One Spirit’s Incense is Another Spirit’s Brimstone

I can understand why the Bible says that all the stuff Jesus did would fill all the books in the world. I’m considerably less significant than he is, and even I have a testimony I don’t have time or space to relate. Stuff is happening so fast, I can only write about the highlights.

Here’s one from this morning.

One of my Armorbearer buddies had to move. He has three young daughters, and his wife is about to give birth to his son. He needed space. I have a truck, so naturally, I got recruited.

While I was helping, I realized he had a problem with which I am familiar. I am not an orderly housekeeper. I don’t live in filth, but I can’t seem to organize things, and I would like to reduce the clutter and dust and so on. I think things like this have supernatural causes. Some people just don’t care how they live, but others have enemies who frustrate their efforts to improve.

I have been taking Perry Stone’s advice and using worship music to clean up my home. He says that when he travels, he ends up in all sorts of ungodly places, such as hotel rooms, which are basically rental stalls where people go to fornicate. To improve the atmosphere and bring peace and order, he plays holy music, even when he’s not present. He’ll leave the CD player on and take off.

I got myself some stuff from Julie True, Grace Williams, and Laura Rhinehart, and I’ve been playing it during prayer and while I drive, and sometimes I leave it going on the living room stereo. I wanted to get more of this material, so I found a website and ordered some CDs. One was by Grace Williams, and the others were by Julie True.

My buddy’s kids mashed some of his furniture during the move, so I took some drawers home to glue up. This is amusing, because I’ve found that it can be embarrassing when you have to tell your friend his drawers are in your garage. Anyway, the other day I grabbed the Julie True CDs and started to open them so I could play them, and I could not finish the job. I got the plastic torn off one corner of each CD, and I had to quit. I felt like I had to give them to my friend as a housewarming gift, to help him get his new home set up spiritually.

This was annoying, because I wanted those CDs!

I dropped the CDs in one of the drawers, and I stuck everything in my truck, and yesterday he picked it all up, and I told him about the CDs. I explained about the torn plastic.

Today he left a phone message telling me how great the CDs were. They were just what he and his wife needed. They put them on and started going crazy with prayer, and he broke into tongues, and they had their own little revival. So now he has a new tool in his supernatural arsenal.

Incidentally, prayer goes much better when you have this kind of music going. Don’t ask me why. Try it and see.

I texted him back and reminded him that God had forced me to hand over the CDs, so he was the one to thank. Then I sent him another funny piece of information: the address of the website where I got the CDs. It’s at DadResources.com. How funny is that? I’m not a dad. Here my friend is with three on the ground and one in the oven, and I’m ordering his CDs from his website, and I don’t even know it.

I still want those danged CDs. I better place an order.

Cheap, Easy Feast Guaranteed to Please

Oh, man. How good can food GET? I am starting to wonder.

I felt like I was insulting God’s gift by cooking halfheartedly, so I stepped it up. And I’m also rotating out my survival supplies, so that means I’m going through corn meal and dried beans. The result? A weekly soul food dinner. It’s whitey soul food, but it’s still soul food.

Yesterday I made white beans with ham hocks, plus cornbread and kale. I don’t know why my mother wasn’t big on kale when I was a kid. We ate a lot of collards and turnip greens. Kale is wonderful, provided you cook it right.

I used the cornbread recipe I posted yesterday. You really need to try it. You won’t be sorry. I just had two slices, and I’m borderline high.

I reheated the beans and cornbread today. Naturally, they’re better than they were yesterday. And I made fresh collards. There is a company called Glory, and they make wonderful greens, ranging from fresh to canned. I went with their bagged collards today because the price difference between bagged and bundled was so small.

Look, try it. Just trust me.

BEANS

1 big ol’ bag dried beans (I like navy, great northern, and pinto beans)
1 sliced white onion, softball-sized
1-5 cloves mashed garlic
salt and pepper to taste
2-4 ham hocks

Dump the beans in a big pot the day before you cook them. Rinse the filth out of them. Leave enough water to cover them, plus three inches or so. Cover them and let them soak overnight. I like to dissolve a Beano tablet in the water. Someone told me the gas in beans comes largely from the skins, so the Beano should be able to make a difference. I don’t know if it’s true, but I am getting wonderful results.

In the morning, drain and rinse the beans. This is also supposed to reduce gas. Bury the hocks in the beans. Chop the onion and toss it in with the garlic. Add lots of pepper. If your hocks are salty, you may want to omit the salt until later.

Simmer this stuff for several hours, and make sure you boil it down so the sauce is thick. If fat forms on the surface, scoop it out with a ladle and discard it. You won’t lose more than half a cup of bean sauce if you’re careful. Adjust the salt and pepper.

GREENS

1 pound chopped greens
2 thick slices bacon, nuked until browned, with grease
1-4 cloves mashed garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1-2 teaspoons butter
12 ounces water

I saw that Paula Deen was using butter in her greens, and I had to follow suit. I try to sneak a little butter into everything. You just plop the whole list of ingredients in your pressure cooker, get it up to temperature, and cook at 16 psi for 15 minutes. Open it up and boil the water down until it’s green and soupy. This is enough greens for two hungry people. If you don’t use a pressure cooker, you may have to cook the greens for two or more hours. You want them wilted, not crunchy. They have to totally surrender and mingle with the pork.

I nuke the bacon in a Pyrex cup covered by a saucer.

If you can stand it, refrigerate everything and don’t eat until the next day. Slice a ripe tomato and a big onion and serve them on the side.

You can’t eat this in a civilized manner. You have to let it mix up a little, and you have to make sure everything gets on the cornbread. If you don’t sop, you’re blowing it.

When you reheat the cornbread, it’s okay to use the microwave as long as you finish off with 5-10 minutes in a 350° oven.

This is just fantastic. Food doesn’t get much better. Eat the fat on the ham hocks. You can always fast tomorrow.

I have to credit God with the improvements I’m making in this stuff. It’s amazing.

God’s Rules Apply Forever

I’ve been thinking about the way life works. I have started to believe we need to re-learn the fundamental principles that were known and applied by ancient peoples in the Middle East. It seems that they understood the guiding forces of the universe much better than we do, and as a result, they knew how to get blessed and stay free of curses.

This morning I thought about the concept of promises. There are a lot of different ways to say “promise.” You can say “contract,” “agreement,” “covenant,”, or “debt.” It all works out the same. One or more parties obligate themselves, and from then on, they carry the weight they put on their own backs.

Jesus told us not to swear oaths (another way of saying “promises”). Why is that? It’s because the instant you make a promise, you put a hook in your own nose, and Satan will look for a way to tie a strong chain to it and lead you to unexpected places. Satan loves driving us to break promises, and he loves torturing us with the promises we keep.

Consider the example of Jephtha, the rebel leader in the Bible. God’s hand was on him for victory, but he ruined it with a promise. One day he promised God that he would sacrifice whatever he saw coming out of his front door. As he approached his house, his daughter came out to meet him. Tradition says hostile priests refused to allow him to cancel the promise, and they forced him to sacrifice his daughter to God. But for the rash promise, this would never have happened.

Today we make dumb promises all the time. I can think of two, right off the bat. Marriage vows and agreements to pay money.

It probably sounds anti-Christian to criticize marriage vows, but think about it: aren’t they a little excessive? I doubt the first marriages were this complicated. You probably made a public announcement of your intentions, got yourself blessed by a holy man, and went on your way. That was enough of a challenge, all by itself. But over time, we ended up piling promises on ourselves. The ancient Jews actually used contracts to spell out the obligations of the parties; some Jews still do this.

Satan is real, and he hates marriage. What do you think he does when he sees you promise a bunch of stuff to your new husband or wife? Unless he’s a fool, he makes a list, and he starts attacking the promises one by one. A married couple resembles God in its completeness, and Satan hates that. Also, a married couple is much stronger supernaturally than two single people. So Satan likes to pull us apart. And what can cause you more suffering than a bad relationship? It’s hard to think of anything.

Personally, I would not make promises at the altar, apart from the basics. Why invite trouble? The promises aren’t going to help you be a good mate. You’re not going to keep a list of them in your pocket, the way your enemy does, and refer to it to see you through. It’s just a set of goals for the devil.

I think wedding rings, which symbolize promises, are probably dangerous. Any man can tell you that the best way to attract women is to get into a relationship. When you have a wife or girlfriend, suddenly, women find you much more attractive. And you can actually increase your luck at singles bars by wearing a ring. Some men wear rings just to help them get women. And women are also attracted to men carrying babies! Why are these things true? I think it’s because the ring is an open challenge to Satan. He has plenty of trashy little servants out there looking for men, and he will send them after you.

As for agreements to pay money, the Bible says the borrower is the servant of the lender. How true that is. Think of America and China. We’re financing their military buildup so they can take over as the world’s leading power. When they decide to take Taiwan, we won’t make a peep. I guarantee it. From then on, we’ll be the laughingstock of the world.

The vast majority of Americans don’t own their cars or homes; they make monthly payments to banks. How crazy is that? Some people think a car loan or a mortgage note is a sign of God’s favor. You’ll never convince me of that. It’s a piece of paper that says another person can take what you have, and that you have to work for that person every day in order to pay him more than the true value of your property. How is that a blessing? There are bums on the street who are worth more than doctors, because the doctors have debts, and the bums don’t.

When you owe money, you have to do whatever it takes to earn it, or you end up in the street. Think of the opportunities for temptation. If your business is based on debt, are you going to be strong when things go badly and you have an opportunity to improve your cash flow by committing a sin? Will you be able to keep your hands out of the till? Will you be able to tell the tax man the truth? Many, many people are in prison because they were in debt and took a few chances in order to get out. Think of John DeLorean.

The other day I saw an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. He worked on an Italian restaurant up north. The place was in real trouble, and the owner was blowhard and a risk-taker. Ramsay fixed his menu and got him pointed in the right direction. I Googled his restaurant, out of curiosity. After Ramsay left, he was indicted for money-related crimes. His life is ruined now.

The weird thing about debt is that so much of it is unnecessary. I have a crummy cell phone and the worst plan I can get by with, but I know a lot of poor people who have Iphones and fancy plans. Last week I was in the ghetto, and I saw a BMW 745 parked in front of a house which is probably worth $60,000 on a good day. We don’t spend the money we have. We spend the money we hope to earn in the future, and we pay huge interest to do it. And we spend it on silly things we don’t need. We even spend it on things that harm us, like video games and giant TVs.

Somehow, Americans have gotten used to the idea that it’s normal to inflate their own money by going into overwhelming debt. Instead of spending $75 for a serviceable cell phone today, a typical American will spend over a thousand over the next two years, for a ridiculous phone that does things that are of virtually no value. We think mortgages are normal. They’re not. There is nothing intelligent about putting another person in charge of your home. The Bible says the blessed will own the gates of their enemies. If you have a mortgage, your enemy possesses YOUR gate. Literally. In the Bible, one of the worst things that can happen to people is foreclosure. It’s a curse which is mentioned often. Again, think of China.

You can pull out a spreadsheet and show me how debt will work out in your favor in the end, for this reason and that reason. That’s earthly wisdom. And it’s all based on assumptions regarding your future prosperity. If your eggs don’t hatch, where will you be? Are you going to eat that spreadsheet? Can you put it on the grill and serve it to your kids? The Bible says you shouldn’t talk about the money you’re going to make, unless you say “God willing.” You don’t even know if you’re going to wake up tomorrow.

In the book of Nehemiah, while the Jews rebuilt Jerusalem, a number of them went into debt. Other Jews lent them money to survive. When they couldn’t pay, the debtors had to sell their children. Promises turned into chains, as they so often do. But for Nehemiah’s intervention, the debtors would have had no recourse. Fortunately for them, he convinced the wealthy to relent.

I don’t make promises any more, unless I can’t avoid it. And I can tell I’m not like most people. If I’m in a group of people, and someone asks for help with something, very often, I’ll be among the last to commit. But the people who jump up and raise their hands at the outset…they don’t show up when it’s time to back up their mouths. I do. I may look selfish for not committing easily, and maybe I am, but it’s also because I know that when I open my mouth, I’m serious. It’s easy to obligate yourself when everyone knows you won’t follow through. When you take what you say seriously, it’s a lot harder to speak.

I’ve broken plenty of promises in my life. I don’t want to continue living that way. When God speaks, everything he says is true, and everything he says he will do, will be done. We should be the same way. God’s words are not vain, and we are supposed to be like God. Our words should not be vain, either. And the best way to avoid making your words vain is to avoid uttering them.

I am going to try to avoid putting new chains on my back. I think I carry enough already.

Better Cornbread

I decided I was too hidebound in my approach to cornbread, so I made the changes I knew had to be made. The result is beyond wonderful, but still your basic Appalachian non-sweet, white-meal cornbread.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups self-rising white corn meal
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups milk
1/4 cup bacon grease
3 tbsp. butter
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar

Heat a seasoned #6 cast iron skillet in your oven at 450. Pour the bacon grease in and give it five minutes or so. You want it hot enough to smoke. Mix all the other stuff (except the butter, which you should melt) in a heat-safe bowl.

Pour the hot grease into the batter. Pour the butter in. Stir thoroughly. Pour into the hot skillet and bake at 450 for around 22 minutes. Make sure it’s low enough in the oven to keep the bottom of the skillet hot. This will brown the bread.

Flip the pone out, right it, and eat!

This is less crumbly and more flavorful than the version with no butter and only 1 egg.

There is no reason why you can’t add even more of the good stuff (butter, grease, sugar, salt, eggs) or use different fats, but this will make you very, very happy.

Charge me up and Turn me Loose

My pastor has been doing a series on carnal Christians lately. It has been very interesting, because God has been working ON him, not just THROUGH him.

He told us he had been planning to do the typical spiel on carnality. Don’t look at porn. Don’t fornicate. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. But he said God changed the plan while he was working on his notes. The message he ended up teaching was about the need to spend time with God, in contrast to running around doing things you think (incorrectly) will please him.

This makes sense. The law came from God, but it was a poor substitute for God himself.

The law is like a sheet of instructions you leave for a babysitter. You write, “Don’t let Mikey stay up until twelve playing HALO.” Mikey tells the babysitter, “It doesn’t say anything about Worlds of Warcraft.” And the babysitter has to give in, and Mikey sleeps through the alarm the next morning. Everyone obeyed the law you wrote, but are you pleased? Of course not.

Jesus complained about Jews who used the law like Mikey did. For example, they were permitted to call their stuff “corban,” which means an offering to God. The great benefit of this was that they didn’t have to share these things with other people. You got to hold onto your money or stuff while you lived, and then it went to the Temple. Meanwhile, you might have two elderly parents starving in the gutter. So you used the law to kill, whereas the Spirit, which is God acting and speaking through you in real time, gives life.

Carnal people use their own tools instead of God’s. They may be serious Christians, and they may try to do what the Bible says, but they don’t get baptized with the Spirit, and they don’t get filled with God’s power and character, and they don’t get directions directly from God, so they end up doing things–in God’s name–which God does not like. In the book of Matthew, God called these people “workers of iniquity” and “lawless.” You’ll see it in the passage where Jesus talked about his judgment-seat statements to carnal Christians.

Here’s an example that will really irritate carnal people. A bum comes up to you and says he’s homeless and needs money for food. You say to yourself, “The Bible says we have to be good to the poor.” So you give him ten bucks. You think you’ve pleased God. But when you get to the judgment seat, you find out the bum bought crack with the money, got high, and was too happy to listen to the missionary God sent to take him to a Christian shelter. You felt all warm and fuzzy when you gave the money, but you ended up getting in God’s way and prolonging another person’s suffering.

A person who hears from God in real time may hear things that seem unscriptural. Remember what Paul said? He wanted to take the gospel to Asia, but the Holy Spirit held him back. Imagine how a carnal Christian would react. “SATAN is telling me I can’t preach the gospel in Asia! God would NEVER tell me not to go somewhere and preach the gospel!” And of course, Paul was correct, and he pleased God by choosing not to help the people in Asia. Why did God make this decision? Search me. He’s God. It’s not our place to judge him.

What God really wants is for all of us to be prophets, not just readers and interpreters of instructions. Moses prophesied about this. He said, “Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” Then of course there is the famous passage in Joel 2. God wants each of us to be with him, through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and he wants us to hear from him minute to minute, instead of running to a book he wrote. The Bible is incredibly powerful, and it’s a wonderful gauge for determining whether things come from God, but it is not as good as having God with you. This is why God called Jesus “Emmanuel,” or “God with us.” He knew Jesus would baptize us with the Holy Spirit, and that would connect us to God’s power and guidance, like computers hooked up to the Internet.

The Bible is general. The Holy Spirit is specific. Sure, you can open the Bible and have your finger fall on a verse that tells you what to do in your specific situation, but the Holy Spirit can do much more than that. He can say, “Go buy a pair of red shoes and then take a bus to Omaha, where you will meet a chiropractor named Earl.” The Bible has limits, and the Holy Spirit does not.

The need for God’s presence is the reason loud, obnoxious worship music sometimes annoys me. God tends to speak in a quiet voice, and when someone is shrieking about Jesus at 125 dB, it can be hard to hear that voice. If you can’t hear it, you are not fully in God’s presence. And it’s not a matter of taste. All human beings are wired up the same. We are created in God’s image, not Marilyn Manson’s. Everyone is programmed for sensations like peace, joy, excitement, frenzy, and so on. It may sound hip and clever to say some people can hear God in a Gwar song, and there may be a grain (a tiny one) of truth in it, but it’s a misguided and counterproductive argument.

God’s nature is peaceful, warm, and reassuring, and the wrong music can make it hard to perceive those qualities. If you want to use harsh music to get immature people into the pews, great, but if you don’t end with music that reflects God’s nature, you have allowed the immature to shape you, instead of allowing God to shape them. The big problem with seeker-sensitive churches that rely on tools like obnoxious music is that they mimic the world until they become part of it. Christians are supposed to be missionaries to the unsaved, but if you ape the unsaved in order to avoid offending them, eventually, they succeed in converting YOU.

It also occurs to me that the word “carnal” should not be used as an insult. Until you get close to God, which takes time, carnality is all you have. Everyone starts out with carnality. And every Spirit-guided believer resorts to carnality from time to time. And we’re stuck in these bodies while we’re here, so it’s not like we can ignore the physical world and abandon physical tools. I think that when you call someone carnal, it should not be intended or perceived as an insult. It should be like telling someone he forgot to plug in his table saw. It just means you’re not using the power God has provided.

You can see why God equates faith with righteousness. In order to know what God really wants you to do, you have to have faith working in you, and that comes only through the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Once you are able to hear from God and use his power, you have to use faith to make it work, and you have to trust God over and over.

Think of the Jews at the edge of the Red Sea, following Moses by faith. Think of the Jews following Joshua around the city of Jericho over and over, doing absolutely nothing with their carnal tools. God’s power showed up and did astounding things for them, NOT BY THEIR OWN STRENGTH. This is what walking by faith is like, every day. God tells you he will do something, and you have to sit there and trust until it happens, and in doing so, you please him by allowing his plan to go forward minute by minute. No wonder God calls faith righteousness. Without it, you’re just doing what you think his book told you to do, and you will be wrong a big percentage of the time.

You can tell me your church’s doctrine says I’m stupid. Unfortunately, I am an eyewitness. I am applying this stuff every day, and it just keeps working. A Spirit-deprived (carnal) church is like the law: it’s a tutor that introduces people to God. Once you know the teacher and see him at work, how can you go back and listen to people who don’t know him? Does that make sense to you?

I don’t have all the answers, but what I believe works and works and works, and things get better and better and better. I would be afraid to go back to the powerless life. I am marked as the enemy’s enemy. I am a target. Don’t ask me to put down my machine gun and wait to get shot, just so I can conform to wrong doctrine and avoid offending people. I’d be like a snail without its shell. A tasty snack for the birds of the air.

Samson was given to us to show us the results of carnal doctrine. The seven locks of his hair represent the seven Spirits of God. Once they were gone, he was blind and weak, and his enemies owned him. This is the same guy who literally possessed the gates of his enemies when God was with him. He pulled the gates of Gaza out of the ground and took them home.

Christians who reject the Spirit and his power are like the unbelieving Jews of Jesus’s time. There is no real difference. Those Jews received salvation through sacrifice, so you can’t say Christians are better off because they get eternal life. We will see many, many pre-Christian Jews in paradise. Their problem was that they told people to earn God’s help, even after Jesus made it clear that a better way was coming. Carnal Christians do the same thing. They say God doesn’t work miracles. They say prayer in tongues is gibberish (or Satanic). They say Christianity is hard, making Jesus a liar (he said his burden was light). They tell us to transform ourselves by effort, ignoring the fact that Paul told us the Spirit would transform us. They even tell us to pray to people other than God.

I don’t want to be a whitewashed tomb. I want the living water to clean me from the inside out. Anyone can have this. Get on board and ride, or pick up your burden and walk.

And Pull Your Pants Up

One of my beefs with modern Christianity is over music. I get tired of music that makes my ears hurt and sounds like something you would hear in a disco. And Christian rap…how is that even possible? Are you praising the Lord or jacking my car? Honestly, I can’t tell. When I was a kid, they had another name for rap. They called it “yelling.”

I’ve sensed the presence of God many, many times, and nothing about him has ever reminded me of rap, disco, or hard rock. In fact, the Bible says “clamor” grieves the Holy Spirit. When God’s presence is around you, things tend to be quiet and tranquil.

We work too hard to make God cool. It’s as if we’re positive every teenager in the United States will go straight to hell unless we let them inflict their awful music on us. If you ask me, God is already cool. He can say a few words and create a galaxy. Isn’t that cooler than wearing your pants around your knees and calling everyone “bra”? I guess my standards are warped.

I can understand the desire to have a certain amount of lively music in church, but after a while, it’s irritating and counterproductive.

There is a new genre of Christian music that was created to fill this huge gaping hole in our worship. They call it “soaking” music. You crank it up and lie back and pray. Typically, the lyrics aren’t all that catchy. Just stuff about how wonderful God is. It’s not supposed to bowl you over with its cleverness. It’s supposed to help you sense the Holy Spirit. That loud junk they play for the kids seems designed to get between you and God, like a big pimply wall.

When you listen to this stuff, it reminds you that God is all around you, and that he’s in charge, assuring you of a purpose and a good future. It brings intimacy.

The first soaking CD I owned was by a woman named Grace Williams. I don’t know how it got here. I didn’t buy it. I suspect my sister left it here. I found it here after watching an episode of Sid Roth’s show which featured a Grace Williams CD. She told him she used to sing in the Spirit when she was a baby. Her material is very nice.

I also learned about Julie True through Sid Roth. I picked up a couple of her albums.

Last night, I found Laura Rhinehart. I DLed her off Itunes. Very peaceful stuff, and the songs are long, so it’s not like they poop out just when you start to feel it.

I highly recommend this stuff. It provides the experience that New Age music tries to counterfeit. The lyrics are based on scripture, so you have good things to think about. You don’t sit there emptying your mind and waiting for nutty Hindu spirits to show up. It puts you in a good frame of mind to talk to God and listen for his responses.

Loud music is like caffeine. It seems to give you energy, but in reality, it’s just sucking energy out of your reserves and making you spend it. Soaking music refills the reservoir.

Food for Faith

Thought I would write a little about my continuing dehydrator adventure.

Yesterday I dried papaya. I have some trees, but I don’t eat the fruit, because it smells a little bit like dog poop. I wondered if dehydration would change that. I suppose I’m picking the papayas too late, and that’s why they stink, but it seems odd to pick a fruit that isn’t sweet yet.

Anyway, I sliced up a papaya and tossed the chunks in lime juice and simple syrup. After about seven hours in the machine, they were dried up to nothing. I tried one, and sure enough, it doesn’t stink like it did before. So now I have a use for all the papayas that come off the trees.

Funny thing…the product is not like the dried papaya you get in stores. It really shrivels up. I’m wondering if there is a difference between “dried” and “dehydrated.” Guess I’ll have to figure that out.

I have not made jerky yet. I think I’ll get ten boliches (eye round roasts) and dry them. It would probably be best to smoke them, too, but maybe I can fake that with Liquid Smoke and avoid the aggravation.

Mike says he has a yogurt machine. Evidently you can make your own yogurt for a small fraction of the price of store yogurt. How exciting. I guess it’s a big blessing, but I’ve never been a huge yogurt fan. I always identify yogurt with the feminist/greenie/Mac/vegetarian lifestyle.

You can use a dehydrator to make yogurt, and you can even turn the yogurt into dry sheets. Weird.

Yesterday I realized I can make shucky beans in the dehydrator. Man, that would be sweet. I need to find a farmer’s market and load up on green beans. Or I could just chicken out and hit Costco. I don’t know if the beans would brown up the way they do when you dry them on strings.

I just got an idea for food storage: corned beef. I look up a recipe on the Cook’s Illustrated site, and it says corned beef is just cured beef. You stick it in a sealed bag with a salt and seasoning preparation, and you let it sit for 7 days. If that’s all it is, it’s perfect for freezing. Seal everything in a bag, refrigerate for a week, and then freeze. That should work, shouldn’t it?

I Googled flooding and crops again, to see if Perry Stone is right about his vision of upcoming food problems. Things don’t look too good. We have no corn reserves, and the weather is not great. The food situation in China is bad. I guess this year will teach me whether I should pay attention to this man’s visions in the future.

The dehydrator looks like a good investment. I still want to get out of here and put some land around me, but until that happens, I think I’ll be fine with stored eats. And I didn’t lose anything by buying a refurb unit. It looks and works like new.

Mike is jealous. Oh well. Now he has something to put on his shopping list.

Both Time-Sensitive

Two requests tonight.

1. My cousin has a new baby, and a spot just appeared on its toe. They are waiting for a biopsy and opinion from a pediatric dermatologist. It’s probably nothing, but my aunt has requested prayer.

2. Heather’s mom still needs help: “Please pray for a good result tomorrow, the cancer is contained or even gone, her kidneys healthy, no issues with anesthesia and a quick recovery.”

Food Hoard Grows

My Excalibur food dehydrator showed up this weekend. Yesterday I fired it up, dehydrating a bunch of Granny Smith apples. I bought four dozen at Costco, and I did two dozen a week or so ago, and the aggravation was what led me to order the dehydrator.

It took seven hours to dehydrate apple slices prepared with a slicing and peeling machine. I’m sure hand-sliced apples would be different, because the thickness would vary. The machines make slices about 1/4″ thick.

The dehydrator expels wet air from the front, and water will condense on anything close to the machine. I guess there is no way to avoid that.

I didn’t dip the apples in lemon juice or sodium bisulfite or anything else that might inhibit oxidation. I wanted them to taste like the apples my grandmother used to dry. Apples that are heavily treated don’t have the same flavor. I figured my apples would come out brown, like the ones I dried in the SUV and oven, but they came out very white.

Here’s the surprising thing: the flavor is amazing. It’s almost like a green apple Jolly Rancher candy. Very strong, and extremely sweet. I can’t figure that out. I don’t know if they’ll make good dried-apple pies, but they’re great to eat as a snack.

The dehydrator has plastic shelves that slide out, and each shelf has a sheet of plastic mesh on it to hold food. You can put the trays in the dishwasher (top rack), but the mesh has to be washed by hand. This is a major pain. But if Perry Stone is right, and food gets expensive, the effort of keeping my dehydrator clean will seem trivial.

I look forward to drying some bananas in it. My trees are producing well.

This dehydrator is a refurb, but I can’t see anything wrong with it. I think I made a good choice. You can get a cheaper Chinese knockoff, but I wanted a warranty and decent customer service.

Quit Watering Your Crops With a Teaspoon

Too much to write about.

I don’t blog much these days. I consider that a blessing. It was a big time-suck, and it tended to add fuel to the less-productive parts of my nature. I don’t know how many people care. I still write when I feel like it.

By the way, The New York Times has just come out with a story, saying blogs are dead. Hmm…who said that several years ago? Some annoying guy who refused to drink the Kool Aid and wear the pajamas. Pardon me for patting myself on the back. Still working on that “pride” thing.

This weekend was a lot of fun. My church’s pastor is delivering a series called “Carnal Christians,” and this Sunday’s sermon was a home run.

He said he had expected to deliver a series about things like lust and greed, but God wouldn’t let him do it. Instead he talked about the relative worthlessness of works. He wasn’t saying works were unimportant. The message was that what God really wanted was to be with us and know us. When we spend time with God, it’s like a son spending time with a father (in fact, that’s what it is): the father’s nature rubs off on the son.

You may not realize what a big deal this is. My church has a tendency to overemphasize works and effort. The change is pivotal.

He told a story about his sons. When they were kids, their schools had them build little houses of popsicle sticks. It’s one of those projects schools come up with; you build your dad one of these ridiculous houses, and then he has to pretend he likes it.

He said that he bragged on the houses, but that what he really wanted from his sons was their company. He said God is the same way. You can go out and build orphanages and annoy the homeless with sermons, but if you’re not spending time with God, you’re missing the point.

I loved this, because it’s exactly what I believe. I come at it from a different viewpoint, but it amounts to the same thing.

Giving to the poor is not always right; sometimes it’s a terrible sin. Donating money to a ministry can also be wrong. Being nice to people can be wrong. These things are only pleasing to God when he tells us to do them, and that’s why he gave us the baptism of the Spirit. We build ourselves up through speaking in tongues, and the power of the Holy Spirit grows in us, and he starts giving us directions in real time. Those directions are much more useful than the comparatively vague and static directions we get from the Bible. As wonderful as the Bible is, it can’t compare to having Jesus standing next to you, telling you what to do. That’s what Spirit-filled believers are supposed to experience. Jesus is supposed to “know” us as a man knows a wife. He is supposed to mingle with us and become one with us. Obeying the general instructions of the Bible can actually be idolatry, when it contradicts what Jesus is telling us to do in the moment, through the gifts of the Spirit.

This is what the Bible means when it says the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Establishment churches hate this message. They want us to do all our own work, because Satan controls them, and he is terrified of believers who use God’s power instead of their own. He wants us out there using our carnal tools to please God. Building unwanted hospitals. Delivering meals that should never have been prepared. Saying kind words to people who need tough love.

God told the ancient Hebrews to kill babies with the sword. Old ladies. Pets. Puppies and kittens. Seriously. What if they had ignored him, mumbling, “Thou shalt not kill” and so forth? God himself told them what to do. He gave them specific directions, and those directions seem pretty awful compared to the general tenor of the scriptures. Christianity is not about being nice, even though being nice usually comports with God’s will. It’s about faith and obedience and being connected to God’s nervous system so the hand will act when the brain speaks.

Jesus said he would punish some people who did “good” works in his name. He said he would call them “lawless” and “workers of iniquity.” Why is that? It’s because he was referring to people who are carnal. They do what their peanut brains tell them to do, instead of waiting to hear from God. The Lord wants you to go to medical school, but you become a missionary. The Lord wants you to be a musician, but you become a priest and swear off normal relations with women. The Lord wants you to open a supermarket, but you take a vow of poverty and go live in a cave. You do things that SEEM good, but you only make God angry. That’s what Jesus was talking about.

When Jesus called people “lawless,” he was referring to the law the Holy Spirit writes in our hearts, not the law the Jews wrote on the skins (the outside of the flesh) of kosher animals. And “iniquity” refers to the desires that motivate us before speaking in tongues gives us the fruit of the Spirit.

To sum it up, you can devote your life to God and do all sorts of things for other people and end up a carnal Christian. Obviously, living in a godless state and devoting your time to things like fornication and drugs and greed is also carnal (if you do it willfully), but people need to wake up and realize that a carnal person who serves God inappropriately is not much better off.

The Jews tell us that “taking the Lord’s name in vain” does not refer to the blasphemous things you say when you hit your thumb with a hammer. It means doing things God never told you to do, and then claiming you did it for him. A person who gives to the poor when God is telling him to do something else, and who claims God put him up to it, is taking God’s name in vain. The “lawless” at the judgment seat are people who committed this sin. If you have the Holy Spirit’s law in your heart, and you listen to it, you won’t be one of these people.

God wants to “know” us. That means the spiritual equivalent of sex between a man and wife. He wants to inseminate us with the Holy Spirit, and he wants us to grow to be like him, just as a fetus grows to be like its father. The crucifixion was an insemination. The Holy of Holies represents the womb. The veil in the Temple represents the hymen. It tore when Jesus died. Do the math.

As a result of this conception, we can be filled with the Holy Spirit, and by speaking in tongues, we grow to be like God, in his power and his righteousness. That’s how it works. It’s not about suffering and misery and defeat, while struggling with your puny tools, which are only a little better than the ones God gave monkeys. It’s about using God’s power tools.

The New Testament often wishes us grace, mercy, and peace. We all know what mercy means. “Peace” means “shalom,” or a combination of tranquility, prosperity, and success. “Grace” means God’s power within us, which comes by grace, not by effort. It doesn’t mean the mercy granted to us in salvation. If it did, the word “mercy” wouldn’t appear next to it, because it would be superfluous. Would you wish someone “mercy, mercy, and peace”?

The message we heard this weekend was about the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, which come through grace. When God tells us what to do, via the prophecy, tongues and interpretation, the word of wisdom, and the word of knowledge (all spiritual gifts), we present ourselves to him as houses of stone, not houses made from popsicle sticks. We become projects that please him, not projects a father has to pretend to love. The things we do have lasting value, because they are done in obedience to his word; not the word printed in Bibles, but the word delivered directly to our minds.

I have been praying for this kind of thing to be taught in my church, and it’s happening. God only knows who else is praying for it. I’m happy to see it, because we hear too much about effort and self-help. I’ve seen how the Holy Spirit does miraculous things in my church, to people I know. That’s what I want. I’m not interested in secular wisdom painted up with a covering of Christianese. We should not be going to the self-help gurus for wisdom. They should be running to us.

More Attacks

Heather’s mom is not doing well. This arrived Saturday. I didn’t put it up until today because I’m so busy on weekends. Thank God she reminded me.

Could you please pray for my mom, Penny, she is not doing so great. She is still vomiting. Her urine culture Thursday didn’t grow bacteria, so I am probably going to have to take her Central Baptist to have her kidney stents replaced.
Thank you and God Bless,
Heather Page

The Road to Hell is Paved With Happy Thoughts

It is an interesting week.

Our President is hostile to Israel. No fair-minded person could deny that. But now his hostility is becoming overt. This week, the United States agreed to join in a Security Council vote rebuking Israel for putting settlements in “occupied” land. The land God gave Abraham and his descendants, FOREVER.

Most Christians don’t understand how much God cares about Israel. Here’s some scriptural stuff to consider. Speaking through one of the prophets, God identified Jesus himself with Israel. And the Bible says the Jews are the apple of God’s eye.

Perry Stone made a somewhat sensational claim in one of his recent messages. He said someone had written a book showing that American betrayals of Israel were closely followed by American disasters. Floods and hurricanes and so on. Naturally, I want to see if this is correct. So I’m going to keep my eyes open for the next ten days or so, to see if anything unfortunate happens.

You have to test people who make claims about God, or else you never learn the truth. Luke commended the Berean Christians for tearing into the Bible to compare teachings with scripture. I’m stocking up on food because Perry Stone says he had a vision of floods, and I don’t want to waste my time if he says things that are just nutty and wrong. If we have a good crop year, I will think less of his predictions in the future. If what he said about the book turns out to be wrong, again, I will have reason to doubt him.

So far, I have never had any reason to break with Perry Stone. He gets carried away every once in a while and says something a little silly, but I can’t think of an example that had any bearing on the central issues of his messages.

It’s frustrating dealing with charlatans. I once saw a traveling “prophet” touch people, claiming God had given him an “anointing” to take 21 years off of people’s lives. People went up and got the touch. If God made them younger, he did it in a clever way that left them looking exactly the same. People will say just about anything to get a dollar; they may even make themselves believe their nonsense first (lawyers do that all the time). Christians are conditioned to believe, and they are conditioned to trust their pastors and leaders to refrain from putting dubious characters before them, so they are easy marks. I believe the only real defense is direct guidance from the Holy Spirit, and I think the Holy Spirit is with me on the 21-year guy. Call me an apostate.

Hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe one day all of these people will show up looking like teenagers. I would be a LITTLE surprised.

Christianity is in a bad state. The old churches bar the Holy Spirit at the door, they deny the power of God, they endorse all sorts of sin, they persecute Israel, and they have major problems with idolatry. Many new churches try to turn God into our fairy godmother, are obsessed with wealth and earthly success, and imply that nothing bad should ever happen to us. What can you do? I go where the Holy Spirit is welcome, and I persevere.

And I try not to offend anyone, but I guess I still do.

Speaking of offense, the new churches have an insidious weakness these days. There is a phobia of criticism. We keep hearing the word “positive” all the time, as if Christianity had more to do with Tony Robbins than Jesus. When we criticize, we risk being compared to the ten spies who told Moses going into Israel was a bad idea.

The problem, obviously, is that without criticism, there is no growth. Correction cannot happen without negativity. It’s impossible. Jesus was extremely negative. So was Paul. So were most of the prophets. John the Baptist…don’t get me started. Read the stuff he said. In the Revelation, Jesus started out by criticizing seven churches. Much of what he said was not positive. It was vital and helpful, but it wasn’t positive.

One of the terrible aspects of totalitarianism is the prohibition of criticism. Totalitarian regimes always limit it. The Nazis and Communists made it a crime. So do the Islamists. The British crown made it a crime, and this is the sole reason we have the First Amendment. It was drafted in order to permit criticism.

In Soviet Russia, people used to come forward all the time and point out the horrible, dangerous problems with the state. And they got shipped off to gulags, and things in Russia got worse and worse. This is the direction in which the church is headed, if we don’t wake up and learn to take a punch. One of the distinguishing characteristics of cults is the suppression of honest criticism. Look at what happens to mouthy Scientologists.

When I hear people complain about criticism, I often think of Ahab. He was about to go to war alongside Jehosaphat, and Jehosaphat insisted on hearing from a prophet. So they rounded up a bunch of lying Baal-worshiping goofballs, and the goofballs all prophesied victory. I guarantee you, these guys were very popular, Ahab paid them well, and people thought they would be remembered as saints.

Jehosaphat made an insane suggestion: how about bringing a prophet of Jehovah in? This must be where Ahab called for his Maalox. The only real prophet available was Micaiah. They dragged him in, and he made a sarcastic prophecy of victory. When Ahab threatened him, he admitted God planned to crush Ahab like a bug.

And of course, Micaiah was beaten and put in jail.

This is another fine consequence of the negativity phobia: we punish people who criticize, and we make them less likely to tell us the truth, so we lack vital information, and the result is chastisement and defeat.

I guess Satan is using the positivity craze to set the church up to persecute its prophets. Christians think they’re immune to that kind of thing, and that only the narrow-minded, non-holy Jews are susceptible, and of course, we are wrong. Human nature is universal, and so is Satan’s influence. Christians torment God’s messengers all the time.

At some point in the future, brave souls will start standing up in Spirit-filled churches and saying disturbing things. God doesn’t want every Christian to be a millionaire. God will not let us win every single battle, all the time. God still gives some people diseases. God still kills people. Some of our biggest Christian stars are revolting fakes. And if the positivity fad is still red hot, the people saying these things will be driven out into the street, with God’s inspired words still on their lips.

It’s a balancing act, and it’s easy to screw up. You have to be subject to authority, and you should not spread division without good reason. You should not complain just for the sake of complaining. You should believe God’s promises. You should try to build up the people above you. But you shouldn’t swallow every bit of nonsense every itinerant idiot pours in your congregation’s ear, and you should not be afraid to warn people when there are serious problems.

I’ve seen Tony Robbins and other positivity gurus at work. They are just plain better at it than the Christian imitators. They make many times the money the imitators make. They have polished, proven methods. They won’t tell you the Holy Spirit told them you need to give them your savings. If you want positivity, go to the pros. Buy a set of Tony Robbins CDs. Why settle for an imitation?

God’s punishment is better than Satan’s kindness. The Bible says, “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness, and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head.” I would rather have healthy criticism than poisonous positivity, any time.

It’s too Bad Blessings Can’t be Delivered Using Restraints and an IV

Today I had a couple of experiences. One was encouraging, and the other was discouraging.

I am too tired to write much about the first. Just that I found new fire and enthusiasm for prayer and supernatural warfare, and I unleashed it here and at my sister’s house.

The other thing happened at church. I was there for a prayer meeting and to help a friend with a baby shower.

While helping with the baby shower, I had to do some work in the kitchen, where I used to make pizza. Background: I was driven out out of the kitchen by mismanagement and antagonism from coworkers, as readers may recall. I made the church a lot of money with pizza, but when I tried to increase the professionalism and the spirituality in the kitchen (as instructed by church leaders), I provoked a backlash from people who preferred the status quo, and out I went.

Since I quit cooking, a strong Christian man has taken over the cafe, and the kitchen and the serving area are doing well. But he has limited authority, because of the twisted, amorphous chain of command at the church. He has to share a back room with a bunch of other ministries, and this is the area where I used to make pizza.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the back room today. The kitchen and serving area looked very good, so I had high hopes. But I was amazed at the chaos and filth.

Flour and sugar I left at the church when I quit were still on the counters, in plain paper bags. Near the bags, I saw a stack of unopened boxes containing glue traps for mice. I opened a couple of drawers. For some reason, the church keeps hundreds of sets of unused stainless flatware, along with unused china, and all this stuff is in cabinets and drawers. It should have been disposed of years ago.

The drawers contained so much mouse and roach poop, I was amazed. But it made sense, given the presence of the unused flour and sugar. Why they thought glue traps were the answer is a mystery, given that they put the traps next to the food supply the vermin were using, leaving the food in place.

The church serves free hot dogs and popcorn on Saturday afternoons. That’s great. But they store the cooking and service equipment in the back room, out in the open. Where the mice and roaches play. I was horrified. This is not a trivial health hazard. It’s extremely serious. Rodent feces kill people in a number of ways.

When I worked in the kitchen, I donated some Japanese cutlery I didn’t use. I didn’t like it much, but it’s very expensive, and most chefs love it. I also donated a diamond hone. I checked today, and all of this stuff was gone. Was it stolen or just put away for safety? I don’t know, but I noticed they left the cheap Chinese cleaver I donated, so whoever moved this stuff knew which pieces were valuable.

The drawer where I left the cutlery was full of poop. I had sterilized it, but the mice had returned.

The obvious conclusion is that the place is still a mess, and I would be losing my mind if I had to work there. So I had to thank my superior in the Armorbearer organization, who strongly advised me to get out of the cafe.

It’s so hard to bless people. They treat good things like trash. They show no gratitude for the good things you do. They fight improvement as though it were a fatal disease. This must be how God feels every day. And it reaffirms my conservatism. Liberals give people what they want, regardless of what they deserve, and it destroys them. Conservatives know that the best way to keep a person poor is to give him money.

I guess I better alert the pastor before someone dies.

Son of Man, Can These Dry Bananas Live?

I have given up. I hate blowing money on things I should be able to make, but drying apples in my dad’s SUV is too slow, so I bought a dehydrator. I got a refurb Excalibur. It ought to do the job.

I put a dozen sliced apples in the SUV on a sliding door screen and gave it two days, but the apples just were not dry enough. Maybe it would work in the summer, but I can’t keep fooling around, trying to get it right.

I was looking at dehydrators online, and I felt stupid, but then I thought about all the stuff I throw out. Most of my peppers and bananas end up rotting because I don’t have any place to put them. I never eat my papayas, because they smell funny, but if they were dried, I think that problem would go away.

Bananas are fantastic. They keep you regular and they taste good. But what do you do when twenty pounds of them get ripe over three days?

Ooooh…pineapples. I wonder how hard those are to grow. Dried pineapples are great, and I have a special culinary use for the fresh stuff.

I guess now I can look into jerky. I don’t even know what cuts to use. It would sure beat paying tons of money for the protein bars I eat when I work at church.

The Thing we Greatly Ignored is Come Upon Us

Now that Mike knows I’m storing up grub, he calls me with his “hoarding” questions all the time. Today he was a hippie grocery, and he wanted advice on the right kimchi to buy, in order to use the bacteria for sourdough.

As I have noted before Perry Stone says he had a vision which suggested we will have flood-related food shortages in 2011. I have never known him to make anything up or exaggerate, and he didn’t use his vision as a way to squeeze monetary “seed gifts” out of his viewers, the way about 75% of Spirit-filled TV preachers would have.

Yesterday I saw some interesting news.

1. Russia is cutting off wheat exports because of drought.

2. China now imports wheat because of drought, and they expect the situation to continue through the year.

3. There is a severe corn shortage in the United States, largely due to the idiotic ethanal program, which values politics over human beings. We all knew there was a corn shortage, but it’s getting worse. And of course, animals eat corn, so there go dairy products and meat.

I guess it looks a little funny, talking about floods when crops are failing for lack of rain, but floods have already destroyed much of Australia’s crops, and we are a month or so away from our own planting season, so the opportune time for US flood damage isn’t here yet.

Hey, guess who is the world’s biggest wheat importer. Egypt! Traders expect that country to buy heavily because of the political instability. Uh oh!

I continue to study food storage. It turns out white flour goes funny after 6 months. Even if you freeze it, you only get 8 months. That’s what I’ve read, anyway. Hard to believe. And you can’t freeze it in paper bags. Funny flavors will get inside it.

I guess you can still eat it, however, and beggars can’t be choosers.

I think I’ll vacuum-seal 50 pounds of flour and freeze it. Can’t hurt. It will cost 20 bucks. That’s cheap insurance.

Maybe you can do better if you bake bread and freeze it. Search me.

I have a nice new Kentucky ham in the dining room, along with a big jar of sorghum, some cracklings, and a jar of blackberry jam. I’ll bet I could make excellent biscuits with canned milk. Geez, if there’s a famine, I may put on a ton of weight.

In other end time news, the US suddenly has piles and piles of oil. Sounds crazy, but it appears to be true. A new drilling method has drastically increased production, to the point where it could halve imports by 2015. And North Dakota (home of the Bakken Formation) is producing too much oil to ship.

What? Weren’t we supposed to run out of oil? Someone send Al Gore flowers. He is turning out to be the Salieri of economic and climatic forecasting. And by “Salieri,” I mean the Amadeus version, not the real Salieri, who was supposedly a great guy.

If I recall correctly, we can produce all the Bakken Formation oil we want at a cost of $70 per barrel, which is affordable. So in the United States, oil problems should be self-limiting, regardless of all the hysterical squawking. I wish oil were at $70 now. I could live with $2.75 diesel.

I can’t believe I’m saying that. We used to tremble at the thought of fuel prices that high.

What this all shows me is that God can yank the rug out from under you at any second, without breaking a sweat. We think we know what the future will bring, at least in the short term, but the last decade showed us that sudden changes can be extreme and unexpected, even when they should be obvious.

Consider the Fannie Mae mess. Nobody with any common sense thought real estate values were justified, yet most people were stunned when Barney Frank’s house (or houses) of socialist cards collapsed and threw our economy into turmoil. One month we were all counting our chickens, and the next month, they were on the barbecue.

I think the same thing is happening with our debt situation. We have marched to the edge of the precipice, and there is nothing to prevent us from going over the side in a big hurry.

We’re also seeing strange plagues hitting important crops. The worldwide citrus industry is expected to shrivel because of citrus greening, and that’s just one example. Did you know bananas are in trouble? A fungus is hitting them, and they lack the genetic diversity to develop resistance to it. May not sound like a big deal, but these things add up.

Speaking of God, the Bible says, “Thou Lord, only, makest me dwell in safety.” That’s important to learn and believe. The stuff you have can disappear in a day, regardless of how it looks to you now. Tomorrow you could get a cancer diagnosis. You could be gone in two months. A sinkhole could eat your house. Your spouse could run off with a Craigslist find. Look at Job. Things like that really happen.

I suspect that the problems Perry Stone foresaw will go away for a time. I think we’ll have some problems, and then things will seem to get better. Why? Because I think God is shaking the world. You can’t shake something by pushing it in the same direction all the time. It has to go back and forth. I think he is slapping us with crises and letting us rebound, so that tractable people will wake up and get right with him. Sooner or later, the trend will go much more negative, and by then, the bulk of the people who can be reached will be on solid ground.

Makes sense to me, anyhow.

I think we’ll have food problems this year, but I don’t think it will be necessary to pile up enough food to get us through 2012. I think we are still too early in the birth-pang sequence. I don’t think God is going to leave me here in this godless city with no land around me when the real mess starts raining down. I may deserve that, but I don’t see it happening.

You don’t get what you deserve, according to your deeds. Not if your heart is right. You get what your faith, willingness, and repentance allow. I hope.

If the food predictions turn out to be wrong, at least I’ll be better able to take care of myself, and I’ll know not to pay attention to Perry Stone’s visions. In the end, it’s all good.