Month: January 2019

My reading today talks about the uncontrollable tongue. This tiny part of my body that seems to possess a mind of its own. This is, of course, not true. It is like an instrument in a masters hand. As soon as the melody is constructed there is no barrier between the thought and the production of the music. There is a straight, unhindered connection between the hands and the mind.

Such is as it is with the tongue and the heart. My contrary ways reveal themselves in contrary words. I profess a love of God yet my words can be like poison. Particularly a poison to the spirit of other people.

How to reign in this small muscle? Were it as easy as to place a bit, like a horse and lead it as I will (or as God wills). But no such instrument exists. The tongue has a hand on its own rudder.

This is the command: to remain vigilant in our hearts to the evil ways inside of us. To place a barrier between our hearts and words. Enough that we have evil thought but to spread them in the world is let loose darkness and let engulf the little light we do shine.

Discipline of thoughts can be attained through continual prayer and reading the word. Being “in Christ” is incompatible with sinful sayings. We can still force it but we feel deeply the annoyance of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that provides the door away from sin. The choice to use the door is ours. This God promises us when He said that there would be no temptation we could not handle, none without a door of escape.

If we purpose ourselves to remain in the light of the Holy Spirit and venture not into the shadows, we may claim to be a follower of Christ.

Mark K.

Are we not afraid of so many things? Being hurt, killed, or worse, having someone we love be killed. Fear is a constant. We are very small individuals in a vast, unmeasurable universe.

Our faith calls us to be not afraid. We are the children of the creator of the universe. Do we sometimes hate what our kids do? Yet in the next moment we would risk our lives to protect them without question.

Even at their worst, our kids still receive our protection. Imagine the power of an all might God in protecting his children.

But God’s ways are not our ways. There is a perspective on all things that is beyond our comprehension. The terrors and troubles of this world are but knee scratches to Him. Although he knows our pain, Jesus saw to that, he sees it in the conversation Nye this of all creation.

His plan is for us to be with him. We can trust Him in everything that happens we have been given the strength to deal with it.

Mark K.

The truth is, my struggle is to stop doing sinful things. But, this is not the only calling of God. We are to avoid sin but this leaves a vacuum. There is a void where the sin used to be and this is dangerous because sin wishes to fill that void.

Live alone can fill that void. Love is incompatible with sin and the two cannot I-exist. Despite my assumptions to the contrary, I cannot sin and love at the same time.

To lessen sin is noble but the path to a changed life, a fulfillment of God’s will, is to act, to love. Not only is this action the will of God, it also diverts our energies away from sin. It is a weapon against temptation. The “escape” from sin that God has always promised he would give us when faced with temptation is the opportunity to love instead of sin.

The great commandments, and they are the great ones, are to first love God with all your being, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Mindful that this live is an act, a duty, and is fulfilled in this world through charity of time, effort, prayer, and resources.

Mark K

It is, and always will be, incomprehensible to mankind, the truth of God. That perspective evades is. Our minds can not comprehend it because our minds are trapped in our bodies and therefore limited to the senses of our bodies.

Through my struggle I take comfort in the knowledge that this incomprehensible power is on my side. Truly, who can stand against me? Not for my will, many can stand against that, but for God’s will.

If I am, in my actions carrying out the will of God, a companion to his plan, a soldier in his army, what force could possibly resist? No barrier could exist that would not be swept away.

First though, I must be all these things on the mission field of my own self. But herein lays the confidence again. To engage the people niter always battle, to be aligned with God as to his plan for my soul, what possible barrier can stand against God’s will. Only one, my own will to reject Him.

Mark K

I guess I have always thought that I was very different. It is, admittedly, a source of pride for me. But am I really that different? Particularly in the ways that matter?

It seems that I may not be. I’m still to grounded to life and Earth. I still work too much, and I’m still a slave to the flesh. This makes me the same as many despite my desire to be different!

I think the key is to show the commitment to act differently, and then the power of God can provide the opportunities to grow and change. There is no room in there (inside me) for the Spirit if it crowded with my own ambitions!

So, today I make myself different. To begin the process of letting go and making room for the transformation.

Mark K.

Accomplishing goals and ambitions is never a solitary journey. Not only do we need other people, we need God. But, we need to nourish our relationships to get this help, including our relationship with God.

So, what hinders this connection to the Creator? Our sin! Often tied up into the ambition itself! Big things and small things can trip us up. That is the real lesson of Achilles’ Heel, that the small things, or the big things we minimize, can be our undoing.

I read today that sin crouches at the door waiting to pounce. To personify this we can use the Devil. Our enemy. He is the Great Psychologist but certainly not of the helping kind! He whispers assurances that things are fine with sin, that the sin is not a big deal.

Sin will be cast in contrast to the non-sin (notice I didn’t say “good”) that we do so that it can seem smaller than it is. The demon whispers into our ear because he knows how the human mind works. This is really the inheritance of sin, the egotistical ability to judge the significance of our activities. To exercise our knowledge of good and evil and focus only on our good and not on our evil.

The crouching killer awaits at the door. “just one more time!” Our addiction can scream. There is never just one more time. As the old AA saying goes “One is too much and never enough.”

So I am aware of my heel. Otherwise I may be invulnerable but for the heel (or maybe more than one heel, having not been fully dipped into the River Styx!)

These things we face so that God can be our partner, the cause, of our success in fulfilling his plan.

Mark K.