Feb 13
8
What Jesus Is Teaching me Today; …Right NOW (13)
LESSON THIRTEEN: “Don’t Just Leave it There?”
Condemn, Criticize, Complain, Blame, Accuse, all words for thought process Victims.
Don’t leave gratitude there! The object is not to replay those old subconsciously ingrained habits of saying that everything is perfect with which you have masked disappointment and even bitterness and/or feeling that you have been treated unjustly …that attitude brings you full circle back into being a victim. Now then, being grateful is only a job half-done …the point of the exercise of being grateful for the incident is to trigger coming to I AM for understanding how to apply it until the habit of complaining has been overtaken completely.
NOTE: One of the things researchers have been discovering recently is the reason that so much of the stuff I tend to share about employing results getting faith doesn’t work for some people – and apparently one of the reasons I have been slow to learn many things, is that if something is buried in our subconscious, we can declare, visualize and apply feeling to our declarations until the proverbial cows come home and accomplish nothing. Embedded in the above words, I believe is one of the missing keys to speeding up the process of bringing those “old tapes” that have a tendency to run my life, into total submission to SPIRIT.
I received the opening paragraph three days ago and had yet to know what to do with it …which didn’t make any sense to me until about three hours ago when I realized I was missing the key in this particular instance. I had, basically, been denying that I was frustrated about the seeming vacuum of the presence of I AM for continuing to write this series about what Jesus is teaching me today.
Is this what I have to do to learn? Sometimes...
I’ve been learning a lot at the feet of the Master (bwoton), but not able to transcribe or translate any of it into a workable LESSON THIRTEEN for two days – and, instead of getting to the root of the problem of feeling so lacking, I was covering up the lack by being grateful, but not following through by coming to our SPIRIT-PARENT for the way to apply it! So I swallowed my nonsense and began getting into an attitude of gratitude for feeling a lack of the presence and power of I AM …AND begin asking for direction for fulfilling one of the ancillary purposes of my being on this plane.
Quick review: My primary purpose is to be aware of my connection with our (your and my) SPIRIT-PARENT (bwoton) and one of my ancillary, or “sub” purposes is to share my experiences while being aware of SPIRIT’s presence and power.
What I learned from LESSON TWELVE is that, for me, the process of getting into a frame of total gratitude for everything was not to stop at merely declaring I was thankful rather than complaining (consciously or otherwise), but continuing to declare it until the feeling of gratitude overtook me and I began acting thankful UNTIL I was and am thankful AND then asking how to apply it.
What has been finally registering in me …and this LESSON (THIRTEEN) accomplishes that for me. Being grateful is only one-half of the needed steps – Once in a state of complete gratitude I am ready to receive how to apply it for each situation – sharing it with you so that it begins to take hold in me – because I desperately needed to see this.
Are you ready for it!
So here I was, for two hours, savoring the fact that I didn’t know what to write – and asking, again (finally) what to do about it. My reverie interrupted by a phone call from Vancouver, B.C. – the only call I get from that part of the world …Ryan. Over the next several minutes, several insights from SPIRIT came pouring through both our mouths; from which we both realized we needed to adjust our thought processes which have tended to lead us into judging certain people and things (who, Ryan and Brad? NEVER!) …well, we all know better, do we not?
Let’s let the conversation we had revolving around Saul, erstwhile Paul, the writer of much of what is referred to as the New Testament unfold. As a precursor, I confess that much of my critical writing in the past about how some folks apply the writings of Paul …the primary point being that they seem to justify their actions which are clearly contradictory to some of the things the writers of the Gospels purport to have come through the mouth of Jesus, have apparently given Ryan the boost to say critical things about Paul.
If you want a list of the things Paul wrote that contradict what Jesus said …I’ll provide you with a quick overview …just e-mail me: [EDITOR’S NOTE: Please see Brad’s prelude to LESSON FOURTEEN – That’s up next.]
brad@spiritualhealingsource.com.
To many unintended things have been twisted out of the words of Paul, Peter and Jesus.
My criticism has never been directed toward Paul, though I’ve felt the need to quote his own remarks which prove, in my mind at least, that he didn’t think he was always right. I certainly have been critical both in tone and content toward those who justify their actions by quoting “the Apostle Paul” in what, to me, seem to be clearly contradictory to what Jesus purportedly said – I don’t think that Paul was contradicting Jesus – what I do think is that some people justify what they do on the basis of how they interpret what Paul wrote …which, in my mind, is a far different thing.
As we discussed this, Ryan was given the following powerful insight:
“I need to rethink my attitude about Paul. Paul isn’t the problem …in fact what he wrote was directed at certain people in certain areas two thousand years ago …groups in Thessalonica, Ephesus, Galatia, Corinth and so on and certain of those writings can certainly apply to me today. To take a slavish attitude toward his writings, however, as if they were all directives for me to live by today is ridiculous. To me, that’s like some psychopath finding somebody’s love letters written to somebody else – and having a fixation in her/his mind that those letters were written to her/him and plotting to kill anyone who thinks differently.”
I voiced my gratitude to SPIRIT for giving that to Ryan – our conversation then veered off to the story told in John’s Gospel about Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman drawing water at a community well. She was so amazed by his words to her …and he was so amazed by her response that he said he had never seen such faith among the Children of Israel …she hurried back to her village and told some men about the encounter and that she had met the Messiah. They followed her back to the area of the well and spoke with Jesus …and they too were overtaken by the same belief and acceptance that Jesus, indeed, was the Messiah.
Matthew 15:24 Then Jesus said to the woman, "I was sent only to help God's lost sheep--the people of Israel."
These men later told her, “We don’t believe in Jesus because of what you said, we believe he is the Messiah because we heard him directly.” Might that not be a good signpost for us? When anybody says anything about Jesus …let it be a sign that we should go meet him directly!
An aside, it was during that encounter with the woman at the well that John recalled hearing Jesus say that he didn’t come to deliver a message to anyone except for Jews! A case can easily be made that by Jesus own words, elsewhere, he expanded on that initial purpose, but the fact is that, historically, the first several thousand Christians were almost exclusively Jewish!
I was exclaiming to Ryan my excitement about what SPIRIT was shining a light on during our conversation this morning; certainly, for one thing, how it was having the effect of helping us overcome our critical attitudes; when some sort of noise interference on the line made it impossible for us to hear each other. I immediately said thanks to SPIRIT and asked how I should apply my gratitude …I heard, “will you write?”
“Oh yeah,” I responded and, about then, Ryan came back on the line again and said he thought he understood the cause of the disruptive noise on the line …and made an adjustment to his mobile phone and I could hear him perfectly. I told him I didn’t know the content yet, but I fairly sure that part of it would be to recap some of our conversation.
…and now you have – stop right there!
Got it …bye for now.
In Freedom,
Brad