Are facts "The Truth"?

Facts can be accurate, that doesn't always make them right...
facts are dispassionate, the truth is compassionate
Facts are said to be "cold and hard"like a prison cell, the truth, will set you free...
just the facts, to tell the truth...
The biggest difference between facts and the truth is in how they're used, I recently heard of a young couple planning to get married...the fact is that at least 50% of marriages result in divorce, especially when the people are under 25yrs old. It takes years to really know what it is that you want out of life or who you really are, people sometimes grow and change a lot in their early twenties. based on these "facts" I would have a hard time being supportive of the idea.
Whats the truth? The truth is that what's impossible with man IS possible with God, when a husband and wife put God first in their marriage He will bless it. a generation ago it wasn't unusual at all for people to get married at 16 or 17 yr's old...those are the ones celebrating their 50th and 60th anniversaries now! Who disregarded the "fact" that at times they were perhaps very unhappy with their spouse in favor of the truth which is that "nobody's perfect" and that we've all done some pretty dumb things...who had the ability to remember what it was that they loved about this person to begin with and hold on to that...and with few exceptions that their lives would definitely be better off WITH this person in them than without them.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "speaking the truth in love?' The term 'truth in love' is actually redundant. You can't have the truth without love. It says in the Bible that God is truth and that God is love. Facts, are most often used to accuse someone, or to discourage someone, are you starting to smell something? who IS the accuser of the brethern? Thats right! our enemy himself, satan...Whats interesting to me about all of this is that when we use the "facts" to tear someone down we ourselves are also left vulnerable to the same attack! This is an area that I know I've screwed up in...why? Because I live in a world of "facts," as critical, and as judgmental and as deadly as a heart attack to a persons Christian walk...So now, it's only the truth that can set me free, the truth in love

Blessed

What does it mean to be blessed? We say that we're a blessed nation, constantly thanking God for our many blessings and praying for other people who we think are suffering or somehow in need of a "blessing." Sometimes I wonder if we're as blessed as we think. We see refugee's in war ravaged places who are starving and have only the sparse clothes on their backs but what we don't see or understand is that these people have a blessing WE don't. We just celebrated Thanksgiving...how thankful were you? Was it just another day? just another opportunity to over eat? or was it manna from heaven? Remember the story of the Israelite's in the desert? They were fed "manna" that was new everyday. There were a couple of reasons for that, one of which was so that nobody could horde it... also, because it's our nature as people to turn our back on God when we have what we need and God knew that. In order for them to continually experience the love and blessing it was necessary for them to be kept humble so that they wouldn't forget or confuse the source of the blessing. God was blessing them by keeping them close to Him! God was blessing them by teaching them humility, God was blessing them by teaching them trust and dependence...

We're so incredibly blessed in this country to have so many church's and the freedom to worship God in the way we see fit. We dress up in our Sunday best and listen to preachers talk about how we're not the church we should be. We kinda feel bad for a minute or two but it's easy enough to brush that aside and contemplate what to eat for lunch or think to ourselves "How perfect! we must deserve each other because you're not the minister you should be either" Meanwhile, somewhere in Guatemala people are being delivered from demons and all kinds of disease, healed from sicknesses,truly brought into the presence of the Lord! These people may not have a three bedroom house or a buffet of food to pick and choose over but what they do have is a real relationship with Christ! They've been in his presence, they'll never be the same...whats the difference between us and them? They're believing on Christ for everything, they've got no other "safety net" to catch them, it's absolutely a matter of life and death! That's a right here and right now blessing not a "Lord, please continue to bless me and my family so that we don't have to find out you're really all that we need!" kind of blessing!
I think that there needs to be a drastically different approach to the evangelistic movement here in the U.S. We need to be treated like the spiritually poor people we are! We need to be given a crash course in honesty about ourselves and where we are. If we could somehow strip away all of the "window dressings" and our "prosperity" to reveal the truth perhaps then we might actually be "blessed." If we could lay down our pride long enough to bend a knee before God and cry a few repentant tears we might experience forgiveness. Perhaps if we went through another "great depression" we might rediscover what it means to be thankful, to be dependent, and then, having "gotton over" ourselves...experience the love and blessing our Heavenly Father longs to give us!

Send in the clowns...

That seems to be the mood lately, I'm a little tired of all of these "reality" shows though. Does it bother anyone else besides me that we as a nation are so preoccupied with them? I think what we really need is an "Extreme Government Makeover", Or maybe we should watch "wipe-out" while the market tanks! Maybe we can ALL be contestants on our own "home version" of "survivor"...Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned, so why can't we "dance with the stars"?

It just amazes me how the priorities of a whole society can be so incredibly shallow...

That we, like the Romans, would prefer to sit back and watch these "spectacles," I suppose it's mostly because watching someone else be ridiculed or be challenged in some ridiculous way, somehow makes Us feel less ridiculous.

Hold on friends, before you take that extra Valium... I've got some "good news" too!

Do you remember the other day I was talking about my cars alternator and how it wasn't working right? A couple of days ago I changed the oil and when I pulled the car off of the ramps and parked it I noticed that the battery light on my dash wasn't on! I was skeptical, so I started it up a few times...still off! That turned out to be really important when I went in to do some pre-training for a job I'm trying to land and had to leave before it was light! It was previously unable to keep itself running when the lights were on. I talked with a mechanical friend of mine and he said that sometimes the brushes inside the alternator don't make good contact or something like that...I'm just saying THANK YOU JESUS! thats cool huh?



Here's another "coincidence" way back in 1994 a
guy smashed my windshield. (long story) I get a postcard in the mail from the prosecutor of Greene county telling me to call them and when I do she informs me that this individual has been picked up for another warrant and that this was still on his record as being unpaid. She asked me how much the windshield cost me, we agreed on 150.00$ and either today or tomorrow I'm expecting a check in the mail! GOD IS GOOD! strange is'nt it?
UPDATE! here's the check...received it tonight!

And then, there's this job opportunity I'm pursuing right now. I was interested in being a bus driver with the Couch Mo school district, only to find out that the maintenance man is quitting in October and they're going to need someone there too! Thats a better Job than just being a driver and I'll also make additional money driving for them! Hallelujah!!

So God really is looking out for me! I was talking to a lady yesterday and we both agreed that as bad as things in our economy/nation/world seem right now, we're probably only seeing the tip of the iceberg! It's SO much worse than any of us can even fathom...But are we anxious? are we depressed? NO! why? because we know from Gods word that these things must come to pass, and that like birth pains, these are the signs that our Lord will be coming soon. This worldly system of things is a wash out, we can't do anything to change it! All we can do is be busy here with our heavenly Fathers business of telling as many people about the real "great news" that there is a God! He does love us! He sent His Son to save us from being eternally separated from Him and from our own choice to be cast into torment! Thats whats important right now...don't you agree?

Send in the clowns, don't bother they're here!

I say send us the savior, it's ever so near!

Come go with me to that land over yonder, He s prepared for the pure and the true.
It s a place where sickness and death cannot enter, I m going brother how about you?
Maybe today or maybe tomorrow, He ll return in robes of pure white.
I m packing up now getting my things together, Who knows? It might be tonight...

The Day After

Yesterday was NOT a good day for a lot of folks, I saw the former CEO of AIG say that he'd lost about three billion dollars...A lot of people are having to accept the idea that perhaps they'll be working past the time they had planned on retiring. We're all concerned with the current state of the economy, it can get to you if you let it! Yesterday was my birthday, because my mother sent me a check for forty bucks I had the money to put gas in my car, go to West Plains and buy some groceries at Aldi with my food stamps,come home and eat lunch, and then later go to church. I've been having an alternator problem with my car lately. Last night after church it was dark and I had to turn on the lights. A few miles outta town it died on me and I was able to limp it into a turn off beside the road. We (my wife, daughter and I) got out of the car and my wife reached into the backseat to grab the ice cream we had bought in town to go with the cake she had made. I questioned her about that, not wishing for her to carry this melting sack for who knows how long it might take for us to somehow eventually get home, she persisted. We took off walking, it was a beautiful nearly full moon lit night but it was still quite dark. Within five minutes a pickup truck drove by us, stopped...came back and asked if we needed a ride (two women) We all loaded into the truck, girls up front and me in the back. These "Good Samaritans" took us all the way to my house which is located two and a half miles off the paved road down some of the worst roads in Oregon county...I've never been so thankful to anybody! Driving through the blackberry thickets,the lady driving mentioned how much she liked blackberries so when they dropped us off my wife gave her a couple of quarts out of our freezer we had picked last summer. After a few minutes of letting my nerves settle we had my birthday party...the ice cream was still frozen! Then my daughter gave me my present she had made, here are some pictures of the book she made for me...








this is the cover...








We love you when you're sad, (notice she has colored me blue) that's me sitting in my chair.







This is me when I'm mad!







you guessed it! me when I'm happy...about getting a job!





We love you because you're YOU!...yup, I trained this one!

It's quite a wonderful thing in these times of upheaval and stress and so much hardship to be able to appreciate how truly blessed I am. I'm so thankful to God that He loves me, a broken sinner! and that He not only has my present circumstances under control but my future figured out too! I'm so thankful that he gave me my family my friends and for the love they show me. and lastly, but NOT leastly, for the kindness of strangers!

Character still matters...(to me)

I've never had to deal with or forgive a spouse who was unfaithful to me like Hillary Clinton has. So I don't really know too much about that. I remember when it happened, I was all over Bill Clinton and so were most conservative people I talked to. As bad as a situation like that is, it was his lying afterward that nearly cost him his job and buried him in a lot of peoples eyes. What I can talk about with some personal experience is what it's like to have to forgive one of your parents for being absent from your life, or for being preoccupied with either work or other activities. My parents divorced when I was nine, as a child this event left me vulnerable to anything I could find to fill the void...I chose drugs. For the next twenty plus years that's what I did. I feel as though I could also forgive Sarah Palin for what I see as a similar situation within her family, but unlike Bill Clinton she's being held to a much different standard by the Christian right and either just doesn't feel as though it's any of our business , hasn't had Ken Starr to hold her accountable, or who knows? Maybe it's just never been "the right time" for her to be able to discuss it without being ripped to shreds...I can understand that I suppose. For my own personal reasons I see what she has done to be quite a bit worse that what Billy did, and her holding onto the mantle of conservatism a curious thing given that most real conservative women don't run for office,they support men that do, they raise their children and give them wise council. Here's another curious thing, that it takes about four years for us as American people to forget the previous lies that we were told by politicians and that we're all ready to not just hear some more but to believe them...again! It's pretty confusing to figure out who's telling us the bigger lies so I don't bother, I just look at who they are as people, the judgments they have shown in their public life but also in their personal life... I believe in forgiveness, mostly for the sake of the one doing the forgiving, but also to the degree that I sense peoples sorrow or regret. I'd like to support Sarah Palin, but I need her to at least acknowledge this thing so that I can defend her and wholeheartedly support her. We're the party of character,accountability and responsibility and it does still matter....to me.

Our Path,Our Purpose,and Gods Provision

The core of my belief system is that if we will do what we're supposed to do in life our needs will be met, paramount among which is to be loved. That can be a tricky thing to know exactly what it is we're supposed to be doing, to say the least. It also takes courage and trust to actually do that thing once you figure out what it is. So important is this concept to me that I named my blog "Seeking The Kingdom" to place an emphasis on how simple I feel that life can actually be.

Allow me to bring this down to a personal level... My current financial situation is not good, I've been out of work for over a year. (stay tuned blog fans, this has recently changed) I've tried a lot of different things during that time to make money but for one reason or another nothing has worked. I have clearly made some bad choices in that time but I've also had some bad breaks. What I have done successfully during that time is to do what I was compelled to do, to tell people the great news that God loves us all, that he wants to heal us, to provide for us, and to spend eternity with us in a perfect place he's prepared for us. So far, I've never missed a meal, still have a roof over my head, a car to drive and gas to put in it! I've been imprisoned, and impoverished, and I can honestly tell you I've never been happier.

Recently I've written some things about the republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. I'd like to clear up any misunderstandings if possible by first of all saying that in no way do I believe that a woman shouldn't work outside the home. This is an issue that is also very close to me right now given my aforementioned circumstances. It's an issue that me and my wife have struggled with recently. My wife homeschools our seven year old daughter, she does all of the housework, attempts to cook and a host of other things in our home. What changed my mind as to her seeking employment outside the home is the basic premise that I started with...what my wife does here is SO much more important than the money that she could make at a job. Being here and doing what she's doing IS what she's supposed to be doing! If the choices that we've made together are selfish and self serving then I wouldn't expect to see Gods provision in them...Our daughter is the most precious gift that God ever entrusted us with, I'd much rather lose everything I have than to give my consent to compromising that most sacred of stewardships. My problem with Palin is that she holds herself up as an example to young women of being able to "have it all" while the pregnancy of her teenage daughter is somehow seen as an acceptable trade-off for her career...And, she wants to be considered a Christian, well okay, I've made my share of bad choices in life and I'll readily admit to them, I've turned from as many of them as I can,I use them as "cautionary tales" to anyone who will or who needs to listen. Sarah Palin is my sister in Christ and I love her, I'm pretty sure I believe in most of the same things that she does. But here we go again, instead of taking the opportunity to use her publicity to caution women about balancing family and work which in my opinion would really be a wonderful thing for her to do...I see her as sweeping it under the rug and once again making winning this election and her career the priority. That seems pretty self serving to me even though she would claim to be a public servant, which is fine, I know who I serve...

Our sick little secrets!

Interesting title, kind of like a supermarket tabloid you just can't help but notice! Are you up for a story? Not too long ago in a land not too far from here I met a man...It was during a period in my life when I needed help...lots of it! That man was a psychologist, and I was in a group therapy setting. This man made a huge impression on me, I often refer to him as having given "emotional birth" to me! He didn't give a RIP about my outward feelings, or if I "liked him" he rolled up his sleeves and dove right into my life casting garbage aside and booting lies until I was naked and bare before everyone! (thats kind-of like birth) He made me admit that my parents had screwed up with me, and that I grew up doubting that they really loved me. He crammed the idea of ME being responsible for my own feelings down my narrow throat, enlightened me to the possibility that "I" based on my perceptions,could control my thoughts,which produce my feelings. I noticed that a lot of people in our group hated him...lol a few of them actually walked out of group when he was on "their case." In the years since then I've never forgotten this man, (obviously) or how his "tough love" worked on me...and I love him still. He spoke the truth in love to me, and it changed my life...he didn't let me squirm away and hide behind some dis-functional lie in my belief system, he pressed on toward the goal, he cared more for my future than my present dis-comfort. Is this just my reminiscing or is there a point to all of this? maybe just this...while there is a time to be gentle and considerate of peoples sensibilities (especially in a therapy setting) I feel that much more is accomplished by confronting peoples objections and excuses directly. Wheather it's psychology or theology it doesn't matter, in theology we typically wait until the spirit opens doors for us to "work" what psychology has taught me is that our behaviors ARE the doors, they are the"cry's for help" we're unable to give words to. They're the outward expressions of inner problems relating to the spirit. Some people will object when it's suggested that the source of their behavior is spirit related and will resist the attempts made to help them...now we can talk about how we're only as sick as the secrets we keep, the lies we believe, the healing power that we embrace, and our bad choices. I would therefore submit to you that because I can "see" a car coming down the street that it has a direct bearing on the decision I make to walk out in the street...why? because I care for my life. If I believed LIES I'd probably walk out into the street and get hit, and be another casualty of this modern life. But the TRUTH shall set you free! Lord, I pray that you would use me as an instrument of thy peace and not the whole orchestra, and a minister of your truth, to set the captives free. help me to know Lord that I am but just a part! That I may plant seeds but it is you that gives the increase, that I may bring the message but it's the Holy Spirit who convicts and changes hearts...amen