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Entanglement With the World

Everywhere you look you see negativity and panic concerning politics and the state of the world. Christians start their day with whatever assorted negativity is on the local news and they take that negative energy into the workplace.

Christians are overtaken by a sense of fear about how the world is turning and about the fate of the next generation. These people are too entangled with the world.

As we have explored before, the Kingdom of God never dies, it simply relocates. Yet even while knowing this most Christians are fearful about the culture of America. These Christians are prioritizing their personal comfort over their faith. They know that moving to Africa or some island would cost them a lot of time and comfort and they do not want to leave.

These Christians are worldly.

They know more about current politics than they do about the Bible.

They can tell you who is currently in office, but they couldn’t list five of the fifteen judges of Israel.

They know dozens of laws and tax codes, but you can count on two hands the number of Bible verses they know.

You can count on one hand the number of Bible verses they have learned in the past year.

This is a problem of priority. We have begun to place too much emphasis on this physical world we find ourselves in.

People forget that we die at the end of life, and where we go next is forever. There are only two possible places to go after death. One of them is eternal life and one of them is infinite death. How can we forget this and become entrenched in the world and in its meaningless trifles?

We have forgotten what is important. We sit around ingesting Fox News or CNN or any other mainstream outlet and wonder why our faith isn’t growing. Because we haven’t put any time into our faith!

We start the day with two hours of news yet forget to read our Bible every day.

Pathetic.

We need to get our priorities in order. God should always be at the forefront of our life, but we have placed the world at the front. We think about the world and politics more in one day than we think about God over the course of a year.

We care too much about political parties and the state of the world.

We care too much about the meaningless affairs of the world.

We care too little about God and about faith.

Today is the day we get our priorities in order. Turn off the news, it does not profit you. Do you even remember what was on the news last week? Last Month? Last year? I doubt it. But you definitely remember how watching the news made you feel: unhappy, depressed, and anxious.

There is no need for this to be our way of life. If we are unhappy and anxious we can never hope to convert other people to Christianity. Who wants to be part of a group of unhappy, depressed, and anxious people?

Of course, none of this is to say that politics and the state of the world is unimportant. It is very important – but it isn’t everything.

I’m not telling you to be ignorant of the state of the world. I’m not telling you to be uninvolved with politics.

I’m telling you to keep those things where they should be – below God in priority.

You need to be able to watch the news, catch up on politics, be aware of current events without having it bother your emotional state. This is absolutely key.

I’ll give you an exercise I performed to acquire this skill. It is simple, and involves managing your physiology. Because if you can manage your physiology, you can manage your mind and emoitons much better.

Dial up whatever news source you listen to. Preferably you can do this with some form of media that you can pause and restart.

Next, start listening to it and start a timer. While you listen, hold awareness on your bdy and emotions. Once you feel those old negative emotions bubble up [fear, anger, worry, etc.] stop your timer and pause your news source.

Now you have to wait for those sensations to go away. Introduce positive thoughts and do some deep diaphragmatic breathing. Bring your heart rate back down to its resting level and be aware of how those hot emotions cool off and leave your body. Do not restart your news source until you are as calm and peaceful as you were before you started. Then you may restart, and repeat the exercise.

Also, use your timer to record how long it takes before you get emotionally worked up. And then time how long it takes to cool off. Record and keep track of these numbers so you monitor your progress over time. You will find that as you progress, you are able to last much longer without feeling negative emotions.

You will also be much more powerful because you will be able to maintain a calm, cool, collected emotional state in the midst of disturbing stimuli. That will make you infinitely powerful in a world of people ruled by their emotions.

You are the general with your perspective elevated above the battlefield. You can now see things more clearly than the men engaged in the battle who are overcome with fear and stress. you have calmed your mind and physiology and can command yourself.

That is something to be proud of, not many people can do that.

You can also repeat this exercise in other areas of your life.

Correct your mindsets and place God back at the highest priority where He belongs.

Lay the Ax to The Root

Jesus talks in His sermon on the mount about how we should sever body parts if they cause us to sin. “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it out and cast it from you” and “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you” citing that “it is better to enter into heaven lame, maimed or blind than to enter into hell with a whole body.

This seems a little extreme if we were to take it literally.

It would be painful to cut off our hand, and inconvenient to cut out our eye just because it is causing us to stumble here and there. What does Jesus mean? Surely He does not mean that we are literally supposed to cut off pieces of ourselves. That would be damaging the body He designed and the body that is supposed to be the temple of the Spirit.

Christ is using hyperbole to illustrate how we must lay our ax to the root of sin and cut it off at its most basic source.

You look at pornography and lust after the images, does that mean you should cut out your eyes? No. Does that mean you should get rid of your computer and replace your smart phone with a flip phone? Yes. This is extreme, but it is necessary for you, since you are a “hopeless” addict. Lax your ax to the root of the problem.

Anxiety is causing you to sin, what do you do? Find the root. Are you watching the news, becoming entangled with world politics that mean nothing on the eternal scale? If this is the source of your anxiety, cut it off.

Cut cable TV.
Block news sites on your computer. News sites are almost as toxic as porn sites. Cut the unnecessary events that are causing you anxiety. Lay your ax to the root.

Do you impose jealousy and envy on yourself? Cut your social media.

Not only is media a waste of time that does not improve you one bit, but it is the source of the majority of envy we see today.

Same with People Magazine or any other moronic media outlet. Cut these off, your envy will subside. Lay your ax to the root.

All of our evil must be attacked at the core, at the very root. If we do not cut off our behavior at the very root, it will spring back up given enough time. Many trees can regrow after being cut down to a stump. New branches and leaves grow out of the stump and the tree starts over because the root system is still intact. However, No tree can survive being cut off from its source of nourishment. For this reason we lay an ax to the root of our evil.

Fully remove evil from yourself. Remove every possible entrance of sin. This is inconvenient and uncomfortable, but it is necessary. Better to enter into heaven having lived your whole life without social media or television than to enter into hell because your worldly interests and negative habits eventually led you away form the faith.

We must kill sin at the root everywhere we can.

It may be hard to throw a computer out a window because we “need” it for work. So we must Install software that isolates the function of your computer to a few select applications. This guarantees that you use your computer for work only.

Set up programs that do not allow News media, social media and porn. This is a simple equation, but few have the guts to make it happen. We are too attached to our comforts. Men must learn how to exist outside the comfort zone. We must cut every unnecessary outlet from our lives. You must be productive and focused. You do not want to look back on your life and realize you spent all of it on social media, politics and lust of the flesh. We have to focus on our true work, living a meaningful life of righteousness.

Relocation of the Church

The Church never dies, is simply relocates. Many older Americans are paranoid about the fate of the country, and have made the mistake of intertwining the fate of Christianity with the fate of America.

This is absurd and Christians should know better. Take a good look as history, gentlemen.

Every time the home base nation for Christianity has fallen, Christianity has not fallen with it, but has simply relocated to another nation.

Throughout the Old Testament God’s people wandered from place to place until settling in Canaan. They went through several judges before they switched over to kings. Kings came and went and the nation rose and fell yet Israel remained God’s chosen nation.

This would continue until the Birth and Christ and the Church. Israel and Judaism would be obliterated with the destruction of the tempt in A.D. 70 and Christianity would eventually be named as the national religion of Rome (only after extreme levels of persecution from Romans).

Judaism was replaced by Christianity, and God’s chosen religion merely changed locations and forms.

Christianity relocated.

Over time Rome became rank with debauchery, the men became soft and weak and Rome would fall. The world power was toppled and small nations like the Byzantine empire resulted from what once was a great power.

What happened to Christianity in that time of Rome’s destruction? It remained alive. The Church grew and eventually would migrate into European country.

The Church would be spread out over England and remain there until the discovery of the new world. A little over a hundred years later the American colonies would be settled and begin to grow.

Over time people in America would grow tired of the regulation on religion and be disgusted with the church of England. Many of them left England to go to the colonies for this very reason.

Men decided that God was not being worshiped correctly so they left to have space where they could worship in spirit and truth.

America would eventually cut ties with England which sparked the revolutionary war. The American Revolution was not really a revolution. Most revolutions involve the attempt to overthrow the government of the nation. Americans simply wanted to go off and make their own nation instead, but the English would not have it. Thus a war began with the battles of Lexington and Concord. The war would end in British surrender, which marked the beginning of the end of England as a world power, and Britain would lose many other lands they “owned”. (They would also lose those lands because they become weak with political correctness). Christianity relocated to Britain, it was never damaged or destroyed. The Kingdom the relocated to America.

The Kingdom lives forever.

Now we are in the year 2019, America is becoming more evil and debauchery is praised. America looks much like the final Generation of Rome before its great downfall. However, this should not make us fear for the Church, because we can see through history that the Church has never fallen. The Kingdom has never been destroyed, it has simply relocated to more fertile ground.

Christianity is growing exponentially in Africa, and it may be that the next home base for Christians is the massive desert continent below Europe. And that would be just fine. It does not matter where the Hub of the Kingdom is while we are still on the earth, it only matters that there is a Kingdom, and it has never been damaged or destroyed by wars or the destruction of nations. The Kingdom lives forever, and it will thrive wherever necessary.

So do not lose heart. The Church will never end, the Kingdom will never die. We will simply move to the place where we are most able to worship God in Spirit and in Truth.

They Preach What They Do Not Know

Once upon a time, a weak “Christian” man preached on the benefits of saving oneself for marriage.

He only had sex once a month, but he still preached to the young generation.

The man preached that which he did not know.

He preached sexual fulfillment in marriage when he himself had none. He preached emotional fulfillment in marriage when it was not possible for him as a sex-deprived preacher.

Men who never tried heroin preached against the dangers of heroin.
Men who have only had sex with one woman preach about how much better and more fulfilling it is compared to someone who has had sex with multiple women. How would he know which is better without experiencing both in order to be able to compare it?

(That is not to say that you must partake in every evil before you have the right to talk about it, absolutely not.)

It is to say that when men in the Church do not know what they are talking about should not speak.

They will preach about what they do not know until they preach it to the wrong person, the young men who actually tests what the preacher says.

They will preach about how unfulfilling and regretful it is to have sex with many women and most men will believe them. Until one decides to go against the grain and try sex with multiple women. He quickly learns that he has no regret and the so-called “meaningless” sex is very fulfilling.

You cannot out-“spiritualize” biology. Hormones will win the battles that are fought with willpower alone. The Church wants to pretend that sex is not enjoyable outside of marriage, but men will learn that this is untrue and this inspires men to leave the Church.

The problem in the Church is men who speak about sinful and earthly matters as if they know about them. Young men see through this nonsense and decide to test the evil for themselves.

In testing evil they find that the men in the Church lied.

The primary way to combat this is to have someone who has actually committed all the evil he speaks against. It is not necessary for everyone to have committed every evil.

But a person who has committed every sin imaginable and can still say that they are unfulfilling is infinitely more convincing than the man who has experienced none of the sins.

Sin is pleasurable and enjoyable, and we should stop trying to pretend that it isn’t. Yes, sin does inevitably lead to death, but before it gets there is passes through the candy-land world of pleasure.

We must teach the kids that sin is gratifying and fun on the front end, then on the back end it supplies you with pain. Sometimes that pain will not come until the next life, so telling kids that “bad things will happen to them” if they commit sins is moronic.

Because someone is going to take that gamble, and they are going to learn that you were wrong, and they will think the church lies to people simply to keep them from enjoying the few pleasurable moments in life.

This is the negative reputation that the Church needs to fix.

Teach that sin feels good. Teach that sin actually feels great, but that heaven will feel better. We can either enjoy ourselves in this present moment, or enjoy ourselves later, but we cannot have both.

Contrary to what the Church demagogues spew, life is not fulfilling nor is it supposed to be. Sure, there are many times when we “feel” fulfilled, but we should not base our lives on these emoticons because they will leave as quickly as they came. All we should focus on is making it to heaven.

All of life is simply a massive moment of delayed gratification.

If we can outlast the desire to do evil in the moment, we can win the war in the end.

This is a difficult truth, but it must be accepted if we are to be more efficient in the Faith.

Wisdom

Proverbs 19:20- “Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.”

Proverbs 12:15- “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.”

Proverbs 18:15 – “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”

Proverbs 17:27-28 – “Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.”

There are two main types of wisdom that people think exist: earthly wisdom and spiritual/heavenly wisdom.

Earthly wisdom comes from man, perhaps most notably from ancient philosophers and writers who have passed on what they have learned in life. Stoicism, teachings of Confucius, and existentialism are examples of earthly wisdom. Earthly wisdom does not always come from a spiritual thinker, and earthly wisdom is not always wrong, contrary to what people in the church think. Spiritual wisdom is what comes from spiritual teaching. For Christians, this is the Bible and the writers of the Word.

Both spiritual and earthly wisdom are valuable, contrary to what you hear in the Church.

In fact, if you look deeply into earthly teachings, you will see connections to the spiritual teachings you have heard your whole life. Any real truth we extract from ancient writings, if it is really truth, must be somehow connected to the Word of God if we believe that the Bible is truth. All wisdom is connected.

“If you know the way broadly, you will see it in all things” ~ Miyamoto Musashi

Wisdom can be instruction on how to live, how to conduct yourself while you are among men.

Wisdom is also used to describe another person. They are wise if they behave and think in a certain manner. Wise men know how to use patience, they have cultivated it over a lifetime. These men know to look deeply at a situation, to analyze it before they search for a solution. Wise men understand that problems are temporary situations that lead to the growth of the individual.

Have you noticed that most of the wise men you know are generally quiet men?

They use few words because they need few words. Wise men let their actions speak for them, and they understand that the man who talks much knows little and thinks little.

The stereotype of a wise man is an ancient fellow with a long beard who speaks in vague, ominous phrases. This image did not appear magically, all stereotypes originate from truth. The wise man is eventually thought to be crazy, until his strange, vague/prophetic sayings turn out to have some truth to them; such is the benefit of speaking vaguely about the future. To be wise, be silent. You must be wise, for there are very few wise men in the Church today.

Mantra

Think much, speak little.

Application

The wise man considers all variables before he makes a decision. If it happens that he makes a decision and something happens that he did not expect, he will remember that situation the next time he needs to contemplate an action.

The man who is wise conducts himself in a way that causes the least amount of unnecessary, unprofitable pain to others. A key trait of a man of wisdom is the ability to use foresight in actions. This is the manifestation of all wisdom. The wise man considers well all of his steps and thinks several moves ahead. A wise man is acutely aware of his surroundings in social situations. He places himself in the shoes of others and sees life through their eyes. By doing this he shapes his actions to the personality of the person he is interacting with.

The wise man fears the Lord and therefore behaves righteously. A wise man thinks before he acts in almost all situations. There are very few instances in which action should be taken before it is thoroughly contemplated.

The wise man conducts himself with character and integrity in all that he does.

He is completely honest and forthright with the truth, but he delivers it in such a way that it does not damage the recipient. If the recipient of the truth needs to be struck on the head with truth, then the wise man knows it must be done. Certain personalities need to be beaten over the head with the truth in order to accept it. Others need to have the truth gently placed upon them, and they will absorb it all the same.

The wise man is masculine to his very core, and he knows never to suppress his masculinity, for in its suppression the darkness of man will rise internally. A wise man considers all variables in life at all times, and remains ever vigil to the assault of evil on his mind and thoughts.

The wise man conducts himself like a man, so you must also conduct yourselves like men.

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