More to life

Posted by George_Hac on Thu 2 Sep 2010 7:16:19 am     | no comments

 Wisdom

Posted by George_Hac on Wed 1 Sep 2010 7:03:59 am     | no comments

Feeling alone

Posted by George_Hac on Tue 31 Aug 2010 7:30:18 am     | no comments

Feeling alone

Posted by George_Hac on Mon 30 Aug 2010 9:30:07 am     | no comments

 Salt your relationships

Posted by George_Hac on Sun 29 Aug 2010 7:14:23 am     | no comments

How do I start?

The kingdom of heaven must arrive in our hearts.  This means turning away from our self-centeredness and "Self" control and turning our life over to Christ's direction and control.

(Matthew 4:17)"From that time Jesus began to preach his message: "Turn away from your sins, because the Kingdom of Heaven is near!"

How has coming to know Jesus been like moving from darkness to light for you?

You have turned your life over to God your Father and have rejected evil and your earthly desires.

(Matthew 8:26)"Why are you so frightened?  Jesus answered. "What little faith you have!" Then he got up and ordered the winds and the waves to stop, and there was a great calm."

You have realized that if you don't trust your Heavenly Father and turn your life over to Him, Life has very little meaning.

No plan - Our God would not be in  ultimate control.

No promise - Our gospel would be empty.

No power - Our faith would be aimless wishing.

No pardon - Our sins would stain our souls.

No peace - Our fear of the future would rob us of the joy of living.

No purpose - Our life would be a cul-de-sac with no exit.

(God's Will in Your Life, Dr. Lloyd John Ogilive).

Trust in your Father in Heaven, has now become what you desire most.
 

Posted by George_Hac on Sat 28 Aug 2010 7:29:56 am     | no comments

 The Gift of the Blessing

Posted by George_Hac on Fri 27 Aug 2010 7:23:29 am     | no comments

Decision to become a child of God

Posted by George_Hac on Thu 26 Aug 2010 7:06:00 am     | no comments

God's Love in Living

Posted by George_Hac on Wed 25 Aug 2010 7:36:09 am     | no comments

Depression and the soul
The soul presents itself in a variety of colors, including all the shades of gray, blue and black.  To care for the soul, we must observe the full range of all its colorings, and resist the temptation to approve only of white, red, and orange – the brilliant colors.  In a society that is defended against the tragic sense of life, depression will appear as an enemy, an unredeemable malady; yet in such a society, devoted to light, depression, in compensation, will be unusually strong.
Care of the soul requires our appreciation  of these ways it presents itself.  Faced with depression, we might ask ourselves, “What is it doing here?  Does it have some necessary role to play?”  Especially in dealing with depression, a mood close to our feelings of mortality, we must guard against the denial of death that is so easy to slip into.  Even further, we may have to develop a taste for the depressed mood, a positive respect for its place in the soul’s cycles.
Some feelings and thoughts seem to emerge only in a dark mood.  Suppress the mood, and you will suppress those ideas and reflections.  Depression may be as important a channel for valuable “negative” feelings, as expressions of affection are for the emotions of love.  Feelings of love give birth naturally to gestures of attachment.  In the same way, the void  and grayness of depression evoke an awareness and articulation of thoughts of a need for God, otherwise hidden behind the screen of lighter moods.  Melancholy gives the soul an opportunity to express a side of its (God relationship) nature that is as valid as any other, but is hidden out of our distaste for its darkness and bitterness.
Today we seem to prefer the word depression over sadness and melancholy.  Perhaps its Latin form  sounds more clinical and serious.  The depressed person sometimes thinks that the good times are all past, that there is nothing left for the present or the future.  These thoughts and feelings, sad as they are, favor the soul’s desire to be both earthly and in eternity, and so in a strange wat they can be beneficial.
Sometimes we associate depression with literal aging, but it is more precisely a matter of the soul’s aging.  Having been identified with youth, the soul now takes on important qualities of age that are positive and helpful.  If age is denied, soul  becomes lost in an inappropriate clinging to youth.
Depression grants the gift of experience not as a literal fact but as an attitude toward yourself.  You get a sense of having lived through something, of being older and wiser.  You know that life is suffering, and that knowledge makes a difference.  You can’t enjoy the bouncy, carefree innocence of youth any longer, a realization that entails both sadness because of the loss, and pleasure in a new feeling of self-acceptance and self-knowledge.  This awareness of age has a halo of melancholy around it, but it also enjoys a measure of nobility.
It’s difficult to let go of youth, because that release requires an acknowledgment of death.  I suspect that those of us who opt for eternal youth are setting ourselves up for heaqvy bouts of depression.  If you allow  depression to visit, you will feel the change in your body, in your muscles, and on your face – some relief  from the burden of youthful enthusiasm and the “unbearable lightness of being.”
Maybe we could appreciate the role of depression  in the economy of the soul more if we could only take away the negative connotations of the word.  What if “depression” were simply a state of being, neither good nor bad, something the soul does in God’s plan and for God’s reasons.  Aging brings out the flavors of a personality.  The individual emerges over time, the way fruit matures and ripens.  Melancholy thoughts carve out an interior space where wisdom/God’s plan can take the residence.
In this sense, depression is a process that fosters a valuable coagulation of thoughts and emotions.  As we age, our ideas, formerly light, rambling, and unrelated to each other, become more densely gathered into values and a spiritual life, giving our lives substance and firmness.
Because of its painful emptiness, it is often tempting to look for a way out of depression.  But entering into its mood and thoughts can be deeply satisfying.  Depression is sometimes described as a condition in which there are no ideas – nothing to hang on to.  But that is when we are forced to realize that we can not control our life and that we need to find another way.  This is when the Holy Spirit can step in and help us turn over control of our life to him.
When, as Christian Lifestyle trainers and friends, we are the observers of depression and are challenged to find a way to deal with it in others, we can bring them into a deep loving relationship with their God.  We could learn from Christian training and follow its guidance, becoming more patient within the Holy Spirit’s guidance, lowering our excited expectations, taking a watchful attitude as this soul deals with God’s plan in utter seriousness and spiritually.  In our friendship, we could offer it a place of acceptance and containment.  Sometimes, of course, depression, like any emotion, caazn go beyond ordinary limits, becoming a completely debilitating illness.
One great anxiety associated with depression is that it will never end, that life will never again be joyful and active.  This is one of the feelings that is part of the pattern – the sense of being trapped.  This anxiety seems to decrease when we stop fighting the elements  the elements that are in the depression, and turn instead toward learning how to love God better and how to be closer to him.
Insinuations of  Death to Self-control
People of all ages sometimes say from their depression that life is over, that their hopes for the future have proved unfounded.  They are disillusioned because the values and understandings by which they have controlled their lives for years suddenly make no sense.
Care of the soul requires acceptance of all this dying to self-control.  The temptation is to champion our familiar ideas about life right up to the point of conversion, but it is necessary in the end to give them up, to enter into the moment of the soul making its most important decision.  If the symptom is felt as the sense that life is over, and that there’s no use in going on, then an affirmative approach to this feeling might be a conscious, artful giving-in to the emotions and thoughts of ending that depression has stirred up.
The emptiness and dissolution of meaning that are often present in depression show how attached we can become to our ways of controlling our lives.  Often our personal plans and our control of our life seem to be all too neatly wrapped, leaving little room for God’s control.  Depression comes along then and opens up a hole.  Depression makes holes in our theories and assumptions, but even this painful process can be honored as a necessary and valuable source of healing.
This peculiar kind of education – learning our limits – may not be a conscious effort only; it may come upon us as a captivating mood of depression, at least momentarily wiping out our happiness, and sending us off into fundamental appraisals of our knowledge, our assumptions, and the very purpose of our existence.
Coming to Terms with Depression
Many people are full of religion, close to life, empathic, and connected to people around them.  But these very people may have difficulty LOVING GOD WITH THEIR WHOLE HEART and moving closer toward that goal and therefore to see what is going on, and to relate their life experiences to their ideas and values.  This difficulty of loving God with their whole heart separates them from God’s close involvement with their life.  We see this development in people as they reflect on their past with some distance and detachment.  To suddenly find need for withdrawal and with vague emotions of hopelessness.  Such feelings  have a place and work spiritually on the soul.
If we persist in our modern way of treating depression as an illness to be cured only mechanically and chemically, we may  loose the gifts of soul that only depression can provide.  We may find it exhausting trying to keep life bright and warm at all costs.  Identity is felt as one’s soul find’s its relationship with God.  We know who we are because we have uncovered the purpose we were created.  It has been sifted out by depressive thought, “reduced,” in the basic point to it’s existence. 
Care of the soul asks for a cultivation of the larger world depression represents.  When we speak clinically of depression, we think of an emotional or behavioral condition.  For the soul, depression is an initiation, a rite of passage.  If we think that depression, so empty and dull, is void of a spiritual factor, we may overlook God’s purpose for it.  In our cities, boarded-up homes and failing businesses signal economic and social “depression.”  In these “depressed” areas of our cities, decay is cut off from will and conscious participation, appearing only as an external manifestation of a problem or an illness of the soul.
We also see depression, economically and emotionally, as literal failure and threat, as a surprise breaking in upon our healthcare plans and expectations.  Hospice workers will tell you how much a family can gain when the depressive facts of a terminal illness are discussed openly.  We might also take our own illnesses, our visits to the doctor and to the hospital, as a reminder of our mortality.  We ar not caring for the soul in these situations when we protect our-selves from their impact.
Because depression is one of the faces of the soul, acknowledging it into our relationships foster intimacy with our God.  If we deny or cover up anything that is at home in the soul, then we cannot be fully present to others.  Hiding the difficult factors results in a loss of soul; speaking about them and from them offers a way toward genuine community and intimacy with our God.
The Healing Powers of Depression
Care of the soul doesn’t mean wallowing in the symptoms, but it does mean trying to learn from depression what qualities the soul needs.  Even further, it attempts to weave those depressive qualities into the fabric of life – coldness, isolation, darkness, emptiness – makes a contribution to the texture of everyday life.  We discover that depression uses the Holy Spirit as a guiding spirit whose job it is to carry the soul into a better relationship with their God.

 

Posted by George_Hac on Tue 24 Aug 2010 7:15:08 am     | no comments

Loves all men

Posted by George_Hac on Mon 23 Aug 2010 7:38:24 am     | no comments

Test of this love

Posted by George_Hac on Sun 22 Aug 2010 7:05:36 am     | no comments

 Doing and Saying in our time

Posted by George_Hac on Sat 21 Aug 2010 7:29:46 am     | no comments

(Charles P. Henderson, Jr., The Christian Century)"These are just testimony of men and women who had neither axe to grind nor material product to sell.  It is the testimony of men and women who in many cases laid down their lives rather than deny what they or their predecessors had seen and heard of Jesus the Son of God.  And what is their for human eyes and ears to witness today - apart from this  record of what happened long ago?

"There is the testimony of millions of men and women of all races and of rank, of all varieties of accomplishment, and of all levels of understanding, that they have found in a person Jesus Christ, a Savior, a brother, a friend, who has lifted the burden of guilt from their hearts and given them peace and stability.

"Do not, if you are an unbeliever, if you are skeptical be put off by the fact that this experience seems to mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people.  In one man the heart and core of it seems to consist in a vocation of personal evangelism rooted and grounded in expounding passages of the Bible.  In another man the heart and core of it seems to consist in regular attendance at Mass, regular confession to a priest, and the thumbing of beads in prayer.  Do not make the mistakes of thinking that these two men are involved in essentially different systems of belief.  For both of them devotion to their convictions.  Indeed the variety of modes in which Christian devotion to Christ manifests itself is a strength rather than a weakness of the Christian religion.  G. K. Chesterton told how he had been compulsively drawn to Christ by the fact that he was a person whom everybody praised for a different reason.

"As we read the Bible, and the works of wise Christian teachers, a hundred Christ's pass before our eyes.  There is Christ the King, and Christ the carpenter of Nazareth.  There is the Son of God seated at the right hand of the Father in Heaven and the child of Mary lying in a manger.  There is the Good Shepherd and the true vine, the Spouse of the Church and its cornerstone, the Sower of seed and the Fisher of Men.  Christ is the high priest standing at the altar and the servant with water and a towel kneeling at your door.  he is the Lamb sent to slaughter and the promised Messiah.

"It is not surprising that those who claim to serve him can do so in fashions so diverse."

We learn from, Christ himself that the whole world is God's world.  We shall learn to live day by day in the light of the truth about God, man and the world modeled through Christ.

We will be using the primary tool God has provided to get to know his son and a tool to get to know Him, the Bible.  But the Bible alone, cannot provide us with guidance to life.  There is always the danger that we will find in the Bible only what we take with us to it, use it to confirm what we already think, hear only what we want to hear.

To avoid this; we will listen to how other Christians in different times and places and situations, have understood it.  We will look at how they define, men's total dependence on God, the claim of God on every area of man's life in the world.  The truth is the truth about God, man and the world guided by Jesus Christ as we know him in the Bible and through others.
 

Posted by George_Hac on Fri 20 Aug 2010 7:26:39 am     | no comments

His Call (Phyllis C. Michael)

My load is too heavy;My shoulders are broad!My feet are too weary;I'll give you strength!I can't see the way, Lord;I'll be your guide!The path is so steep though;One step at a time!I fear I shall stumble;I'll help you stand!I'm poorly prepared Lord;I'll teach you all!Lord, here's a crossroad;I am the way!I'll go then, where you call;Follow thou Me!

It is every day's life plan; which wrestles with the basic issues and  decisions all of us face every day, whoever we are, whatever we do.

Our purpose in these topics is simply to restate some questions that no doubt come to mind in your life and help guide you to some answers.  Although "Theology" deals with ideas, truths and doctrines ("doctrine" simply means "teaching"); it points to a very personal and living area, our day to day relationship to our purpose and goals of existence.

If we the provider of these topics and you the student are to achieve this purpose; you must be able to relate what follows; to your social, sexual, political, your individual life, your everyday work and play, and your worship of your God.  We both will be satisfied; if after reading this, you will be able to make God a part of your daily life, True God dealing with real men in a real world.

Since we are basing our guidance to daily life on the Christian principals set forth by Jesus Christ; we will be relating much of these topics to what he has left us in guidance.  it is often said to know someone you only have to look at the people around them.  Well who better to look at, then "God's Son" to get to know God.  If we want to relate to him, we must look at how God has provided some very solid guidance to humanity.  We will look at the many forms of guidance God provided us; the Church, the Bible, other followers, etc.
 

Posted by George_Hac on Thu 19 Aug 2010 7:26:08 am     | no comments

"Our Father, who art in heaven"

Posted by George_Hac on Wed 18 Aug 2010 7:04:31 am     | no comments

God's World

Posted by George_Hac on Tue 17 Aug 2010 7:28:20 am     | no comments

 Faith

Posted by George_Hac on Mon 16 Aug 2010 7:34:33 am     | no comments

Motives for Living

Posted by George_Hac on Sun 15 Aug 2010 7:37:30 am     | no comments

Training Plan

People are not interested in changing their life to be successful at something they care nothing about.  They have been told they can go to heaven to be with God forever.  But this is in a uncertain future, not the certain present.  They move on to whatever they really care about, making money, etc.  They do not have the desire to meet God, so the promise has little effect on their life, unless they start to look at their life.  Then purpose, values, meaningfulness and many other factors of life come into focus.  These areas are better known as religion.

"Religion, after all, is the serious business of the human race" (Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial).

Religion, the belief in a divine or supernatural power, is a universal cultural trait among humans.  Throughout prehistory within the primeval rain forest, a staggering majority of human beings have been and still are prepared to accept belief in a supernatural force superior to themselves.  No less a thinker than Albert Einstein once acknowledge that his idea of God included "the presence of a superior reasoning power... revealed in the incomprehensible universe."

"I have noticed a similar phenomenon in Christians today.  They can almost invariably make sense of their own history, they can look back over childhood, over early adulthood, over family troubles, over career choices and say, 'I think I see what God was teaching me.  I see what he was doing.'  They can look at the past and see more than change, they can see growth.  Christians need never feel lost in the cosmos, because the Holy Spirit identifies for us our place in the sweep of history;  the Spirit assures us of our place in relation to God who loves us as his children.  This knowledge of intimate love and purpose comes from Jesus through the Holy Spirit just as it came to the disciples at Pentecost" (Knowing the Face of God-Tim Stafford).

Having a personal relationship with God is truly a requirement if we are truly God's children.

No matter how sophisticated or religiously well-informed we become at our simplest, most emotional level we long to see God.  Children ask; "How big is God?" and "What does God look like?" until parents and teachers warn them away from these questions.  But none of us ever totally shakes the feeling that some point in time we will meet God.  Indeed something deeply hungry is touched by the thought of such a possibility.  God is always present, we know, but we wish he were visible.
 

Posted by George_Hac on Sat 14 Aug 2010 7:16:59 am     | no comments

Jealousy and Envy
Even though care of the soul is not about changing, fixing, adjusting, and making better, still we have to find a way to live with our disturbing feelings, such as jealousy and envy.  These emotions can be so sickening and corrosive that we don’t want to leave them raw, wallowing in them for years and getting nowhere with them.  But what can we do short of trying to get rid of them?  A clue is to be found in the very distaste we feel for them: anything so difficult to accept must have a special kind of shadow in it, a germ of creativity shrouded in a veil of repulsion.  As we have so often found, in matters of the soul the most unworthy pieces turn out to be the most creative.  The stone (Christ) the builders (the world) reject becomes the cornerstone.
Both envy and jealousy are common experiences.  They are entirely different feelings, one a desire for what another person has, the other fears that the other person will take what we have, but they both have a corrosive effect on the heart.  Either emotion can make a person feel ugly.  There is nothing noble in either of them.  At the same time, a person may feel oddly attached to them.  The jealous person takes some pleasure in his suspicions, and the envious person feeds  on his desires for what others possess.
We tend to think of jealousy as an emotion we can control with understanding and will, and we try to do our best with it.  But in spite of our efforts, the human soul proves to be an arena in which great struggles, far deeper than rational understanding can reach, play themselves out.  Jealousy feels so overwhelming because it is more than a physical response.  Whenever it appears, issues and values our being sorted  out deep in  the soul, and all we can do is try to identify with the emotions and simply let the struggle work itself out.
Jealousy
Jealousy is not simply insecurity or emotional instability.  The tension we feel in jealousy may be that of much greater worlds (God and the devil) colliding than can be seen by looking only at our personal emotions.
The end appears tragic, but tragedy, even in everyday life, can be a form of valuable restructuring.  It is painful and in some ways destructive, but it also puts things in a new order.  The only way out of jealousy is through turning it over to God and working through it.    We may have to let jealousy have its way with us and do its job  of reorienting fundamental values.  Its pain comes, at least in part, from opening up to unexplored territory and letting go of old familiar truths in the face of unknown and threatening new possibilities.
T reduce jealousy to an ego fault is to overlook its complexity and also to avoid the deeper soul where jealousy is lodged.  If we were to give jealousy an open hearing, we might find out something about its history in our life and maybe in our family, the circumstances that have called it forth at this time.  These things are never obvious, and so we tend to focus on the obvious emotions and their superficial interpretations.  We neede to go deeper and see the characters and themes at work.
When jealous feelings and images penetrate the heart and mind, a kind of initiation takes place.  The jealous person discovers new ways of thinking and a fresh appreciation for the complicated demands of loving God with your whole heart, soul and spirit.
In a culture that prizes individual freedom and choice, the desire to possess is a piece of shadow, but it is also a real desire.  Jealousy is fulfilled in true connection with another person.  But this connection makes severe demands.  It asks us to love attachment and dependence.
Envy
Similar to jealousy in the way it jabs at the heart is envy, one of the seven deadly sins and clearly serious shadow material.  Once again we ask a difficult question: How do you care for the soul when it is presenting itself in the green ooze of envy.  Can we give this deadly sin  an open-minded hearing?  Can we perceive what the soul wants when it wrenches us with longing for what another person has?
Envy can be consuming.  It can crowd out every other thought and emotion with its strength.  It can make a person distracted, “touched,” as we say, aching for the life, position, and possessions of others.  My neighbors have happiness, money, success, children – why don’t I?  My friend has a good job, looks, luck – what’s wrong with me?  There may be a good dose of self-pity in envy, but it’s the longing that is so bitter.
Although envy may appear to be filled with ego, it is not fundamentally an ego problem.  Envy eats away at the heart.  If anything, the ego is the object of envy’s corrosive power.  No, it is not an excess of ego, it is an activity of the soul, a painful process in the soul’s life.  The ego problem is how to respond to envy, how to react to the sickening wishes it inspires.  In the face of envy, our task – which should not surprise us now – is to find out what it wants.
Compulsions are always made up of two parts, and envy is no exception.  On the other hand, envy is a desire for something, and on the other, it is a resistance to what the heart actually wants (peace).  In envy, desire and self-denial work together to create a characteristic sense of frustration and obsessiveness.  Although envy feels challenging – the envious person thinks he’s the victim of bad fortune – it also involves strong willfulness in the form of resistance to fate and character.  In the thick of envy, one is blind to what God is doing in your life.
The point in caring  for the envious soul is not to get rid of the envy, but to be guided back by God’s plan for them.  The pain in is like pain in the body, it makes us stop and take notice of something that has gone wrong and needs attention.  What has gone wrong is that our close-up vision has been blured along with our trust of God. Envy is an inability to see what is most important to us.  Our love and trust in our God.
In the presence of envy’s misery, it is tempting to become a cheer-leader.  “You can do it.  You can have whatever you want.  You’re good as anyone else.”  But that approach falls right into the trap that envy sets up: “I’ll try to get my life on the right track, but I know the project is doomed from the very start.”  The real problem is not the individual’s ability to have a good life, it’s his capacity not to have one.  If we avoid the compensatory move into support and positive thinking, we can learn instead to honor the symptom and let it guide us in close care of the soul.  If in envy the person wishes life were better, than maybe it’s a good idea to feel that emptiness deeply and thereby turn control of their life over to God.  Wishes can be fluffy instruments of repression, turning attention to unrealistic and superficial possibilities as a defense against the void that is so painful.
In both jealousy and envy, fantasies are potent and utterly captivating, yet they float in an atmosphere somehow removed from actual life.  Soul is always attached to life in some way.  As symptoms, jealousy and envy keep life at a safe distance; as invitations to soul, they offer ways into one’s own heart where love attachment to God and others can be reclaimed.
The fact that jealousy and envy are both resistant to reason and to human efforts to eradicate them is a blessing.  They ask us for a deeper diving into the soul, beyond ideals of health and happiness and into the spiritual world.  Ultimately, these troublesome emotions offer a path to a life expedr4ienced with greater depth, maturity, and flexibility in our relationship with God.
Our task is to care for the soul, but it is also true that the soul cares for us.  So the phrase “care of the soul” can be heard in two ways.  In one sense, we ddo our best to honor whatever the soul presents to us within God’s plan, in the other, the soul is the subject who does the caring through the  efforts of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, its suffering initiates a move toward increased spirituality.

 

Posted by George_Hac on Fri 13 Aug 2010 7:44:58 am     | no comments

 In Pride

Posted by George_Hac on Thu 12 Aug 2010 7:10:12 am     | no comments

Toward what end?

Just as a child of earth learns submission in stages starting with total reliance on earthly authority as a baby; the child of heaven learns submission to God through being broken of reliance on himself and the physical world around him and transferring that reliance to God.

(Psalms 27:11)"Teach me, Lord, what you want me to do, and lead me along a safe path."

Recognize that only God can assist when we stand helpless.

Waiting certainly plays an enormous role in the unfolding story of God's relationship to man.  It is God's oft-repeated way of teaching us that His power is real and that He can answer our prayers without interference and manipulation from us.

But we have such trouble getting our will, our time schedules out of the way.  Much of the time we act like a child who brings a broken toy to his father to be mended.  The father gladly takes the toy and begins work.  Then after a while, childlike impatience takes over.  Why is it taking so long?

The child stands by, getting his hands in the father's way, offering a lot of meaningless advice and some silly criticism.  Finally in desperation, he snatches the toy from the father's hands and walks off with it, saying rather bitterly that he hadn't really thought his father could fix it anyway.

Perhaps it isn't even "his will" to mend toys.

On the other hand, whenever we are trustful enough to leave our "broken toy" with the Father, not only do we eventually get it back gloriously restored, but are also handed a surprising plus.  We find for ourselves what the saints and mystics affirm, that during the dark waiting period when self-effort had ceased, a spurt of astonishing spiritual growth took place in us.  Afterwards, we have qualities like more patience, more love for the Lord and those around us, more ability to hear His voice, greater willingness to obey.

(From Adventures in Prayer by Catherine Marshall)

Do you catch yourself being impatient with God?  Do you think you know the best way to handle a problem?  While waiting, don't stew over your problem.  Praise God for his solution to the problem.  Instead of focusing on yourself and your problem, focus on God's care for you by his training plan for you.

In earth's schools you have teachers, textbooks, school buildings, classes, pep rallies, etc.

(Psalms 26: 1-3)Declare me innocent, O Lord, because I do what is right and trust you completely.  Examine me and test me, Lord; judge my desires and thoughts.  Your constant love is my guide; your faithfulness always leads me."

Given a sincerity scale" of 1 to 10, how would you score on the Lord's test? Why?

We see in God's program, we have God's love, examining, tests and faithfulness.  In heaven's training we have ministers, the Bible and other religious books, services, evangelization  rallies, etc.

As on earth, there is a selection of schooling approaches, types of schools and training.  There are various religions, denominations, and churches.  Sometimes it's hard to select the right "training camp" or church and remain with it.  But we must remember that we are being taught by God.

(John 6: 43-45)Jesus answered, "Stop grumbling among yourselves.  No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him to me; and I will raise him to life on the last day.  The prophets wrote 'Everyone will be taught by God.'  Anyone who hears the Father and learns from him comes to me."

Has your familiarity with Jesus (e.g. raised on Sunday School stories) ever kept you from seeing who he really is?  What can help remove the blinders?

As part of earth's schooling we learn that we must accept authority and be able to interrelate to others or else there are penalties we must suffer.
 

Posted by George_Hac on Wed 11 Aug 2010 7:34:39 am     | no comments

In what ways can you fulfill the Great Commission in the context of your family?  Work?  Community?

how are we to make disciples?  Of Whom?  With what resources?

Toward what end?

Posted by George_Hac on Tue 10 Aug 2010 7:14:33 am     | no comments

 What is God's Will?

Posted by George_Hac on Mon 9 Aug 2010 7:28:54 am     | no comments