. 

Paul about 2000 years ago said:

 

“I want to do what is good, but I can't. I don't do the good things I want to do. I keep on doing the evil things I don't want to do. I do what I don't want to do.” [1]

 Ancient words, that still apply today don’t they? 

I wonder whether that president of British Petroleum(BP) got up one morning and decided that today he would deliberately cut back on safety equipment that could stop environmental accidents occurring.  

Did he want to make that decision? Didn’t he know the right thing to do? I am sure he knew it, but he didn’t do it did he?  

To bring this closer to home, have you ever had a day when you said to yourself “I am not going to loose my cool and get angry” only to find out that by the end of the day there is a seething anger firing away in your mind? I have! I didn’t want it to happen, it hurt me, but I did it anyhow!

 We are crazy in this way! We hurt ourselves and seem to choose to do so! Why?

 Ever promise to do something and then make the decision not to do it although you know it’s the right thing to do? Like get out of bed in time to do chores before going out? We fail often and we do so by choice! Why do we do this?

 Well the good news is that Paul, who was one of the most godly men this planet has ever known, felt the same way. He said;

 

“But I am not really the one who is doing it. It is sin living in me.”

 What does he mean? Do we have an excuse? Can we skip responsibility for our actions?

 Sin can be considered selfish, ignorant and nasty things we do. Paul says this lives within us! Weird way to put it isn’t it.

 Rather like getting the flu! It gets inside us and screws us up! Flu screws up our bodies and impacts our mind, mood and attitude. Sin impacts our spirit and that then impacts our mind, mood and our even body.

 We are more sensitive to picking up sin than we pick up a virus or bacteria that could make us ill. However with sin we do have a defence that is better than our immune system. We have the ability to choose! Our decisions should stop us from getting into sin. Unfortunately sin is rather “nice to do” in the short term, (like sleeping in when we have to be somewhere) so we override our decision to do the right thing and do the wrong thing. There seems to be gain but we sure pay for it afterwards.

 Notice that when we have flu, it’s not us making ourselves ill, it’s the flu virus. Paul explains that it’s not us making ourselves sin, it is the evil in this world that does it!

 This seems to give us a reasonable excuse. So obviously we are home free without responsibility? Wait a second, not so fast!

 We have to give into the evil for it to take effect. Evil is different from a virus. A virus as it infects us doesn’t give us choice to let it in or not! Evil has a gateway it has to go through to get in. God put a control in place for us. Evil must go through our minds and God gave us free will so he gives us the ability to choose right instead of evil.

 Unfortunately once evil is in, it undermines our ability to choose right and we get less and less capable of resisting it if we continue to choose the wrong thing.

 

So how do we win?

 How do we overcome evil and make the right choices?

 

We cannot!

 Yes! Without God’s intervention we are lost!

 God gives us the ability to overcome this problem. Jesus once we respect him and join with him in trying to do the right thing, sends Holy Spirit into our lives to join with our spirit and give us extra power to do the right thing. Now Holy Spirit lives in us instead of evil! Like a super immune system!

 More than that, Jesus takes over our sin debts and gives us a chance to carry on without the evil having a right over us. A bit like someone coming in and offering to do all the chores we should have done while we slept, allowing us to continue through the day as if we had done them ourselves. He pays the price for our selfish, ignorant and nasty actions, words and thoughts and sets us free.

 God gives us the ability to overcome our hurt, but only if we respect Jesus and understand his role as God.

 This gives us a way to start anew! Now with Holy Spirit with us, God’s guidelines to help us, and no evil debts, we can walk forward in strength. Is this it?

 

Is this all we need to do?

 Nope! There’s more. Instead of giving over to sin, we must give our mind over to Holy Spirit to control. When He is in control, he sees the sin before it hits us and prompts us to make the right decisions. If we simply do what Holy Spirit asks, we are able to do things the right way without hurting ourselves.

 So in Paul’s words “So in my mind I am a slave to God's law”

 

A happy slave!

 A person sold out to doing good in our world! A person who would find it real hard to cut costs and choose to hurt ourselves and others.

 

Let’s choose “righteousness” forever! Have a great day!

Shareholders are screwing up the western world aren’t they?

 

Layoffs: Short-Term Profits, Long-Term Problems

The stock market has cheered as companies boosted profits by cutting payrolls. But the big cuts may hobble the current recovery—and spark a political backlash[1]

This article by Ben Steverman goes on to say that “The millions of layoffs in the past year have been bad news for almost everyone—except, that is, for investors.”

 Layoffs are only part of this problem that pulls down our world.
As people everywhere gain more and more confidence that they can profit quickly for actions the attitudes change the very laws of our land and move it towards the inevitable point where the laws in many countries now allow shareholders to SUE the directors of public corporations if they do not do things to ensure short term profit.

 

What does this mean?

 Some things by definition take a long time to develop and research can take more than one or two years.

Think of people of the past who spent lifetimes working at something that has now benefited the world. Consider what would have happened if they had been told “Sorry, you cannot get funds unless you can show a significant profit over the next five years!”

 So, why can corporations not develop long term plans?

Is it perhaps because the shareholders don’t let them. In fact often the countries legal system backs the shareholders in enforcing short term gain.

Why can we not focus on green environment activities and programs? Because there isn’t time to see the payback to shareholder, and so the shareholders will switch to companies that pollute simply to keep their capital. Alternatively they sue the directors for making long term plans.

 Is this message all bad? NO!

 What it says is that we as the public can change corporations and laws if we apply integrity and truth to our decisions, if we are willing to sacrifice a bit in the short term for long term gain.

The right thing is to allow companies to improve and not demand every cent out of them so soon that they react by layoff of their staff, running antiquated equipment, cutting wages and ignoring programs that help the community and our planet! We need to acks if we worked for that company, would we back the executives decisions or not!

 We can make a difference by making good decisions!

 The Christian world is not isolated from the ongoing profiteering and short term thinking mindset!

 Many churches institute programs only if they can show “returns” within a few months.

Where is the missionary attitude where years are spent before a single person sees the light? No, now days church personnel and leaders must be able to show impact within six or less months to be considered “effective”.

Why?

 Did Jesus waste the first thirty odd years of his life because he didn’t start his public ministry as soon as he was born?

 Then consider those wanting to accept God into their lives. . . today they look at the promise of eternal life in heaven as a risky gamble, and that living a life with Christ is not going to show the immediate profits that greed, coercion, power struggles and evil plans can do. The goal is short term self satisfying gain!
 
They of course miss out that from the moment Jesus becomes part of their life they gain immediately, but since they haven’t taken this step they can be forgiven for not understanding this.

 So short term greed keeps people from investigating the riches of God.

 Let’s become long term thinkers!

Let’s look for truth that stretches through time and has certain long term success. Let’s put our money and decisions into the control of Holy Spirit to gain the true profits that don’t damage others as they are made, and that benefit us from day one.

 Have a great day!

Peace not hurt!

 

We have a choice, we can choose to have peace or to hurt terribly!

 

Each day we are faced with choices. What we choose the interplays within our lives in among a cacophony of influences that threaten to either overwhelm us or build us up!

The outcome of the choices are not obvious from the choosing side in time. The outcome after the choice is often only too obvious.

 

How can we flow through these days without loosing peace and having knowledge that the choices will ultimately work out correctly?

 

It depends on our basis from making the choices. If God is true , supreme and ultimately in control of everything (anyone is free to disagree), then we need to know our choices as influenced by him,  will be contributing to some universal outcome that we may not actually see.

Jesus pointed out that this was the case and said that he would provide us with a tool enabling us to know we are flowing with the universally correct direction by our choices. The bible says that he sent his Holy Spirit to combine with our spirits and take us along the road to right living.

 

Jesus said he would enable us to know this by the peace we have in our lives as we make the choices. This is the way we know we are making choices that are right and not hurtful. If we have God’s peace in the choice if we are heading in the right direction. God’s Holy Spirit reminds us of what choices we need to make, and then he leaves us to make the correct choice or not. Our peace is the outcome showing the right way has been achieved.

 

Jesus said, “I leave my peace with you. I give my peace to you. I do not give it to you as the world does. Do not let your hearts be troubled. And do not be afraid.”

 

This peace is a something that is with us all the time (or can be).

It is a level above that of life chaos. All hell can be breaking out around us, and even involving us, but with Jesus and Holy Spirit guiding us, we are able to win. There is a higher plain of existence that we live in simultaneously to our physcial life that feeds us with the spiritual peace that is totally different from the simple absence of aggravation that most people consider peace. God's peace can be with us through aggravation, and even in what would otherwise be very hurtful circumstances.

 

Living in peace is also a choice however! We need to choose to live according to Holy Spirit guidance! This means we need to know and love God. (He knows and loves us already).

 

Today I pray we will all walk in peace.

Have a peace filled day!

---

Other discussions on hurting and dealing with hurt
Bragging? Big strong? Who cares if others get hurt?
Hurt and suffering has a purpose!
Pain for gain or to hurt us?
How patient am I when I am hurt?
I hurt as I see others hurt themselves! How about you?
Hurting? No one understands? You don’t know where it will end up?
Contentment and happiness.  .  .and hurting others?
Let's get away from hurt!

…
NEWS FLASH on  7:54 a.m. ET, Sat., Nov . 8, 2008 said the following

 

Pilot lands safely after going
blind in mid-air

British aviator reveals 'terrifying' ordeal after suffering stroke at 5,500 feet

 Can you image how you would feel? The pilot Jim O’Neil was flying a small Cessna aircraft and was at 5500feet.

 
"It was terrifying," O'Neill said. "Suddenly, I couldn't see the dials in front of me."

 A RAF pilot Paul Gerrard came alongside. 

For me, I was just glad to help a fellow aviator in distress," he said.

 "Landing an aircraft literally blind needs someone to be right there to say 'Left a bit, right a bit, stop, down,'" Gerrard said. "On the crucial final approach, even with radar assistance, you need to take over visually. That's when having a fellow pilot there was so important.^[1]

 Jim landed safely.  

In life we can get into difficult situations in which we have little chance of getting out.

We cannot see the way ahead. There is too much we have done to get us into the trouble or situation we find ourselves in and we cannot take back our decisions.

Jim probably wanted to take back his decision to take off that day when the blindness struck. We often want to take back our wrong attitudes, the nasty words we have said, the wrong promises we have made, and myriad of other selfish, nasty and ignorant things we have done. The things the bible lumps under the heading of “sin’.

 But lets be honest, sometimes we seem to have done nothing and we still get into a no-win situation. 

What do we do? How do we get help?

 
Since we cannot see ahead we need to call to Father God, the way Jim called on the air traffic controller to help him. Someone who can see the whole environment, even more than what we could see if we had sight.

God has that universal view and can see all paths of all lives. 

Then God will come alongside us and be with us. Unlike Jim who could only have a person fly alongside, we have Holy Spirit who if we ask him will take over the controls and guide us down to a perfect landing. (not like Jim’s bumpy 3 bounce landing). 

We are privileged to have our mistakes forgiven and their effect taken away. They never count against us again if we accept Jesus and what he did for us! 

If we don’t ask for help and keep silent about our mistakes we fly on through life, but all the time the fuel tank gets more empty. We cannot win without God, we can groans and feel the weakness in us, the inability to do, like sitting in the sun in a desert without water our strength drains and we get weaker all the time. 

But Jesus is right there to cover up our mistakes and clear them away if we just admit them to him. He forgives us of all the stuff we do wrong or don’t do right when we should! 

Let’s all pray for each other today, that we will be able to stand up against the flow of life and call out to God for peace and strength. Lets make God our place of safety, our hiding place from troubles.  

Let’s put on some songs of victory and power and love. Songs that tell god we appreciate his cover of strength. He doesn’t control us like a horse with bits, bridles and whips! No! instead he comes to us as we call for help! 

We can land the day safely even if we cannot see the events coming towards us. We can do this if our spirit aligns with god’s Spirit. 

Let’s have a successful day! Let’s have a day where we let God be the pilot, because we know we are too blind to do it real well. Let’s ensure success today. Have a good one!

 ...

BP is to try a new tactic after its latest failure to halt the leak, but says there is no guarantee of success.[1]

So has BP done every thing it can to solve the oil problem?
Has Obalma done everything to lead America to solving this crisis?

 

Half a million gallons a day of toxic pollution is being pumped into the oceans. Highly visible, this blemish on the ocean and mankind’s abilities to correctly deal with nature and energy has grown in size, and it is as if the Earth itself is complaining to mankind , doesn’t it?

 

Then to add to the complaint, an eruption of seismic proportions under a glacier in Iceland is polluting our air, and when this eruption expands across our countries, it shuts down our airspace stopping travel and showing us we are helpless when the Earth starts to speak with some very small Earth actions!

 

What do we do as the human race when we are faced with the reality of our mortality and inability to content with these minor natural and assisted “disasters”?

 

As the guy in the street we complain that our government and BP aren’t doing enough, and maybe this is true, but let’s bring this type of situation closer to home.

 

Think of those times in your life when things are going badly wrong and there is nothing that you do that seems to help. Most of us have experience the pain and frustration and despair that fill our lives at those times. We do everything within our ability to clear the problem, but as we start to make headway, it is as if another larger burden appears and threatens to push us back down.

 

When I was young I remember as a seven year old going to swim at the public pool where a some older teens were fooling around playing water polo. All was fine and then I did a stupid thing! I grabbed the ball and threw it to someone. With that some of the older guys and girls grabbed me and pushed me under the water. Every time I was about to come up for air the next person would push me under again. My lungs were screaming for air after a few times, and finally I couldn’t do anything any more and just gave up. I remember thinking that this was not going to please my mother, when a hand descended through the water and grabbed me by the hair pulling me to the surface. When I got there the person was lecturing the others about their stupidity, and pushed me to the side. I was saved just in time!

 

The helplessness of the situation was evident to me. In those circumstances, but for the help that I received externally, I would have drowned! I never actually saw the person  who helped me and can only remember the force of their hands doing the work and the sound of their voice.

 

There are other situations in life that are similar to this. In divorce situations, once the couples have triggered the events leading to separation, it is hard to turn the tide and move back to reconciliation! When we get illnesses the doctors cannot solve with their limited knowledge we are helpless!

 

What are we to do? What is BP to do? What are the governments impacted by the clouds of ash to do?

 

The answer is everything in our power and when that fails (and preferably before it does) we should turn to God.

 

In South Africa many years ago a drought was threatening the country. It got to a desperate situation and the South African government realized there was no way out. What did they do? They announced the country would be taking time off work on a workday to join in on a national day of prayer!

 

Yes you heard right! A modern nation’s government requested their people to go to God for relief! Did it work? Sure! Within the next few weeks the dams filled as rain provided the water to sustain life. People could flush their toilets again and farmers could plant crops. The country moved from ruin to survival!

 

Have you heard of BP asking the world to pray for them, or Obalma, or the governments of the countries negatively impacted by ash.

 

No!

 

We are so proud of ourselves we don’t face our limited abilities when it takes us down!

 

Our leaders do that, but aren’t we the same? When do we turn to God for help? Only when things are going real bad or as a matter of daily living? When we turn to God do we do this knowing who he is and acknowledging our limited abilities, or do we just try to manipulate the creator of the Universe with our words?

 

Today I want to ask everyone who reads this blog to pray for the containment of the BP oil mess.



To pray that people would turn to God and ask him to help. To pray that we ourselves would realise that despite our great advances, the earth and nature is not under our control but God’s.



Similarly with our lives!

 

Then we will be aligning with the power of the Universe in addressing life and our lives will start to flow in the correct paths again. God can make a difference! How about we agree together today to ask him to do so on behalf of mankind in this one simple problem of capping an oil well. Then, we can ask him to cap our lifes problems and be the strong hand that guides us to safety.

 

It’s great to have the love of our awesome God isn’t it?

...
Connecting in Worship and Power!!?

 Jesus says we should come to him with our loads that we pick up as we go on through life. He says he will pick them up and help us through. To do this however, we need to “come” to Jesus and so many people don’t have the faintest idea of how to do this. 

We think we have to go to a specific place, or practice specific rituals, or get to certain point of perfection before we can connect with God. All this is unnecessary, but all can be helpful for us to get in the right mode or attitude. Noen of it is necessary! 

God wants us to form a habit of connecting with him. In fact at one point in the sacred writings it says something about praying without stopping. I hate to damage some people’s view of talking to God, but this means we can talk to God while in the shower, while on the toilet seat, having sex, while in meetings, on the bus and myriads of other places.



The type of connecting with God is one where we are aware of our activities and at the same time aware of the presence of God and talk to him as we do things. 
However “worship” and “praise” do imply a deeper spiritual connection. Here we connect with the awesomeness of God and his presence and in some ways we start to experience ourselves through spiritual sensitivity. 

We connect our spirit to God’s spirit in a non verbal superior way that connects on a level above that which our words can express. We often feel at one with nature and in harmony with it during this experience, while living, we are in some way also disconnected from the immediate context of life. We align ourselves with God’s presence when we get into this “mode” or “attitude”. I use the words “mode” or “attitude” although they are inferior to the real experience that I am trying to explain with these words. 

I recommend reading psalm 63 and looking at the words that the ancient song writer David used to describe his connection with God. Some of these are, “long, thirst, seen your power and your glory, glory to you, lift up my hands, satisfied, sing praise, remember, think of you all night long, sing, hold on to you” 

We need to practice the habit of connecting to God in this way and then when we really get into those times when we need to overcome the stress and strains of life, and perhaps where we need some supernatural support, we will automatically connect with God’s Holy Spirit in this way. 

Then the power of God will flow through us, rejuvenate us, give us his joy, build us up and enable us to love and care for others, even to the point of loving and caring for our enemies. 

Do you know one reason why Christianity became the number one religion just after Jesus’ death despite the Romans trying to kill off the Christians? Christians connected with God so much that when the Roman soldiers sent to kill them and got injured, Christian women went to then, bound their wounds and nursed them back to life, at the risk of being killed as soon as the soldiers were well!


Radicale! 
 Worship of God was so widespread that Christians were seen as weird and strange but wonderfully loving and caring. I would like that kind of experience in my life.

The power of god to course through my daily activities, for my worship times to become so powerful that for the rest fo the day I react with supernatural love and care for those around me. I think its possible, what do you think? Shall we try it?