Watch Stand Pray

Until the fame of Jesus fills the earth. watchstandpray.com

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0 – Religion Substitute

Christianity is a “substitute” religion. It doesn’t need priests because Jesus is the high priest who walks with us all. It doesn’t need rituals since Jesus finalized the rituals himself. It doesn’t need any kind of ceremonial sacrifices since Jesus offered himself as human sacrifice—the ultimate sacrifice to end all sacrifices once and for all. It doesn’t require buildings since our bodies are God’s walking, living, breathing Temples—for those of us who acknowledge His name. It doesn’t require images since we were already created as God’s Image. It does not need any hierarchical order since the Bible is God’s direct message to all people for all times.

Christianity is not any kind of conventional religion. Those who treat it as one misunderstand it, whether from within or from the outside looking in on what they have never known. Christianity is mere truth of nature and nature’s God, who created Heaven and Earth along with all the molecules, photons, and space therein. Christianity substitutes what often occupies the space of conventional religion in people’s lives, even anti-religions such as Gnosticism, Agnosticism, and Atheism.

Because Christianity does not rely on any infrastructure, Christians can practice Christianity at any time. They can go anywhere, be anywhere, and change everything everywhere.

“Going to church” and the need for cathedrals made sense during a dark age when the world had technology neither for transportation nor communication. In those dark days, most people were illiterate and the only way to learn was to travel on foot or horseback to the one place at the one time when a teacher with knowledge would explain God and His ways. But, with widespread literacy, transportation, and global communication, that ancient system of weekly infrastructure is no longer necessary. It may be good or evil, but never necessary.

The only remaining purpose for weekly infrastructure would be for liturgy, but God’s mercies every morning are new. Jesus himself finished the need for all liturgy when he became our substitute for the sacrifices and rituals necessary to end our own self-oppression caused by our own sin. Jesus was the substitute for all because Christianity is and has always been a religion of substitution.

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365 – God Saves the Best for Last

Many wicked people take shortcuts and impatient routs to amass luxurious plunder, but because they build their wealth on shaky foundations, everything collapses. They spend many years in their rich halls, but it all fails when laws of sowing and reaping swing back around to haunt them.

Somehow, it’s encoded into the heart’s understanding of satisfaction. However we go out is what matters. A long life of pain is somehow trumped if it ends in happiness, making the entire painful journey worthwhile because of the victory that the troubled path led to. A long life of luxury that ends in poverty makes the recipe for a tragic tale. Justice doesn’t always have the final say in the joy or pain of an ending.

Most signatories of America’s Declaration of Independence reached the end of their lives in sorrow and poverty. Living out a story with an unhappy ending didn’t prove that they were wrong, but that they paid a high price and are all the more heroic for taking the available step in their day to found a nation that would, a century and a half later, end the slavery that the British founded a century and a half before. Many Black slaves died still under the yoke of slavery, only having prayed for the freedom of future generations. Many peasants in Europe prayed for a literate society free of feudalism, later founded by the Pilgrims. Many Christians die in prison after giving testimony that opens up the way for the message of Jesus to spread to millions of people who are each eternally thankful.

Martyrs live lives that end in sorrow, making their lives sad, but just and fair in the eyes of Heaven. In that next life, they receive their Eternally happy ending, making their Earthly sad story worthwhile. But, not everyone needs to die a martyr. Many people see happy endings before their deaths, demonstrating justice in this lifetime. Justice works many ways.

Don’t give so much credence to temporary happiness. Pursue greater priorities. Respect the farmer who sows with empty barns. Eagerly press on toward whatever happy ending awaits you and you’ll find whatever light you need to guide your way.

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364 – Repentance unto Hope

Saying, “Sorry,” is a good thing, but not everyone knows this—to say it or to hear it. Jesus taught in no uncertain terms: Forgive others, lest ye not be forgiven.

Repent, knowing that God wants to forgive. Come back to the light. Return from whence you fell. Repentance is a good thing; it is the basis is hope.

When someone makes a mistake, say so; it’s not an accusation. Accusing, pointing the finger of shame, calling a vote to throw someone overboard—all on account of error—is not any kind of teaching one would learn from the Bible or even tolerate. The purpose of calling out someone on a problem is to restore the person, granting the invitation to return to the simple, safe road that leads to Life.

The Bible’s view of repentance is that repentance leads to hope. An apology is not an admission of fault as legal testimony against oneself; it is a response to the summons issued by God Himself that we return to Him, even when we return to Him for the first time.

The first time a person walks the path of repentance that leads to hope, simply understanding at the heart-level that Jesus died at the Cross to cover the cost of our guilt, that person becomes a “Christian”. That’s all a Christian is—someone who repented to Jesus, accepting his hope in return. Becoming Christian is not about “church”, real estate, weekly schedules, or money given to the pastor. Becoming Christian is nothing more than the pure acknowledgment that Jesus is one’s personal, forgiving, hope-giving “Christ”—the Messiah who saves the whole world—thus, accordingly, believing the “Christ” already came to give hope to those who repent to him. “Christianity” is nothing more or less.

A non-Christian plainly does not believe that the “Christ” has already come, but still waits for some future hope other than Jesus.

Non-Christians are incapable of understanding the idea of repenting toward hope. Self-proclaimed “Christians” who shame others or can’t simply say, “Sorry,” without feeling overwhelming shame themselves might not be Christians since every Christian, by definition, has experienced Jesus’ gift of hope in exchange for us repenting to him.

Matthew 6:14-15

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363 – Summers Work

Work over the summer is the reason for America’s tradition of a summer school break. Initially, most work was done on farms, but there are other parts of the economy that need seasonal labor during the summer months.

Strong, hard, manual labor helps familiarize oneself with the real world. This is especially important since most bad leadership stems from lack of connection with the real world—whether leadership in a company, government, or other organization. It’s difficult for an economist to understand the overall job market without ever having had an ordinary job. Unless you have had to deal with the normal conflict between management and the labor force, you may miscalculate whether a union strike will affect long-term stock value of which company.

One of the saddest arguments in the international discussion about immigration is the need for basic labor. It’s arrogant to think that car washing, housecleaning, harvesting, and manufacturing jobs are “beneath” citizens. Those jobs, especially for young adults, build necessary character for great leadership. Without that character, future organizations are doomed. No! It is not “beneath” citizens to have character-building jobs, in fact it is the dignity of all humans in every part of the world to take time for hard, hands-on work.

As for the problem of young people being too snooty to work on a farm or wash cars during the summer, all it takes is a little awareness in the hiring market. If HR interviewers understand that having worked on a farm makes for a lower turnover rate, suddenly the classroom theme will change from “go to school, get a good job” to “go to school, spend your break on a farm, keep an awesome job”. But, this is rather simplistic. People who do intense work over the summer won’t only keep a good job; they will better lead future companies and create more jobs.

One financial leader at a university, a friend of mine, always preferred to change the oil in his car himself. He said it was therapeutic. He helped that college enter the top 100 in the US, no doubt why.

Summers work well. Do it, teach it, hire for it, and hire from it.

Psalm 90:17, Proverbs 12:11, 24; 13:4; 14:23, 2 Thessalonians 3:10

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362 – The Marvelous God of Science

Take a long look at the world around you. Consider science and exploration. Look at history and wonder. Don’t be biased—look at all science and medicine—traditional, Chinese, Western, homeopathic, pharmaceutical, herbal, spiritual… Everywhere you look, we find wonder and mystery and sensibility wrapped into one.

Never let anyone or anything convince you that our natural universe was not created by a benevolent and wonderful God.

Conclusions from observations must be properly ordered. The “Biblical” God is wondrous and immense and fascinating. How absurd of a claim that the universe is too immense, fascinating, and wondrous to have been made by the immense, fascinating, wondrous God of the Christian Bible! Such science is not scientific.

When God put His awesome splendor into creation, He was not merely giving us evidence that He exists and created all in Heaven and the universe; He was also expressing invisible parts of His Divine Nature—abstract nouns, if you will. The harmony and dance between simplicity, beauty, and functional fortitude throughout nature explain the character and ways of God. Being His Image, we can’t not find nature fascinating because nature also explains the original from Whom we came and reflect.

The Bible presumes that we can establish science and research on our own. As we look at the skies and whatever appears through a microscope, as we walk among the fields and even ponder the miracle of our hands themselves, the Bible offers additional explanation for all of it. We look and work in this world and make our own discoveries, while the Bible guides us to understand what we would never figure out on our own. These two work together.

Thomas Aquinas explained this, that “All truth is God’s truth.”

The one thing we always learn from science is that we can never learn everything. This is the same lesson we learn from theology—that knowledge about God is just as inexhaustible as knowledge of what He has created. Nature reflects His unseen character. Once a godless science or arrogant theology persuades our worldview, we also become so godless and our inner life force breaks down. A godly, thus thriving, life begins with a godly cosmology.

Joshua 3:5, Job 5:9; 9:10, Psalm 19; 86:10, Proverbs 11:2, Romans 1:20-21; 11:33-35, Ephesians 3:18-21

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361 – Grade & Gauge Correctly

Never let instruments and labels lie. If the bottle says “iodine”, don’t take the dabber and touch it directly to your skin so that the bottle contains “iodine and dead skin cells”.

This is basic science lab conduct.

When you’re still angry at your father for yelling at you five decades ago—or however you exaggerate numbers and cling to your past—don’t remember him as a bad, evil monster that eats trees, rubber, and even asphalt. Just remember that he was your father and that he yelled at you.

When we level the charge it makes complaints much easier to manage.

When the car is low on fuel the dashboard doesn’t display a “low oil” light just to get our attention. Yes, low fuel is a problem, but it needs a petrol station not a mechanic to rebuild the engine. As anyone should know, by the time the “low oil” or “low coolant” lights comes on, the engine is probably already damaged.

Only a bad teacher would dare to think, “Students only do 50% of what they are instructed, so I will tell them to do 200% so they end up doing 100%.” A teacher who does this will only attract “fifty percenters”. Students who are serious need accurate figures to calibrate their efforts. Under such a teacher, students will rightly harbor resentment, something no one wants from people who give 100% without needing to be asked.

As a parent or supervisor, do not over-punish and never ignore good work. If your “children” do a good job at their morning assignment, but fail their afternoon assignment, don’t score a “FAIL” for the whole day, only for the afternoon. If a bad afternoon means that the morning doesn’t matter to you either, then people will give you the effort of a “FAIL” for the whole day tomorrow.

Accurate reporting is part of justice. If people don’t seem to care or lack self-motivation, deceiving them with an artificial reality of false physics won’t do anyone any good. Report accurately to yourself. If the truth can’t help you help people, then you either need to learn the truth yourself or you need to find the right people.

Leviticus 19:35-36, Proverbs 10:9; 20:23, John 8:32, Colossians 3:9

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360 – Theology Humbles

Theology does not teach us that we know more, but that we know less. The more we know about God, the more we know how little we know. Martin Luther taught that the ultimate theological question is not about what we think about God, but what God thinks about us. Those who are with the Lord know far more about God—and what He thinks about us—than the greatest of all theologians because, for them, theology is no longer a belief or study, but sight.

God wants us to be humble, He delights in humility. Humility is the purpose of all theological study. It is the moral of the story, the lesson of every lesson on who God is. Just as the lesson from every scientific discovery is that science has not discovered everything, so does every lesson about God’s nature and His thoughts toward us—every single on—teach us how little we can ever know in this lifetime.

Those who become arrogant and overconfident after studying the Bible—who try to compare their own level of knowledge to the knowledge of others—have missed the whole point, proving that they may not have learned anything at all. If one truly believes that God is all powerful, then one won’t lord one’s position over others. If one truly believes that God is all knowing, then one won’t get a big head by learning so. Remembering the information while arriving at the wrong attitude indicates that the student wasn’t paying attention to any of the information, that the student’s understanding of the information is entirely tainted.

God’s love for us is immeasurably vast. Paul prayed for a supernatural experience for the Christians at Ephesus, just so they could understand God’s love. His love is that vast—we can’t understand it with any amount of research and diligence.

When we encounter real, unfathomable truth about God, that truth changes our hearts to a point where houses and careers and financial statements don’t matter to us anymore. God’s love drives us to continue to manage those things as responsible stewards and to love our neighbors, but only because we are humbled by His love for us.

Psalm 147:10-11, Proverbs 3:34, Ephesians 1:17-19, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5-6

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359 – Animal Mode

There is a strange mindset people often get wrapped-up in. It is more of “mode of instinct” than any actual thinking. It is highly selfish and tends to latch itself onto people who amass power and influence over others.

Know it by this: It is prone to violate moral absolutes with heavy self-rationalizing.

No matter how good you are, no matter how ethical, this can happen to you! Recognize it when it does.

The types of wise principles this “animal mode” will tend to violate are often the most basic morals—communicate, do not accuse without a fair trial, wait for and keep marriage vows, don’t steal, do not do normal work on your sabbath no matter how much it feels like you should. Generally and for some reason, these often include the Ten Commands and instructions in the New Testament like Jesus’ teaching in Matthew, James’ “slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to listen”, rules about lust, temptation, immorality, and others. These are simple, objective moral guidelines. But, when we get into “animal mode”, we forget them all.

Clinging to moral principles keeps you out of animal mode. When you see yourself crossing those lines, you know you must stop yourself. If you don’t, it could be the beginning of the end for whatever your current life’s work may be.

These moral codes not only guide us, to keep ourselves on track. They also warn us about others.

When you see someone in “animal mode”, unwilling to knock it off, just zip your lip and step back. Be cordial but resolute, especially when he’s in the power seat. That person will self-destruct. The clock is already ticking. This was your alarm.

In truth, this “animal mode” could be a form of spiritual attack. Demons try to tempt and influence anyone. However much mind control demons and evil spirits can exercise, they show it in “animal mode”.

Whether “animal mode” has come for you or someone you know, morals are vital to guide and warn you. But, you also need a strong, ongoing fellowship with God or you don’t stand a chance. “Animal mode” destroys anyone without a daily life in prayer and Bible.

Matthew 17:18-21, Mark 9:28-29

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358 – Why You Are Your Own Solution

Christianity does not contain a list of rules that its members hate people for breaking; Christianity clarifies good rules, forgiving whenever someone causes pain by breaking those good rules. Christianity is not an institutionalized religion with buildings of stone, steel, glass, and wood, with images and pontiffs through which Heaven dispenses its messages. The Bible is Heaven’s message, humans are the Image of their Creator God, and every human body is His Temple—God Himself will take up residence inside the “body-temple” of anyone who recognizes Jesus as God’s one and only Son.

Condemning people for breaking good rules, who thus hurt their own lives, is not Christian at all, but the teaching of demons who have found their way into every corner of society, even parts of Christian institutions. Reliance on buildings, images, and pontiffs to teach what the people supposedly can’t figure out by reading the Bible—that is not true Christianity, but a perversion of Christianity meant to exploit the people for money and power.

The anywhere-everywhere nature of Christianity empowers us for every circumstance. As a Christian—simply believing Jesus is the Son of God—no matter what you face, God is already living in your body. You already are God’s Image. When you err, God forgives you, empowering you to continue. So, you don’t need to visit a shrine to pray for help. Your body is already a prayer machine equipped with legs to go anywhere and hands to prepare a way where there is no way. Your heart can praise God and call down Heaven’s justice wherever you go.

Biblically, you already are the solution your circumstances are waiting for. Jesus saved you, thereby giving you the power to bring the rest of the solution.

Without Biblical Christianity, saying, “You are your own solution,” is no more than a feel-good lie. Being your own solution needs a basis—Jesus. Yet, many Christians, who have Jesus, don’t know how much of a help they can be to themselves because they depend too much on institutionalized systems that have nothing to do with Jesus.

Don’t think you are weaker than you are. Know the Truth and thereafter be your own help.

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357 – Loving Others Means Caring for Others

Caring means sharing just as much as it means closing our mouths and silently growing as individuals from the inside out.

God puts people in our lives that require us to love other people in ways that are not so easy for us to demonstrate and express our love. Love isn’t love if it is easy. In this, everyone will always have room for improvement—even throughout all Eternity, every one of us will have an ongoing need to increase our own capacities to love.

Loving others doesn’t mean throwing enormous meals before them, even if food is your own love language. Loving others does not mean working for them or giving them money or giving frequent hugs or spending quality time with them, regardless of which of those are part of your own love language set.

It’s an old anecdote, where the man tells his wife, “I love you, I would die for you,” but she retorts, “Then take out the trash.” We all have baggage and the one thing that the people we love most need from us to know that we love them is likely the one piece of baggage that we don’t want to deal with. Loving others means confronting your own “skeletons in your closet” and “wrestling with your own demons”. If you’re not willing to deal with your own baggage then those closest to you will eventually tire and leave you, no matter how much love you feel for them.

To love others, we must take personal ownership and responsibility for where we are in life and where we will go from here. Love cannot exist without follow through and corresponding action—and it is no one’s responsibility to clean up our own lives and take necessary action but our own. Love means taking responsibility for our own faults—not making it our responsibility to repair other people’s faults nor to expect others to take responsibility to repair our faults. True love understands this.

When we love others, we can’t not take action to provide care. Everyone has basic needs—food, shelter, clothing, and, before those, other people need us to clean up our own mess on our own.

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356 – Action Is...

Action is what separates Men, good from bad. God will judge each and every one of us—not by what we say or hope to do, but by our actions. Our actions yield results, showing us that our intentions behind those actions were wrought in God and His fairness. The fruits of our efforts slightly lag, but by following Biblical teaching, we can know what will result from which efforts with those things about which God is most concerned.

As for the actions that we do not understand, their results are also delayed from the actions that cause them, but we can learn slowly by reflecting on which actions we took that led to the results. If God’s Word had not made it so clear where our actions would lead, then God is much more concerned that we learn from all of our failures and become better at what we do. God will forgive when we repent, but we don’t want repentance and forgiveness to be the greatest action we took.

Run in the wide birth of God’s forgiveness so that you can focus your efforts on discerning the right kinds of action that will bring the maximum good results. God gives each of us small amounts of opportunity to train us and refine our abilities. As we learn, God gives us more to be responsible with. This is a principle God’s Word calls “stewardship”: responsible work lead to respectable results, thus God gives us larger fields in which to work.

If you haven’t seen your fields increase, don’t condemn yourself, but keep learning. You might be foolish and need to step in line or you may be doing everything wonderfully, so God wants you to spend extra time learning because He has some great future planned for you. Just keep working.

God created all of us as stewards in some capacity. God is our steward over us, tending to us, training us. Whenever we take action, we partner with God in a cascade of great work, rippling through creation, bringing beauty, plenty, and justice everywhere. It is in our working stewardship that we understand who God is by experiencing His reflection working within ourselves.

Genesis 2:15; 39:1-6, Psalm 11:7, Jeremiah 17:10-11, Matthew 6:1-4; 25:14-30, Luke 19:12-27, John 3:21, Romans 2:6-11, 1 Corinthians 3:9-15, Galatians 6:9-10, Hebrews 13:16, James 4:17, Revelation 2:23; 22:12

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355 – This Is a Test

Everything difficult is a test of your character. Tests reveal our problems, but, more importantly, tests fix our problems. God drives us to a point of impatience in order to grow our ability to be patient. He puts us in circumstances with people where it is difficult to love in order to grow our ability to love. He does the same with forgiveness, joy, peace, charity, selflessness, friendliness, hardihood—all designed to stretch our ability to respond perfectly in every situation.

Don’t ever give up on growing your heart and rising to the challenge. If you do, your progress and growth in life will level-off. Money will start drying up or you’ll have so much money that it crushes your heart and you won’t know what to do—which is a real problem for many who live the shallow life of luxury without happiness. The heart levels off and stops growing once we stop rising to the challenge of difficult situations. Then, love grows cold and we spiral into becoming hateful, bitter people who are always angry, yet can never make the positive difference we so strongly year for.

It never gets easy. Never let your guard down. Just when we start to love in difficult situations, a challenge will come along, sneak up on us, and irritate us to no end. It’s not that we aren’t growing in our ability to love; God just keeps give us more and more difficult challenges to keep us growing.

But, never blame others for your own inability to love. Someone else’s error is a completely different matter from your own level of self-control. Check yourself: One knows that oneself has become angry without just cause when one wants to blame someone else for ones own anger.

Strong rhetoric and outbursts do not necessarily equate to genuine inner anger, but they should be optional. If you can’t say your piece gently—without being sarcastic—then you aren’t justified in saying it angrily.

God can use our unjustly angry words to teach each other. Never discount wrongful wrath as valid instruction. It’s about your own ability to respond to anything in love—not tone or manners—actual, real, love.

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354 – Good People Speak Their Minds

When you have something to say, say it. Whether in times of harassment, nuisance, abuse, or someone just being more friendly than feels comfortable, if you don’t like how things are going, you need to say something about it. Addressing your concerns is on one’s responsibility but your own.

God puts concerns in our hearts so that we can deal with them. You might be wrong about your concerns, but bringing up those wrong concerns for discussion will help others to understand how they are perceived and help you to learn what things to not worry about. Then again, your concern just might be legitimate. Either way, the concern God puts in your heart is a responsibility, a stewardship, a job, a duty, an essential task that only you can perform, and if you don’t, others will suffer because of your negligence.

Don’t be rude or abusive, just speak your mind clearly enough to be heard.

Like an task, speaking one’s mind is a skill that gets better with time. If you never learned the skill, you will do it wrong the first time. It’s like learning to ride a bike. The way to learn how to speak your mind is to speak it, even if you speak it the wrong way at first. The worst way to do any necessary thing is to not do it at all.

If you don’t speak your mind when you have a mind to speak, your problems will swell and mount and it will be no one’s fault but your darned own. This is also part of God’s design in nature, that whatever problems we ignore grow and grow until they overwhelm us into doing what should have been done from the start.

If someone else happens to say what you were thinking, an applause is sufficient. But, don’t ask someone else speak your mind. And, don’t ever tell someone who doesn’t have the courage to speak up that you can speak instead. Some things are matters of “order”, such as the right to make a motion before a committee, but even a sitting committee member can invite a guest to speak or at least give an introduction.

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353 – Godly Life Balance

An effective life can feel like a juggling act. On the one hand, you need a strong work ethic; on the other you need to good old fashioned R&R. R&R is central to the military philosophy of the very real need for rest. But, that idea began with the Biblical Sabbath.

There is more to the balance. It’s not a “tension” of conflicting opposites, but the kind of “balance” of an ecosystem with an equilibrium. Like an aquarium, everything must be in harmony. It’s like a musician perfecting a musical scale to play is as effortlessly as a butterfly flapping its wings. Build the skill and the muscles, then relax and let the art flow. Building up the muscles can take decades, though.

In addition to work and rest, there is also love for friends, yet patience in absence. Love your friends and family, but when God-controlled circumstances (any and all circumstances) takes you from them, leave them in God’s hands and focus where you need to. Be present with those in the room and thankful, even when your mind may want to wander elsewhere.

Be thankful—for what you want more of to have more; for what you want less of to have less; and for what you want to keep to keep a little while longer. Enjoy the journey. Even the hard roads make for the best stories told in comfortable dining rooms decades later—enjoy those hard stories while they are happening because you can never go back to them.

When your work can’t get done fast enough, don’t squander your commute fretting about the world passing you its problems and your limited tool shop; enjoy the scenery, especially if it’s windy and rainy. Life happens now, as you go along. God is not as much interested in our final product as He is interested in the journey that makes us into His final product.

If you don’t have that drive to work, then you may need to pray for some. Taking extended time to pray is another part of life’s balance. Don’t just pray for deliverance; praise God right in the midst of any circumstances. Praising God makes the best equilibrium.

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352 – Prayer Is...

Praying connects us to God Most High. It gives us fellowship with Him, we can listen, He speaks back to our particular situations and needs we often don’t know we have.

Praying puts you on the speaking platform to appeal in Heaven’s courtroom. When you make prayer requests, include reasons why, defensive arguments, explanations of fairness, why your request is so important to you, and why it should be important to Heaven. God is the Judge, hearing your request in His courtroom; He is also your friend. In prayer, you do legal business with the best friend you ever had and ever could have for all Eternity.

When you pray, angels and demons see your body change different colors, flames lick upwards off of your body that can only be seen in the spiritual realm, and smoke rises up off of your head, arms, and legs like incense, bellowing upward toward the sky.

When you pray, Heaven gets an invitation to do things Heaven’s way in your life and in the space around you. Miracles are more likely because they are more welcome. Understanding, knowledge, wisdom, strength, insight, hope, and peace are all more probable because those are the things you are probably praying for—they are the things you had better be praying for.

When you pray, angels watch this great miracle in the natural world that spiritual beings can’t understand—that a human with a physical body performs the spiritual action of prayer to the only real God, Who is invisible in the natural realm. Why would a human do that, all by faith? Angels just can’t understand because our prayer fascinates them so.

When we pray together, all of our powers are multiplied by ten. One praying person can stand against ten demons, three can stand against a thousand. Praying together brings unity in our hearts and amplifies our prayer requests like logs joined in a fire. Pray with others as often as you can and for Heaven’s sake, don’t only pray in the same building only once a week.

Pray everywhere you go because you want the blessings of Heaven to go everywhere with you. Be a walking Heavenly flame: Pray.

1 Chronicles 16:11, Ephesians 1:15-23; 6:18, 1 John 5:14-16

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351 – Don't Wait to Shine

God has a plan for great and glorious things. Our brains aren’t capable of imagining how good things can actually be—even though we can imagine things being much better, if we would only open our minds to the possibility. Things will be unimaginably amazing in the future, in the next lifetime that will last through Eternity. But, things could be much better now. It’s all about what level of happiness we are willing to settle for.

Several things hold us back from being better off, whether shame or amusement.

We often get distracted by mediocre entertainment, thus robbing ourselves of a much happier life. Most of the world’s problems—including pollution and abuse of natural resources—wouldn’t be possible if people refused to settle for amusement as their solution to boredom. But, too many “sheeple” are satisfied to crawl out of bed, go off to a job or school they hate, and return home to a hypnotic video screen until they are tranquilized into sleep, just to do it all over again the next day. If no one in the West was addicted to videos, games, and video games, there wouldn’t be starvation anywhere in the world.

Whose fault is it that children are starving in India during an age when private companies launch their own space ships? It’s the fault of the teenager who won’t look up from his mobile phone and study something that can make a difference—who grows old, but doesn’t grow up to set a good example for the next generation. It’s the fault of the adults, mentors, parents, and teachers who don’t welcome each other’s help to figure out how to get it through to young people that we were created by God for bigger and better things, not just to be entertained.

For those who aspire to more in life, the giant in our path is “Shame”. We don’t want to sing unless we are the best birds in the woods. But, to humankind, all birds sing beautifully. Shine your little light now. Give hope, especially proving we don’t need to be perfect before we begin; we need to begin in order to make the world perfect.

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350 – We Need Judges So We Can Be Fair to Our Enemies

God’s morals are for God and God alone to enforce. He gave His morals in clean and no uncertain terminology. But, no one becomes a judge above his fellow man by knowing God’s moral law anymore than by being a law school student. God alone writes the laws that govern Life’s course and God alone judges each and every one of us for how much life we cultivate by complying with His laws.

In society and family, even in business, we need judges to navigate us through murky waters toward justice. We need someone to speak with authority to pronounce a verdict and exact a punishment. We need injustice brought to finality so wrongs may cease and discussion may end rightly. Judges do not only condemn, they explain through “opinions of the court”.

Without judges, society, family, and business break down. Judgment is so important that courts are often the first branch of government society raises up in regions of anarchy. It was the first office in Israel, even before there was any king.

God calls everyone to exercise “good judgment”—not to appoint ourselves judges above our peers, but to practice and improve methods of giving justice and fairness to those around us. When God judges us at the Great White Throne Judgment, ushering in Eternity after, He will judge us individually by our ability to be “unofficial judges” in the small things of day-to-day life with each other. We will answer for our morals, for our choices, for our love, and for our ability to exercise good judgment.

Jesus considered it a matter of justice when he said, “Love your enemies.” He meant that we should have affection and positive emotion for our enemies, but he also meant that we must give justice to our enemies. While God has rules and morals we try our best to understand and conform to, it is the duty of the Christian to give justice to others without making God’s moral code a prerequisite to receiving justice.

Justice is fair to those who aren’t fair. “Justice” is no excuse to strongarm others into obeying any moral code. Giving justice includes being fair with everyone you deem immoral.