Stay on YOUR Growing Edge

I would like to share with you the main ingredient of what has kept me going in the Lord. My life is almost like being born out of time, as if I were moving through church history but many years after the fact. The stages in my walk started out in a religion where I was baptized as an infant and that was what was supposed to have saved me rather than being born again. I accepted Jesus as my savior when I was twelve years old while lying on the living room couch and watching Billy Graham on television.

The next step was discovering the treasure chest inside Christian bookstores, and I began to read and expand my faith. I soon wanted to become baptized upon confession of my own faith and was led to an Anabaptist church. During the time in this church, I even went on a tour of Europe which visited places in the history of the development of that faith, such as standing on the banks of rivers where people were martyred for their faith and having communion in a cave where the Anabaptists met in secret.

The Anabaptist church I attended had a book lending program, and of course, I was into that. One day, I borrowed a book which would change my life. If they had known that book was in their library, I know it would have been promptly removed. But God always makes a way for us to get closer to him, even if the environment is hostile to the means by which you'll draw near. That book gave step by step instructions on how to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. This was during the time of the charismatic movement in the 70s.

If you decide to continue to read this blog, you must be mindful that I'm not like most people. I know this is very unorthodox but I received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit while sitting on the toilet! The reading throne. And how my life was changed after that! I moved on into another church which had spirit-led worship and emphasis on the gifts of the spirit. I was dramatically delivered of so much fear.

I stayed in the charismatic church until the Lord led me to sonship teachings of the 80s. But I'll stop here in the story of my journey because this is not about me. What I want to point out is the one thing that has kept me growing for the past 46 years of being a Christian. And that is always staying on YOUR growing edge. This growing edge will not be the same as other peoples'. In fact, you'll have to walk alone many times. Sometimes, great criticism will come against what you feel is the truth. They'll even say it is the doctrine of demons, you are being deceived, and turning your back on God. You won't be welcome in certain places if you follow God. I was told that I was turning my back on him if I turned my back on my infant baptism and got baptized again upon confession of my own faith. Every step I took along the way on my growing edge was confrontational to the established church.

However, if you stop at any point whether it is through fear of the unknown or because someone else is trying to control you or control God's movements, oh my, how great that loss will be to you personally, in this life and the next!

The most important thing you can do for yourself is to identify your growing edge and go after it tenaciously. Don't turn back. Don't stop moving forward on that growing edge. Read, read, read. Investigate everything. Cry out to God for his truth. And he will give it to you, and rest assured, it won't be popular with the masses or many of those in charge.

But you say, I'm afraid of being deceived. Yet I say, don't be afraid! God WILL protect you. You will need to be able to glean truth from everything you are presented with. Staying on your growing edge will mean you'll walk in such a great adventure that you'll stand speechless at the way it unfolds before you.

Don't allow anyone to attempt to control you by saying you shouldn't look at this or read that. They are not the ones who will stand before the Lord and be judged for what YOU did with YOUR life.

Be a hunter-gatherer while maintaining an obedient, humble attitude in love. Seek out everything that God wants you to know. The sweet spot is your growing edge. Rally up your spirit and determine that come hell or high water, you'll walk there, for surely hell and high water will come.

Truth and the Proof of the Truth

This post will be short, but it is of great importance to me. I continually pray that the Lord will lead me into truth and give me proof of the truth. Above anything else in this life, I want to do the will of God and know the right paths.

However, the more I research and look into history, the more I want to throw up my hands. It's discouraging really. If I want to know about a subject, I start by looking for articles on the internet written by Christians who expound upon what is wrong with it. Most often, you can't find anything else. It seems that the prevailing attitude is to go into every subject on the negative side to find those points that are questionable, then label those with the appropriate scripture against it. The "Fat Lady" has sung her song on the entire category! Brush the dust off the hands, go sit down, and wait for the next thing to debunk.

Excuse me for my exasperation this morning, but are we trying to stop or to go? Please, let's concentrate on which way to go instead of where not to go.

Is it just me or do you long as well for believers to investigate everything from the positive side? What is right about something instead of what's wrong with it? Isn't God the author of all truth and wisdom no matter where these may be found? Can't we get to greater maturity and then identify the point at which the subject diverges from what is right into something wrong? Do we not become stalled right off the bat with inaction on what could be good for us if we fail to put the good part into our baskets up to the divergence, but from there on, leave the wrong part alone?

The more I look at the difference in how the first century Christians thought and how we think today, it is apparent that for all the negative scrutiny we have come up with, we've still managed to cook and eat a different recipe of truth than they did. There is not one person on this planet who has all the truth, even if some go about continuously pointing out what is wrong. They may be surprised that they, too, are using the wrong measuring cup.

Notice that I am even doing the same things here in this post that I so long to be different on, but there is no other way to explain how I'm feeling at this moment. But enough now! I don't want to do that myself. I want this blog to focus on what is right about things. I want to point out good things that we CAN add to our baskets, not have it be a continuous critique of error.

Lord, have mercy upon us and help us walk only in the truth! And don't allow surprise or fear keep us from it.

The Stress of a Financial Mess

I've been working on getting my financial affairs in order for the past five years. It has been a horrific undertaking, and many times, I eat cereal for supper. Back in 2003, I was at the end of my string wondering what in the world I was going to do, praying that God would show me some way to remedy my situation. He led me to Christian Financial Ministries as the first phase of getting myself put back together. It will take approximately another year to get the majority of my credit card debt paid off, and I'll have completed Phase 1 of my financial plan.

How did I get into such a mess? I used credit cards to supplement my income. Circumstances at the time were such that I felt I had to, but boy, do I ever wish I hadn't! I did not want to claim bankruptcy if there was any possibility that I could pay back what I owed, so I have soldiered on in spite of many obstacles. I am so thankful for the help that Christian Financial Ministries has given me in reducing interest rates and negotiating payment amounts. I send one combined payment to them and they distribute the payments to all my credit card companies. That in itself reduced a lot of stress for me in writing and keeping track of all the checks.

The stress of a financial mess is somehow very different than any other mess that we can get into. First the pressure is incredible, causing nervousness, despair, and worry, and that's just the psychological side of it.

On the physical side, I have lain awake at night, sweating it out on how I was going to juggle things around. I worked two jobs for five months until I couldn't do it anymore. I have put in so much time calling creditors to explain my situation and answering the phone when they have hounded me. I have a special work table for financial things set up in a corner of one room to localize all of that in one area of my home rather than having it in my face everywhere, because a financial mess creates a tension and a "busyness" that disrupts the peace of the home. I've literally put in hours at a time, opening bill envelopes, posting payments on ledger sheets, filing and organizing how I'm going to "rob Peter to pay Paul." I feel as though I get more mail than some businesses. You name the situation, and I've had some experience with that part of the financial mess. This is going to go on for another year, but the end of the struggle is finally in view.

Phase 2 of my plan (which I have started even though I'm not finished with phase 1) includes getting rid of more stress by reducing the amount of electronic debits on my checking account and paying every bill I can with cash rather than checks. Electronic ACH debits and charges from debit cards can actually be very stressful for someone in a financial mess. I have sweated it out so many times when the ACH debit is coming through on the day before payday and there's no way to stop it. Had to swallow my pride and ask for pay advances from my employer and even went to the loan sharks at the payday check advance companies when there was no other way. (You may as well get a loan from a pirate as from those places. They will hang you high on the fee.)

Debit cards have another aspect to them in that the banks can give you an overdraft as of the day you used the card while not giving you credit for a check deposited one minute after the business day closes on the same day you used the debit card. Banks can also give you overdrafts if the check you deposited to cover checks or debits has not cleared yet. I know these things from personal experience when I got $180 worth of overdrafts because of just these scenarios. (I got those fees back when I went to the bank and threatened to close my account if they didn't.)

So how convenient are those ACH debits and debit cards when you can rack up those kind of fees and are constantly watching the account to make sure funds are in there to cover them? For me, that is too much stress, and it's got to go!

Using the free bill pay system online can be problematic as well if you are on a tight budget. It can be a nightmare figuring out when the checks will be automatically written and when they are actually going to clear. You have to be in a position to keep enough money in the account at all times to use this service and not try to work deposits around clearing dates. More stress!

Use cash for everything possible, and you are done with the transactions. No worries about whether the check or debit is covered and no checkbook entry or reconciliation later.

If it helps anybody, here is my basic financial plan of action:
1. Get the credit cards paid off.
2. Use the money I was paying on the credit cards to pay off whatever else remains.
3. Use cash instead of ACH debits and the debit card wherever possible.
4. Never use a credit card again. A debit card works for airline tickets, renting cars, travel, etc.
5. Make my motto to be "if I don't have the money, I don't buy it" with the exception of my mortgage and car payment.
6. Be a good steward of whatever amount of money the Lord wants me to have. Wealth is not my goal, but totally his choice.
7. Be a source and not a consumer. Seven is the number of perfection, and I can't think of anything more financially perfect as being in the position to be a source that God can use.

I post this as a help to anyone who is in a financial mess right now. It may look impossible to fix, but take the first step today. Contact Christian Financial Ministries or another debt counselor of your choice. If I had not done that five years ago, I don't know where I would have been right now. It is inevitable, however, if we continue hanging in there, with God's help, eventually we'll come out of the black hole of a financial mess.

A Hidden Element of Economic Depression

Sometimes, God will draw my attention to something he wants to show me prophetically by bringing to mind a question or a statement. These come right out of the blue when I'm not even thinking about that particular subject. This happened again a few days ago, when this suddenly came to mind: "How did Hitler start WWII? What initiated all that? And then I heard: Be mindful of how Hitler got started as it is happening again."

I was not at a place to do any research on this subject at the time and I didn't write it down, so I confess I forgot about it. Then I was doing some other research, and found myself at a link which was about Hitler. Again, what God told me earlier came back to me, so off I went on the trail of finding out what that was all about.

What I found was rather interesting. This subject is a complex one, but I feel the part that God wants me to zero in on is this. In Germany and Italy, one of the factors that opened the door to allow Hitler and Mussolini to come to power was a severe economic depression. Japan was also having a severe economic depression at the time of WWII.

Economic depression puts people in a different frame of mind, bringing on desperation and opening the door to things they would not accept otherwise. And what are we seeing at the present moment in history? People are becoming desperate. They are losing their homes, can't pay their bills, and can hardly put food on the table. I know of a few people who went from an affluent position to poverty within a year due to medical debt.

Much of this is what I call engineered economic depression. What else could it be when oil companies are recording record profits of billions of dollars while people are resorting to yard sales and selling personal belongings at any price to buy gasoline to get to work? Credit cards and banks are charging ridiculous fees and interest rates, effectively locking people into a debtor's prison and throwing away the key. And the wheels of governmental action against these wolves in sheep's clothing refuse to turn fast enough to win the race against them.

What we are seeing is an engineered economic depression for a purpose. It's what is known as creating a problem that will produce a desired reaction in order to install a predetermined plan. I do not know the specifics of the predetermined plan, but I think we can certainly know enough aspects of how we are being herded toward it.

What can we do? Here are some important points:

1. Don't be afraid. The sons of God must keep moving forward for the sake of those who will come to depend upon them. We have an awesome responsibility.

2. Somehow, some way, the Lord will provide our daily bread, and we have to train ourselves to be satisfied with that. Warehousing wealth is not the answer. The prosperity message is not going to work on this. We CAN lose everything, and it doesn't mean God has abandoned us. But we need to move into the mentality that when we have what we need on a daily basis, we are the wealthiest people on the planet. Jesus got his tax money out of a fish's mouth as one of his daily provisions. He didn't get enough money out of the fish to invest it into the stock market for the next time he paid his taxes. Yet, he was the wealthiest man that ever lived because what he needed was created at the time he needed it. No warehousing, but on demand. We must explore the principles of the Kingdom of God to get our bearings on this aspect of financial stewardship. You'll have to do this on your own for you won't learn it in the church system.

3. In Matthew 24, Jesus says:

15When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)16Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:17Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house:18Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.19And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!20But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day.

Gleaning from this scripture, what we need to focus on is allowing the Lord to birth the spiritual seed of who he wants us to be that he has planted within us so that we will not still be pregnant with it when these days come. We also need to allow him to mature that baby beyond the infant stage so that we will not be giving suck to it in those days. Let us not return back to put on any garments, however wonderful, that he has exchanged for others. Most important, let us not have the "go back" mindset where when the going gets tough we return to the "house" that we came out of for there is nothing there that will help us after we have experienced the housetop. Finally, let us pray to be able to read the times and the seasons.

We all know that there is a hidden agenda in the way history is playing out. But there is another plan that is deeper than this hidden agenda, which is a masterpiece of creation and fueled by the love of God.

What About the Florida Revival?

Warnings are circulating about the Florida revival with its manifestations of laughing and jerking, angelic visitations, and other elements considered "high strangeness" compared to traditional beliefs.

First off, we should never judge anything anyone considers to be a move of God by comparing it to what has happened before. Every move of God in history changed the church as it was manifested in each timeframe. Everything grows and changes over time especially if the present situation is not the final destination. Is the present stage of growth of the citizens of the Kingdom of God the final destination? God forbid! May he have mercy upon us to bring us into the fullness of maturity. So why have believers traditionally kept their foot on the brakes, looked upon every movement of God as something strange, and generally, persecuted anyone who took one step outside of the box? The answer is wrapped up in one word: fear. We fear becoming deceived. We fear being out of control of our comfort zones. We fear being rejected. We fear losing that "old time" religion.

But you know what, that old time religion is definitely not good enough for today. It's only good enough if you want to circle your wagon train and camp by the side of the road. Safely bury the faith you've been given right there. Then dig it up when the Lord comes and hand it back to him when he asks what you did with it. Paul didn't mean it to be that way when he said he kept the faith. He meant he walked in faith. Paul even talked about going to the third heaven, and he didn't know whether he had gone in the body or out of the body. High strangeness! Mainstream churches might not even receive Paul if he were to walk into their buildings today and they put two and two together to realize that Paul wasn't sure if he had had an out-of-body experience. But Paul's faith went with him wherever the Lord took him. He kept it close to his heart no matter what situation he found himself in.

How can we possibly do the greater works than Jesus did if we can't deal with angels and can't deal with the presence and power of God that definitely will be felt in our physical bodies?

Thank God, believers are now becoming aware of the angels and the fact that they are on our side. We used to fear these ones because we did not want to be guilty of worshiping angels. How frustrated angels must be that members of their own team are scared of them and may not even like them. Oh, but we've got to be careful that we don't give them glory or any worship. But let me ask you this. When the UPS man brings you a package, do you worship him or thank him? Do you worship your friends or appreciate them? It IS possible to go too far and worship, but that doesn't happen in normal, balanced interactions. We have to rise above all the fears we have and realize that it is possible to interact with these beings without becoming disobedient to the Lord, worshipping them, or being deceived. We take our faith with us wherever we go. There are angels helping to protect our faith, and we must learn to be comfortable working with the team. Always keep in mind that we have more and better angels on our team than the Kingdom of Darkness has on theirs.

What we have to know in the coming days is that we are going to see what "eye hath not seen" and hear what "ear hath not heard." If we haven't seen or heard everything yet, that means what is coming doesn't look or sound like what we have seen or heard before!

In the fall of mankind, we lost perhaps 90% of our brain capability. Our wiring is not the same as it was originally wired up. This is why people jerk, laugh, or do other strange things when the power of God comes upon them. It's like baby steps. The wiring is not a perfected conduit of the power of God into this physical realm. Also the other element involved is controlling our own energy forces that God placed within us and is also restoring. The jerking, laughing, running, etc., is not always going to happen after we rise up in "rewired" maturity in handling the frequencies of power that God emits. He is in business to bump up the capacity of the sons of God and establishing the "norm" of them walking around just as Jesus did, carrying power that would otherwise kill an unregenerate human.

Therefore, let us not be so quick to reject what seems strange. The Bible is full of strange things, and surely we don't believe that those were fairy tales. But some must believe they were fairy tales because they would not receive it if it happened today. Amazingly, some believers live as though the supernatural is not real.

Balance is the key. Your faith goes with you, and God is faithful not to allow you to go off the deep end. We must continue moving on without fear into the unknown, else we'll never arrive at the gates of that heavenly Jerusalem coming down from God.

Christianity's Freak Shows

Italian church officials have exhumed the body of the revered monk, Padre Pio, on the 40th anniversary of his death. The body is now on display in a glass coffin. The BBC reports that the body is in "fair" condition and one archbishop said "his nails looked as if they had just undergone a manicure." You can read the article here.

I went to the Padre Pio Foundation's website, and I quote below what they say about this man:

"Padre Pio, a humble Capuchin priest from San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, was blessed by God in many wonderful and mysterious ways. The most dramatic was the stigmata. Padre Pio bore the wounds of Christ for fifty years!

"Among his other gifts were perfume, bilocation, prophecy, conversion, reading of souls, and miraculous cures. People are still being cured through his intercession in ways that cannot be explained by medicine or science.

"More important, if less spectacular, are the spiritual healings that take place in all parts of the world! Padre Pio is a powerful intercessor!!"

I have no desire to trash Padre Pio for anything that God has brought through him, however, what is wrong with this picture? What in the world does digging up a body and putting it on display for people to file past and view it have to do with the Kingdom of God? It's weird! What kind of message does this send to the world if only to bring condemnation and ridicule once again upon Christianity?

Yet, this is no different than other "freak" shows that are going on within the church. It is full of hype and human greed and people-centered worshippers who focus on their own needs. Pastors preach into that need and are not teaching the ways of the Kingdom. Jesus never came to establish a religion. He came to establish a Kingdom. Somebody has to say this. Oh, how we need more Martin Luthers who would nail another 95 Theses on every church door of every denomination in all the world! We've diverged, and then we expect God to revive that divergence. No revival is coming to produce better freak shows!

Are you weary of the church system? The only answer is to come out of it and "seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Matthew 6:33

There is no way that God will allow his name on this kind of thing. and people don't realize that it isn't God's name on it any longer, but Ichabod which means, "the glory has departed." Stop beating a dead horse and praying that he will resurrect it. No revival is coming for the church system. Only judgment. Come out of her so you do not partake of that judgment.

The amazing Fibonacci sequence

I came across another video on YouTube the other day which gives a talk on the Fibonacci mathematical sequence of numbers. I just had to reference it here as it speaks to me of the brilliance of our creator. Prepare to be amazed as you watch.

The Power Within

I'm currently putting together another article which I hope to post soon, but in the meantime, I ran across a video on YouTube which is most interesting and pertains to what I will be writing about in that article. I thought this is important to see.

This video is a mini-documentary about a man who has developed his "chi" or inner energy and uses it to heal.