With memories of a very good movie, and Jack Nicholson being Jack Nicholson, I am reminded of the above phrase. Here is another one: "The Truth Hurts". What do you think about this? Does the truth hurt? Are we opposed to "taking" the real truth?
There is a blog site,: "Mycultlife.com" that I have been blocked from . I, basically have disagreed with the author as to why she is so mad, and vindictive, and has such a "get even" attitude towards a certain orginization, church, denomination, and individuals because of the problems she encountered. Her newly crafted blog site is quite nice, she has a section on the history of this denomination, a timeline as to what happened to her, and a section basically telling the readers what would constitute being banned from commenting. I had wondered what it was that "got to her" in my many comments. Well there it was: "Calling her or anyone aggreing with her, angry,bitter, trying to get even wit...." I did call her bitter, and angry and vindictive, so there you go, I was blocked.
But, she was did come across as angry, bitter, and trying to get even. I never said she did not go through some things, or that certain things did not happen, although she thought I did.
You see, sometimes the truth hurts. I have gone to several counselors, Dr's .... for counseling in my life. I have been told that I was being Bitter, or angry or vindictive to those that hurt me. I was told that forgiving them would help me more then it would them (Your getting a spanking, but it's hurting me more then it is you, there is some truth to that). And not all these people were Christians, a few were just regular plain ole' counselors.
I believe when a person gets SO upset at someone or something that they take as drastic a measure as banning them from their website, for disagreeing with them and pointing out there may be somethings going on here, that won't agree with, then perhaps there is an element of truth.
I know several people at my church that have gone through the same things as this author, but they see things Much differently. One young lady told me,: "Yes , there were some things going on that I didn't agree with, but I am not going to let them control me. That was in the past, and I need to learn from those mistakes, and move on in the Lord." You see, when someone wrongs us, we can let it control us, for the rest of our lives, sometimes. Yes, there are people out there that will try and destroy you and your whole lives, But, don't let them, by trying to get even. What good does it do?
You see in the situation above, the principle leader has been fired, one of the churches involved has had it's group remove the name it was operating under. I see no more "justice" needs to be done here, only healing.
Remember the Lord says" "Vengeance is Mine", we try to "help" him all the time, but He is the one to "get even". We are to hold no grudges, but move on and do as He wants us to do.
I am reminded to the time of Christ's being taken away in the clouds, the Disciples were gazing up into the clouds, and an Angel of the Lord appeared and basically said: "What are you doing, looking into the heavens? There is work to be done, stop wasting time"
In my opinion, the author and the contributors of this blog (because only those that agree with the author are allowed to comment) are "Wasting time". You see "Vengeance it His", and He will take care of those that wronged them, and you, in the Lords name.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Finding God: Heart of Head?
I recently got into a conversation about "Feelings" vs "Intelligence" This became quite a friendly disagreement, but it got me thinking. How do we approach God? Do we use our brains, or our heart? I have always felt it is the latter, our heart, but how does our mind come into play?
Matthew 25:26 tell us: We walk by (the eye of) faith and not by (natural) sight" (The Message ). Now that tells me to think to much about our faith is in the "Natural way of living", but to "walk by faith, (notice The Message interjects "the eye of" here), is the right way of living.
In talking to my friends about this, I used the illustration that my eyes see the rain/snow outside, and I hear the thunder , see the lighting, see others walking around with umbrellas, raincoats, hurrying so they won't get wet, But until I go outside and feel the rain for myself I am not absolutely definite it is raining, I am pretty positive, but not completely. Have you ever seen it snowing outside, your excited,(I live in Texas, THAT is pretty exciting), you bundle up, put on your gloves, coat, hat, warm socks and go out in to it. Wow, snow angels, wow it is so white and pretty, wow that snowball almost got you........You see you feel the snow, you feel the cold, you feel the snowball whiz past your ear. So the point I am trying to make? We saw the rain/snow, we saw all the things that tell our brains that it is raining/snowing/cold/warm/very hot/ outside, but until we open our door and feel these things ourselves we are not 100% satisfied.
My friends were not impressed or persuaded by this point, they still felt Thinking was the way to understand God.
OK, lets look at education: When I was in school, science was not my best subject, Math was. Math was easy for me, because I saw everything right in front of me. The equations, the formulas, the problems they were all right there for me to memorize, solve, or not. If I had problem with one, my teachers could use that dreaded red pen and show where I goofed.
Science, on the other hand was hard for me. Yes there was that dreaded table with all the elements symbols, abbreviations or whatever we were supposed to memorize (Why not use the first letter of the element for the symbol? And if there were two or more with the same letter, use a number after it. Like Gold would be G, and grass (you see why I did so bad in science, I actully think grass is an element!), would be G1, but you get my point, unless you were one of those science geeks, I was a Math geek, oh well we were all "geeks" of one sort or another, I digress.) When we did experiments in Science, then my understanding started peeking, Oh , I SEE how that works.......You see when we use one of our senses to visualize something it helps our understanding, and of the senses "Feelings" wither emotional or physical are the strongest.
How can we understand God, well the Bible says "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your HEART that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9 New Living Translation) Notice it doesn't say: Believe with your mind, or think about it for awhile,or mull it over in your head, or sleep on it, and think about all night. It Says "believe in YOUR HEART". That is where it is won or lost, isn't it. You can think a certain thing about whatever, but once that thing is in your HEART, it is not embedded in your soul. How are habits (good or bad) formed? Repetition. If you smoke, it is because somewhere in the past you started picking up a cigarette and lighting up, weather it be after a good meal, the first thing in the morning, before bed,,,,,it became a habit to smoke at certain times, then it just became a habit. Now a Habit is something you do without even realizing it. Your mind doesn't say :"Pick up that cigarette and light up, now inhale, now exhale, now shake off the ashes, now inhale......" You just do it.
When serving God, if our minds ruled then we would have to think about every single thing we do for Him, but since we serve God in our hearts, the things we do because we love Him are habits, we do them without even realizing it. We have no selfish thing to gain, just being obedient to Him,because we love Him.
Cults and Legalism start by getting into our head instead of our hearts. God becomes real to our hearts and then gets ahold of our heads. Don't try to think God into your life, there is NO WAY to do that. God is knocking at the door to our Hearts, not our heads. And I am glad about that.
Think about your Heads and your Hearts and let's talk more about this. I don't know if anyone is reading this stuff, have no comments, yet, but it is helping me get straight in my Heart what I do and do not believe. It is good to put down in words the things I have been feeling for along time. Later Chris
Matthew 25:26 tell us: We walk by (the eye of) faith and not by (natural) sight" (The Message ). Now that tells me to think to much about our faith is in the "Natural way of living", but to "walk by faith, (notice The Message interjects "the eye of" here), is the right way of living.
In talking to my friends about this, I used the illustration that my eyes see the rain/snow outside, and I hear the thunder , see the lighting, see others walking around with umbrellas, raincoats, hurrying so they won't get wet, But until I go outside and feel the rain for myself I am not absolutely definite it is raining, I am pretty positive, but not completely. Have you ever seen it snowing outside, your excited,(I live in Texas, THAT is pretty exciting), you bundle up, put on your gloves, coat, hat, warm socks and go out in to it. Wow, snow angels, wow it is so white and pretty, wow that snowball almost got you........You see you feel the snow, you feel the cold, you feel the snowball whiz past your ear. So the point I am trying to make? We saw the rain/snow, we saw all the things that tell our brains that it is raining/snowing/cold/warm/very hot/ outside, but until we open our door and feel these things ourselves we are not 100% satisfied.
My friends were not impressed or persuaded by this point, they still felt Thinking was the way to understand God.
OK, lets look at education: When I was in school, science was not my best subject, Math was. Math was easy for me, because I saw everything right in front of me. The equations, the formulas, the problems they were all right there for me to memorize, solve, or not. If I had problem with one, my teachers could use that dreaded red pen and show where I goofed.
Science, on the other hand was hard for me. Yes there was that dreaded table with all the elements symbols, abbreviations or whatever we were supposed to memorize (Why not use the first letter of the element for the symbol? And if there were two or more with the same letter, use a number after it. Like Gold would be G, and grass (you see why I did so bad in science, I actully think grass is an element!), would be G1, but you get my point, unless you were one of those science geeks, I was a Math geek, oh well we were all "geeks" of one sort or another, I digress.) When we did experiments in Science, then my understanding started peeking, Oh , I SEE how that works.......You see when we use one of our senses to visualize something it helps our understanding, and of the senses "Feelings" wither emotional or physical are the strongest.
How can we understand God, well the Bible says "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your HEART that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9 New Living Translation) Notice it doesn't say: Believe with your mind, or think about it for awhile,or mull it over in your head, or sleep on it, and think about all night. It Says "believe in YOUR HEART". That is where it is won or lost, isn't it. You can think a certain thing about whatever, but once that thing is in your HEART, it is not embedded in your soul. How are habits (good or bad) formed? Repetition. If you smoke, it is because somewhere in the past you started picking up a cigarette and lighting up, weather it be after a good meal, the first thing in the morning, before bed,,,,,it became a habit to smoke at certain times, then it just became a habit. Now a Habit is something you do without even realizing it. Your mind doesn't say :"Pick up that cigarette and light up, now inhale, now exhale, now shake off the ashes, now inhale......" You just do it.
When serving God, if our minds ruled then we would have to think about every single thing we do for Him, but since we serve God in our hearts, the things we do because we love Him are habits, we do them without even realizing it. We have no selfish thing to gain, just being obedient to Him,because we love Him.
Cults and Legalism start by getting into our head instead of our hearts. God becomes real to our hearts and then gets ahold of our heads. Don't try to think God into your life, there is NO WAY to do that. God is knocking at the door to our Hearts, not our heads. And I am glad about that.
Think about your Heads and your Hearts and let's talk more about this. I don't know if anyone is reading this stuff, have no comments, yet, but it is helping me get straight in my Heart what I do and do not believe. It is good to put down in words the things I have been feeling for along time. Later Chris
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)