The Heart

So let's imagine just for a moment that we are there... in the temple, year 1, Jesus has just been born, and there are His parents, dedicating Him to the Lord according to the law of Moses. Here comes this fellow named Simeon...he takes Jesus in his arms, says a whole lot of interesting things, and ends with the most interesting of all. Speaking of Jesus, he says to Mary, "...and a sword will pierce even your own soul, to the end that thoughts from many hearts will be revealed."

Fast forward an unknown number of years...again we see Jesus, this time as King, and He makes this statement--"I am He who searches the hearts and minds."

Hebrews says this--"all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do."
Proverbs states that "Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord; how much more the hearts of men?" and, "The spirit of man is the lamp of The Lord, searching out the most inward parts." Jesus said that "from the heart of men come evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, etc. etc." The book of Jeremiah says that "the heart is wicked and deceitful above all things".

All of these things, just for beginners, tell us quite a lot. The Bible has tons more to say about the heart.

Here is what we are learning.

True spiritual warfare takes place in the heart. The heart is where God works most; it is also where the Adversary works the most. Why? Because they both know that the heart is where everything that makes a person who and what they are happens. The heart is where the formation of a person takes place. The heart is where a person's identity is formed, argued about, and debated. It is where all of the things that make a person who and what they are, are found.

So...the logical conclusion...to most affect human beings, for good or for bad--go for the heart! Proverbs is correct when it says to "guard your heart above all, for from it flow the issues of life."

If you have the fortitude, ask God to show you the truth about your heart. It can be a very eye opening experience!

...more to come...

More on Foundations

Here is another observation that I have made about foundations that helps make the point about how important they are.

Perhaps you have noticed, as I have, that whatever note is played at the start of any relationship is very much the same note that is played throughout that relationship.

I have noticed that however my relationship starts with someone is generally how my relationship with that person continues. Years later, we still feel the same feelings and respond to each other as we did during the foundational period of our relationship.

This is not to say that relationships cannot change and grow, because they can and do. With the help and leading and guidance of God in relationships, I have seen them and do see them change. However, that original flavor is reluctant to let go. It takes time and work.

This just helps to make the point that a foundation, in whatever setting or application we find one, is very important. And, me being me, I will always focus on how the lesson applies to kids. So, the most important thing to learn and apply from this lesson, is this--"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." In other words, whatever foundation you lay in a child's life is going to last in that child as they grow up and become an adult.

I know that I am comparing two different things here, relationships and raising children, but I am just pointing out the power of foundations. We can see it in many areas of life, and so we must apply it in every area that we can.

Notes on spiritual warfare

One of the keys to spiritual warfare to remember is this--it is not so important to avoid spiritual warfare as it is how you respond to it. Everyone is going to experience it simply by living on planet earth and being human during this time period of human existence. So the key is not to avoid it, the key is to respond to it correctly.

And what is the correct response? Or, rather, what are the correct responses? Trust, receiving love, (from God and others), and responsibility, (not giving away, or abdicating, the responsibility for your life). If a person successfully knows how to do these three things, then they will be pretty much impervious to spiritual deception, temptation, etc.

Which, of course, leads me to the point that I make over an over and over again. Build these characteristics inside of your kids while they are kids so that they are natural responses when they become adults. Make them impervious to spiritual assault without their knowledge that you are doing so. Make them so trusting, so able to receive from God and other people, and so responsible that no spiritual lie can even find a tiny foothold inside of them. Build inside of them an undivided heart.

Foundations

There is no substitute for a good foundation. True of houses, true of lawns, and true of human beings.

I have learned this lesson by trying to fix peoples' lawns. People ask me to fix their lawns when they are not doing so well. The first thing I find out is whether or not it was installed correctly in the first place. This one factor, more than anything else, will tell me what is wrong with their lawn and what I am going to be able to do about it. Specifically, what I want to know is, when the lawn was first installed, was there adequate topsoil installed first? This is an all important question, because we live in Nevada. If you plant a lawn, either by seed or by sod, here in Nevada, and you do not first add six to eight inches of topsoil, then you are wasting your time. However, I see it done all the time. Then people ask me to come fix their lawn.

Now, to be sure, there are plenty of things that can be done to help a lawn that is struggling because it was planted right on the hardpack. You can aerate it regularly, you can fertilize, you can add many amendments that will break up the soil and change its composition, etc. But you will have to do these things constantly, and it's going to cost you a lot of time and money, for as long as you have the lawn.

On the other hand, if a lawn is put in correctly from the start, with a nice thick layer of good soil, and watered correctly, it is going to grow well and be much more healthy. This is because its roots are going to have plenty of room to go deep, and deep roots are the key to a healthy lawn. A lawn with deep roots is able to survive anything: pests, animals, freezes, droughts, disease-- a lawn with deep roots can survive it all.

So here is the parallel that I want to draw. Lawns are just like people.

God made kids so kidlike for a reason. When I say kidlike, I am referring specifically to their impressionability, malleability, their willingness to follow, etc. Kids are like sponges; they soak up everything around them. Again, they are like this for a reason. The reason is so that they can learn to be loved, learn to trust, learn to be responsible, etc. The reason is so that a good foundation can be laid, for the first 18 years or so, that will support them for the next 80 years or so. With a good foundation, a person will thrive and be healthy for the rest of their life. They will be naturally immune to pests, (spiritually), antagonists, (physically) diseases, (spiritually and physically), and all other dangers which can potentially befall a person. With deep roots, a person will thrive indefinitely. Without deep roots, because there is no foundation, a human being will be more susceptible to disease, attack, etc.

The point to all of this is, again, the infinite importance of teaching your kids how to receive love and love, how to trust, and, as they get older, how to be responsible and how to be free. These things are the four cornerstones of a good foundation for a human life.

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The ability to trust. It sounds simple enough, but there is a lot to it. People can have one of two identities at work inside of them. They can have the identity of a Truster, or they can have the identity of a Fighter. And to make my point poignant before I even make it, I ask you, which of the above two identities is given more respect, praise, and commendation in society? The blatantly obvious answer is the identity of a Fighter. This identity is lauded, applauded, and sought after the world over. It is constantly glorified in movies and television; we are taught from day one that it’s the fighters who win at life.

However, fighting naturally infers that there be someone or something to fight against, otherwise there would be no fight. This is all fine and dandy when faced with a real enemy who is threatening you. However, when it comes to the spirit, most of the time, there really is nothing to fight. You are only bombarded with lies. And lies, being lies, are not true; hence, they ARE NOT REAL. Hence, there is nothing to fight.

And here is where the identity issue becomes important. Because people naturally operate in whatever identity, (or identities), they have inside of them, whether they know it or not. It is something that is done without thinking about it.

So, a person is walking around with either the identity of a fighter or the identity of a truster. Now here comes a lie. How is a person with each respective identity going to respond? A person with a truster identity is going to respond with indifference to the lie. He will simply trust God, what God says about him/her, just trust what he knows to be true, and go on his merry way. However, a person with a fighter identity will, of course, see the lie as something to fight. He will immediately, because of his pride in “fighting for what’s right”, attack the lie head on with every weapon available to him in his arsenal. This is because he, we, have been taught, our entire lives, that fighting is the honorable and best thing to do. We should always fight all evil and bad things wherever we encounter them.

The problem with this is that when you fight a lie, you are fighting with an illusion. You are, literally, fighting with something that does not exist. Because a lie is just that—it is the opposite of the truth, and therefore it has no real substance. There is nothing to a lie. If you try to stand on a lie you will fall, because it does not exist. So, and here is the dangerous part of this: the more you fight with an illusion, the more real it becomes to the one fighting it.

Do you see why this is bad? It’s not very difficult to see. The more a person fights with something that is not real, the more real it becomes to him because he is focused on it. As any fighter will tell you, you must never take your eyes off of your opponent, lest he slip one in on you. Therefore, in an honest and honorable attempt to do the right thing, he actually only digs himself further and further into a hole that is going to be harder and harder to get out of the more he continues to fight. And the sad part is, that he really never needed to fight it at all, because it was never true in the first place.

This is why it is CRITICAL to build inside of your kids the ability to trust. It is absolutely critical. It is not just important, it is absolutely critical.

Jesus was a Truster. Because He knew God perfectly, and knew all the truth that there was to know, he never believed a lie. And therefore he never fought with a lie. And therefore he never wasted any time fighting battles that didn’t need to be fought.

I believe that massive amounts of humans are walking around every day fighting battles that do not need to be fought, because they are only faulty responses to lies. I also believe that a large majority of sin in the world is not a result of people’s bad intentions, but of people’s belief of lies. Specifically, lies about themselves. Which result in mistaken identities, which result in actions based on those untrue identities. Which is why you have a whole bunch of people, good people, doing bad things, all the while knowing that they are bad things!

A friend of mine used to tell me this principle long ago, and I never understood it. He would say to me that a person living apart from God and/or in sin was simply a case of mistaken identity. And he is right! That’s what it really is!

The solution to all of this is trust. And, unfortunately, it is harder for me to write about the trusting aspect than it is for me to write about the fighting aspect. Why? Because I had the fighter identity. That is how I learned all of this. But I know that the solution is trust. Because when you know how to trust, and even more importantly, when trust is your natural reaction, you will never even consider the lie in the first place. Your natural reaction to it will be one of disregard, because you are so grounded in the truth... as Jesus was.

When Jesus was tempted, his reaction was to rely on what God said was true. This account is given in a couple of the gospels. When the enemy lied to him, Jesus’ response was, “No, here is the truth—what God says.” Jesus response was one of trust.

See, real victory is not beating an opponent. Real victory is never being affected by your opponent in the first place. When you let yourself be affected by your opponent, then you will have to fight him. If you just ignore him, then there will be no fight.

This is important because when you are fighting, it is taking your time and your energy to do so—time and energy that SHOULD be employed in doing the productive things that you are created and called to do. Fighting is simply a diversion from productivity.

The important point in all of this, that goes with everything else I have said in this book, is this—teach your kids how to trust. Instill and literally build this trait inside of them their entire lives. Build it inside of them intentionally, the entire time that they are in your care, so that it becomes their natural way of operating. Do this for them so that they trust naturally, so that they don’t have to ever even think about it—they just do it, naturally—and this will save them WORLDS of heartache when they are grown adults.

And, on a related note, this is why we are admonished over and over again in the Bible to not judge people. Because we really have no idea how a person came to be involved in whatever "sin" they are involved in. I love it in Romans 1 where Paul states that, "we know that the judgment of God for those practicing such things is according to the truth" whereas our judgment is not according to the truth, because we cannot see or know all of these things that go on inside of human beings like God can, and does!

The Four Most Important Things In The World

The four most important things in the world are as follows--love, trust, responsibility and freedom. And, to get even a little more specific--not only is love the most important thing in the world, obviously, but the ABILITY TO RECEIVE LOVE, is the most important thing in the world.

This quality must be built inside of you while you are a child. This is because when you are a child, you are in formation mode. Just as your body is forming, and using all of the ingredients that are fed into it to do so, so it is when your soul is forming; it is using all of the ingredients that are fed into it. If it is consistently fed love, taught to trust, and gradually but consistently taught responsibility, then that is going to be the makeup of that person. When you reach adulthood, you are going to naturally, without thinking about it, walk around receiving love, trusting, and being responsible, which includes being able to handle freedom.

The point--if you are already walking around doing these things, be grateful. If you are struggling with any of them, realize why and choose to grow in them now. And, most importantly of all, TEACH YOUR CHILDREN THESE FOUR THINGS. Teach them: how to receive love, by loving them consistently: how to trust, by providing them an atmosphere of safety: how to be responsible, by consistently providing them opportunities to be responsible for themselves (age appropriate, of course): and how to be free, by, again, providing them opportunities to practice responsibility.

Getting what you want

Well, welcome back, to anyone who happens to still be reading my blog. Here is the latest wonder that I have beheld in my life.

Sometimes you have to get what you want to realize that you don't want it. I learned this lesson very nicely over the past nine months or so, having moved to a place that I was sure that I wanted to move to, and living a dream that I was positive that I wanted to live. So what happened? A lot. To put it briefly, I learned that I really don't know myself as well as I think I do. I learned that I really don't know what it is that I want. I learned that it is really not my circumstances in my life that are causing me unrest or unhappiness, but my own deeply ingrained attitudes and thought patterns, that I didn't even know I was indulging in. I learned why it is that I need to "Trust God with all my heart, and lean not on my own understanding". It is because we really don't know ourselves, or what we want, or what is going on inside of us, like we think we do. He does. The wonderful book of Proverbs states it this way (along with the one that I just quoted)-- "Sheol and Abbadon are open before the Lord, then how much more the hearts of men?" and "Every man's way is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the motives of the heart" and "The crucible is for silver and gold, but the Lord tests hearts". And then there is this one from the book of Hebrews which states, "All things are naked and laid bare before the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do" and "The reckoning of the Lord is sharper than any two edged sword, able to discern between the thoughts and the intents of the heart". WOW.

The older I get, and the more I learn the truth, the humbler I get.

What to focus on

Heard a lady say an absolutely brilliant thing the other day, truly. She said this.

"You know how when somebody tells you not to think of a pink elephant, you automatically think of a pink elephant? The reason why that happens is because there is no mechanism inside of a human soul for don't. There is only mechanism inside of the human soul for do. So when you say, "don't", your brain (0r whoever's you are saying it to) responds with a "do" mechanism. "

This is the most brilliant and amazing thing I have ever heard.

So what is the lesson we can learn from this? The lesson is to not focus on what you don't want to do...focus on what you DO want to do!! Because you are a "do" kind of being! It's how you are created, by God! Don't try to stop bad habits...do good things! Don't try not to bad things...do good things!!!!

More Proof...

...that faith only works through love. There are all these verses in the Bible that say that if we ask God for anything that is according to His will, then we will get those requests from Him. I think it says this in the book of John, Jesus Himself talking, and in the book of 1 John as well. It probably states it in other places as well.

Here's the rub. How do we know what is according to His will and what isn't? Well, here is what I have learned. I have only become able to know what His will is as I've come to know Him.

Before I knew Him, and only knew about Him, those verses didn't work for me. They stayed in the misty grey area of Bible verses that had zero effect on my faith. But, now that I've gotten to know Him, and what He is like, and, more specifically, what He is like toward me, I know a lot of what His will is. And, therefore, I ask Him for things regularly and receive them, because I know it's what He wants for me! It's so simple!! But I never knew what His will was, and therefore those verses never worked for me, until I got to know HIM!

This is just more proof of the fact that faith works through love! My faith never worked until I discovered that God loved me and wanted to have a relationship with me. After I discovered that, and began to live in it, MY FAITH BEGAN TO WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why is it...

...that before we become Christians we are promised all sorts of wonderful things like healing love, a friend who never quits on us, freedom, purpose and destiny, and the like, but then after we become Christians, we are constantly bombarded with all the things we have to do or else? Where did the change come in and why? As Christians, we need to be actively partaking of these real things that we were promised all the time. It did not change after we chose to follow Christ.

And we must live these things ourselves to prove the validity of them to anyone else that we are going to promise them to, or else we become hypocritical.

So, what's the point in all this? Love. As usual. What everybody needs, Christian and non, is love. And trust. And freedom. And healing. And peace. And hope. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Why Trust is so stinking important.

Was feeling pretty bad about not knowing how to trust God, and not knowing how to receive love correctly, and wondering what I was going to do about any of it, until I heard a great sermon tonight. A sermon about Abraham. A man who didn't know how to trust or be loved. A man who suffered from depression as a result. A man who did really, really really stupid things as a result. A man who had to learn, just like the rest of us, that God is good, and loves us, and is worthy of our trust. And it took him years, and years, and years.

And not only Abraham, but Moses, and Elijah, and Job, and Gideon, and Jonah, and all the rest. All people whom God had to teach to trust, because they were not taught it. All people who had no idea how good God is and how much He loves them.

The Greatest Weapon in the World

The greatest spiritual weapon in the world is the ability to receive love. This ability makes one impervious to fear, guilt, shame, pride, (the wrong kind), insecurity, etc. Without it, all these other things can grow. Where love is, there can be no fear, guilt, shame, insecurity, etc. Therefore, the ability to receive love is critical. Where love is not, there will be fear, pride, insecurity, shame, etc. (this is only a partial list of the other things that grow where there is no love).

Therefore, the greatest spiritual weapon available to a human being is the ability to receive love. If you don't have it, you must get it! If you have the ability to help someone else get it... give it to them! Being loved is a person's greatest defense in this world. Defend someone today!

The Determing Factor

Here is something that used to not make sense to me. I couldn't understand why it was that I could see no consistency between people's belief in God and their well being or success as a human being. I had always thought that belief and faith in God were the sure ways to go and were the things that would set a person right in this life. I was sure that they were the path of life that the Bible talked about. But, when I looked objectively at people, I did not always see consistency between people's faith and their overall well being as a person.

In other words, I would see people with no faith or belief in God doing wonderfully well in their lives, while seeing people with faith and belief not doing well. And then I would see some who DID have faith in God doing well, while others who had no faith were not doing well. In other words, their seemed to be no direct correlation between a person's faith, or lack of faith, and their well being as a person, either for or against. It all just seemed to be random. Until now. I have discovered the determining factor.

Love is the determining factor. And love knows no theological bounds. It crosses them all. Love occurs in Christians, atheists, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhists, Paiutes, agnostics... All people have the ability to experience love. And any human being's well being is a direct result of how much love they have received, experienced, lived in, and currently live in! A child of atheists who receives more genuine love than the child of a Christian is going to be better off. And, the child of a christian family who receives more genuine love is going to be better off than the child of athiest who do not love. Theology is not the issue! Love is!

Belief and faith in God are factors in a person's well being, in that they connect them with God, who is love. So they are contributing factors, but they are not the most important factor. The most important, overriding, all important factor for being a human being, is, and will always be, love.

Destroying religion, bit by bit

We, those of us who have been around religious circles for a while, have all heard this phrase, that "Jesus has the keys to death and hell". (I think it's somewhere in the book of Revelation).

Well what does this really mean? Here is one thought. Since we know that hell is something, or somewhere, as evidenced by so many of Jesus other teachings, then why would he want, or need, the keys to it? Why would he want to go there? If somebody has the keys to a place, this infers that they will be going there at some point, and have access to it, and can go there whenever they want. It infers, at the least, authority to be there, if they so choose. So, He can go there any time He wants to.

Well,why? What is He going to do there? Isn't He the one who sent all those people to it in the first place? Or, it was His Father, at least, wasn't it?

Let me make a couple of suggestions, based on a couple of Bible verses that seem to be almost universally ignored. Jesus said, in the book of John, that a time is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and those who hear it will live. So, assuming that some of those dead are in this place called hell, apparently Jesus went to hell, spoke to them the word of the gospel, and those who heard it (accepted it?) lived. Just like He did (does) here on earth. Amazing. So much for the theory that all the people who lived before Jesus showed up on earth are burning in hell for eternity.

And, here is the other conveniently ignored verse. This one comes from 1 Peter 4, and says, " for this reason, the gospel has been preached also to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God". Wow! Like God is actually fair and just, and understands that there is deception and darkness that affects people and their decision making processes while they are here on earth, and so gives them the chance, when they are dead (physically) and can see it all clearly. This sounds like just what Jesus said, that He Himself went, or maybe even still, goes there, and preaches the gospel to the people who blew it and found themselves there. Just a thought. So much for the theory that everyone who dies without hearing the gospel is going to burn in hell for eternity!!

Maybe this is why He needs the keys!!

Danger Will Robinson

A dangerous thing to do-- Believe that the trial that you are or may be going through is ordained by God to make you stronger.

The trial you are going through is a result of living in this world. The goal that God wants for you from it and through it is to draw you closer to Him in absolute dependence and trust and love.

This doesn't happen when you believe that He has ordained the trial for you to make you stronger. That breeds pride. Pride is always very dangerous.

Living in this world has trials. God certainly does use those trials for His purposes, but His purpose is always to love you and to show you His love for you. That love MUST be your only goal through any trial you face.

God works through the trials that we go through to bring us closer to Him... FOR LOVE.

Real security vs. fake security

Fake security-- acting against your fear and insecurity to try to make it change

Real security-- trusting and being loved

Can your religion and let God love you.

Proof that God needs you

Here is proof that God needs us, that God needs people.

The world is in a mess. If God worked in this world apart from people then the world would be just fine. God will not and can not ignore people and walk all over them to just do what he wants and get what he wants done. Because of the nature of us, his creation, and his own nature, that is impossible. He is love, which means that He will always respect us, our choices, and our freedom. That is what love does. We are autonomous beings. We would not be better off if God just ran us over to make things how he wants them. That would not be good for us.

Because of the nature of the reality in which we find ourselves, it has to be a joint effort between us and Him. We are all, us and Him, free, autonomous, beings. He does need you, just the same as you need Him.

God needed about several million or billion people that didn't know it or believe it, and so they were not able to do what God needed them for, and so the world is in the shape that it is in. If every one of those people had realized the truth that God needed them, badly, then they would have come to Him, responded to His love, and out of that love done whatever beautiful and good thing God had planned for them to do in the world, and the world would be in a much better state.

And, conversely, those that have realized God's need of them, have come to Him and found out why, and done, by His empowering love and grace, whatever astoundingly beautiful thing that He had for them to do in this world, have made it better off for the rest of us today. I. e, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, Bill Wilson, Rich Mullins, George Mueller, etc.

Now, I know that those who disagree with this theory would quote the verse out of the book of Esther (4:14) where Mordecai says to Esther, "if you remain silent at this time, deliverance will rise for us from somewhere else". He may have been right, however, this is not God speaking. This is Mordecai speaking. People often give verses out of the Bible as proof of something and say, "it's the word of God" without realizing that at a lot of places in the Bible, it is simply recording dialogue by fallible, broken human beings, like the place in Acts where the Pharisee strikes Paul and Paul calls him a whitewashed wall. (23:3) The point is, the things that the people say in the Bible are not necessarily "the Word of God".

If God didn't need people, and He raised up someone else to do a person's job whenever that person failed to do it, the world would be perfect. As it is, the world is pretty jacked up. Which tells me that a whole lot of people that God needed didn't agree with Him about that!

God needs you.!!!! Refuse to listen to the religious crowd that tells you differently!

The Phenomenon of Loneliness

Ever experience true loneliness? I don't mean that general ache that most of us feel from time to time that comes from living in this world. I mean the real thing. Like you feel when you come home to an empty house that is usually full. And the full force of actually being by yourself with nobody else around hits you right in your heart. It is not a pleasant experience. And, of course, I'm sure you all know by now where I'm going with this. We are not meant to be alone.

We operate best in relationship. And, of course, since we are made in the image of God, this means that He doesn't like to be alone either.

I hear people teach all the time that God doesn't need us, that God can do what He wants to do without us, God will find somebody else, etc. etc. etc. Like He cares more about getting what He wants done than He does about us, which is simply not true.

So, if God doesn't need us, then why would He go through so much effort to reach us and have a relationship with us?

I think, again, that there are too many people out there saying things that they've heard somewhere in the annals of churchdom and believing that they are true of the nature if God, instead of being responsible for their own relationship with Him so that they could hear some truth that might actually help someone or encourage someone.

God feels loneliness. And the only antidote for His loneliness is YOU.

Worship?

So I have never understood the term worship. It has always just been one of those religious terms that has never done me any good... until now.

My understanding of the term has led me to think that it means always paying attention to something, giving something (or someone,) all of your attention, or most of your attention, or more attention than you give to anything or anybody else. And, I can honestly say that I think I have reached a state in my life where I give more attention to God than I do to anything or anyone else. But the key is how I got here. And, for any of you who have been reading this blog for any length of time now, you can probably guess what it is that I'm going to say.

I have reached this place that looks like what I perceive worship to be by love. Because He has so unrelentingly hammered it into my brain that he loves me, and I am falling so in love with Him, I think about Him more than anything or anybody else. Gee, I guess this is my faith working through love again. That has got to be just about my favorite verse in the entire Bible. Because it is so stinking true. Faith works through love. It is the only way it works.

So, the point here, is that while worship of God is so preached and held up as the standard for us to live, I think that there is only one way that we are going to reach that goal... and that is by learning and coming to know of His love for us!

The Greatest Miracle in the World!

This is by far the greatest miracle that I have ever seen accomplished in this world and in my life. I know that Jesus raised the dead, and walked on water, and healed blind people, etc. etc., .... and even in my own life I have seen people healed on the spot, and seen God come through for people, myself included. And I've read the Bible, and know all about how He parted the Red Sea, and made Manna fall from heaven, and turned water into wine, etc., etc., etc.. But I have seen a miracle greater than them all. A miracle of such beauty and wonder that all the others pale in comparison with it.

I have seen my heart come to believe that God loves me.

Believe it, or not.

Yes folks, it has taken nigh on twenty years of constant hammering on the door of my heart on God's part, but it has happened. I am convinced that God really truly loves me. And, as if that weren't enough, I have also come to believe that He loves everybody else as well. And if you had seen inside of my heart twenty years ago, you would know why these two accomplishments are such astonishing miracles. And if you could also see the struggle, the astonishingly difficult struggle that we (me and Him) have had to go through over the past twenty years to get here, then you would be even more astonished at the fact that this has taken place.

This may sound trite, or insignificant, or even silly to some, but it's not. To change a human heart, knowing now what I know about them, is by far a greater work than healing the lame or opening the eyes of the blind, or parting the sea. To me, who has to live with me, and who knows what it has taken to get here, it truly is, without sarcasm or exaggeration, the greatest miracle I have ever seen happen. And I mean it.

Thank you, and good night!