Building faith

Healing verses are comforting to consult and carry with you at all times. After all, one never knows when the blow may fall.  Often in the struggles we encounter are victories of faith. I found it wise to watch closely what Jesus said prior to healings. Those who neglect this endeavor are at times heard trying to convince God to heal them, long after God already healed them when Jesus endured stripes on the Cross. These pleaders reveal their ignorance of the Cross.  God sent Jesus and now they expect Jesus to believe for them. He said, we must recall, that they would be healed according to their belief.   

Be careful what you hear

"For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light. Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured out to you, and to you who hear more will be given. For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him."  

 Mark 4:23, 24-25.

The only reliable rule in psychology I trust is "projection". From out of the heart the mouth speaks. One reveals more about themselves in talking about another than they realize. And if anyone takes an offense, they are offensive by reason of having taken it. 

How to bargain with God

So often people tell me 

the bargains they 

made with God. 

One, I remember him now, because he was so colorfully animated. His nickname was the name of a boxer all the rage at the time. 

Seems my friend had cancer of some variety. And he told God he would help people if He would heal him of cancer. Apparently he felt God agreed with the arrangement because he set about doing his end of his bargain with gusto. 

He agreed to built an elaborate front walk for someone in our group, himself a character of high estate, and during the course of his labors asked the high estate to get some more stones. 

Whereupon he was told in no uncertain fashion, to buy them himself. Harsh words resulted. I cannot say with any certainty that he ever finished the front walk.

Despite his habit to fly off the handle he finally passed away, happy as a lark in a nursing home. Maybe that is the way it is when the mind deserts the body before the spirit takes over. Despite my tendency to advise shying away from bargaining with God, now that I think about it, he did quite well in his bargain for all that. 

definition of Paraclete

The Paraclete is the Holy Spirit. I favor this simple early church definition. First mentioned in the gospels in the book of John, Jesus said He would send His disciples another Advocate. 

So this is why I identify Paraclete with the Holy Spirit. Para means alongside, and a paraclete is like a lawyer who stands alongside his client before a judge. Like a lawyer also, he is one who tells his client what to say and speaks for him.

One view, first explained, unknown now to me, was the Paraclete is one who represents us before God and assures God that we are believers. Then they made the point that God does not tolerate nor allow evil, not even in His presence. I mention this because so many church people I've engaged believe God allows evil in the world. 

For God to heal....

....we have to accept it.

We have to believe greater, 

and persisting, never give up 

until we can accept healing

When God does not answer prayer, is it because He changed His mind, or just decided not to want to heal for some reason? 

He is not a man that 

He can change His mind

So Yes! Healing may not occur, but not for any reason like changing His mind. He cannot change His mind, according to the scriptures. I can say He does want to heal and in fact already has, long ago by Jesus' stripes on the cross, as told in the scriptures. 

Gave up believing

So no one can say He did not want to heal for any reason whatsoever but why then was there no healing? He did heal! We didn't!  It is we who did not persist and believe with great enough faith. See the words of Jesus when healing.

Peristence

Those who prayed for healing did not persist. Bedrock of faith is persistence. They gave up believing. In doing so they pulled the plug, and then blamed it on God. 

Knowledge more than God

 I believe God knows our decisions before we make them, but He does not make those decisions for us. We decide, since we loved knowledge above God from the beginning. The knowledge we gain continually shows us how more ignorant we are now than we originally realized. 

Book of wisdom

At least by the time I was in my thirties, I think now, my mind as a dominating guide was stalling and needed the spirit to rescue me to a higher level from the seen to the unseen. Many societies and their religions have books of wisdom to usher the inexperienced young into the more advanced concepts of life away from the physical desires the mind is susceptible. Proverbs is a book of wisdom intended to be taught to the young to prepare them for the pitfalls waiting for them before the seen gains complete hold of them. 

Judging extent of the effort

Hard work

If, after thinking really hard for awhile, one is not sweating or feeling like they are about to sweat, then maybe there was not enough hard thinking going on. It was perhaps more like watching a movie of one's thoughts sliding idly by bye. I know too much about it. 

Definition of God first reported by Moses.

 God defined Himself. As I clearly understood in an epiphany I did not quite fully understand at the time, God defined Himself as Existence. I read much later that God defined Himself, as I am that I am, which is to say existence. 

Now also, we know God is a spirit, known as the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, as well as His only begotten son, Jesus. 

We also know as a surety that God is a person because He spoke us into existence as someone like Himself. In the definition I quote I include these definitions in a separate site by that name which is the primary purpose of these Sunset Stroller sites, click on.....

God is the spiritual personification of Existence.

Names for God. 

The names for God cannot be counted.

Click above and scroll down to see a few of them.

Quote of the week

Which person is worse off? The one who tells a lie or the one who believes it? 

Surrendering to safety

 Jesus said, and was quoted to this effect many times, that there would be a day when the first shall be last and the last shall be first. There is a virtue in surrendering our thoughts to God, and why not? Considering who God is and what He does, that would be the place to be, in the fountainhead of existence. 

I found this to be the way out of danger. Once, drowning. I had given up, starting to take in water, even thought of what would be said at my funeral, he was so young. All this time however, I was being saved but did not know it until a voice behind me said crystal clear in my memory, try one more time.

When, exhausted, I surrendered I unknowingly started to drift gradually upward. My struggling no longer held me down. When the voice told me to try one more time, that was all it took. My hand cupped an inner shelf under the top of the pool. My body reacted with a powerful surge upward and I was sitting along the wall gasping and safe. 

Another time as I lay totally exhausted with walking pneumonia. Suffering long overwhelmed me and suddenly I gave up, crying. From that instant on I began to recover. I immediately felt better. It was a dramatic finish to experience. What is true in the spirit is true in the flesh. 

If I surrender to God I am rewarded in similar fashion. So I see in this that the spirit struggles just as in the physically seen world and this assumes final victory in surrendering. It seems as though I perhaps cast off every negative thought if I can surrender to the God of my existence. It is after the fight and the struggle I am tested, but if I give everything up to God I gain the good. Everything God urges me to do is for my benefit. Worshipping and praising God? God is existence. Proof eliminates the need for faith.