7.4.10 MAY YOU LIVE FOREVER!

it happened this year...it was coming. i could feel it. everytime i went to a high school basketball game and had to listen to that lie '..the land of the free and the home of the brave'...it was getting harder to take. first i stopped 'saluting' the flag with hand over heart, then i could no longer sing those words anymore and if i hear it much more i will not be able to even get up. i don't impune those who have and still are giving their lives in the belief that this is what they should do...i don't impune those who love america and are glad for all the benefits they experience here...it's just a deep and vast visceral reaction...how can i possibly honor in anyway a nation that is floating in moral sewage and has for many years 'mainlined' it to the rest of the world? no longer. i am very ashamed to be an american. the glory that was ours when we feared God is trampled in the dust. we are the great whore of the world...an open pusy wound full of unimaginable filfth before God and the watching world. destroy us quickly oh Lord and raise up a people who will fear, honor and obey You.

i am not a light painter...meaning, i don't like to paint with a light. first of all, i find that on occasion i have a harder time 'seeing' what i am doing with the light on than with it pointed away or turned off. part of this may have to do with the fact that there is something i'm not understanding still about the use of light..i'm not sure. i also do not enjoy, especially in summer, all the heat that comes from the hallogen light. but i often have the experience where i have thot i carefully painted thru a section, turn the light on it and am horrified at all the very obvious misses. in the future it would be wise if i get into the habit of at least training the light on each section after i have painted to make a final check. why i bring this up is that it really speaks to me metaphorically. i think i'm doing ok, maybe even pretty well but then God reproves (this word literally means 'turns the light on') me by His spirit using His word and i see that i am not doing pretty good or even ok. He makes it very plain. He never beats on me but its all right there in front of me to clearly see. i want Him to do this all the time because i need that light shined on my darkness. i thot of david this a.m. where he says in psalm 19, 'keep back Thy servant also from presumptuos sinS. let THEM not have dominion over me. (a presumptuous sin is, according to webster, to do something without right or permission. it is when i know i'm not supposed to step over the line and do so deliberately). but the thing i realized this a.m. was that david had a number of these things in his life. this is the normal state of the christian life. we are all walking around with our fly continually open and need the next guy to give us help. this is not how most 'churches' come across. you walk in and everyone is squeaky clean...perfect! oh to know continually that i am a sinner and that i will be that way until the moment i die. oh the continual thrill of being forgiven and loved and cared for despite the mess i am!!!!!!!! Lord, let me never again return to the awful desert of self-righteousness and not needing You continually.

i keep hearing this guy saying to another guy i love, 'she's the boss!' (referring to the latter's wife). finally i overheard the latter guy saying , 'she's the boss!'. something in me snapped. i don't know if i will have the grace to do this but there and then i decided that i am going to be SILENT NO MORE. silence is consent! why should the devil's 'truth' be broadcast everywhere i go without me, who has the real truth, saying a thing! Lord, help me to respond by word, look, deed etc. to what i am hearing and experiencing wherever i go.

it may be time for me to get a change of eyeglasses. my current pair i have had for the last 4 years since the bike accident. it is leaking all kinds of green stuff onto my upper face (i actually had to daub the bridge of my nose with an epsom salt solution in order to draw all the green out which had totally clogged 3 or 4 pores. was afraid that the same thing would happen there that happened on my neck when the filthy dirty (evidently!) string for my neck-cross clogged a pore with black stuff and a 'goider' the size of a marble was the result!!! that did in the cross. i had been having less and less peace about it sensing it was to attract attention to myself (gross!) rather than to Jesus.) ,and i have been putting up with it but now am starting to get headaches regularly (when i have the glasses on) and so its time...maybe.

vom, june 2010, p.7..abdulmasi, originally a muslim who was befriended by a church in nigeria and, pretending to be saved, he was baptized, joined the young adult group and even became a leader, all the while going to the mosque and praying to allah. after 6 years he went to a youth conference and a pastor preached to those who were living double lives. abdulmasi was convicted and that night the Lord saved him. he had been very active as a muslim even to the point of killing christians. here is a part of his testimony.

after years of being persecuted actively starting the night of his salvation when he was warned by his friends not to go back to the mosque as they were planning to kill him...'abdulmasi continues to minister to muslims. he secretly counsels quranic teachers, mullahs and sheiks who want to become christians. he is a lamb among wolves who has intimate knowledge of the wolf's lair. many men in muslim villages tell him they are christians because of him. a major focus of abdulmasi's ministry is witnessing to persecutors. he even visited the man who planned his son's killing, offering him forgiveness. the man rebuffed him. however, the man's son heard about the exchange on a radio program and later showed up at abdulmasi's home seeking to accept Christ.

"i discovered that LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE...if you want to win muslims to e on your side, YOU HAVE TO LOVE THEM, not WITH the human type of love, but THE LOVE YOU YOURSELF HAVE EXPERIENCED THROUGH CHRIST". instead of treating them as enemies, pity them, because it's not them, its something that is motivating them. because when i was there i did not know what i was doing. i was once a persecutor. now through His grace He has forgiven me. this is God's love. and though we have been persecuted, we are not crushed...we die so that others will live.' (abdulmasi is already a dead man! may God make me one of his tribe!!!!)

a former muslim woman in pakistan who now a follower of Jesus and has a vision to evangelize unreached peoples from other religions (matthew 28.19)...'i have no fear from any fanatic. i am strong in faith. IF GOD WANTS TO USE ME in this area, nobody can stop me'. Lord help my unbelief.

taken from Christ on the jewish road by richard wurmbrand from his experiences of persecution for his faith in Jesus..'we christians were not frightened by communist revolutionism. after all, we ourselves are the descendants of revolutionary movement...we do not reproach the communists for their revolutionism, but for the fact that it has not gone far enough.

the Bible is much more revolutionary than the writings of marx and lenin. on the very first page of the bible, we read that god says to the human beings He has just created, 'have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.' genesis 1.28. only notic this: man is to have dominion over all of nature, but not over another human being..

we utterly oppose communist dictatorship and terror. we abhor communist atheism..but..we must show sympathy to the individual communist..no one need abandon Jesus in order to be a revolutionary. he can be a much better revolutionary by remaining with Him. without Jesus, revolutions are destructive and costly in blood. a revolution with Jesus is constructive, changing social conditions peacefully, after sanctifying hearts.'

poop along the way..
6.25 the path of life! you need to believe what the bible says about Jesus, give your life completely to Jesus, mimic Him exactly all the time, proclaim Jesus to everyone, go to where other professed believers in Jesus congregate to 1) worship Jesus in that place and 2) help the others to Jesus as savior AND lord. (key facts to remember about religious people: 1. they ignore what the bible says to do and will not in their everyday life submit to what Jesus wants. 2.they think they are god or are seeking some 'god' by doing what is prescribed by self or another entity. 3. they think they are good. 4.they look at themselves as being better than others. what a laugh! if we could all completely see ourselves we'd be vomiting our of total disgust continually..

animal love is big these days. this is another of the innumerable 'drugs' people use to get by. because they don't have the love of Jesus in their hearts they are always seeking love for themselves rather than demonstrating the love of Jesus to those people around them. in doing the former, they soon realize there is no one who truly loves them and so bump to the animal. romans 1.20f says, 'the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen...so that they are without excuse, because that, when they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, neither were they thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like...four-footed beasts..' a follower of Jesus is merciful and kind to animals but does not look to them for 'love'. the only love that truly meets the needs of the human heart is the love of Jesus!....listen to romans 5! 'when WE WERE WITHOUT STRENGTH in due time CHRIST DIED FOR THE UNGODLY..GOD DEMONSTRATES HIS LOVE toward us, in that WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS, CHRIST DIED FOR US. what a contrast to our great need and Jesus' great love that meets our need!

6.26 i have a new name for frenzied drivers. one would think that each person out there is under the delusion that they are God and that all other creatures unfortunate enough to find themselves in their way are to either vaporize out of the way, go fast enough to stay out of their way or immediately pull out of their path so they can go on in their fury, unimpeded in any way for even a nanosecond. your reality must conform to theirs as soon as they cross your path. you must think about them constantly as long as you are IN THEIR WAY. etc. they are GNATS. i can tell a gnat right away, even at a great distance. they have a homeing device that causes their two front headlights to affix themselves on my back window sooner or later. i generally move from my normal 5 miles above the speed limit to speed limit as soon as they make their appearance in the distance for i have found that in some cases this, surprisingly will help them behave themselves. but if they are their normal boorish selves i start to gradually slow down. i have had to almost come to a stop at times while the gnat is absolutely going ballistic. i have in this manner left 18 wheelers at 5 mph at the bottom of a mile long uphill stretch, have had garbage thrown at me out the window as passing, etc. but my stubbornness (i am not going to drive along forced to think about this gnat when i want to be in prayer or meditate on scripture!), as well as my didactic bent win out and each time a gnat appears a. they learn a lesson about driving safety and b. i forget they are on my back window..at least those are the goals. if i ever am challenged by a gnat i will communicate that if they insist on immitating a nascar speedway on a public thorofare by driving within one carlength, i will insist in keeping the speed to less than 10 miles an hour (rule of thumb: one car length for each 10 miles per hour speed). maybe this will be the way i go to see Jesus..

6.27 written about pearl buck..'she was an enthusiastic participant in local (chinese) funerals on the hill ouside the walled compound of her (missionary) parents house: large, noisy, convivial affairs where everyone had a good time. pearl joined in as soon as the party got going with people killing cocks, burning paper money and gossiping about foreigners making malaria pills out of babies' eyes. "EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS LIES", I REMARKED PLEASANTLY...there was always a moment (truth-speaking was pearl's typical m.o., evidently!) did they or did they not understand what i had said? they asked each other. they understood, but could not believe they had. the unexpected apparition of a small american girl squatting in the grass and talking intelligibly, unlike other westerners, seemed magical, if not demonic. once an old woman shrieked aloud, convinced she was about to die now that she could understand the language of foreign devils. pearl made the most of the effect she produced and of the endless questions - about her clother, her coloring, her parents, the way they lived and the food they ate - that followed as soon as the mourners got over their shock. she said she first realized there was something wrong with her at new year 1897, when she was four and a half years old, with blue eyes and thick yellow hair that had grown too long to fit inside a new red cap trimmed with gold buddhas. why must we hide it? she asked her chinese nurse, who explained that black was the only normal color for hair and eyes. (it doesn't look human, this hair?)

buck, again...'even the dire process of having her feet bound became heroic in retrospect. wang amah (buck's nurse) explained that her father made her sleep alone in the kitchen outhouse from the age of three so as not to disturb the rest of the family by her crying at night. rarely able to resist pearl's coaxing, she took off the cloth shoes, white stockings and bandages that had to be worn, even in bed, by women with the infinitely disirable 'golden-lily' feet that enforced subjugation as effectively as a ball and chain. pearl inspected the lump of mashed bone and livid discolored flesh made from forcing together the heel and toes under the instep, leaving only the big toe intact. she had witnessed the mothers of her contemporaries crippling their own daughters' feet and even suspected she might have ruined her chances of getting a husband by failing to go through the procedure herself. she watched her nurse put the bindings back on without comment. it was one of her firest lessons in THE POWER OF IMAGINATION TO COVER UP OR CONTAIN AND MAKE BEARABLE THINGS TOO UGLY TO CONFRONT DIRECTLY (a.k.a. ABORTION) it was the same lesson she learned from the body parts (babies left to die from exposure) on the hillside,...

hope you have a good week. love, dad