Quantum Super Intelligence & God: An Analogy
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me
-Psalm 139 7-10
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Col: 1:17
“For in Him we live move and have our being…”
-Acts 17:28
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8 WAYS JESUS TELLS US TO CHANGE OUR ATTITUDES
“Blessed (or Happy) are they who...”
When Jesus tells us how to change our attitude… We should probably listen.
Conquering Loneliness
“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”
I think we all know loneliness.
Whether it’s the kind where we are totally isolated, or the kind where we feel unseen, unloved, and unknown - it hurts. Especially this time of year. But you are never alone. Even when it feels like we are.
Why would God allow all that evil and suffering?
“I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”
The number one obstacle many have to finding faith is - why would God create a world with so much evil and suffering - and then allow it all to happen? But I would bet, that if you were to create your own little world, you would have made it the exact same way, and you wouldn’t want it any other way.
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Struggling with Faith: 5 Steps to get closer to God
“... if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
I think we all struggle with our faith at times. And I think we all genuinely want to be closer to God. A professor once told me, if you’re not wrestling with it, you’re not doing it. So here are 5 steps, compiled over the last 20 years of battle, and blood sweat and tears, that have helped me Get closer and find Faith.
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Why do I need God? A Proposal.
What do I need God for? A proposal.
I remember visiting an old church up on a hill in Bavaria Germany. This tiny country church was the site of many recorded miracles and the home to a collection of Easter candles, many of which were more than double the age of our country. We asked the Pastor how the attendance was and I never forgot his answer. “Very few are coming these days. People feel they don’t need God anymore”.
ARE YOU RICH IN HEAVEN?
“Store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven...”
We all desire wealth, fame, power and success. We are made that way, by God, for a reason, but has that desire been hijacked and misdirected? Which would I rather, all the treasures of Earth, or all the treasures of heaven? Which one do I trade my life for? Jesus says, "do not store up treasures on Earth, but treasures in heaven", let's work to build treasure in heaven.
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So you think you're a Christian...
He/She is a Christian…
1. Who is merciful to all.
Who do I need to be merciful to today?
2. Who does not become angry for an injury.
Am I in control of my emotions or…
3. Who gives aid to the poor.
How does this make me feel?
4. Who suffers with the afflicted.
Who do I know who is afflicted?
5. Who participates in the sorrows of others as though they were his own.
How do I know who is carrying a heavy burden?
6. Who does not shut his door on the unhappy.
Who do I know who is unhappy?
7. Who does not insult anyone.
How many times do I insult someone in one day?
8. Who serves God day and night.
Who do I serve day and night?
9. Who continuously meditates on Gods ways.
What occupies my mind (most) throughout a day?
10. Who is poor in the eyes of the world but rich in the eyes of God.
Do I care more about what the world or what God thinks?
11. Whose soul is simple and upright
What does my soul look like right now?
13. Whose conscience is faithful and pure,
Who is in charge of my conscience?
14. Whose spirit rests in God and places all hopes in Christ.
Do I trust that, He is in control?
In fine, he is a Christian who prefers the treasures of heaven to those of the earth, and turns his back to the world in order to unite himself totally to God.
- Augustine TCA P. 337
Please add your own to the list in comments below:
How to talk WITH God (not to God)
How to talk with God, not to God: A short guide to pray, deeper.
“There is no conversion without prayer.”
The two questions I get the most are, "how do I pray?", and, "how do I get closer to God?". The first is the answer to the second, but sometimes our prayer can get a little stale, and/or we may have never learned how to pray- deeper. This is a short guide of thoughts and techniques that have helped me to pray deeper, better, and most importantly, from the heart.
The Resolutions of a Saint
Resolutions of a Saint
I can’t think of a better place to start a new year than with the resolutions of a saint. Sister Faustina was a simple, uneducated, Polish nun, who obediently wrote down what Jesus told her in her now famous diary. These were her own personal resolutions written January 1st, 1937 (Diary 238-240) one year before her death.
As they were written for life in the convent, I, very humbly, adapted them for you and me today, while adding a simple thought from Jesus, also taken from throughout the diary. My hope is not to merely put these on a page just to read, but to become them, even if it means starting with just one. Join me.
Dear Lord, help me to become a little more like a saint this year, one day at a time.
1. Maintain a strict observance of interior silence.
Quiet the constant storms, voices, and noise in your heart and mind, and rest with me.
2. See Jesus in every person: all love of neighbor must flow from this motive.
In the next person you see, choose to see me, and love them as you would me. I come to you in those whom you least expect, love me, and leave all judgment up to me.
3. To do the will of God faithfully in my life at every moment.
My will is simple: Love God and love your neighbor. Everything else stems from these.
Come to me at all times and ask, “what is your will for me, right now.”
4. Lay bare the inner most secret depths of my soul to God (at least) once per day.
In your simplest human terms possible, tell me your fears, your joys, your sorrows, and how you are doing. Yes, I already know, but it pleases to hear it from you.
Empty your whole heart into mine, my heart is limitless and can take it all.
5. Imagine Jesus were to come for me this day: Examine my conscience accordingly.
If you were to meet me face to face this day, are you prepared to see your soul as I do?
You are who you are through the eyes of God, no more, no less.
6. Don’t seek God out there, but within my own being.
Your soul gives life to your body, what, or who, do you think gives life to your soul?
This is where we meet, where my hand gently holds your soul into being.
7. In sufferings and torments take refuge in My Heart, and be silent.
Run to me in adversity and say only, “you can do all things”, then think of it no more and sit with me.
You waste much time and energy with your human ways of over-analyzing.
8. Unite my suffering with Jesus on cross.
I give your suffering meaning and turn it into great power.
Unite your suffering with mine and we will renew the universe… together.
9. To use all free moments no matter how short to pray for the dying.
It touches my heart very deeply when you pray for the dying.
Pray that they all come home to Me where I eagerly await them with open arms.
10. Direct all works to the lord and have no regard for what others think of you.
When all is said and done, who do you aim to please: Me, or the world?
Be fools for love, truth and goodness; be fools for Me.
11. Empty myself for the sake of others.
As I empty myself for you, always.
Love one another as I have loved you.
12. Make the presence of God the basis for all my thoughts, words, and deeds.
Place yourself in My loving presence at all times, then do what you will.
13. Always put self love in its proper place; namely, the last.
I stripped myself of all Glory and became the least among you: Imitate me.
Whoever humbles himself will be exulted; whoever exults himself will be humbled.
14. To carry out all my daily spiritual exercises and duties as if it were the last day I would do them.
The smallest act done with love is far greater to me than any great accomplishment done without.
Christmas Can be Hard...
Christmas can be hard…
Christmas can be a hard time of year for any of us... To meI have always seen this as an opportunity to get back to what matter’s most at this time, and to go home, our real home, where we find our peace. A merry Christmas to you.
10 Tips for Dealing with Temptation
“He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires and fears, is more than a king.”
As long as we live in this world, it is impossible to be free of trials and temptations (T.A. Kempis). It’s not always easy to act in ways we know are right. Our feelings, sentiments, moods, appetites, and desires do not always obey our better judgments and reason. We sometimes feel too strong a love for one thing, and not strong enough for another: this is temptation. It draws us to what we know is wrong and holds us back from what we know is right.
Temptation simply brings out what is in us. We know ourselves better once we have dealt with temptation. Our first safeguard against temptation is to recognize it, to see it for what it is, without its attractive camouflage.
Adapted from My Daily Bread, Anthony J. Paone
Why does God let bad things happen?
“Evil isn’t answered. It is overcome.”
Corrie Ten Boom, mystic, and survivor of a nazi death camp…
… spread the message that the love of Christ is greater than all the evil and suffering in the world. She shares this poem:
My life is but a weaving between my lord and me.
I cannot choose the colors, he works steadily.
Oft times he weaveth sorrow, and I in foolish pride,
Forget he sees the upper and the underside.
Not till the looms are silent and the shuttles cease to fly,
Will God unroll the canvas and explain the reasons why.
The dark threads are as needful in the weavers skillfull hand,
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern he has planned.
-Corrie Ten Boom
A Quick Thought For Advent (But Really for the Whole Year).
A Quick Thought For Advent (but really for the whole year).
God. Ferraris and Thanks - Giving. (Audio)
1) Thanks for the Ferrari.
2) Thanks for the place to be.
3) Thank you for this next moment (and the one after that).
And thank you for doing all this simply because, for some reason I don’t understand why, you are madly in love with me…
Am I kind, or just nice?
“Kindness is the overflowing of self on others.”
“I pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there is any good that I can do, any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now; let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again”.
-Fr Lasance, My Prayer Book, Page 65
Some thoughts on kindness:
The worst kinds of unhappiness, as well as the greatest amount of it, come from our conduct to each other. If our conduct, therefore, were under the control of kindness, the state of the world be almost reversed.
Kindness adds sweetness to everything.
Of great consequence, is the immense power of kindness in bringing out the good points of the characters of others.
A kind act has picked up many a fallen man who has afterward slain his tens of thousands of demons and become conqueror.
Kindness has converted more hearts than either zeal, eloquence, or learning; and these last three have never converted anyone unless they were done with kindness.
Kindness is infectious. One kind act leads to another. Our example is followed. This is the greatest work which kindness does to others: it makes them kind themselves.
A proud man is seldom a kind one. Humility makes us kind. And kindness makes us humble.
A kind man is never self-occupied. He is genial, he is sympathetic, he is brave.
Let kindness become a habitual disposition of the heart, ready to manifest itself without any effort, at all times, in all seasons.
One who habitually has kind thoughts of others is not far from being a saint.
Let kindness flow from your heart naturally, like scent from a flower, like song from a bird.
Like the sun, let our kindness shine down on both the good and bad alike.
Without kindness, even charitable works loose their power.
How many noble a work was nipped in the bud by the blast of an unkind judgment.
How many holy aspirations destined to bear abundant fruit has been forced back into the heart from which it came becuase of unkindness.
How much has been lost in the world of all that is good and great and beautiful through the instrument of unkindness.
Kindness is the outcome of: love your neighbor as yourself.
(from: “My Prayer Book”, Fr. Lasance, and, Fr. faber on Kindness)
Jesus: Madman, Conman, or God.
“C.S. Lewis”
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”
-Mere Christianity, 55-56
Madman, Conman, or He’s telling the truth: You decide.
'I and the Father are one.' Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, 'I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?' 'We are not stoning you for any of these,' replied the Jews, 'but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God' " (John 10:30-33).
Before the Chief Priests and the whole Sanhedrin. Caiaphas the High Priest asked him: " 'Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?' 'I am,' said Jesus. 'And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven' " (Mark 14:61-62 NIV)
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58)
“But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” (John 10:38)
“And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17:5)
And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” (Only God has the authority to forgive sins, the ancient Jews understood this) (Matthew 9:2)
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me”. (Matthew 28:18)
“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25)
Lent 2021 (Audio)
A short message for this Holy Thursday (1:15)
“The potter of the universe washes His disciples feet of clay”
A short message for Lent (3 Minutes, NO VIDEO)
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind;
and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’
…
-The Hound of Heaven (Excerpt) By Francis Thompson (1859–1907)
