Insidious Adaptation

Thou shalt not... Christians are commanded to, and commanded not to. Yet, this freedom Christ gave when he died on that cross has gotten distorted. A sense of entitlement has come about. It is not your church or church attendance that matters, the list of actions, charities you contribute to, or reciting of verses that are lingering words in your mind to sound haughty, that matters, but our love. We are commanded to love the Lord our God and love a neighbor like ourselves. These are non-negotibles. Due to needing to categorize and condemn a man for their actions, keep them away from us, we Christ followers sure think a lot and do a lot for ourselves. We justify a sin when we know better. It turns out we are good at one thing aren't we, reviving an old forgiven nature, going back to our own vomit, awaiting a time to be spewed out of the mouth of the one who gave us life. A nature that a conversion of the Holy Spirit should no longer be in love with, no longer stand. A Christian ...

It isn't that we have such great lives, and that man as a whole is not living in his own squalor, but it's the fact that there is a reprieve offered. There is a way out of suffering, out of heartache, there is a peace that can be found here on earth that few really allow themselves to see. One could argue that man has a desire to suffer, living in destruction, to harm one another to then receive harm. We know that if people are suffering in the world that even as calloused as we have become, saturated with news of horrors unheard of in our own life, that we still hurt because others hurt. We can continue to distance in our minds of the suffering of other people, but we hurt, or we distance ourselves from the reality of it. When we start, in one way or another, to distance from the reality of human suffering, we all suffer. Think about when you read a memoir about some horrors a man or woman has lived through. We read these things as stories, yet there is a thin strand of re...

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...

Having no responsibilities means that we could essentially do whatever we want. If we had no job, no children, no bills to pay, what a glorious day, yes? I assume the thought brings fear, as it should. If we have no responsibilities, we are then not responsible, or no longer important. Lacking importance is something man is not familiar with, after all, psychology justifies that we are all the authors of our own stories and everything we view in the world, is through our lens, or how it affects us. Yes, we are the first thought and we fear that we will come across in this selfish way. However, in our actions, rather than words, walk rather than talk, we do what we claim we don't do. Phrases, like, "I'm just saying," or, "I don't mean to sound like a jerk but..." are part of our everyday language to justify and relate to the people we are talking with. However, typically the people we are talking with by the point we choose to use those justifying phr...