High Occupancy even in August

My bed and breakfast continues to attract customers.

This weekend, I played host to friends I got to know at Trinity Church and New Dawn Ministries in Miami. I will call them Fred and Ginger. Fred is half Nicaraguan and half Puerto Rican. I think Ginger is Puerto Rican, but I’m not sure. Their 13-year-old son Rupert came with them.

I have a list of people I pray for. I pray that God will move them out of areas where his people are weak and the spirits against them are strong. I ask him to give them homes in places where his people are strong. I ask him to use those properties for prayer and gatherings. So far, I’m the only one who has received these things. Fred and Ginger are not doing too bad, though. They lived in Little Haiti when I met them, and they had to deal with voodoo parades on their street. Now they have a townhouse in Pompano. A step up from Voodooville, AKA Miami.

Fred and Ginger drove up in June, and we had a long prayer session the day after they got here. We prayed a lot during their visit. Someone I know was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and since then, she has been praying in tongues a great deal, which means her life is going to change tremendously.

Fred got fired from a job he had had for a long time, and he got a similar job which didn’t pay as well. When he came in June, he and Ginger wanted prayer for a new job. Fred was also unhappy because he was mismanaged. He wasn’t trained well, and the company didn’t back up employees. They had very lofty expectations, but they didn’t do the groundwork to support them (much like the churches we attended).

I have been praying for God to rid people I know of things that aren’t pleasing to him, including jobs. This weekend, I realized I might have had a hand in Fred’s firing. I didn’t feel too bad, because he hated the job. He was at peace with what had happened, because the job was so unpleasant.

A week or so before they arrived, I had a dream in which Fred showed up at a table where I was eating. His head was shaved. To me, this always symbolizes a lack of prayer in tongues. I relayed this info to Fred, and as he talked to me, he essentially admitted he hadn’t been praying in tongues enough. That was a relief. If someone comes to me and says he has been praying in tongues for two hours a day and still suffers a lot, I don’t have much to offer him. If he hasn’t been praying, I know what to recommend. You can’t have a really blessed Christian walk without it. You will have problems you should not have.

I don’t know if Fred will jump back into prayer in tongues or not. Sometimes he is slow to take advice.

It was wonderful to have them here. There is nothing like having Spirit-filled Christians to pray with. I have two more coming this weekend.

While they were here, I dreamed about my dad. He generally symbolizes Christian leaders. I dreamed we were walking down a street. He was telling me a story from his days of practicing law. When we got to the end of the street, we came to a wooden dock. I stopped on the dock. My dad walked right off of it and sank to the bottom.

I didn’t jump in. In the dream, he was pretty healthy, and he was capable of swimming. I figured he would pop right up. He didn’t. He was under the water for 5 or 10 long seconds before I saw his head emerge.

I started guiding him toward a ladder about 10 feet away. Two women showed up. One had short hair and extremely large breasts, like soccer balls. She was distressed by my dad’s predicament, and she seemed angry at me. She jumped in the water and pushed him toward the water.

When he reached the ladder and climbed out, it turned out the ladder was nearly on land. He rolled off and onto dry land covered with green grass.

I took the dream to mean that I don’t need to sink to the level of frustrated Christians in order to help them. That would be enabling.

Water represents the water of the world, which is the bad ideas and words of spirits who are against God and of people who don’t know God. When you don’t have authority that comes from time spent with God, you sink below the water and lose. My dad represented anointed Christians who don’t spend enough time with God.

The ladies represented feminine insurgency in the church. Women are not supposed to lead churches, period. Sorry, but that’s how God has set things up. These days, churches are feminized. They don’t talk much about judgment and consequences. They gloss over personal accountability. They teach us we’re supposed to wallow in other people’s problems and coddle them, which is nothing like what Jesus did.

The lady with the big breasts had short hair because she didn’t spend enough time with God. She didn’t hear from him, so she took charge inappropriately instead of submitting and letting me handle things. Abnormally large breasts represent compassion which is out of hand and not balanced by logic.

The ladder represents Jesus. He was Jacob’s ladder (or stairway). The dry ground with grass is where God wants to put us. In Psalm 23, he says he makes us to lie down in green pastures. He doesn’t make us plant green pastures or hoe weeds. We just lie down and eat.

The lady sank into the water with my dad and got herself wet. Her pushing didn’t help my dad at all. He was almost at the ladder when she got full of pride and took over.

I was saved from the striving and fussing. I stood on the dock, dry, and watched a confused person act up and make a fool of herself.

The message is that we don’t have to carry people like babies. We’re supposed to be helpful, but not to the point where other people’s failings eat into our blessings. Example: if your son is a compulsive gambler and tells you someone is going to break his legs for money, you’re not supposed to mortgage your house for him. He needs to repent and go to rehab. It’s not on you if he refuses.

I have a responsibility to warn other people when they’re blowing it, but I don’t have to get involved with their carnal efforts to save themselves. If they’re not doing what God has told us to do, they need to get back to that before bothering me and spreading their problems to me. I am available to pray and guide and so on, but I don’t have to pay off your student loan (although I got roped into doing that for one defeated person).

When people fall off the dock, I’m not supposed to dive in and wrestle them to shore. They’ll just fall off again, unless they change their ways. I’m supposed to stand on the dock or the shore and tell them where the ladder is.

When Peter sank in the Sea of Galilee, Jesus didn’t sink with him. He stood on the water and reached down to him.

I woke up after this dream with a new understanding of favor.

I was my grandfather’s favorite grandchild. My mother was his favorite child. I was my parents’ favorite. I’m the smartest person in the family. Now that my grandparents and parents are gone, God favors me. He doesn’t favor everyone. There are many people he does not favor, and many are Christians. I’m not supposed to feel bad about this. It’s a good thing. It has to be good, because God ordained it. Anyone who demands an explanation needs to demand it from God, not me.

To be favored is to be a favorite. This is what God offers you, if you turn to him. Joseph was a favorite. Jacob and Isaac were favorites. David was a favorite. Daniel was a favorite. It’s okay to be a favorite.

I tend to think of Psalm 91 as a psalm of protection, but it’s more accurate to call it a psalm of favor. It’s about a person who escapes the problems other people have, because he is close to God. Diseases don’t touch him. He is delivered from problems. He watches while thousands of people fall around him. He is set above spirits that reject God. No evil befalls him.

It’s okay. If God makes you one of his 1%, you have nothing to feel guilty about.

If I get to stand on the dock while proud, carnal Christians who don’t pray strive and resent me for refusing to jump into the mosh pit, it’s okay. It’s right.

Remember Mary and Martha? Jesus was at their house with guests, and Martha was working her butt off to serve everyone. Mary sat at Jesus’ feet instead. Martha told Jesus to order her to get up and help her. Not only did Jesus refuse; he told Martha what Mary was doing was better.

It was better–more righteous–for Mary to sit at the feet of Jesus and do nothing than for her to help her sister.

It is believed that John was the only one of the 12 disciples who did not die a violent death. Ancient sources say the emperor Domitian put him in hot oil in a stadium full of people and fried him alive, but he felt no pain and was not injured. His deliverance spurred a lot of conversions. Sure looks like John had favor, and what does the Bible call him? “The disciple whom Jesus loved.”

When Jesus was murdered, he turned his mother over to John, not Peter, to be looked after. That says a lot.

We are not responsible for what happens to other people unless we fail to speak the truth to them. If we warn them, whatever happens later is their fault. Completely. Not one particle of responsibility adheres to us.

If good things happen to people who are close to God, while other people suffer and lack, it’s fine. It’s what’s supposed to happen. The Bible says, “The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.”

People ask why God created the world, knowing spirits and people would end up in hell. The answer is that he’s not responsible for what anyone else does. The fact that he created you doesn’t mean he’s to blame for anything you do.

I’m not responsible for other people’s suffering. I don’t owe anyone a single word of apology or explanation if I do well. It’s unpleasant, to say the least, to watch people fail unnecessarily, but it would be worse, and it would not be God’s will, if I chose to share their misery and abandon his favor.

My beliefs about personal accountability have firmed up a great deal since my dream. When you and I stand before God, he won’t let you tell him what I’ve done wrong, and he won’t let me tell him what you’ve done wrong. We’ll be expected to account for ourselves and no one else. He won’t care if you didn’t get slavery reparations or student loan forgiveness. He’ll want to know why you didn’t spend time with him and give yourself to him.

The entitlement crowd is pathologically deceived. I’m so glad I don’t live near them. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to move back to Miami, or if God sent me to live in Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, St. Louis, San Francisco, or any of the other envy hotspots. Cain murdered Abel because of envy, and his descendants are no better.

I hope I’ll be dead or raptured before the rot gets to the place where I live!