"live by the cross, not by the scales

"mercy and grace are twins"

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_kouresh.wmv

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_fariborz.wmv

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_assad.wmv

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_kamil.wmv

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_farid.wmv

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_caner.wmv

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_shahrokh.wmv

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_manal.wmv

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_tash.wmv

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/watch.asp   (select 69 ) 

Always listen to the inner perceptions of the Holy Spirit no matter how perfect things appear to be outwardly.  He knows things we do not know.  We must have so much more confidence in the inner witness of the Holy Spirit than we have had in the past as a Body.  He will never lead us into trouble. He will only lead us out of trouble and into the perfect will of God. 


For whatever reason the Holy Spirit might be guiding you through the inner witness, you are encouraged to obey Him at all costs.  Maybe He is trying to protect your life.  Maybe He is trying to keep you from marrying the wrong person.  Maybe He is trying to lead you into prosperity.  Possibly He is guiding you into a major change of direction in your life.  Do not allow outward obstacles to keep you from trusting Him.  He can remove every obstacle, even supernaturally.  Possibly He has been impressing you for months or even years that something specific is coming into your life.  Just relax and let Him work out the details.  He will remove every obstacle. 

This is a decision you must continually make, daily.  The Holy Spirit will not force you to obey Him, but He will continually bear witness within you as to what is right and what is wrong for your life.  He will continually give you peace or unrest about things.  He will continually give you the green light or the red light, but you must LET that witness rule within you.  You must decide whether to stop or to go ahead.  You must make the decision constantly to not be led by outward circumstances, well meaning individuals or anything else besides the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.

A crisis is not the time to attempt to develop sensitivity to the “inner witness” of the Holy Spirit.

If you are about to make a decision in your life concerning investments, a move, marriage, school, a job change, etc., and something on the inside is telling you to back off, you would do exceptionally well to heed that inner perception.  That “something” is actually “Someone.”  That is the “inner witness” of the Holy Spirit and it is the primary way that God guides when there is no Scripture to tell you what to do.  

 The Holy Spirit within can be illustrated by the internal guidance systems that are commonly used by ships, planes and spacecraft today.  These vehicles all have an inner gyroscope that is based on the magnetic pull of the Earth.  A gyroscope sends signals to instruments indicating the attitude, or the position of the vehicle.  Pilots spend years, decades and thousands of hours training themselves to trust the readings given by the internal gyroscope, not outside reference points.  Many pilots have died overriding their instruments and depending on their human senses in a crisis situation.  The human eye and the inner ear particularly can give false readings leading a pilot to believe that they are in one position when actually they are in another. 

For example, in the dark with no visible horizon or outside reference points, a pilot can easily believe that he is right side up when he is upside down.  This is known as spatial disorientation.  If a pilot will choose to believe his instruments over his inner ear, he can pretty much be assured of safety.  The inner ear can give a false reading but the magnetic pull of the Earth, although it may vary ever so slightly at the poles, will never give a false reading.  Pilots are trained to trust their lives to this fact.

The human mind, outward circumstances, trusted loved ones, however well meaning, can all give wrong guidance that appears to be right, just like the inner ear of a pilot can.  The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is like the inner gyroscope based on the magnetic pull of the Earth.  He will never give a false reading because His guidance is based on the pull of the Father Who is All Knowing. 

Human race is only one race.  There are intercultural marriages not interracial marriages.

Family Fellowship

Commit life, not sucide.

Accepting anger as a normal human emotion is also important. Because the intense energy that goes with anger is often frightening, people tend to either ignore and stuff it, or to let it out in an aggressive, uncontroled manner, hoping to relieve some of the tension. In their minds, people unconsciously associate anger with aggression, and worry that they’ll react aggressively if they let themselves become aware of their anger. But refusing to acknowledge anger is to ignore reality. Stuffing keeps a person from dealing with what they are angry about, and may lead to stress-related physical problems, such as ulcers or hypertension. Letting it out as aggression creates more problems.

Anger, like all other human emotions, serves many crucial functions. Anger tells you that others may be mistreating or taking advantage of you. When properly expressed, it may be a way of setting your boundaries and asserting yourself with others. Think of anger as a smoke alarm. When you hear a smoke alarm go off, you are often unsure whether there is actually a fire, or whether someone burnt the meat loaf. When there is a fire, the alarm doesn’t tell you how large that fire might be, or how to put it out. The alarm is only a warning – a loud, obnoxious warning, just like anger.

"We are sinners saved by grace, but still sinners who gather in church. And that’s our excuse, right? That this is not a reflection of God, but of our sinfulness…but the problem is, is that the church is to be a reflection of God’s kingdom. Why is it that we often claim the first, but fail to live out the latter? Why is it that we teach about worldviews, but not how to move the world? We wound each other so much more gravely by not being open about our sin, by projecting this condescending legalism (aka accountability), and always speaking from a position of power and self-righteousness, rather than brokenness and vulnerability. It’s like we teach people more about why they should hate or avoid non-Christians rather than love and serve them."

"Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God"

Christianity is more than a crutch

"it is a whole new set of legs. A living relationship with Jesus makes everything else look like a crutch."

God’s Revelation to Heathen

Examples of the many cultures aware of the inadequacy of their own religion

The Mbaka (Africa)

The Mbaka believed that the Creator revealed to their ancestors that he had sent his Son into the world to do something wonderful for all humanity. Their ancestors, the folklore continues, later turned from the truth about the Creator’s Son and in time even forgot what he had achieved for humanity. Since then successive generations longed to know the truth about the Creator’s Son. All that they could learn was that messengers, who would probably be white, would eventually come to restore the lost knowledge. One day those messengers arrived and the Mbaka joyfully embraced Christianity as the culmination of their spiritual longings. (56-58)

The Santal (India)

In the late 1860s two missionaries began preaching to the Santal people, of whom there were about two and a half million. Suddenly Santal sages excitedly declared that this new teaching must mean that the ‘Genuine God’ had not forgotten them after all. It turned out that these people believed they originated from the far west and that their ancestors traveled with a knowledge of the Genuine God, until they came to some impassable mountains. In desperation they made a covenant to serve the spirits of the mountains if the spirits showed them a way through the mountains. Soon after, they found a pass (the Khyber Pass?). Because of their oath, the Santal began appeasing spirits and engaging in sorcery until all knowledge of the ‘Genuine God’ was lost except the name. The thought that Jesus could heal the rift between their race and the ‘Genuine God’ moved them so greatly that tens of thousands became Christians. (41-48)

Korea and China

There was an ancient belief in China and Korea that there is just one God and he must never be represented by idols. This belief seems to have predated Confucius by over 2,000 years. By about 1000 BC, however, religious leaders so emphasized God’s majesty and holiness that they decided that the Emperor was good enough to worship him just once a year. Everyone else was forbidden from worshipping God directly. (63)

The Incas (South America)

Pachacuti, king of the Incas from 1438 to 1471, restored one of the temples of the god worshipped by all his people - the sun. But he began to have doubts. He noted that a mere cloud could dim this ‘god.’ The sun did nothing but the same thing over and over, acting more like a laborer than a god. His observations brought the conclusion that the sun is neither universal, nor perfect, nor all-powerful. In Inca tradition there was a vague memory of Viracocha, the omnipotent Creator. Pachacuti’s own father had had a dream in which Viracocha reminded him that he truly was the Creator of all things.
Deciding that the Creator, not the sun, was worthy of worship, Pachacuti met with the sun priests. He told them that the Creator is supreme and uncreated. He made all spirits and all peoples by his word. He manifests himself as a trinity when he wishes but otherwise he is surrounded only by archangels and heavenly warriors. He warms the world through his created sun. He brings peace and order. He is in his own being blessed and he has pity on people’s wretchedness. He alone judges and forgives and enables people to overcome their evil tendencies. From now on, Pachacuti commanded the aristocracy, the sun was to be regarded, like humanity, as created and that prayer was to be directed to the Creator with awe and humility. (33-41)

(Numbers in brackets refer to pages numbers in Don Richardson: Eternity in their Hearts Revised Edition CA, Regal, 1981, 1984)

"I am the LORD, I change not."

"God is the most Consistent Person ever.

He is also Unpredictable"

"rests are a precious manifestation of God’s love."

"at times, the only way we can be fully attentive to God is to block activities or we’d be in too much of a frenzy to hear him. We can only give to others what we have first received from above. Resting in God’s presence enables us to receive."

"Would you attempt pushing a jumbo jet to help it fly across the Atlantic? That would be wiser than trying to do your bit to help Christ secure someone's salvation or breach the infinite gulf between who he is and what he would have to be to merit God’s smile. 


Anyone foolish enough to keep trying will be left on the runway when departure time arrives. 


In love, the Lord will not take you far in ministry until this issue is sorted out."

"it is not our labors or our diligence or our usefulness that makes us precious to God. If your child fell ill and could no longer do her chores, would your love for her diminish? don’t imagine this speck of human love exceeds the love of the Almighty."

"When God does something, it’s not just functional, but beautiful; not arid necessity but brimming with unexpected joys. Consider the sun. A lesser god would have stopped at making it an essential power-house. Our Lord even went far beyond making it an exquisite time-piece. His love and ingenuity soared as he fashioned a warm bath of pleasure, delighting and inspiring all humanity. It forms weather patterns, sculpts clouds, sends leaves twisting and twirling like a ballerina. Its rays don’t just illuminate, they sparkle and dance, they paint rainbows and the ever-changing splendor of endless sunsets, splashing color through all the earth with unrestrained exuberance."

"The day is coming when what is endured in secret will be shouted from the housetops. Look at Job: bewildered, maligned, misunderstood; battling not some heroic foe but essentially common things – a financial reversal, bereavement, illness; – not cheered on by screaming fans, just booed by some one-time friends. If even on this crazy planet Job is honored today, I can’t imagine the acclaim awaiting you when all is revealed. Your battle with life’s miseries can be as daring as David’s encounter with Goliath. Don’t worry that others don’t understand this at present. One day they will. And that day will never end.
As astounding as it seems, the times when we teeter on the edge of suicide are the very times when we stand on the brink of spiritual greatness, if we refuse to throw in the towel by choosing the cowardly path of defeat that is suicide."

"Midlife crisis is an illness, a chemical imbalance that either is or highly resembles a typical affective mood disorder (clinical depression or bipolar). If recognized, it can be treated. The signs are sleeplessness, anxiety, repetitive thinking and talking, weight loss or gain, irritability. During this time suffers might seek help; once they are in the middle of it, however, they are much less likely to do so."

"There is no life and no peace without Jesus."

"when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers”

"condemnation is furthest from God’s mind."

I love God .

He is humorous.

An amazing pony

For countless generations, the Wa people in Burma passed on their ancient tradition that one day a ‘white brother’ would bring them a copy of the book about God that they had lost. In the 1880’s, Pu Chan, one of their tribesmen, persuaded several thousand of his people to abandon headhunting and spirit-appeasement. He said the true God was about to send the long-awaited ‘white brother with a copy of the lost book’ that had been part of their folk-lore from time immemorial. If the brother learnt that the Wa people were doing evil things, he might consider them unworthy of the true God’s book. One morning Pu Chan readied a Wa pony, and told some of his disciples to follow it. He said that the previous night the true God had told him that at last the white brother was near. God would cause the pony to lead them to him. The pony started walking. Surely it would simply stop at the nearest stream. To the disciples’ amazement it kept going. On and on it went for about 200 miles over mountainous trails and down into the city of Kengtung, then turned into the gate of a mission compound and headed straight for a well. The disciples looked all around. No white man. No book. Hearing sounds in the well, they peered in. From the dry well a white face greeted them. Did he have a book from God? Yes! Before long about 10,000 Wa people had given their lives to Jesus. (87, 102-104)

Heathens Miraculously Prepared
for Christianity

Startling examples from around the world of God working in the lives of heathen peoples and preparing them, often centuries in advance, for the coming of Christianity.

African prophets

The Gedeo were a half-million strong Ethiopian tribe who believed in Magano, the benevolent, omnipotent, Creator of everything. And yet few prayed to Magano. They were far more concerned about trying to appease Sheit’an, an evil spirit. They felt they did not know Magano well enough to be free from this evil spirit. One day, however, a Gedeo man, Warrasa, prayed that Magano reveal himself to the Gedeo people. Then followed a vision in which he saw two white-skinned strangers erect temporary shelters under a certain sycamore tree near Warrasa’s hometown, Dilla. Later they built more permanent shiny-roofed structures. Warrasa had never seen either type of dwelling before. A voice told him that these men would bring a message from Magano. During the next eight years other Gedeo soothsayers prophesied that strangers would soon arrive with a message from Magano. At the end of 1948, missionaries Brunt and Cain planned to set up base far from Dilla but the political climate forced them to decide on Dilla. So two white men erected tents under that very sycamore tree Warrasa had seen in his vision. Events continued to unfold in accordance with the vision. Today there are tens of thousands of Gedeo Christians. (54-56) (Of course, there’s nothing special about being white. It’s just an historical fact that for some people groups it was white people who first brought them the Gospel.) ‘What happened among the Gedeo is by no means an isolated incident,’ writes Don Richardson. ‘Incredible as it seems, literally thousands of Christian missionaries down through history have been startled by exuberant welcome even among some of the earth’s remotest peoples! Folk . . . anticipated the coming of message-bearers for the true God almost as knowledgeably as if they had read about them in the morning news!’ (56) Richardson has documented some of these incidents in a book mentioned below. Bracketed numbers indicate relevant pages from that book.

"Heaven has joys we cannot even conceive of."

"many blame themselves than admit that parents who should have loved them, had let them down so badly."

"Christ is divinely anointed to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release prisoners from darkness, for “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. . . . He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” 

"Messiah, the Everlasting Father is fun stretched to the extremes."

"His features were only vaguely like the earthly Jesus I had seen before, but he was so stunningly regal that I knew this had to be the exalted Son of God. Everything about him, though reminiscent of humanity, was markedly different to any earthly person. His skin literally glowed. His slightly wavy, shoulder length hair was brownish but, perhaps because of the radiance emanating from him, no one on earth has hair that color. He seemed of no particular race, and yet I could see in him features of every racial group. With an enormous grin and sparkling eyes he was beaming with delight at the children. It seemed that each child was his precious darling, the light of his life."

"the beauty, the wonder, the majesty, the magnetism of the eyes of the astounding Being. Like prisms, they shone with every conceivable color, but there was far more to them than just stunning physical beauty that totally eclipsed any eyes. They glistened with life, twinkled with joy, and beamed with love. In comparison, diamonds are dull, fire is frigid, and leaping gazelles are lifeless. But even more than this, his eyes revealed such warmth, such openness, such acceptance that I felt drawn to Him who was infinitely more than man. 
To be in his arms was truly to be home. One glimpse at those eyes would sweeten the sourest soul, melt the hardest heart and satiate the most love-starved person."

"Child abusers (parental abuse) normally do all they can to crush their victims’ self-esteem. With this happening in one’s formative years, it is the norm for people to be exceedingly fragile, which makes it even more damaging when over-zealous christians try to “cast out” a huge part of who they are. To reinforce an alter’s dangerously false self-image by declaring them demonic could be the final straw. At the very least, any attempt to drive out an alter will succeed only in driving the alter into deep hiding, giving the person temporary peace in that the person is no longer aware of the alter, but making healing of the person’s inner pain, false guilt and so on, impossible (unless the damage is somehow reversed). It could even result in the person’s suicide."


"one consequence of (parental) verbal and emotional abuse is personal ineffectiveness stemming from the lack of direction, inability in developing one's self thereby unwittingly resulting in self doubt and fear of success manifested outwardly as shrinking from success in any career."

"today's decisions are tomorrow's reality"

"God honors us by respecting our wishes. If we don’t want him to be our God – letting him be in total control of our lives – it saddens him, but in his gentleness he will let us go our own way. No one has suffered the pain of rejected love like God. You can not be forced to love someone. Nor can you be forced to desire purity of heart. The Giver has done all he can. It’s over to you. To ignore our Creator is the height of selfishness. He is the source of every good thing we ever enjoyed. Every wonderful thing we take for granted comes from him. He holds our atoms together. He looks after those who ignore him, giving them time after time to respond to his astounding love. They don’t want God to interfere, but he does anyhow – showering them with a thousand soft, warm, beautiful, delicious, refreshing, thrilling and uplifting gifts. At death, however, those  to be free from God have their wish. That’s the final path, cut off forever from love, beauty, fulfillment and joy."

"Women often want a sizable part of their marriage not to be a sanctuary from their workaday life, but a psychiatrist’s couch on which they can verbally work through all their problems and find relief by talking things through."

"We know how irrational anorexia is, and how resistant it is to treatment, but even when we do not understand it, we don’t use someone else’s torment as an excuse to feel superior"

"God alone sees the heart and promise its secrets will be exposed."

"To control anger is to exercise true authority"

"handle emotional and physical pain without anger, violence or defeatism." 

"society presume that no one can be a real man if he excels in gentleness, patience, kindness, humility and purity"

Weak men/women are so insecure the only way they feel safe and keep loved ones around them is by shattering their children's self-esteem through constant emotional verbal physical abuse, put downs and guilt trips.


This is a characteristic trait of all abusers.

 love is not about suppressing people.

"When William Wilberforce teetered on the edge of conversion he assumed he should abandon politics and become a clergyman. He would have made a great preacher, but his childhood hero and father-figure, John Newton, talked him out of it. And millions have benefited. The abolition of the slave trade was just one of the accomplishments of this devout politician whom John Pollock labelled 'the moral leader of the Western World'. After Cliff Richard became a Christian, he felt he should quit show business and become a full-time teacher of religious education. Someone had the insight to show him that he could more effectively minister to this needy world as a pop star. Does that curdle your brain? It makes sense to me. In heaven's sight, a truly Spirit-led entertainer could be as much an ordained minister (ie divinely ordained to minister) as any pastor, bishop or missionary bearing impressive church credentials.

Moral dilemma

I'm going too far. I see you warming to this book as it burns in your fire. Nonetheless, I'll step over the edge because I ache for the tiny minority whose sacred mission clashes with our sense of decency. To underline the reality of this problem, I cite specific examples, though I do not claim to have the mind of God on them. I have enough difficulty discerning my own direction. Instead, employing the wisdom of Gamaliel, I refuse to hurl stones whilst a doubt remains, lest I be found opposing a work of God. What would you think of a man who felt divinely commissioned to spend countless hours viewing hard porn? Dr James Dobson is such a man, even though he is thoroughly convinced of the evil of pornography. Do you question Florence Nightingale's call to nursing? You might in her day, when nursing was renowned for gross immorality and drunkenness. Simon Peter had to fight his conscience to preach to Cornelius. Fellow Christians were aghast. 'Ill-natured, wicked, mistaken - deserves punishment ...' wrote the West Indian press about James Ramsay, a sensitive Christian who had inflamed public decency to intolerable levels. He was guilty of the 'absurdest prejudice,' roared men in England. Ramsay had published a book suggesting that the slave trade was wrong. Earlier this parson had had the gall to insert into the service a prayer for the conversion of blacks. The church was outraged. Some stalked out. The Churchwarden presented a formal protest against Ramsay's 'neglect of the parish'. Not everyone assuming the 'higher moral ground' should be trusted. In a move as bold and glorious as his original creation of the music, Handel took a composition which might have merely given goose bumps to fat Christians and turned it into a channel to flood the lost with the warm love of Christ. Yet even this involved a moral risk. The first performance of Handel's Messiah secured the release of 142 people from debtor's prison. Subsequent performances authorised by Handel achieved so much in aiding the poor that one biographer wrote, 'Perhaps the works of no other composer have so largely contributed to the relief of human suffering.' What's more, this composition - thought by some to have done more to convince multitudes of the reality of God 'than all the theological books ever written' - was bringing potent Scriptures in a powerful manner to the unchurched. I'd hail this use of his work as a magnificent achievement, but I lack the discernment of Handel's Christian contemporaries. The church castigated him for not restricting performances to the hallowed confines of its buildings. For John Newton - of Amazing Grace fame - Handel's 'secular' use of his Messiah was such a scandal that he is said to have preached 'every Sunday for over a year' against it. Like the Pharisees of old, we can be horrified at the actions of our spiritual forebears - adamant that we could not possibly be so blinded by religious prejudice as to oppose a work of God - and yet make grave misjudgments of the same magnitude that God-fearing people have been making for millennia. I make no plea for blind tolerance. That's one of the fad heresies of our age, and even the bigoted Pharisees wrongly tolerated temple money-changers. But whether they erred on the side of acceptance or rejection, the Pharisees' error was always the same: they let the accepted norms of their group ring so loud in their ears that they couldn't hear the heartbeat of God. Like us, they were sure they would never make such a mistake. So though I don't preach mindless acceptance, I urge caution - especially since God's primary concern is to enlighten me concerning his leading for my life, not his personal leading for everyone else. Cristina, claims a Christian monthly, beams the light of Christ into darkness so oppressive it's shunned by nearly every Christian. She's a regular act at a strip club. No, she doesn't remove her clothes - she repeats her act before children at circuses. As Australia's leading contortionist, she takes her audience's breath by twisting her body, not her morals. At what she is convinced is God's command, Cristina teeters on the precipice of hell, plucking souls from Satan's fangs. When I saw the impressive write-up in a leading Christian magazine, I assumed Cristina's daring exploits, spiritual power and soul-winning success had made her a celebrity in Christian circles. After months of feeling an unusual prayer-burden for her, I finally yielded to the urge to contact her. I was shocked when Cristina confided that she felt rejected by 98% of Christians and couldn't find one church where she felt accepted. The godly treat her like a Samaritan, though she alone is neighbour to the man wallowing in the gutter. Strategically placed in Satan's heartland, Cristina loves drug-addicts, prays for strippers, witnesses to transvestites, and gives back-sliding Christians a fright. Yet few uphold her in prayer. God uses preachers, singers, maybe even nurses, but a contortionist? In a strip joint? Next you'll be saying God could heal the sick with a handkerchief, feed a throng from a boy's lunch box, become a Man denounced by religious leaders for his 'low' morals ... For years Cristina battled with what seemed the call of God burning within and buckets of water thrown by well-meaning Christians. Being endowed with a rare skill nurtured from the age of four was not proof God wanted her to continue. Jesus called fishermen to forsake abilities burnished by years of experience. The moral tangle is daunting. I couldn't enter Cristina's work place without grieving God. Scripture teaches, however, that a few issues are not settled by an immutable law but by an individual's purity of motives, conscience, and personal leading from the Most High. This applies only to breaking rules of human origin - though, like pharisaical laws, such rules could be designed by well-meaning Christians to put a protective hedge around God's law. The fearfully holy Lord would never break his written word or smudge his awesome purity by calling Dobson to lust, Miss Nightingale to drunkenness, or Cristina to immorality, though flocks of halo-studded angels in psychedelic jumpsuits herald the call. Neither would God assign them such precarious tasks unless they were exceptionally resistant to the type of temptation they would face. We are often so conscious of sin being like leaven that we forget Jesus' teaching that the kingdom of God is also like leaven, which starts as a speck and transforms everything it touches. A potent Christian on a mission from God is a far greater threat to the Enemy than the Enemy is a threat to the Spirit-led Christian. It is quite another matter, however, when a Christian wanders aimlessly or sinfully onto enemy turf. So, though it will always be rare and subject to stringent conditions, God's leading could challenge a man-made moral code, even one that has protected millions of Christians. I have faced a moral dilemma in even raising the matter. Someone might twist it to their own destruction to excuse sin, yet if I stay silent others might quash God's leading by considering themselves holier than God. We must bow before the Holy One whose ways are not our ways. All our joy is to be found in the perfection of his will, no matter how it clashes with human tradition.

God-given diversity

We all know that humanity's first ministry was nude gardening. It worked. It had God's blessing. Yet - I hope - we feel no compulsion to emulate their approach to ministry. Nor do I see many people trying to organise their own crucifixion to replicate the most powerful ministry earth has seen. So why try to steal anyone's ministry style? We would end up looking as ridiculous as skinny David clunking an erratic course in Saul's ponderous armour. You're a unique work of God. Only a fool would vandalise Leonardo da Vinci's priceless works by trying to turn them all into Mona Lisas. God is most elevated, not by a hundred imitations of Billy Graham (or Cliff Richard), but by a hundred commonfolk each being true to their unique calling. The result will much more accurately reflect the multi-faceted character of God. Our great God is a humorist as well as a judge; a musician as well as an orator; a servant and a king. Just look at creation: God is an artist, an engineer, an inventor, a gardener. He's a bio-chemist, a mid-wife, a philosopher, a labourer, an architect - does the list ever end? In the vastness of God's nature there must be a tiny element that you can portray better than anyone else ever has - if you accept the challenge of a truly Spirit-led ministry, instead of a pale imitation of someone else. Just as the life-styles of Jesus and John the Baptist differed enormously, there should be a rich diversity within the body of Christ. Unfortunately, a warped view of holiness and/or submission often leads to drab conformity. In reality, this is carnality - the inability to love or appreciate anyone different from ourselves. Deodorised saints are the order of the day. Real saints get up hypocrites' noses. To reach the many different people groups he encountered, Paul became 'all things to all men'. If Paul as an individual could contemplate this, imagine the breadth that should be evident within the body as a whole. This is possible only if we allow the Spirit to nurture our individuality. Christians wishing they had the abilities of others are nightingales coveting a peacock's beauty or soaring eagles envying the powerful legs of an ostrich. Yet most of us feel this way at times. It's a pity our brain-waives have such an unconventional spelling. Don't despise the unique blend of abilities bestowed on you by the keenest Mind in the universe!

"Do not be so tradition-bound as to confuse ministry with mimicry. Every human mind is chained to established practice and custom. All that distinguishes any of us is the length of our leash. "

" service need not conform to our petty notions before it can sparkle with divine greatness. Let's cut the ropes and let God express his boundless creativity through us."

"Some would much prefer God to be a machine; coldly predictable as trapped by a simple law of physics. There's something reassuring about an idol. 

Within us lurks a desire to fashion a god that says 'I love you' when we press the right button and never disturbs us by doing or asking the unexpected."

"God is so superior that his acts take us by surprise.


God so vibrant, bursting with life and creativity and personality that in comparison the most dynamic of us seem listless and boring. "

"God's character is wonderfully predictable and his methods wondrously unpredictable."

 "To a stranger i might just be one of millions, but not to God who truly loves me."

"the tongue is like a seemingly harmless spark that can ignite a wildfire"

“God is God, and we are not. ”

"You will probably learn a lot more than you impart, by just listening and enjoying the other person, you may give them a gift that is beyond words and beyond answers."

" If God has placed someone on your path, walk with them, at their pace"

"Most of us feel a compulsion to advice/counsel, when what people who are hurting need is not words but kindness."

"Job 42:3-6  . . . Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.  . . . My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.

If we truly know God, why aren’t we humbled into silence by the consciousness of how staggeringly inferior our understanding is, relative to God’s?"

"the longer you are Christian, the more you are in danger of becoming arrogant know-all."

"Arrogance can have grave repercussions as to turn genuine attempts to help into something that drives people to suicide or into the slimy hands of the devil."

"some individuals, especially those in ministry, have their neat little view of the universe on handy mental flash cards, ready to whip an answer out at a moment’s notice to life’s biggest questions, rather than admit, “You’re asking the wrong person, dude. I’m just a mortal. How in the world could I ever even hope to contemplate the vastness of understanding even 1% of any topic involving God or ethics or morality or humankind.”

        

" ...the nicest word anyone in a church has ever said to me was still incorrect and based on presumption.."

"When people need God, step out of the way and let them connect with God. "

"The average person approaches hurting people like someone cocksure that two weeks in a meat factory qualifies them to engage in heart surgery. The vast majority of us sincerely care and have no idea that our kind-hearted attempts to cheer are almost the emotional equivalent of trying to trim someone’s toenails with a chainsaw.

Everyone ends up sometimes hurting people without realizing it."

"Imagine being a nurse in a burns unit. You want to dress the wounds of patients with horrific burns, knowing that the slightest slip will send them to the roof in agony. Just one further complication: the patients are new to you and a power failure combined with emergency lighting having to be diverted to more critical areas of the hospital means the ward is pitch black. You cannot see a thing and the patients are new to you, so you don’t know the precise nature or location of their burns. That’s what it is like relating to someone who has inner pain. Emotional wounds are invisible. You can never be certain who is hurting, nor what well-meaning words will bring them unintended pain."

"If someone plunged a knife into your eye you would end up wounded regardless of whether it were done accidentally or with criminal intent. 


"observers can wrongly suppose that such factors make a difference"

"Whilst it is not biblical to live in denial or sidestep grief, neither is it biblical to make grief our home, rather than merely a place we pass through."

"Some, will try to offload pain by talking incessantly about it, whereas others feel they can cope only by never mentioning it. "


 Keep pouring out your heart to God and the trial will be shortened."

"Grieving, does not necessarily mean crying. It involves acknowledging to oneself the magnitude of one’s loss."

"Emotional response to crises is largely concreted into us during our formative years. Freeing ourselves up in later years is exceedingly difficult and takes more than mere willpower." 


"Those who clam up emotionally suffer enough without anyone compounding it by being critical of their dilemma."

"do not add to people’s burdens by implying that a stiff upper lip is a spiritual duty"

"those who confront their inner pain head-on, heal quickest. Inner pain will gradually retreat when we face it, but it will keep haunting us if we run from it."

"To experience heart-ripping grief is to enter into a unique understanding of the heart of God."

"those who refuse to mourn often take much longer to heal"


"someone ignoring a physical wound, acting as if it had never happened, is likely to end up with an infected wound that takes much longer to heal."

Hope lessens grief, but it does not eliminate it.

"In contrast to “mourn with those who mourn” , many well-meaning Christians think the truly Christian thing to do is to gently chide mourning Christians for not rejoicing. Paul's references to joy and rejoicing have inspired modern day super saints to think it spiritual to act like robots."

Real Christians Grieve

"No matter how medically curable a particular cancer may be, if you treat it as a pimple, you cannot expect to heal. "

"First, people keep telling us not to live in the past, to “get over it,” and so on. There is point in healing from a broken leg when one must discard crutches but to expect anyone to run on a broken leg when they r not ready in the healing process is both foolish and cruel. It will only worsen the injury. 


So it is with inner healing, but those who insist people should act as if they have never been wounded typically have the audacity to blame others when their foolish advice does not work."

"If someone hacked your hand off, the fact that someone else had his whole arm cut off would not lessen your own pain. You will recover when your inner wound heals, not when others get more hurt. Moreover, if you ignore a minor wound, allowing it to get infected, you will end up in more pain than someone with a deeper wound who gave it the attention it deserved earlier than you did."

Anger is part of healing. Injustice arouses much anger. Such anger should not to be whitewashed but faced squarely and worked through until you find the peace you deserve. Maybe some get away with their crimes in this world. But this is a very brief world compared to what they face in the next. Moreover, I’m about to show that fewer escape than we suppose. You can heal. Unless people who hurt you face what they did and repent – truly regret what they did – they spend their lives running, even if it doesn’t show. I once sat down with a man who had committed murder. He shot a man in cold blood, blowing his head off while the man was on his knees, looking into his eyes, begging for his life. He never was caught for it; never served time. There was no justice for the victim. Or so it seemed. He confided to me that the man he had killed was always with him, haunting his dreams and his waking moments; ruining his sleep and spoiling his carefree times. He took drugs to run from that man but far too soon the victim was back in his head again. Outwardly, he seemed normal and did well, but inside he was in perpetual torment. Then he suffered a serious car accident and ended up in the hospital. He got over a million dollars worth of free care at tax payers’ expense. The hospital called me, saying he was asking for me. The staff couldn’t understand and neither could his family. He was calling out to someone. “Go away! Forgive me! Leave me alone! Help me! Forgive me!” Of course, there was no way for this man to receive the dead man’s forgiveness. When I arrived he grabbed me in desperation, telling me that the man he shot was standing in his room watching him. He pleaded with me to make the victim go away. For years, everyone had thought he was prospering, but all the while he had been tormented by guilt and horror. 

Anyone unable to feel guilt is missing the opportunity to repent, thus causing his sin to consume him more than ever. Such a person has hell to face. 

 You are connected to the living God. Eternal life is flowing through your veins and with God you will push through every obstacle to endless victory. Who has it the worst? Who will suffer the most? You who are getting healed? 

You have every right to be angry. Allow yourself to express those deep emotions. Pour them out to God. He is more than big enough to take them. But don’t forget the big picture. In the end, those who avail themselves of God’s grace win.

"to expose one’s inner wounds to the world inspires backyard brain surgeons to “help” by further wounding us"

anger awareness

anger awareness

"I never get angry,” says a character in one of Woody Allen’s movies, “I grow a tumour instead.”In over two decades of family medicine, including seven years of palliative care work, I have been struck by how consistently the lives of people with chronic illness are characterized by emotional shutdown: the paralysis of “negative” emotions - in particular, anger.

This pattern holds true in a wide range of diseases from cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis to inflammatory bowel disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Patients I’ve observed with these illnesses seem incapable of considering their own emotional needs and are driven by a compulsive sense of responsibility for the needs of others. They all have difficulty saying no. Many studies, in several continents, confirm the prevalence of these patterns in people with chronic conditions.

The suppression of anger contributes to the onset of cancer and other diseases because the mind and body cannot be separated. The brain’s emotional centres are directly and powerfully linked with the immune centres throughout the body. Emotions such as anger serve exactly the same defensive role as the immune system: to protect our boundaries and to keep us from being overwhelmed by external forces. 

Similarly, both emotions and the immune system, when healthy, also serve a repair function: they help us to heal when we have sustained some trauma or when something has gone wrong internally.

Emotions and immunity are interconnected, part and parcel of the same system of defense and repair, so when we suppress any aspect of that system, other parts will be suppressed as well. Thus, in one well-known study, women with breast cancer who had difficulty expressing anger toward their physicians also had diminished activity of a group of immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells. They had a poorer survival rate than did women whose anger was more clearly expressed and whose NK cells were better able to attack the tumour.

It follows that an essential preventive measure against cancer and other diseases is an awareness of what emotions we are experiencing, and the healthy expression of these emotions. These same qualities are also important to the healing of those who have been diagnosed with illness.

There is no quick route to emotional awareness because many of us have lost that capacity in early childhood. We must begin by practising paying close attention to the body: tension in the neck, a flutter in the abdomen, a headache, a sudden hoarseness of voice, unexplained muscle pain, the outbreak of a rash, poor sleep, disturbed bowel habits - these and many other phenomena can be symptomatic of some underlying emotional disturbance. We must at such times ask what in our lives - in our work, in our relationships - we have not been paying attention to. Why, and to what, is our body saying no?

Gabor Mate, MD, is a Vancouver physician and the author of When The Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (Knopf Canada, March 2003), available in paperback February 2004 from Vintage Canada.

Source: alive #258, April 2004

anger I

Taking Control of Anger
by author Curtis Foreman

People often describe anger as a wave that sweeps over them. Like the forces of nature that send breakers crashing to the shore, anger can surprise us with sudden, sometimes destructive force. And at times, it can seem both inexplicable and unstoppable.

But anger is neither inexplicable nor unstoppable - although it can certainly feel that way for people whose anger threatens to take over their lives.

Although a “flare-up” of rage may seem to come from nowhere, counsellors and researchers generally agree that the emotions which cause us to fly into a fury - and even to lash out at the ones we love - are anything but fleeting. In the same way that ocean waves have their origins in a distant storm of wind and water, anger grows from a deeper emotional disturbance.

Ill Effects

“Anger is a healthy emotion when it is expressed appropriately,” says Dr. Kathryn Jennings, who manages the Anger Management Counselling Practice (www.angeronline.com) in Toronto. “When not expressed properly, it can have devastating effects. Anger is at the root of many personal and social problems including domestic violence, physical and verbal abuse, and community violence.”

The effects of anger are not limited to our personal and social lives, adds Jennings. Unchecked anger can tax a person’s immune system, and can contribute to headaches and migraines, severe gastrointestinal symptoms, hypertension, and coronary artery disease.

The Many Faces of Anger

In The Anger Trap: Free Yourself from the Frustrations that Sabotage Your Life (Wiley and Sons, 2003), author Les Carter, Ph.D., points out that while it is easy to identify rage in volatile commuters, unruly children, and unresponsive co-workers, we may not recognize more subtle expressions of anger. For example, our anger may manifest itself in obsessing over loose ends, acting impatiently, or making overly critical judgments.

As well, angry silence or withdrawal can be just as emotionally harmful as overt violence. Passive-aggressive behaviour is characterized by emotionally abusive treatment of others through non-cooperation, evasiveness, and behaviours that leave others disempowered.

“A passive-aggressive person has become convinced that the way to protect his or her fragile ego is to be in control as fully as possible,” explains Carter. “Rather than viewing relationships as a dynamic exchange of encouragement and understanding, they think in competitive terms. Others are not considered potential partners as much as they are potential adversaries.”

Avoiding Pain

“Anger is a tool that people use to distance themselves from things that are hurting them,” says Linda Duarte, a counsellor at Stewart and Associates Counselling and Consulting Services (www.stewart-assoc.com) in Vancouver. Duarte, who has a Master’s degree in counselling psychology, teaches anger management techniques to individuals and groups.

“Issues of safety and control come up often in my work with clients,” explains Duarte. “If someone feels threatened by something they are powerless to resolve, reacting with anger is one way to keep it at a safe distance. For many people, anger is the only coping strategy they may have for dealing with negative emotional situations.”

Taking Control

Anger often arises out of situations in which we feel powerless.

“Learning to recognize your internal warning signs is critical,” counsels Jennings. “Take a time out from the situation; that way, you don’t respond in a reactive manner.”

Once you learn how to temporarily defuse volatile situations by calming yourself - or physically removing yourself from the situation that is making you angry - the next step is to address the larger issues that are giving rise to your anger.

“You need to come back to what’s causing your anger on a deeper level,” advises Duarte. “We advise clients to count to ten in tense situations, or to use breathing to control their reaction, and these strategies do work. But if you’re not addressing the deeper issues that are creating the problem - be it a lack of communication with your spouse or an overbearing boss at work - then in the end, you’re running away from a problem that’s not going to go away on its own.”

If anger is causing recurring problems in your life, it can be difficult to look within yourself and face the fears or pain that you may have been running from for years. But you can do it. You have the power within you to take control of your anger - and your life.

Curtis Foreman is a freelance writer in Vancouver.

Source: alive #262, August 2004