Flashback :2007

Hi! I've been sorting through my old files, with the intention of cleaning up my computer and I came across a few of these old blogs from a time before Facebook was popular. The deep, dark past of 2007... This one is from MySpace! Remember that? I wrote it in May 2007! In fact, I wrote it on my last ever sick day!(before my current enforced holiday!)Interesting glimpse into the past. (Disclaimer: this article reflects my thoughts, attitudes and beliefs of the time, not necessarily now. It reminded me that life is a journey and we are always learning and growing) Hope you enjoy it :)

BEGIN HERE: MAY 2007

Hello

I have the day off because I have a cold and it is raining. So I can take some time out and write something. I'm looking forward to this... lets see what happens.

Some of you may know, but most probably don't, that I have been studying at the Living Wisdom night school for the past 18 weeks. In short, this school is teaching us some life and counseling skills. It also has many other goals, such as teaching us how to speak the truth in love, how to see ourselves how God sees us, and to teach us how to renew our minds. It has been my experience that we are often told to do many Christian things but find it hard coz we don’t know exactly "how" to do it.

So that’s what this course has done for my classmates and I. Now I know how to take my thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. Now I know why I believe lies and don’t want to embrace the truth. It’s often easier to live in delusion coz its all we have known, in some cases, for our entire lives. But Jesus promised that when we know the truth it will set us free, and I have finally been persuaded that this is the case, even if I have to go through hell first!

But enough about that. I was just thinking "yeah it’s great that I have been studying a course on wisdom, but why? what’s the point of getting wisdom anyway?" So I thought, the bible might tell me. It’s good like that!

I first checked my concordance to see what "wisdom" translates to in the original Hebrew. "hokma" wisdom, skill, learning, this can refer to skill in life, trade, war, or spiritual things. This is cool. It seems to be telling me that wisdom is a skill. Skills can be learned can’t they? Cool so wisdom isn't necessarily something super-spiritual (although there is that element) but it’s a skill! Sweet as. We can learn wisdom, and with practice get better skilled at life and other various things.

Cool.

Anyway, Proverbs chapters two and three seem to give some pretty cool advice about these benefits of wisdom. So I started to read it and here's some of the stuff that it says. I think there seems to be a lot of things so I will just list a few off them.

Verse 5: You will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Discretion will protect you and understanding will guard you. (Well that’s good, if discretion and understanding are protecting and guarding me, then surely that means I don't have to protect myself. I don't have to be on the defensive, I can let my walls down, I can express who I am and not be afraid. All of our relationships and lives will be much more fulfilling if we all let our walls down and came closer to each other. Isn't that what God intends? He will protect us. Relax).

Wisdom will save us from wicked men.

It will save us from the adulteress.

We will live in the land. (What land?) The Promised Land (what's your Promised Land?) wisdom will let you live in your Promised Land, where your dreams and goals are fulfilled and the desires of your heart are met. I want to live there!

Our lives will be prolonged and prosperous, our bodies healthy and nourished.

Wisdom will bring peace to our lives. (Not necessarily our circumstances, but in our souls (heart/mind/emotions) instead).

Well, there’s heaps more in there, I highly recommend that you read it yourself...

In Proverbs 3:7 Solomon warns us not to be wise in our own eyes. My thoughts here would be, to remember who gives you the wisdom = God, not yourself! And also to check why you are gaining wisdom. Is it for purely selfish reasons? To feel good about yourself and improve you life. Or is it purely to please other people? If we always please people, then how can we always please God? Both are wrong. We should be seeking wisdom so that we can find a healthy balance of helping both ourselves and others and ultimately bring some positive attention to our heavenly Father.

Its not always selfish to want good things, and its not always loving to help other people (they might just need to learn how to swim on their own for example). So seek wisdom for everyone's benefit and ask God to help you remain humble as you do so.

Well I might go get some breakfast now. I have only just touched the tip of this huge iceberg, and I am in desperate need of a coffee. Hope you get something from my ramblings and seek a bit more wisdom in your lives.

Might come back later, got the day off, so there’s only so much relaxing I can do without getting bored!

Bye

END HERE: JULY 2012

Well, I did come back later! Took my time though! Since then I have done many wise and unwise things, but with the intention of increasing the wise things and learning to weed out those unwise things.

I was thinking that our lives are like gardens, with many beautiful and fruitful plants growing in them. If we keep making unwise decisions, it's like allowing the weeds to grow and choke those God-given plants, making it difficult for us to produce anything of any value! You would have to rely on going to the supermarket every week and giving your money to someone else just to get fed! I would rather grow my own veges to feed my family, and even have so many that I would take my extra food to the supermarket and give it to them! That sounds very rewarding!

(Of course we will always need to go to the supermarket regularly to get stuff, if we want our lives to actually taste any good!) ;)

I don't want my life to be like that neglected, old compost heap! With a few old spuds growing in it, and lots of weeds!

And let's be honest... it smells a bit funny...

I would rather my tomato plants, for example, were straining under the weight of masses of fruit, needing others to take the fruit off! This helps everyone! I would have to help others, just to survive! A weak spindly tomato plant with weeds growing all over it won't help anyone. Sometimes it even struggles to help itself!

While some things change over time, and we should all be wanting to grow, some things remain the same. I am still in desperate need of a coffee!

:)

Yay? or Neigh?

4:30am. Considering my recent sleeping patterns, this is a nice sleep in. I'm not complaining, after all it's just a side effect of the medication I am on, which is trying to kill me so that I don't die...

Just coz something feels bad, doesn't mean it's bad for you. Conversely, just because something feels good, doesn't mean it's good for you! They are unrelated. Some stuff that makes me sick, like Justin Bieber, Glee, and The Backstreet Boys is bad for you, but other stuff like chemo makes me sick, but is good for me.

Our feelings are a completely unreliable guide as to what's good and bad. Your feelings don't care about whats "right" or "best for you", etc, they can be the traitor within, caring only about themselves, and not you as a whole person.

Our feelings only care about feeling good. Not what's best for us. Don't be led astray by the lies of 'if it feels good, do it', or 'try before you buy'. These are just catchy sayings beamed out through the atheist media to a carefully and systematically dumbed down populace so that we are brainwashed into living a life with few boundaries, wielding a self-righteous battle axe that constantly whooshes "what about me, what about my rights", every time we blindly swing it, in our perpetually defensive mindsets, which are in that state because deep down, we know we are wrong, but the lies telling you to "do what you feel like, it's my right", "everyone else does it" (DO THEY REALLY?) are just too loud to ignore. Every time you listen to a thought and agree with it, it gets louder. A lifetime of the same thoughts gets pretty deeply ingrained and can take time to change.

This is made even more difficult when thousands of people like me have an antidote to this and keep it to themselves. Church is full of selfish hypocrites, that's why I go there, coz I'm one too, and I get help every week to try and not be one. The whole world is full of hypocrites too, people forget that, but it is harder to be a hypocrite when you don't actually have any real standards, that make you any different from anyone else.

That's some good writing there. Did anyone else just feel that small earthquake?

My mum would have. The world's best mum. Hi mum. Love you. Thanks, Aunty Trish for printing this out and taking it to mum so she can read it. She loves it. Or at least she pretends to, to make me feel good ;)

Here's one for ya: don't wait 'til you feel like doing something. Commit to it, then you will feel like doing it. Oprah won't tell you that one.

But really, who cares how I feel? Well, cliched as it is, because it's true, God does. I remember when I first started going to church, about ten years ago, in my early twenties, I didn't feel good at all! To qualify that, I still remember the very first time I went, because I felt this warmth, this life, light and unexplainable joy this feeling of being at home, they told me that was The Holy Spirit. Whatever that was? Ha ha! I was excited, and freaked out too! In fact, I only ever went to our smaller night service of about 100 younger people my age, for about three-four months, because I was far to scared to go to the morning service, with 5-600 people! I was actually physically sick on numerous occasions, because of the fear of the crowds. True story.

About a year or two later, I got up the front and spoke, was leading a small group and was playing drums in our band!

If I'd listened to and obeyed my feelings, who knows what a boring, empty life I would have now! I can't even imagine! As God says, "just taste and see, that I am good" but people don't do that because they don't want to lose their lifestyle, or friends, or they just love getting pissed and partying too much! Take it from me, that life feels good, I was an expert at excess, (three years at a politically correct brainwashing institution / University), but ultimately is just a bit of a band aid over a wounded heart, it will never make you truly happy or whole, but it will distract you weekend to weekend so that you never get around to living a full life. It is a life of treading water, buying time. I don't want to tread water, I want to walk on water... (metaphorically, not literally, for any stubborn, anti-Christian cynics still reading)

It's a gamble. You might lose things. You probably will lose friends and people will judge you. They are usually just jealous of your boldness, and afraid that their little world will be made a bit uncomfortable. I lost several friends. But I also kept several, and made hundreds more! Just like putting $1000 on a horse to win. Handing over the money has all sorts of mixed emotions, fear, excitement, anticipation, doubt, second guessing your decision, living in a state of what happens next... But when your horse comes in first place at odds of infinity to one, and there was actually only one real horse in the race and dozens of cardboard cutout images of horses, you will be overjoyed!

But it's your choice. I used to go to church for the first few months, hungover, or coming down off drugs, (sorry mum, it was years ago), with about two hours sleep. No one gave a crap! Probably, no one even noticed! Coz your heart is all that matters, and that's between you and God. Like I've said before, going to church doesn't make you a Christian, any more than standing in a garage makes you a car. But if you want to look after your car, it will always be in better condition in the long term, if you keep it in that garage.

My Dad hadn't been to church regularly for probably 40 years. His church was the hundreds of people who needed food, a bed for a while, money for bills, or for a car to get to job interviews. I don't even know half of the good he and mum did over the years, they just kept it all quiet. But sitting by his hospital bed a month or so ago, he knew where he was going, as much as anyone has any idea about it.

If there's no God in heaven, then we are just animals and would be free to just do what other animals do, eat, sex, kill, rape, fight, defacate in our beds, steal other people's stuff because I WANT TO! That whole macro evolution argument has more holes than my favourite undies. But people don't see them, because they DON'T WANT TO! and they are taught evolution as scientific fact, based on some old goats bone. Good evidence... Yeah...

That's so sad

God says "give me an honest go and see what happens". God is love. Love is a choice, and sometimes a feeling. It's your choice. He's already chosen you. Don't worry, our stupid feelings always catch up!