What if we stayed. And worked.

 For a thousand years.

A possibility occurred to me amongst all the rehashing of Jesus' return and what thens, what if when Jesus returns, the resurrection trumpet doesn't blow just yet, but instead those of us who believe and are still alive are changed to be like him, then we are tasked to work thru the 1000 year reign alongside and on behalf of Him. How would we feel with that prospect?

I've spent a lifetime believing and looking forward to not being troubled with the mess and heartache of this fallen world at Christ's return. In short, getting out of here and being reunited in an eternal fellowship with other believers in peace. But, what if we had to stay and do the work alongside Him in a still messy, subject to sin, still full of scoundrels and all their mess world? That's a serious question, how do I feel about it?

The world is blowing up into a mess no previous civilisation has ever known. There's no where to run, no new territory left to hide and rebuild, and so every horrific sin there ever was is festering and intensifying in a world wide petrie dish no laboratory has ever seen. This is the world Jesus is coming to judge and rule over, but it's not going to be via magic wand, it's going to be thru His own people finally renewed in His own likeness.

 We'd like to think that'll make it all easy-peasy, but I'm not convinced at all that's the issue. 

I came to realise some years back that I'm glad that angels are Jesus' army of vengeance because I don't want to ride along slaughtering evil people like a scythe thru a field. It may be necessary and just, but it's still horrific and I don't want to experience that. Let the angelic host have that one, no dispute from me there.

But what if the resurrection of the dead and no more sin is another 1000 years off and we have another 1000 years of careful work ahead of us? I'm retired now, I'm not all too cheerful about taking up a thousand year commission of work and waiting again. I'd do it if asked, I'm sure it's totally doable with the Lord's personal presence and no obstruction of the Spirit's guidance of our flesh anymore, but it's still a tough calling. Real tough.

Perhaps it's the appropriate apprenticeship for an eternity of God's rule in the universes and ages to come, though. A mere summer of diligent labor to prepare for what is coming later.

I dunno. We'll see.

I like this fellow

 A lot.

HOW TO PRAY WHEN YOU FEEL DEAD INSIDE
Mull Monestery

Resource list

I need a place to park these things, but why not share? To be updated as I find things.

Interactive Timeline of the Kings and Prophets - I swann, keeping the Old Testament in order is like juggling ferrets, especially if you're only reading a chapter or two a day. This should help.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes youtube channel - she has a terrific weekly video called Torah Tuesday with her new finds as she goes thru the Old Testament again as she writes another book. It's also available with Spanish or Hindi subtitles! I love her, she gets excited and wants to find the cool new thing she found right away.

Sentinel Apologetics - this guy has jumped the shark when it comes to long form studies of a topic, but he's never failed to find something I didn't know I needed to know until I heard him say it. People like that are worth the time every time.

Edit: I haven't been around here for several years, obviously, but some things have changed in a large way. I intend to cluster up some bits and post those, for the record basically, because there is no readership. But, I think I must be alright with that, it's just posting things entirely outside myself that is satisfying. Someone AI crawler bot might stumble it one day and .....

If he wasn't there

What if I had got this Christianity thing wrong and when we died, we all went to some beautiful land where everyone was their best self and no one did anything hurtful and everything was happy ever after - but Jesus wasn't there? Perhaps there was even a God there, but He was a Force or even a Super-Being, but he wasn't the Jesus of the Bible - not that whole Saviour on a cross Son of God thing.

What would I do? How would I feel about that? After all, I'd be in the most beautiful place ever,
and I'd know that everything had come out alright,
and all the people I loved would be there.
And there would only be good things happening.
And there would be endless interesting things to know and do.
And happiness ever after.

But no Jesus.


Just think about it.

Eternal peace.

Endless opportunities.

Lots of things to do.


But no Jesus, Lord of Glory.


I've thought about it. If He isn't there, it would be an emptiness that ten thousand million billion people couldn't fill. If I can't be with Him, all the lovely in the universe could never substitute. If the imagination of such an afterlife crushes your soul to tears, then you know where your love is. If it doesn't sound too bad, then maybe being a Christian isn't really where you're at right now.

Identity forclosure

From this blog post here.

"Identity foreclosure is a psychological term for the phenomenon in which a person makes premature conclusions about his or her personal identity without a time of exploration and discovery. Identity foreclosure happens when a person adopts the identity of others around them or is forced to accept the identity expectations assumed or given to them."

and

"I began getting to know myself—like one might get to know a new friend. I started asking myself questions. What do you like to do? What are you good at? What are your dreams? What makes you tick? What are some things you have always secretly wanted to try? If there was nothing holding you back, who would you choose to be?"

That post is also about a doctrine circulating in Christian circles that posits that women have a dependent position to men within the church called Complimentarianism - women "complement" the primary role men have as ministers within the church. No matter what view you have about religion or the role of women within Christianity, if God exists and has revealed Himself to humanity, then it is very important to know Him and His view about who we are as clearly as we can.  If you are a Christian, understanding Him is your daily meat and potatoes (metaphorically speaking) because the whole of your spiritual strength comes from standing under Him, and Him alone - not your own reasoning or anyone else's.

Don't ever be afraid of learning more about His way of identifying you for He made you from the very beginning. It isn't as if He is some outsider trying to barge in and change the good thing you have going on. Whether you are a man or a woman, rich or poor, modern or traditional, young or graying middle age, none of these things matter in Christ. His call is not to your gender, sexuality, age, influence, or fame. Jesus' call is to the person you are inside of that frail human frame, and He wants to light you up inside brighter and livelier and more creative and joyful than anything you've ever seen anywhere.

Are you sure you're sure?

Someone somewhere else asked if a true narcissist (her mother) could be a Christian, after all, the narc is all about himself and Very cruel. This is the encouragement I gave her in response. It applies to NPDs and all those with mental disorders and mental illnesses.

Narcissism, even within the parameters of the personality disorder, exists on a continuum. Some people are more, some are less. But really, it isn't a straight line scale, it's a landscape of selfishness. Some people cross the border regularly for visits, some people hoist the flag and buy penthouse apartments in the capital city.

By the time I learned about NPD, my mother was very much on the decline physically, so I had to get help from friends who also knew my opinion about her being NPD. My friends are still astonished that I am confident she was genuinely a Christian, they just couldn't find any evidence other than the religious forms she had always used as a cover.

The key thing to remember about Christianity is that the root of it is not in the mind, it is in the person's spirit, and we neither save ourselves nor keep ourselves in a state of righteousness with God by our prayers or good works. Being made right with God is something we give ourselves in trust to Jesus to do FOR us. That is our faith - we are trusting Jesus to reconcile us to God AND keep us from being such stupid jackasses as to walk away from that reconciliation.

Lots of people stop right there. They recognize the truth of the gospel that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, they sincerely believe it and acknowledge Jesus as their savior, they never stop believing that is true - and then they carry on the rest of their lives trying to live out of their reasoning faculties. Believing happens in the heart, reasoning comes out of your head.

NPD is an entrenched mental disorder. It begins as a form of self defense and grows over time to become an aggressive, pernicious, hideous thing. I heard someone call mental illness "cancer of the mind" once, and it might be a fair analogy. It makes the personality deformed and ugly, but it's key to remember that "personality" is just the part of a person that we see acting outwardly. The innermost part of a person we never see, only that person and God knows what goes on in there.

It only takes faith the size of a mustard seed for God to change someone completely from the inside out. How many have waited until the last moment to throw down the rebel flag and surrender, yet we have no problem believing they are saved? How many sit in church because it's full of "nice" people, yet never do believe that whole "blood shed at Calvary" rigmarole?

If your Mom says she saved, go with that in your prayers. Hold her words up to God with your whole heart and entrust Him to make her words true and sure. It's His problem and He can bloody well come up with the solution. If He is God, then He can live up to it for your mother. (I'll tell you a big secret about that kind of prayer - He ain't scared of it and He likes to save people right where they are.)

You will have to keep your own head outside of the neat little boxes psychology and religion want to stuff people in. Categories of mental illness and most sermons are ratiocinations of the mind, and faith in God always comes from your spirit. I recommend C.S. Lewis as a trusted ally - The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, and the whole of the Narnia books.

Lewis had an understanding of people in the grip of addiction and mental illness, and hard won experience in being a faithful friend to both. I think both of those things light up his writing. "...it is not easy to throw off in half an hour an enchantment which has made one a slave for ten years."

Private conversations

Looks dry and dusty and ever so technical, doesn't it? I think it probably doesn't look much different to most people than my bookcases full of topical studies and Bible reference books.

I was listening to an old teaching on praying in the spirit a few minutes ago and the thought occurred to me that, although I'm hearing some really great and useful things that I hadn't heard before, it's someone teaching from the inside of their experience with God. Trying to explain it or share it with most people would be really useless, because most people either have little or no experience with Him. He's an Idea, or afar off, or a particle physics discovery yet to be made.

I think it's just human nature to try to study all about God before we actually commit ourselves to Him, and we Fur Shure [!] try to read all the commentaries on speaking in other tongues before we do that whole baptism in the Holy Ghost thing. I have some good news for you, though - all that in depth study is completely useless without God Himself teaching you. You'll never know a thing about God unless He shows it to you.

I realized not long ago that the reason my relationship with my mother did not ruin my relationship with God was that she was not in the relationship. I "got saved" as a little girl of about six or seven. We kids sat on the back row in church while Mother sang in the choir. We were disciplined enough to hold ourselves together back there, and what fidgeting we did couldn't distract too many people, but she could still keep an eye on us.

Since the sermons were a bit dull to my ears, I used to go looking thru the pew Bible for the words in red, because I knew that was Jesus talking. Generally, you can find some good action stories that way, quite a few miracles, and a bit of talking about things that had plain words but just didn't seem to fit as a story. I lucked up [Ha!] on the gospel of John, and he just quotes Jesus talking for the longest time, pages and pages, especially in the time right before his death.

I really didn't understand all the things Jesus was talking about, but I knew I could trust him, so I just kept reading. Finally I came up on John, Chapter 17, and for the first time I could read an entire conversation Jesus had with the Father! I mean all of it, not some little synopsis, but him going on and on - it was just like being there! Oh, I wanted to listen to every little scrap of it, I wanted to really know what those two talked about in private.

And it's in there. It was like sitting at the table in their house while they talked about the most important things in Jesus' mission here on Earth. Jesus is giving a status report, going over how things have gone and what he has left to do, almost like a top secret intelligence briefing or something. I'm still amazed God had John remember and put it in his gospel, I mean, who lets that kind of stuff get printed up and put out for even little kids to see???

Anyway, I got down to verses 20 thru 23:
 "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word;  that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:  I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me."


I had found my way in. Jesus himself was asking the Father to bring  me to the table, it wasn't just for The Twelve, "but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they all may be one."  The official plan wasn't that I could be just one of the disciples, but "be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us."

I was completely entranced with Jesus' repeated insistence on "I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one."

I wanted that. I wanted up close, side by side, free, unhindered access to God that no one could interfere with or obstruct. Somehow I knew I was being offered that deal and I needed to accept the deal or not, no guarantees that I would ever be offered the deal again. So, one day soon after, outside playing around by myself, I agreed to it, crossed the line never to go back, all in and no getting out for life.

If you aren't sure you like God, or definitely don't like Him at all, don't sweat it, you've probably been reading technical manuals and listening to 57th hand stories about Him.  You'll never like Him much that way. Jesus came as the Passover lamb, he walked around letting himself be seen and examined for who and what he was before he was accepted as a sacrifice. Look Jesus over for yourself, see if what he said and what he did was beautiful and worthy and if he is the kind of man who you can trust with your life.

You'll never figure God out for yourself, let Jesus show you. There's a place at the table set for you.