Their Truth, My Truth, and GOD's Truth:

 Three Different Trees

     While praying for one of my clients from the food pantry where I volunteer, I thought about his life story that he told me and how he ended up where he is living now, if you could call that living.  It's a very rewarding and frustrating job to deliver food to these people, especially the ones living in such abject and pitiful situations.  One client, in particular, has everything under the sun gone wrong against him, and he is completely innocent in his dire situation, or so he thinks.  I want to help them in other ways, besides just bringing them their monthly food boxes, but I am powerless to help some of them.  There are just too many problem with their living situations for me to tackle.  I decided its best to help where I can and pray for them about the other things.  I thought that I could offer solutions and ideas to help them, but then it occurred to me that I only know their side of the story.  

     While praying about this one in particular, I told GOD that his story just seemed a little off, and then the wisdom of GOD hit me like a ton of bricks.  The Holy Spirit put it in me like this:  Their stories may be an exaggeration, but to them it's their truth.  To them, it really did happen that way, and their plight is really as bad as they have told me, even if it's not the whole truth.  Then, GOD related it to us, all of mankind, and He hit me with another ton of bricks to really flatten the curve of my own story.  I've been blaming quite a few people for my own plight and situation, while they have been blaming me for being in the wrong as far as they are concerned. There are many people who have done me wrong, as I see it, but I will  use two men in particular to best describe the point I am trying to make. 

     To one, nothing I say is truth to him, it's only truth to me in his eyes, and none of it means anything to him, because it would interfere with his current happy lifestyle.  Biblically speaking, the truth I've been speaking to him comes straight from Scripture.  GOD has already shown me that this man has created God in his own image, an image that is acceptable to him, one who accepts his actions as okay, not offensive to YHVH GOD in any way, when clearly what he has done is spoken against in multiple places in the Bible.  He doesn't read those passages. He is not in the least bit interested in reading those portions of the Bible, but he goes to church on a regular basis.  He likes his last seat in the back row, way up in the balcony, where no one will bother him. The soothing message of just how much GOD loves him, regardless of how he lives, makes him feel better about himself, while the Scripture passages I share with him make him uncomfortable enough to ignore them as if they do not exist or as if they are obsolete today. His truth is that today we live under grace and not law, as he's been taught by the New Testament Church. To him, he's not obligated to keep any of the Laws, especially the parts about making vows to YHVH GOD.  According to him, this wonderful pastor and the enjoyable music that is played at this mega church speak quite the contrary to the things I've been telling him are in Scripture.  In essence, he prefers his "truth" to the Truth.  The real truth makes him look bad. It says that because he has turned his back on GOD he may have lost his salvation, and well, that's just unacceptable to him.  

    The other man has many things against me, none of which I really know, because he refuses to speak to me, but his truth is just as viable and real to him as the first man's is to him.  I can't fight this second man's truth with Scripture, because I don't know what his truth is to him. I only know what my truth is to me, and how it relates to me.  The crux of the problem is that we have two different truths.  I only know mine, he only knows his, and I'm going to venture a guess that neither one of our truths are GOD's Truth.  I can only make assumptions about him  based mainly on misinformation that I myself have had to conclude or deduce, and quite frankly, I could be way off base here.  He has a huge advantage over me because he knows all about me, and I know nothing about him, that is his choice. 

     So, the moral of this story is, as humans, we make up our own truths, and to us they are rock solid, whether they are GOD's truth, close to GOD's truth, or even way off of GOD's truth.  We are  judgmental by nature, and we judge other people's truths as lies if we believe they are lies.  We can't convince anyone of their lies being lies because our lies to ourselves are truth to us only.  Does that make sense?  What I am saying is that we all lie to ourselves that our truth is the truth.  How do we find the actual truth? Well, the truth is in the Bible, all of it, but unfortunately, we feed our lies into Scripture and pick and choose what truth means from those Scriptures.  We take our personal doctrines not from Scripture, but we force our doctrines into Scripture with select verses that seem to agree with our doctrine.  If I had to use a picture to describe it, I guess I could use a fruit tree.  The roots are GOD's truth, His actual Words, but the leaves and fruit that grow off the stem and the root are our truth. Hence, to us, the leaves and the fruit are just as much of the tree as the root.  The leaves and fruit are the truth we accept because they are the most visible to our naked eye. 

      My fruit tree may be an apple, another's fruit tree may be a peach tree and another's an orange tree.  They are all trees to us, they are all truths to us, but the actual truth for all our trees is in the roots, which are under the ground and they all look exactly alike, because the roots are GOD's truth.  So, what can we do about all these differing lies we convince ourselves are the rock solid truth.  Nothing, absolutely nothing. 

   We cannot ever convince the other that their fruit or leaves aren't really GOD's truth, only GOD can do that. Our own leaves and fruit are likely not GOD's truth.  Somehow, we have to learn to live with each other's lies, and just keep searching our own trees' roots, and pray that somehow, we can live acceptable lives to GOD, and thank Him with all we have that Jesus's death on the cross is the grace that keeps our trees standing, until it's time for our trees to fall. The best we can do is to keep praying, keep studying, and keep believing that the Living Water of Jesus will extend to the next generation we leave behind when our own trees fall to the ground. (Pun not intended, but if the fruit fits, eat it!)

      THE FRUITS OF MY LABOR: And no one understands this better than an octomom!

     Sometimes, my own stupidity amazes even me.  I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, why even the butter knives laugh at me.  I am so amazed at the patience of the Almighty who continually puts up with the idiotic behavior I sometimes exhibit, okay, I usually exhibit.  I complain constantly about my own personal trauma when I know darn well that He has assigned me a job that is so much bigger than myself and my own petty problems.  I had been sleeping the day away, because I became so self-absorbed in my personal trauma, again. That was until I had this horrible nightmare. I woke up from it, knew it was from GOD, but couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was about, but I knew it was from YHVH GOD.

THE NIGHTMARE:

I was pregnant at this late age, I gave birth, but the hospital took the baby from me, not letting me see it, or know if it was a boy or girl, and told me to go home, and when the baby was ready to come home, they would call. I went home, went about taking care of my eight children, and forgot about the baby for weeks. When I called the hospital, they said there was no record of me giving birth, but they would get back to me. Again, months went by, and I remembered the baby, again. It was then that I realized the hospital had stolen my baby for the black market. I knew no court in the land would side with me, because I had forgotten about my baby for months. I couldn't stop crying and had to have one of the kids dial my phone to get their father over here. I called him to come over so we could go to the hospital together, but then the pipes burst in my upstairs master bathroom.

Strange, huh? Well, just doing the dishes, the Holy Spirit said to me to think about it. What have I been neglecting? My writing, my assignment as a writer for the despaired. My ninth baby is my job as a writer. The books are the baby. I can't see the results of the books, because I won't be here to see the fruit of my labor. It is my fondest desire for the LORD to take me out of this world before He takes the words I have written world-wide. The last thing I want is fame or notoriety in this world where everyone pretends to be someone famous. No one pretends to be a dead person, well, unless you're voting democrat. Sorry, couldn't resist.

I'm so stupid most of the time. I haven't quite figured out the pipes bursting, maybe that's the cancer, which will be my Ticket Home, keeping me from getting to the hospital to retrieve the "fruits of my labor."

ADDENDUM: November 12, 2024, I just figured out what the pipes bursting is. Daggone it, it's not cancer, it's this brain aneurysm in my head that I was diagnosed with a few months ago. Makes sense, huh? GOD taking me out quick with one killer headache. Pun intended.

 

Stone Siblings 

Because Allen Means Stone!

    

    Biological connection does not make a family, love does. That was in very short supply in the family and home in which I grew up in, due to the fact that my parents despised each other.  They never taught us to love each other or anyone else. My mother taught us to hate everyone, my father taught us to love only ourselves. I'm not saying they indoctrinated us with that, I'm saying they lived that out before us.

     I used to be covetous of other families whose siblings were loving and intimately close friends, while mine were only related by blood. Once every ten years or so, they'd be a family reunion of sorts for some special occasion, and I always dreaded going, because I knew what I would be facing. I was always the odd man out, and the older I got the odder I became, to them. The closer I became with YHVH GOD the less I was liked by them.  It's to the point now, where I am not even welcome to a family funeral, and not only am I not welcome, but my children are not welcome, either.   

    I have looked at this picture hundreds of times over the decades, and I never noticed that I am "set apart" from the rest of them.  They are all in relatively close contact with each other, and I am off to the side a bit, I am the odd man out.  That never occurred to me before this moment.  Kodesh/Kadosh are Hebrew words that mean "SET APART."  The English Bible translators translated those words as holy.  Holy to most church people means pure, clean, good, and yet that is nothing like what the Hebrew word means.  The Hebrew words do not always translate properly into English, because Hebrew words have so much more depth to them than the English. Christians have misused and mistranslated the word holy for centuries. It simply means, SET APART. Something could be set apart for a good use or even a bad use. Someone can be set apart to do a work for GOD and some people could be set apart to do an evil thing, all for the purposes of the growth of the Kingdom of GOD or a person's spiritual growth and health.

     Having studied the Bible as a means of survival these past decades,  I have observed a lot of sibling dysfunction. The very first sibling rivalry ended in murder.  Cain, out of his jealousy for Abel's being favored of GOD, killed him, for no other reason than jealousy and hate.  Jacob and Esau were a mess because their parents pitted them against one another by favoring one over the other. Most of the Biblical heroes were not well-liked by their siblings, they were SET APART by GOD for His special purpose.  David is a perfect example, the "runt" of the family, and quite possibly not even from the same mother as the other seven, according to ancient Hebrew tradition.  It has been thought by ancient Rabbis that David could have been the son of an adulterous woman or even a prostitute,  None of that is in the Bible, but it does make sense, seeing how he was definitely the family reject. 1 Samuel 17 tells it all. (28 Eli’av his oldest brother heard when David spoke to the men, and it made Eli’av angry at him. He asked, “Why did you come down here? With whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is! You just came down to watch the fighting.” 29 David said, “What have I done now? I only asked a question.”)  

     Many times, the set apart one is called the trouble maker, is the hated one for no other reason than there is something different in them.  Jacob's son, Joseph, was just that kind of brother.  His brothers  were so full of hate they had no regard for how losing Joseph would devastate their father.  Their stone-hearted hate was more important to them then their father's heart of flesh. They had no remorse when they lied to him, telling him that his precious son was eaten by a wild animal, and bringing back only a bloody tunic. They were never convicted of their guilt, until such a time as near twenty years later when they were in a bind, and it occurred to them that this was their punishment for what they did to Joseph and their father.  Sadly, some family members are never convicted about their ill-treatment of the "set-apart" one. 

     GOD doesn't see the ugly others see, He sees a set-apart one.  Even if that set apart one is living in very ugly and not so pure circumstances.  YHVH GOD knows what He will be doing with His set-apart ones, and we are judged based on what His plans are, not the mistakes we make.   

    Even Jesus had a few renegade brothers who thought Jesus went mad by calling himself the "Son of GOD. (Mark 3: 21 When his family heard about this, they set out to take charge of him; for they said, “He’s out of his mind!”). I love Jesus response, which was basically, he dissed them in public, and they well deserved it. Jesus did not do it with malice, but with truth in love. Jesus said, in a nutshell, biology means nothing, but those who belong to GOD are my true family. 

      So, although, I have been envious of other families and their closeness, in a way, I'm glad that I grew up in the house of "stone," full of hate and rivalry, at least that's all I ever felt from them. When I was twenty-six-years-old, GOD changed my stone heart to flesh, (Ezekiel 37), and as the years passed, He blessed me with eight children of my own, two more than my mother had. Although, it is never pleasant to be rejected, falsely accused and blamed for everything from one's siblings, I was the one of the six who YHVH GOD set-apart.  I was the one called to a special work for Him, while they just revile me more and more each year. The key here is to always see how YHVH GOD sees us, not as man sees us.  

     

    

 Some Hills Just Aren't Worth Dying On.

There are so many people out there who just don't get it. But, it's taken me almost six decades to get it myself. My mother cursed me by saying the usual mother's curse, "I hope you have a child just like you." Well, I had two. Like their mother, they insist on dying on every hill. They have to win an argument or debate. Sadly, I taught them that. I made a lot of mistakes as a mother of 8, and that was one of them. I didn't learn this lesson until recently, so I do not expect them to learn it any easier or earlier.

Being a writer, student of the Word, student of people, and all around social person behind the blue screen of a monitor, I observe a lot of people arguing online. I too used to be one of those who could get into a good knock down drag out fight on Twitter or Facebook, or anywhere someone lit my fire with what I call their folly. It's so foolish to start and even try to continue a fight or debate on social media sites, just as foolish as it is to fight with one's significant other in a text conversation. It goes nowhere fast, and both end up worse off then when the conversation began.

With the world the way it is, now, there is a great divide, one like I've never witnessed. There are what we Patriots call "The Normies" and worse than them are those with "Trump Delusional Syndrome." The normies are the average TV-watching, fake-news believing, let's call them JonesTowners. They have drunk the Kool-aid, and there is no way to get that poison out of their system. They may mean well and be perfectly "normal," passivists, but they aren't helping the cause, they are hurting it by their obedience to fascism.

Those with TDS, on the other hand, are seriously mentally disturbed, but not because of a mental illness, but because of a demonic influence. We've all seen short TikTok videos of them doing simply insane things that would have gotten them locked up a few decades ago. I'm sure we've all experienced the crazed woman screaming her head off when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, or the obese pro-abortion radicals, walking around near naked, swearing to go on a sex strike to prove the point that their body is their own and giving states back their rights to govern themselves is akin to taking away their right to dispose of their unwanted consequences of gratuitous sex. Although, I doubt many of those women are out every night exploring new territories beneath the sheets. (Just my ugly opinion.)

Both of these kinds of people are in the category of woke liberalism. They are the cancel culture and they support crazed agendas that no one would have believed post WWII or even in the 60's-70's. They are trapped there. For many, there's no escape because it is of YHVH GOD. The Bible is clear that He would send strong delusions to force them to believe the lies, and worse than that act out in strange demonic ways. Have you noticed that these people get so radically angry that every other word that comes out of their mouths is the F word? They seem to have gone completely mad! (Pun intended) In a way, they have. GOD has turned them over to their natural selves, and there is no way to rescue them. (Romans 1)

Arguing with a woke/delusional liberal is absolute foolishness. These people are cursed of GOD. They are condemned. They have Trump Delusional Syndrome. They are programmed to hate Trump. It comes from the pit of hell, because he is an instrument that YHVH GOD is using to take down the evil syndicate.

It is the same with hardline fundamentalist New Testament Christian church people who treat the New Testament as if it replaced the Old Testament, or as we like to call them, the Hebrew Scriptures. They read and follow Paul as if he replaced Jesus. They take Paul's words so out of context that they completely contradict what Yeshua clearly taught in the Gospels. These man-made doctrines are so ingrained in them from generations of seminary-taught pastors who drilled it into them, that getting them to even consider that they have been taught wrong is like knocking down a hornet's nest in the middle of the day surrounded by sea of hornets. You are asking for trouble, and you are going to get stung, there is no way around it. You cannot reason with these people. They have all been so brainwashed and conditioned to think their way, and YHVH GOD has chosen NOT to reveal the truth to them. Don't get me wrong, I am not questioning their salvation in any way shape or form. First of all, I am not YHVH GOD, and salvation is in TRUSTING Yeshua, not in knowing the Scriptures properly, as written in historical and cultural context.

Many of these church people hate Trump. They also have Trump Delusional Syndrome, because Trump isn't a Biblical scholar, or a saint like Joseph or King David (ah hem, clears throat) or such, hence he can't be an instrument of GOD. These people have zero knowledge of Biblical history and the politics throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. They have been taught that King David was such a righteous man that he never got it wrong about YHVH GOD. How wrong they are. David was clueless when it came to the Torah, and 2 Samuel 6 proves that. He knew nothing of the Scriptures, because by the time he came to power, the Torah had been just as corrupted and mostly lost and misunderstood as contemporary Christianity has become today, with its thousands of Protestant denominations and the Vatican. I'll stop there. Times were no different then than they are now.

Many church people think we are living in the worst of times, because they have no true historical knowledge of all the evil that existed before they were born. The Bible is replete with the most horrific evil, but it is white-washed or ignored, because it doesn't sound uplifting. I stopped arguing with these people, because YHVH GOD said it was folly. Instead of "converting or educating" these people, arguing with them sinks us to their level. YVHV GOD has chosen to blind them, and who among us thinks they can go beyond what GOD has already decided and change His order?

We have no more power to change or convict a non-believer of their need for a Savior than we do to change or convince these people of the truth. The only power that can do that is the Holy Spirit. If YHVH GOD so chooses, He will, but getting into a knock down drag out fight on social media just adds fuel to their fire, and instead of helping them, many times we are making them worse.

 How to explain the Spiritual to those who don't have the Spirit. 

       Recently, by miracles of miracles, my atheist 91-year-old father decided to come to visit.  We haven't ever been a really close family, and my relationship with my father has been somewhat strained over the years.  I grew up in a very dysfunctional home, where my mother and father came from two different extremes in thought and behavior.  It was a marriage made in hell, no doubt.  From that marriage, GOD brought forth six children.  For some strange in explicable reason, GOD chose me out of the entire bunch to be His exclusively, in other words, I am the only "born-again" believer in the entire line, going beyond both my mother and my father's lines.  If anyone understood how Abram felt when YHVH GOD called him out of his family and homeland, I do.  

     When it happened to me in 1989, I did not come seeking GOD, I did not have any kind of traumatic event in which I was desperately seeking some kind of life-saving miracle.  I hadn't hit rock bottom and realized there was no place else to go, nor was I converted in a church or pounded over the head by a Bible thumper with the ABC's of salvations. (Admit you are a sinner, Believe you need a Savior, Jesus, and the Confess him as your Lord and Savior.)That is the church's 3-step plan to becoming saved out of our lost state to people have no concept of being lost.  That's man's way of explaining the Gospel, it is not the Biblical and Spiritual way.  He, GOD just came for me.   All of a sudden, there was another world that I was aware of and drawn to, and there was no way to resist the pull. It was from there that I sought out the truth from the only "Bible thumper" I knew at the time. I asked him where it said that one had to be born-again, and although it took him way too long to find it, I read my first Scripture (John 3:3), and I believed it to be true.  From there, with the door open, GOD did the rest of the work to complete the mission of bringing me into a world I never knew existed before.  It was then that I went from lost to saved, even though I had no idea that I was lost in the first place. 

    1 Corinthians explains the difference between the "lost and the saved," far better than any church person can, but how do we explain 1 Corinthians 2 in the spiritual to one how has not the Spirit.   It's like teaching Greek to an English speaking student using only the Greek language with no translation tools.  Or like typing Scripture out in wingding font and expecting them to get it.  There must be some kind of translation tool that opens the world of Greek to an only English speaking person.  It's is the same in the Spiritual.  That tool is the Holy Spirit. 

     If the Holy Spirit doesn't translate from "wingdings font to cursive, and then to regular print (for those under the age of 40) we will never be able to understand the Scriptures.  Sometimes, the Holy Spirit will give someone like me a great metaphor that will explain to the unspiritual what it is like to travel and operate in the spiritual, and that just happened.  I am awake at 2 AM because I just had this vivid dream, and I woke up abruptly.  I know when I've had a dream like that, waking up abruptly out of it, my mind automatically starts to mediate on that dream to try and understand why I had it. When I can't get my mind off the topic or my body back to sleep, I know it is the Holy Spirit saying to me, "Think Kristina."  Sometimes, my dreams have no point, and then there are times like tonight when I can see the point clear as day, clear as looking at a photograph instead of the negative.  I am going to attempt to explain the unconscious mind and where it can go in sleep/dream state, because many of you know that when we dream, it's nearly impossible to explain the circumstances of the dream because it's almost as if it is in a different realm.  Quite frankly, it is.  

      I once heard a sermon that hinted that dreaming was much like entering the Spiritual Realm  where angels dwell.  We cannot see that world, but when our minds are free to go, because our bodies are at complete rest, we dream what scientist call REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.  It is then that most of us have dreams.  Some of us have quite vivid dreams that we can remember, even if the details are foggy. Then there are some of us never seem to dream at all.  My husband is like that.  He said he never dreams, or remembers dreaming.  That's almost kind of scary, because it would make me question his salvation, but, maybe being saved isn't just about dreaming.  I think that some of us are "gifted" with the ability to go to that "dream place," the Spiritual Realm, while sleeping, and there YHVH GOD communicates with us.  That certainly is how it happened in the Hebrew Scriptures with prophets like Joseph, Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and the like.  I am one of those person who dreams almost before REM even starts.  I'll start to fall asleep and I'm already dreaming, even though my mind is still conscious of the physical realm.  It's that really deep sleep that I go to a place that I cannot explain in words that can be understood.   It's not every night, but it is most nights, and on a rare occasion like tonight, I'll wake up abruptly from a dream that has deep Spiritual connotations, and I'm forced to contemplate them over ad over, enough so that going back to sleep is out of the question.  

    So, to the best of my ability, I'm going to try and put into words what has no language.  In my dream I was in some kind of medical training.  Imagine being up on top of water, learning how to live underwater, even though one must keep their eyes closed under water because it's pitch dark under there.  In this school, I was learning how to function in the complete darkness under the "sea," and then, it was my turn to go under.  I went under the "water" in complete darkness into this hospital type and my personal trainer was saying to me from above, "Okay, now, you've been trained where the walls are, where the hallways are, where the rooms are, and how to hear the patients, use what you've learned in your head to function.  Use the map we gave you from your mind in the pitch dark."  

    In spiritual terms, walk in faith, knowing you've had the training and now get that hands-on experience with what has been placed in our heads.  Living in faith of YHVH GOD is much like living under that water.  Unless we are explained "boundaries and entrances" are we won't know where to go.  We have to be trained to listen to the "patients" when and where they call and be able to attend to them.  We can only be trained in the Scripture and the patients would the lost world needing us to tend to their sickness of original sin.  

     In my dream, I was learning all alone with my personal trainer, but when I went under, there was a fellow student who was trained elsewhere.  We were both going so slow in the darkness, using the skills we had been taught to get around.  It was just a short time later, an emergency came, and a patient was calling us for assistance.  We both couldn't walk slowly anymore, we had to run through the hallways to attend to this patient, so we both just started running in the pitch dark.  Within just a few minutes, we began to see where we were going, but not in black and white, but in negative form as in the picture above.  He was behind me, and he said, "I can see now," and I said, "Yeah, me too."   We bolted through the hallways and could see the patterns on the walls and the floor tiles, then I woke up. 

     We could see not the details of the "hospital," but the forms of the walls and floors and doorways.  At the same time, we both exclaimed that we could see and we needed to hurry to that patient.      The only way I can think to explain what I dreamed do that in metaphor, so hold on to your hats, we are about to enter the metaphorical world of this metaphor mama. In the world of photography, there is the picture in great detail on white film paper, and then there is the negative from which that picture was developed.  An experienced photographer in his red-light developing room can see more details of his work in the negative, and it is protected from being over exposed in the bright lights of a white fluorescent world.   I don't know if that makes sense, but that "negative" world needs to stay protected in the dark.  In other words, the Spiritual World is alive and active under the "red-light" protective power of GOD.  

     This is definitely not a blog post that one can skim through and understand, but it's going to take some time and imagination to understand.  The Spiritual Realm is under the control of the Almighty, only by the Holy Spirit are we invited to live in it.  Some have the gift, or what I rather call the burden of being able to see "under water" with our eyes closed what other cannot see when they are swimming. It is both a gift and a burden, because it is impossible to explain to the seeing physical world, and even more impossible to explain to those outside the realm of faith who have not the Holy Spirit as their translator. Fellow believers may get it, but they don't know if they believe it. 

     I was trying to explain the spiritual to my atheist father, knowing he did not have the Holy Spirit.  I showed him 1 Corinthians 2 passage and for the first time, as an adult, my father read the Holy Scriptures.  I told him, "Dad, I can't explain GOD and the spiritual things to you, because you live in the black and white world.  You haven't been given the ability to see the things of GOD, and only He can give you that ability, but this is how I am trying to explain spiritual terms in black and white."  

     His question to me was, "well, how then do you know what you are reading in the Bible is true?"  That is the most difficult question we get hit with a lot of times.  I showed him the passage about Moses.  GOD had to reach down and "show up" in the physical world with a burning bush that was not being consumed by the fire, and Moses had to "turn aside" to see.  He was willing to check out what this event was, and when GOD saw that he had turned aside to further investigate, it was then that GOD called to him.  It is like that with us when we try to explain the spiritual terms of salvation to an atheist.  YHVH GOD has to show up with a "miraculous" hand to do something statistically impossible to show that He can do the unbelievable and impossible.  It is when we open our mind, or as I told him, crack the door open to the possibility that GOD exists and is truly reaching out to us that he bursts open wide the door and fills us with the Holy Spirit, the translator.  He agreed to crack the door open, and now it is up to YHVH GOD whether to open wide the understanding of the Spiritual to him.  I explained to him that with those little bits of proof, we are invited to hold our breath and jump into the sea of faith, like jumping into a deep blue and dark ocean.  Unless we hold our breath and jump in, we will never be able to experience underwater, much less be able to see underwater.  That is the faith spoken of in Hebrews 11:6. (6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him.)  It is that willingness on our parts to hold our breaths, jump in, trusting there is life under the sea.  That my friends is saving faith.  

     It isn't coming to the end of ourselves, because in the natural flesh, that is impossible. Only the Holy Spirit can show us that we are sinners in need of a Savior, and that happens when we hold our breath and jump out of the boat into the sea of the unknown.  We have to be told, trained and taught that there is life under the sea, then we have to trust the one who told us that they may be speaking the truth.  It is only after we jump off that boat that we ourselves will experience walking "under" the water, and able to see the life under there and thrive and breathe in the the truth of the Spiritual Realm.  Telling someone who doesn't believe in the Spiritual Realm that there is a Mighty GOD and beings that dwell there, then explaining their need for a Savior is the equivalent of typing this entire blog in wingdings font. 

 Trusting in GOD is IMPOSSIBLE For Us Outsiders

      I know that line will probably shake up many Christian/church people.  It is meant to.  There's one thing a generational Evangelical Protestant Christian from the Bible-belt will never understand, and that is we outsiders are a completely different breed of people. They have been sitting in a pew since utero, but to us outsiders, all this is foreign territory to us.  We are completely foreign to them, and because they do not understand us, they will never be able to be an effective witness to us.  As a matter of fact, one thing that Protestant evangelicals will NEVER understand is that they are more effective at turning us outsiders away than they are at drawing us in.  

       I consider myself an an outsider, again.  I wasn't always an outsider.  I began in the Roman Catholic Church since utero and remained for twenty-six years, believing they had the only truth because that was ingrained in us. Then, I became a Protestant evangelical when I was trained to believe they had the truth, and I was a fierce one.  I quickly became an insider and spent twenty-six years as one of them.  More and more searching for the truth has made me go full circle to become an outsider, again, only this time, I have the advantage of know how an insider thinks this time. 

     I grew up in a dysfunctional secular home.  I had an absentee father, stone-cold siblings, and a very unstable bitter mother.  We were raised Roman Catholic, but in the northeast to be raised Roman Catholic usually means to be raised with a drive-thru-church mentality. If you drive through the 40 minute mass once in a while, you're in. That's it. That is all that is required.  You don't go to heaven right away, you have to spend an unknown amount of time in purgatory, but eventually, if enough people say a mass for you, at some point in eternity, you've earned your way into heaven.  Most of us  northeast Roman Catholics only have to go to mass and CCD until we are "confirmed."   To be confirmed means getting your get-out-of-jail card at an earlier age than when you graduate high school.  You have done your required time, and you are paroled.  After that, you are free to do whatever you want for the rest of your life, live however you want, and because you are a card-carrying Roman Catholic, you are in, no matter what.  

     That wonderful age of freedom is usually around 13-14 years of age.  We don't even really understand the whole confirmation process, we only know that it's like high school graduation, only sooner and you really don't have to try as hard as you do in school.  There are no grades, no GPA, you graduate just for attending class.  All you are required to do is put in the time in CCD (catechism) as we called it, and pretend to be halfway interested.   There is no final exam, or GED test, but there is a diploma on the rolls of the Roman Catholic Church, and it's good for life.  You go, you behave yourself and you're good to go.  That is the mindset of the Roman Catholic youth in the northeast.  The church and CCD teachers know it, and they don't care, because it gets another name on their rolls.  

     It's much like a Protestant baptism, especially during VBS season.  It's a another point in good-standing for a church to have young children complete the ABC's of VBS.  Admit you are a sinner, Believe Jesus died on the cross for your sins, and Confess it, particularly at the end of the week, get dunked and you're good to go, also.  It doesn't matter if you are sincere, they'll convince themselves that you are sincere, they will put you on their rolls of accomplishments and they earn points in heaven for the most kids dunked.  

     Let me tell you something, you won't find Jesus calling any children to be his Disciples in the Gospels.  He called all adults, and I'm going to assume, besides maybe John, all were over thirty.  There is a reason for that, and it goes back to the Levitical law where a man had to be thirty before he became an official priest at the Temple or the Tabernacle.  Why thirty?  It is simple.  A person wasn't even included in the census or considered an adult for the GOD's army until twenty, hence it is assumed one is a child all the way through age nineteen and becomes an adult for the census at twenty automatically.

Exodus 30:14 Everyone who is counted, from twenty years old and over, shall give the contribution to the Lord.

  Numbers 1:3 from twenty years old and upward, whoever is able to go to war in Israel. You and Aaron shall count them by their armies. )

     Remember, the life-span of a human was indeed a great deal shorter in length back then.  A person was not considered truly mature or trustworthy enough to serve  GOD as a priest, in the Temple or Tabernacle, until he was thirty.  

    How does this have to do with not being able to trust GOD?  It's easy, conversion is not just spoken, nor is trust. Children are not considered accountable until they are adults.  Trust must be experienced during those formative years.  If you cannot earn the trust of a child, it will be impossible for that child to ever trust as an adult. If you mess up the foundation of a house, eventually the walls and roof will collapse.  It is the same way with people.  We who grew up in dysfunctional homes, with unreliable parents, will never be able to truly trust in our Heavenly Father even after being converted by the Holy Spirit. 

     Yes, when the Holy Spirit convicts, the old nature is gone and the new has come, but that's only for eternity purposes. It is not necessarily referring to a complete transformation from the inside out.  Sure, we understand spiritual things like we never did before.  Most of us believe that the Holy Scriptures are GOD-breathed, reliable and the truth, but our life experiences go to war against that truth.  The ghosts of the past never leave, and the adversary knows just which buttons to push to send us back to that wounded, untrusting little child, no matter how old we get. 

     I had a friend who never understood how I had the audacity to "get mad at GOD."  She found it incomprehensible that I would question His authority or reliability.  How she couldn't figure out the obvious is beyond me.  She grew up in a Baptist home, where church was a joyful, wonderful thing for a family to do together, completely opposite of my upbringing, where church was a misery that one had to endure, but could eventually graduate from into freedom.  She grew up being taught about a wonderful Jesus who loved her dearly, more than even her own two married parents who not only loved their children but their spouse with a life-long love. We grew up with an angry parents who hated us enough to let that get in the way of any love they may have had for us.  She grew up with stable parents who kept their word, loved them faithfully, and demonstrated the love of the Father to them every day of their lives.  The father was always home at night, he was the authority figure, and he could be counted on to be their helper, assistant, advisor, and godly counsel for all of their lives, until he was rewarded for his faithfulness in heaven. I adored her parents, they were the perfect Godly couple.  I used to be so jealous of her and family and her parents.   We spent many Christmas's with them after we moved here, and when the invitations stopped coming, Christmas was just never the same. Everything about my life was the antithesis of this kind of life. 

   Unfortunately, all these years later, we aren't even friends, because I became too much of an outsider on the other end of the faith spectrum.  I started taking this devotion to being an instrument of GOD too seriously.  Finally, when I asked GOD why I was so unstable in my ability to trust Him, he brought back my past in vivid technicolor, then my present situation and told me straight out. "Your mind knows the truth, but your experiences speak of something completely opposite." 

    Somehow, I got to this ripe old age not being able to get to this bit of Godly wisdom, until yesterday.  I have doubted GOD, I have shaken my fist at Him, I have talked myself into not believing the Words on those pages, and I have had more mistrust of GOD, as of late, even if I know the truth and have the full understanding of His Sovereignty.  I have experienced the worst in betrayal by those I've loved with everything I have.  Tell me, how am I supposed to trust an all-loving Sovereign GOD who has let my past happen to me?  Sure, He's done many good things for me, and many of those good things have wrung true the words on those pages, but there are way too many cracks in my foundation for the walls and ceiling of my trust home to stand firm.  

     I used to beat myself up every time I would fall into despair, hopelessness, and sin because of my fear and lack of trust.  Most of us do sin out of insecurity and fear.  We refuse to believe the truth because our carnal nature and our past experience go to battle against the Words in that Book, even if we know them to be true.  It is impossible to win a battle against all the bad experiences of our past.  Our foundations are securely cracked, and there is no way to build a new foundation, unless the LORD strips down the walls and does it Himself.  If He chooses to continue to let bad things, unfaithful people attack us, then the foundation cracks are never sealed, and the walls crack even more.  That's where I am today.  GOD revealed that to me yesterday, and I finally stopped beating myself up, yesterday.  It's is a huge burden off my back.  I am not being disobedient by not trusting an all Sovereign GOD Whom I know is in complete control.  I am just operating and holding my walls up with a completely cracked and almost severed foundation. 

      If you find yourself in a house with a cracked foundation, and church people blaming you for the cracks in your walls, know this:  It's NOT your fault. You cannot do the impossible, and you are not living in sin when sin lives in you.  Fear is fed by the fury of the fire fueled by a heated past, ambers of fiery life experiences that will never completely be put out, until you are safely in the arms of your Savior Yeshua for all eternity.  What I can tell you is, YHVH GOD, your Heavenly Father understands more of you than you do, and a million times more than any church person who is ready to whip you with the cords of the cat-of-nine tails that flogged your Savior.   

 Who Adopted Whom?

     I have another metaphor that recently came to mind while reading a book called, If GOD Already Knows, Why Pray? by Douglas F. Kelly.  I highly recommend this wonderful book.  It is the second time I'm reading it, and it is basically and expanded dissection of the LORD's Prayer, line by line.  Its very first point is how GOD is our intimate Father, because He is the Intimate Father of Yeshua/Jesus His true and only begotten Son.  We on the other hand are not "related" in such a way to the Father.  We are strangers, orphans on a very large planet called Earth.  This is going to be what seems to be a very basic and primary metaphor and very simple to understand.  Yet the truth of it when truly contemplated is really very deep.  

     Imagine the world as one great big huge orphanage.  GOD is the prospective adoptive parent. He goes to the orphanage, because He desires to adopt some orphaned children.  He did not have to, because He already had a son, but He wanted to expand His family.  Having sought out the orphanage, knowing its full history, because He instituted it, He would know what kind of orphans and counselors (clergy/Bible teachers) are there.  He would know what they are teaching the children. He would know what they are learning, and He would know the heart of each child.  He, therefore, could confidently know who was learning, and who was robotically obeying for rewards.  Some children weren't even interested in rewards, rather they just rebelled against the authorities of those running the orphanage, because they did not like the rules of the road.   

     Having known the heart of each "child" in the orphanage, YHVH GOD Himself would choose which child He would adopt.  He would adopt that child by visiting with him and reaching out to that child. He would introduce Himself and  reveal Himself as their adoptive Father, thus showing that child His intimate and loving nature. That child never even knew that there was an Adoptive Father seeking that child, until the Adoptive Father revealed Himself.  Most times the Father caught him completely off guard.   Because He knew the child, He knew that the child would respond to the Father's revelation of Himself, and come to accept and know Him almost immediately.  Not only would the Father choose and adopt that child, but He would set a standard and rules to live by in order for that child to remain in good graces with Him. Some are just adopted into the family and some of His adopted children were chosen for extraordinary tasks.  They get an extra dose of revelation of Who their Adoptive Father is.  

     Knowing that no child would ever be a perfect child, He arranged for His natural son to be a mediator, a go-between for the sinful child who wanted a Loving Heavenly Father and to be a part of His family.  That child would recognize and gratefully respond in kind to the Son's intervention by doing his very best to live up to the Father's standards and rules.  In other words, the Earth is GOD's house, and if we want to remain living under His "roof," being a part of His family, we have to live by His rules.  Most parents and adult children can understand that rule because I doubt hardly a child who hasn't heard that at least once from his loving parents.  They understand the rules, they respect the rules and they respect the parent who set the rules.  Those who don't understand or respect them leave.  

    The question then remains, and will forever remain, that if the child is officially adopted by the Father, does  the adoption become null and void by the child's own will.  If the child chooses to emancipate himself from the Father, breaking the bond, and seeking out legal and permanent separation from the Father, forgoing the Father's rules and standards, and if he stops respecting Him as the authority and parent, does He get to live with the Father for all eternity?  That is a question that has been debated among Bible Scholars for thousands of years, and I do not intend to answer it.  No one knows who truly is a (permanently)  adopted child of the Father, except the Father.  I suppose the Father takes in some strays out of His hospitality and Grace, but knows ahead of time that they won't stay.  That is His loving nature.  

    He is The Most High, The Almighty, the Creator of all of us, whether we acknowledge that truth or not, but He is Father to those whom He adopts into His personal family.  Let's look at some examples of adopted children. Let's start with the very first one, that would be Noah.  Genesis says that the whole world was bent on doing evil, but Noah found grace in GOD's eyes.  It doesn't say that he was righteous and blameless, as many of us have been falsely taught.  It just said GOD had Grace toward Noah and chose to adopt him and his family.  Nowhere in the Bible does it even imply that Noah or his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law were righteous and deserving in any way of being adopted, it just says that Noah found Grace in GOD.  

     After Noah was Abraham, but the truth of the matter is it was Abraham's father, Terah who was first called, but he only went halfway and stopped.  I think that he would probably be qualified as a stray who chose not to be in the Father's family exclusively.  GOD picked him out of the polytheistic orphanage and gave him the privilege of coming into a true and personally intimate relation to the Father, but he chose not to take it to the level he was called to.   Terah chose not to live and go further on with YHVH GOD, but to stay in Haran and continue with all he knew, which was worship, acknowledgement, reverence, and obedience to many gods.  Everyone then believed in many gods.  Even after Abram was called out and sent forth to the land of Canaan, Abram did not understand that there was only one GOD. It was just that YHVH GOD was the One who called him to follow Him. GOD called him out of Haran and promised to made him a father of a vast family of GOD.  Abraham ended up having many sons by the time his life was over, but Isaac was the only one adopted by GOD to be His very own, and carry His name.  When Isaac became a father, before either of the twins was born, before either had any opportunity to do good or evil, GOD had already picked Jacob to be adopted into His family. (Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. Romans 9:13)  (“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet Jacob I have (chosen/adopted)  loved, Malachi 1:2b  (my interpretation).  Does this make sense?  

     All of GOD's heroes in the Bible were called to and received a special personal, intimate and direct  revelation from the Father Himself. None of them were looking for any kind of heroic work of ADONAI, many did not even know He existed.  (Moses, Gideon, King Saul, King David, Jeremiah, Amos, Elijah, Elisha, all of Jesus's disciples, and Saul/Paul, among many more.) It is GOD the Father who looks down upon our lives before we are even conceived, and it is only He who decides whom He will adopt as His own.  As a church people, whether Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, or Evangelical, all our lives we have heard that we were either born/baptized into GOD's family as infants, or we asked Jesus into our lives and accepted him as our Lord and Savior.  NOTHING could be further from the truth.  We play no part in being chosen by the Father.  We play no part in our salvation.  We are chosen before we are even born, because the Father is not constricted to time and history.  He knows our nature and our hearts before we are even conceived in the womb, and we are the ones whom GOD chooses, based on His prior knowledge of who we will be.  All of the earth's future is laid out before Him, nothing is hidden from His knowledge, nor out of His total Sovereign control. 

     The next time an evangelical tells you that all you have to do is believe in Jesus, ask him into your heart and life, and make him your personal Savior,  know this, many believed in Jesus while He walked the earth, but to most, he was just a great Tzadik, a holy man, a teacher. Yet, to those whom YHVH GOD had already chosen, He was the mediator, the Messiah, the link between a far-off, out-of-reach, Holy GOD to our  intimate relationship with a yet still Holy and Loving Heavenly Father.  

     If you are reading this and know for sure that you are a part of this intimate family, know this, it was YHVH GOD who adopted you, it was not you who adopted Him.