Prologue
Living souls with human
consciousness arrive with raw sensory data pouring in that can only be stored,
not understood. Eyes open seeing. Ears hear.
Feeling feels. Taste wants. Vocal chords sound. Noses smell.
None has idea of what is going on.
Anxiety attack number one has begun.
It is not until the new one feels the clutched closeness to feel the
known music and rhythm of the drum it has known during pod season does a sense
of security and calm come.
The announcement follows of I AM here in the first cries of wanting and
needing what cannot be expressed. The
one who holds the new arrival places a nourishing part of her body near to the
new one’s mouth and the installed software programmed instinct of nature older
than time itself generates a connection of call and response satisfied. Ahhhhhhhhh, this is happiness. Did you know there was an app for that?
This is the human lot for a
lifetime. We do not know what we do not
know. We take steps into the unknown to
begin to catalogue our experience of data collection. We learn quickly the law of cause and
effect. We learn that if we cry loud
enough long enough our cause, an effect will follow, one we hope will satisfy. From these experiences of data collection, we
begin to think and then to manipulate all things external to ourselves to get
what we want. This is our design. This is how the Creator has made us. This is why WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS.
Introduction of the Message Text
Your
reality is not just what you say it is, it is what you think it is says Jesus
in Mark 11 vss 17a and 22b – 26.
17a
and he taught saying unto them, “Is it not written, MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED BY ALL NATIONS THE
HOUSE OF PRAYER?
22b
Have faith in God.
23
Truly, I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be
taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but
believe that what you say will come to pass it will be done for you. (Our ADD
at all ages and stages prevent focus on this powerful revelation).
24
So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe
that you have received it, (NOW, already) and it will be yours. How
the successful person acts in the role or goal we desire, we must manage our
behavior and live as if our achievement is already a fact. Those of us who have completed published works
saw ourselves with completed published works as published authors long before
accomplishment. We saw our degrees
before we earned them. We write our
scripts before we act them out and realize their achievement all the while
living as if we already have them. WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS.
The Jesus Addendum
Incidentally and parenthetically, Oh and by
the way one more thing
25 and 26 “Whenever you stand praying,
forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that God in heaven may also
forgive you your trespasses.
A bit of information on the text, vs 22 b, Oxford Research Notes on
some ancient authorities believe the original languages did not just say ‘have
faith. Their comment suggests a better
understanding would be to say, ‘if you have.’
We have what appears to be Jesus teaching with direction. The subject of this sentence that is unseen but
understood is the pronoun “YOU” to each individual and to the group. He was speaking directly to those gathered
around him.
Down south, the text might have easily had unspoken pronoun represented
by, “YA’LL.” There is also the unspoken
but clearly established “WHEN” of the implication of the teaching. The “WHEN” is “NOW” “RIGHT NOW!”
Right now if you have faith in God, nothing can stand in your way. Today, we must face the question. Since, I am a Christian, why do I, why do we
seem to face so many mountains and why do we perceive so many things in our way?
Henry Ford, the Founder of the Ford Motor Company said, “Whether you
think you can or think you can’t, you are right.”
What we say and what we do reveals what we really think of
ourselves. Hard luck feel sorry for me
stories conform to one of the first laws revealed in Genesis. Every seed reproduces fruit after its own kind,
Genesis 1 vs 11. Keep planting hard luck
feel sorry for me stories out your mouth from your seeded thoughts and they
have no choice but to come to full harvest. Ultimately, what you know means
nothing. What you think means
everything. WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS.
Dark Nights of My Soul, St.
John of the Cross
In my own experience, I have known some dark nights of the soul. Depression is the clinical identifier of this
demon. Depression can express itself as
outwardly aggressive and hostile anger or it can manifest internally into an
experience of sadness that feels like sinking in quicksand at midnight. I don’t know if you have had moments like
this. Whatever way you turn to help yourself
get free, you feel like you are sinking deeper and deeper into a darkness that
might hold you in a sad forever.
Once Bonnie noted this was taking place in me. One afternoon, she had come home from work
and found me on the couch in our first house. She looked at me and said with all the brave
and tough love she could muster, “You have to get up from there and do
something.” Her heart and the passionate
intensity of her voice had touched me where I hurt and felt sorry for myself
and called me back to life.
The conflict in this testimony is that I am the one God has used to
draw many out of their dark nights. Many
across the world (women and men) have acknowledged me as their rescuer from their
conditions of emotional hell, an invulnerable knight in shining armor superman
all the while without knowing I too am not immune.
15 years later and living in Phoenix, my daughter Micha became my next
champion. I had fallen into a funk. I had called her to tell her my latest sad
luck story of how bad it was when she abruptly stopped me mid – sentence. She said without hesitation, “Dad, how much
more of that do you want?” Like Bonnie years earlier, her heart and the
passionate intensity of her voice had touched me where I hurt and felt sorry
for myself and called me back to life.
Like others of you here, my children and my friends, I have laid on
your couches to tell you sad stories of my perceptual engagement of life and
your voices and loving hearts like Bonnie’s and Micha’s touched me where I hurt
and felt sorry for myself and called me back to life.
Can you hear this song right and feel my experience and maybe
occasionally yours? I was sinking deep in sin far from the peaceful
shore, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more, but the Master of
the Seas heard my despairing cry, from the waters lifted me, now safe am
I. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. When nothing else could help, Love lifted me. WHAT
YOU THINK MATTERS.
The Question
Proverbs 23 vs 7 says, “As we think of ourselves in our hearts, so are
we.”
When we discover that it is our thinking that forms what happens in our
lives, what should our immediate course of action be? When the 49ers, not the football team, were
chasing gold mid – nineteenth century in California, they immediately went
where news of gold strikes sounded.
Where is your our gold to be found?
Acres of Diamonds, writing and speech made famous by Russell Cromwell,
earned enough money to found Temple University.
He delivered the speech 5000 times after writing it in the last decade
of the 19th Century. In the speech, he told the story of a man
searching for diamonds. He sold
everything he possessed, lands and all to search for them.
The man who bought his land was walking it one day when he kicked a big
rock. Curious about the stone, he had it
examined and processed leading to the discovery of the world’s largest diamond. The man who had sold him the property who left
in search of diamonds had owned what would become the world’s largest diamond
mine. Where are your our diamonds to be found and
what opportunity are you missing right where you are? WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS.
Jesus’ Answer
According
to the proclamation of Jesus, our gold and our diamonds begin with what we
believe and think about ourselves. As we think of ourselves, so are we. If we think we are losers, we are right. If we think we are winners, we are
right. If we think of ourselves as
victims of a mean society because we are black and male, we will find a way to
prove we are right. If we think of
ourselves as victims of any form of abuse, we will find a way to prove we are
right.
If
on the other hand, we have the clever audacity to exercise the privilege of
human intellect to believe what Jesus has revealed to us, we can have what we
say we want. Listen to the words of
Jesus from Matthew 19 vs 26, “With men on their own functioning only from the
limits of their fear based awareness, this is impossible; but with God, men and
women unafraid to live by faith, discover all things are possible.
My
friend, the late Dr. Robert Letcher taught all who worshipped at the Christ
Center Church in Ashland, Kentucky, “Faith never rises above the level of
confession.” Confession is affirmation
with Jesus clothes on.
The
regular and continuous confession of the man and woman of Christ Centered Faith
might regularly confess what God told Moses: I am that I am.
I
am a living soul transformer because my mind is renewed and energized with
thoughts that build me up.
I
am a victorious winner always striving for the positive, the excellent.
I
am a soul inspired by prayer, meditation, and study to do great things in
Jesus’ name.
I
am a loved son of the most high God and a man after God’s own heart.
I
am the voice that speaks into existence what I want to show up in my life.
I
am a healthy spirit, soul and body and an agent of healing to others.
I
am love that cares empowered by the intelligence that comes from God.
Conclusion: Right now, YA’LL, IF you have faith in God,
nothing can stand in your way to keep you from accomplishing your goals. The sho nuff true truth is that the only
power that can stop you from succeeding is you.
When what you think is right, what you believe is right. When what you believe is right, what you affirm
to God, yourself and others on a regular basis is right. Not even a mountain called impossible can
stop you because nothing is impossible for God and nothing is impossible if you
have faith in God. Nothing is impossible
with God and nothing is impossible if you have faith in God. WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS.
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