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Shipwrecks
Grief is a stormy thing. You’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.
What you didn't notice along this wavy ride, was who was right by your side, who actually ensured your survival, Jesus. In our darkest hours, He is there and calms the waters so that we never drown.
Mark 4: 37-39 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm
Actual Freedom
The Constitution offers no restraints on religious beliefs. Congress can make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
The NC Declaration of Rights regarding religious freedom says no human authority, in any case whatever, shall violate or interfere with the freedom of conscience.
If you are told to come to court over a “crime” in which no one is harmed, you can simply say your religion doesn’t allow you to accept jurisdiction when no one is harmed, and there is no witness to claim damage.
You have freedom to live before God as you wish, yet religious leaders come forward and convince you that you must vote. In that teaching, they hijack your freedom. You become convinced that you can only be free if you can get others to believe as you.
2Peter 2:19: “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved”.
The freedom you already have in the world is taken away by convincing you that you can only work through government. Walk into court and listen to the bailiff declare that the courts are under God, and let them convince you that you must obey. While promising us liberty, we are enslaved.
Render Unto Ceasar.
“Render to Caesar”. I actually hear professing christians tell me I’m supposed to pay taxes because Jesus said to render unto Caesar. For the hundredth time, Jesus was NOT telling us to pay taxes. Just the opposite, in fact.
The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus. They asked if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. Not by Caesar’s law, which was a no brainer, but by God’s law.
In the crowd were Sanhedrin priests and Roman soldiers. If Jesus answered yes, he would be in trouble with the Sanhedrin. If he said no, the Roman soldiers had him.
Jesus used the Jewish technique of meeting a question with a question.
He asked for a coin and showed it to the crowd. Then he asked the Pharisees, “whose image is on this coin?”.
The Pharisees answered “Caesar’s”.
With that answer, the Roman soldiers began to lose interest. They knew nothing of God’s law, and didn’t care. Jesus’s next answer satisfied them “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, render unto God that which is God’s “.
The Roman soldiers may have walked away. Jesus had satisfied their curiosity.
But the Pharisees knew better. When Jesus referred to “image”, they knew he was referring to the second commandment, which said they were NOT to bow down or serve any image of any kind for any reason”.
Jesus had answered them correctly, and they knew it. No, they were NOT to pay taxes to Caesar. It was NOT lawful.
They didn’t disagree, because any disagreement would put them in the same hot water they tried to boil for Jesus. They held their silence as he walked away.
By that same token today, we bow and serve Federal Reserve notes, which are nothing more than images on paper. We create the value because we bow down and seve images that are designed to make the rich even richer.
We even fight and die for these worthless images because they say “In God we trust”.
SCOTUS has ruled that this statement means nothing. It’s a kind of ritual decoration. We don’t really trust in God. We trust in worthless pieces of paper with images of dead presidents, controlled by a banking cartel designed for the rich.
Christianity bows and serves this bullcrap😡
I AM
Judaism rejects Jesus for the important reason that he never fulfilled the prophecy of what the messiah was supposed to do. The messiah was to establish a kingdom of God on earth. The messiah would establish his kingdom in Jerusalem and God’s law would be proclaimed to the world.
Jesus didn’t do it. Like hundreds of others, he was crucified as a traitor to Rome.
If you read Jesus’s teachings, he could never have done what the Jews expected him to do. Turn the other cheek, love those that hate you, bless those that curse you, pray for those that persecute you.
These are not methods for achieving world rule. If everybody really lived that way, perhaps we could have the kingdom of God, but we know that ain’t gonna happen.
In Matthew 24, Jesus warned against would be messiahs and those who would come in his name. He said not to believe any of them.
But that’s human nature. We seek a leader. We hope for someone to present that image we can trust to make the world better. The very thing our nature cries out to do is just what Jesus said don’t do. Don’t look for such leaders. Don’t jump on the bandwagon with friends and family. Instead, come ye out and be a separate people. Many Jews understand this. That’s part of the reason they oppose Zionism. It’s too easy to look for a strong leader to deliver us from bondage. The nearly impossible part is to walk away from the crowd and live by truth, especially in a world where truth was dismissed centuries ago.
We’re told to join this, join that, change the world by group force against group force. What you have done by that method, as Jesus said in Matthew 23:15, is to make converts twofold more a child of hell than yourself.
American founders knew that. All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. No group, no government, no body of men could violate or interfere with those rights.
When Moses was about to face the Pharaoh, he asked God, “Who shall I say sent me?”
God answered “I AM. Tell them I AM sent you”.
I am. I exist. I need no one’s permission to claim it. Good or bad, right or wrong, if I harm no other, you have no power over me.
Thanking God
• Thank, God, for what He has done for you. Don't wait to see the results you want or to receive rewards you'd like. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until you feel better or until things look better. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until people say they are sorry or until they stop doing what they’re doing. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until the pain your body disappears. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until your financial situation is better. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until your world is quiet and peaceful. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until you get the job you want or the promotion you'd like.Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until you understand every situation and experience in your life that has caused your pain or grief. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until the journey gets easier or the challenges are removed. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Thank Him because you are alive.
• Thank Him because you made it through another day.
• Thank Him because you have walked around difficult obstacles.
• Thank Him because you have the ability and the opportunity to do more and to do better.
• Thank Him because He has never given up on you.
Are you already in our group with us? If you aren't you should be. Fun, encouragement and giveaways: CLICK HERE
• Don't wait until you feel better or until things look better. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until people say they are sorry or until they stop doing what they’re doing. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until the pain your body disappears. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until your financial situation is better. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until your world is quiet and peaceful. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until you get the job you want or the promotion you'd like.Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until you understand every situation and experience in your life that has caused your pain or grief. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Don't wait until the journey gets easier or the challenges are removed. Start thanking Him right now😍
• Thank Him because you are alive.
• Thank Him because you made it through another day.
• Thank Him because you have walked around difficult obstacles.
• Thank Him because you have the ability and the opportunity to do more and to do better.
• Thank Him because He has never given up on you.
God is so good – in so many ways – all the time.
The Struggle
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared; he sat and watched the butterfly for a few hours as it struggled to free its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It looked to him as though it had gotten as far as it could and it couldn't get any farther.
Then the man decided he would help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would grow and be able to support the body, and fly, in time.
But none of that happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were nature's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If nature allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been.
And we could never fly...
Psalm 27:14 Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
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