Wednesday, June 1. “we proclaim Christ crucified.”
11/23/21 36 degrees – wind chill below 30 degrees- Last day of golf for 2021
John Koller, Bruce Blaisdell, Fred Prince, Paul Laliberty
The Holy Spirit inspires our Post.
We are using the readings for the Memorial of St. Justin, Martyr.
we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 1 Corinthians 1
In all of our blogs, we have proclaimed “Christ Crucified.” We did and do this because I am convinced that this is what separates Jesus from every other person who walked on this earth.
Christ Crucified!
If you think about these words for a while and let them fill your mind, maybe you start to realize how foreign they are to human thinking.
God the Father sent His Son to be crucified so that we might be justified.
To someone who doesn’t believe, this is a strange statement. To those reading our blogs, you might not all agree with this statement and may even not be moved by the statement, “Christ Crucified.” Everyone has to agree they have heard of Christ being Crucified.
What happened?
We are two thousand years since Christ was Crucified, and in that two thousand years, satan has never stopped working to win over past generations and you, just as satan did with the Jewish people before Jesus came on the scene and upset the applecart.
I am reading the last part of the second book of Chronicles in the Bible, where the Jewish kings are starting to worship other gods and worship them in the temple. God doesn’t just say, well, that’s ok and dismiss what they are doing. God comes down hard on the Jewish leaders and population.
What else can God do?
Not coming down hard on the leaders and the population would mean God doesn’t care what they do, and there are no ill effects of their actions.
That wasn’t true then, and it’s not true now!
satan is always active in everyone’s life.
We researched and found out that suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in this country, and alcohol and drug addiction rates are increasing. The divorce rate is rising.
I am not suggesting that all of these people will go to hell when they die!
Never forget, Jesus from His Cross said, “Forgive them for they do not know what they do.” Luke 23:24
We are suggesting that their current life is not filled with Joy and Peace.
What a shame!
Joy and Peace are available, and we choose not to live in them.
I, yes I, know I lived in anger, hate, etc. It wasn’t until I, and later we decided to change, that my, now our, life started to take off.
What is most frustrating to me is when people won’t even try.
I, yes I, can picture God the Father in Heaven, which is here, not up there, looking down and crying because the people They love won’t even give life in the Holy Spirit a try.
Jesus, His Son, was Crucified, and Jesus and His Father sent the Holy Spirit so your life might change in ways no one can even imagine.
Never forget, the Muslims claim Jesus didn’t die on the cross. The Death of Jesus is that outrageous.
It’s easy to get started!
Five decades ago, I wrote, The Nine Fruit of The Holy Spirit on paper.
I prayed daily for an increase in each fruit, and shortly after that experienced a positive change in my life.
How hard is that?
I prayed nine words, and that was all.
Guess what”
The first experience I didn’t know the Holy Spirit at that time, I had was increased Self-Control, and next came Patience, and guess what? I started to grow in the love of………..
Myself!
Yes!
Not a phony love.
But a love of the increase of Self-Control and the Peace I was experiencing.
And I didn’t want less Peace; I wanted more.
Approximately a year or two later, I realized I was also growing in Joy.
My life changed over fifty years from I to we, and I never want to return. Life is easy when you accept the Triune God into your life and let God take over, which is why I joyfully proclaim “Christ Crucified.”
“The nine” We pray you will grow in the Love, Joy, and Peace of the Holy Spirit by growing in Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.
Sidebar:
About two years ago, Steve asked me to be his spiritual mentor. I told him I didn’t know what that meant but agreed to try, God working in both of our lives.
The first thing we asked Steve to do was learn “the nine.”
Steve did and started seeing change come into his life, and Steve liked the change.
It was about this time in my, now our life, that I discovered the Weeeeee relationship that God wants, and Steve and I talked a lot about this.
Last week’s Blog, “To an unknown god,” prompted Steve to send me an email.
Here is part of what Steve wrote;
I had a loan closing today that had every opportunity to go wrong. This was a mortgage on a commercial property and normally we would have closing documents 2 days prior to the closing. When I left my office at 11:45 for a 1:00 closing the documents were still being revised. The directions that Waze was giving as I was driving were completely different than the directions everyone else gave me. The radio was off and I had to pray “Father, I trust in You. I will live the fruits of the Holy Spirit and do my best while trusting that You will take care of the rest.” When I got to the closing and we started signing we found the documents were still wrong and had to be revised. The client, who supposedly talked with the title company last week, did not bring a check for his part of the closing. Fortunately, there was a Bank within walking distance. There were several other things that went wrong but about 90 minutes later the closing was done and we were all leaving. My client left but the Seller complimented me not only on the closing but also on what I did for the Buyer to get him approved. He said “bankers like you are few and far between. When you find one you hang on to him. If I ever need anything I’m going to you.” Needless to say, I felt great when I left and with the radio off, thanked the Father for every possible thing, one by one, that went well that day.
As I drove along I kept thinking about how I trusted in the Father and He took care of me. I trusted and did what he told me to do and He took care of everything else. I thought that was what He was trying to teach me until I read your blog. I couldn’t figure out how to get from “I trusted and He did to We did”.
I trusted, He did
I did my part, the Father took care of me
I trusted, He did
I did what He asked, He took care of the rest
I trusted, He did
WE DID IT TOGETHER!!!
WEEEEEEEEEE DID!!!
What a fantastic revelation to receive somewhere between 3:30 and 4:00 AM this morning. I can’t wait to see what else WE can do together!!
A few comments on Steve’s email;
Notice the Joy in Steve’s email. He was so excited by what he experienced that he got up and sent me the email at 4 am.
We had a hard time getting Steve to turn off the radio. I think it’s now off. You, Steve, in this case, can’t talk to God with the radio on.
It took me eighty years to learn of the Weeeee relationship God wants, and Steve is much younger, so what a life he has before him.
I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I had had a Weeeeee relationship with God while running my, yes, sadly, my, my business.
Oh well, that’s water over the dam. God has forgiven me, I have forgiven me, and now I am enjoying a God of Outrageous Love who really wants a Weeeeeeee relationship.
Shifting gears:
The glory of God’s creation:
I received this email from a friend Joe Higgens and had to share it with you.
A view from a cruise ship where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet in the Strait of Juan del Fuego at the tip of South America. Did you know that the two oceans do not mix? They do not mix because there is a huge difference in salinity between the two. Here, the Pacific is largely made up of melting glaciers, and the Atlantic is fed by many rivers emptying into the Atlantic is muddy green.
Type into the Youtube search bar where the Atlantic and Pacific meet. It’s a 1:42 video taken from a cruise ship.
God called the dry land “earth,” and the basin of water he called “sea.” God saw that it was good. Emphasis mine Genesis 1: 10 God can’t even create two seas the same.
One last note:
We will answer all comments on Thursday. We respond by replying to the email, and the reply is sent to the email address that is part of the comment. I noticed some comments don’t have an email address, and I realized they would not get a reply. We will reply only to those comments with a return email address.
