Tag: God’s word

Do You Know?

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

doyouknowRecently I have been watching a Netflix series documentary called, “In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal.” Basically it is about different so called religious leaders in Korea that led their followers on unimaginable paths proclaiming to know, amongst many other things, God’s will for their lives. These kind people were led astray despite having a humble, heartfelt desire to learn about God. The false leaders and teachers were successful in obtaining their allegiance by promises of love, fulfillment, a ticket to heaven and many other things that most people seek after. But, what struck me the most wasn’t the weird things people can unknowingly get into. It was how little of the truth of God’s Word these people knew. Using the Bible as their guide, the charismatic leaders introduced all sorts of things that are not found anywhere in the Bible. One claimed to be Jesus himself appearing for his second coming. However, unlike Jesus, he demanded sex from his followers as a token of their love for God, even reporting that he himself was God. As incredulous as that seems, if not outrageous, the people were led astray because of what they did not know. And like what happens to all people when they are ignorant, they were led down painful, disgusting paths as a result of it. All sadly, in the name of God. Which begs the question, do you know?

People that do not understand what the Bible says or have been taught erroneous beliefs supposedly based on it, are ripe for deception. People do all sorts of illogical things because someone falsely attached God’s approval and blessings to it. If you want to make people give you money, fall under your control, be manipulated by you, all you have to do is convince them it is somehow God’s will. But, let me ask you a question. How do you know what God’s will is? If you do not have a standard for your beliefs outside of yourself and your own thoughts, how would you know what was true? How would you know if you were really doing God’s will? You see, you wouldn’t and that is exactly what happens to so many people today. These damnable leaders and false prophets have people doing all sorts of things that are nowhere to be found in the Bible or maybe are in the Bible but not addressed to them today. It matters. Otherwise your sincere heart will be taken advantage of all in the name of God. How many good people live each day drowning in their sins and sinful nature completely unaware of God’s solution for them? How many tender hearted believers are living on antidepressants and other medications because they just cannot stand themselves? How much precious life and experience are people missing out on because someone convinced them that everything they like is wrong? Ignorance is not bliss. The reason so many people are living under the control of others (and I do not just mean at church) is because they have these wrong beliefs floating around in their heads. Wrong beliefs are built on error. And no matter how sincerely you work according to your wrong beliefs they will continue to produce bad results, i.e. more error. Then folks want to get mad at God. God is very, very clear in His Word about who He is, what He does and will do, and what He does not do! Do you know?

There is an opposing force in this life that does not want you to know. He overloads you with other options. He derides the Bible for its antiquated beliefs. He convinces people that what he actually does, God does and what God actually does, he does. He gets people to call the light darkness and the darkness light. He works in people and the world to put limits on what you can have and not have. He convinces you that certain things have no solution. He gets you to believe that either God can’t do anything or worse, won’t do anything. All outright contradictions to what God says in the Bible. See, do you know? In that same Bible God says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” If you knew for yourself what His book says and what it doesn’t say, it would be a lot harder to lead you down these calamitous paths. As soon as the first leader in the documentary said he was the second coming of Jesus Christ, I knew immediately it could not be true because of what God clearly says will occur before Jesus Christ’s second coming. Error! When he said they had to obey him in order to get to heaven, I thought – false, getting to heaven is based on what you believe, not on what you do! Again, error! The problem with not knowing is that you can be led down any crazy path the leader wants to take you down because you do not know for yourself. If the suggested beliefs and actions contradict what God says is true, they will always be error and if followed hurt you. There are dark spiritual forces behind all of the insanity, all of the illogic, all of the hurt and pain people experience in this life. ALL of it! The sooner you can begin to recognize evil, the sooner you can seek the truth that will set you free. Not knowing or relying on someone else to know for you won’t get the job done. If you know, you know. Do you know?

A lot of stuff is said and done supposedly in the name of God. Many things that defy logic and good sense are portrayed as the will of God. All manner of cruelty is done in the name of God, not just today, but all throughout history. And it happened because the people did not know for themselves or relied upon religious leaders to make it make sense for them. But, at the end of the day, some things simply do make sense. Some things are full of hypocrisy and contradiction. Another female cult leader in the documentary stated that all sex and pleasure was sinful and wrong and to be excluded at all costs, even between married couples, yet she herself could have sex with all of the young men because it was “pleasing to God” among other things. How do people reconcile those types of things? What kind of abject deception makes that concept plausible or remotely acceptable? God is the one that built sexual desire into people and outlines a perfectly acceptable expression of it. The sex was the least of the horrors that occurred all because people did not know for themselves. Although any of us can get caught up in things that seem good, but aren’t really good, the true acid test will always be found in what the Word says. If God says something is evil, no matter how many disguises you cloak it in, it will always be evil and will always involve deception at some level. It’s not that people are so bad, it is what is behind it that is so bad. Many things people proclaim to be evil or wrong are not evil or wrong at all. But, how would you know? Do you know?

Since all of life begins with God and exists with God, the best thing you can do for yourself is to learn what God really says in His Word. All of us have to start somewhere unless you were blessed enough to have parents that taught you. But even then, it still might not be true (smile). If you want to know you can know. If you have a hearts desire to learn you can learn. If you are tired of being so confused about life you can understand if you want to understand. I can assure you the Bible is neither complicated nor confusing, you just need someone to teach you. Someone taught me. How can you be sure that what you are learning is true? Simple, does it work for you? Are you happier as a result of it? Are you getting your needs met? Are you seeing your prayers answered? Are things improving in your life for the better? Or is what you are learning causing you more pain, limiting you and dogging you, condemning you and taking away your joy? That is not the results that come from the truth. Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. But, not to worry, God looks on your heart. He knows that you are seeking Him and He knows if you want to learn. All that is required from you is a decision. Not a decision to live a bondage filled religious life as that is counterfeit, but instead to live the more than abundant life God promised us in His Word. If you want to know, you will be given a way to know. Trust me on that one. So my dear friends, do you know?

Just some good thoughts…

Advertisement

Managing Your Expectations Part 2 (Fear Not)

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

fear notThere is more to managing your expectations than just being aware of the spiritual forces at work in your life and endeavoring to remain positive. There is also a hidden ingredient involved in many people’s lives and that ingredient is fear. Fear can be very subtle and has many disguises. Fear serves only to thwart and hinder life. Fear slows your experience down to a standstill. Fear engaged stops you from receiving the things you want in life. Fear is also an expectation, but it is a negative expectation. It is expecting something bad to happen and if you persist in it (ignorantly) it will lead to something negative happening to you. Fear is the adversary’s only weapon and he wields it masterfully in order to prevent you from living the life you want to live. It starts with doubt, progresses to worry and then when fully realized results in fear. When you are afraid you are now working against your own best interests. You are cooperating with that dark sinister force that wishes to bring you pain and suffering or at minimum frustrate and defeat you. Fear is an expectation that you don’t try to manage but instead work to eliminate. Fear has ruined more people’s lives than any other thing in the world. Fear is not your friend nor should you try to make it your friend. Fear, in the end game, results in unbelief of the promises of God which ties God’s hands from helping you or providing something that you need. If there is anything in your life that you really need and don’t have or have been seeking for some time, chances are there is fear involved somewhere. In order to successfully manage your expectations you have to learn how to get rid of fear.

The way that the enemy uses fear is by endlessly promoting negatives things that might happen to you. The world is fueled by it, lives on it and is controlled by it. Fear is always a lie. It is, as you may have heard, false evidence appearing real. The reason it works so well is because of how convincing it is. I had a friend who was particularly afraid of diseases and ill health. The moment she had any discomfort it had to be something dreadful. One time she was telling me about a persistent pain in her side and starting to draw negative conclusions. I said it was probably something simple and inquired what she did yesterday. Immediately she remembered doing some gardening and the cause was found. Instant relief. That’s how fear works. The more you look for evidence to support your negative conclusion, the more evidence you will find. Fear and reasons to fear are literally all around you. Fear has been called believing in reverse. The same way you can believe for God’s blessings in your life you can also believe for negative things in your life. And believing always equals receiving, except you receive from the wrong source, the one that works to make your life difficult and hard. How many people have suffered and do suffer at the hands of fear. Bad things happen not because you have a fear thought here and there, but rather because you persist in it. You hold it in mind and give it an audience. You begin to talk to it and consider it and rationalize with it. You are defeated by your own human logic. In considering it you are admitting its possibility in your life. And because the starting premise is wrong, the end result will always have to be wrong. The way to beat fear is not by trying to figure it out. Its source is spiritual and because it is spiritual you will never be able to figure it out with your five senses reasoning. This is how so many people are deceived by it. In trying to figure it out by running it through your processor, analyzing, churning, mulling it over, thinking and thinking and thinking about it, you are allowing it entree into your mind and are unknowingly persisting in it. You will never get rid of fear that way. You beat fear by refusing the discussion. Stop entertaining it. Stop trying to figure it out. Stop considering it. It isn’t easy because it feels like an itch you have to scratch, but like a mosquito bite, you cannot scratch it. Once you give in and scratch it, it only gets worse and unlike a mosquito bite, it won’t go away on its own. You manage your expectations by getting rid of fear and you get rid of fear by refusing it entree into your mind.

Refusing consideration of fear is only the first step in improving your expectations which will improve your life. Next you have to find that promise of God that negates those thoughts of fear. Fear not is the number one admonition in the Bible for a reason. God does not want you to be afraid, nor does He ever use fear to motivate you. Fear is sin because it works at cross purposes with the things God wants for your life. God only motivates by love. Similarly, people are motivated in life generally by one or the other. So many things are done in this world by people whose motivation is fear. But, when you are motivated by fear, no matter how hard you try or how hard you work, the result will always be negative or temporary. Lasting results and lasting change can only come from motivation that is fueled by love. As such, when you are confronted by thoughts of doubt, worry or fear, you must take the time to resolve those thoughts in your mind. Don’t ignore them or simply distract yourself from them. Instead you have to take them on as unpleasant as it is. But, you do not take them on by considering the fearful thoughts. You take them on by finding the promise of God that negates that fear directly and feed your mind that instead. When the temptation comes up to be fearful and it is a temptation, you resist the temptation by quoting God’s Word just as Jesus did in his confrontations with the devil directly. You will note that he didn’t try to argue and reason things out. Instead he simply said what God’s Word said (that he knew) and defeated his opponent in every case. The same is always true for you and me. You manage your expectations by framing those expectations in terms of what God says is true and vigorously rejecting EVERYTHING that contradicts that.

You see it is up to you and me to believe the things God says are true. When we learn how to believe God’s promises and persist in them, God is able to do all the good things He wants to do in our lives. Conversely, when we think fear, consider fear, cleave to fear and persist in fear, we tie God’s hands in our situations of life. God is always very willing to give us what we need by His loving grace which He generously and freely offers to all people and He is absolutely unlimited in what He can do. When we fear (and we all do at times) we limit His great influence and impact in our lives. We retard and thwart our own results. We make things take much longer than they ought to take, then we call that life. It isn’t the life God intended for us. If you have problems and unmet needs or have been frustrated for years seeking yet not finding, chances are you have some fear that you need to take on and with God’s help eliminate. “I sought the Lord and He heard me and delivered me from all my fears.” (Psalms 34:4) Everything you really want and need in life is on the other side of fear. Learn to manage your expectations and get rid of fear and you will experience how good God really is in your adventure of life. There is no other way. Fear not!

Just some good thoughts…

Is It Working For You?

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

image

I often wonder, what’s the point of being a Christian if your life is just like everyone else’s life. I mean think about it. Surely there is a benefit, indeed many benefits to having a relationship with God and if there aren’t any tangible benefits, maybe we are doing something wrong. For many, it seems that being a believer means you believe in God but not necessarily in the power of God. You are pretty sure that God exists, but when it comes to the life you live, not much seems to happen. People pray for God to help with them difficult times, but don’t pray for God to provide solutions for the difficult times. It’s sort of like God is there for you, but doesn’t do anything to change whatever it is you are facing. Maybe people don’t understand that there is the power of God that they can access. Or, perhaps they have prayed so much with so little results that they have resigned themselves to go through the motions never really expecting anything good to happen. If God is perfect, and I believe that He is, then we must be doing something wrong. If I never receive any results to my prayers, I must be doing something wrong. Why would God promise us so much in His Word if we could not experience those things for ourselves? Is God unwilling to intervene in our challenges? Are our concerns, our troubles not worthy of His consideration? Is this life we live presently supposed to be hard and our task merely to endure it patiently? When it comes to what you believe, is it working for you? 

If you’ll notice the media of today it is fraught with a beggar mentality. We are instructed to be thankful that we woke up or experience other benign benefits that all living people experience. There’s nothing wrong with being thankful of course, but waking up seems fairly fundamental to living creatures. The subtle message implied is that therein is the limit for your expectations. Wake up, be glad and endure another day powerless to effect any change. My words have no intent to criticize, but instead to shake up the lethargy the world engenders. God’s promise is not reserved only for your future life, but for the life you live right now. God wants you to be happy now! God wants you to be healed now! God wants you to prosper now! God wants you to live abundantly now! The reason you don’t experience this reality is because you don’t believe it to be true. The world has reduced God to be the morality police, concerned only and always with what you do right and what you do wrong. He is not seen as a Father providing loving care for His children, but instead an angry judge perpetually displeased with His creation. It’s as if He is wholly unfamiliar with your humanity and your needs associated with that humanity and is more concerned with rules and requirements most of which run at cross purposes with what you want to do! You’ve been told that God does not have time for your petty needs and that it is selfish to pray for yourself. It is no wonder people live the way they do. Instead of days being filled with excitement and enthusiasm for living, people trudge along in perpetual misery, lost, confused and without hope. If you are living this way, it isn’t working for you.

Your first step in your quest is to find out what God actually says about Himself. If you are going to pray for His help, you need to know what He says. I can guarantee you that a lot of what you have heard about God is not true. Instagram is chock full of people whose job it is to make stuff up! “God only gives His toughest battles to His strongest people!” Who says? That’s not what God’s Word says, that’s what people say. It subtly implies God is loading you with hard times as a test or something. We are all in the fight; in the battle, and we get our asses kicked when we don’t know how to fight back. You have to learn what God says about Himself. You have to learn who God really is. Once you begin to appreciate the vastness and the ability of God, you will have no problem going to Him for help. But first, you have got to get all that worldly garbage out of your head. If your first thought when you pray is about how you have been living, then you are doing it all wrong. God doesn’t answer your prayers because you are so good, He answers them when you believe Him, and you will have a hell of a hard time believing what He says when your focus is on yourself and everything you do and do not do!  By the grace of God I am what I am! That is how you win. No-one deserves God’s goodness, yet He offers it to everyone! If you aren’t getting your prayers answered, it isn’t working for you. 

Much of the hinderance we face in getting results is based upon our expectations. We expect so little. It’s no wonder as the world works hard to persuade us thus. We think we oughta be grateful when it’s all going to shit and learn to accept “what cannot change!” Well, who said it cannot change? If God is my Father and I’m struggling or suffering in some capacity, then it stands to reason He would want to help me. To assume otherwise is to assign monstrosity to God. To consider that He would allow evil to work me over in order to produce something beneficial is of equal horror. Sometimes I think we just have to slow down a bit and think. If God is love, if God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, then I must have something confused somewhere along the line. God desires to answer your prayers more than you want to pray them! But, in order to do so he needs a little cooperation on your part. He needs for you to do something with that mind of yours. You can’t be full of negativity and darkness and expect God to shine the light. You cannot be convinced that nothing is going to happen when you pray and expect something to happen anyway. Life does not work that way; lotteries perhaps, but not life! If things are not working out for you, chances are you are not doing something with your mind. 

There are a multitude of things God is reportedly telling you not to do but most, if not all of it, is not from God at all. There are some things God says not to do and it may surprise you what those things are. The number one admonition in the Bible is to fear not! Fear and all of its devilish companions are your primary problem. Doubt, the precursor to worry, stops your prayers in their tracks. Worry, the precursor to fear, stymies your every move. Fear, the precursor to misery and suffering not only prevents you from getting what you want, but actually serves to bring you the things you do not want! Read those sentences again. Fear is your main problem. Fear runs the world. If you will notice your thought life, even for a brief period, you will see the prevalence of fear. You are afraid that you and your loved ones are not safe, so you do all kinds of shenanigans to make them safe. You are afraid your health will be compromised, so you work hard to get it all right. You are afraid your need won’t be met, so you drive yourself mad working to make sure you are okay and that all your needs will be met. The problem with fear is that is has you doing all the right stuff for all the wrong reasons. Your core belief, when it is fear, is wrong and cannot help but bring more of what you don’t want. Before you can get your prayers answered, you have to rid yourself of fear. You must learn to recognize fear and challenge it with God’s Word. Otherwise, your mind won’t be in the right space to receive from God. That, my friends, is your part. You cannot expect God to give you roses while you are earnestly expecting weeds. God will not overstep your free will as much as you may wish otherwise. Obeying God is more properly obeying His command to fear not. You loose the grips of fear by letting God do His job while you do your job. God’s job is too hard for you to do and your job is yours and yours alone. Are things not working out for you? The likely cause is fear and you owe it to yourself to learn to overcome it. 

Being a child of the most High God should be the greatest thing ever. You have access to the greatest power in the universe and He exists for you. There is nothing God will not do for you. There is no challenge, no shortcoming, no former defeat, no sickness, no lack, nothing that can overcome the power of God in operation for you. Life does not work for anyone outside of Him and with Him you can only win. Is it working for you? I hope so and if not then get busy learning who God is and what He will do for you. It is there for you if you want it my friends. It is always there…

Just some good thoughts… 

Deceived…

On By Papa TonyIn Thought2 Comments

The problem with being deceived is that you do not know you have been deceived! At its core, in order for any deception to be effective, the person subject to the deception has to remain unaware of the deception. There’s little profit in informing someone they have been deceived because in their deception they usually don’t believe you anyway. So why bother discussing such a subject given that there’s so little return on your investment? The point is that the deception only lasts as long as there is no information exposing the deception for what it is. This is the exposure. Have you been deceived? Probably!

As I’ve penned many times before, life is spiritual at its base. Spiritual verities, though often referred to and lauded, are typically misunderstood. They are misunderstood because man needs a standard of truth outside of his own reasoning to separate truth from error. Absent any standard of truth, man is ripe for deception. God does not say that His people are destroyed because they have a spiritual enemy. He says His people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. It isn’t what man knows that defeats him, it is what he doesn’t know or worse what he thinks he knows but doesn’t really know that defeats him. Ignorance is never really bliss! No person that begins to dabble with illicit drugs, for example, perceives that there is something evil behind his pursuit. Instead he relies on his feelings and his newfound discovery of an exciting hidden world he wasn’t aware of before. In this new world there is promise of discovery and insight, indeed awareness he never experienced before. His experiences are generally positive and fun and certainly nothing to be concerned about. He assures himself he has got things under control and knows what he is doing, that is until that which he allows begins to show itself for what it really is and usually by then occurs too far down the road to escape. And like a fish trapped on the hook or a bird caught in a snare, by the time the trap becomes painfully apparent, it’s too late. This is the story of life lived by what appears as opposed to life lived by what is actually true.

It has been said that the secret to the adversary’s success is the secrecy of his moves. As a testimony, most folks don’t even believe there is an adversary. They brush it aside as religious fantasy, all the while being sorely pricked and assaulted by that same source. They fail to see that the life they live is influenced by two sources, one good and one evil. One source promises life, life lived more than abundantly in every regard. One source seeks only to steal, to kill and to destroy. One source encourages and enhances life. The other source diminishes and hinders and thwarts life. Every problem you have ever had, small and great, minor and major, inconsequential and catastrophic comes from one source. Every sickness, every disease, every life cut short, every life lived in bondage, every torture, every war came ultimately from that one evil source. I say that not as a criticism for those suffering or to blame those unjustly victimized and targeted, but as an expose’ and urgent appeal to see things for what they really are. If you are suffering, if you are having a tough time, if you are struggling in any capacity, the source of it is ultimately evil and it is not God’s will for you to live that way! There is a way out, a real source of escape, but it requires that you humble yourself to what God says is true instead of spending your life trying to figure it out on your own. The reason your spiritual opponent gains ascendancy in your life is because you remain ignorant of his devices.

All of us living in this world are subject to the same contest, the same fight. I am not exempt and you are not exempt. I lose the fight sometimes just like you lose the fight sometimes. I get deceived like you get deceived. Being a Christian, indeed a child of God, does not guarantee you will win the fight, ultimately yes, but not necessarily in the day by day. The only way to win the fight is to see through the deceptions and the only way to see through the deceptions is to learn what God says is true in opposition to what the enemy says or portrays as true. The systems of the world are set up and carefully schemed to convince you of things that aren’t true. It doesn’t matter how smart or confident you are, it matters what God says is true. In fact, your spiritual opponent is counting on your own ego to lead you astray. You cannot go by what you think or how you feel or what your parents may have taught you. You cannot depend upon your finite, limited five senses reasonings to discern truth from error. You cannot depend upon your life experiences or your previous successes or failures. You can only depend on one thing and that one thing is the truth of God’s Word.

God invented life and as such knows exactly how it can be lived. Thinking you have to try and just survive life or that life sucks for everyone or that is just the way life is, when it is not good, is to be deceived. With God’s love and help you can solve every problem that ever confronted you or portrayed itself as unsolvable. You can overcome any barrier, every hurdle, all obstacles that ever showed up in your path. You can be healed, restored, uplifted, rejuvenated, revitalized or whatever it is you need to be blessed and to be renewed in your one precious life. It’s not about quoting scriptures and claiming God’s goodness in your life. It’s about seeing and proving it to yourself. It’s about a real and true source of help and answers and solutions. Otherwise, why bother? Lord knows life is too short to live in perpetual defeat!

Have you been deceived in your life? Chances are if you aren’t living blessed and victorious, happy and excited about life, the answer is yes. Don’t stop there however. God is alive and well and chock full of the answers and solutions you need to win against your spiritual opponent. He is just waiting for you to ask.

Just some good thoughts…

I’ve Been Blind for Awhile Now…

On By Papa TonyIn Thought3 Comments

In life, just because you cannot see something does not mean it doesn’t exist. There are whole vistas of life and understanding to be discovered once you finally get the eyes to see. People trudge along their journeys lifeless and hopeless never quite discerning; never really seeing; never able to make sense of life with all of its varied and manifold twists and turns. And because they have not experienced it they don’t believe it and in not believing it, it escapes them. Often life is more about what has been obscured from your view than it is about seeing what is right there in front of you. Maybe there is more; much more, for you to learn still. Maybe you have been blind for awhile now…

In order to see what is available to see, your mind needs illumination. Darkness is always the absence of light. You will remain unable to see what direction you are traveling as long as you are traveling in the dark. To think you are already illuminated yet continue in futility is a sure indicator that you remain in the dark. To grossly assume that your limited life experience or past education has provided you with all that is necessary to understand life is to cut yourself off from the very essence and fiber of life. You do not know what you do not know. All of the natural, breathtaking reality of nature surrounding you serves to capture your attention. Whether it be the brilliance of a sunset or the intricate depth of a flower, all are designed to lead you to a question; the next question. That question urges you to the light. In the light life, real life, is found.

The reason people live their whole lives in darkness is because they do not know or understand the truth. They have unknowingly lived in darkness for so long that they cannot even consider that light exists. The glimpses of light they have experienced are quickly chased away by the darkness. They are led away unmercifully time and time again, herded with the masses into uncertainty and fear. They do not seek light because they have been sold on lies concerning the light. Religion, posing as the light, feeds them error upon error, producing only more darkness. Religion informs them of all the things they must do to find the light, then chastises them for being unable to find it, attributing it to sins or hidden faults preventing them from finding, seeing or experiencing. Every wrong path pursued, be it intentionally or out of ignorance, leads only to more darkness. Error works to harden the hearts of men, and once hardened, can no longer perceive. Darkness is a cruelty that can only be remedied by the light. Otherwise man remains blinded and unable to see clearly.

Light comes from God and from God alone. The light is found in the truth of God’s Word. Ask yourself how much of God’s Word you understand and you can accurately predict how much light you enjoy. Most people, sadly, know very little about God’s Word and worse much of it has been manipulated and distorted to be something it is not. In place of unparalleled freedom people are enslaved. Instead of being a source of encouragement and edification it is turned into a touch point for accusation and criticism. People falsely conclude that life with God is all about their behavior and what they are doing and shouldn’t, and aren’t doing, but should. They make God the morality police and as such avoid Him like the plague. I’m pretty certain God already knows how you are living, yet like any good parent worth his salt, loves you anyway. You pray for healing to a god that supposedly made you sick. You endure unspeakable tragedies and console yourself with some mysterious higher purpose. You daily assign evil to the only good and live in abject fear of destruction and loss. Brothers and sisters, you have got it all wrong. God is only good always! God will never do anything to harm you, no matter who you are and whatever you have done! That is love and that is light…

Once you begin to understand God’s Word and His purposes, you find the light for which you have been searching your whole life. God’s Word illuminates your path. The truth enables you to separate good from evil. God’s Word helps you to finally see all the things you have formerly been unable to see. Once able to see, you become free to experience real life. You find the love and the joy you have only heard of before. You discover the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding and in that peaceful state are able to quickly spot the imposters when they arrive. You no longer have to live your life terrified about what tomorrow may bring. When you have a need, God, not your human wisdom, meets it. If you are sick He will heal you. What you cannot understand He will explain to you. The parts of life that formerly enslaved you, will no longer hold you bound because of the light that lives within your soul. Have you been blind for awhile now? Well, now is the time to see…

If your heart is open and if you are willing to admit that maybe you don’t know, you can learn. You can both see and experience all that God intended for life to be. You can live on the high road. You can escape the clutches of religion and bondage and walk in complete and total freedom, never again held in by anyone or anything! You can discern error for what it is, error, promoted and espoused by evil to keep you away from the true light. God is not hiding any of this from you, but something else is and you owe it to yourself to figure that out. The life you are yearning for is yearning for you as well. Maybe you have been blind for awhile now. The truth will make you see…

Just some good thoughts…

 

Getting Out of Your Funk…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

If you’ve spent enough time dwelling on terra firma, you know that at certain times in your life you find yourself deeply entrenched in a funk; an americanism for feeling down in the dumps; which is related to a dutch word meaning a mental haze; and in German a word for gloomy or depressed. No matter the language or the usage, all you know is that it sucks. It sucks away your life and enthusiasm for living. It’s no happiness, no inspiration, nothing to look forward to, blah, blah, blah…Blah! But, there is something you can do about it! No matter how far down the rabbit hole you are, there is always a way out…

The place to begin when attempting to understand your feelings is first to examine your thoughts. Thoughts precede feelings. You don’t wake up in a bad mood. Your bad mood follows where your mind has been. Most folks pay very little attention to their thoughts. They sort of let them come and go like the weather. They consider themselves blessed when their mental environment is sunny and cursed when it is gloomy. The weather never stays gloomy and you don’t have to either. However, you do have to take some initiative with your thoughts. Letting your thoughts run makes you a victim to whatever circumstance is being engineered against you. Please read that sentence again! There are forces at work in the world plotting and scheming, persuading and manipulating to lead you and your thoughts to a certain place. You cannot see them, but instead only register their effects. They gain access to you by the thoughts you allow and encourage. They cannot overtake your freedom of will (at first), but they can get you off track; way off track! They begin by getting you to consider some negative aspect of life, then work out circumstances and situations that corroborate your wrong thinking.  And, if you remain stuck there long enough, you find yourself submerged and engulfed in heaviness from which it becomes very difficult to escape.

Life is spiritual in nature. It is not made up solely of the things which do appear. Ignorance concerning this will mire you in futility chasing your own tail, searching yourself and your own feelings for a remedy. Yet, you won’t find your solution in your own thoughts because the problem didn’t originate in your own thoughts. You are not fighting against yourself, though it may feel like it, you are fighting against a negative spiritual opponent working behind the scenes to control you. To defeat this spiritual foe (behind all of the misery of mankind) you have to learn how to compete spiritually. You have to learn how to fight back. And, amazingly, the arena of competition is in your mind. You see, it’s not as simple as deciding to be happy, though that is a good start. It is learning how and what to think and holding on to those thoughts though a monument of resistance be placed in front of you. If you find yourself today steeped in misery or unending gloominess, it is a good indicator that you are not winning the fight. You never want to get comfortable with those negative emotions or embrace them as some incredulously purport. Instead you fight them and you fight them and you fight them with spiritual words that negate and overpower their authority. Refusing to fight back only leads to defeat. Or worse, explaining away those insidious attacks with man’s wisdom will only serve to prolong the fight. You only win a fight by being stronger or tapping into something stronger than whomever or whatever you are fighting against. Evil has power but it is no match for God’s power.

It certainly doesn’t make for light conversation to learn about standing against evil. It probably won’t be found in the self-help section of the bookstore. Public opinion poo poo’s the notion of evil altogether or portrays it as a construct of man. The movie media displays it as frightening and ghastly. But, no matter the babblings of the naysayers, it does exist and it is your problem. God does not want you to be ignorant concerning evil, nor does He want you to be afraid of it. Instead He wants you understand what is actually going on so you can direct your efforts appropriately and with great and lasting impact. People are stuck today ensconced in difficulties because they no longer understand or acknowledge spiritual realties. When Jesus stood against all the forces of hell, he did so simply, though not easily, by quoting and cleaving to what God’s Word said. It is God’s Word quoted on the lips of believing that defeats the powers of darkness. It is the only way.

You can be delivered today, rescued, set free by learning how to tap into God’s power for your life. It doesn’t matter how low you may have sunk or how entrenched you may have become. All you need is a little humility and a willingness to learn about spiritual realities. You can escape any of the chains that have been binding you; break free from any bondage; break out of the bands and fetters that have been controlling your life. You can learn again how to live and enjoy and be blessed. You can return to happiness and joy and peace and love. You can escape from the prisons that have been holding you in. Stop thinking that something is wrong with you or that you are somehow deserving of the misery you have been living. Stop settling for less than the best in your life. You don’t need more medicine or more treatment or more of the expertise of men. You need God and His Word.

Finding yourself in a deep funk; down in the dumps; in a mental haze; gloomy and depressed is a horrible way to experience life and you do not have to live that way. There are answers and solutions for any malady that challenges your life. Won’t you be willing to find your way out of your funk? I sure hope so…

Just some good thoughts…

 

Solve Your Anxiety Issues Already…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

UnknownLiving in the world today, you have likely been convinced that it is perfectly normal to have anxiety and that it is actually a natural part of life. And, although our overtly negative society has normalized and rationalized the experience, it is completely unnatural and is something you should seek to exterminate each and every time it encroaches on your life. Imagine that something or someone greater than yourself would purposefully design life to be an overly anxious affair and leave you no recourse in overcoming its daily onslaughts and attacks. Well, imagine no further because it simply aint true. Learn to rid yourself of any and all anxiety, code name vague fear, secret name, defeat!

Growing up as a particularly scary individual, I completely acclimatized myself to anxiety and couldn’t have even comprehended what it meant to have true peace. I, like you I suppose, found methods to cope, beginning with whistling, humming and chewing gum as a child, graduating up to self-medicating and other escape seeking behaviors as a young adult. In short, I was running from that feeling; that apprehensive, something is going to go wrong or something is going to get me or what if I end up here or there or some other undesirable destination, feeling… It was never clear enough for me to wrap my mind around it, but it was distinct enough to take away my rest. Then, right in the midst of my ego-driven, perpetual desire to work it out on my own, a nice guy named Jon taught me about God, loved me and introduced me to a class called Power For Abundant Living that changed my life forever.

PFAL, as we affectionately called it, taught me about my number one enemy, fear and how to overcome it with God’s Word. The class showed me the source of fear and anxiety and that it certainly wasn’t something I should embrace or learn to accept in my life. It taught me that I needed to control my thoughts and maybe for the first time in my life, learn how to think properly. And the result was one of the most unusual, odd things I had ever experienced in my life. Suddenly, unexpectedly, my heart was completely at rest and I was experiencing true peace, the kind that surpasses understanding. Wow! There is truly nothing like it in the world. It is the absence of all conflict. It is knowing you have absolutely nothing to fear in any capacity, in any way. It is how human beings were intended to live. In fact, we were supposed to get so accustomed to the peace we enjoyed that any threat to it or any disturbance was immediately detected, so we could act, so we could win.

But sadly, that is not how life works for most people. We live our lives pushed from pillar to post, hurried, exhausted, overworked, overtaxed with outrageous expectations for ourselves that we foolishly call success. Meanwhile our day collapses if we eat a donut for breakfast or miss morning meditations by 6 minutes or aren’t earning six-figure salaries by the time we are 28. There’s nothing wrong with self-improvement but is it ourselves we are improving or some fictitious version of ourselves we got from the Kardashians or Instagram or some other well-known spokesperson for society? We can’t even sit down in the evening to relax without some “don’t waste time” expectation nagging us to get back up. We’ve got work to do, by God, and if we don’t get it all done now some almighty total collapse is looming on the horizon! We work full-time, have work that needs to be accomplished at home after work and work to be handled on the weekend. If we stay in our PJ’s all day on Sunday we feel terrible because we’ve lost valuable yardage in the race of the rats! And you know why we are killing ourselves to get it all done? Because we are afraid! Because we think we must carry the entire load of living on our own backs and every step missed has the potential to spiral our lives into failure! We are party of the first part, party of the second part and party of every damn part in between! We think we are God Himself but instead of enjoying love and peace we are chock full of anxiety! It’s no wonder folks…

Philosophize, self-aggrandize, get more education, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, seek more opinions, more Google searches or more WebMD, you aint going to rid yourself of this persistent malady on your own. You need spiritual truth to combat the abundance of spiritual error. You need to finally concede that God never intended for you to figure it all out for yourself. He never wanted you to drive yourself into a frazzle making sure things always worked out. He only wanted to be party of the first part ensuring all of your second and third part parties worked out. If you’re honest, your anxiety is always related to some fear you have about something that you need or might need in the future. Or, your anxiety is based on some unchangeable, unrepairable mistake from your past that only lives on in your mind and not in actual reality. In both cases you are playing on an away field you cannot prevail on because neither time period presently exists. Anxiety, solely based on the present circumstances, prompts you to make changes, which you are fully able to do. Now, you’re playing at home!

Do yourself a solid and stop being so smart. Accept your limitations like children do and simply ask for what you need. Getting your needs met may involve some work, but good old-fashioned work never made anybody anxious. Cease from trying to carry a world of concerns you were never meant to carry. Stop pretending to be God minus all of the infinite spiritual power and intelligence and ability! In fact, stop pretending to be okay and blowing past that anxiety as if its normal, choosing to use your mouth to ask for assistance instead of using your mouth to ingest or swallow or inhale something to make you feel a little better. You, my friend, owe yourself and your Creator that much, don’t you think?

Just say no to anxiety with just some good thoughts…

 

 

 

 

 

Hurt Hearts Hurt Humans… Healed Hearts Heal Humans!

On By Papa TonyIn Thought2 Comments

broken_heart_8220916All us good folk living our lives the best we can have one thing in common. We’re all carrying around some bullshit we need to get rid of! We have all been hurt. We have all been mistreated. We have all made mistakes; lots and lots of them (multiplied by our current age). We were brought up by parents who made mistakes. They were raised by people who made mistakes. Our teachers taught us things that weren’t true. Employers may have used us. Others abused us. And, while we may not be psychopaths, we are all damaged goods in some capacity. We are imperfect creatures in an imperfect world living among other imperfect creatures. And sadly, knowing the futility and insanity of our own thoughts at times, we insist on demanding from others that which we don’t even get from ourselves. Hurt hearts can only hurt other people.

If you will really think it through, none of us want to do things that are wrong or hurtful. None of us. But our pain, our unresolved issues really aren’t centered on others, they are centered on ourselves. Our frailties, our weaknesses, our issues pave the way for the foolish things we do. We say horrible things to people not with intent to hurt them, but to salve our own wounds. We gash and tear and bash other people because we are gashed and torn and bashed ourselves. Couples fight, inflicting verbal wounds on one another’s hearts in a misguided attempt to protect their own hearts. Wounded hearts wound other’s hearts.

Oh how compassionate we would become if we ever got past our own bullshit long enough to see and feel the other person. But, we cannot see past the bleeding wounds of our own souls. A compassionate heart is one that is completely and thoroughly in touch with its own absurdity and as such is willing to easily look past the absurdity in another. A person with a compassionate heart forgives freely because they remember how and for what God has forgiven them. People often compliment me personally on how non-judgmental I am, never considering the heavy judgments I cast on myself. A compassionate heart helps people heal.

In order for people to actually get past their baggage and their bondage and their bullshit, they have to be made whole. But, they can’t be made whole without God. All the counseling and positive thinking and affirmations in the world can’t repair the breach because the real source of the breach is always spiritual; a spiritual enemy, ever veiled from view, yet ultimately behind both the suffering we experience and the suffering we inflict. All healing is first spiritual as all pain is first spiritual.

There but for the grace and mostly mercy of God, go I. We are all the same. We all have hopes and aspirations and dreams. We all endure fears and pain and suffering. We all need love, compassion and understanding. We’ve all hurt and damaged and messed others up. We’re in this boat together and though it appears others are awful and we are saints, wrong is still wrong is still wrong. The damage caused by the jaded heart is the same as the hurt caused by the gentle heart. Our life’s work is not to exhaust ourselves in improving ourselves but rather to expend ourselves getting to know and understand the One that heals us.

How does God heal our hearts? If anyone has the right and authority to judge us, it would certainly be Him. But, as One not subjected to the deception of evil, He heals not by pointing out our absurdities and faults; not by seeking to punish our foolishness and frailty, but by knowing who we really are and remaining faithful to treat us in that light. He sees behind the smoke screens and facades and clearly discerns what got us; why it got us; and how the heck He can get us out of it. With Him we can only succeed and without Him we can only fail. Life is too big; too tricky; too perilous to figure out this thing on our own. God heals hearts and healed hearts help others heal.

Once God heals our situations spiritually and trust me, He does, it’s still up to us to put it on in our minds. And though our earthly minds will never reach His perfection, we can still get so repaired of a lifetime of bullshit that we can actually heal. We can become so blessed, so forgiven and encouraged that we become a source of valuable help to others. We have no difficulty looking past the so-called egregious errors of other people because we finally understand why. And once you know why, you never have trouble with the things people have done. Sure some things are worse than others, but underneath it all lies a human just like you. Healed people forgive others.

Simple logic tells you that a broken machine doesn’t work like it should. When it finally blows up and breaks stuff, you get why it damaged things and instead of blaming and accusing and assaulting it, you seek to get it repaired. Humans are no different. We may have free-will and minds and thoughts and decision-making ability, but when we break down we tear stuff up. The solution is therefore to help it (them) get repaired. A child, guilt ridden for the wrong he did doesn’t need a lecture, he needs forgiveness and an approving, unconditional loving response. That’s what God gives you. That’s what you give to others. A healed heart sets people free!

We find ourselves all lined up in the same boat on a similar journey. Don’t allow the wrongs you have suffered to make you a cause in the suffering of others. Instead accept and love yourself for all the foolishness that you are and be grateful for your perfect God that saves you and saves us all! Healed hearts love the unlovable until they become lovable too.

Just some good, healing thoughts…