Absolute's? Absolutely!!!

          Being human is a tough job.  Of course there are the one percent of humanity who control roughly 90% of its wealth. They are the humans who live in opulence, luxury and carelessness. The other side of the spectrum is human, abject poverty coupled with suffering. Why does one get to live so richly and the other so desperately?
         That is a question that cannot be answered without investigation. We know when a child turns five, they can easily recognize a "poor" man and a "rich" man. When a preteen comes to pass puberty, they long for riches and the life of the jet set because they SEE what they do not have. By the time we are thrust into college learning or the real world of labor, we see with what difficulty riches are gained and how we have to pay out to survive. We settle into normality with perhaps a feeling of "is this all there is?". We grow up, we strive, struggle through challenges, bill paying, physical ailments, deaths of friends and family. All the while we start to doubt that this life is worth living or that to invest too much is a waste of time and we give up because quitting is easier than understanding it all. Life is just a dealt hand of cards and you just accept what you are given and then its over, correct?
       No. It is not correct.  We are not simple animals (yes I know how complex animals are, but I have never seen a chimpanzee type a dictionary, let alone question why they "are") we are the "thinkers". While we have dominion over the animal world for the most part, they are not like us. We ARE different. We live a life that creates. It pulses, it interacts, it challenges, it harms, it blesses and a thousand other attributes lie in the life of a human. We WONDER about the episodes of life and what their meaning is. We struggle to find understanding. We want to KNOW why, how, when, who and where. Science which is a marvel and wonderful for us to have has not yet proven that the animal or natural world has any biological entity outside the human race that has posed questions, wondered, pondered, investigated or debated its existence.
      You see we are the ones who must ask "what is my purpose in this life?". We add "What happens when this life is over?" We aregue, debate and contend the conclusions about the truth of the whole matter. We seek the facts, look for the evidence, listen to others, listen to our inside voice and we either stay awash in confusion by it all, or we set our mind on the rock, solid truth.
      What is truth? We find truth in what IS and what CONTINUES and what WAS. It is an ABSOLUTE. That means, an unchanging point of reference. Dr. Ravi Zacharias uses this illustration. Have you ever been at a stoplight and been distracted, looked up and on your side another car is moving forward? You don't know if it is you or them, so you press your brake pedal harder. The light is still red, they are moving, you are still not sure so what do you do? you look for a FIXED object. A tree, a building. It is ONLY when you affirm that point of reference and its permanence that you can realize that you are the one who is NOT moving. The truth today given by humanistic, secular and non religious scholars is that it all MOVES. You cannot TRUST anything, its all relative or changing. Just by stating this we know that is NOT TRUE.
       We could call truth the "absolute". There are absolutes. Here on earth if you drop a plate, it will fall until it meets its physically impassible barrier and gravity will hold it there, until a greater force compels it into a different direction. In finance, if you borrow more than you make you will eventually be broken and without commerical power. In philosophy you cannot contradict what is incontradictable. In engineering, you cannot overstress steel when building a bridge by passing the time tested formula for length and weight. In hydrodynamics, free flowing water will find its own level. In electricity, touching a live and ground wire will complete a circuit and what is in between will flow current. That is absolute, it happens everytime and will never be interrupted. If we do not maintain our cars, they will degrade. Absolutes are all around us, yet the philisophical, scientific, skeptics and detractors all contradict absolutes. Are there new truths and absolutes we have not found yet? YES and again I scream "YES!!", however that does not erase or nullify the past absolutes.
        If you follow this school you are bankrupt of hope. ABSOLUTES give hope. If I negate and deny that there is a GOD, life is MEANINGLESS and is no value in running life to its full course. I will seek out meaning because it is inherent in my mind, just as it is in your mind. I will choose to seek meaning, absolutes and hope, or I will believe the humanistic school and lead myself to drink, drugs, hobby, denial, outrage towards the absolutists (Christians and honest science) and ultimately the darkness of a death with the UNKNOWN on the other side. You cannot erase GOD. You cannot erase the historians of Greece, Rome and four other countries who attested to CHRIST being crucified. What is the evidence for the other prophets? Did they become the worlds biggest religion? Of course there are blemishes on the human side of it, but to be the worlds fastest growing, most influential and godly, surely shows the testimonies were true.  
         We live in an age where mankind is hanging his/her spiritual coat on a trembling nail called pride. The prideful DENY possibility. They deny facts, they deny truth, they lie, cheat, steal and underhandedly act in order to gain notariety, control over people and huge amounts of wealth. Pride is the only thing that is being presented to destroy the fact of Christianity.  It was pride that shot lucifer from heaven down to this earth. It was pride that turned Adam and Eve from in God's presence to the lowly place of being an eternal soul, in a physical (not glorified body), out of God's presence, living under the law because they chose it, beings. From the exit away from Eden until now pride has shook its finger in the face of absolutes and said "I REFUSE to acknowlege absolutes". Pride says "That is the unchangeable truth, but I will not be moved outside of my own thinking". How many lives have been taken, how many mistakes, misjudgements, maimings, eletrocutions, falls, accidental deaths have occurred because of pride? How many living, human babies have been murdered in the womb because of pride (saving face)?". How many problems have we brought into our own lives, in SPITE of our elders telling us "you can't avoid the effect of your causes"? We had to learn for ourselves, but somewhere along the years in this life we conclude that we are no longer going to excuse the ABSOLUTES/TRUTHS by trusting in our PRIDE, which really are feelings. What if we continued on with trusting feelings only? Could we trust the whole of our communities and our professionals in dire and emergency circumstances? I would like to see hwo many of you would fly airlines with pilots who relied on their feelings instead of their fully working gauges. "I know the altimeter says we are two thousand feet above ground, but I feel like we are way higher than that and want to drop down ten thousand feet". How about a surgeon? Auto mechanic? Dentist? Electrical worker? Pride has no place in the world of truth/absolutes.
          I remember the first time I questioned God. While I was away from the faith of Christianity I heard many outrageous theories. I took it all in. All religions, all faiths but they did not have the ABSOLUTES/TRUTHS that rang true in my mind. I was given a mind to THINK, a heart to create, correct and move forward and a soul to seek my maker. There is only ONE absolute that has answered the questions, given the understanding and explained why it is the way it is. That is the truth of the bible. If someone has taken away books of it, changed it, reintroduced it wrongly but I have kept seeking the truth and am uncovering it day by day as an honest student; I can ABSOLUTELY lean on the truths I have found. I do know that with Jesus Christ operating on men without corruption and sincerity in their hearts my world is a better world. I also know that corrupted Chrstianity  and untruths and the philosophy of relative truth or meaninglessness has caused more deaths than any Chrsitian war ever fought. There is too much truth to be found and so little variance to wade through to make the excuse that one has given up on finding the absolute truth. It can be found, it HAS BEEN Found and it WILL BE Found from here to eternity. For someone to say all truth is corrupted and we can believe nothing and there are no absolutes is to be a candle shining on the birthday cake saying "I have no light, there is no party and I will not be blown out, this is all imagined". 
          You must either use evidence based on the knowlege you seek out, or you have to push the queries aside and live without those answers. . It is supposed that the spiritual desert is a place each human passes through. That is where your heart tests the absolutes. Faith in those absolutes found, is a life with a clear conscience, understanding and moving forward into knowing exist. No abolutes is a sloop in a squall. Tossed to and fro, never knowing, always denying. How long will  a life lose itself when there is no concrete path laid out, instead of a thickly underbrush filled jungle fought through?
            Use your thinker, if you fall down, its going to hurt....to a certain degree.

Winter blah's

      It's here and we are in the thick of it. The middle of winter. Bland gray skies fill the midwest. Frigid cold, snow and then warmth and slush, melting, freezing cycle on and off. One psychologist figured out that January 24th is the most depressing day of the year. You and I can be sold on that. We can choose to believe that its a rotten time of year. We can choose to believe anything we are told. We could also take a fresh view which we have a biblical example of. The Apostle Peter, who the author believes is his kindred spirit, was going back to "law keeping" by eating under old testament laws. This would be the same to us as saying "I have heard an Ipod, but I like wax phonographs, so that is what I am going to do". WHAT!!! Why would you change your mind to use an antiquated product? Peter was under the tutelage of Jesus himself who despised law keeping as evidenced by his laser pointed indictments towards the Pharisees and scribes (televangelists and lawyers....lol). It was SLAVERY and ever increasing sinfulness at the hands of over 5 thousand laws. Christ fulfilled the law, thereby having the authority to set it aside to make his prophesied kingdom and new law the better way. Peter, siding with the law keepers again needed a very poignant lesson to foment correction.
        One night Peter had a dream. A sheet was let down and all kinds of animals were let down. God said "rise, kill and eat". Peter must have went into near cardiac arrest. "FORBID it Lord!!! it is unclean". God replied "Do not call unclean what I have made clean". Peter underwent a thought change process. The Greek word was "Meta Noeo" or the "changing of the mind".
          Many of you may not know about your conscious and unconscious mind. One is awake and making decisions. The other is sleeping, while soaking up everything while awake and asleep. Many things bombard us day after day. During our awake state we filter information according to our values. When we are watching TV or sleeping or not filtering that information; it all becomes a file in our brain. "You can't do that!"....."We don't have any money for that!"...."No jobs on market"....."Many people fail", it goes on and on. You can choose to believe that, or you can choose not to believe that. You must understand things that are offered for learning have been done by others before. An old movie line stands out. It says "What one man can do, ANOTHER CAN DO!". That's right. Do you want to be an ace mechanic? Then DO IT. I want to eventually be an artist, who restores old cars. That is happening. I quote Solomon; "So as a man thinketh so shall he become". Do you dwell on the gray skies and neglect work, projects and hobbies because of the winter blah's? You had better change your mind.

He must become greater, I must become less

      John 3:30. I was sitting in class before our instructor came in, it must have been about half way through getting my bachelors degree in bible. It was very cold outside and about an inch and half of snow put the makeup on the face of the foothills in the Rockies. My best friend at school, Jeff Cobb was setting up his laptop next to me. He finished up and said "check this verse out", spread open his notebook and John 3:30 stood on its own.
      What you are seeing in the title is not some ranting of a lunatic that followed a lunatic. It is a spiritual LAW. John was not a blind follower. From what we know, he was monied. He may not have had fame, but he had hired servants. This was a rarity in that time. We don't know John's nationality, but we do know he was from a fishing village on the shores of the Galilee. At this time the "well to do" were more esoteric in their spirituality. There were myriad gods to follow. Household idols, strange and difficult practices were seen all the time. What made John, an esoteric, monied citizen of Galilee follow Yeshua?
       Just like all of us, there must have been a nagging question rumbling in his soul. There must have been a chasm between knowing this physical world and wetting your toes in the spiritual. John must have been searching. What great providence John had to cross paths with the son of God. A rod straight, sold out on principle, righteous to the core man/God who unravelled the mystery of what God really wants from us.
        Well then, what is the the apostle saying here? He is telling us "If you really want to know power in your life, take this ADVICE!!!". This is one of the verses we can let stand on its own. John was also saying "If you increase your knowledge and wisdom given from above and you grind off the flesh thinking, instinctual human side of yourself, you will surely gain life here and heaven afterwards!".
          Why can I say that? Because when it is read, repeated, understood and implemented into this life it improves. Not that you will become anymore famous, wealthy or have station above others like a noble, but because you will see the world and what's on the other side of this life with the prime reason for the stars and galaxies eyes. No more wondering what blindsides you, no wondering why you have long and taxing challenges. No more fear about what tomorrow brings, no anxiousness about what may or may not happen. You will fill yourself with Godly confidence and boldness. The inner spirit will start to control the scared and unknowing human side.
            Take note! If you fill your head with spiritual laws and knowledge and you empty your own understanding, POWER becomes your companion. Even atheists can't touch that.

The root of all fear

            I don't know if any of you have ever heard of Mel Fisher. He and his wife started scuba diving and quickly moved to California and opened the first scuba shop in that state. They did very well, had four children and he and his wife moved to Florida. Mel heard about a Spanish Galleon (ship) that wrecked off the coast of Florida. He had some money, had a boat and they took on charters, bought and sold and they worked, day after day. Week after week, months turned into years. Years into decades. His creed was "Today is the day". He SAW himself finding that Spanish treasure in that wrecked ship called the ATOCHA. It was rumored to have TONS of gold coins, bars, jewelry and that was just the half of it. His crew would get discouraged. It took from 1963 until 1985 to find the Atocha. It was not without trouble, challenge and fear. The Fishers and their team socked all thier money back into their enterprise. They ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The scraped and every free minute was spent searching for that boat. Shortly before the glory of that find, Mel's Son, daughter in law and a hired diver while sleeping lost their lives when their salvage boat capsized in the middle of the night. Ten years later they hit the mother lode. Tons of gold coins, gold bars, jewelry and rare and exquisite emeralds were found. An estimated 400 million dollars in treasure was recovered.
            What does this have to do with the root of all fear? Mel Fisher was a dreamer. He also was a worker. He was a failure for almost thirty years. However, he did NOT FEAR. He knew that he did not understand the unknown. He knew what he was doing was an uncharted land. He knew he didn't know it all. He didn't let his IGNORANCE put him in the choke hold of unrealized fear.
             Franklin Delano Roosevelt, now known as a European banking agent who was a very evil indeed. He knew the stock market was going to crash, he knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming, but through these evil acts, he did dish out some truth. He said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". What was he saying? We let insecurities, low self confidence, anxiety of what will happen in the future if we don't do things exactly right cause fear in ourselves. He was actually poking fun at those who do fear. Its like saying the only sweets we should eat are all sweets.
              There are three statements following and you will notice the difference immediately. There is a "healthy respect" and "False confidence" and then there is "fear". Now, I will give you a few scenarios. Let us say you know you are going to a national park where there are bears. You don't read up on it, you don't gain your best understanding on how to live and stay alive in this environment. You rush in pell mell , set up your tent, cook your beef stew, have some cheese curls, toss it in a bag and retire for the night. You have some chocolate chip cookies for dessert and then fall asleep. Around 2 a.m. you awake to a horrible sound. Its a grizzly bear tearing through your things. You are frozen in fear. The bear smells the cookie bags and enters your tent. You see Jesus after 15 minutes of being mauled to death.
               Scenario number two. You are going to a national park and you know there are two kinds of bear there. Grizzley and Black bears roam the park. You call the park, ask what is the safest structure to sleep in and camp with. They tell you an RV or the park hotel. You can increase your risk by using a tent, but you can minimize that by hanging your food in airtight containers, on a rope, suspended in the air. All other foodstuffs, personally soiled garments need to be put safely away. All garbage is to be burnt or fully buried. You are informed that you are allowed to protect yourself with a sidearm. You can also bring pepper spay or a taser. You like camping, but don't want to incur loads of cost, so you decide to take your .45 Smith and Wesson. You also take spin top plastic buckets that are airtight. You have strong cord to suspend those buckets. You have read up on bear behavior. For two months you prepare, sorting the fluff from the truth. You talk to officers at the park. You are ready. Your third night, you just fall asleep and you hear something outside. You slowly peel the tent flap open and there is old smokey sniffing around your car. He sniffs some more, and then walks off into the night. Your pounding heart slows down and according to the park personel and your research, you go back to bed. You wake up in the morning and you are not in heaven, you are on your air mattress, wiping the sleep out of your eyes. Safe as you were before .
               What is the difference? The first scenario was full of "false confidence" and then "fear". The second scenario was full of "healthy respect". That difference was that even though it was a new venture, one party ignored the risks, they were not prepared for any problems. The second party had a healthy respect for what they were doing and prepared. Read up, talked with experts and understood that even if he left a twinkie out near the extinguished fire pit, he would have been able to pepper spray the bear, or shoot the bear if there was danger.
               With this challenging economy we live in, the world changing into a patently more evil place everyday. We have two options as Christians while looking for a new way to make a living or looking for a new job. Having a healthy respect for your talents and your shortcomings is one way to sharpen your edge. I hate this saying, but you can "choose your battle".  Having a sense of false confidence or being ignorant and blindly walking forward not understanding what your skills and talents are or what your shortcomings are is a good set up to remain locked in fear and doubt.
                 God has called those who call themselves Christians to be "bold". Notice in the New Testament Jesus never said "Be cocky with a puffed up head and rush into new ventures without thinking". The apostle Paul never told us to be haughty or to have a false sense of confidence. We were told by both of them to be bold, trust the Lord and go about your ventures thinking and trusting the Lord to watch over you and help you along the way. Jesus CONSTANTLY said "FEAR NOT", yet we live in fear of so many things. Will I have enough qualifications? What if I fail? I don't know all there is to know about this job, but I have done similar things, will I be able to do it? There is an old axiom about fear. It is called the "paralysis of analysis". Over thinking something you CAN handle. Guess what? you WILL make mistakes in this life. You WILL have challenges. You WILL have trials, tests, hurdles, missteps. Take a lesson from Mel Fisher. He didn't know everything about marine salvage. He was ignorant on how to find sunken treasure. What if Mel Fisher stayed frozen in fear? Let me give you a few more people who have struck out on their own or with a partner with little resources. Nicola Tesla, Bill Gates, Beethoven, Thomas Edison, Carl Breshear, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, John Deutschendorf Jr. (John Denver), Martin Luther and a host of other bible figures, historical figures and real people that you and I know. I was told personally that I would never get through a bible college and get a bachelor's degree by someone in my church. I struck out, moved 2100 miles away and completed my bachelor's degree at the age of 33 in 2.5 years. I did it. I had some fear, but I knew God had given me talents and skills and that I had been given enough brains to LEARN from mistakes, comprehend difficult concepts if I studied hard enough and that I could accomplish it.
       I would hope you take the advice from someone who is your best friend. I would hope you would read HIS words, take confidence in them and have a healthy respect for your Creator and what HE made when you were born. How many of you have taken on a new venture when you were younger, failed, overcame it and then had success? Plenty of you.
               Quit your DOUBTING. The lord's own brother said "A double  minded man is UNSTABLE in all his ways". A doubting man/woman is a troubling child to the God we serve. He knows you will have doubts, but if fear and doubt are your master, you are slapping God in the face. Shocked? You shouldn't be. When you are promised something with no timeline, you cannot expect the promise to be fulfilled on your timeline. You can expect the one who made the world to fulfill His. Not trusting and filling yourself with doubt is the ROOT of all fear. Remember the old childrens film "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"? Gene Wilder has a line in that movie that says "Oh, you should never, never doubt what you're not sure about". God works totally different than we think. HE KEEPS HIS PROMISES. They are not going to be on your schedule. That means you MUST trust. Every time you doubt you are taking away the power that is availble to you. Removing fear has two components, trusting and waiting. I am stuck waiting for a wonderful blessing. I live in joy while I wait. I see the outcome. Will I make mistakes along the way, you betcha! I will NOT however give into the fear. I will trust and I will wait and HE WILL keep His promise, I promise.