I confess, I’m not there yet. If I’m not sinning one way, it’s another. I know, “Welcome to the obvious Nathan.” Right? That bothers me though, because I believe that a sinful cycle is broken by the power of the Holy Spirit that puts the deeds of my flesh to death, but saying that doesn’t mean anything if there isn’t a result. I can say that I believe with all my heart that the issue of sin in me is broken as I confess “Jesus, my Lord,…”, and the Church in me says, “Through faith, it is, when Jesus returns.” But the Christian in me wonders why I still eat the fruit of sin that Christ took away? How can I eat something that’s been taken away?
What I’m about to write might be controversial, but I’ll clean it up.
The Holy Spirit teaches the Scripture for my understanding, not my local church (1 John 2:26-28). I’ve learned through my local church the meaning of fellowship and worship to God as a body within the Body, but the knowledge of the truth is learned by my personal relationship to the Holy Spirit who teaches me all things in Christ for discerning the nature of my spirit and the spirits of the body gathered around the preaching of the gospel. Why is that important? Christ the Lord has bought the world with His blood, and each person who remains faithful to believe in the Word of God is being saved by Him for an eternal life, which is a life in Him, the nature of Jesus Christ; as opposed to the nature of Satan, which is not a life, but an experience of eternal consequence that eternal beings—as such we are—will inevitably wake up to, if found guilty by maintaining the position of denying the very Person who bailed the world out of jail. That Person is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Eternal Father.
I guess the reason for my writing this is to hope for those who read and believe as I do to pray a prayer of righteousness over my soul, that my conscience guilty of sin will be forgiven and healed. Not that I would escape the necessary discipline as a son of God, on the contrary, I ask for the necessary discipline to overcome the fruit of my sin I desire even now… To eat.
There was a time… a time when I transitioned from a site supervising security officer to an engineer of a 14-story class double “AA” office tower that…
So there I was, without a job and free to do whatever again… I thought about seeing if my old position in the Public Services department (City of Richardson) as a Water Production (SCADA) operator was available, or to go back to engineering, but my heart has always been geared toward mission work! I just hadn’t known how it was going to come about.
Laura and I prayed and waited a month before I would go back to Security Guard work; bear in mind that I’d been working random shifts on the GaurdTexas team through a friend/ Operations Manager (Boss Man) who kept me in the loop for Security work throughout Dallas. God’s providence is very real!
So that’s what I did, I decided to go back to being a humble security guard with a plan to work the night shift. The days are too distracting for what I needed to sort out and not only that, I needed time to learn premiere pro. I’ve always enjoyed shooting video to create content, and to my surprise Laura wanted to join me on an adventure to video editing work through a friend you’ll know or discover if you stick around on this site, aka Dallas. The man is so good at what he does, especially when it comes to loving his family and others! Dallas blessed us with work, entrusting us to his guidance and direction as we got our feet wet in that field through him.
Now there’s a question that’s been beckoning…
“So why not go to bible college and or seminary?” MAN—that’s the question! Isn’t it! The answer is not a simple one for me and really, I think it might be controversial which is not my intention for it to be, but I have my concerns about that approach to “ordination” because of some trauma from my past, I don’t trust it.
Fast forward to January of 2022 when a breakthrough happened when fellowshiping with a friend over…
1 Thessalonians 5:23
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So they were saying to him, “How then were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man who is called Jesus made mud, and spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash’; so I went away and washed, and I received sight.”
I pray our neighbors will have hearts’ genuine to the answers you’ve provided by sending the Holy Spirit to reveal the nature of your Word that makes our eyes see the miracle that you are; you’re seated at the right hand of the throne of God. I pray we are faithful in communicating the testimony of your work in us and the world. Please help us not use our ability through grace to see the world as an opportunity to sin by wrong motives and ideas, but for righteousness in serving the cause of your good news. In your Name, Jesus Christ. Amen.
DEATH
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2:17)
The nature of death is quite difficult for me to contend with, not because of fear, or…at least, the fact it will happen in its finality one day, but rather because the experience of impending death distracts from its twofold nature—the nature of its physical process and spiritual process. So while the experience of death has a physical hold on me due the condemnation of man; how I choose to die is of another nature to death entirely. Observe…
The two biblical passages—of which there are more—presented, reveal two realities about death, at least, from my perspective. There is (1) a biological reality and (2) a spiritual reality of death. Lets proceed to understand the biological reality…
BIOLOGICAL REALITY
I don’t think it requires much explanation for understanding our biological experience of death, but the fact of its experience, is what is of interest to me, because the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed – but can only be converted from one form of energy to another—of which, admittedly, am totally uneducated about. The only way that that makes sense to me as a human being of energy is that an eternal God (Father) [energy] exists outside our reality and is emitted as God (Son) [energy] inside our reality for emitting [energy] God (Holy Spirit)—LOGOS—to an eternal reality. It doesn’t make sense that life would randomly come into being only to evolve to death, intelligently—”the end”. How does that make any sense to anyone?
I can testify that I experience pain in the process of death, and that communicates something beyond the scientific resolve—it’s not a biological issue. Yes, biology is the study of life, the living, so how is death biological when the very definition contradicts. Death is not biological, it’s a consequence.
I can hear you smart people… “Don’t give me that! That’s not the definition!” Nonsense! I googled the study of death, and you’re correct, it’s the study of thanatology, but the point is… It’s a thanatological (Is that even a word?…) process of a biological reality (… It is a word! Yeahhh… I’m a stewpid smart person!!!). And that means the energy of death is a process of elimination; it will eventually conclude it’s purpose (converting into another form of consequence); whereas, the energy of biology will transcend (converting into another form of experience); we can see that, especially, in our Revelation 20:13-15 passage. That brings us to the second reality of deaths’ nature.
SPIRITUAL REALITY
Since our Lord, Jesus Christ, is the propitiation of our sins, but not ours only, the entire worlds (1 John 2:2). We now have the spiritual reality to die a different death given by the Holy Spirit of God to help in our time of need. We can choose to die a death in faith by believing in Jesus Christ, entrusting Him with our soul by the Word of God. That may sound simple, but the discipline of change is not pleasant nor the process easy.
When death converts into another form, the reality will be—figuratively and literally—Hell (lake of fire). Death and Hades will be thrown into the lake of fire, the lake of fire is the second death (Revelation 20:13-15). That is a spiritual truth from a biblical God, and one not to be taken lightly as we see the world taking it. The consequence for neglecting the discipline of the Holy Spirit’s work in sanctification that saves and seals the believing soul is…a spiritual reality and of eternal significance.
If anyone reading this comes short of the fear of the Lord, then I pray you’ll consider this another plea for your souls’ salvation. I pray you’ll turn your mind and heart off to the world and “die” (For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but…) for the sake of Christ the Lord (…whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.), our gift of salvation; Jesus, is the Savior of those in the world who might believe (John 3:16-20). Do not wait for the days where you will wish you could die, but cannot:
And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
"NOT WITH INK" 