How to have J-O-Y

Some people just seem to be happy and peaceful all the time!  It used to make me wonder what was wrong with them.  I thought that if you where going through hard times, and you appeared joyful -even somewhat happy - you where just being hypocritical.
   Not so, says the Word...

Hebrews 12:3  “For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.”

 This verse says it all to me.  Consider Him [Jesus]..... lest I be weary [worn and dull of mind] and faint [grow weak in my Faith].
    In other words,  I need to keep my mind on Jesus ALL THROUGH THE DAY so that my Faith will be strong to accomplish what needs to be done.  What needs to be done?  I need to live for Christ and through obedience to Him [action Faith] do the work the Father has chosen me to do.  I will know when the time comes what that is in it's totality.  In the meantime, obedience is the job.
  The key I'm seeing with this verse is this:  Keep your mind on Him.

Chapter 12 of Hebrews starts with the word (KJV)  Wherefore.... that means that the verses leading up to it have led us to a point being made  ..and so we need to know what led us up to this point:
   Leading up is Heb 11 and a message about people of Faith and their accomplishments.. vs 33-40 in particular, is talking about the early Christian's who where martyred for their Faith, mostly in the Roman Coliseum.  They were fed to lions, spitted on stakes and set afire, sawn in two, boiled alive in oil, and a hundred other obscenities.   These people, when they where being tortured in the Coliseum sang and Praised God in their martyrdom to the effect that Nero (Emperor of Rome) would plug his ears and cry out "Why are these Christians so eager to die?"  
 The early Christians were eager to follow Jesus.  They KNEW that with Jesus was the place to be!  I'm not talking suicidal...I'm talking of a total lack of fear of death.  Jesus had just given us power over the fear of death, remember?  These people lived such fear free lives that they went to the Coliseum singing and praising God!  Even some of the soldiers quit their posts and ran to take the place of those being martyred because these people had 'something' that others had never seen before.  Jesus! 
  Listen to this truth and reflect on it ---within 30 yrs of this, the most powerful nation that had ever existed in the known world, fell.  It disintegrated  - imploded- because of the Christian Faith.
     Oh how we have fallen away!  Today, we are scared to even mention His name in places!

This then all leads into Hebrews 12 and now we need to pay attention, for the point leads us to what we need to do:
    

1 Wherefore seeing [by the preceding verses] we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, 2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, [of bearing any sin] and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

  Paul is telling me to remember those that have gone before and how their walk with Jesus was.  To lay aside everything I am going through at present and to focus on Jesus.  By doing so, even during these afflictions [persecutions] my Faith will enable me to persevere with patience the trials before me.

 How could Jesus, knowing and aware that the torture, brutality, and cruelty of the cross was directly before Him, possibly walk toward it in Joy?  did you ever wonder about that?
Joy?  ???

  Jesus had joy because He kept His mind on the Father.  He had Joy because He knew He was doing what the Father wanted Him to do .  The assignment did not matter - obedience was the issue.  The fact that it was going to kill Him and cause him untold pain and undeserved horror and shame-did not steal His Joy!  He did not endure the trek to the cross with a sulky self-pitying attitude.  His mind was fixed on the prize He was to attain over his victory and he was flooded with joy because of it.  Even in the midst of His worst earthly moments, He had joy.

   That sure takes away any excuse I have for my next pity party!
  This teaches me that JOY is under our control. It is an emotion and so subject to our control.  Your emotions follow upon your actions.  Actions follow your thoughts.  You can stir yourself up to feel any emotion you desire to have. What are you focusing your mind on?  What emotions are your thoughts creating for you? 

How then can we possibly allow ourselves to be depressed, discouraged, sad, etc...?  We can stir ourselves up through remembering what Jesus did and by doing the same.  He stayed focused on the joy of serving His Father.
  This is an incredible teaching. 

    There are some hard things coming in the near future.  I for one, and keeping my mind on Jesus. Otherwise, I will be too weak to endure my own race.

Keep the Important thing the Important thing

Photo by Rick Mortimer

Keeping the important thing the important thing.

There is a graveyard behind my house.  It is a huge graveyard of about one hundred acres and has existed since this city was incorporated about one hundred and fifty years ago.

 Yesterday when I was walking by it I saw graves where the people had died almost one hundred years ago.  Some of those people where old at the time they died and some where not. 

   I tried to imaging what their lives must have been like.  These must have been pioneering people who came to this city when it was young or maybe even still pretty much a wilderness even.  And then I got thinking about what their world was like for them and of all the technology and changes that have come and gone since their deaths.

   You know, they were normal people.  They had issues and pet peeves, and things that gave them pleasure.  They had families and bills to pay and jobs to go to and food to gather.  They had things they cherished and things they hated about their lives.  The had issues.  They had relationships.  They had sadness and happiness come and go in their lives just like I do.  They loved living as much as I do.  They lived and saw other die.  They had their own social circles and valued their friends just like I do.

  But none of those things matter now.  It’s all gone for them.  Their earthly trip is over.  Not one thing matters to those people now except where they are spending their eternity. 

  Think about it.  

The only thing that really matters in our lives is our relationship to God. 

When someone walks past your headstone one-hundred years from now, what are they going to think about the things that you value and place importance on  today?  What are they?  Are you putting a priority in your life on your job?  Politics?  How much money your pension is going to bring?  If your child goes to this school or that school? What your boss thinks about the last report you filed?  Where you are going to vacation this coming summer?   Which hockey team is going to win the Stanley Cup?

    Are these things going to matter down the road to you?  To others?

The only thing that matters in our lives is our relationship to God.  When that is in place, the rest will be added to you.

  What did you do to Praise God today?  Did you ask Him to spend the day with you?  Did you thank Him for bringing you the prosperity that you have and for giving you the good health you enjoy?  Did you thank Him for loving you today and paying the horrid price of the death of His precious Son so that you could know Him today?  Did you thank Him for delivering you from the fear of death and for inviting you over to His house for the next bazillion years of eternity?

What value do you put on God?   Because that is the only thing about you that is going to remain one hundred years from now.  The only thing.

  What value you give God in your life today, is the only thing that is going to remain in the future, because this is what is going to determine where you spend it.

  Keep the important thing the important thing.  That’s what really matters.

Photo by Rick Mortimer

Learning about Grace.

When I was about 14 or 15 years old, one day on my way home from school, my pals and I went into a local shopping market and I stole some cigarettes.

  I got caught.

Being rebellious and pretty cocky, when the store manager informed me that he could either phone the police, the principal of the school or my Dad, I told him to phone my Dad.

  Dad showed up and made peace with the store manager.  He and I went home.  Once there he and I went directly to his room where I got a good strapping on my hind end with his belt.

  I made sure I did not let any tears show, and as casually as I could, sauntered out the room to go to the kitchen for a drink of water.

    In the front room that I had to pass through, sat my mother in a chair sobbing her heart out.  “How could you do this thing?   Did we not raise you to be better than that?”

  My heart broke.  Tears streamed down my face as I stood condemned before her by her tears of agony.

   I never stole anything again.

   My father did no wrong giving me a strapping with the belt.  Scripture (Proverbs 13:24) tells us that ‘He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”  And my Dad loved me, there is no doubt of that!

    Punishment of this kind is force.  It is effective and necessary.  But it’s goal is to produce fear.  If we are acting ‘right’ because of the fear that we may be caught and having then to face some kind of painful punishment being handed down to us, then our motives are totally wrong.

   My mother on the other hand, responded out of her Love for me.  Her disappointment was very real; not for herself but in me, and it was this that brought such conviction upon me and made me realize the true error of my act.

This is the difference we see between New Testament Grace and Old Testament Law.

The Law was never brought to show us how to live Holy and righteous.  The Law was brought to show us that we could never live Holy according to what God’s standard of Holiness is.  We may be able to live a life in a more Holy manner than other men, but we can never measure up to the standard that God has set for us.  The Law was brought to man, for this purpose only – to show us how far we are from God’s standards, and to fear the judgement that comes through sin.   This was the curse of the Law through the Old Testament.

  Jesus redeemed us from the Law.  The word ‘redeemed’ means to ‘recover’ or ‘gotten back’;  much the same as you ‘redeem’ an item from a pawn shop.  So Jesus literally ‘bought us back’ from the curse of the Law.  He did this by becoming a curse for us through his submission to being crucified.

  Gal 3:13 “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”

   After Jesus was crucified, the NEW TESTAMENT came into effect.  For a testament is of no effect until the testator has died.  This is what we celebrate on what is known as Good Friday and Easter.

 The New Testament brought in a whole new set of ‘rules’ for God’s people.  We were set free of the Law and now come under God’s Grace which he has extended to us who accept his Son –the price God paid- for our redeeming (redemption.)  The curse of the Law has been lifted off of us, and through Grace and the Faith in it we show back to God, we are made to be partakers of the Blessing of Abraham. 

Romans 4: 22 And therefore it was imputed to him [Abraham] for righteousness. 23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; 24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;

  Gal 3: 29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

  So we are now living with the Blessing of Abraham upon us through New Testament Grace, and not under the curse of the Old Testament Law.

    This is the GOOD NEWS given to us by the saints who wrote the New Testament.

     Unfortunately, the church seems to have been –and still is – preaching the Old Testament message of the Law and condemnation to those who do not live up to it.  Such teaching makes the work of Christ to no avail.

Galatians 5: 4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

We can never hope to achieve righteousness through our works.  We are of a fallen nature and impure.  That is what the law came to show – and the message that I learned in that house so many years ago by parents who loved me.

  We can only hope to be righteous [living right] though Grace and the unconditional Love of God.  Faith is but our gift back to Him for Faith works by the law of Love, and when we see the love that our Heavenly Father extends to us, the only response is to accept it in Faith and show it back to him through our actions.  God is Love.   Love always makes you want to respond in kind.

   And Love is always the right motive.

Rick Mortimer

AS A MAN THINKETH IN HIS HEART SO IS HE.

AS a Man Thinketh in His Heart, so is He.

From Proverbs: 23:7

We are composed of a body soul and Spirit.

Body = anything physical about you.
Soul = emotion, ego, id, will, logic mind, subconscious mind....all that is not body.
Spirit – anything of you that is not of body and/or soul

The subconscious mind is the way or path that our spirit speaks to God through. This is where God 'lives' in us.
The aphorism "AS a man thinketh in his heart" is referring to:
heart= your ego id..your subconscious identity of yourself. the core of you. the part that drives you but from the background where you are not even aware of it. id ego whatever you personally call it.

The subconscious mind 'pushes' you according to how it is programmed. It will be programmed by whatever prevalent thoughts it receives. You can control those or not. your sub mind will still operate on what it is fed. REGARDLESS of what your logical mind says.
"I do the things I do not want to do....." that is because your sub mind is programming your actions and you may have let 'weeds' program it.
When you 'dwell' or 'abide' in God's Word... you are programming His Truth into the control room of your heart...your subconscious mind. You are now taking control of what you are putting into your sub mind and ordering it to follow God's Word..not the junk from the world it has been receiving. Seeds fall as the wind blows them and they grow where they can take root. Seeds of thought..even wrong thought..will grow in your sub mind just as quickly and easily as seeds of God's truth.
This is why I say Guard your MIND. Turn off the TV. Cancel the newspaper. Feed your mind God's thoughts. Let Him live in that mind and so control it... you could then say..."As a Man thinketh [through God] so is he."

A lot of it is in a way semantics. but the old world definition of Heart...is really your subconscious mind...your radio channel to God. It is from your sub mind that you hear God speak. This is your control room. I think of it like Windows running in the background of your computer. The computer represents your life and windows is your subconscious. No matter what you logically tell your computer to do, it will ALWAYS do whatever windows is programmed to make it do.
So is your life. AS a man thinketh in his heart (how your subconscious has been programmed), so is he [because your sub con mind is YOU. and that is what dictates how you act, what you say..what results you get..everything about you comes from here.)

The world [satan's system] wants to program your sub mind for you. That rat knows as well as we do how we operate. In fact, maybe even more than we do, because people will not study how they 'work'.
To change who we serve, we must know this. We have to 'program' ourselves with God instead of letting satans 'weeds' just grow willy nilly.
Faith comes by Hearing..and hearing from the Word of God. Words are seeds. WE have to plant the seeds to get the crop.
If you do not consciously PLANT a crop..any old crop will grow.... and guess who is planting those seeds? the world..satan's system.
You do not just WISH good things to happen here. You have to make them happen. making things happen takes effort..........and so people (generality I know) do not program their minds for righteousness. and so, weeds grow.
This is why I will not listen to words that attack my self-esteem This is one of the most hateful things anyone person can do to another...attack their self-esteem the ego the id the core of who they are. Instruction and communication are one thing....attacks are another.
Jesus said "Be careful how you listen."
I believe He was also saying "Be careful how you hear and allow into your guarded mind [sub conscious] because untruth will program you just as much as real truth will.

   Because our minds work this way, and because of the power of whatever seeds you are planting in your subconscious mind, you can begin to see the power that your associations have on you.  Are you letting the television set and it's negative messages into your mind?  Are the books you read positive and edifying to you?  Are your friends loving and supporting of you, or do they try and knock you and are sarcastic and critical of you?
  Remember, your subconscious will feed on whatever it is given.  It does not evaluate what is true and what was said in 'fun'.  It just acts on whatever seeds are allowed to be sown there.
   Guard your mind if you want to control your future.

OVERCOMERS

                     OVERCOMERS                              

We are made to be overcomers.   “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.”

  It is not our in our spiritual nature then to fail.

 [2 PETER 1:10   Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:]

  If that is true –and it is- that we are overcomers, then failure must need our permission – our agreement - with it in order to manifest failure.

  Our permission to fail, can be given by default.  If we do not exercise our Faith in our success, we then are exercising our permission to fail.

  Think about it; there are only two choices in any undertaking.  Success or failure.  There is no ‘degree’ of success.  If we do not totally succeed at any thing, then we have not succeeded.  The opposite of success is failure.

    Now we do not have to accept a failure and so quit trying to succeed. Failure then can be defined as the result of not continuing to attempt to succeed.  Quitting.  Stopping the action to bring about success.

  Conversely, succeeding can be defined as attempting to bring about success.  Each time you do not reach full success, you learn a bit more about what is required to reach it, therefore the attempt itself is a part of the final success.

   So if you fail at something, it is because you quit learning how to succeed at that particular enterprise or endeavor. In other words... you quit.

If we truly want to succeed at a thing, then we must believe we can and will succeed.  We may not succeed the first time, or the hundredth time, but if we still attempt to accomplish a thing, and use our faith in our ability to succeed eventually…we will.

  

  It has been said that failure is not failure until we accept it as such.  ‘I give up!’ we say.  Or, “I can’t do it!’   We are right both times.  We will give up and we can’t do it.  Because we are not applying our faith to succeed.  And if we are not applying our faith to succeed, then we are giving failure permission to be accomplished.

  If we are made to succeed, and we don’t, then it is because we have quit doing what we need to do in order for success to occur.  Success may require being persistent, it may require continuing to gain more knowledge –either personal or through the experience of others, or it may come through prayer, but it will come if we are persistent and apply knowledge.  

 Or we give up. Quit.

 Give permission to failure, and failure will take over.  Put your Faith to work, and you will overcome.

Rick Mortimer

April 4 2010