Insidious Adaptation

"Do you love your guns?" Yeah "god?" Yeah "The government?" "Do you love your guns?" Yeah "god?" Yeah "The government?"- Marylyn Manson, "The Love Song." 2000 The love of money, fame, fortune, notoriety, the love of other men regarding what we produce in this world, the worst drug out there. A drug, as I am using here, deviates people from truth. Drugs cover what the mind naturally does, therefore drugs are found in various forms, with the addition of chemicals being just a few.  "You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing You say I am strong when I think I am weak And You say I am held when I am falling short When I don’t belong, oh You say that I am Yours And I believe (I), oh I believe (I) What You say of me (I) Oh, I believe" - Lauren Daigle, "You Say" 2018 Two choruses, one God. Two supposedly opposite ends of the spectrum. Two people, Marylyn Manson, and Lauren ...

Love is the sacrifice of oneself for another. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs."- 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 What love is can easily be defined by what man isn't. WE are typically love's anti-venom and we have redefined "love" in a culture of lovelessness. Love is not lust, nor is it a present, nor is it controlling. You do not love if you need to know where that person is or what they are doing or to receive reassurances about your worth or their feelings for you.  Love does not need to be proclaimed in some bold statement for others to see, nor does love have to break another person down, hoping they lose so that we can remain their caregiver. Love does not steal. Love does not covet. Love is not some romance movie where the unhappily married woman finds her, "true" love and is acceptab...

The time it takes to read this, you could have done something else. You could have presented to someone and made a sale. You could have went for a brisk walk around the block, for this I will make it quick, maybe half a block. You could have done what you've always done and continue scrolling through social media waiting for that one thing to distract or entice just enough that you can feel satisfied. The internet has no end, but my words do. Well, inspired words I must confess. Rarely do we get ideas on our own, for our entire life we are saturated with environmental conditions we have to understand and adapt to. We have to learn and grow for our individual environments. Learning about and playing into social media is some people's new Siberian tiger trying to eat them. their new reality. People need to adapt and learn the lay of the land as they navigate through the treacherous waters perceived as social expectations. I am slightly older than that, not much, but enough ...

Like a sentencing from the judge, the pain inside when the inevitable truth is revealed has me torn. The benefit here is that the Judge grants me a life of eternal freedom from all woes and allowed to live in His glory for eternity. No more sorrow, no more pain. That's it, it is finished, as His son that he gave to the courts in payment of all the wrongs I have been accused of. I stand, in rags of clothes draped off my pathetic body, I am sick and weary, and yet, I am being treated like a King. I have been redeemed in this court room where I am definitely guilty. One thing is asked and it is that I give to the judge, my shoes. An easy thing to give for all eternity in my future. Take everything, these rags, I will stand here naked, unashamed for I know that I am now redeemed, given a gift I could not repay. Oh glorious judge how much you must love me, not in charitable compassion, but as one of your own. He watches knowing what I will do, however waiting for me to take the shoe...

"And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord."- Ephesians 6:4 What is it to provoke someone? What is it to influence a life in corruption? When we interact with people, do they walk away worse than before meeting us? Nobody wants to admit they could be a contributing cause to the destruction of another because that is a lot to take on, and counseling says that people are responsible for their own actions. All very true, even the painful part of acceptance. However, what if in our pursuit for self-satisfaction we eat up and produce noxious fumes polluting the purity of life along the way? What if on our way to weight-loss we post pictures promoting our thinner physiques as our salvation to an otherwise pathetic self? What if on the way to becoming a doctor we produce long, difficult sentences to show our knowledge, thus superiority? What if in my accepted way of self-promotion I provoke you in a negat...

Opposition at times seems to be the best method to describe something. When one cannot think of what it is, one can only know what it isn't. With that, what if Jesus did not die on the cross for our sins as the Holy and perfect Son of God in flesh to account for the terrible deviation against all that is true. Furthermore, what if He didn't exist. A world without Jesus, a world then without the Bible, for the Bible refers to His coming and God's sending His son for Redemption. So, no Holy Inspired Word from God. Therefore our sins, they still exist. They are still ours to account for. Life would not be full of rebellion, there would be nothing to rebel against. There would be no hope. All that is good would be lost to the evil of man in this world, and those that oppose Jesus now, or oppose God don't even realize the structure provided for them to defile God's nature by the ones who believe in Him. "For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will...

This world is oftentimes like a piece of gum. When the gum is taken in, it is so sweet and fills the mouth with flavor, for nothing is like a good piece of mint gum after a meal. This gum however, becomes a burden when we chew it for too long. Yet, oftentimes the obligation to continue chewing past the pleasurable part keeps us in misery. We hold on to the movement of this formless wad between our teeth, and yet all flavor and thus pleasure is gone. We think to put another in, and then another, for if two tastes good, imagine three. The pleasures of this world, the promises to satisfy our needs sadly fall very short. I only say sadly because that after all is where most people waste their time, me included. Yet, we know the truth inside that we are meant for more than this world, that we have a higher standard, and that we aren't born good. We are sinners who fail to do the right thing, think the right thing, and perform to at least some kind of moral compass everyday. We know ...

Before we can celebrate the holidays a significant truth must be acknowledged:  11  Then I saw a great white throne  and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence,  and there was no place for them.   12  And I saw the dead, great and small,  standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life.  The dead were judged  according to what they had done  as recorded in the books.   13  The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades  gave up the dead  that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done.   14  Then death  and Hades  were thrown into the lake of fire.  The lake of fire is the second death. 15  Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life  was thrown into the lake of fire.- Revelations 20:11-15.  It gets worse, if of course you are...

On a drive back from a military funeral, one that a team and I performed as an honor to a lost World War II veteran, we hear it. "Want to look better, naked?" The phrase intrigued me. It was a commercial for a company that I would eventually work for. It was the breaking down of that phrase, that indicated to me, that being naked is our most pure form, in this world. There are no hidden flaws behind mountains of sweaters and scarfs. There is no makeup or cover-up. There is the self, vulnerable, exposed. Now, one may think that words like, nude, naked, bare, are synonymous with sex and immorality, and trust me, at the time, I too thought, I probably need a little help in the nude. Consumed by an all-or-nothing thought process of, "bigger is better,"   figuring that tight sleeves were all I needed, realizing that being shirtless, or even more intense, pant-less, brought about inadequacies. It was the idea of exposing my hidden parts, that someone else is ine...

"The one who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and the one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in very much. If then you haven't been trustworthy handling world wealth, who will entrust you with the true riches?"  - Luke 16:10-11  We would all like to believe our cause is a noble one. We look to the world to tell us that it is. We look to our friends, whom have had the similar interests, or to family from which our interests have been raised, for them to tell us, "Yea, good job." When in the end, what matters is the progress of your wealth for others, not yourself. In July there was a death. An uncle. A military man, retired. His name was Mike. His funeral was yesterday, five days after what would have been his 72nd birthday, a service I was fortunate enough to have seen pictures, videos, witness second-hand, the military burial at Arlington National Cemetery. I performed those same funeral specifics. I have done what t...

In the spirit of the season, I sometimes find it best to reflect on where we've come from to see where we're going. I find that looking at the very elements of a situation can assist in finding common ground in which to walk, versus the egg shells we sometimes tiptoe around or crush just enough to pierce the leathery skin on the bottoms of our feet.  I will refer to the Bible here, so if you aren't interested past this then, there ya go.  In Genesis, man was made, and woman was made from man. God did both.  In Genesis again, man sinned, woman sinned. God did not make sin.  The rest of the Bible and life as we know it is based on this original sin and how we react, cover, attempt to live life on top of it, all the pain of cycle after cycle, mess on mess, and now here we are blurring the lines of what a nationalized agenda-biased media depicts either way about sexual assault.  Ah, this season... No, this isn't for children, and there are n...