Swag

Swag

            The problems in the world, nations, governments, individuals, making simple things complicated.

            There is really no reason for complexity, simple as the swag of the bumper sticker, radio or television jingle, an easily memorized slogan. Most children can recite jingles-slogans-popular swags, before they have the ability to read or write.

            We live in a world of neo monasticism, most individuals lost in the haze of the imagination of their own brain.  This is not all together bad because it is from these self stimuli that we have the music, art, inventions of today's world. So fortunate, that we had the brain stimuli-cerebral power of an Edison and Einstein...more recently Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

            Just suppose most human beings, wired by God with mental ability, were content to just lay around in a mode of self imposed drug addiction such as the case with the Chinese masses in their dens of opium, just not caring about anything. This writer has seen the beds on which they spent their lives in a stupor of opium coma. Why did Jehovah God of grace and mercy, allow such human beings to be birthed on this earth when he well knew that they would never contribute anything to the world (God is the alpha and omega, knew everything that would happen on this earth before its creation). MAN CANNOT FIX WHAT GOD HAS BROKEN. The older generation must accustom itself to the new language of the youth....things that are pleasant, cool; things that are good, bad; beautiful, neat; friend, dude; mother, old lady; addict of any type, wasted.

            In a world of blasphemy, consequences to which they had no part. Decadence the rule rather than the exception. Hypocrisy found in every area of life: economic, political, even spiritual. More a test of survival than a need for accomplishment. "What is the need for my hard work? The world will blow up anyway." So many young people and we can certainly understand why, do not see the neo monasticism of a future. A spiritual belief as essential now as 5,000 years ago. "Who the Lord calls, he enables." Enableth "them who he called, justified, glorified, delivered" (Romans 8:30-34).  There was never a time in the mind of God that you did not exist, his plan, purpose, predestination, for your life. WHY DISSAPPOINT GOD BY BEING A BUM? Why not present the best version of yourself at all times?...Not just a bedraggled, ship shod, bumper sticker, cheap clothing tag, but a person of worth, made in the very image of God, ambitious and showing the genuineness of the spirit of God in you. Jesus paid too great a price for our redemption for those who claim his name to bring shame on him.

            In other articles, I have described in great detail, the years I spent as a college student selling bibles door to door during the summer months. It still haunts me, a beautiful home, totally comfortable front porch on which sat an old man. He was a little doubtful about me at first but found he had someone with whom he could talk and he had much on his mind. He told me that he had everything that money could buy, that a man could want. His well educated children lived far away, he had buried his wife and he was very much alone...so crippled with arthritis that he could barely get around. He said, "I gave up on the church and God long ago but have a real need now." I told him that as long as he was breathing, it was never too late. I said, "If you will read the gospel of John over and over again, you will get all the answers you need." You see, I have a real problem with "pressure evangelism." So many walking the isles of a church, "card signers" who are perhaps even baptized, just church members. The word of God has the power to convince and convict anyone who has the need, who is called, and this man, in spite of his leaving the church and forsaking God at an early age, still was available for God's mercy.

            Loneliness does strange things to people. I do not believe God visits very many in a crowd. Your relationship with Jesus is a matter of being alone. Even the disciples who were with Jesus continuously were different people, after his ascension, after they were alone....Thomas, alone, crossing the Himalayas, to tell of the life and resurrection of Christ in India (killed by a Brahma sword at Madras), Bartholomew traveling to Armenia, where he, alone, was skinned alive, the gallant physician Luke, alone, hanged from an olive tree in Greece. Mark, who fled Yosemeni naked, alone, dragged through the streets of Egypt, Peter, impetuous-denying, the only man to ever walk on water, alone, crucified in Rome. Not one of the disciples would ever have seen the other again, each possess his own love affair with Jesus. John, youngest disciple, 17, who lived to be the oldest, the only one not martyred, left writings dictated by God. Salvation is a very private matter, you and you alone know the truth.