By faith, not by sight

By Erika Schwibs

On the river of God's will, a believer must learn not to strive to row or paddle to something seen along the river bank, unless that striving is God's will and it's being done in His strength, and not human strength. 

When believers do something in His strength, there's a peace and effortless to it, even when accompanied by great trouble and difficulty. The Lord leads believers through the circumstances of situations, and He takes them where He wants them to go in His time, just like a boat on a river fully under His control instead of the control of the people in it. Just wait on Him until then.

Too often, believers think that when God shows them something and gives them insight, it means that He wants them to immediately go out and "make it happen," even if that means using worldly means, when instead He's teaching them and revealing things to them. If He shows a believer a shed on the river bank, then, including many details about it, it doesn't necessarily mean that He expects the believer to row like mad to the riverbank and then construct the shed by whatever means necessary. Nor does it mean that the believer should try to row furiously to the banks whenever something appears that resembles a shed and it's virtually impossible to reach it before the current takes the believer far downstream past it. When thinking that way, it can seem like God presented an opportunity to the believer, but maybe only to tantalize or punish with failure. 

But instead of building the shed or having to reach shore when it's impossible to do so, the Lord might only be revealing things about such a shed because at some time in the future, He will take the believer's boat effortlessly to that spot on shore in order for the believer to pick up just one needed item from that shed. God's ways and thinking aren't ours. They're higher. Believers need to always remember to practice waiting on Him.

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Once the Lord taught me something important from a large construction project that I saw almost daily. I'd see some of the same workers in the same areas of the site day after day, and through that He showed me that, despite the grand size and great intricacy of the project, all a singer worker could do each day was the daily work of one worker, and no more. They all had their very small piece to do out of the larger project, and it was manager of the whole project who actually knew who better than the worker how the pieces fit together.

In the same way, the individual worker couldn't just decide to break from the orders given him to do what seemed good to him, but had to stick with faithfully going along with the overall plan, whether he could see the point to any of it or not. One could imagine that sometimes some workers thought something else should happen, or wanted to be doing something else, but that was like playing God, and much more difficult than just faithfully doing one's one small part in the overall construction project.

And that is the perspective I should have, the Lord showed me, in going about my life on earth. I should remember that I can only do my small part of His plan. And I'll never fully understand it on earth -- neither the whole, or any of the parts, or even my own part. Even the human manager of a construction project, who seemingly knows it all, can never know how the Lord has used that project beforehand or will use it during construction or after. He doesn't know all that came before of that land, or the building materials, or the lives of the people making it, and He doesn't know how the finished project will be included in the Lord's plans, either, in the future. Since we know so little, then, even far less than we think we do, it's best to walk very humbly with our God, leaning on Him and not our own understanding, and walking by faith, not by sight. 

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The Lord and the devil come by. The Lord tries to give away the truth, as Wisdom tries to give herself away in the book of Proverbs. The devil has lies to give away, the price to be paid for them to come later. Even though the truth comes from God Himself, so we can be sure that it will be good and pleasant and pleasurable in the end, a lot of it isn't at all appealing at first sight, so it's not easy for the Lord to give it away. On the other hand, the lies offered by the devil look very attractive, and are practically irresistible to mankind. Even though the lies come from the devil, so that people should know that they'll end up making them terribly miserable eventually, they look so appealing and even sort of wholesome and good when the devil brings them out that it's all too easy to justify accepting them. They're full of flattery and false promises, just what people want to believe, and the devil has done the hard work. It would take a lot of work to counter or question his lies. It's easier just to accept them. "What else is there to do?" 

But rather than accepting and possessing the devil's lies, it would be better to be empty-handed for awhile, for as long as God wills, and to say, "I'm not sure what the truth" is about a situation if only the devil's lies are available while waiting on the Lord to reveal the actual truth, or to labor for the truth if it's our responsibility to do so, even though we find a stronghold in ourselves that doesn't want to accept the truth from the Lord. As it says in 2 Thessalonians 2, those who will be saved receive the love of the truth, and the truth is what God says is the truth, and what it reveals about His heart and our hearts.

As Some Christians Abandon the Ark

By Erika Schwibs

The Christian faith brought powerful spiritual knowledge -- truth about God -- to much of the world, and it's been part of the modern world's social foundation for centuries. 

Yet as the Bible teaches us, Satan and the forces of Hell will try to conquer the world before the second coming of Christ, and entirely banish spiritual knowledge from the earth, if that were possible. Babylon will try to claim control of Heaven for itself. Babylon and the Beast system exalt man and natural knowledge while doing all in its power to suppress the true, life-giving spiritual knowledge that's available in Christ, and they have been growing in power in the modern world where belief in God is often mocked and dismissed as "ignorant superstition." Babylon and the Beast system would shut out the Spirit of God, if they could, and leave man as god of the world. And their efforts, permitted by God to fulfill His partly-hidden plan, have never been more successful, or so it seems. The world around us now very closely resembles in many respects the one that exists in the Last Days described in Revelation.

From our earliest days in the Garden of Eden, human beings have sought after knowledge, and our desire for knowledge quickly became destructive when Eve gave in to the Serpent's wiles. She desired knowledge, but went about it the wrong way, directly disobeying God.

Truth -- knowledge of what's true -- is most valuable to us, but the human heart is, at best, ambivalent about it. Few people would put up with outright lies in the weather forecast, but beyond that, the truth is often not welcomed despite being, in many cases, even more vital in importance than the weather. Spiritual truth is most important of all kinds of truth, yet it without doubt the most distorted by man over our history. While long gone is the flood of water that God brought on the earth in response to man's wickedness, humanity itself has flooded the earth since then with lies, and the modern world, which has "improved" upon just about everything, has only "improved" in dishonesty.

Yet, God spared godly Noah and his family aboard the ark that He led Noah to build patiently over many years, and He also offers to lead any and all in building a spiritual ark to save us from man's lies. To do so, we must receive a love of the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10). Love of the truth isn't loving what we want to hear or our own opinions. Faith in Christ, the Son of God, reveals to us that there is both natural knowledge and spiritual knowledge, and that these two work together when we yield ourselves fully to God and give spiritual knowledge its foremost place.

Even in the natural sense, though, such a world carries in it many of the seeds of its own destruction. For the health of a society, some deep commitment to truth is necessary -- a commitment which comes from the spiritual and impels people to value God and truth and to act with integrity. Yet with the unprecedented technology of this age, where knowledge has increased and people run to and fro, such great control can be given over to a worldwide soulless system itself that human society necessarily self-destructs with its machine-like workings. The Satanic spirit will be fully in control of natural society at that point, although only because, for a time, the Lord will permit it.

I think of some jobs I've worked where, for many of the workers, appearing to do a good job was the same to them as doing it. And they often seemed untroubled by receiving credit for the good they didn't actually do and the quality and safety standards they didn't meet. While this attitude has always been a part of human society, of course, I believe it's progressed to unprecedented levels in recent decades because never before have the societies of the world thrown off the fear of God and the love of God as we have. The result is so many people convinced that they're "good people," no matter what they do, and simply refusing to feel guilty when they should. I just recently happened to look up the lyrics for a song about "karma." Not surprisingly, it's all about how another person besides the song narrator is a terrible person. Godless self righteousness is no improvement on Christianity, but is its natural successor. Godless society runs on feeding into people's natural narcissism. It's flattery that spreads a net for people's feet, but a godless society of primed for self-worship just doesn't have the spiritual wisdom -- especially the spiritual humility -- to recognize that.

And having come from a family torn apart by ordinary human ungodliness, a family that psychology would call pretty "dysfunctional," I have to think that too much spiritual degeneracy and feigned integrity simply leads to such great social degeneracy that societies simply can't operate any longer.

While largely Christian nations mostly haven't been actual theocracies, they've been strengthened with spiritual power and shaped supernaturally by faith and truth. Great spiritual light was permitted to come in.

Now this light is being increasingly shut out. 

When Babylon gets so established in the world, even natural philosophy has to be replaced by society with something more to people's liking, like modern psychology. Natural philosophy, although far from perfect as it gives short shrift to spiritual truth, still asks too many difficult questions and isn't fawning enough over the individual. It's not egocentric enough for today's modern, prosperous societies where the overall point is to have one's way, with little if any thought to God. 

One of my high school teachers once paraphrased a famous saying by Socrates as follows: "I'm the wisest man in Athens because I know that I know nothing."

While being sorely deficient in knowledge of God, this statement still shows far more natural awareness and wisdom than is found in today's self-worshipping, godless culture. 

The republican form of government commonly called democracy is too threatening to Babylon. Babylon claims to be the defender of democracy, while, ironically, desiring to lord over people made ignorant by its lies. 

A false Kingdom of Heaven is apparent in Babylon. It can't be run by laws, but must be founded on people -- "good people," "superior" people. People who believe themselves to be righteous like the Jesus of their imaginations. They reject the real Jesus, the foundation of Heaven, for the foundation of themselves. While psychology, like philosophy, is filled with human error, it speaks a half-truth about what drives humanity, and so, this godless society: "self-serving bias". 

Babylon -- the false Kingdom of Heaven -- also demands that people take every thought captive to itself (2 Corinthians 10:5). It seeks to remove all things that offend against what it  wrongly takes to be righteousness (Matthew 13:41). And it requires that people's every word be judged (Matthew 12:36).

And much of the church here, too, is taken up with "coexistence" with the Babylon world. It's either merely going along with it entirely, or else half-heartedly fighting the darkness by natural means, rather than by spiritual. Zeal -- passion for God -- is sorely lacking much of the time in modern, prosperous societies where worldliness has also been greatly "improved". It's as though much of the church has exchanged God's actual Word for another Bible. A Bible that an unrepentant Laodicean church would have authorized -- the Kidding Yourself Study Bible. Rather than "love not the world," it says instead to love the world, as it is God's creation. This "Kidding Yourself" Bible teaches people "what God really meant." It vocally disowns the Prosperity Gospel, yet that's what it is at heart. It is disdainful of the Study Bible of the Philadelphia Church -- the "Whatever It Takes, Lord" Study Bible.

Going by what's revealed about the End Times in the book of Revelation and at other places in the Bible, it wouldn't be a surprise to see the institutional church in prosperous countries go completely the way of Babylon and never turn back. 

In that case, however, individual believers can and must stay faithful to Christ, as also described in Revelation. In Christ, and Christ alone, is Heaven found. And though the lies of Babylon are flooding the earth with more and more confusion, there is still the Christian's duty to Christ to point people to Heaven. And it's wise for every Christian to be found to be doing so if still here when Christ returns.

Prayer to Rely on the Lord and Not My Own Vision, Knowledge and Understanding

 Heavenly Father, thank You for the gift of knowing You and Your Son and Your Holy Spirit and also of knowing that I can always trust You and depend on You.

Please keep me from trying to see and know and understand all the many cups in my life according to my own understanding.  I know I can't see anything as it truly is because my human eyes are so faulty and easily deceived and fooled by Satan, other people, and my own heart.

Instead, help me and remind me to always look to You first and to depend on You to show me Your Son -- the Way, the Truth and the Life -- in every situation and to rely on Him. Help me to wait until You reveal to me that a cup which seems half full or full to me is actually empty, and when a cup that seems empty to me is actually actually full or half-full. And remind me when I dwell on a cup being half-empty that it's also half-full, and vice versa.  

I pray also that I remember each day that with You, my cup of blessing is always overflowing, and my problems in the natural sense are challenges and opportunities in the spiritual sense and will all work together for my good and the good of the church.

In Jesus' name I pray, 

Amen.

-- Erika Schwibs 

As No Earthly Launderer Could

 By Erika Schwibs 

In the worldy, economic sense, the U.S. dollar has often been referred to in recent times as "the cleanest dirty shirt":

Fortune, July 2022: "Why is the dollar dominating? Because the U.S. is" the cleanest dirty shirt. "

Asia Times, September 2022: "Analyst Louis-Vincent Gave at Gavekal Research observes that 'in a dangerous world, the reason for the US dollar' s super-charged performance over the last year has been investors' view that it is the 'cleanest dirty shirt'  in a smelly pile of laundry.'"

In the spiritual sense, who or what has the "cleanest dirty shirt" in the world?

The Christian church, of course.

That's the chief admission of a genuine Christian: that our "shirt" is hopelessly dirtied by our sin, with no hope to ever get it clean ourselves. We need to be provided a clean wardrobe by God Himself. Similarly, our own dirty clothing is our biggest problem and not the dirty clothes of others. 

But it's only through faith in the spiritual that we can see that every human being, including ourselves, naturally has a dirty shirt. The natural man and the spiritual man are at enmity with each other. A person is blind in the spiritual realm the more that he or she denies its existence and chooses to live only through the natural, as if God doesn't exist. In a word, atheism. The shirts of other people different from himself, especially Christians, are dirty to the natural man, but his own shirt is pretty good by comparison. 

The natural, God-denying man actually believes himself to have, if not a clean shirt, then "the cleanest dirty shirt." That's because "all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes..." (Proverbs 16:2). The hardened unbeliever believes that he's supreme morally and intellectually. He believes he's achieved this exalted status himself.  He hears the word, but isn't interested in being a doer of it, even in pretense or pride. So he doesn't even use the mirror God has given him to see the state of his clothing.

"But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was," (James 1:22-24).

That makes for incompatibility between believers and unbelievers. "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" (Amos 3:3).

And it shouldn't be forgotten that the Laodicean Christian often isn't too far off in heart and mind from the unbeliever. 

The Christian life in this world is about laundering our dirty laundry and exchanging it one day, once and for all, for the white robes earned for us by our savior. 

We don't need to despair because we are credited with having the perfectly clean robes of the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ:

"And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them," (Mark 9:3).

But we can only have these robes because we recognize the eternal dirtiness of our own, our own inability to either possess a clean shirt or to launder it to cleanliness ourselves. We can't do anything for it but receive it:

"And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment. And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen," (Matthew 22:11-14).

And we must follow Christ through whatever suffering we're to endure with Him in carrying our cross: 

"After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands," (Revelation 7:9).

"And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," (Revelation 7:13-14).

We cannot provide the "laundry soap" ourselves. The "soap" that gives us new life and eternal life with God is the blood of the Lamb.

Unbelievers have no solution to the problem of their dirty shirt. They don't even recognize their problem. The dirtiness is only on other people. 

As Christians, we can confess the dirtiness of our natural attire, and confess that the only launderer in the universe who can take away the stains of sin is Christ. We can tell other people about Him, and point the way to Him. On Sundays, we can come together to discuss the problem of man's dirty clothing, continually own it as our own, and rejoice in the eternal clean robes provided for us by God in His Son. And that's why, even in this world, Christians who love the Lord in sincerity still have, overall, the cleanest dirty shirts.

Your Will Be Done

 

Years ago, the Lord taught me some lessons from a couple of experiences I had of missing buses.

One day I'd just come from grocery shopping and was waiting at a stop across the street from the market. This was at a corner where a number of city streets either converged or diverged, depending on your perspective. Two buses originating from downtown came down the same street, and then, at this particular corner, the street transformed into two that eventually ran parallel to each other, though a good distance apart.

I frequently rode these two busses, which ran on similar schedules, so it was probably out of a little bit of complacent inattention that I ended up boarding the wrong bus this time when it came along. It pulled up, and functioning on autopilot as I was, I got on with my little cart of groceries. I'd no sooner sat down than I realized my mistake as the bus immediately made a sharp turn at the corner. And it was too late to catch the other bus because it had just come and gone, too. Yes, it was a good lesson on the necessity to read labels carefully and not just jump aboard the first bus that comes along.

So I was going to have a long walk ahead of me. At least a half-hour of walking while dragging my cart along beside me.

But immediately I started laughing happily at the thought. Years ago my first and only reaction always would have been to fret, discouraged by the thwarting of my plans. And even today, that is still my natural reaction. But there is another reaction that competes with it, and often soundly defeats it -- the reaction of supernatural faith. At the moment I realized that I'd taken the wrong bus, I laughed because I knew the Lord well enough by then to know that He must have some purpose for my error. There had to be a reason. If He'd wanted me to catch my proper bus, nothing could have stopped me from doing so. 

A few minutes later, as I got off the bus at the closest point to home, I realized I was near the local library. I hadn't been there in awhile, so I decided to go in and look at their used book section. Maybe there I'd find the source behind my mistake.

Sure enough, as I started looking over the books, I noticed one called, "Return to the Hiding Place," by a man named Hans Poley. He had been hidden by the ten Boom family during World War II, and this book was his account of their ordeal. Amazingly, I'd just given my copy of The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom herself, to a woman at church a couple of days before. 

Finding that book more than made up for the long walk home I had that day.

Around the same time period, I missed a bus at the same corner on another day. I was grocery shopping again and just didn't make it out of the store in time. 

My destination -- home again -- was almost an hour's walk from where I was, and busses came by about every half an hour. The weather was pretty nice for a Great Lakes winter morning. Sidewalks had been cleared of recent snow, and there wasn't any wind. It was just quite cold.

Rather than standing around waiting for the next bus to come along eventually, I thought I'd walk towards home and see how far I could get before it did. I did a lot of walking and thought that, all things considered, I was a pretty fast walker for a short woman. So I would get some exercise while challenging myself, and all while avoiding the unpleasantness of feeling like I was starting to freeze.

Though a weekday morning in the city, it was very quiet. With no wind and the snow that blanketed the ground muffling much of the noise of traffic, the stillness of snowy winter prevailed. After 20 minutes of brisk walking, I was pleased with how far I'd gone. I was on a main street, and there were bus stops every two or three blocks. I was right in between two of them when I thought that I'd better get to one and stay put there just to be sure that I wouldn't end up walking all the way home. I pictured the bus with its warm occupants cruising past me at the inopportune moment when I was nowhere near a stop. But I was at least a block now from the nearest stop. So should I keep going forward, or turn around and go back to the one I'd just passed?  

Naturally, I wanted to keep going forward. After so many minutes of walking as a challenge to myself, I felt almost driven along, like I'd become a machine. But I also felt some opposition forming within me, and a surprisingly strong check in my spirit. I suddenly felt convinced that God wanted me to turn around and go back to the last stop I'd just passed by. 

I did turn around and go back, but not before it took me several seconds to stop myself. It was almost like a tug-of-war was playing out in my spirit. I had set my mind and my will on achieving a certain goal, and it took a few seconds of God's voice calling me away from what I wanted for me to obey. 

I had a strong sense, too, at that moment, that while we human beings are very small and insignificant in the world in the physical sense, we are much larger and more powerful spiritually -- and that is both good and bad. It felt like my own will was the size of a battleship that, despite the usefulness of its great strength, couldn't very easily or quickly be stopped or turned in another direction, given all of its momentum when I was determined to reach a certain destination in life. And that was true even when I really wanted to obey the Lord, and even in a situation that was insignificant to me in the grand scheme of things, as my walking goals were that day. 

The experience gave me a sense of how the Lord really has His work cut out for Him in dealing with us human beings. When people are determined to do something, sometimes that's described as having an "indomitable" will. It begins early in infants and toddlers, continues through childhood and adolescence, and really becomes ripe in adulthood. While our willpower can drive us on against great challenges and tremendous difficulties, it's nevertheless an eternal liability until it's submitted to His will. When we truly submit our will to His, then the truly miraculous can happen as the indomitable human will is working alongside the almighty divine will. As Jesus prayed just before His arrest that would end with Him on the cross: 

"And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done," (Luke 22:41-42).

With those words, absolutely true in His heart, Jesus demonstrated that He was the Savior of the world. 

In Matthew 12:36, He tells us that we will be judged for every last word that we've said here. 

"A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned," (v. 35-37).

Despite our words feeling utterly disposable and the belief that "talk is cheap," our words are indeed very powerful and eternal. The Bible says that again and again, though we are often slow to believe it because we don't feel it. We usually don't see our words having any instant, world-changing or people-influencing effects, so many people become intensely frustrated by a feeling of ineffectiveness and impotence. Our individual voice seems to get lost in the cacophony of the human population seemingly all shouting at once. Yet, we care very much about what everyone else has to say because *their* words are perceived to have a lot of power, especially over us.

Certainly, our lives today are at least in part the product of even the most casual of conversations and the most carelessly uttered comments of our ancestors hundreds and thousands of years ago. Our lives can and are affected by all sorts of off-the-cuff remarks made by the people around us -- some close to us, but many by strangers. Many of these remarks aren't remembered by anyone, either, except the person profoundly affected them. 

"For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile." 1 Peter 3:10

"Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips." Psalm 141:3

"Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof." Proverbs 18:21

"We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be." James 3:2-10

There in James we see what we can do about turning our massive, hard-to-control wills over to the Lord so that His will and ours merge more and more into one. It's in our words.

Talk *is* cheap, sort of. Our mouths have a great deal of freedom, and when we are relatively free to say what we like is the perfect time for practicing obedience to the Lord and learning to like to say what He would like to hear from us. Spiritual readiness for anything begins here. And the Lord doesn't leave us in the dark about what type of talk should and shouldn't be coming from us. Praise, prayer, encouragement and humble correction for others, witnessing of His goodness and His work, edification.

Eyes that see, ears that hear, and human hearts that love the Lord through union with His will are only possible with mouths that not only talk the talk, but walk the walk.

-- Erika Schwibs

 

Everything to me now is about meditating on the Bible

Everything to me now is about meditating on the Bible. I know it's a bridge that is, or seems to be, too far to most Christians these days, but I'm quite disconnected from today's culture, including novels and movies. Reading the Bible 20 years ago "ruined" them for me. And I'd always been very much into them. That's why I'd majored in English. But it's been no sacrifice "losing" them. Shockingly, I've been happier about it than I can say. In ancient times, we didn't have TV, movies or even books as they are now. I've felt so freed for other things that are so much better, including more stories of real people. That's probably enough on that, though. It probably sounds pretty "shocking."

I didn't actually read the Bible or take any religion in any formal school. But I've studied the Bible a lot on my own over the past 30 years. There was a bit of Christian mysticism, if that's what it is, that was very influential to me early on. It actually did come from a novel, interestingly enough, at that point in my life.

It started with reading The Catcher in the Rye in high school. Later I wanted to read the other works of J. D. Salinger. Franny and Zooey had a big effect on me. It's all about the characters saying the Jesus Prayer. I believe it's chiefly an Orthodox tradition. The characters got it from an old book that actually exists, The Way of a Pilgrim, about an 18th century Russian peasant, if I recall correctly, who wants to know how one can pray without ceasing as the Bible says. So I ended up saying the prayer and made a daily habit of reading in the Gospels at that time.

I was about 21, and at this time I decided for myself that I really did believe that Jesus was and is who He said. And a few weeks later, something happened that was so amazing to me.

I'd also started saying the Lord's Prayer, and one night I was praying it as I lay down to sleep. My eyes were closed, and all of sudden I realized something had started to happen, and I even said that to myself. "Something is happening!!" It was like I could "see" a presence, a living spirit, like a living, shimmering light that started out very small, but then very quickly grew, radiating beautifully the whole time. It got as big as me, and then bigger than me and I was inside of it, and then a few seconds later, it was gone and I fell asleep.

Well, the next morning when I got up I found that I'd been completely released from my addiction to cigarettes. I was then a two-pack-a-day chain smoker. And at 21, I'd never tried quitting. But a few hours before bed that night, I'd heard a "stop smoking" infomercial on TV and just had a passing thought of conviction that given my newfound faith, I should work on quitting.

After the experience I'd had with God's presence, I never had any cravings for cigarettes. The next morning it was just like I'd never smoked. But I didn't tell people at the restaurant I worked at how I'd quit. They all thought people who took prayer and the Bible seriously were religious nuts. My boss said I'd never be able to quit "cold turkey." But I didn't touch another cigarette - - for five years. I still had a lot to learn and change, so I ended up going back to smoking and smoked for another five years. A number of times I tried quitting cold turkey for real then, but didn't get anywhere. It was only when I had financial difficulties that I was able to stop, and I'd learned my lesson by then and have never touched another one. I was really thankful for the Lord forcing me to quit. And those difficulties also led to me reading the whole Bible, which completely transformed my life spiritually.

-- Erika Schwibs

When Grocery Stores Weren't Superstores

 When grocery stores weren't superstores: They were much smaller, and simpler like the second-tier grocery stores that still exist in some places today, and for most products, there weren't all the many varieties and flavors of them that exist today, either.

https://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-grocery-stores-usa-old-pictures/

Censorship against Christ

The Biblical Christian stand on homosexuality is not hate. And it is one shared by many Jews, as well, not surprisingly, as this story relates. I say this, too, as someone who decades ago identified as a lesbian until I became convinced differently due to my Christian faith leading me to read the whole Bible for the first time.

"Yeshiva University asks Supreme Court to act in case over LGBT club on religious freedom grounds":

Yeshiva University has asked the Supreme Court to intervene in its legal battle over the recognition of an LGBTQ student club on religious freedom grounds.

The filing outlines the school’s Jewish character, including other groups officials declined to approve for being “inconsistent with its Torah values” — from student clubs involving shooting, video games, and gambling, to a chapter of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi.

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnypost.com%2F2022%2F08%2F30%2Fyeshiva-university-asks-supreme-court-to-act-in-case-over-lgbt-club

The Becket Fund has been involved in other high-profile religious freedom cases, including a Jewish group that sued former Gov. Andrew Cuomo over COVID-19 restrictions, and Hobby Lobby stores that opposed a mandate to provide contraceptives to employees on religious grounds, according to its website. In July 2019, Amazon removed the books on homosexuality by a number of Christian authors.

This move by Amazon was widely reported on in conservative circles while probably very few Democrats heard anything about it at all. Over the past 20 years, I have to think I've seen tens of thousands of stories on every conceivable subject that are deliberately censored by the media to favor Democrats, which shouldn't be surprising. Both parties are well supported by big donors. These stories are usually reported on by the media, but very quietly. They don't enter the "news cycle" discussion -- that is, they are not hyped and heavily promoted and talked about endlessly so that most people hear about them.

As I said, the Christian Biblical view on homosexuality is not hate, and I say that as someone who identified as gay decades ago before my faith matured to a certain point.

Specifically, the books of one of the authors, Anne Paulk, I'd found helpful and had ordered at least one from Amazon years before. Since Amazon banned her books, Facebook has also removed her ministry, leaving only her own Facebook pages. But all this and much, much, MUCH more is never called censorship these days by most on the left.

How about just the fact that all public institutions, from schools to libraries, simply massively promote Democratic and atheistic viewpoints and demonize and censor Republican and Christian ones automatically. This while atheism is legally counted and protected as a religion. And, we had no publicly funded schools and many public institutions have grown immense in size and power since the nation's founding. Yet Christians are compelled to chip in to fund them while they promote the pet worldviews of others and lie, slander and undermine Christianity.

https://www.facebook.com/AnnePaulkAuthor

https://dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.com/amazon-bans.../

https://www1.cbn.com/.../amazon-pulls-books-by-gay...

https://www.christianpost.com/.../amazon-pulls-books-by...

https://www.godreports.com/.../amazon-removes-christian.../

https://stream.org/amazon-ban-christian-counselor-anne.../

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Shelter for the Homeless

This world is like a prison, and we're the criminals. We must be re-formed to live in a perfect place like Heaven, and to live perfectly in tune with the One who rules Heaven all the time while fully maintaining our free will and the freedom of our hearts. All that can and does happen through knowing Jesus as our Lord and Savior. That's the only way our living in Heaven is possible.

But this world is also like a homeless shelter you can't remain at permanently. And Heaven is also a homeless shelter...but unlike all other shelters, it's a perfect one. It's a refuge from the Hell of this world, and the next. And you can stay forever, in happiness.

When confronted with the simplest choices about basic conveniences, comforts and pleasures -- like beds that are comfortable versus painful to sleep in, better and worse food, getting enough versus not enough sleep, etc. -- people tend to be absolutely sensible and to choose the BETTER. I see that at the homeless shelter I'm in all the time. So, too, should they choose the BETTER next world. It's that simple.

"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." Revelation 14:2

The Importance of Preparation

 "In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."  Matthew 3:1-3

"After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go." Luke 10:1

"And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."  John 14:3

Some thoughts

Erika Schwibs

Do we wonder sometimes if the Lord is with us, especially in our troubles and suffering? Do we feel that he's not there, and we're on our own? It's natural to feel that way, after all. Do we also wonder if we're with Him?

"If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour." John 12:26

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The world leaves nothing out of its plans to gain power, and no stone goes unturned --

EXCEPT.

-- Except that it does everything in its power to first exclude consideration of the spiritual, and if and when it can't do that, then it will try to distort and misrepresent it because an honest and sincere pursuit of the spiritual leads to God eventually. The world talks so much about everything else in order to get people to forget Him.

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Christianity has been the counterweight to human narcissism.

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I've been homeless, and one thing one can't forget is that being in a homeless shelter is only a short-term, temporary solution. It's not permanent, so one shouldn't get too comfortable there, and what's there isn't yours. And so is life in this world like that -- temporary, and the provisions aren't really ours.

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What God provides for us through the sacrifice of His Son on the Cross is a Welfare program. And while we will work if we appreciate what He's given us, we haven't earned our place in Heaven. We are all dependents on Christ.

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Here is the trouble, and why Heaven is for those who become reconciled to God and put His will before their own, without kidding themselves:

"Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the LORD."  Isaiah 26:10

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Faith is supernatural because of what it stands upon, the Word of God. Its math doesn't add up in the natural. It learns to make happiness out of unhappiness when it's impossible to do so in the natural.

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The Lord is Lord to us all, whether we recognize Him in that or not. Those who choose to reject Him and to identify as unbelievers are like the citizens who hated their nobleman in Jesus' parable:

"He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come. But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us."  Luke 19:12-14

And God's Word counsels us not deceive ourselves into thinking we believe in Christ if we actually don't. We should beware not to be like these servants who joined with the world rather than do the work of their Master because He hadn't yet returned:

"But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken; The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers."  Luke 12:45-46

Babel, Modern Interdependence and the Return of Christ

 Recently, Jonathan Haidt ominously compared the U.S. to Babel due to its deep divisions. 

But weren't the divisions made by God after man tried to build the Tower of Babel actually a good thing? They must have been, since God did created them in His wisdom. He hindered cooperation among men and scattered humanity across the earth.

Ever since Babel, however, mankind has kept trying to circumvent what God did to divide us and to reunite itself while rejecting Him. Often these reunions were attempted through building empires based on military conquest, and humans reigned with an attitude of usurping God's rightful place over human beings. But while these dictatorships achieved some success in forcibly bringing people together, none really came close to uniting all of mankind. 

In modern times, though, technological "progress" has given us many more "reunion" tools, and they are much more powerful in their own ways. Electronic media have made it possible for almost the entire human population to hear the same news at the same time. Each of these new tools has its own "benefits," real and imagined, and part of the price for using them is exchanging a measure of our independence for interdependence.

God created human interdependence in the Garden between Adam and Eve, and all the members of the Church, when it reaches perfection, are interdependent. 

When lived out in godliness and obedience, interdependence is part and parcel of Heaven itself. But in this fallen world, Satan's counterfeit Kingdom of Heaven tends to exploit our interdependence.

Not coincidentally, these technologies are for a time giving the upper hand to the world as they aren't neutral. The more "advanced" the technology these days, the more ungodliness increases.

    

Testimony on Heaven and Hell

By Erika Schwibs

Advanced technology coupled with prosperity seems to bring about the worst cases of an intoxicating spiritual disease that attacks our most important sense: our fear of the Lord.

Two signs of this intoxicating disease are dismissing the reality of the Devil and of Hell.

So in the interest of combating this disease as God has enabled me to, I have a short testimony about Heaven and Hell to share.

First, when I first became a Christian more than 30 years ago, I was praying one night when I experienced the presence of God, His Holy Spirit. I was 21 and had just decided for myself, as an adult, that I believed in God and that Jesus was who He said He was. And I started to pray just as I lay down to sleep one night, with my eyes closed, when suddenly I sensed something surprising going on. I remember thinking loudly, "Something is happening!" It was like having another sense I didn't know I had, and there was a living spiritual light, like a tiny seed, starting to grow somewhere within or beside me. It sort of felt like both. It was shimmering with life, I'd say, but any words to describe it aren't quite accurate. It seemed like the most light and most lively of any light and any life that there could be. Life and light themselves. This presence grew quickly so that it felt as big as I was, I noted, and then it became just a bit bigger than I, and I was inside of it for several seconds. Then it was gone, and I immediately fell asleep.

The next day, I found that I'd been healed of my addiction to cigarettes just like that, as if I'd never smoked, and I'd been a chain smoker who needed to go out in snow storms to buy more cigarettes if I was out. Just before bed the night before, I'd heard a "quit smoking" infomercial and thought that since I was Christian, I shouldn't smoke, but gave it no more thought. I was only 21 so I'd never tried quitting. But now I'd quit with no cravings whatsoever. I went into work and told people I'd quit, but not how. I didn't know anyone who took the Christian faith seriously. Everyone I knew thought devout Christians were religious freaks to be laughed at. Not knowing the whole story, my coworkers told me I'd never be able to quit cold turkey. They knew I smoked while still eating on my breaks. I stayed quit, though, for over four years until, still immature in faith, I went back to smoking under some stress. Then I tried multiple times over the next four or five years to quit under my own will power and couldn't. Only financial difficulties made me stop, and having learned my lesson, I decided never to pick up another cigarette and haven't. I'm grateful that the Lord got me to stop again, though not so easily. But my second experience of smoking and quitting did demonstrate to me that the Lord had openly performed a miracle for me the first time. 

Despite confused living in sin after my experience with God's presence, I came to believe that that was when I was born again and became a part of the Kingdom of Heaven. Afterwards, whenever I'd reach the crossroads of a crisis, God would show me I'd have to turn, and I'd follow Him the best I could. He, I saw, was and is everything, and there was nothing worth trading Him for. 

Now about Hell.

Many years later, I was going through another difficult period. My faith had grown a lot, but partly through superstition. For example, I wouldn't walk down a certain street because of a number on a license plate of a nearby car. I often made decisions that way. God had used my fear of such things to get me to come closer to Him at one point, as it was bound up ignorantly with the fear of Him, so I couldn't see not paying attention to them and being guided by them, but with my growing knowledge of Him, I felt it was wrong. I didn't know what to do.

So eventually He solved the problem for me. He gave me months of a supernatural Hell experience. Not a "hellish"  experience, which I'd had a number of times, but experience with the actual Hell itself. As I said, I was experiencing a rough period personally, and the devil was after me especially hard at this time. If he can't get you to actually sin, he'll try to convince you that you have, and that you've so hopelessly fallen short of God's will for you that He is rejecting you. And while God promises to correct us over time, the devil will make you feel like your need for correction means you're not truly a Christian and don't have a saving relationship with the Lord. And the devil had a very powerful weapon in the hold that superstition still had on me.

So during this troubling period, there was suddenly a tremendous rash of runaway cars in my area, drivers driving their vehicles into buildings, usually after confusing the brake and gas pedal. It was widely covered in the local news, with more cases practically every day, and the reporters were looking increasingly fearful about it themselves. I knew it wasn't "all about me," but I thought it was partly about me, probably. Me and a large number of other people all being affected differently.

Then, too, during this time, almost every time I had a hopeful thought, with only a couple exceptions, one of three things would happen within seconds: a nearby crow would caw, or there would suddenly be an emergency siren, or I'd hear a jet overhead and have the thought, "man-made," which meant the hope I had was just from the tainted works of man, not the perfect works of God. God made birds to fly.

As this troubling time went on, there was on Christmas Day afternoon about 10,000 crows that flew over my home for about 10 minutes, packing the entire sky as they swirled around in flocks. These massive swarms are actually a phenomenon, though I wasn't aware of that then.

And other things happened, too. For awhile I stopped going to church. A voice had said, if I have faith, I should go into church the next day and go up and give a short testimony about God being good always and helping me in my troubles. But with the supernatural torments I was experiencing, I doubted His acceptance of me and was distressed. The next day, it being around Christmas, the guest pastor we had preaching spoke on belief and the birth of John the Baptist. He pointed out to us how the angel Gabriel had made John's father, Zechariah, temporarily unable to speak because he had questioned his pronouncement. 

"Note the lesson that we should learn from this," the pastor preached. "Unbelief has nothing to say." 

I was distressed, thinking that if I'd gotten up and spoken before this sermon, I'd probably feel supernaturally restored for having had something to say. 

The next week, as I walked to church, I stopped halfway and pulled out my phone to check the time. When I did, I was horrified to see that it had started to pocket dial and the display actually said nothing but, "666." I felt so rejected of God right then that I turned around and went home, and while I kept up with my faith at home, I didn't go back to church for months. 

During this time, I saw that people's sins pursued them through the universe in the spiritual world. And I felt the hopelessness of Hell, that weeping and gnashing of teeth was all one could do, but they held no hope. For a moment I'd forget that I felt permanently cut off from God, and I'd feel a hope that there was still a way out. Then I'd feel sick as I remembered there wasn't any hope, ever. And I felt, too, how people's damning words and actions were played over and over in Hell in their remembrance, mockingly tormenting them. 

And it got to the point where I felt so troubled that I could only read God's Word one verse at a time, and one day as I looked at the Bible sitting on my nightstand, a voice said, "If you don't stop reading the Bible, something terrible will happen." But I said, "No, I love the Lord and His Word! I can't stop reading the Bible!" 

That was some light in the darkness. I still loved the Lord and mourned over the distance between us. 

At the same time, on a few evenings, as I went to bed, I turned out the lights as usual, making the room pitch-black. But on these occasions when I closed my eyes, it was just as if my eyes were closed in a bright room, or I was facing a very bright light with my eyes closed. Since I knew each time that the room was completely dark, it actually concerned me that I might have something wrong with me neurologically, but it only happened a few times and then stopped entirely, and later I fully recognized that it had been miraculous. The Lord had been encouraging me through the darkness that I'd been in. 

And not long after, the Hell I'd been experiencing all went away. I still lived in the same home, but the supernatural torments stopped. I thought hopeful thoughts and noted that nothing unusual and disturbing was happening anymore. 

I learned more, too, about the need for us to see that we were saved by faith through grace and not our works. I'd struggled with that also before this troubling time, feeling I couldn't be good enough for the Lord. I saw that while giving a testimony before the church was a good and right thing to do, if it wasn't the Lord's will for me at the time and I thought I should be able to give it in my own strength, then I'd lack confidence, fail somehow, and so be open to the attacks of Satan against my faith. 

As hard as this Hell experience was, I can look back and see that the Lord worked through it in my life in many ways. He brought me out of it (after bringing me through it, though it had been hard to feel His presence at the time) and I think that was because, by His grace, I refused to let go of Him.

So, that is my testimony on Heaven and Hell. Make use of it as you can in this time of little fear of the Lord. 

 

Servants of the Lord, or Babylon

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”

The Lord brought His servants together, dividing them into three companies. He told them to go into the wicked city Babylon and warn people about their sin and that they needed to repent and come out. He then sent each of the three companies to a different part of the city, commanding them to return to Him at nightfall.

When it was starting to grow dark, the first company returned to the Lord. It was a multitude much larger in number than the company that went in, and His servants were joyous. They reported that they'd met many people who seemed to be waiting for them. They had been desperate to leave Babylon, but didn't know the way. They were miserable due to the evil of the city and were persecuted by many of its citizens. Once they knew how to leave Babylon, many decided to stay and help pass along the good news to as many as they could. 

The Lord's servants also reported that their company would have been even larger, but they lost some to martyrdom at the hands of the city dwellers. But those who were killed died full of faith and sure that they would live forever in Heaven with the Lord.

Then the second company returned. It wasn't as large as the first and they reported more difficulty in getting the people of Babylon to listen to them. Their words were mostly met with derision and scorn, if not outright hostility and violence. And their company, too, had suffered persecution and martyrdom.

By this time, it was night, and the third company was still nowhere to be seen. The Lord inquired of the returned when they had last seen them. Not since they first entered the city and went their separate ways, they replied. One spoke up and told Him that they'd gone to the area of Babylon that had a reputation for being the most godless and unrepentant of the entire evil city.

Night passed without the third company returning. At first light, the Lord told the rest of His servants that they were going back into Babylon, and this time He was going with them as it was time to judge the city. 

First, they went to find the company that hadn't returned. They found them in the most evil part of the city, just where the Lord had sent them. They were living in pleasure, comfort and ungodliness when the Lord found them and demanded to know why they hadn't left the city and returned to Him as He'd commanded them.

Quickly, they tried to explain to the Lord their reasoning and what they were doing. They had seen that the people they were sent to warn were the worst sinners of all -- proud, unloving, lustful, greedy, worldly. They couldn't see any hope of these people ever repenting of their sin and fleeing Babylon no matter what anyone said or did. They were ungrateful to God, despite many of them possessing a great many earthly blessings. And they fiercely defended their lives and persecuted those who followed the Lord. 

So the third company decided to live among them and try to do what they could to point them to the Lord. And in a way, there didn't seem to be all that much wrong with these people. Many of them were blessed, and they enjoyed these blessings. They just didn't credit God for them as they should. That was the problem. The third company actually thought that everyone could learn from how these Babylonians enjoyed the blessings given to them, unlike many dour and joyless Christians who seemed to love misery and suffering. And as along as the third company wasn't overbearing about talking about the Lord, these Babylonians would pretty much leave them alone to their beliefs.

So the third company decided that somehow, some way, they must have misunderstood the Lord's command to come out of Babylon at nightfall. Both day and night are gifts from God, they reasoned, and the Babylonians loved and celebrated the darkness. It was naturally appealing, too, to the servants of the third company. They were just enjoying all that God had given to human beings, both day and night. They happily joined the celebrations of the Babylonians, and the Babylonians were happy that they joined them rather than preaching at them or trying to talk to them about the Lord.

But to the surprise of the third company, the Lord rejected all their reasons for not leaving the city at nightfall. Did they think they knew better than He?

Rather than humbling themselves and admitting their disobedience, the servants of the third company grew angry at the Lord's rebuke. Didn't He send them to the worst sinners of Babylonians, the ones that He knew would never repent? He had given them an impossible mission, and yet He was finding fault with them!

That's so, the Lord answered them. He explained then that He had given them an impossible mission since He knew they were lazy servants whose hearts weren't truly with Him. They weren't His servants, after all. Why would He give them true work to do if they would never do it? He had sent them in to be with those they truly loved, the Babylonians whose king is Satan.

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