On the way to the shower
That Joyce Voice (Joyce Meyer) stopped me long enough to write it down–
(not an exact quote because the morning brain has more holes in it than the late night brain)
She said, Whatever effort you make to keep the law before you become a Christian (while you’re trying to act like one) is the extent to which you will be judgmental toward others who can’t keep the law after you become a Christian.
Chew on that for a day or two.
I heard in passing and I stopped to listen
When you confess your sins as a forgiven Christian, the forgiveness is instant. Forgive yourself and go on. God does not remember sins that have been washed in the shed blood of the lamb. (John Hagee) So why do I carry the rotting corpse of guilt? Because I feel like such an idiot for committing the stupidity in the first place. The truth is that I really am an idiot when I know this stuff and insist on penance at which point I am moving into pride, my behavior declaring God’s plan of forgiveness on the cross wasn’t good enough. Forgive me.
I hear these nuggets over my shoulder as I walk from the curling iron to the kitchen and back again. Our satellite plan is Dish’s Family plan, the least expensive, the fewest stations but includes Foxnews. To upgrade to some of what I miss e.g. History, A&E, and so on, and keep Foxnews, we have to jump 3 levels. What idiots work in media? If 4 million watch Foxnews to CNN’s 900,000, you would think they’d want to attract those 4 million on every level and not punish. I’d gladly upgrade with another $15, but not $45. Thanks anyway.
I did not pick up the forgiveness nugget on Foxnews. I picked the plan for the express purpose of saving money and getting Foxnews but hardly watch it. Not because it isn’t as they claim, “fair and balanced,” their enemies timed left vs. right and conceded they’re almost perfectly 50/50, but because the way OB the Brand is stomping on the constitution, indebting our great-grandchildren, and whining that his quadrupling the deficit is George’s fault, well…… I can’t ruin my health for the sake of keeping up. So I take advantage of Daystar, Inspiration, TBS, and Angel. But if I do feel the need to listen to news, it will be Foxnews.
I have favorite teachers/preachers. I’m even learning the schedules and not wasting time on klinkers or searching. For instance, Life Today features Beth Moore every Wednesday. Other days I’ll flip to Swaggart when he’s dissecting prophecy but don’t care for his choice of music — himself.
I heard in passing a good one from someone I hadn’t heard before, can’t remember his name but couldn’t drag myself away from the curling iron long enough to surf for a substitute so I half listened until he said something about salvation evolution. I stopped to listen. He asked if I believed people were saved gradually or if each one of us needs to make a from-darkness-to-light decision.
Do I believe we grow into salvation or do we grow in faith from accepting salvation? What does the seed that is witnessed into my mind grow into? The seed of knowledge grows toward a decision, one that has to be made consciously. I’ve said it before — does sitting in a garage long enough turn you into a car? Salvation cannot be applied onto anyone.
At some point you turn from your wicked ways. The point at which you have wicked defined for you and have the consequences of wickedness clearly stated if you don’t turn from sin, is when you decide to repent or not to repent, which is “turn.” The One you turn to is not just critical, it’s the point as opposed to “turning over a new leaf” on New Year’s Day.
Maybe you can’t pin the sticker on the calender. Maybe one day you had an epiphany and acted on it in prayer without thunder. Maybe you were so close that the transition from pre-dawn to light wasn’t that long a ride. But you did cross over. Jesus is the source of the salvation. The Word and personal contact through prayer is the means by which we grow in faith and learn to walk deeper and deeper in Him.
You can attend church for years. I heard sermons from womb to knees. But Mom could not paint me with salvation, feed it to me or dress me in it. All she could do was force me to be there and pray I listened. I had to reach a point, an actual point in time, when I reached out and I received the gift. I opened it. I exercise it. Me. Knowledge may have soaked in — I knew who Jesus was and all about Him but did not know Him until I decided to know Him. He’s always there, does not go away, holds me, watches me, teaches and disciplines. He gives me the choice to stay or leave, to contact or not to contact Him. I grow when I choose contact, to stay.
The TV preacher asked me if I believed in evolutionary — gradual salvation. No. I don’t. You’re dating or you’re married. You’re pregnant or you’re not.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then will I tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” —- Matthew 7: 21-23, NIV
You’ve got 5 years
….to get over what ails you if you’re currently 40 and older. Ration Care passed the House. The Senate has a chance to save our country but don’t bet the farm. By the end of that 5 years, the rationing from the same people who run the post office, the not-one-year-of-profit Amtrak, and the IRS will have, by virtue of waiting lines, culled out the aged, the chronic, the most expensive to treat — diabetics and the handicapped. Those with birth defects will be included, many in trash cans.
The five years will search for ways to pay for everybody as promised. After all, the former 60’s rebels who hated the so called establishment then are still trying to eliminate it in office in Washington D.C. They’re still the proverbial bleeding hearts. Then, when their plan starts crashing after the new T word (trillion) has wiped out businesses and subsequently jobs, lowering the tax revenues, they’ll hit your 401k and IRAs. They’ll suck ‘em dry, baby! Ronald Regan set them up, he was a conservative Republican, they hate him, they can take it down. B’bye retirement.
but that won’t matter much because shortly after that the retirees will start dropping like flies in the ER lobbies coast to coast.
Congratulations to all of you who voted for change. You got it. Grandma and Grampa are really going to get it. Happy now?
Catch up time
I’ve been away from the blog world for a while now. I don’t make any big promises of something profound or even readable going forward on a daily or a weekly basis. But do check back once in a while.
Nothing much political aside from the continuing BS on health Ration Care has been going on in my head since I’ve practically stopped watching the news, even Foxnews. I am no longer plugged non-stop into Boortz, Rush, or Hannity, not from lack of interest, I’ve had a phone headset on at work since April, but between incoming calls I’ll pop in the ear bud and see who’s nailing OB on his latest “uh, uh, uhs”.
The biggest problem with keeping up is the stress factor. I go insane — livid, ballistic, vibrating bloodshot stompin’. That can’t be good for the blood pressure. Even our local morning show, the ambassador of can’t we all get along, can annoy the snarl out of me. So I run my CDs, Perry Stone teachings, one in particular that shows how as Egypt went, so will the USA, and this time it’s the Bride that will be in the exodus. Good stuff. Go to his link.
Speaking of the morning show, the host was giving the stats on cable news listeners. To illustrate, Knoxville’s 100.3 talk station has a potential listenership of an estimated 850,000, confined to little old, some say backward and small town, east Tennessee. On any given day, the big gun, the original, the first of its kind, CNN, international satellite, available worldwide has 892,000 tuning in. HNN is over 900,000, MSNBC is just over a million, one other is almost 2mil and Foxnews clocks in at over 4 million viewers.
Why is the smartest man ever in the White House at war with Foxnews? Isn’t it more logical to hog its air time, get on there as often as is humanly possible, to get more of his Marxist agenda shoved at more people? He could demand the entire 50% left side. Yes, it’s true. Enemies have actually timed Foxnews in order to challenge its claim of fair and balanced. They are. It’s that other 50% is what drives me nuts.
All that said, not a lot is going on. The work hours are erratic keeping me out of Wed nights at the church, choir, tiring me out to the point I don’t participate in more than praise team practice on my way home from work. There was a bright spot in my schedule about two weeks ago.
I was told in September that I needed to hustle and schedule my remaining vacation days or lose them after Dec.31. I took two around Honey’s birthday and discovered later that Perry Stone was holding his annual conference near Chattanooga ending that Friday. “Hey, Charlotte, want to go on a field trip?”
More on that pilgrimage in another post. Short version: I rolled in the driveway at 1:30 Saturday morning, dragged the ol’ bleary eyes out of bed and told Honey I had to go back, just had to. Hot prophetic teaching. Hot.
The coming event is health related. The chest pains starting creeping back so I went to the doctor. She took me off all supplements for 3 weeks to draw blood for a nutrition deficiency screen, analyzed the usual stuff (I’m nearly devoid of vitamin D), and scheduled a ride on the Enterprise to go where no man has gone before. Around 5pm on Monday I get to drink 4 liters of chalk sludge, and learn how to flush with my elbow and check Facebook at the same time. Life is so sweet after 50.
Not to be inefficient, the same GI miracle worker is going to scope the stomach for anything he might find there too — as long as I’m on the table. Send me your one liners. You know you want to.
Then I was brain dead enough to schedule a first thing the next morning visit to the good doc on my way to work to get my nutrition results at a moronic 8:40 when I could have slept to 7:30 instead of getting up at 6. You know, you might want to sleep after you’ve been drained. Literally. Some people, men, can go from bed to commute in 20 minutes with a shower, less without. Me? I’m an hour from bed to door no matter how well I plan ahead. Argh.
The good news is I hear I’ll be about 15 pounds lighter for about 48 hours. Maybe I’ll take a new Facebook profile shot and leave it there for a few years.
Not much else going on. We’re heading up north, being the only people in the south who go north in the winter, to see the kids ‘n’ kidlets over Thanksgiving.
So stay tuned. Don’t touch that dial! I will have enough to chat about for several weeks. I promise to not go into a whole lot of detail on the procedure, like pictures, you know, posing with the doctor and nurse? Can you just see that? Uh, uh. That gown can’t possibly be fastened in the back on this trip.
Have a great next few days. G’night.
