We Are All Prisoners.

Newness of life.

We quite literally go from having a very real eternal death sentence over us to having a very real eternal life offered to us. New life.

Having seen several shows on television, and reading about the true life stories that some of those show themes are taken from, I have heard about people being exonerated after years of incarceration. What joy to have their good names cleared at last. How they react to such newfound freedom varies. Some embrace it with that new zeal for living, others holdfast to desiring revenge for the wrong done to them.

Then you have criminals who have been justly locked up for many years obtaining their freedom, but without exoneration. Their crimes hang over their lives forever, following them wherever they go (unless they can buy a new identity and move to a place no one knows them etc.)  These criminals too can embrace their freedom from prison with joy or anger.

I know I'm minimalizing what they can experience, there is truly a wide range of emotions they'll go through in either scenario given above. Some may go through several emotions- happiness, anger, sadness and so on.

WE ALL ARE PRISONERS.

We, as guilty prisoners in life, condemned to eternal death by the weight of our sins will remain imprisoned with that death sentence to come if we do not accept the salvation offered to us by the Author of our lives.

The prison for all people is earth.  Think about it for a long, long moment. This is a prison planet. Truly it is a prison planet in so many, many ways and it has been disguised as being a planet of freedom. We are born inside this prison planet and while we are allowed a semblance of what true freedom may be like, all around us are reminders of our incarceration.

In fact just moments ago as I paused for a short necessary break and came back to resume my writing, I took a moment to check my social media page and right there was a post from an Animal Rescue site I belong to and on it a picture of a beautiful owl. The story wasn't beautiful though. The brief caption read- 'glue traps are inhumane'  it went on to tell how awful glue traps are for animals- their suffering before death and such. This beautiful owl was brought to the clinic with a glue trap stuck to its feathers in such a way it could not fly. It took the clinic a long, long time to get the trap off the owl and they are hoping for an eventual full recovery- some of the primary flight feathers were involved. My heart broke, the tears started as the horror of such things as glue traps exist at all!  It's this awful, awful prison world we live on that allows such things! Things such as that torture trap -even for the rodents and pests deemed nuisances that those the traps were made for, that they even exist is horrific! One of millions of clues to the type of planet we belong to. Prison planet earth, and we are all a part of it, no one escapes.

Because we are born with the propensity towards sinning- no one escapes from that either- we are on this prison planet. We all have been offered a pardon from this planet, a very special pardon- a full exoneration that we can claim. The thing is, while we may accept the pardon with full exoneration, we will not be freed from living our physical lives here on the prison planet. Notice I said, physical lives. We are given a newness of life, and that newness is our being allowed to be born again only this time our birth isn't into eventual sin, but into spiritual living.  The promised pardon and exoneration is ours, the knowledge that we are freed from our death sentence is ours. We must choose to live in a new spiritual life focused on our Redeemer, our Creator, our Hope. Our trust must be kept in HIM and the promise we've been given. While we continue to suffer this prison planet, we walk in newness of life. The weight of eternal death is no longer ours.

2Co 5:17  Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 

Rom 6:4  Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 

All things are newly spiritual in Christ. We are raised from hopelessness, to hope. Our walk in the newness of life is one of hope. We have an advocate, we have someone fighting on our behalf.

The prisoners on this planet who choose to remain imprisoned even after they are offered freedom- live under a death sentence and they are controlled by the warden running this planet- Satan. We are surrounded by the unredeemed prisoners and as such, our lives will be far from easy. We must holdfast to the newness of life we are given- a newness we renew every single day of our new spiritual life.

More on this tomorrow by the grace and will of our LORD, our SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST!

What Part of Us Should Die Daily?

What part of us should die daily?

1Co 15:31 … I die daily.

Death to Selfishness. Death to Self-serving.

Denying ourselves- what part of us are we denying in order to take up the cross of Christ and follow Him?

Luk 9:23  …let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 

What is this cross we must take?  How are we to follow Christ to be worthy of Him?

Mat 10:38  And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. 

The commandments of God are summed up like this by Jesus- God with us-

Mat 22:36  Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 

Mat 22:37  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 

Mat 22:38  This is the first and great commandment. 

Mat 22:39  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 

Mat 22:40  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. 

Loving God with ALL our heart.

Loving God with ALL our soul.

Loving God with ALL our mind.

Do we? Look into your heart and lay it bare right now. Open your heart before God and search for a moment, what is in there? Who is in your heart, what is in your heart? We put other people in our hearts- but aren't we supposed to? We are told the second commandment of ranking is loving others as we would be loved. To love they have to be in our heart, don't they? The answer is truthfully yes and no.  Let me try to explain.

God must be first in our heart- we must love HIM with ALL of our heart and that leaves what left over? Nothing. It is ONLY when we do love God with ALL our heart are we able to love others WITH that very same love, God's love.

We surrender our all to God and out of that surrender He will enable us to live as He wills. We won't be loving with our own imperfect love that is riddled with flaws, but we will love with God's love and HIS love is perfect. God's love can love what we deem most unlovable. God's love will continue to love through many, many betrayals- we as human beings have turned our backs on God time and time again, yet He still loves us.

God's love has provided hope.

God's love will in truth destroy utterly into non-existence those who cannot love. It is that love which knows all the people who choose not to love would never be content if forced to live in that love offered. No forced love, no forced will, no forced hope, God allows each of us to choose- daily.

There is no one-time only choice and you are forever held to that choice regardless of all circumstances.

The initial choice is allowing the life-long commitment to be possible. As soon as you choose to allow God to have all your heart, soul and mind you are choosing to love Him. The forgiveness you find through the sacrifice of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, our Savior, allows us to love.

Because you do not stop thinking, breathing, functioning as you've always done up to that point, you will be prone to temptations that will want to draw you away from God, not towards Him. Daily a renewed commitment must be made. You don't simply stop after baptism, you don't stop after the newness wears away. Every day RECOMMIT your life to God. EVERY DAY. Wake up and choose every day to exalt God above all other things in your life no matter what they are- and love Him with all your heart, mind and soul. Seek forgiveness as soon as you recognize any other entering your heart before Him. Put God before all, and love others with HIS love.

Rom_5:5  …the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

I asked above-

What part of us should die daily?

1Co 15:31 … I die daily.

Death to Selfishness. Death to Self-serving.

Denying ourselves- what part of us are we denying in order to take up the cross of Christ and follow Him?

Luk 9:23  …let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 

What is this cross we must take?  How are we to follow Christ to be worthy of Him?

What part of us should die every single day? Our life outside of God. Truly all we do should be to His glory and not our own in any way. That cross we must take up is the knowledge we are choosing a path less traveled, a path that will have us making choices the world will not want us to make. In fact the self-serving part of us is going to fight against putting God first in every way it can. 

Can you put another person before all your own wants and needs? Yes, I said needs. Or do you think or say things like, I need to do this before I can help you with that. My need is just as great as yours. I need to take care of me first. Again I ask, can you put another person before ALL your own wants and needs?  If called to do so, could another person come before your preferred way of life? And by preferred way of life I mean- doing the things that make you most comfortable, most content, most at ease. Will you choose others before your own ideas of how you want your day to unfold?

We must allow God's way to unfold for us and follow HIM wherever He leads us and that will mean taking up a CROSS and that CROSS will kill our self serving and by the grace of God make us God serving first, and from that serving others!

Please LORD, we would be YOURS! Please! Put to death all the self-serving inside of us that would take over and kill You in Your rightful place in our hearts! All in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ!

Overcome This World.

We need to overcome the world.

Faith is the victory, truly. Faith in Christ is the victory in overcoming the world.

This world will drag you down to great depths of despair. If you don't think so then I'm really surprised. There is not a person alive with sound, or mostly sound, mental faculties that can't agree that there are times in this world where we are knocked down to an emotional abyss where everything is dark, sad and very, very dreary. I don't know ONE single person who hasn't experienced some sense of despair in their life time. I'm not saying everyone has been brought to the point of wishing for death over life (not necessary suicidal) but just having the wish even momentarily for an end to whatever suffering it is they are going through. This world offers us plenty of opportunities for suffering in all sorts of ways. 

If I were to be a promoter of Earth and humanity upon Earth to- let us say, an alien race, trying to get them to want to help earth by coming to live here with us and bring their own technologies etc, what would I have to offer in way of promotion?

Yes, there are a lot of beautiful, amazing and wonderful things on Earth, but let's get down to the nitty gritty. Even those people who have everything money can buy, often lack things money can't buy. Even those people who have nothing, lack the things money can buy. People who have money often use (employ) those who don't and those employees are not always happy in their positions of subservience to the rich, rather they wish they had the riches and had servants of their own. Yet, there has to be a servant- there has to be those who are not living the life of ease so many dream of in this world we live in.  If we brought an alien down here and showed them the rich lifestyle and the most beautiful that Earth has to offer, they would not be able to help but see that not all the people on Earth are in that rich lifestyle- it'll be all around them every time one of the rich people has a not so rich person do something to accommodate the alien.

And if I were an alien race looking to possibly share my technologies with and maybe enjoy mingling of alien races for the sake of exploration and way of life- I would want a sample of all Earthlings and how they all live. I'd want an overall picture, not just the one presented at its best.

If I had to witness the enormous amount of suffering that takes place all over Earth, would I truly want to consider mingling with such an existence?

Yes, these fictious aliens are living in a world with no pain, heartache and suffering- these are my fictious aliens so I can have them that way if I want them that way, right?

The aliens don't die, they don't hurt, they don't have any diseases, or sickness at all. The aliens don't have any mental or emotional illness, but truly are a contented people that have never had to live with the ravages of sin. When they come here and witnesses all that sin has done to this world and us who live upon it, there is no way they would want to live here exposed to all the heartache, the pain, and the horrors of life upon planet Earth.

Do we need to OVERCOME this world? We most certainly do!  And how do we overcome this world? We live, by faith in the ONLY ONE who can help us because HE overcame this world and promises us that help. We overcome this world by living for the world to come, the promised world found only through Jesus Christ our LORD and SAVIOR, the SON OF GOD.

1Jn 5:1  Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. 

1Jn 5:2  By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. 

1Jn 5:3  For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. 

1Jn 5:4  For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. 

1Jn 5:5  Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? 

May God help us live for HIM, for believing in HIM and all HE would have us believe. May we through HIS power live for HIM. We surrender our entire life to GOD to use according to HIS WILL, for HIS purposes. We believe and ask that HE help any unbelief that arises in us. We long for the return of our would be KING after His priestly ministry is completed in the Sanctuary in heaven. We long for our KING to lay aside the priestly garb and come for us to take us from this pit of sin into His heavenly home, and eventually bring us back to Earth as He destroys all that sin has done to the world and makes it new for us. This is our HOPE that we find only in the ONE who can save us from ourselves, from all that sin has brought to this world. Please, Father God, please keep us from evil. We believe in Jesus Christ our Lord, our Savior, the Son of yours, God, and wipe away any unbelief we might harbor anywhere within us. Lead us in the way everlasting. Help us to love YOU and love all others as YOU would have us love. All through JESUS!

Amen.

Broken World.

The fictional novel reads as follows- a planet overrun by an evil ruler is found to have a small group of non-evil people who rebel against the evil ruler and after many battles, some won, some lost- the rebel forces subdue the evil world domineering dictator and the good people overcome the bad. The reader cheers as tears of happiness flow down their cheeks- they've been through such a whirlwind of emotional ups and downs as this small group persevered and saved the day. Good overcame, all the evils of the dictator were over and there were many, many evils. The new ruler, one of the small group of fighters, would set up a fair and just society where evil would be frowned upon, not encouraged, evil would be subdued, not allowed to flourish.

Yes, this is the basic premise to a lot of fictional novels and movies. Some of the movies have gone on to be great successes with this as their back bone. When you do away with all the trappings, it boils down to the above description. The details change over and over again, and when a person or persons get the details just right they have a hit on their hands and people fall in love with their story telling.

Good vs. evil.   Even when good wins out over evil in these books and movies, the sequels will reenact the scenario in another way. Evil will have not quite been completely destroyed so it is allowed to come back so the good has another fight on their hands. Always, the evil isn't allowed to vanish, there must be some left even if it is a tiny tube of dna it lives on. Time and again you may think the evil is gone for good, and yes, some books and movies do allow for this, but in the back of the minds of the creators of these stories they know if they want they can resurrect a foe to fight once more.

We also have quite a bit of evil-good out there too- where the bad guy does bad things for good reasons. The gangster is a more conscientious gangster than the one he fights.  I'm not saying there aren't some evil- truly evil wins over good entertainment out there with evil being glorified because there are. I'm saying this though, and I believe it, the MAJORITY of parents will never raise their children with watching glorified evil. Note I said majority, there are always exceptions to the rule.

When fiction meets reality- when the mass murderer takes your family member for a victim- you no longer root for the killer no matter how charismatic they may be. When the collateral damage of a gang fighting another gang is your son or daughter, your mother or father, your sister or brother, you don't find either gang appealing- not even the one with a higher moral code. Strip away the fiction from the narrative and insert reality's evils that are in existence, destroying the lives of person after person, infant, toddler, child and teenager- animals large and small- defenseless against the horrors, and evil is no longer glorified- NOT when it hits home. And YET… the perpetuators of the evils do so because there are followers of evil. They've found a market for the evil, they can benefit from the evil. In fact there is a huge market for evil and there are evils so evil they will never be allowed to be called good, not ever- and yet they continue to exist and flourish because people desire that evil. Every now and again when the news of those evils surface we are appalled, sickened, mortified, and part of us can't even believe such things exist- yet they do.

Reality over fiction is horrific, yet, it exists.

To the person who says evil doesn't exist that it is a creation of society, I say they are ludicrous, they and their belief. I know evil exists, I know it does. I also know that evil will NOT always exist, there will be an end to it.

Reality tells me life was NOT supposed to have evil in it. Reality tells me that we were not meant to suffer.  I think reality tells this to a lot of people because so many are constantly trying to make the world a better place in large and small ways. The push for betterment has never stopped. Even when the push is someone's warped idea of a better society. The pretense is given for making things better, and people want that so they give into the pretense supporting it because of what they think it means. Very few politicians will set up a platform on anything other than making things better- their plan for doing so compels people to follow them. If in the end the plan turns out not to be better, they ultimately try to get a new leader, or they suffer under the weight of dictating regimes we know are alive and well in our world today.

From the internet-

'As of today, there are 50 dictatorships in the world (19 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 12 in the Middle East and North Africa, 8 in Asia-Pacific, 7 in Eurasia, 3 in Americas and 1 in Europe). We define a dictator as the ruler of a land rated “Not Free” by the Freedom House in their annual survey of freedom.

Free-  86 countries

Partly Free- 59 countries

Not Free- 50 countries

Free - 1 territories

Partly Free - 5 territories

Not Free - 8 territories

Total 196 countries 14 territories

From <https://planetrulers.com/current-dictators/>

There are MORE countries NOT completely considered free today than there are Free countries. This means, there are more people ruled by freedom restricting governments, and the free obviously to not approve of them.

Even in our free countries laws of the land exist, laws of government exist that a lot of people would claim restrict true freedom.

We live in a very BROKEN world, everybody in their heart of hearts, deep down in their souls they know it is broken and if something is broken it is NOT as it should be.

I agree with anyone who says that this world will never be good, that it truly isn't fixable. I believe there is ANOTHER world to live for, to hope for, to strive for- and I'm not alone in this, a lot of people also believe this to be true.

I personally HAVE to believe there is another world, another way, another plan simply because I refuse to believe that all there is evil fighting good endlessly. With the reality of suffering of so many innocents with no recompence for them at all through no fault of their own, I can't live with that as a reality. I have to believe good triumphs ultimately, I have to. All the innocents will be rewarded for their innocence stolen, every single one. Not one abused child will have suffered in vain.

I believe in an ancient truth. I believe in ancient prophecies that have come to pass over and over again- and in those ancient prophecies there are unfilled predictions that will come to pass, they have no choice based on all the prophecies that have been fulfilled.  I believe in this truth, I have faith in the unseen, I hope for what these prophecies say will come to pass. My faith isn't baseless by any means. There is a firm foundation, a rock solid immoveable base for my beliefs. The naysayers are blind to the truth of it all, because they choose blindness, and that is their choice- no one can be forced to believe.

Heb_11:1  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Joh_13:19  Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he.

Heb_11:13  These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

1Ti_1:1  Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope

Come soon, Lord Jesus, come soon and put an end to all evil forever! Please! Thank you! All glory, praise and honor unto You now and forever!