Tag: believe God

Believing God…

On By Papa TonyIn Thought1 Comment

believeAs a believer it has been my personal experience over the years that anything that places the focus back on me instead of on God is usually suspect. That’s not to say that I have no responsibility for anything, but rather so-called requirements on my part tend to take me away from and not closer to God. One such example of this involves believing God to get our needs met. I’m sure it started innocently enough, but over time it seemed to morph into something bigger than it actually was. Every time we failed in some capacity or maybe did not get a need met, the reason was always centered on our own personal lack of believing. And while God does require belief on our part to receive from Him, too much focus on myself and whether or not I’m “believing God” tends towards the negative. All of the great power and ability of God is suddenly held at bay all dependent upon something I am doing or not doing. The first red flag to notice is when the focus turns away from God and His willingness and ability and instead focuses on something people are doing or not doing. You can see this happening over and over again in religion. Religion repudiates God’s grace and unconditional love for us and makes it all about me and you. God’s blessings somehow happen or don’t happen dependent upon how well we obey or “do the Word” or line ourselves up with His perfection. If that were actually true all of us would fail. God is already well aware of our human condition and the sin nature all people are born with dating back to Adam and Eve. In this He and He alone initiated a way for us to escape the bondage of sin and it was not based upon anything that you or I ever did. Similarly, believing God is not a measure from which we evaluate ourselves. Believing God is more about knowing Him, trusting Him and looking for His help in life’s situations. Believing God is likely much easier than we have heretofore imagined.

If you think about it logically, all of the good things that happen in this life have been initiated by God. He is the starting point and the end point. If I am struggling with something He knows where I’m at and where I need to get in order to prevail. He knows me and you better than we know ourselves. This notion that we have to somehow grit our teeth and believe God in order to get something cannot be true. Then “believing God” turns into this magic system, this thinking nirvana, this systematic approach we are putting ourselves through in order to receive from Him. Unbeknownst to me I have now instituted a work I must do to earn or deserve something God has already promised to me. God’s promises are absolutely not contingent upon something I must do. Instead the promises have already been given to me to help me, to save me, to rescue me. It’s a very subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless. The acid test will always be who or what is my subject of focus. If the focus is on me and what I’m doing or not doing chances are I am no longer believing God. If my focus is on God and what He said He would do, chances are I’m believing Him. So the question is, what or who is your subject of focus? The enemy of righteousness is quite adept at getting the focus back on you and me. Have you noticed? You have a need that you are endeavoring to believe God to supply and what goes through your mind? You start thinking about where you don’t measure up, how many, many mistakes you have made in the past, how you must not be believing God or this need would have already been solved. The focus is then where? Squarely back on your own shoulders from whence there is no power (absent God) or ability to effect change. This is how and where we get tricked out of believing God and start trying to make things happen with our own mental powers. It’s a slippery deception but it always produces the same result – nothing!

So, how do we believe God to get our needs met? Simply stated we keep our focus on Him and what He promised. When our focus turns inward as it often does, we change our focus back to Him. We don’t have to make something happen! God is the One that makes something happen! If everything that happened was based on what I think then that would sort of make me God wouldn’t it? (Shudder) But that is exactly how we tend to view things. Again as if believing God was some type of mental nirvana state I must enter and maintain in order to get results. OMG I just had some doubts! Oh no, I was thinking negatively! Now nothing will happen until I sustain a certain mindset, over time and in the right way. Can you see how this kind of thinking just drives me back to me? It’s not it folks. Believing God is looking at Him. Believing God is remembering what His Word says. Believing God is thinking what God says is true and endeavoring to not think what isn’t true. At the end of the day it is God who backs up His Word. He made the promises, not me. I think God is big enough to get past my own inadequacies and weaknesses. God meets us where we are. We don’t have to get somewhere to get His help. We don’t have to perform to earn His help. We don’t have to play mental games to get His help. If your kid wasn’t doing so well, don’t you wish he would just tell you that? No matter how frightful, how ugly, how impossible, wouldn’t you want him or her to just tell you about it so you could help? Well, I’m pretty sure God can exceed that. If you are struggling why not say so? If you are having trouble getting your needs met, why not just talk it over with Him? I think believing God is just laying your whole self out to Him and asking Him to help you. He knows anyway right? He has already seen your whole life through and He still loves you. He still called you. Hey maybe it never was all about you!

I think it is time to reframe our thoughts about God. He is so incredibly vast and so much higher than us in His thoughts and ability. We need to simply approach Him how a child approaches their parents. No pretense, no performance, no formulas and systems, none. Just say what’s wrong and what you need. Humble yourself in that you might not already know. What you think is your issue may not be the issue at all. There is no need to play mind games with God. You are the child and He is your Father. Father knows best. Believing God is really about getting honest with Him and honest with yourself. Life is way too big with way, way too many variables for you (and me) to figure it out with our own thinking alone. Believing God is about letting God be God and solving for us what we are unable to solve on our own. Look for the red flags of self-focus and become determined to focus on Him. Believing God is not a system or a law. Believing God is a willingness to trust in something higher and bigger than yourself. Believe God!

Just some good thoughts…

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Relax Already…

On By Papa TonyIn Thought2 Comments

shotsIf you have been around long enough in our world today, you already know how stressed out people have become. We live amidst a performance based culture that promotes productivity at all costs and measures success by how well we have been performing. Everything is a contest to be won. And this frenetic mindset has led to a nation of worn out humans exhausting themselves day by day to get it all done. We have been convinced we have to have the best house, the best car, the best career, the best body, the best family, the best behavior, the best spouse et. al. In this we no longer have time to enjoy our lives or appreciate all the little things that make life sweet. We measure our value not on who we are but rather on what we do or don’t do. We have been deceived into thinking that we control every aspect of our lives and dare not let anything go or leave it to someone else. “I better do it if it’s going to get done!” And I suppose if the system actually worked, we could work ourselves into the best possible life ever. But, it doesn’t work. It serves only to occupy all of our time and energy leaving very little left. We live within a world that is spiritual in nature with much of what actually goes on being hidden behind the scenes. We unknowingly fight against forces we cannot perceive. Our human nature demands we find solutions to spiritual problems with earthly reasoning which leaves us frustrated, discouraged and defeated. Why are working so hard and receiving such little results? What are we doing wrong? What is wrong with us?  We stress and strain and strive all to no avail. We need to relax already…

God never designed life to function this way. We have been hoodwinked, deceived, sold a bill of goods, tricked and subsequently trapped. The design of man was never that he would endure life alone and somehow through enlightenment and damn hard work become his own source of sufficiency. It was never part of the plan that man would be solely responsible for his own health, his own prosperity, his own blessings and protection. If life really was a surface affair, as it often seems, it might be viable, but man is inherently spiritual functioning in a world of spirit he cannot discern. The things which are were not made of the things which do appear. The world is lost and all of its systems to promote life actually reduce life. The formula will not work. The plans are defective. The system is rigged. Man spends a lifetime pursuing in ways that do not yield fruit. So he plants more, fertilizes better and waters yet gets nothing back. It is not his effort that is at fault but rather his understanding of cause and effect. He ends up playing a game at the carnival already arranged for him to lose though winning seems so simple. Man apart from God will always be defeated. God is man’s benefactor and as such is the actual supplier of his needs; indeed his sufficiency. Man was created to rely on God and in that total trust and reliance, rest. How futile to strive so hard for health only to become sick anyway. How discouraging to strain so much to prosper only to experience lack. How disheartening to stress over your loved ones protection only to see them suffer loss. Can’t you see it? We have gotten it all wrong. We are crossing the wrong t’s and dotting the wrong i’s. We cannot find peace because we haven’t gone to the source of peace. We cannot acquire love because we haven’t inquired at Love’s hand. We have trouble prospering and being in health because we seek both only according to our own resources and not His, which He gives freely for all to enjoy. We must learn how to relax…

In the proper arrangement where we allow God to be God and we content ourselves with being human, we rely upon God to meet all of our need. We go straight to the source behind all that ever was, is and will be. We set our affections on things above and not on things of the earth. If we are honest, all of that seeking for self, working on self, and striving for self never worked anyway. The harder we work, the less we obtain. People in the world are exhausted through and through. They are tired of fighting in a fight they always seem to lose. Instead we have to learn to let go of almighty self and seek something bigger and more powerful than we have ever known. We have to stop confusing the source of our sufficiency and let God do what He promised to do. Do you know how liberating it is to finally surrender something to God’s love and care and at last relax? Imagine how little stress you would embody if you decided to trust God and let Him be God. Imagine how much better your days would become when you finally set down all of those heavy burdens, casting them all to Him. Imagine how much easier your thoughts would be if you weren’t saddled with solving every problem that came your way with your own mind and reasoning. What you have been so ardently endeavoring to do is in actuality impossible to do. You cannot see the hinderances that seem to favor one and curse another.You cannot discern what is really behind your problems that plague you and steal away your precious life. But, once you learn of God and learn how the competition works; what you are up against and why your human efforts can never work, you can begin to let God do what He promised to do. Relax already, God’s got you!

Real life begins when you stop being so determined to be your own sufficiency and reach upwards for help. You have to learn to rely on Someone who is infinitely bigger than you. You have to learn to let go of all of the negative pressures and fears and threatenings that have been driving you to the brink. You don’t preserve your health, God does. You don’t supply all of your own needs, God does. You don’t realize your hearts dreams and desires alone, God brings them to you. Don’t search the world in vain to find yourself. Let God show you who you really are. You see, once you get on the right track, the correct path, the best course, life comes alive for you. You are no longer so shook up and pressed every day. Instead you learn to trust God with all of your heart; with all that matters most to you; with the whole of your life. And in trusting Him you can relax. You can exhale. You can settle down and enjoy life. You can finally be free to experience life and love and happiness. You can appreciate the things that really matter. Oh you will always have challenges for sure, but there is nothing you will ever face that God cannot handle for you. Oh my friends, relax already. God is there.

Just some good thoughts…

Can You See It?

On By Papa TonyIn Thought7 Comments

believeI often reference the process of believing God when I write my blogs and I began to wonder if people really understood what it means to believe God. Believing is one of the most simple, natural things in the world. It is not some magical mind activity that we employ when we have a need, nor is it the power of the mind which some erroneously purport. Instead believing is a prerequisite to receiving anything from God. In fact, it is the necessary ingredient in order to bring any good things into our lives. People believe everyday and remain unaware of it. If believing is the key to receiving, then it behooves us all to learn how to believe. In this I ask, can you see it?

Believing is something that all humans do and the result of it can be found in the circumstances of our lives. People that expect to prosper, do prosper despite their upbringing, their education or social status. People that have escaped extreme poverty have done so because they believed they could. Believing is a principle that cannot be broken. Fear is also a form of believing, but it is believing in reverse. Instead of an expectation of blessings and goodness, fear is an expectation for negative things to happen. Fear only produces negative results. What you fear in your heart will manifest itself in your life. If you are afraid of a disease, not just wary of it or uncomfortable about it’s possibility, but truly afraid of it and you incubate those thoughts long enough, you will get that which you have greatly feared, not because God doesn’t love you, but because the principle of believing has already been set. The admonition to fear not is found on the pages of the Bible more than 5,000 times. That should arrest our attention! You and you alone set the limits of your believing. If you believe you can, you can and if you believe you can’t, you can’t. In both instances you are correct. Often in life people think they were born or predetermined to enjoy or not enjoy a certain station in life. They foolishly conclude that prosperity and good things are reserved for other people. Sadly, their expectation has been set by their own hearts; their own expectations. Believing is the reason some people are successful and some people are not. Believing is the reason certain folks live in relative safety while others suffer one calamity after another. God has not decided this for you, you have. God’s will is that you believe Him in order to receive His promises to you. Did you know there are over 900 promises in the Bible for you and for me? Despite our sincerity, God will not and cannot override our free will. Human beings have no power of the mind as I mentioned before, but they do have the power to decide what they will and will not believe. Can you see it?

The how of believing is really quite simple. Believing is a decision we make from our hearts, greatly influenced by the thoughts we choose to think about the most. The world and the great media machine and social media platforms work hard to shape our believing. All day long we are bombarded with images and ideals and are led to form the wrong conclusions. The world, a metaphor for evil at work in the world, informs us of what we can and cannot have. God’s Word also tells us what we can have and it will always be found to be in direct contradiction to what the world is reporting. Thus believing positively is our responsibility and our right as the rightful owners of our own free will. Believing is a verb and, grammar fans, always involves action. If we believe something is going to happen, good or bad, our corresponding actions will align themselves with whatever it is we are believing. If we believe God is going to do something to help us, we will naturally be looking for the help or the solution. If we say we believe God will help us, but do nothing to find that help, we are not believing. We are simply mentally assenting to the truth instead of living the truth. Living the truth means expecting God to do what He said He would do and not stopping until we get what we are believing to get. Again, believing is not difficult or requiring mental gymnastics. If you believe, you act! Expectation is a key you hold to every lock. Believing has no limits as God who honors it in every case has no limits. God is not deciding how much money you can have, your health status, where you can live or even what kind of car you can drive. You are! If God decided what people could have or how far they could go, He would be a respecter of persons and He is no respecter of persons. All of us can believe including the unbelievers and believing equals receiving including those unbelievers. When you observe some dastardly person prospering it is because they also believe and as such, receive. The principle has no respect for who someone is, but rather what they believe. Can’t you see it?

Finally, if you cannot even get your own mind to entertain the idea of getting something you need, you will not be able to receive it. Our minds come complete with imaginations which we control. The reason Jesus told us to have the heart of a child is because children have unlimited and unrestrained imaginations. They can picture what they want, believe and thus can receive it. You too can follow this same process. Our minds work in images. How easy it is for us to picture disasters and negatives, yet how infrequently do we take the time to picture good things? As easy as it is for us to conjure up images of defeat and loss, is as easy as it is for us to “imagine” good. You choose the pictures in your mind. Why not picture yourself having what you need and want? Can you see it? Can’t you picture yourself getting the good job, having plenty of money, enjoying health and having a loving relationship with those you hold most dear? You have to believe first before you see it which means you have to be able to see it in your heart and mind before it comes to pass in your life. Bryce Harper saw himself where he is today, playing in the World Series, (Go Phillies) long before it came to pass in his life. Yet now he gets to live it and enjoy it. Can you see it? The pictures you hold in your mind are a form of believing and there is no limit to what you can imagine. Determine now to begin seeing things you want in your life which serves to root out things you do not want in your life. It’s your mind. Can you see it?

As a great man once wrote, “How have you mentally pictured yourself for the past week, month, year, ten years? The picture that you carry of yourself with clearness and concern is what you are.” Can you see it? You are deciding how your life will turn out by the things you are believing in your heart. If you cannot get your mind to see good then you will have trouble receiving good as you determine what those things will be. Learn to believe positively. Rid yourself of fear whenever and wherever it shows up. Don’t keep waiting for your life to get better, believe (act) for it to get better. Give God something to work with. When you believe God you unleash His unlimited power into your situations. You can have everything you ever wanted if you will only believe. Can you see it?

Just some good thoughts…

If You Move I Move…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

truHealth+Chiropractic+Take+ActionYou know there are many people in the world that pray, yet for many nothing seems to happen when they do. It seems reasonable that if God could hear what you are saying and He is very interested in you as a person, surely He must be willing to help you if He had the power to do so. I think you will find that God is always able and willing. The primary cause for your unanswered prayers is typically a lack of belief as demonstrated by a lack of believing action on the part of the one doing the praying. If you believe there are a hundred dollars laying in your driveway, I’m sure you would walk over and take a look. You couldn’t imagine remaining in your chair while begging God to bring the money into the house. The problem with praying amiss, if you will, is that all of the time you are waiting on God, God is waiting on you. Sometimes there may be nothing left you can think of to do, but even then your job is to keep saying what God’s Word promised you and keep moving ahead. Whenever we stop in our tracks, for any reason, we end up keeping ourselves further away from what we need. When you pray; when you believe God when you pray, there will always be something you need to do in alignment with whatever it is you prayed for. In other words, believing is a verb and that verb signifies an action on your part. In this God’s message is thus, “If you move I move.”

When you pray and pray and sit around wishing God would do something for you, you end up spending a lot of time sitting around. You wait for God as if He is somehow withholding something from you. I can absolutely assure you, God is never the problem. The problem is that you don’t really believe God will do or wants to do something about your dilemma. Life itself informs you that if you want something, you have to invest the time required and pursue it. If you are not chasing anything then you won’t find anything. God has not complicated the process with formulas or mysteries. People add that. If you believe God will help you find a new job, waiting all day by the phone or waiting for the answer to show up in your mailbox is not how life works. You have to start applying for jobs. And, even then, when you pray for a new job you have to become specific about what you want, or at least have some of the basics. This whole notion of praying, “God send me what I need” without articulating what you need is like dumping your coffee into the pool in order to get it to warm up. The reason people pray this way is because they are afraid they cannot actually get what they want, but instead have to settle for whatever whenever, then call it a blessing. Your job, my job, is to get as clear as possible about what it is that we need. When you get real clear about what you want, pray about it and then take any actions you can think of to get it, you are now synchronizing yourself with God and when you move, He moves. 

How frustrating it must be to God, (if God gets frustrated) to hear the multitudes praying to Him for a need, yet not taking any action concerning their need. When you get serious about getting your needs met, especially those long standing chronic issues that have tortured you over the years, you will begin to make some progress towards those things you so desperately need. ‘Hope so’ prayers yield nothing. One man put it this way, “you have to get clear and concerned about what you need. Get clear about what is wanted, then become concerned about getting it.” If you really need something to happen and you are very clear about what that is, you need to become concerned about receiving it; concerned as in taking some action, making some moves, getting yourself out there in the world. I muse sometimes that much of what we need is going to come via those people we keep avoiding or situations we do not want to put ourselves in. Which is worse, getting out there in life and taking uncomfortable action or sitting at home in desperation over unmet needs? What is it that you really, really need to happen in your life? Don’t limit yourself or aim low. What do you need in order to make your life complete? Once you are clear about it and honest, get damn serious about it coming to pass. Remember, God is not withholding anything from you. He would like for it to have happened yesterday as well, but He is not going to overstep your free will. Get serious about what you need and make some moves. “If you move I move!”   

As I look around me and participate in my own life as well, it becomes obvious that the adversary has the whole place all screwed up. Bad things happen to good people and injustice often prevails. Life is not fair and people do not always get what they deserve, especially those that endeavor to live for God. Time and chance happen to them all. Yet, God has made a way out for us. God has promised His unending love and care for us, so there must be something we need to do in order to access it. The thing we need to do is not to overly concern ourselves in being better or repairing in ourselves that which we do not have the power to repair. Instead our only requirement is to believe God. Believe what He did for us in the life of His son. Believe in who He made us to be instead of consuming ourselves in everything we are not. Believe that He hears our every prayer and move out taking bold action towards the things we so desperately need. If you want God to move, then you move first. Go get it. Look for it. Find it. Don’t stop looking for it until you get it. When you get to that place in your mind and heart, you will find that God has always, always been more willing to answer your prayers, than you are to pray them. After all, if you move He moves…

Just some good thoughts.

Unpack Your Bags…

On By Papa TonyIn Thought3 Comments

When you return home from a vacation, you know one of the first things you need to do is unpack. Oh you can leave the bags sitting there with plans to fish out the toiletries in the morning, but you won’t be very comfortable until you supply the effort necessary to unpack. Leaving your stuff in the suitcases leads to feeling unsettled and becomes exacerbated with every passing day. The dirty clothes start to smell and you become aware of things you are missing, at least for a little while. Your mind, your thoughts about things, your conclusions formed also need to be unpacked at times in order to get back to happy living. You have to take some time to unpack.

Have you ever taken the time to contemplate how many things enter into your thinking in a day? One solitary thought leads to another thought and before you know it you are starting to form some conclusions about certain situations. Some thoughts seem centered upon your inadequacies while others pick at your capabilities or areas where you struggle. Mistakes you may have made are somehow compounded and joined with other mistakes leading to unsavory opinions of yourself and your motives. Before you know it, outside of your awareness, you have unknowingly arrived at a destination concerning yourself that is neither true nor substantiated. And, similar to the lazy traveler, you have to give yourself time to unpack it all and get back to what is right.

Failure to take the time you need to digest life’s experiences and your thoughts concerning the same lead to packing around baggage you likely need to unload. Unbeknownst to you perhaps are hundreds if not thousands of microscopic bits of unguarded and unwatched thoughts littering their debris on your mind and heart. That which you fail to control seeks to control you. At first blush, you clearly recognize the errant thought and its effect upon your tranquil state. But, those thoughts not dealt with and confronted lead to more thoughts stacking and adding and conglomerating until at last you find yourself distressed. Many, if not all, of our agitations in life come from these deftly planted ideas and notions that have been left to themselves to blossom and to grow. They grow and multiply because they have been ignored or glossed over and never challenged for the lies they actually represent. When you find yourself troubled, as you necessarily must, your task isn’t to simply move on and let it go, but rather to give yourself time to unpack it all until you get back to the equanimity that is your birthright.

Human beings as a whole have failed to take seriously the importance of right thought and as such get blown about with every wind of doctrine, afraid of this new threat, terrified of some unknown possibility, batted around to thing to thing to thing. In the helter-skelter of confused and disparate thinking, anxious, divided and distressed, they run and stagger and halt and keel never actually taking the time required to sort out the mess and settle upon some real conclusion. It never dawned on them the importance of taking back control of their organ for thinking by allotting the necessary time to unpack it all and get it straight. They must needs pull out the stinky garments one by one until all are gone, the threat dismissed, the situation resolved, the peace returned. Unpacking is required for all that would seek to live in peace.

In order to unpack you must first recognize that which you have packed. You thought the thoughts and you entertained the possibilities. No matter what may be going around you, you are the one thinking the thoughts. It is your mind and it is the one thing you have complete control over. Oh, you may not be the author of every wild beast that flashes across your awareness, but you are the gatekeeper who determines if it is allowed to remain. The competition for your happiness, for your peace of mind, for your overall well being, takes place within the confines of your own mind. We are all assaulted, we are all attacked, we are all subject to seemingly endless accusations and annoyances, but we don’t have to lose the fight. We lose not because we have been harangued but because we supplied no effort to fight back. We fight back by taking the time we need to get things straight. It is not a matter of how much time it takes, but instead have we taken the time we need. Enough time is defined as the rest returning to your soul. Unpacking leads to the promised rest.

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of prayer is the opportunity to unpack all of our nonsense and foolishness with Someone far greater than us in terms of insight, understanding and ability. As such, we lay it all out there with great honesty of soul. We tell of our hurts and our troubles, our pains and our dysfunctions. We elucidate our vexations and sources of discomfort with an expectation of answers of peace that help our souls return to the reverie we need so dearly. We talk things over. We get things straight. We sort it out. We clean it up. We start fresh. We get back up. We resolve ourselves to win next time. We learn what we can learn and are that much better off in the next fight. We don’t pretend something is what it is not, but instead we say exactly what it is believing it does not have to remain that way! We lay it all at the feet of our Master and in so doing relieve ourselves of a whole world of burdens and pain.

Do you find yourself troubled about many things? Do you feel confused and divided inside, knocked about from pillar to post? Are you suffocating in the effects of wrong thought and wrong believing? Do you find yourself underwater and barely able to breathe? Start today by making the time to unpack your baggage and get to the clean, fresh air where you can breathe in new life with all of its limitless possibilities… They’re your bags, after all. Unpack them!

Just some good thoughts…

Settle It. Solve It. Resolve It…

On By Papa TonyIn Thought2 Comments

There are times in life, when you are an avid believer in God and His Word, that God will open the eyes of your understanding and show you something that will absolutely change your life! Just such a thing happened to me this weekend. The subject of the teaching was accessing God’s peace in your life and how, in order to experience and enjoy that peace, you have to take the time to settle the things in your heart that remain unsettled, unsolved and unresolved.

Peace typically occurs at the end of a conflict. It has been referred to as the absence of strife. Peace can follow accomplishment or a job well done. Peace is also defined as undisturbed well being. It is knowing that everything is going to be okay. Peace is something God gives to us as His children. Yet for all the magnificence that God’s peace is in our lives, we often fail to access it. We fail to access it because we go about obtaining it in the wrong way. We tend to believe that peace is something we have to work for by “living right” or by giving up something; by adding something; or by abstaining from something. Such is the life of the typical Christian believer, ever condemned and guilty, never measuring up, always unworthy! I cannot tell you how many Facebook and Instagram stories promote how unworthy we are before God, implying that if we only “did better” or worked harder we would arrive. Well, here’s newsflash for your weary soul – there will never be anything you can do that will make you worthy before God! Making you worthy is something God had to do for you! The sooner you come across that realization, the closer you are to enjoying God’s peace in your life. What a cruel, dreadful, awful trick the enemy of God has placed on God’s people since the world began. Who the hell wants to worship and serve a God that is perpetually unhappy and displeased with His children? Are you perpetually displeased with your children? Don’t you have a little forgiveness for their foolishness? Do you not extend them some mercy at times? Don’t you just love them for who they are irrespective of their behavior? Well, it’s fair to say the God of love can do even better than that! When you find yourself caught in that arduous trap it isn’t God that you are serving anymore, instead it is the commandments and doctrines of men, made by men in an attempt to access a God they neither know nor understand. There is no peace in living that way (and definitely no love).

Peace is something that God freely gives to His children. In order to access that peace in your heart you have to settle things in your heart. You are not going to be able to settle all the things that aren’t right in the world, but you can settle them in your own heart. You do so by believing and accepting what God says over what everyone and everything else says. You remain unpeaceful because you (and I) have all these things going on inside of us that are not resolved. God says that He gave us His son as a payment for all the sins we may commit in a lifetime, past, present and future. Accepting Jesus Christ’s finished work for you leads to peace. BUT (and it’s a helluva big but), your failure to accept that reality in your heart leads to a lifetime of dwelling on and living in every stupid thing you ever did throughout your life! Of course the sin and error is wrong and leads to pain, You don’t need me to tell you that. But, remaining in it is worse, especially when God, the only true judge, has already forgiven you in the life of His son. God solved your sin problem and mine forever. Our Savior’s work is finished, it’s done. Until you resolve that in your own heart, you won’t enjoy the peace God has freely given to you.

Another way believers get talked out of the peace God so dearly wants for His children is by living under the negative judgment of man, including yourself. You do not have the right to judge yourself. When you negatively judge yourself, you reject God’s plan of redemption already enacted for you. Judging yourself and allowing yourself to be judged by other people is wrong. It is not humble to refer to yourself as a worm for God, lowly and defeated. Thinking this way not only robs you of God’s peace, but it serves to work the purposes of your insidious enemy, the accuser of the brethren before God night and day. Similarly, living in the past, rehearsing and cataloging your every mistake, remembering and cleaving to your lowest moments, denies God’s true opinion of you as His child and crucifies afresh His son that died for you. You may not be able to forget all the dumb stuff you have done throughout your life, but you can resolve to settle the matter in your heart. Leaving it unsettled and undone leads only to fear and an incessant focus on what is not right about you!  (Have you ever been there?) Settle it in your heart. Forgive yourself and let it go. Let it ALL go and simply move ahead. Walk out a new man, a new woman, fresh, alive and vital for the day at hand. Walk out with your head held high, a son or daughter of the most high God! Once you really decide to let it all go and refuse to unearth it, you will find yourself living in the peace God has already given you. Resolve it in your heart once and for all.

The good life you dream of is not found in riches and cars and houses and more and more stuff. It is found when you know and understand Him, the God who so loved you that He gave His only begotten son for you. It is found in the joy and love and peace that only God can provide for you. It’s not about you, for goodness sakes, it’s about Him. You don’t have to spend your life feeling like you don’t measure up before God which leads only to increasing fear and doubt and defeat. You have not been found wanting and there is literally nothing you have to do in this life to be at peace other than fully accept all that God has already done for you. Settle the matter in your own heart. Resolve the matter in your own heart. Solve the matter in your own heart by believing what God says is true in every situation that ever confronts you. You will surely be challenged in this life, but God will make sure you always win! Always…

Get peace…

Just some good thoughts…

Getting Unstuck (Take It On Already)…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

I would hazard a guess, based on my personal experience, age and general listening plus paying attention, that many people get stuck along the way in life. Something happened or didn’t happen. They have endured some affliction. Some gotcha got them or even they may have enjoyed way too much of a good thing for way too long… Suffice it to say, they have become stuck, as in not moving forward, aka stopped in their tracks, fast forward, stagnating away in a perpetual pool of nothing happens. What sticks it to you to make you stuck and how can you escape it?

All of life is on the move. Only dead things stay still. You can either egress or digress. You flourish or you wither. You continue to grow or you begin to die. No matter how you wrap it, life was designed to involve forward action. People, in general, are at their best as long as they are moving towards something. You don’t have to be in a full sprint and at times you are allowed to pause, but when you stop altogether, that’s where the trouble starts. People stop moving for a variety of different reasons. Some find themselves embroiled in a problem for which there appears to be no solution. Others have long given up on their dreams or accepted the falsity that they had no dreams. Some think they are too old, too fat, too dumb, too lazy or too anything that convinces them it’s okay to surrender. For others it may be a mistake they made 40 years ago or even last month. Some are just plain old worn out by life. Regardless of the shape or form it comes in, ceasing from forward movement is always not true!

Full speed living means that you take on an issue as soon as it appears. Like children do so beautifully, you create a large fuss about your needs not being met then not let it go until something happens. Children are persistent. Adults are complacent. Children are honest. Adults lie to themselves to make things okay. Children ask for help right away. Adults ask for help just after all hell has broken loose. The quickest and easiest way to solve a problem is right when it occurs. You take it on and deal with it right now! Letting things go, a national epidemic, allows our difficulties and troubles to become entrenched. Once entrenched, like allowing yourself to weigh too much, is that much harder from which to escape. And, your habits of letting it go must be confronted with that much more resolve, a habit you have not been practicing. Then, no wonder you find yourself stuck! People aren’t talked out of their dreams overnight. They are talked out of them over days and months and years. You can’t become too old or too fat or too lazy unless you have let something go for too long! You are worn out not by life, but by your refusal to fight back. Even mistakes, no matter how egregious, represent a moment in time; one you can never get back.

Each precious day of your life you are in a contest. Your mind is the arena. You can battle and strive or you can give in and retreat, but no matter what you do, you are in a fight. Wishing away the fight won’t end the fight. Ignoring the fight just leads to eventual defeat because you are still getting hit. Numbing yourself to the fight is more of the same. You have to learn to fight back! You have to learn what exactly is going on. If you don’t and many, many don’t, then you lose. You get stuck then whittled away in a shitty existence always wishing you would have and should have etc. And worse, all that crap that’s been threatening you a lifetime starts settling in on you. Can’t you see it? You stopped moving forward. You quit fighting for yourself. You gave in…

Your life is not over, no matter what has happened or where you find yourself! You may have stopped moving for awhile, but if you are reading this, it aint over yet! You still have hope. You can change once you finally learn what has been perpetually kicking your butt! But, learn you must. You aren’t alone in your quest. In fact, you are just like all the rest of us. You are in the contest because all people are in the contest. You may not have been competing very well, but you can learn to compete. You can learn what it means to fight spiritually with spiritual enablements and quit relying on your intelligence, your brain, your extreme rationality. You can see because God wants you to see. All you need is a little humility and a little willingness to ask for help. Or you can sit there, defeated, pretending to be okay, and wait for the end. “Why sit we here until we die?”

The simplest way out of your dilemma is to begin moving forward again. Move forward! Stop looking around you bewildered, confused, distressed and decide to make a move. Take some action. Come to my Bible fellowship. Pray about it and then listen carefully. Read your Bible. Talk to a friend. Do something. Don’t just sit there mentally, do something. You will quickly learn that once you make a move, God makes a move. Once you act, God acts. God won’t make you move (trust me), but He will honor your believing efforts. There is an answer. There are always answers.

No matter how entrenched you’ve become in that giant bowl of spaghetti, know this, once long ago there was just one piece of pasta, from which you could easily escape. You just need to start grabbing at the strands, one at a time until they’re all gone. With God’s help you can do it. You can move ahead. You can the life you have imagined!

Just some good thoughts…

 

Sometimes You Just Have to Fight…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

Recently, I found myself suffering from a physical issue I neither planned on nor expected. Being a believing believer, a self-professed son of God with power, I inadvertently found myself questioning how something like this could happen to me and further what I could do about it. I knew God’s promises to me yet continued quite uneasy with the rather unpleasant circumstances and the potentially life changing consequences should things not turn out right for me. So, as you might expect, I went to God in perfect prayer at significant lengths in order to figure out what to do next. During those fretful days that followed, I learned a lesson of paramount importance and inestimable value, namely that sometimes you just have to fight!

You may have found yourself at certain junctures in life besieged and assaulted by something that threatens to change your life forever or at minimum, take something away from you that you formerly enjoyed without question. In those frightful moments, what can you do? When you believe in God and have expectations for His care and protection in your life, especially when you’ve enjoyed a lengthy existence with virtually nothing negative ever happening to you (yes that is called being blessed), when something bad happens it can come as quite the shocker. It sort of knocks you off your feet and leaves you reeling for answers. How many people do you know that either begin to search within for possible causes or worse blame God for failing them in some capacity? Or, sadly, how many resign themselves to an awful fate and simply learn to live with it or live without it?

I think that in these moments, you sort of find out who you really are or maybe better, what you really believe. It’s all fun and games until the shit hits the fan. It’s all terrific in theory. It’s nice to talk about and tell others about. I mean it is the truth after all. But knowing the truth of God’s Word and preaching about it is one thing, but demanding it in your life is a whole other thing. So you are basically left with a choice. Are you going to hold fast to spiritual truth or are you going to faint in your heart based on the information supplied to your senses mind? The whole fight will be won or lost based upon your ultimate decision. But, there’s the clue. It’s a fight and in order to win sometimes you just gotta fight!

As I’ve said on many occasions, we are all in a spiritual contest between good and evil. Good proceeding from God wants you to be blessed, healthy and prosperous. Evil proceeding from the devil and his multiplicity of minions, wants you to be miserable, defeated, sick and finally dead! God wants to give to you and the devil seeks to steal from you.  How you vote determines the election! Unlike our dismal, present day political elections, yours is the only vote that counts. Who or what are you going to believe?

Now flash forward to a guy who already believes, wholeheartedly. Well, maybe I should add, wholeheartedly wants to believe. Imagine that this guy is generally passive in nature and seeks rather to avoid the fight than get in one. He aint no punk, but by nature he loves peace and harmony. Yet now he finds himself assaulted! What should he do? Well, first in his quest is to recognize that he is in fact being assaulted. He has to remember he is in a spiritual contest and that his opponent plays for keeps. He has to look beyond the five-senses portrayal of events and see things spiritually. Now, with God’s help and clarity, he has to do what anyone finding themselves assaulted needs to do. Fight back! He cannot spend another moment considering and dwelling on where he may have gone wrong or what in his life allowed this to happen (though it will prove useful to learn this after he wins) but instead has to get into the fight. He must perceive the insidious nature of his opponent and resolve himself to fight until the end, no matter what it costs, until he wins. There is no other reasonable solution. God has given him spiritual power with which to fight, but he has to get off his mental ass and swing!

It is futile for him to wish God would simply remove the barrier and bring back his ease and comfort. God never promised he wouldn’t be assailed at times, but instead promised no matter the attack, he could always win. God doesn’t need to make an obstacle in order to strengthen him to win, but rather uses the obstacle from the dark side as a means to make all things to work together for good, provided his man or woman is willing to fight. It’s sort of like you going to get your Dad’s help in a conflict and him telling you to get your ass back out there and fight! However, this is always a spiritual fight and requires you to tap into your spiritual Father’s power if you are going to be able to win. By your own self, you can do nothing!

In that great fight, taking place in the arena of your mind, you have to stop vacillating between what could be or could go wrong and instead gird up the loins of your mind with what God says is true. Don’t fall into the fallacy that you can overcome your opponent with your logic. He will eat you for breakfast. The logic of your senses mind is his home court. He will squirrel up your thoughts so bad you won’t be able to even stand up, let alone fight! No, no, no! You fight with God’s Word with no backup plan, no settling and no negotiation. You stand on, with all that you are and could ever hope to be, what God says is true, which in this case is to heal you. The doctor says your recovery is doubtful (and maybe it is according to the factual world), so you quickly duck and fire back (in your mind) with, “I am the Lord that healeth thee!” Your conditions don’t seem to be getting better or maybe the pain persists, so you duck again, dismiss it and throw your haymaker, “Jesus Christ suffered torture so that the devil would never again have access to my physical body to cause me to suffer!” And you just keep punching that bastard until he backs down as he necessarily must because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world!

You see, us peace-loving folks aren’t always looking for a fight, but when we find ourselves in one, we stand up on our spiritual haunches and fight back!

If you want to live the more than abundant life God has promised you, and you have some need to be fulfilled, sometimes you just have to fight and fight and fight until you win! That’s the only reasonable, logical conclusion. Don’t faint in your heart because of what it looks like for nothing is impossible with God.

We win folks, we always win…

Just some good thoughts…

 

Making Your Mind a Friend…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

Different emotionsYears ago I wrote a book called, “Making Your Mind a Friend.” It was an amateurish project at best, but at the time I penned it, it helped save me from a world of suffering; suffering mostly self-imposed by wrong thought with a heavy, heavy dose of religious bondage. Somehow, in some imperceptible way, I had morphed (or had been morphed) into everything I hated in life. I became sickly religious and when you get religious enough, everything you do or say or feel will be wrong. It’s wrong because you have set up for yourself an impossible standard. And, before you know it, your worst, most pervasive enemy will be your very own mind. Thus, making your mind a friend isn’t about splitting yourself into two separate entities and having positive dialogue with each part. It’s about learning to extend kindness and forgiveness and friendliness to your own self in the same way you might extend it to your friend.

I remember years ago when my brother had agreed to watch our boys. When we picked them up he explained incredulously, that one of them was throwing rocks in the road and when he told him to stop, he threw another one! He couldn’t understand how that could happen. Of course, he didn’t have his own children yet. He now knows that disobedience happens but it is the parent’s job to correct it. So here’s a thought. Disobedience happens with adults also. But, just like when you correct a child, no matter how satisfying the chastisement feels, all a parent is really after is an acknowledgement from the child that they did something wrong. There’s rarely much to say after the apology occurs.

How many of you have spent years and years chastising yourself for some event that has long since expired? It’s gone from life and is in the books. It only shows up again when you re-read the book. Stop re-reading the book! The things you do wrong and have done wrong were committed to the history book just as quickly as they happened. They are no longer a part of your life unless you allow them to be. The egregious errors, the scarring hurts, the bruising slights all have vanished from the present reality. You make your mind a friend by not subjecting your friend to the same old, tired story. Like your friend who might tell you it’s time to get over it, it’s time to get over it. You don’t magically transform bad behaviors by punishing yourself, you know that! You transform yourself the same way your child transforms, by receiving your forgiveness. And don’t you think for a second that God is bringing it up. God forgave you the FIRST time you were sorry. You have to “accept” His forgiveness also. Beyond that it’s all a bunch of egotism and you can take that to the bank!

Once I heard a father say how dumb his kid was and that he didn’t think his elevator went all the way to the top. How sad is that? To think that a father would say that about his own flesh and blood, astounded me. All I could think was, he’s your own kid! What the eff is the matter with you? Your child will be about as smart and talented and good as you can teach him he can be. You, horrible father, are outrageously defining his limit. Now as bad as I guess that made you feel, how about the things you say to yourself? Would you so easily tell your good friend that he was an idiot? Would you be so quick to focus on and point out his every weakness and fault? Oh sure you would see both, but out of love you wouldn’t bring them up, would you? Do you know anyone on earth that gets better at something after repeatedly being told he sucks at it? Weakness is never overcome by focusing on the weakness. You win at life by focusing on your strengths; what you can do the best! Strength is built from strength! All you accomplish by acquiescing to an endless stream of negative chatter about yourself is to weaken and severely limit your true capabilities. And, the worst part? You are saying those things to yourself! You aren’t just being honest! You are treating yourself like an enemy and not a friend. If you don’t love you, who does? Well, God does and He disagrees with your estimation of yourself. Again, beyond that, it’s all just a bunch of egotism…and your insistence on self harm.

Making your mind a friend is about choosing what you will and will not think about and choosing what you will and will not say to yourself. Your mind is your mind and you may use it in whatever fashion you see fit. You may say, “I can’t stop thinking about it!” But, oh yes you can! Like a lifelong smoker, the longer you’ve been engaged in the habit, the harder it is going to be to stop. The new non-smoker has to say ‘no’ to himself one hundred times a day at first, but the next day may only require seventy-five. Eventually the thought comes up ever so rarely. The same with negative talk and condemnation, once you break the habit, it happens less and less. And like the smoker that quit, you brighten your prospects for a long, happy, successful life.

At the end of the day, you my dear friend, are the only you, you’ve got! And, like your heart would seek in earnest to console your sad, defeated child, you must learn to be good to yourself. You aren’t serving God by behaving that way, no matter what some preacher may have told you, you are serving your enemy by your refusal to believe what God has already said. You aren’t the evil one, but you just may have been listening to him. Be kind with yourself. Be forgiving with yourself. Learn to accept your imperfections and just be. It’s okay. God knows all about you and loves you anyway!

Just some good thoughts…