...what do you do when you just really screwed things up and days you just feel dog discouraged about who you are in this life? Yes, it's about finances. Franco

Hello Franco,

I'd say it's time to realize who you REALLY are in this life. Believing that your life consists of the stuff of this world is probably what got you into the mess you now find yourself in. It's the same lie that now demands you must continue to validate yourself according to its rules. Though the world around you, as well as the lies you've been repeating back to yourself, will demand that you are nothing but what you can see with your eyes, hear with your ears, reason with your knowledge, I say to you to hold to the one and only true validation of who you are in Christ.

Jim :)

Thanks, truth giving must be easier for the giver than the receiver, would you say the same applies for judging oneself as "inadequate"? Franco

I think judging oneself as inadequate forms the major preoccupation of all flesh. Some are able to cover it by shifting the judgment upon others, however, it is still a projected inadequacy. The world around you and I is absorbed in self-condemnation and it expects us to play its game. We are only removed from it in Christ, the old mind will still demand it be given into.

Tell me more.

Jim

WOW, I am so glad to have this exchange going on, it is so hard to find. Church had made me a nut job. What you are doing is worth thousands of times more than some one telling how much i am loved but hurry up and get it together. To me what yu are doing is actually a true expression of love and ministry. I often find myself wondering what God wants me to do with my life. Not too long ago i was still convinced how worthy of hell and wrath that i was. My own views have changed quite dramatically. I tried to run away from the whole God thing to find peace. I used to be convinced that i was disgusting to God because of my fleshly indulgences. I have since found that the death of the old is the only way to escape this idea. It has been hard to escape my own thinking and I am very grateful and humbled to speak with you my new friend. Franco

Hi again, Franco,

I hear you about being made a nut job. The pressure can easily make people snap, crackle and pop ... especially those who are sincerely seeking the reality of life and are instead given the ministry of condemnation. I remember thinking how necessary it was for me to get people motivated to "serve the Lord", but I found it a most difficult task. No wonder. When you believe a person needs to change so much in order to become a worthwhile servant of God you are only going to give them what seems logical to stimulate them. That logic only ends up bringing death and condemnation. Ah, but the ministry of life! :) What a difference. For the motivation has already been put within those who hear. They simply need to be set loose from the bonds that would convince them otherwise.

Hell and wrath makes sense to the flesh, for it finds a crazy justification for it. But Christ has done away with the thing that exists within that insanity!! Oh, did I ever use that old guilt and fear in times past in hopes of scaring people into salvation. But such motivation only breeds more of the same stuff. Hell and damnation coincide with the logic of the flesh, but we do not preach fleshly logic, we preach Christ himself.

Consider this. Instead of trying to escape your own thinking simply recognize it for what it is, for it is only the same dead logic that drives the world (yes,including the religious world). You have your own rich heritage by which the only true sanity of Christ stands out so strong and clear in contrast to that old mind of death and hell. I slowly came to value the distinctions realized in my own life that came about as a direct result of the old logic that once held me.

Jim :)