When I am NOT thinking straight...

One good thing about all the mind-emotion exercises I have done before, it gives me a very good sense of when I am not thinking straight. And at such moments I am able to look at myself as an outsider and evaluate my own words and actions.

Very useful!

Right now I am feeling angry, resentful and frustrated. And though it is really tempting to just use all of that as a justification to do some wrong stuff (as Kent Henry once said, "God, just give me 5 minutes in the flesh, just 5 minutes, I'll...") I am working really hard to not let that happen.

Some things that  help keep me from flying off the handle more often:

Colossians 3:1-4 (NIV) - Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

We have to set our hearts and minds on things above in order to live in the reality of the new birth, the new life that is ours in Christ Jesus. Don't expect God to just zap you into the new life, and hope that you will just wake up the next morning with a renewed mind and a pure heart.

Doesn't happen that way!

We have to deliberately set your mind on heavenly matters. One simple and practical way to do that: take time out to read the Scriptures aloud. If you read silently your mind might drift, but when you read the Bible aloud, and take a few times through the same passage, you will end up giving the Word of God some attention. Our fleshly nature rebels against the discipline, but since when did living by the flesh give us spiritual results?

How about the heart? When we set our hearts on things above, that means we surrender the right for our emotions to run rampant. People tend to go into extremes. They either let their emotions run amok and cause them to say and do stupid things, or they are so afraid of their own emotions that they are not able to acknowledge them or face up to them. When we set our hearts on things above, we choose to value heavenly things. And also we find that the things of the earth will lose their hold over our minds and emotions.

Psalm 73: 25-26 (NIV) - Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

How do we get to that point? By entering the sanctuary of God, spending time in his presence (Psalm 73:17).

Colossians 3:5-10 (NIV) - Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

Many people want to put to death what belongs to the carnal nature. Sin loses its appeal to the child of God over time. But few of them understand that God does not intend for us to start at this. We cannot put to death what belongs to the carnal nature until we first set our hearts and minds on things above. God has a pattern, a divine template for holiness for us to follow. We cannot expect God's kind of results if we do not submit ourselves to doing things his way, right? And even Paul cannot let go of the topic. When he tells us not to lie to each other, it is based on our status as born-again children of God. He cannot drop the topic.

Obviously it must be very important!

Colossians 3:11-14 (NIV) -  Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

We are God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved. If you have difficulty walking right in the Kingdom of God, that is because you have forgotten this: We are God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved. Take a few minutes right now and really speak it to your soul. Say "God has chosen me, I am holy and dearly loved!" Say it until you actually start to believe it...

Many of us feel a strong resistance to saying that, because of our lives. We know we aren't the sort of people we ought to be, as children of God. We know God is compassionate, but we often aren't. We know God is kind, but we often aren't. We know God is patient, but we often aren't.

But it is okay!

Take those virtues and put them on as clothes. When we begin, they are NOT a part of us. Come on, no one expects you to be your shirt, right? Likewise we need not expect ourselves to be compassionate and kind. We just need to put them on as clothes, something we wear for the sake of spiritual decency and to cover our flesh

Important: all this comes AFTER verse 1-4. We can do all this only AFTER we have set our hearts and minds on things above. Respect the divine order God has set. If we don't do what comes first, we can NOT do what comes after. We may be able to keep it up through sheer will-power, but after months of not getting enough sleep, or yet another crisis or disappointment, your will-power will run out.

That's when the flesh shows!

So if you want to be able to live right even when you can't think straight (like me right now), make the time and effort to set your heart and mind right. Don't wait till crisis hits, usually by then it is too late. Nobody starts building the foundations in the midst of the storm, not wise!

And if you want some accountablity in your Scripture time, do consider joining me at my Faceboook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/approved.workmen/ which I also call 2 Tim 2:15. You will see where I am in my Bible-reading plan for this year, as well as any immediate thoughts that are too big for Twitter and too small for a proper blogpost. Commit yourself to posting up what you have read from the Bible, and you will find that you do better at keeping up with it.

OK, that's it for now. I have typed more than usual (because I am too tired to edit properly) but I just want to get it all off my chest. Hope my ranting is of some help to you in some way.

Be blessed!

2013 Bible Group

Hi, everyone!

 

I mentioned a few months back that I would start a Facebook group for those of us who want to be held accountable for our feeding and study of the Bible. OK, I FINALLY got it done. I call it 2 Tim 2:15 group...

 

2 Timothy 2:15 (ESV) - Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

and you can find it here at https://www.facebook.com/groups/approved.workmen/ (copy and paste the url if you can't click it via your email).

 

So head over to that Facebook Group and join in. Start posting up the passages and chapters of the Bible you have read that day, and let us spur each other on!

 

Again, the group is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/approved.workmen/

Hope to see you there!

Quarrels Late At Night

(Personal Blog Post - modified from my Facebook post)

‎1.30 a.m., and there was loud quarreling from the void deck area below my flat.

In the past I would have been irritated, judgemental or amused. Now I find myself sad. Especially over the past 7 years or so I've learned firsthand what it is like to face provocation by a fool, what the Bible says is a heavier burden than stone or sand. 

Proverbs 27:3 (NIV) - Stone is heavy and sand a burden, but provocation by a fool is heavier than both.

It is heartbreaking to realize that someone you geniunely want to resolve conflict with delights in prolonging the strife. You wonder why you hold back the insults and barbs while the other person doesn't, in fact, delights in giving you a double portion...

Psalm 120:6-7 (NIV) -  Too long have I lived among those who hate peace.
I am a man of peace; but when I speak, they are for war.

So now my heart goes out to those who have to live with contentious people in their lives, the agents of strife who delight in war when others desire peace. Is there a way out? The Bible says:

Psalm 37:37 (NIV) - Consider the blameless, observe the upright; there is a future for the man of peace.

God, bring me to that future you have prepared for me, and not me only, but also those who love peace!

On My Facebook Wall

I received this message on my Facebook wall.

"Thank you so much for your help in music ministry! People have NO idea how taxing being a Worship Pastor is, and your instruction makes it soo much easier! I have tried some of your techniques, and they REALLY do work...talk about a move from God! May God continue to bless your ministry as well as your instruction! Blessings!"

Min. Warren Gilmore
Worship Pastor
Urban Outreach
East St. Louis, IL USA

One thing about Warren, he isn't a newbie to worship ministry or leading worship. If you check out his Youtube videos you can see that he is a fantastic singer and musician. On top of that, he can do something I cannot do, choir arrangements.

In other words, he is someone I would not presume to teach. He's got the charisma, music skill and enough experience in the things of God to make things work even if everything else goes wrong. Telling someone like him that I've got an easier way for him to get results in worship ministry is like approaching a billionaire to tell him you've got ways for him to save money in his day-to-day expenses. He can make it easily without my advice, why should he take it?

But he did, and even more than that, he was kind enough to tell me about how my Invisible Worship Musician has helped him. And that humbles me deeply.

This incident drives home to me a lesson about what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:10.

1 Cor 15:10 (NIV) - But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

This verse summarizes Paul's ministry – it began with a touch from God, Paul responded with all that he could humanly do ("I worked harder than all of them"), and yet realizes that even that was from God ("the grace of God that was with me").

And that also describes where I am now. I began my ministry with a touch from God (all the insights and experiences I detailed in Invisible Worship Musician) and responded with all I could humanly do (write the book, set up the site and do marketing work). Some people have felt my promotional work was too extreme, that I was too boastful about my abilities and that if I truly trusted God I would have toned down on my marketing efforts and spend my time praying instead.

You can guess that I didn't pay much attention to those people!

(marketing for Christians, a topic for another blog post?)

And Warren's post on my Facebook wall strongly reminded me that ultimately even the best of my natural efforts are still God working in me. If what I have can be a blessing even to someone like him, then it really must have come from God.

Now I find myself in a funny position. I used to find Christians who deflected praise cheesy. Do you know what I am talking about? I'm talking about those who, when you affirm them in some way or other ("Hey, you played the drums really well today!"), would say things like "All glory to God, it's all his grace". I thought there was something wrong with how they seemed unwilling to acknowledge that they put in effort and made themselves available to God to be used by him to bless his people.

But that is where I am now. All the human efforts I have put in (and which I used to be proud of) just look so lame now compared to what God did through it. So now I have to say, like those I found cheesy, that it's really God's grace working through me.

The point of what I am sharing is this:

There are believers who spend their time talking about God working through them, but they so busy waiting for God to zap them into inspired action and they miss the little steps they can take right now to become the right person in the right place for God to use for a supernatural work. Why? Because they don't see God working through the ordinary, the unexciting and the un-glamorous in their lives.

There are others who get so caught up with the human efforts that they even resort to methods they would be ashamed to acknowledge. One Christian marketer I know used an automatic article spinner to produce many different versions of an article he wrote and submitted those mass-generated articles to many sites to get Google's attention. The problem is, those articles ended up un-readable, with poor choices of synonyms, and therefore of no help to people reading them. And he did all this for the sake of tricking Google's search engines.

It is so difficult to navigate through life, to find that right balance where we labour as unto the LORD and yet fully trust him to work in us, through us and for us. So if you know God has brought you to that point, rejoice in him! And then expect that he will still have some more growing for you to do. And you disagree with what I write here, that's OK too. I'm still growing in the Lord myself, and if I am wrong it's only a matter of time before God will teach and convict me about it. I'm sure of that!

Be blessed, everyone!


P.S. Do take some time to enjoy the Youtube videos of Minister Warren Gilmore I find them very inspiring!