A Withered Branch

I have been wrestling with too many things lately. The back and forth issues of living in this natural world by spiritual means can be a daunting lifestyle to uphold. Thankfully and friend of mine came to the rescue; my friend sent me a line of scripture from John 15, 19:

“If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”

That explains a lot, which I will not go into now, but in looking up the verse I read the most beautiful words. They touched my heart and I would like to share them with you—my friend.

John 15

The Vine and the Branches

1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
9"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.

God speed!

A Lesson in Love

How do I love? In Mark 12, 28:34, Jesus gives us the answer in a commandment to live by:

28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. 31 The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
32 "Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

Wow, how exciting to be that close to the kingdom of God! And if we live this way, by this command, we will be in the kingdom! But the unfortunate choice not to ask specifically how this is done plagues us still today. This is witnessed in the mean, self-indulgent society that we live in ruled by spiteful governments, high divorce rates, an increase of folks taking anti-depressants, children raised in day care, divisive sects of Christianity, etc. So what do I do to remedy this and live by love? Here are the steps:
1. Get the idea of love in my mind.
2. Tell my heart to be open to give and receive love. This will connect my heart and mind.
3. Act on the feeling of love traveling between my heart and mind.

It is not enough to think loving thoughts. It is not enough to feel love. It takes both coupled with action to live as God desires us to do. Here are some examples: I love to hear your voice so I take the time to listen to you. I love how your skin feels so I touch you. I love the way you look so I spend time with you. I love to make you feel good so I learn about the things you like and make them manifest in your life. I love to help you so I remain attentive to your needs and am always at the ready to assist you. And so on; you can see how busy we should be every day living by love. This doesn’t leave much time for us to worry and fret.

It’s important to get a healthy idea of what love is before we practice it so do your homework. Read books, talk to experts, read the bible, and pray. Love may take sacrifice, but it should never be painful; on the contrary, it should bring only joy.

God speed!

Man the Reformer

Ralph Waldo Emerson gave a lecture on January 25, 1841, before the Mechanics Apprentices’ Library Association in Boston. In offering his thoughts on general relations of man the reformer he presented the following quote which, this statement alone, adequately maps the destination of my life:

“Let it be granted that our life, as we lead it, is common and mean; that some of those offices and functions for which we were mainly created are grown so rare in society that the memory of them is only kept alive in old books and in dim traditions; that prophets and poets, that beautiful and perfect men we are not now, no, nor have even seen such; that some sources of human instruction are almost unnamed and unknown among us; that the community in which we live will hardly bear to be told that every man should be open to ecstasy or a divine illumination, and his daily walk elevated by intercourse with the spiritual world. Grant all this, as we must, yet I suppose none of my auditors will deny that we ought to seek to establish ourselves in such disciplines and courses as will deserve that guidance and clearer communication with the spiritual nature. And further, I will not dissemble my hope that each person whom I address has felt his own call to cast aside all evil customs, timidities, and limitations, and to be in his place a free and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip along through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping by his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, but a brave and upright man, who must find or cut a straight road to everything excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably himself, but make it easier for all who follow him to go in honor and with benefit.”

My inspiration is to conduct myself with Mr. Emerson’s brand of commitment to cause and eloquence.

God speed!

Inspiration

It has been a while since I’ve written here because I have been in a spiritual dry spell. It happens to us all; we get caught up in the hectic distractions of our everyday world and quickly lose sight of our dreams, our commitments, our pleasures, our God. Lately, I had been moping around, plodding through life; knowing that I was off track yet unable to right myself. Thankfully with God’s grace and the whisper of the Holy Spirit I eventually got back to the system of my life that works best for me—living one day at a time, concerning myself with staying in God’s good graces.

A major thing I realized is that I had not been living an inspired life. You see, in our society we think that we are searching for that instant gratification. However, I’ve recently come to realize that gratification is only a by product of an inspired life. So in chasing gratification, we are chasing a nebulous ghost. But when we become inspired to life with purpose we find ourselves gratified, and satisfied with daily life.

I encourage you to find your personal inspiration and live your life on purpose.

God speed!

More Common Sense

In the previous post I wrote about common sense; where do you think this common sense comes from? Is it an energy that is floating around in the universe that we can draw from when needed? Or is it something in our brain the computes logical information? I’d love to know your opinion.

God speed!

Common Sense

We all have common sense. If we didn’t have any we wouldn’t be alive for very long; we wouldn’t have survived the monkey bars on the playground. Some of us appear to have an abundance, maybe enough for two people, and some of us appear to have very little but looking at the definition of these two words, it might shed some light on each of our circumstances.

Common: “Belonging equally to or shared equally by two or more; joint: common interests. Of or relating to the community as a whole; public (American Heritage Dictionary).”

Sense: “Natural understanding or intelligence, especially in practical matters (American Heritage Dictionary).”

So we could say that there is this universal understanding that belongs to all of us. This understanding gives us the practical discernment to determine a result before it happens. Well, we all want a good result. We don’t want an event to cause us harm; we don’t want to be hurt so we use our common sense, which gives us good judgment so we can get good results.

Common sense tells us things like; you don’t buy more than you can pay for. You don’t eat more calories in a day than you can burn off.

Our common sense should be used for the common good. We can share our common sense with others to prevent others from harm. Our good judgment can be applied, with kindness, when those around us are having trouble sensing their common sense.

I find it interesting that people that struggle with believing in God, or Godliness, have no trouble believing that they have common sense. Jesus said “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth.” That’s the Gospel or The Good News!

God speed!



common. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved June 08, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/common

sense. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Retrieved June 08, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sense

Love God

I had recently heard a speaker on the radio preach about the story of the prodigal son. He pointed out that the first thing the prodigal son did after receiving his inheritance was to move out of his fathers house. Isn’t that a great analogy of what we do? We ask God for an abundance of blessings and pray for His favor. We live blessed lives, by the grace of God, and yet spend the majority of our time outside of the Kingdom of God. We take what He gives us and then we move out of his house until we’re in trouble and then we come crawling back praying and begging for His help. I wonder how many people that say they love God actually do? Do you love God just for who He is? Do you ever pray just to be in His presence? Not for what he has done for you and what he might do for you in the future? Do you ever pray without asking for something? If you haven’t thought about it, maybe it’s time.

I had also recently had a discussion with a friend about whether or not God wants us to live abundantly or meekly. I believe we are to live abundantly as kings and my friend believes we are to live in a lesser, modest manner. We both agreed that we are to be humble and giving, the difference lies in our personal lives and finances. To spare all of the details, we both quoted scripture to support our views. One in particular that he began with was the story of the rich young man in Matthew 19:16 Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"
17 "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."
18 "Which ones?" the man inquired.
Jesus replied, " 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony,
19 honor your father and mother, and 'love your neighbor as yourself."
20 "All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"
21 Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

I’ve often heard this story told for the premise of stating that we are to live almost as peasants to appease Jesus, but I say for the sake of that argument we don’t know the end of the story. This young man was offered treasures in Heaven! Isn’t this worth more than anything on earth? Didn’t God create everything on earth? Then I contend that He will manifest any treasures in heaven here on earth; we are the ones that don’t make it a reality by limiting our thoughts. I believe that is what Jesus was trying to convey when he went on to say:
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
25When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?"
26 Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

At some point we need to let our faith take over. The Gospel is literally Good News! Love God, trust God, have faith in God. In the end I pared our discussion down to it’s finest point to search in your heart; if you admit that God loves you, do you think he wants you to have the best, or just barely enough to get by?

God speed!