Trumps greatest asset

I think it’s his swag. To me, Kamala to me comes across as a pushover. Whether or not you like trump you have to admit his “been there done that” demeanor is unsettling, filtered according to your red or blue.

It’s his whole platform. She has promises while he has reminders. There’s no greater sales pitch than “tried and true”..

Sharing Realtors

Man isn’t it fun to learn you can humor multiple realtors by dividing commission?!

Why compete when you can go here and there feeling in partial commissions from adjacent properties?!

Also new to me is the buyers agent. I mean why does Zillow even exist? Tom I forgot how to search. Lil help!

In the end I get to weigh the man from the old neighborhood mafia or the old friend from the hip urban central! Does it get any better?…2 hip to be square!

Like water for chocolate

Not reviewing the movie here. Just a half a lifetime of the yips. More specifically I see now that bad company corrupts good character and Mental Illness LOVES bad decisions.

So they say if your child asks for an egg, will you give him a snake? What if he asks for a snake? If Jezebel lures him in she will be satisfied only in his self-rationalizing behavior.

So please ask for good things. God says He’ll feed the hungry with this. Then you will know good from evil, right from wrong, when you are tested to whatever length necessary for you, and you come out as gold!

Let the past sins go. They are waiting to master you all over again and again and again…

Old Time Religion

I’ve been getting nostalgic lately…I grew up in a very intellectual church. There were solid people there but as a whole the teaching was over my head. Then I spent 10+ years in church bliss. In the inner city we were serving, I felt complete. And the teaching was spot on: illustrations, gospel presentation, conviction. Now I go to a soft foot church. Don’t bother nobody and have a beer after service. Makes me miss the old time religion sermons that urge you to “keep in step with the spirit” because the time is short. That kind of sermon leaves open ends and it gives you hope that Jesus does love us sinners and that he has a plan. Hallelujah!

Assurance of Salvation – Can I really know here and now?

So much of the Bible if not all of it brings whatever dispute is at hand back to God. The knowledge of, fear of, thankfulness to are all the magnetic heart of scripture. 2 Timothy says “if we deny God He will deny us. (Def fair). If we are faithless He remains faithful for He cannot deny himself.”

As I see it there are some black and white areas to God’s acceptance of us such as outright denial. But the faithless is a grey area to me. Romans says NOBODY seeks God. The same book talks about there being a purpose to inclusion of some and exclusion of the “more deserving”….Pharisees.

There are security rich words like election, predestination, being called and chosen. But then it reminds me of myself too much when Jesus cursed the fig tree that wasn’t producing any fruit. He came to initiate the installment Scripture transitioned into.

I personally think the passage in Ecclesiastes made famous by the Byrds song spells out the need for context to have a big say in our doctrinal concrete feet. There is indeed a time a time to prune and a time to graft in. Mainly bc it’s all done so what is lost may be reinstated in its later stronger, more merciful form and the natural may know what it’s like to be an outsider. All for love, for unity.

‘Righteousness’ in the Bible –

What does it mean for us?

I’ve been doing a study of the word ‘righteousness’ in the Bible. The layman’s dictionary describes it as moral correctness or justified morality. But Scripture takes it a step further..

A certain behavioral hierarchy is used in the Old Testament to describe the implications here. Deuteronomy 9 says Israel is not going up to inherit the promised land because of their merit, but because of the wickedness, or lesser merit of the people in the land currently. God reminds Israel of their stubbornness in the desert. So righteousness is here described not as good or right, but better, or best.

In the book of Job, he uses the term to describe not an objective or widely agreed upon sort of righteousness, but one that Job perceives as justifiable, simply because it’s true, and he dares any man to say or prove otherwise. God later comes down to Job, demonstrating how righteousness, for man, begins and ends with the fear of God, because of how worthy of praise God is. True righteousness is not with trying to defend or justify your own perceived righteousness, in your own eyes.

The author of Ecclesiastes didn’t seem to lift righteousness up to the same standard as other places in Scripture. However, he does continue the theme with the fear of God. “Be not overly righteous and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?” He goes on to say, that although righteousness is a coveted position, it is nothing without the fear of the Lord, which truly is saving grace.

When the book of Matthew accounts Jesus coming to John the Baptist to be baptized, Jesus said to John that his baptism was to “fulfill all righteousness”. I suppose only the Son of God could make such a statement, but as I see it, baptism is here signed and sealed as the mark of conversion for believers from then on, as we see later in the early church chronicled in Acts. Also, Jesus’ submission to the Father at his baptism was a precursor of his ultimate submission on the cross, which was the greatest act of righteousness of all time…the perfect lamb, led to the slaughter, though he committed no crime.

1

Is your Soul Anchored?

The Soul Anchor

They say the body is about a pound lighter after death, and that that is the weight of the soul.
This is not news to me, nor to you – the part about the soul being a part of the man or woman. The physical weight though we’ll leave up to the coroners.

So…there are a lot of ways we can go with the idea of something that anchors our souls (or not?). What I want to talk about is what God’s revealed word to us in the Biblical letter to the Hebrew people, says about a “soul anchor”.

It must be said: I have the tattoo of an anchor on my arm, maybe to draw attention to my maybe being in the Navy? But also, to remember the anchor as one of the main symbols early Christians, persecuted ferociously by emperor Nero, used to unite each other. A prisoner might draw the sign of an anchor on a prison wall to encourage a future prisoner, that there IS an anchor for our souls, found in the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ.

But the Bible gets more exact about the soul anchor – the book of Hebrews says it is Hope! Specifically it is the hope of the good news in the. Bible, about the Messiah, and His people’s deliverance. But I like to think the anchor for the soul is also in a broader sense, hope in itself.

We see it all the time, everywhere…”Attitude is Everything!” Could this be a hope declaration? A negativist practically wears their disbelief in hope on their sleeve. “Down with Trump!…No new taxes!…Hell no we won’t go!” Ad nauseam. Not so much…”Keep it up Donald!…I love my current tax rate!…Thanks for the offer, but we’ll stay WHERE WE’RE AT!”

A good attitude can only come from someone who is grounded, in something to hopeful for. But even if the situation looks bleak, hope is a necessary tool in the belt. We all would give false hope to our family if it meant life or death. “Hold on, the ambulance is almost here!”

Hope is found in trust. And some like to find comfortable hope, by joining an affiliation, like a fraternity, taking a stance, like Democrat or Republican? The country song says pessimistically, “you gotta stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.” I disagree.

I believe Hope is connected to a time in human history.
Furthermore, I believe Hope is a person, a spirit, that resides in our very being, a seal stamped onto our minds and hearts by God himself (the Alpha and Omega – beginning and end), guiding us, comforting us, and pointing us back to Jesus as a man, to the hall of faith members in Hebrews 11 who cheer US on…and forward, to eternity spent with God himself.

You can’t say hope isn’t real when you talk to Corrie Ten Boom or Anne Frank. You can’t say there was mere happenstance or a good attitude keeping the Christians in the first century churches going. Say the same for Chinese Christians, meeting underground with shared smuggled Bibles or for Muslim converts to Christ, fearing rejection by their families, and fearing for their lives.

What keeps the fire stoked, to persevere under such duress? Is it a well educated attitude, toughness inspired by great leadership? Gut conviction? Protection of familial community?

I would say Hope has such qualities as its fingers. It has the universal body of believers as its branches.

At its core, it must be a living being…