Practice.

Day X.

Or am I still doing that?

So as a recap:

We all have a Foundation. The Body of Christ has Christ as their Foundation, simply because we know that it’s Christ who loves us, and it’s Christ who really, really loves us. His finished work – His birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension are proof of His – And His Father’s – perfect and everlasting love for us.

We don’t stand on our beliefs – in fact, our beliefs are built on our Foundation. Therefore, because we have Christ as our Foundation, He is the basis, cause and effect of all we believe.

For example, it is because of Christ that we believe that we are reconciled with God, and therefore we believe that nothing can ever separate us from Him.

From our beliefs, our being manifests.

I’m a little conflicted in using the word ‘manifest’ especially as more and more people are subscribing to the narrative that we can think what we want into existence, and speak forth whatever we want, apparently in the same way that God spoke light. I’m having a little trouble believing this, because although there have been claims of legs growing from stumps, and money and finances coming at the exact time they were needed, there have also been countless times I spoke something, and it didn’t come to pass.

I spoke healing for my Dad, and his physical body still expired from the toll cancer dealt on him. And these people who invest too much in the words we speak – well, they didn’t speak to me straight to my face, but it was sort of implied that it was because I didn’t have enough faith.

Or well, who am I kidding – I didn’t have any of that nonsense spoke to me during the wake, or up until now – at least, as far as I remember. But it just pains me to think that we can place an extraordinary burden of faith upon our fellow believers, putting the focus back on them instead of on Christ.

Our belief forms our being. And coming from that little rant, no, I’m not saying that if you believe in something enough, then it becomes true. Remember that these beliefs stand on a Foundation – and until these things we claim to believe are in line with where we build them on, they remain as things we want to believe.

I hope I’m not losing anyone here so far. On the other hand, I felt like I needed to make these clarifications for myself before I kept propagating it any further.

But let’s go back to my example. Because Christ is my Foundation, and because I believe that His finished work guarantees my reconciliation with God, I also believe that nothing can ever separate me from His love. I also believe in the other side of the coin – that everything in this reality, everything that I perceive with my senses reminds me of His love for me.

Now, because I believe all of this, my perspective on life changed – I don’t fear rejection as much as I used to. And to think that the worst that could happen to me in this reality is the end of my physical body – that just challenges me to celebrate Christ even more, through my song and in every opportunity I have to speak to 1, 10, 100, or 100000(!) people, simply to proclaim that through Christ, I am free of oblivion and free to enjoy eternity, here and now.

Because Christ is my Foundation, and because I believe in Him and His finished work, fear is put in its place, along with sin and death; My being recognizes these things as defeated, and more importantly, limited compared to Christ, who is my life and righteousness, and the power and peace behind all I see, hear and do.

Because I believe in Him I live, move, and have my being, I take on every routine and every project brought my way with intention and deliberation.

Gosh, I could keep going, but I got sidetracked there. But yeah. We all have a Foundation. Our Beliefs is built upon our Foundation, and our Being is based on our Beliefs.

Part of our being is our Knowledge, Skill, and Will. At any given moment, there is information we have stored in our brains (Knowledge), there are things that we are able to do with more skill and less deficiencies compared to others (Skill), and there are other things we believe in strongly (Will)…

And when our Knowledge, Skill and Will come together to produce anything, this is our Talent.

Moving on:

Belief lifts our Talent – Our Talent is based on what we believe.

Passion energizes our Talent – Christ does not only give us passion – He IS our Passion.

Initiative activates our Talent – Christ gave us sight, so we have a vision. Our vision activates our initiative.

Focus directs our Talent – Any good vision has to be focused, and the more we focus on our vision, the more details we direct out Talents towards.

Preparation positions our Talent – Focusing on our vision reveals the details, and by way of Preparation we cover as many details as possible.

And as a result, we position ourselves closer to the vision we have.

Now as we go along this path of talking about Talent, we come upon our next chapter: Practice Sharpens Your Talent.

I’ll say this on the onset. I’ve written about this earlier, and I’m pretty sure I mentioned something like this: Preparation is for events, Practice is for every day. Preparation is on and off, but practice is always on.

You can prepare for something, but when you practice, you prepare for anything.

Bear with me, because I’m writing on this without referring to my previous notes.

I see a link between passion and practice here. Passion transforms preparation into practice, and because of passion, our practice doesn’t even feel like preparation.

I see a link between initiative and practice as well. It’s as if to say, in order for us to practice, and to keep on practicing, we need to constantly remind ourselves of our vision, to activate and energize our Talents on a regular basis.

Okay, I’ve looked through Evernote now.

We’ve all heard how practice supposedly makes perfect… But really, when you think about it, there’s no way for us to be perfect, even if we had the ability to define what perfection was.

I say, from perfection, we practice. Perfect makes practice. And linking this to what I wrote yesterday (yes, all that up there was yesterday), We in the Church have no less than Christ as the personification of Perfection, who is also, as we previously discussed, our Passion, and also the source of our vision, which activates our initiative.

In other words, we celebrate Christ’s perfection by practicing the Talents He has given to us.

Not sure I’m going to share this next part, but I’ll definitely say it here.

Throughout my time in Good News, I have grown to be allergic of certain religious words, or certain words revered too much to the point that they have a religion of their own.

We seem to have a stigma, remnants of a religion which has us giving our lives to Excellence. For a moment we’ve trusted Excellence as our Lord and Savior, and what bothers me is that the definitions of Excellence were limited only to the preferences of a few.

This is fine and dandy, but the problem is not in their definitions – no, I believe that the problem here is with those who (1) think they have the market cornered when it comes to Excellence and (2) who have had experiences which match or define their standards in the past, and are constantly pushing the same standards today, when they clearly do not work.

Because the definition of Excellence has been reduced to such a joke, it just follows that their definition of practice has been similarly reduced as well – based on obsolete standards which were impossible before, and are even more ridiculous now.

Rant over.

The Creator of the Universe, the Perfect One, who is thrice holy – He loves you with an everlasting and perfect Love, and this is guaranteed, both now and forever, through Jesus Christ.

He is Creator, and we are His Creation – Therefore, we are infinitely inferior to any standards He may impose upon us. Yet, in His infinite superiority, He was the One who chose to be born in this inferior reality, and to lay down His life, to satisfy the highest of all standards, that we would not necessarily be brought to His position as gods – no, Christ became sin and died under the law in order for us to have life, being declared righteous.

It is because of HIS finished work that we, as inferior Creations, can boldly come to the Throne of Perfect Grace, fully reconciled to the Father.

So instead of us living with the purpose of trying to reach excellence in impossible terms, we ought to be living in celebration, in the Truth that the perfect became imperfect in order to reconcile Creation to Creator.

I’m writing this right now with a passion because I certainly want to stick it to those who have willingly or unwillingly forced people to carry on burdens too heavy to bear.

That shit stops today.

We come to Christ, the Perfect, and He gives us rest.

And from this rest and relief, we live out our lives, constantly practicing the Talents given to us, not FOR a false standard of excellence, but FROM the approval of a loving Father, whose standards count over anything we could ever think of ourselves.

Gosh, I went over the line here. Some of that rant just came back.

I’m posting this as it is now, but if I have time, I’ll get back to it before this Sunday.