My Newest Book - When I Worship: Devotional Poetry

I have just released my second book of spiritual themed poetry called - When I Worship. It is a collection of 40 of my poems, each introduced by an appropriate Bible verse. It is available from Amazon HERE at a special introductory price of $4.99.




Here is one of the selections from the book.

WHO IS JESUS/

Whom do you say I am. (Matthew 15:16)

I sought not a teacher to show me the way
who says this is bad and this is OK
for what gain is there with human opine
seems right with the world but not the divine

But what of a prophet who channels the truth
with miracle powers, is always astute
can this guy take care of rebellion and sin
establish God's kingdom so I enter in

There is only One who is sent from above
the Son and the Christ who gives us His love
without Him as Lord there is no place to go
and only His blood can new life bestow

This question remains for each one today
about Jesus Christ, so what do you say
a thousand religions, each one man can scan
yet new life in Christ is the Father's great plan

Ukraine Told As A Business Story

There once was a very large corporation, which we shall call Company A. Like most large corporations, company A had a CEO, a board of directors and shareholders. In order to advance their strategic interests Company A would provide funds, or investments, to various other, smaller companies. The amounts allocated were determined by the board of directors.

One of those companies was Company B. Company B was important to Company A because of its location, near a very aggressive and potentially dangerous competitive corporation.

Now one thing you need to know about Company A is that they had a fairly new CEO, and when this CEO came in he began to question every one of their strategic investments, wanting to make sure that Company A was actually getting maximum benefit for the money invested. He hated wasting money and began asking questions that were not asked before, sometimes shifting long assumed priorities.

This was not very popular with many of the directors in Company A. Even though the CEO was chosen by the shareholders (an annoyance to many in the board) the board of directors liked to do things the old, proven way, and were wary of anyone rocking the boat. And, if you must know, many of the directors had a financial interest (outside of what their corporation provided) from the investments they were making into other companies.

When the CEO got around to considering Company A"s investment into Company B he noticed that in the past a lot of the money invested ended up not actually being used by Company B but instead were being siphoned off to third parties. One of the main third parties benefiting from this bit of corruption was Company C., who produced much of the raw material for Company B. The CEO discovered an interesting story to go along with this.

Before the new CEO came in there was an high ranking executive in Company A who had a son who was on the board of directors for Company C, while Company C was siphoning funds from Company B. One year, after the board of directors allocated a large sum of money for Company B but before they received it, the board of directors for Company B chose one of their executives to investigate the suspected corruption of their relationship with Company C. A short time later, the high ranking executive from Company A flies over to visit Company B and informs them that they have 6 hours to fire the executive in charge of investigating the corruption with Company C or they will not receive that year's funds from Company A. The guy gets fired, Company B gets their money and the high ranking executive is shown on tape bragging about tough he was doing this.

Some time after Company A gets their new CEO, company B also gets a new President, who obtains his job because he has promised to end all the endemic corruption throughout Company B. The board of directors of Company A, as they have done every year, allocates a large investment into Company B. Funds are promised to Company B (timing for the story sake) on July 1st and according to company policy the funds must be distributed to Company B before the end of the year.

Shortly after taking office the new President of Company B is interested in having a phone conference with the CEO of Company A, which is arraigned. Before the phone conference happens the CEO is aware of a some dynamics concerning Company B and their new President. One is that although he has promised to end corruption throughout Company B his ability to obtain his position was made partly possible by financial backing received from known corrupt sources. And another thing on the CEO's mind is that he knows some of his board of directors who were opposed to him being selected by the shareholders had worked with various executives at Company B so they would make public statements opposing his election to the position of CEO of Company A.

The phone conference happens a couple of months after the board of directors have approved the disbursement to Company B but before they funds are actually sent. One of the things on the CEO's list of concerns was that the corruption problem would actually be taken care of, and was not just rhetoric the President used to obtain his position. During the phone conference many things were talked about. At that point in time the President of Company B was not aware that his company had not received their annual funding from Company A. Part of the reason might be because those funds did not have to be received until the end of the year and there still were a few months to go.

During the phone conference (according to an official transcript of it) the last name of the former executive's son (and perhaps by association the former executive) was brought up by the President of Company B, not by the CEO of Company A. The CEO did pick up on this and repeated the last name in connection to his desire that Company B would publicly announce they would be examining any corruption in regards to Company C. At no time did he stipulate or hint that there was any connection between the disbursement and a need to announce an investigation.

This subject was not brought up during a second phone conference between the two. It was not brought up during any of the 5 official meetings that high ranking executives from Company A had with their counterparts in Company B before the end of the year. Company B never publicly announced an investigation into Company C before the end of the year and the funds did get released as required before the year ended.

Prior to the first phone conference the high executive whose son had been on the board of directors of Company C put in his name to compete to be chosen by the shareholders at the regular election to choose the companies CEO. The members of Company A's board of directors who were opposed to the current CEO later heard that the former executive's last name had been mentioned by the current CEO in the phone conference. Looking since he came in to get rid of him they now came up with the following strategy.

Instead of wanting to follow through on examining any corruption or inappropriate relationships with former executives or board members with Company B they instead declared that the current CEO was unfit to lead their company. They said that the mere act of mentioning the former executive's name to the President of Company B in relation to any investigation of corruption amounted to a high crime and misdemeanor.

In order to try to accomplish the CEO's removal the board of directors, because those opposing the CEO had more members than those supporting him, were able to have meetings. During the witness depositions for those meeting they only allowed witnesses called by their side and not the other. They did not allow the other side to ask certain questions of the witnesses. They did not allow the identity revealed of the second hand witness to the phone conference that they used to set the whole thing up to be able to start the whole process.

And finally in their rush to remove the CEO they did not make any effort to go through proper legal and procedure channels in order to obtain certain records or testimonies that the CEO initially denied them. They then declared his following of proper procedures as a perfectly reasonable second reason to remove the CEO.

Although this was all a farce from the beginning it happened that 10 of the 12 major avenues where shareholders would get their information about what was happening were owned by close friends and supporters of the majority board members. It was their job to make this all sound reasonable, which they attempted to do, 24/7.

However, as fate would have it, Corporation A was so large that if a CEO were to be removed by its board that removal would have to be approved by an elected Federal board of directors. They saw through all the smoke and mirrors and kept the CEO. After the hearings were done, profits kept increasing, board members all around were still slicing up their piece of the pie, and the CEO of Company A kept winning bigly.

As for the board of directors, they two would eventually be subject to election by the shareholders and it didn't go well for many of them.

As for the former executive, he sank into a daze of confusion and challenged the CEO to a push up contest. When his former friends later pulled the rug out from under him he went home and took a long nap.

The End.     

The King of Glory Comes

"Lift up your heads O gates, and be lifted up O ancient doors"  Psalm 24:7

This year 2020 will be a year of declaration leading into a decade of declaration. As we speak out and declare, so God will respond and do.

And what we are to declare is that the King of Glory is welcome to come into the hearts and the affairs of the people and institutions of this country, to move with great power, changing hearts and changing structures.

Psalm 24 begins by declaring that the earth is the Lord's, and all it contains. It also goes on to say; This is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face.

Commentaries on Psalm 24 say that this psalm talks about a procession carrying the sacred ark, bringing it to a city which would be called Jerusalem, in order to place it into a tabernacle set up for it there. This is a city King David conquered to be Israel's capitol, the same city called Salem where the High Priest Melcizedek (a representation of Christ)  lived, who came out of it to bless Abraham from whom he received tithes centuries before.

The picture here is a procession ascending with the ark up to the gates of the city. When the procession gets there a choir outside declares; Lift up your heads O gates, and be lifted up O ancient doors. that the King of Glory may come in. The idea is that the King of Glory, the Maker of the universe, is present with the ark. And when the ark is placed into a tabernacle set up for it in the city (a tent structure at this time) the Lord's presence would reside in a thick cloud of glory over the mercy seat, which sits on top of the ark, inside the most holy section of the tabernacle

However, to get into the city He has go through gates, which figuratively are too small for One so great.

There is evidence that back then those gates may have worked on a weight and pulley system, not opening out or in but rather the doors were set in grooves and moved up to open. Once the choir makes their declaration Lift up your heads, O gates . . . it is answered by another choir from inside the city who ask; Who is the King of Glory?

And the response then from the choir outside is; The Lord, strong and mighty. The Lord, strong in battle. Lift up your heads O gates, and be lifted up O ancient doors, that the King of Glory may come in! Who is the King of Glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of Glory.

I see a connection here to what the Lord wants to do in our country now in a mighty way. It is like in Revelation chapter 3 where Jesus says He stands at the door knocking. There are walls surrounding our hearts and walls surrounding the institutions of our country (government, media, academia, finance and business, arts and entertainment, the family and the Church). We need to declare that the King of Glory is welcome to enter the gates (or doors) through those walls and that He is welcome to reside there.

I believe we are in a generation of those who will, even more than in the past, seek the Lord and seek His face. This year in our land and to our land we will be part of an anointed choir that will declare to the hearts and institutions here: Lift up your heads O gates, and be lifted up O doors, that the King of Glory may come in.

And when they ask us, Who is the King of Glory? We will respond; The Lord of host, He is the King of Glory! Let us then look and expect to see His glory coming in great clouds, changing not only hearts but also the institutions of our land that have been made captive to the lies, plans and schemes of the evil one.

And one more thing. Our call as always is to pray, to intercede, to be in His will, and now to declare. And we can do this in confidence because the battle is not ours, it is the Lord's.

How Dare They!

Sixteen year old Greta Thunberg has recently been named Time Magazine's person of the year. Greta is a climate change activist who has been a subject of hundreds of memes making fun of her "HOW DARE YOU!" speak at the United Nations as well as for the mural of her recently painted on the side of a San Francisco building which (unintentionally) bears an eerie resemblance to Vladimir Putin. Now how you may wonder does such a young girl from Sweden whom no one knew about a year or two ago get named Time's person of the year?

The simple explanation is as follows. We are living in a time where the main stream media now acts as a propaganda tool for a small but rich and powerful group of people who have a globalist world view and an organized agenda and timeline to achieve that. Part of their agenda involves climate alarmism, which is the claim that the world is being threatened by carbon emissions produced by man which will result in a very short time with the world heating up and ending life as we know it.

The solution presented to avoid the catastrophe they predict has very little to do with creating a cleaner environment and having purer air to breath. The climate scare at its most basic is actually a means to achieve one of the main goals of globalism, which is income redistribution. I've written a number of posts examining man made global warming and am not going to make any of my counter arguments here. My purpose here is to look at how Greta became famous.

At the beginning of this year a group of about 250 leftest/progressive media organizations met at Columbia School of Journalism to discuss what they as news and opinion outlets could do to advance this climate alarmism. Someone suggested Greta, a young girl with Aspergers who had, being convinced that the planet was indeed dying, dropped out of school to be an activist on climate change. Greta soon became funded, hyped and suddenly all sorts of doors were opened for her.

She (like a lot of passionate 16 year old girls) was invited to speak to the United Nations (which funds the main group which comes up with all the alarming computer climate models) and to get there she (bravely) boards a low carbon fingerprint yacht (her crew of 2 take a jet liner home once the boat arrives in NY and another crew of 2 fly there in order to sail the vessel back to Europe). By a strange coincidence when she is there the public schools in NY declare a climate skip school and protest day. Greta then goes on the rest of her trip in the US (also organized, planned and funded by her Soros funded NGO) and becomes so gosh darn famous and important that Time magazine just has to choose her as their iconic Person of the Year.

Or - in a space of a year the MSM chooses someone to be famous, organizes events, gets the funding and hypes the adoring heck about a 16 year old girl and then awards her for all the hype they bestowed upon her. This would be a THE case study in the creation of fake news (if there were not so many other obvious examples going on at the same time).

So let me admit here a couple of things. Although I've read some online pieces about Greta I did not read the Time article. Thirty years ago I subscribed to Time until it became so overly liberal that I switched to Newsweek. For awhile they were a lot more balanced but after a few years they too in my opinion went over the edge. A couple of years ago I saw Time in a waiting room at a tire dealer. It was now a thin little rag devoted to some liberal cause, a minor blip that still has an annual person of the year cover which now lacks any relevance.

I also did not realize until recently that Greta had a form of Autism known as Aspergers. People that have this can be very intelligent and very high functioning. They tend to put a laser focus on things that interest them, are prone to depression (and suicide) and understand most things as black and white issues without seeing the shades of gray. It would be easy to understand then how Greta could read all of the blah blah being pushed her way, decide that the world was indeed coming to an end and that she had to do something about it.

The downside here, and this makes me really mad, is that it is now obvious that the United Nations "HOW DARE YOU!" speech was a reflection both in her voice and in her facial features of her Aspergers. It also explains the video of her at a UN panel discussion where she seemed lost, confused and inarticulate. Instead of a hero I actually see her as a poor girl being exploited for political gain by adults with an agenda who are using her age and Autism as a hammer to silence any critics or objections to what they (through Greta) are presenting.

The funny thing about the moral outrage directed to any who criticize Greta is that those people are blind to how easily they are being morally manipulated by forces that are totally devoid of morals. The main stream media has become a tool of those forces as are platforms like Twitter and the rest to advance an agenda while at the same time presenting it as a moral argument. And when your have morals not etched in stone, inscribed on your heart and based on the Word of God and are instead swimming in the ever changing tides of modern society one can easily be manipulated.

Facts matter, but you can't argue facts with people who make emotional arguments and are offended by anyone even attempting to disagree with their worldview built on shifting sand. I can still love them just like I will love Greta and pray that she will experience the deep love of God and the peace that passes understanding. At the same time I will pray that all those who are abusing her will be exposed and justly dealt with.

Falling Into The Pit

You would think that the opposition would at least be logical in how they appraise a situation or in what they are trying to do. Instead there has been insanity from the Left and from the Main Stream Media for the entirety of last three years. They have consistently lied, presented everything Trump has done in a negative light, twisted and then persisted in their hate for the President. And then to top it off they accuse him of doing everything they are doing or have actually done themselves.

Each time the truth comes out they react by doubling down on their lies and then lashing out at whoever is looking into their dirty deeds. Gathering from the Horowitz hearings which I watched Tuesday it is obvious that their next step will be an attempt to discredit Attorney General Barr and the Durham Report which will be even more devastating than the Horowitz Report. By the way, at the hearings today not one single Democrat asked any questions about any of the serious and illegal abuses associated with the FBI investigation. It was all spin, spin, spin.

The Russia investigation was first predicated when an undercover CIA agent set up a young Trump staffer by passing along a rumor that the Russians had the missing Clinton emails. When the staffer mentioned this to an Australian diplomat (who worked for the CIA and is now missing) in a bar overseas the CIA had inserted their first hook. They then passed that hook off to the FBI. (This is not mentioned in the Horowitz Report but it will come out in the Durham Report), The FBI then used the Steele Dossier (a totally false report created by Fusion GPS and paid for by the Clinton campaign) as the second hook. Interestingly the wife of FBI agent Bruce Orr who would be involved in the investigation worked for Fusion GPS.

The third hook was a report that the FBI or CIA leaked to a media outlet disinformation that was mentioned in the Steele Dossier, making it look as though there was independent confirmation of its contents. In order to begin a secret investigation on the Trump campaign the FBI needed to use the FISA courts. In order to get FISA court approval they used those 3 pieces of information to justify it, even though it became clear to certain agents in the FBI very early on that the Steele information was bogus.

A sad side note to this is that Robert Mueller (or his team) should have been aware of this by at least the second month of his investigation. Since there was never any "there" there the investigation should have ended then instead of going on for two more years. It was not ended because the FBI's Andrew Wiseman, who was actually running the case and who hired the 12 lawyers (all Democrats) for figurehead Mueller, had an obvious anti-Trump agenda.

So here we are. Impeachment without a crime. If you actually think so you need a lesson in history, government, common sense and really have to stop watching outlets who employ guys like ex CIA and FBI guys Brennan, Clapper and McCabe, who are all up to their necks dirty in this affair. The real crimes re the Ukraine were efforts by the Obama administration and the DNC, which influenced Ukraine to make anti-Trump statements during the 2016 election, and by Adam Shift and his staff who, in partnership with people in the CIA, set up the whole whistle blower episode.  But just so no one gets too surprised, be aware that the hammer will be coming down, the truth will come out and people will be going to jail.

I want to paraphrase a few verses from Psalm 7 for you. I personally believe that God is letting the craziness continue in order to display what are the true plans and motivations of many on the Left in order to expose what is really a clear and present danger to our country.

They conceive mischief and bring forth falsehood. They have dug a pit and hollowed it out, and have fallen into the hole which they themselves have made. Their mischief will return upon their own head.

All To Jesus, I Surrender

It was around this time in the month of November, 47 years ago, that I knelt down on the living room floor of our little apartment in Kalamazoo to confess my sins and asked Jesus to come into my life as Savior and as Lord and to fill me with the Holy Spirit. I had been born and raised a Catholic but was then an atheist. Earlier that year I had married a Spirit-filled Catholic woman, and there I was, now speaking in an unknown tongue and experiencing the overwhelming presence and peace that Jesus had indeed come in. He revealed Himself in such a way that I could never deny what had just happened.

I recognized even then, without any theological training, that I had surrendered the lordship of my life to Jesus and that my life was no longer mine. Obviously I knew that I would often fall far short of what His will would be for me but sensed, as I would learn later, that having died in Christ I was indeed a new creation, now part of God's family. And as a bonus, by surrendering to the move of the Holy Spirit in me, I had also surrendered and opened up many areas of my soul that might put up barriers to my relationship with God.

Here is a point that I want to make clear when we talk about how we go about obeying the will of the Father. Salvation is to the spirit. Baptism of the Holy Spirit is to the soul.

When we are born again it is our spirit man that is changed from death to new life in Christ. In our spirit we are now perfect, holy and redeemed in the Father's sight and that is now a place where the Holy Spirit can reside. The Father's will from the beginning was to give us revelation of His will from the Holy Spirit, through our spirit, to minister to our soul and from there to our body.

At death the spirit/soul is separated from the body and for the believer the spirit/soul goes to be with the Father. The rebirth of the spirit affects the soul as well. The difference is that although the reborn spirit is now perfect we have a soul that, although redeemed, still needs to be conformed to the image of Christ.

The fall was the result of man desiring the knowledge of good and evil apart from the direction of the Father through the Holy Spirit. And the result of the fall was that the spirit of man in effect died and became separated from God and the soul of man took charge, subject to it's own weakness and to the weakness of the desires of the body.

The answer of the world to the fall is religion, or, we do things or act a certain way to earn something and thus justify ourselves before God. In all religion it is the soul of man that stays in charge.

And sadly, although the believing Church talks about redemption through the free gift of what Jesus did on the cross, our walking out our salvation can sometimes look an awful lot like religion. The emphasis in many places is completely backward. People are taught that they can come into a deeper relationship with God by striving toward obedience and holiness. And that striving is often a struggle because the soul, apart from the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is trying to overcome its own weaknesses as well as the desires of the flesh.

I contend instead that obedience and holiness should be a natural out working of a deep and mature relationship with God. We seek Him. We become sensitive to the Father's will and develop a deeper relationship with Him through prayer, through the faithful reading of His Word and through the influence of the Holy Spirit. Thus the desire to be obedient to the will of God comes from and through that relationship. The Holy Spirit moves through our spirit to influence our soul. This makes obedience so much easier. We will now be acting out of a desire born of love and the desire to honor that love.

Now the Holy Spirit does move to one degree or another in the soul's of all who become born again. Many old desires are changed and the soul often surrenders certain aspects of control to the Spirit of God. Old sinful ways are set aside. Godly fruit is demonstrated. Christian growth becomes evident and various ministry abilities spring forth. However the soul is very complex. It contains our personality, our memories, the effects of our past experiences, our desires and so much more. In many of those areas the soul has barriers (probably because of fear) where it does not allow the Holy Spirit to freely move or maybe even to enter.

From observation I would say that most born again believers actually desire a closer relationship with God and the ability to live a life submitted to His will. They just don't know how to go about it. They don't know how to remove the barriers still set up in the soul. When the Church, in it's desire to create better disciples, presents a list of things that a person should avoid or must strive to accomplish, it may actually result in producing guilt or frustration. Sound spiritual advice must be partnered with the spiritual means to achieve the goal.

That same sense of guilt or frustration can come about for people involved in groups with a strong spiritual authority figure where there is an emphasis on instilling "holiness" or an "overcomer" lifestyle. This usually goes to a place where people lose all the freedom and joy they should be having in the Spirit. What was begun in the Spirit cannot be completed in the flesh, no matter how spiritual it sounds.

Would it not be so much better instead to show people that perfect love overcomes all fear and to demonstrate how we can experience that love by surrendering to the move and power of the Holy Spirit?  We open up the door to a more excellent way but we must allow the Holy Spirit to walk the person through it. At salvation I surrendered my life to Jesus. I also surrendered as an act of faith my tongue to a language the Spirit gave me, which opened my door to a much greater infilling of the Holy Spirit.

So much happened in those beginning months. Behavior changed, friends changed and I counted it all joy. It was a process and it still is a process. The Holy Spirit fills us but we need to keep emptying Him out (by responding to the direction of the Spirit) so that He can refill us a fresh.

And that is a key. The Holy Spirit is never stale. He will always move in fresh and more amazing ways. The gifts, fruits and the power of the Spirit as demonstrated in the Bible are for all of us today. There is joy and faith, a peace that passes understanding and a closer relationship with God where we can actually say and feel, every day, Abba, Father. But even more important there comes with the Spirit an ability to live a life holy and pleasing to the Lord.

Take some of your precious time and devote it to seeking His presence. Take a risk and surrender your tongue and your whole being to the infilling of the Holy Spirit. He is a gentleman and will only bring you as far as you are willing to go. That said, surrender the fear that is holding you back and receive in turn what your Loving Father has designed especially for you from before you were even born. It is much more than you could ever imagine!

Come to Me all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. (Matthew 11: 28 - 30)

Key Words

The 2020 elections are now just a bit less than a year away. With that in mind I thought I would come up with a list of a dozen keys words for Conservatives to remember when we head to the voting booth next November. Problem was, I got up to 12 and then others kept popping into my mind. So for your enjoyment (or maybe enlightenment), here they are (read slowly for best effect).
.
Abortion
Resist
TDS
Pussy hats
Border Security
Supreme Court
Federal Court appointments
Kavanaugh hearings
Covington Kids defamation
US Embassy to Jerusalem
Impeachment
Clinton paid Steele Dossier
Adam Shift lies
Read the Mueller Report
Confused Robert Muller
Adam Shift secret hearings
Read the transcript
Antifa
Twitter mob
Algorithm censorship
YouTube demonetization
MSM 24/7 bias
Hollywood hate
"Good people" distortion
"Racism, racism, racism"
Identity politics
Men and Women are different?
The Swamp
Comey
Brennen
Clapper
McCabe
Struk
Socialism
Marxism
Anti-Semitism
The Squad
1st Amendment
2nd Amendment
The Constitution
America's Founders
American pride
Religious liberty
Arlene's Florist
Masterpiece Cake Shop
No Mexico City Accord
No money for Planned Parenthood
No Paris Climate Accord
No crazy Iran deal
Hostage's released
Less Federal regulations
Dismantled Obamacare
Destroyed Isis Caliphate
Dead Al Baghbadi
Domestic manufacturing growth
Do nothing Dems
USMCA Trade Deal
Middle class tax break
6 million new jobs
3.5 % unemployment
Real wage growth
Low inflation
Lower drug prices
Record Dow
Rebuilt military
Better care for Vets
U.S. world's largest energy producer
Project Veritas
Chuck and Nancy as American Gothic
China
Air Force 2
Hunter
Burisma
DNC deals with Ukraine
Slow slow Sleepy Joe
Crazy Bernie
Pocahontas
50 TRILLION government health care
70 TRILLION Green New Deal
Obama election interference
Harvey Weinstein
Pedophiles
Private island flights for Bill
Mega bucks for Hill
- and of course -
Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself