It was a trying day a couple of days ago. I was short with my Mom again, specifically because she was preach-praying after we worshiped that evening, triggering me as she mentioned 2 Chronicles 7:14. I couldn’t control myself, and we went down the whole discussion of how I think most people who claim to be ‘modern-day prophets’ are just so misguided. I’m just as tempted to call them full of shit, but man, I used to listen to them and believed and shared what they had to say at one point.
What triggers me about all this is that this is my own Mom, who I know is smart and sharp and wise, and these ‘prophets’ have her on a wild-goose chase of feelings and emotions, when she should just be recognizing times and things as they are. My expectations of my own Mother were for her to put these things in their place, knowing that Christ and His finished work are far more than anything that could claim to affect us in this reality.
Anyway, I spoke to Tita Nitz right after I got off of a call with representatives from my Worship Team for the Afternoon Service. We caught up, just talking about Church politics as we would always eventually get to, and then we also talked about the Gospel from our perspectives at the time. I remember reiterating my intentions during this whole time since Pastor Oscar’s passing, and that was to ensure that we were all rallying under a common message, which could not get any simpler than the living Message, who is the Living Word, who is Christ Himself. If we were all constantly attuned to Christ and His finished work – I say attuned, and not necessarily ‘focused’ because a whole bunch of people are just taking that so out of context recently – then we would literally be living our Message, because the Message Himself is our life.
God, these conversations were gold in themselves and they apparently continue to let out so much in terms of insight, even as I recall them and write about them.
The Message is our Life, and the Life is our Message. We live the Message. Our lives ARE the Message – we’re that close to Christ, and we’re that close to the Message. Okay, that’s something that came to me just now, but, well, continuing down the conversation I had with Tita Nitz, she mentioned that in all things we should always remember: “Delight yourself in Christ.” I found it funny because I had a wall hanging with that verse in my room, and I showed it to her. It was timely, considering that I was showing how I was so affected by how my expectations of my Mom weren’t met, and I was giving it more attention than it needed.
We ended our call on a high note, but then I just had to reach out to Jonas, who was checking on me that day, of all days.
Jonas didn’t waste time to share his current thoughts during this time. He opened up by saying that he was turning 1 year over at his job and he is not planning on staying there any longer. He then said one of the many gems I would be gathering from the conversation that evening: that ‘There are more deals than there is money.’ We’re talking too much about how to get money when we should be looking at all the opportunities and deals that are readily available all around us. There is much for us to take advantage of, and we would do well to work on ourselves while waiting for timing. To this, we both agreed, ‘School education will make you a living, but self education will make you a fortune.’ And while these are among many other quotes we like to caption our photos with to inspire others and ourselves, we would only be honoring our inspiration by starting, and acting. Jonas dropped another bomb, by saying what a mentor told him: ‘Some people never start’.
Now, we can react to that last statement by calling it a rebuke, or we can also capitalize from it by understanding that if we start, we’re already so far ahead of anyone and everyone else who is still stuck at getting inspired. So whether we choose to invest our time on deals (others) and/or ourselves (via education) at any given moment, we should just follow through, and start already. If some good comes out of it, then we win. If we stumble, we make a mistake, we learn, and then we win. Either way, we win.
We understand that even starting is hard. Of course, as in many cases, the first step is always the hardest… and people procrastinate by holding off on the first step knowing that the rest of the way will be smooth sailing. Twisted reasoning. My reasoning at times. But we ought to be constantly driven – ideally, we should constantly be taking first steps as reflex and routine, avoiding compromise by means of thinking. In my mind, thinking leads to overthinking, and with enough overthinking, we condemn ourselves with thoughts of missing opportunities and being off timing… and we find ourselves back to thinking, and the endless cycle keeps us paralyzed.
What are we to do then? Christian, if you’re having trouble with drive, remember who gave you drive in the first place.
This month in Good News we’ve been tackling the following themes: Life Lived With Purpose, Love Captivated By Jesus’ Passion, and this Sunday I’m taking the stage again to talk on how we Lead To Multiply Potential. I’ve decided to approach each theme by saying that Christ is our Life and our Love, and we determine our purpose and live our purpose accordingly.
Before Christ we were dead. Impotent. Our actions and methods may have done their part in multiplying, but all they multiplied was death. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. So, with Purpose, Christ lay down His life and in so doing, gave us life by being our Life – By Christ’s resurrection we have been given potential, and really, sense. A facet of our salvation is that we were given a a point for existence, a reason for breathing.
With Passion He loved us, and the nail marks on His hands and feet are perpetual testimonies of His love and commitment towards us. Christ’s commitment is seen by the Truth that He is forever faithful and true to His word that He is with us and He will never leave us. With that said, in the presence of Light, no darkness can stand, and in perfect love, fear is naturally cast out.
I see Christ’s love in that He is as close as He could ever be, all the time, no matter what we do, in this age and the next. The song goes, ‘Nothing that you do can make Him love you more, and nothing that you’ve done will make Him close the door.’ When we realize Christ’s commitment to us, the question is no longer if or even when Christ’s love manifests in our lives – No, when we realize that we are loved by true love which goes beyond our senses in that it is a love with no beginning and end, a love eternal and everlasting, not dependent on time or space… it gives us a revelation of how nothing in all of creation can ever come near the love of the Creator.
In light of this I see that the Potential we have is Multiplied to infinite proportions…
…and now, because our potential has been multiplied from the Beginning and the End, we can not just live, but Lead.
One thing I forgot to mention while I was talking with Jonas was that he talked about the brain – the logical left hemisphere and the creative right hemisphere. He mentioned that much can be achieved when both sides work together, but even then we would need to deal with a third ‘aspect’ of the mind: one which reacts more than responds, and from my understanding, an aspect which is hypersensitive to its surroundings and influences the choices and actions of our being in that manner. He spoke of us needing – and I still can’t believe he said this – the ‘cojones’ to fight this third aspect of the mind, and to push through with what the left and right brain are agreeable upon.
To this, I reminded Jonas, that in Christ, we’ve been made new creations, which includes our mind. So even our third aspect has been made new… therefore, any self-defeating and negative thought that tries to make its way from within or from outside, is not of our new beings. We would still be making our mistakes. As we are still in this reality we could definitely give in to being torn down by these outside influences… and we would be counted as statistics, part of the many who never start…
Yet our advantage remains – We delight ourselves in Christ. It is from Christ that we not only exist, but live. From Christ, we not only live, but give life to all within our influence. From Christ we influence ourselves and others, and we start. From Christ we start, and not only do we start, but we conquer – whether by our expectations or not, from Christ, we conquer.
Will you look at that. I had ‘Write about your conversation with Tita Nitz & Jonas’, and ‘Write about your message this Sunday’, and even ‘Write about what you may share at the second Communications Consultancy meeting’ on my Task list, and it’s looking like I’m hitting three birds with one stone today.
I was in the zone through all of this thinking that it really is good to have peers and mentors that I could relate to. I told my Mom, who mellowed down after the small tussle we had a few hours ago, that I wish I had a wife with whom we could have the same revelations with, minutes into our conversations.
Until that time, there’s a lot of learning, and living, and writing to be done. And even then, there will be more to come. And no matter where I am or what I’m doing or who I’m with, let our stance and status always be: Delighting in Christ.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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