criticizing our disappointing secular messiah, but I don’t see how any man of God can keep silent when someone this odd is leading the country.

I don’t understand why a preacher can’t criticize a politician. That seems idiotic to me. Obama advocates allowing newborn babies to die from deliberate neglect. He believes partial-birth abortion, which is unquestionably murder, is fine and dandy. He wants to use our tax dollars to pay for abortion. He wants to slash our religious tax deductions. He believes Israel–the only civilized nation in the Middle East–has been spoiled, and that we need to be “even-handed” with the neighboring barbarians who are plotting to steal the Jewish homeland and kill as many Jews as possible.

Obama can attack the church and its values all day without fear. Why can’t a pastor stand up and tell his congregants Obama is a problem? How is that prohibition in any way reflective of the intent of the First Amendment?

Pharaoh was a politician. So was Herod. So was Hitler. So is Castro. A politician can be an enemy of God. Why shouldn’t God’s servants be allowed to fight back?

This will be an interesting week for me. I’ve decided to have five days of prayer, today through Friday. I want to set aside a certain amount of time every afternoon, to go after some persistent problems. A couple involve me directly. The rest involve people around me.

I love listening to Perry Stone’s father, Fred Stone. I got myself a CD of a conversation between the two of them, and they talked about the power of setting time aside for concentrated prayer. They both said there were times when they had secluded themselves to “pray through” problems. You go off by yourself and get down to business, and maybe forty minutes later, you feel you have found God’s face and gotten the help you needed. I think it’s a great thing to do. The things that happen in the physical world are only reflections of foundations that have been laid in the spiritual world. They are the tip of the iceberg. If you want to get rid of an iceberg, you don’t chip at the top. You have to do something about the part below the waterline.

Fred Stone said there are times in prayer when you push and plead, and finally, “Your faith tells you you’ve got it.” He has been at this for 60 years, so I take his word for it when he says this is the way to go. He also said that when you fast, it’s not always necessary to proclaim a period in advance and then stick to it. Apparently, it’s possible to get your answer during the first day of a three-day fast. He said he had had this kind of thing happen to him. You fast until you get your result, and then you quit. I think that makes sense. Daniel fasted for 21 days, but I don’t think the Bible says he proclaimed a 21-day fast, in advance. The story suggests the fast lasted 21 days because that was how long it took the angel to arrive. I suppose the fast would have been shorter, had the angel arrived sooner.

I hope this will be a breakthrough week. I’m sure it will. The more I progress, the more often I feel God’s presence and his confirmation that he will help me. I keep having experiences where the Holy Spirit just descends out of nowhere, for no apparent reason. It happened to me in the drugstore last month, while I was walking by the refrigerated beverage cases. I could not figure it out. I didn’t know what to do with it. I noticed two college students walking in front of me, speaking in Arabic. I decided to pray for them, since they happened to be handy.

I used to look forward to feeling God’s presence at church, and I still do, but now he shows up regardless of where I am, and I no longer see church as the primary place to feel his power. Fine with me. My church is 18 miles away!

Aside from convenience, there is such a thing as becoming addicted to God’s presence. You miss it when you get distracted for a few hours. You want it back, badly. Talk about a gift. Anything you’re addicted to will be a major part of your life. You will get good at anything you do a lot, so if you’re inclined to do something because of a craving, and that thing is beneficial, you’re very, very lucky.

Sure beats the typical American addiction, which is television. An American who doesn’t run the TV five hours a day is a freak. Imagine what your life would be like if you prayed and studied five hours a day.

It’s very sad that we watch the tube so much. By the time you die, you may have spent twenty years watching strangers play make-believe. That’s what TV is. Play-acting. No more important or real than a three-year-old running around with a towel pinned to his collar, claiming to be Superman. Nice use of your time. A typical person, faced with imminent death, would give anything to postpone it. And then what would most of them do with the added years? TV and the Internet. We are strange creatures.

I will get started on my five-day plan later on today.

Plus Prison Ministry Stuff

Today I went to a class for people who want to help out with my church’s prison ministry. Apart from the pastor running the show, there were five adults present. Not a big group, but enough to start.

We didn’t talk much about the ministry itself. I learned that we’ll have a wing of a local jail handed over to us, but that’s about all I know. We talked mostly about fundamentals. Christians should read the Bible. We should memorize scripture. That kind of thing. Good, solid, essential information.

I don’t know where we’ll go with this, but I’m glad I went. Maybe I can accomplish something worthwhile in my remaining time on earth.

On the way home, going against common sense, I decided to give a local pizzeria another try. My area has two pizzerias that keep going out of business: Riviera Pizza and Cozzoli’s Pizza. In the past, these places have failed over and over, and I believe fake cheese is the reason. I can’t prove it, but the cheese always tasted mealy and disintegrated as I chewed it, and it didn’t really taste like cheese.

This morning I noticed that Riviera was under a third (at least) set of owners, and it got me wondering. My policy is to try any new place in the area, or any place that changes hands, because I figure some day someone will make decent pizza in the South Miami region. Right now we have Domino’s and Papa John’s, which are really bad, and we have Miami’s Best Pizza, which is weird and frequently burned or raw or covered with the wrong stuff. To get good pizza, you have to go to Bird Road (La Dolce Vita) or Ludlam (The Big Cheese), at least.

I decided to be bold this afternoon. I went into the new Gables Pizza and Salad (formerly Riviera Pizza) and asked the owner whether they used real cheese. Why play games? I’m tired of spending good money just to find out someone is feeding me thickened vegetable oil or a quasi-dairy product known almost facetiously as “pizza cheese.” Why not just ask?

Surprisingly, the owner did not seem happy to have a stranger barge in and loudly ask if he was cheating his customers, which is sort of what I did, but he told me the cheese was real, and that it was not all mozzarella, and that it was 2% fat. I think I have that right. He said he did not use Grande cheese because he thought it did not live up to the price and hype. He’s right about that. It’s very good, but it’s not the only good brand out there.

He claimed he had never heard of fake cheese. He must not be Jewish. Jews who keep kosher eat some of the scariest fake cheese imaginable. They call it “parve cheesy.” Anyway, you can Google and read all about fake pizza cheese. They may call it “non standard” cheese, or they may use the innocuous-looking term “pizza cheese” to describe it, but it’s lame, whatever it is.

I ordered a slice of regular and a slice of Sicilian. The verdict? It’s okay! I guess that doesn’t sound like a compliment, but it is. The other stuff available locally is so bad it’s only worth eating when you’re starving. Gables Pizza makes pretty good pizza, and around here, that’s a big achievement. Making pretty good pizza is very hard.

The cheese seems real. It didn’t make me want to get up and dance, but it tastes like cheese. The crust is fine, although for some reason the Sicilian was a little wet. He uses too much salt. The sauce is acceptable. Personally, I’d make it a little sweeter and tangier, and I’d use a little more than he uses. A small amount of sugar and some white vinegar would improve his sauce a great deal. But he’s as good as The Big Cheese and not much worse than La Dolce Vita. That will get the job done, as far as I’m concerned.

This guy did not want to hear my input on the local pizza market, and that was a mistake, because he is in an area that is desperate for good pizza. I know exactly why his predecessors failed, and I know how he could improve his product and be virtually assured of a steady flow of customers. If he would start using Stanislaus Super Dolce sauce as his sauce base, he’d be a millionaire in three years. But there is nothing wrong with solid B-plus pizza, which is what he’s making. I’ll return and buy more in the future. Everyone pray he makes money, so the dark days of bad pizza don’t come back to torment us.

Quick Post

From Heather, whose mom is battling cancer and a bunch of other stuff:

Steve could you ask your readers to pray for my family?
We are trying to get a trailer placed on our property and the construction isn’t going well. We really need some heavenly intervention on our behalf. We had been promised a move-in date of 12/15 and we aren’t anywhere close.
As an aside-you have written before about the contractors in FL, their incompentency can’t hold a candle to the hillbilly jerks we’ve had to deal with on this. They simply don’t know what they are doing and we have construction equipment stuck in the mud that may be our new lawn sculpture because it’s been there two days and no one has bothered to try and get it out. The worst was showing up today at 11AM and leaving before 3P. I am in the middle of this high-risk pregnancy and being stressed is really taking a toll on me.
Thanks so much!

Relief

I got my fly cutter working. Thanks for the help.

Big shock: it was not a mysterious problem. It was just bad workmanship. It appears that the relief on the bottom edge of the tool was not sufficient. It worked in the past, and I did not find any evidence that wear had changed it, but when I ground the tool over again and put a nicer radius on it, it cut beautifully.

I threw my aluminum plates on the mill and resurfaced them. I had intended to get them to 0.500″, as closely as possible, purely for the learning experience, but I had to settle for 0.498″.

I decided to get a 4″ cam action fake Heinrich vise from Grizzly. People said a 6″ vise might be unwieldy, and I noticed that the mounting holes were not a great match for my slide table. I also ordered T-nuts and countersinks. I want to sink 3/8″ screws into the bottom of the plates, and I can’t do that unless the holes are countersunk or otherwise recessed.

My dad wants to know what I want for Christmas. I may let him help me out with the VFD or motor for the drill press. I can’t resist a chance to install a VFD. As for his Christmas, all I am willing to say now is this: I was forced to call the BATF and get information about “straw purchases” before I could take care of him.

I’m so glad God has given me a great relationship with my dad. Apart from the things God has done within me, it’s the greatest treasure I have. If you’re on the outs with someone, remember this: as long as there is a sliver of light in them, it is possible for God to reach them (and you) and help you reconcile. Some people are reprobates and can’t be fixed, but others will surprise you.

This week I’m going to start classes for the prison ministry at my church. I have no idea what I’m doing; I can’t believe I’m going. Over the last year, I thought I saw changes in a very headstrong and self-destructive person, and it gave me hope that others could be turned around, so when I found out we had a prison ministry starting, something pulled at my heart. Or maybe it was God’s boot in my rear end. I wonder what it will be like. I fully expect 95% of these men to be completely dishonest and unwilling to change, but surely some will be reborn. Jesus would not have told us to visit prisons if it were a waste of time. I hope I overestimate their unwillingness to learn and change.

I’m having some difficulties right now with someone I have been praying for and trying to help in the walk of faith. Perhaps a few readers would take a minute and say a prayer. God has been so wonderful to me, I want everyone to share in it, but you know what they say about leading horses to water. And it can be very frustrating when a difficult person provokes you to the point where you worry that your own attitude and behavior grieve the Holy Spirit and put the brakes on your development. It’s easy to sound holy on a blog on the same day you told someone off, face to face.

I keep saying I expect to be perfect any day now. I can’t understand why it has been delayed.

My jowl bacon, dried apples, and blackberry jam arrived from Kentucky. It’s almost like being at Granny’s house. I guess tomorrow I’ll fry up a couple of slices. The apples are not as brown and dry as the ones I remember. I don’t know if that will affect their usefulness in dried pies.

Life is good for me. Maybe some day I’ll succeed in helping one other person have it as good as I do. Perhaps this will occur next month, when perfection is finally upon me.

My Future Self

I still have to choose a vise for my drill press. No idea what size to get, or whether a quick-release vise is worth the additional cash. The vise I have right now is maybe 3″ wide across the jaws. The drill press is a 17″ model, so if anyone has a suggestion, I am listening. I’m thinking 4″.

I bought a very good book recently. I think the Christian life is mostly about spiritual warfare, as Paul made clear when he talked about principalities and powers, so I am trying to learn more about how to fight. I want God to teach my hands to war (Ps. 18:34). Luckily for me, I found Perry Stone’s Dealing With Hindering Spirits.

It always amazes me how little mainstream churches talk about Satan and demons and fallen angels (I mention fallen angels and demons separately because I suspect they are not the same things). Jesus mentioned three things he expected his followers to do, and one of those things was casting out “devils.” Fighting a spiritual war by being good, without going after the enemy, is like trying to win World War II by keeping your troops at home and growing a victory garden. It makes no sense.

Evil spirits make us sick, often terminally. They kill us by attacking us physically. They give us addictions. They give us sick behaviors we can’t quit, such as domestic violence and fetishes. They ruin our careers and our families. They make us blind, deaf, crippled, and insane. They prevent many of us from receiving salvation. They cause us to do things that bring punishment and curses on us and our families. They are as common as flies, and they are not trivial enemies, and there is no human being on earth who is not beset by them. Yet somehow we have decided we should not talk about them or fight them. Crazy.

The book taught me some interesting things. Example: it’s probably a stupid idea to get puffed up and tell Satan or another powerful spirit off. There are little spirits we can deal with pretty easily, but there are also big spirits that can make our lives hell if we attack them without preparation. Stone notes that Jesus pointed out that even when armed with his name, we would sometimes have to resort to prayer and fasting to get certain spirits to submit. Look how long it took God’s messenger to reach Daniel, when an evil “prince” withstood him. Three weeks. Not all spirits are pushovers.

The message I took away from that is that I should not go looking for trouble. I think there are certain fairly low-level spirits in the area in which I operate, and I should be content to overcome those spirits instead of inviting bigger ones to go after me and my family. Stone says some ministers will rail against powerful spirits, only to end up with horrible problems in their ministries because they bit off more than they could chew.

He also said a married couple will have more fighting strength than a single person. That’s something that has been on my mind a lot. I’m not constant. Sometimes I’m spiritually strong, but sometimes, I have to deal with earthly matters, and besides, I’m fundamentally bad. So I’m not always focused on my enemies. If there were two of me, I could be on my guard more of the time. The Bible says one will put a thousand to flight, and two will put not two thousand but ten thousand to flight. I see a single person as a house with only two walls. The spouse provides the other two walls, and that closes the house and provides security. You have to clean up your temples and establish armaments and barriers.

Stone wrote about Paul’s thorn in the flesh, and he noted that God told Joshua that if he didn’t clear his enemies out of the promised land, they would remain to vex him. In the Bible, the story of Joshua is symbolic of the story of any given believer. That’s what I believe, and I think it’s what Stone was saying. Crossing the Jordan (water) into the Promised Land represents baptism and salvation. The warfare the Hebrews did inside Israel symbolizes our warfare to get spirits and sin out of our “temples,” meaning our bodies and minds and hearts. We are supposed to fight the spirits using our faith, as the Hebrews did. The walled cities they conquered represent strongholds in our lives. Sins and afflictions we need to defeat. If you don’t get rid of as many as you can, they will remain and vex you. You will have given place to Satan, providing him with his own office in your “building,” and he will have the right to make you miserable, as the Amalekites made the Jews miserable after God’s people permitted them to live.

This is why Christians have to quit sinning, even if they are not under the law. Sin generates defeat and leads to a life of slavery. And then you lose the rewards you would otherwise store up in heaven. We have to be filled with the Holy Spirit and the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, and we have to be changed from inside, and we have to fast and cast down strongholds. I’m convinced this is how it works. Joshua got the Lord to help him destroy Jericho and Ai and other cities. We’re supposed to get the Lord to help us destroy alcoholism, unforgiveness, sickness, habitual sexual sin, drug addiction, pride, hard-heartedness, and other “cities” Satan has built inside us.

We’re supposed to be in constant communication with God while we do this, and we are supposed to walk in faith. The Hebrews wandered in the desert for forty years not because of proactive sin, but because of a lack of faith. It’s as bad as defiant and immoral sins such as idolatry and adultery. The spies looked at the Promised Land, and the ten faithless spies convinced the Hebrews they couldn’t defeat the giants that lived in the land, and God punished Israel for having no faith in his ability to deliver them. Had they had faith, they would have entered the land forty years earlier and been given daily guidance and blessings. They would have lived in victory.

You have to be like Joshua. You have to have a personal relationship with God, in which you seek his will daily, and then you have to do what he tells you to do, even if it seems like it won’t work. Otherwise you’ll wander. You may think you’re doing great, but you’ll eventually find out that you were spinning your wheels. Building on sand. When trouble comes, you will have to crawl back to God for help. You may be blind and poor and naked and not even know it.

That is my take on spiritual warfare, so I am glad to get any advice I can. My family has been subject to all sorts of evil-spirit manifestations since before I was born, and I am tired of it.

On the subject of broken strongholds, I continue to lose weight without much effort. I am down twenty pounds now. Fifteen more would be great, and it seems certain that I’ll keep losing, since I’m not the one doing the work. If God chooses, I’ll make it. I also have more control over sexual immorality and anger-related sin. I hope God will see fit to continue the improvements, because I don’t want my enemies to have any footholds within my walls.

Can’t Get a Permit for a Moat

I bought some elephant tur…”concrete buttons” today. These are the round concrete domes people put on their lawns to discourage drivers from using the grass as a highway. For a long time, the only name I knew for these objects referred to elephant droppings, and then I heard “berm,” and now I find that the people who sell them call them “concrete buttons,” so I am relieved to know the generally accepted term.

Some character who drives in this area early in the morning–almost certainly a newspaper delivery person–has been deliberately running over and moving my only elephant…my only concrete button. The yard is getting pretty torn up. This seems like a poor way to stimulate newspaper sales. He’s in for a surprise.

I considered getting buttons with holes in the middle and hammering rebar into the ground through them, with a little bit sticking up from the top of the buttons. This would make the buttons immovable and hole tires pretty quickly. But the object is not to cause damage. It’s to discourage idiocy. If the perpetrator doesn’t see the rebar, he’ll hit it, and then the deterrent will have failed. After that, there will be no hope of peace or change, and the newspaper guy and I will be like Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam.

It’s wonderful having a truck. In the past I would have had to borrow my dad’s ancient SUV and put the buttons in the back, making a mess. Today I backed the Death Star up to a gate, and a forklift pulled up and held the entire box of buttons over the truck bed while a guy unloaded them for me. Nice.

I spend time in prayer and study early every morning, and today I thought about the first psalm. It says we are to “meditate on the law day and night.” My assumption has been that as a Spirit-filled believer, I was to interpret this as an instruction to pray in the Spirit during the day. There are strong hints about this, which I am too lazy to repeat now. We believe the law, handed down at the first Shavuot, has been supplemented and to some extent superseded by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which was handed down at Pentecost (Greek name for Shavuot) after the crucifixion.

I think I missed part of the picture. The great thing about the post-Pentecost era is that we get to mingle our strength with the unlimited power of the Spirit, and while the latter is unquestionably the big-ticket item, the former is important. So I think it’s important for Christians to meditate on (which means “repeat internally”) the scriptures during the day, especially during time that is otherwise idle. I have a rule, which I observe poorly: never wait. When you find yourself delayed for some reason, find something useful to do. This fills that time very productively.

Because God is a thoughtful planner, I am fairly well prepared for this. For a long time, I’ve been memorizing psalms. I keep losing bits of them, but I have a pretty substantial mental library built up. The psalms are no joke. Jesus and the Apostles used them all the time, as did Satan when he tempted Jesus. They have power. Memorized scripture is the sword of the Spirit. It’s a weapon. It worked for Jesus. So it’s not like I’m just armed with meaningless poetry.

I’ve been making an effort to think on memorized psalms when my time is free, and it’s wonderful. It brings peace, and it reminds me of the power that is at work on my behalf. Very nice. It also helps me not to forget the things I’ve memorized. I recommend it. I’m not suggesting you have to do this in order to be a good Christian, but it appears to work.

I can never remember to do anything I purpose to do, so I asked for grace to be able to make myself do this, and so far, it’s working. I feel much better and more inclined to trust God. If you try this, or if you do it already, let me know what you think.

I learned something yesterday. I love watching Robert Morris, because I think God is telling him fantastic stuff about Spirit-filled living, but I think he may be wrong about something. He says he believes the Holy Spirit “owns” the spiritual gifts, and that any believer can exercise any gift. I’m sure this is true, to the extent that God can do whatever he wants with any believer (or with donkey or a rock or a stick) at any time, but I think we are wrong to believe that generally, the gifts are universal. Robert Morris seems to teach that if you have one gift, you have them all, all the time.

I thought he was right, simply because so much of the rest of his teaching was right on target, but I now think he’s wrong.

Here’s a bit from 1 Corinthians 12:

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

Here is more:

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

You can look at the first passage and say that it doesn’t expressly rule out the Morris interpretation. The fact that God gives different gifts to different believers at various times doesn’t mean those believers can’t operate in all of the other gifts at other times. But why would Paul write the second passage, if different believers did not have different gifts, generally? There would be no reason to write the passage. Why would one believer think himself better or worse than another, with regard to the gifts, if he had exactly what everyone else had?

If you read 1 Corinthians, you will see more evidence that his interpretation is shaky. I am too lazy to quote all of it.

Not a big deal, but worth noting.

Keep the Fire Extinguisher Handy

I have been looking at The Messianic Times, which is a newspaper I picked up on my visit to Ayts Chayim. It was a real eye-opener.

The cover featured a photo of a wolf disguised as a sheep, over a long article about spies that infiltrate Messianic congregations. You might wonder who would bother. The Klan? Stormfront? Pat Buchanan? Well, no. Actually, it’s Jewish journalists and Orthodox Jews.

It’s kind of weird. The Orthodox don’t proselytize among non-Jews. But some of them make a strong effort to go after Messianics. Which, now that I think about it, seems to conflict with their position that Messianics aren’t Jews. If you go after a “Christian of Jewish Birth,” aren’t you proselytizing a Gentile?

Do they do this to the Hare Krishnas and Buddhists? Weird religions attract a lot of Jews. I wonder if they all get the negative attention the Messianics are getting. I’ll bet there are a hundred times as many Jewish Buddhists as Messianics. And these Eastern cults aren’t just philosophies, any more than yoga is just exercise. They are full-blown religions, with spirits and idols and afterlife myths and the whole nine yards. Messianic Judaism is no less compatible with Orthodox Judaism than these faiths. The jump from one to the other is much smaller.

The stories in the newspaper were pretty shocking. There was one about a lady in Israel who runs a bakery. She lost her kosher certification because she was Messianic. She had to go to court to get it back. This was a huge threat to her livelihood. In the meantime, she had to put up with–you won’t believe this–children spitting on her in the street. I am no rabbinic scholar, but I am sure Jewish law does not endorse children abusing and battering adults in public. Surely the parents of these children did not know what they were doing. I guess the kids heard negative remarks at home and then veered off into juvenile excess.

The Israeli High Court of Justice determined that kosher status was related to methods of food preparation, not the religion of the person doing the work. I don’t think that would fly over here, where the whole business is overseen by religious authorities instead of secular public servants. Although kosher slaughterhouses are full of Gentiles.

I wonder if a Christian can own a kosher business in America. I know products made by non-Jewish companies routinely get certification. Look for the tiny insignias on your Oreos and Cokes.

The paper said the spies sent to Messianic congregations are known as “probes,” and they do things like getting your contact information and putting up posters publicly identifying you as Messianic. That has to be a bummer if you live in Israel.

I wonder if Messianics send covert operatives to the Orthodox. I doubt they could make an impact. I read that there are only about 100 Messianic synagogues in the US, so math is not on their side. I know there are Messianics who continue to associate with other Jews, but I doubt the primary purpose is conversion. After all, these are the people they knew prior to becoming Messianic.

The paper also mentioned arson and a Molotov cocktail.

Suddenly I think I understand the things Jesus said about giving up families and houses and so on, for the kingdom. I’m sure he meant it as a general message to all believers, but I can see how it is particularly relevant to Messianics. Back when the church was primarily Jewish, they had to put up with a lot of violence and other types of persecution. It’s not like the situations most modern Christians face. If you join a church, your buddies might make fun of you for refusing to go to strip clubs with them, but you’re not likely to have kids spit on you, and flogging is passe.

Maybe when Jesus made remarks about turning the other cheek and giving in when wronged, he was primarily talking about Jewish followers who faced persecution from their own people. That would make a lot of sense, because he clearly endorsed self-defense at other times; he ordered his followers to buy swords. The mistreatments he mentioned are typical of the offenses religious minorities suffer when persecuted by the majority. You wouldn’t want your fledgling religion to be known for fistfights and lawsuits. Before long, instead of a church, you’d have a gang.

One Messianic has told me her parents offered to pay her to be treated by a psychiatrist. Not pay the psychiatrist; pay HER. Apparently they believed Messianic Judaism was a mental illness. I wonder if they would have tried to have her treated for atheism.

I can’t tell people how to practice their religions, but I think history shows that violence, crime, and strongarm tactics only produce suffering and reprisals. That’s been true when Christians and Muslims and Hindus have used these methods. I don’t know of any faith that has done anything positive by this approach, unless you count the wars the early Hebrews fought at God’s express command, as revealed by prophets. If Moses or Joshua tells you–face to face–to spit on the baker, you spit on the baker. Otherwise, probably best to rely on prayer and persuasion and a godly example.

I much prefer the attitude of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the very non-Messianic head of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Christian employees are not allowed to proselytize, but they are not forbidden to talk about their beliefs if they come up. And there is a Messianic on the board, and as far as I know, the Rabbi’s kids don’t spit on him. I would guess that Jewish employees enjoy the freedom to promote their faith to curious Christians.

The Rabbi’s position shows that coercion is not an officially recognized and sanctioned tool of Orthodox Judaism, so it would be a dangerous mistake to assume otherwise.

I really feel for the people I met on Saturday. I know the important thing is to have God on your side, but it can’t be fun, being part of a controversial movement with virtually no human support. I admire their guts.

Cardboard?

As much as I love lard, I am starting to have doubts about it. Today I really wanted a biscuit, but I had no bacon grease on hand, so I made biscuits with a mixture of butter and lard. The texture was fine, and there was no boar taint, but they tasted a little bit like cardboard. It’s very hard to beat bacon grease in biscuits. The flavor has no rival.

I suspect the cardboard flavor was caused by oxidation. Lard seems to go funny very quickly. The can I have is from Thanksgiving, and I wouldn’t want to use it after the middle of this month. Maybe lard should be kept in the freezer.

I used butter because lard doesn’t have a lot of flavor. I do this with pie crusts, too. If lard isn’t optimal in biscuits, maybe it’s not the right thing for pies, either. Maybe bacon grease is the fat of choice. Sometimes the hint of bacon flavor will be a problem, but it won’t hurt a fruit pie.

Country ham grease is fantastic for baking, but you have to dilute it because the flavor is so strong. It can add a strange flat taste to food. Hard to describe.

Now that I eat so little, I don’t see how I can work effectively on recipes. What would I do with the food? Today I made four biscuits, using half a cup of flour, and I gave half a biscuit to Maynard and Marv.

I didn’t make it to church yesterday. I figured I’d be home from Boca in more than enough time to make it to church by six, but I got home so late, I would have been here for about half an hour before turning around. I was wiped out, too. I didn’t eat enough, so the lights in my head were starting to dim. I corrected that with two slices of bad pizza. I feel bad for the people who recently took over the nearest pizza joint. Their food is never going to be any good until they start using real cheese, but I doubt they’d admit using the fake stuff if I offered a suggestion. The lady who waited on me yesterday had a great attitude, but when it comes to pizza, service means nothing. Quality is all.

I could get rich selling pizza in this neighborhood. I could make a dynamite cheese pizza from $1.50 in ingredients and sell it for ten bucks. Surely that margin would cover rent and other costs. There has never been a decent pizzeria within half a mile of downtown South Miami, which is the nearest conglomeration of stores and restaurants. Anyone who makes good pizza available in this area will be a millionaire in a year. I wish someone would do it. I wish there were two of me, so one could open the pizzeria and the other could go on with life.

If I had a pizza joint, I’d sell pizza, rolls, and soft drinks. Forget the other stuff. Too much aggravation. People would come. No one would refuse to do business with me because I didn’t offer fripperies like stromboli and spaghetti. They’d crawl on their knees and pay whatever I asked. The local pizza famine is at least 25 years old. I’d be hailed as a hero.

Mike needs to move down here so we can become pizza magnates. I’ll make him do all the work. Of course, he’d be dead in six months, and they’d have to bury him in a cargo container. That’s the down side. My dad would probably be buried next to him.

I should just go in there and tell those people they’re doomed. I can hand them my recipe, plus directions to Gordon Food Supply, so they can get real sauce and real cheese. But they probably have to buy whatever garbage their company sells. They’re part of the Cozzoli’s chain. I’ll bet they have some sort of exclusive commissary contract.

Time to leave for church.

There Must be Some Mistake

What I day I had. I’m almost too pooped to write about it.

I contribute to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. One of their reps contacted me a while back, asking to meet with me. I went, and we had an amazing conversation, and we became friends. She invited me to visit a Messianic synagogue she attends, and today was the day.

I visited Ayts Chayim (I wish I had asked how to pronounce “ayts”) in Boca Raton. At the moment, they’re meeting in a church. Because Jews worship on Saturday, the church is able to accommodate them.

I can’t tell you how strange it was to enter a building which was clearly a church and to find myself surrounded by the familiar mannerisms and speech patterns of Jews. I’ve spent much more time around Jews than in churches or around hardcore Christians, and I am very used to them, but being with them in a church is weird; it’s like being transported in time to the Messianic Age, when Jews and Christians will presumably be united and better able to associate in comfort.

They did a very good job. There was worship, and they brought the Torah out of the Ark (I wondered how they managed to get other Jews to sell them the scroll), and then the Torah was carried around the church, and people touched it and then kissed their fingers. The man who carried it made a couple of circuits around the seats while happy people danced behind him. There was a good deal of dancing throughout the service, and I was relieved to see that there was some dignity to it. These days, worship sometimes turns into a sideshow. The “Davidic worship” folks can get a little nutty.

They read today’s Parasha (Torah portion), and they added a New Testament portion which, in the opinion of the Rabbi, was related. Let’s see. I can’t remember the exact order of things. Prayer for the sick, musical worship combined with giving, and at the end, teaching. Something like that.

Rabbi Brawer taught on the story about Jacob wrestling with the angel of God. If I understood him correctly, it was his opinion that the angel was God himself. More specifically, the preincarnate Jesus. This is a fairly widely held belief. He pointed out a few things I had not noticed about the story, and he concluded with four lessons that logically followed. I would not have picked these things up on my own; they were the kind of things Spirit-filled pastors and evangelists come up with. If I had to name the main point, I would say that it was that ideally, man is supposed to deal with God up close and in person. Like David said, “When thou saidst, seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, thy face, Lord, will I seek. Hide not thy face far from me. Put not thy servant away in anger. Thou hast been my help. Leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation”

There was more to it than that, but like I said, I’m very tired. I recall this: he said the angel kept asking Jacob his name before he would bless him, because Jacob had lied about his identity when he convinced Isaac to give him Esau’s blessing. And Jacob demanded the angel’s blessing in order to make sure his legacy was not corrupted by a counterfeit blessing obtained by deceit. That was interesting. A couple of weeks back, I learned that David questioned his own legitimacy. Now I see Jacob may have had a similar issue.

After the service, I had lunch with some of the folks in attendance, and I enjoyed it tremendously. Believe it or not, I met some conservatives! And a bunch of them want to get concealed carry licenses, and the Rabbi is all for it! I may be invited to help out.

I learned that there is a very stealthy side to their faith. Because other Jews believe they have the authority to expel Messianics from the race and cause them problems should they try to emigrate to Israel, Messianics sometimes have to fly under the radar. I don’t mean they lie. But there is a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy at work. I can’t say more without casting unwanted light on the things that go on. I don’t mean they’re sneaking into synagogues and pouring holy water on the pews, or that they’re secretly baptizing their neighbors’ kids. It’s nothing sinister or weird, and it doesn’t involve proselytizing. But there are times when they have to keep quiet in order to associate with other Jews.

They’re not flogging them any more. That’s progress! Paul never had it this good.

I noticed something about the worship music. It was very good, but I thought it had a little bit of a mournful quality to it. Repressed sorrow, perhaps. Reminiscent of the superficial, bittersweet, determined gaiety of klezmer. Surely there must be a lot of sorrow in the life of a Messianic Jew. They feel they have something wonderful, yet the people with whom they yearn to share it consider them traitors. Literally worse than Hare Krishnas or pagans who disdain their God entirely. It’s surprising how much anti-Jesus sentiment there is among Jews. My IFCJ friend said starving Jews overseas have turned down IFCJ food, simply because the people who paid for it believed in Jesus. Everyone knows there has been anti-Semitic persecution, but it’s not like the IFCJ is grinding up communion wafers and putting them in the food.

I formed some other impressions. Maybe they’re wrong. It seemed that when the Rabbi spoke of deliverance from fear and anxiety–a gift many Christians are used to–these people praised God more intensely than ordinary followers of Jesus. Inner peace seems to be a special challenge for Jews. If so, it seems appropriate, because they are a nation of wanderers, separated from their homeland by centuries of exile and never quite accepted by their foreign hosts. Never quite safe. How can such a people relax the way the rest of us do? To quote David again, “Thou tellest my wanderings. Put thou my tears into thy bottle; are they not in thy book?”

In my church, you can generally feel the presence of the Holy Spirit very soon after worship begins. At Ayts Chayim, it took a while for the heat to come on. I was concerned at first. Some churches never light up, and that is especially true of churches where God’s power isn’t working. But as the service progressed, I began to feel the sensation. Maybe the delay has something to do with the relatively restrained nature of the people, compared to the Haitians and Cubans and white pentecostals I worship with. Or maybe it just reflects the fact that everything involving God has to be harder for Jews. A few Noachide laws for us; 613 commandments for them. That’s how it goes.

These people must be tough. If Jews are outsiders, what is a Jew who can’t turn to other Jews?

Hope your day was as interesting as mine.

Handouts Welcome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bring Your Rubber Duck

My Ebay Jacobs Super Chuck arrived. It’s a beauty. I went for the 16N, which goes up to 5/8″. I don’t know how I managed this, but I got an unused chuck for about $67. That’s half of what Enco charges. There’s no key, but I have two that will fit.

I already have an old 14N I got on Ebay. I thought I was so smart, buying used. The 14N acts like it has wadded-up metal obstructing the parts when you turn it. The 16N is nearly as smooth as my Albrecht. I was stupid, buying a used chuck just because it looked good in the pictures. And the 14N was a little small. I guess I could use it on the lathe, if I got it working right.

The guy who sold me the chuck wrapped it in about seven layers of bubble wrap, with packing tape around each layer. Using a big Gerber folding knife, it took me several minutes to get to the chuck. As I cut and pulled, I heard myself say, “This guy must be retired.”

Do you ever say things to yourself that you find funny? It happens to me from time to time. In a sermon, my pastor told our church that the way to control lust worked like this: when you see a hot tamale an attractive woman walking down the street, you praise God for his work. Today while walking out of a restaurant I passed a lady with a remarkable endowment, and before I realized what I was doing, I thought, “Way to go, LORD!”

That was bad.

I’m getting better. The last time something like this happened, I saw a lady walking down the sidewalk, and I thought, “Way to GO, lady!” I totally forgot the praise part. You can see how I’ve improved.

I keep telling people I expect to be perfect in a couple of months, but there have been unexpected delays.

I am not alone. Last night at my prayer meeting, I learned that one of my church’s members makes a living selling sex pills to to convenience stores. I did not know what to make of that. And the pastor who leads the pill guy’s regular prayer group said their group was going to be hot-tubbing together. I thought he was kidding, so I laughed. And it turned out I was wrong.

Call me overly cautious. I see a recipe for problems here. I’m glad the last time I got together with guys from the church, all we did was shoot pistols and talk about killing people. You know. Holy stuff.

I don’t know what I’d do if I were invited hot-tubbing. I’m not fond of other people’s dirt and germs. I don’t know if I could bear to sit chest-deep in man soup. Wasn’t one of the Apostles boiled to death? I would hate to get martyred by a malfunctioning jacuzzi. Next to the guy who sells sex pills.

“The bottle was empty when we found them, Chief.” “Okay, let the news photographers in now.”

Last night someone suggested doing a tailgating thing at the stadium where the Dolphins play. We’d have food and drinks, and we’d hang out and try to win souls by distributing ribs or something. “God took Adam’s. We’ll GIVE you ours.” Something like that. Sounded great to me. I love barbecuing. Then someone pointed out that the line of cars is like a thousand miles long at seven in the morning, and my righteous zeal to win souls for Jesus disappeared instantaneously. So I have to ask myself, “Would I rather see people go to hell than sit in line for five hours?”

I prefer not to reach a conclusion.

I’d do it, but man, I hate lines.

We might start chauffeuring people to services. We tossed that around. Problem is, you need drivers with chauffeurs’ licenses, and you have to get a physical and pay over $300 to take a written exam. I don’t know if we’re capable of that level of effectiveness. Right now, we have trouble getting people through the church cafe’s waiting line in under an hour and a half.

We will definitely do something. We just don’t know what it will be. Figuring things like this out is where the Holy Spirit comes in handy. Otherwise, each of us is just listening to his own internal Pointy-Haired Boss.

We Elected a Grinch

Obama knocked Charlie Brown off the air so he could hold a Tuesday night press conference. Does anyone else think this is completely appropriate?

Obama is a humanist. He is nominally Christian, but he opposes Christian goals as a matter of course, and he thinks Israel is no more important than any other nation. To many, including me, he appears to see himself as a secular messiah who will fill in the gaps where God (in the humanist mind) has failed. The Charlie Brown Christmas special is one of our nation’s few prime-time, network-TV celebrations of God’s greatest gift. It only makes sense that Obama would have no feelings for this beautiful program, and it may very well be that hidden forces motivated him to oppose it. God was supposed to be glorified last night. Instead, Obama got the spotlight.

You’ll notice that he didn’t mess with “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” which is a cartoon that denies God glory. Dr. Seuss and liberal Chuck Jones removed all mention of Jesus from the holiday and turned it into an exaltation of pretty but powerless and limited earthly love. Jesus was not primarily about good behavior or warmth or kindness; those are only parts of the picture. He was about total submission to God’s will, and he was about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He was about the Torah and sacrifice and sin and redemption. He did not save humanists or Muslims or Buddhists, no matter how nice they may be. He saved only those who admit their sins and their need for salvation. He works in our lives today, not just by moralizing and correcting, but by giving us the supernatural power to behave righteously. You can’t get that from philosophy or self-help books.

People forget that the Bible says Jesus will eventually make his robe wet with the blood of his human enemies. He will literally kill them in person, just as the Holy Spirit executed Ananias and Sapphira in the book of Acts. He sent an angel to kill 185,000 soldiers in a single night. He killed the firstborn males of Egypt, including babies and puppies. He allowed Hezekiah’s descendants to be taken captive and castrated by the Babylonians. He caused Herod to be eaten alive by worms. He turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt. Lovey-dovey pacifist humanists don’t act that way. There is more to Jesus than hugs and kisses. Maybe pastors don’t talk about it much, because God is not blessing their ministries with followers, and they think the answer is to tell people what they want to hear. But anyone who makes an effort to read the Bible will see that our loving God can be the most terrible enemy imaginable. This, after all, is the person who created hell.

I love Dr. Seuss, but even I am not dumb enough to prefer his work to the gospel.

The pleasant thing about God’s severe side is that he uses it to chastise us, for our own instruction, and to fight our battles. When your enemies attack you unfairly and without reason, you don’t want a pacifist on your side. You want the God who sent his angel to kill 185,000 Assyrians. At the very least, you want the God who closed the mouths of the lions for Daniel.

It seems like Obama’s behavior is calculated to offend Christians and observant Jews. I’m sure it’s not (at least not in Obama’s mind), but it works out that way, over and over. We all need to pray this man gets a clue.

I’ll be pretty busy today. I’m working on something important, and I would appreciate prayers for my success. I have learned that there is absolutely nothing I can be sure of accomplishing without God’s favor.

ABC says Charlie Brown will return next week. Let’s hope Obama does not return in 2012.

Am I Dreaming a Dream?

I am listening to a Shavuot sermon by Rabbi Ira Brawer of Ayts Chayim Messianic Synagogue. I have been invited to attend this Saturday, and I can’t wait. Don’t ask me why; I just can’t wait.

It’s so weird hearing a Jew talk about Shavuot as a charismatic Christian would. To Jews, Shavuot is the day God gave Moses the Torah. To Christians, it’s the day God gave man the Holy Spirit, writing the Torah on man’s heart. We see the first Shavuot as a shadow of the one that occurred on Pentecost after the resurrection. It’s odd to hear a Jew who believes the same thing.

Aaron likes to call Messianics “Christians of Jewish birth,” but they are different from ordinary Christians. They don’t have their roots in the Christian church. Their roots are in Judaism. They are Jews (“people of Jewish descent,” whatever) who continue to practice Judaism but believe Yeshua is their promised messiah. It’s not really the same as being a Baptist or a Catholic. You can’t call these people Protestants, the way we generally refer to non-Catholic Christians. They’re in a class by themselves.

I know it’s not very likely the Orthodox would respect the Messianic brand of Judaism, even if Yeshua were not part of it. But it’s more like Judaism than anything else.

I guess the reason I find this exciting is that I have been around Jews since I was three years old, yet I have never known one with whom I could cross the bridge of faith. There was always a “middle wall” of separation between us. This was true even of close friends. It’s wonderful to see Jews I can relate to with less restraint.

Actually, my ninth-grade algebra teacher was a major babe, and she was Messianic. I should have made her wait a few years so I could marry her. She was only six years older than me. We could have made it work! Maybe I could have gotten her to change those D-minuses she gave me.

These guys are probably going to start having a big impact on Christianity, because their knowledge of Judaism gives them insights the rest of us can only have by direct inspiration of God.

It’s wonderful. It’s like listening to Perry Stone or Robert Morris, except this guy is talking about Judaism from the inside.

The Old Testament foreshadows New Testament events in ways that are mind-blowing, and the Messianics must be more aware of it than anyone.

Jewish holy-rollers. How can you beat that?

Listen.