Have you wandered off
Just a little bit
And felt like nothing is
Or ever was
Quite right?

Who are you to think
That in a flash
You could be right back on target?
You could turn – not so much away
From loveless, lifeless darkness
You could, right this very instant, turn
To the Light.

Now everything’s become
Unspeakably beautiful
Full of love and joy
And unending recognition
Of who it really is
That you are!

God will use everything that ever happened to you to forge a whole new you:
stronger, richer, healthier, happier.
When?
As soon as you give the ìncident(s) over to Him.
How?
By virtue of the fact that it’s already done.
Where?
At first, in the Spirit; then, in the natural.
Why?
Because He loves you that much!

I have no idea why God told me to open up my Office Pro and start to write. I know I feel my best when I’m helping people to realize that God is their very, very best friend. He is so much more than just a friend because He has infinite power as He is the creator of the entire universe. I know it’s quite mind-boggling to think that He lives on the inside of you, but He does! In order to recognize His ever-presence, we need to turn away from our moment-by-moment preoccupations – yes, FORCE ourself apart from them. Just ignore them. All of them! Now, here’s God! If you only knew what He wants to tell you! Oh, if you only knew! Three little words! “I (the Lord thy God who knew you from time immemorial, who created you perfect – in My image and likeness, who has always been within you no matter how much you tried to deny it) … I … Love … You !!
You can’t get away from it but you can THINK that you can. You can hate people, look down on people, think you’re better than people, idolize people, think they’re better than you, fear them and every last bit of it amounts to ‘dung’.
What I, Robin, am trying to tell you hasn’t come out yet – not in this writing anyway. Are you happy? No, I don’t mean ‘adequately’ – I’m talking about the exuberant bubbling over, almost ready to explode happy. Like Paul when he encountered Jesus. Can you imagine the ineffable joy he must have felt? How many times he must have asked the rhetorical question, “why me?” “Why ME?” “WHY ME, Lord?” Why you indeed! Why not you?
If you didn’t have whatever problem you’re having, would you even be reading my rambling? Maybe that problem is a temporary expedient to get you to where you really want to be. If you hadn’t had all those unspeakably difficult challenges, would you have come to God at all? You were pretty far off, you know!
I’ve almost said what I came here to say. Let’s see if I can just spit it out now. You can have a Pauline experience! There I said it! If you really want it: wanting is prayer!
Want Him more than you want your healing. Want Him more than you want justice – retributive or other! Want Him more than you want to set people straight! Want Him, want Him, want Him.
There’s nothing more fulfilling in this world than wanting – with all your heart – that which you already have.
I love you,
Robin

This is dedicated to the “YOU” out there
That I keep wanting to reach.
I’m frustrated.
I want to get something across to you
And I need your help in getting it there.
I want sooo badly for you to see God
For the first time, BE–ING your answer,
Being within you,
Being better than every ‘thing’
You ever ‘pray’ for.
You don’t need to ‘do’ anything
Or even to ‘believe’ anything
To make it true.
The clincher: [A need for you to do, think, or believe anything
Means it is about your effort after all.]
It’s much, much, much better than that!
It’s all about God
In you
Here
And
Now.
Only wake up and realize
What’s already here
And then ….. DON’T …
Don’t EVER …
Go back!

Dear You,
What would it take to get you to listen to Me ALL the time? A billion dollars? Or, take all your money away and throw you in prison? Or, something in between? If you EVER took the plunge and gave up ALL human pride, giving your-SELF over to Me, we could live a glorious life right here, right now, in a mansion or in a prison.
W.A.M.L.,
God

I’ve been grappling with this question for some time now: “What if  nothing about you nor anything you ever did were a mistake?” What if everything were exactly as it was supposed to be?

Everything we’ve been through has set us up for where we are now; and, I don’t know about you, but I’m thrilled with where I am now spiritually!

It’s not a matter of God giving us pain and suffering to prompt us on; but we can look back and observe that our greatest leaps forward – in discovering who we are in God – seem to have come out of our finally seeking His help while abandoning our own.

Dear God,
Sometimes you give me so many wonderful insights that I can hardly stand it! I want to shout them from the rooftops!
…. and
……… and
…………… and
I want everyone else to “get it” immediately. I tend to forget that I had been grappling with that very issue for a pretty long time. . .
I want everyone to have an automatic upgrade to my newly discovered awareness. Good grief! Help me to get over myself once and for all!!!
Recently you showed me that when I’m fully plugged in, I just love and understand everyone so much that my eyes get moist with joy.
Let me not beat my friends over the head with a superabundance of … well … uh … of … “love”!

Over the years, my understanding of God, sin, humanity, and everything in between, has changed drastically.

Like most Westerners, I was born under the shadow of doctrines like original sin, through which it’s communicated to us that we carry around guilt like a genetic flaw. God’s perfect morality and impeccable ethical-ness, then, becomes our enemy. It’s an attribute of God that makes it impossible for him to have any attitude toward us but anger, wrath, and holy hatred, as our inherited guilt activates his sense of justice, and puts him at odds with us.

Because I took my Christianity very seriously, this idea haunted me like a vengeful specter. I could never get away from the feeling that I was unworthy of divine love, and lived in constant crippling fear of death, because hell awaited the guilty, of whom I saw myself as being chief. The only way, in this inherited view, to find peace with God was to trust in Jesus as being a sacrifice that satisfied in God what I never could, and because of the immensity and intensity of the fear and guilt I was shouldering, this idea, as absurd as it actually is in light of who Jesus proclaimed Abba to be, was very, very attractive.

So, eventually, I was able to exorcise the vengeful specter of original sin and an angry God by believing Jesus had satisfied this God’s anger as it concerned my guilt, and for years I preached and taught this as being the Gospel.

However, as time passed, I came to see that the problem never really had anything to do with an inherited guilt passed on to me by my naked, garden-expelled, primordial parents. God was never angry at humanity as a whole for the sins of the figures of Adam and Eve, and Jesus did not die to satisfy the debt that they incurred and passed on to the rest of us. This was nothing more than an anachronism, read into the Gospel story by Christians who had had centuries to think on and develop the doctrine of original sin as well as a violent atonement that fixed the problem.

However, while the original problem I perceived was never actually a problem, it still was a problem to me, because I was born into a religious worldview that had made it one. So, regardless of the fact that this problem was actually a non-problem, it was still a problem in my mind that was only undone by an unnecessary theology and doctrine of salvation, that existed only to remedy an imagined problem. Even though that particular understanding of salvation was not ever a true or necessary thing from God’s perspective, it was, in a sense, necessary for me so that I could overcome the man made problem of original sin.

So, in my experience, an imagined, and ultimately unnecessary understanding of sin was cured by an equally imagined, and unnecessary concept of salvation. Both were human ideas, and one was dreamed up in order to solve the other.

While I no longer hold to either of those views, because I was born into the former, it was almost necessary that I pass through the latter in order to be able to overcome it. I was born into that view without my consent, and was held captive by it until something was able to get me thinking differently. In my case, it was a problematic solution to a nonexistent problem that did the job.

This is the strange way that I think God sometimes allows bad theology to cure bad theology. I would never have been able to understand God as I do now, that is, in the way that I presently believe Jesus revealed him, had I not first had my false understanding of sin cured by an equally false understanding of salvation. Once the latter had cured the former, I could be liberated from the latter as well.

I know this all sounds a little bit complicated, but it’s how things worked in my life. I needed the bad to cure the bad, and on the other side of experiencing that cure, false though it was, I was able to recognize both as ultimately unnecessary.

I bring this up only to say that I must constantly remind myself that I did not come to hold my present beliefs overnight, but had to pass through a lot of stuff first. Some of the very things that helped to heal me up and get me into a healthier frame of my mind are things I’ve now even come to see as being unhealthy, but necessary to my own healing process. I must remind myself of this because some are still in that process (and I’m sure I am too) and I cannot allow myself to deprive them of the grace I was and am continually given as it concerns my faith journey. People have to be allowed to have their own journeys, which means that I will rarely ever be in agreement with everyone, because, while we’re all walking the same road, we’re all at very different places on that road.

I (we) must allow people the freedom to experience freedom the same way we did, which was/is in installments and small fragments. Eventually, we’ll end up at the same place, but until we get there, we’ll always think where we are is the best place.

Just some thoughts (mostly for me) to consider.

~ Jeff Turner

YOUR KNOWING THE TRUTH HAS FAR MORE POWER AND EFFECTIVENESS THAN YOU’LL EVER KNOW !!
John 8:32
And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

I OFFER MYSELF AS A VESSEL , FATHER , FOR YOU TO REACH OTHERS WHO NEED YOU .
1 Peter 1:23
having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,

THE BATTLE IS RIGHT HERE IN YOUR MIND – AND THAT IS THE ONLY PLACE !!
Romans 12:2
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

JESUS’ . . . RESURRECTION . . . WORK . . . IS . . . DONE !!
JESUS MADE YOU A BRAND NEW PERSON IN YOUR SPIRIT.
Ephesians 2:14-17 KJV
For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us ; [15] Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; [16] And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: [17] And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.

PAUL DIDN’T PRAY FOR GOD TO -D-O- ANYTHING !! HE ONLY PRAYED THAT THE “EYES OF YOUR UNDERSTANDING” BE OPENED !!
Ephesians 1:18 KJV
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,

PAUL PRAYED THAT GOD WOULD LET US SEE THAT WE ALREADY HAVE SUPERNATURAL POWER ON THE INSIDE OF US — BEFORE WE EVEN HAD THE NEED. OUR SPIRIT HAS EVERYTHING WE COULD POSSIBLY NEED ALREADY ON THE INSIDE OF US FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES AND BEYOND !!
Colossians 1:27 KJV
To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
CHRIST IS ALREADY IN US !!

HOW – PLEASE TELL ME HOW – I CAN FINALLY “GET IT” ?
ANSWER: BY SUBSTITUTING YOUR NAME EVERYWHERE IN THE BIBLE. “I, Robin Starbuck, AM NOT CEASING TO GIVE THANKS TO YOU . . . . MAKING MENTION OF Robin Starbuck . . . .”
Ephesians 1:16 KJV
Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers;

CAN WE TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL? . EXCEEDING GREATNESS = SUPER-ABUNDANCE !! . IT’S THE SAME POWER THAT GOD USED TO RAISE JESUS FROM THE DEAD ! ! ! ! ! [THAT’S WHAT WE HAVE ON THE INSIDE OF US RIGHT NOW ! ! ! ! !
Ephesians 1:19-20 KJV
And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, [20] Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places ,