I'm still impatient....

There is a Christian metal band that I really like, it is called "Barren Cross"; you guys probably heard it before; somehow I ended up being in contact with the lead singer of that band, His name is Michael Drive.

I just remembered how I started to chat with Michael; I was searching for them on the net, and I ended buying Michael's solo album/DVD "Live in Paris", which I really liked; anyway, I ended up making a choker ( I can't remember if I ever made him a bracelet); and he was going to send me a picture of him wearing the choker so I could put it on my website.

At any rate; about two years have gone by, and today I get an email from Michael (with a picture of him wearing the choker) apologizing for not sending me the picture before. I have to be honest here, I forgot that he was supposed to send me the picture, but he didn't.

You might be asking yourself why does this matter; or you might even say 'who cares'; but I care, Michael cares, and more importantly, God cares. In fact, God cares in an infinite way.

It all might seem unimportant; but in the scope of the great theater of God nothing is unimportant; yeah, I know, I have been accused of spiritualizing everything before, but if you don't like it, it's simple, stop reading; but I know you like it.

Who among God's children does not like to see Him move the hearts of men for His glory? Who is it that is not hungry and thirsty for righteousness among the saints? I know I am. I know you are if you are a child of God.

So then, I ask: where does this hunger and thirst come from? Some people like to believe that they are spiritual and that they somehow came up with this desire to please God; some believe that deep inside of their heart there was a tiny spark of righteous thinking and that they were able to fan it into a flame of desire for God because they are special, maybe even spiritual; they have tried hard.

Now, let me be clear: of course I am not talking about Michael in this case, on the contrary; he is a brother in Christ in whom the Spirit of the Living God dwells; the only reason I even mentioned him at the beginning of this post, is because he reminded me of the King of kings; I had to mention him because of his email, and of course God used his email to remind me that He is control of all things and to to pray for Michael; I am sure that he does need prayer, as all of us do, so pray for him; and also, check his website out: http://michaeldrive.com/en/index.shtml

Have you ever seen a Flying V acoustic guitar? A Takamine, to make it more interesting? No? Go to his website, you will see what I mean; I think it's awesome.

But believing that there is anything good in human nature, even a tiny spark of goodness, is to believe something that contradicts the word of God; "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"; "and you were dead in trespasses and sins....you were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest of mankind"; "the imaginations of the heart of man are evil continually"; etc, etc.

I know I will be misinterpreted by saying this; but the goodness I refer to is obviously not the human standard kind of goodness; I cannot deny that there are some good men and women out there that are not Christians; but the goodness I refer to is the ability to perform, or think anything that is pleasing to God; that goodness is completely absent in a natural man.

A few days ago I celebrated my birthday; I am such a blessed man; I spend the day with the people who love me, I ate twice and had a cake and ate it too; both my daughters gave me presents, my grand daughter made me a card, Eutychus' daughter made me a card, and they made a cake with candles and everything; man, I was the center of the universe for the whole day.

Did I say that? The center of the universe for the whole day? How about all the time? Is not that the way we all think? That we are the center of the universe and all things revolve around us? Don't deny it, if you are human, then you think you are the center of the universe, and how do I know that? Because that is human nature; self centerfold-ness; we have Facebook to prove my point. If I deny it, I make the cross of Jesus of no value.

The Word of God teaches that man plunged into sin the moment our first parents decided to take matters into their own hands; by their actions, not only were they turned into an abomination in the sight of God, but they also became the fountain of depravity for the rest of us. The fact is that things just got worse from that point in time forward; I can see this in Cain murdering his brother.

Things got so bad; and sin was so rampant, and self-centered-ness exploded in such a way, that God had to wipe out the whole human race, saving only 8 people. Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Things have not changed as far as I can see; the human race continues on it's downward spiral of depravity. Nothing has changed for the better in thousands of years for mankind; we remain in the super slide in spite of the huge steps of advancement in technology and knowledge; depravity has become high-tech depravity; lots of RAM for it.

There is another kind of depravity, I call it "delusional depravity"; let me define it here for you: delusional depravity is when a man or woman who is devoid of the Spirit thinks that he, or she, is not that bad because they are not as bad as the criminals who live in the streets, or those who are in jail because they have been caught.

You might be thinking "man, this guy is tripping, I think he is part of a cult"; and you might be right, classical Christianity has become so rare that some people think it is a cult, just like the Mormons or the witnesses. But you are wrong, I am not tripping, and I'm not a part of any cult; I just belong to the special kind of people called "born again" Christians. You may also ask, And where do I get all this stuff that appears to be so weird in the eyes of evangelicals? Well my friends, I get it straight from the source; it is a collection of sixty six sacred books called "the holy Scriptures"; vulgarly known as "the bible", and respectfully called "The Word Of God".

It is God Himself who ultimately calls man depraved, not me; how about this: "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?"; see? I told you so.

Man, this blog is too long; no wonder people don't want to read it.

I'm almost done anyway. Going back to delusional depravity; the problem I see is that this malady is now infecting, or has for thousands of years infected, the church; people are oblivious to their innate depravity and think they can be pleasing to God by performing for Him; you can hear it preached from the pulpits of most "modern" churches.

They tell you stuff like "see the man with the withered hand, he was told by Jesus 'stretch out your hand', and he obeyed; now is your turn; God wants to heal you but you have to obey and believe"; man that sounds spiritual, doesn't it? But as Eutychus says, what about the lepers? What about the guy who was lowered through the roof? And I say, what about the thief on the cross?

You can also hear things like "you have to stop drinking diet coke or God is not going to bless you; you're preventing the flood gates of blessings from being opened unto you"; or "you don't have a job because you don't have enough faith"; or this one "maybe God has already spoken to you and you are not listening". Not only are all of the above false statements, they also rob God of His glory and contradict everything the bible says about who God is, and about His character; and not only that, but all of these false and contradictory statements absolutely deny the grace of God.

You might be asking yourself what does this have to do with delusional depravity; well, let me explain and I will be done, or not; the heart is so deceitful and depraved, and so desperately wicked, that it will oppose God with all its might; such is the extent of that depraved thinking that it will, though unconsciously, constantly make up works of righteousness to try to justify its lack of understanding.

Anytime you hear somebody placing the root of your blessings on yourself rather than on God, you hear someone who has not yet been trained in the knowledge of the grace of God; I'm not saying that the person is not saved, all I'm saying is that the heart and mind are so prone to self-righteousness and pride, that they will always make an attempt to take the place of God and sit on their little throne. Trying to sound spiritual they sound like idiots.

I have many more things to say about this, but my back hurts and this blog is too long, so I'm going to lay down and meditate on how can I cause God to open the flood gates; as if He was my genie in a bottle, it must be that I am more powerful than He is. Of course I'm being sarcastic; remember that I'm impatient and judgmental?

Have a nice day.


http://makariotes.blogspot.com

Sunday dream...

I woke up about 20 minutes ago, it is only 4:30 in this Sunday morning and this dry air is killing me and my sinuses. The dream takes place in this train bridge made of steel, the kind that has the big long lines of iron rivets on the floor; a scene out of some mega city like New York or Chicago, or even Mexico City, everything is painted black.

You have probably seen the kind; the floor has stripes of tiny holes; there are long A shaped columns on both sides; and you can hear your own steps screaming back at you as you walk. It is all dark, like diluted charcoal pencil; a wash of sepia and battle ship gray makes up the sky; this is some surreal place of a bridge, there is a huge light at the end of it and it is not a train.

The details are all fuzzy, just like a dream, I mean, exactly like a dream; what I see is these women having a hair pulling contest; one of them, the one who is actually winning the fight, is wearing a black business suit with a white blouse; I'm convinced she is a lawyer. The one on the floor, loosing, is dressed as a nurse; I can see a stethoscope around her neck, her hair is braided with many colored beads; she looks like she came from Jamaica or some tropical island; the braids are all tangled around the hoses of her heartbeat-listening tool, paramedics are trying to get her up off the floor, but the lawyer just won't let go.

The lawyer has now a chunk of hair with beads on her hand; and she is screaming, "you made me lose my baby years ago", she says; the nurse's eyes scream guilt back to her, and even as she is speaking I hear my own thoughts: "I better get out of here, Ms Davies has some serious issues"; I guess that was the woman lawyer's name, Ms Davies; I run towards the huge light at the end of the bridge, I knew it was not a train, it was actually a huge room with bullet proof glass windows; and there were a bunch of people dressed like doctors watching the fight under the white light.

As I try to open the door, I feel that I can't breathe, my nose is all plugged up; that's when I woke up with the urge to pee; right now as I'm typing, I feel like I'm dreaming; there is absolutely no noise; all the birds are still sleeping, the dog is sleeping, the neighborhood is sleeping, my left nostril is sleeping; I had to wake the coffee maker up, one and a half hours earlier than normal.

I can't wait to go to heaven and see the King of kings; this life is going to appear as one of my surreal dreams; I hope it is all fuzzy and I can't remember the details when I'm there.

Some of my friends made me a celebration two days ago; they actually rejoiced that it has been twenty one years since I had a drink; that seems like a dream; it all seems so far away in the past; there was not a hint of strife or selfishness present, I will try to remember that.

That day in the distant future one of my dreams will turn into reality; a reality so immeasurably joyful that it will make my best day here seem dark. Yeah, I had one dream that God etched into my memory; that's the one I'm talking about.

I found myself in the midst of a crowd of people; I looked and I heard; this crowd was so big that it had no end in sight; it looked like an endless ocean made of white robes; people from all races and tribes and tongues; all of us were wearing white shining robes. We all had our hands up and we were holding palm branches or something; and we were singing this amazing song, the melody was incredibly beautiful, I looked around and all I saw was billions of people with their hands up in the air, singing with me.

We all faced this white light, and we sang non-stop and tears of joy ran down our faces; I knew we were worshiping The Lamb; it was fleeting. I woke up crying, humming this tune, I forgot the words to the song minutes after I woke up; I tried to go back to the dream but I could not sleep anymore, I remained there on my bed, weeping.

It is coming, I'm convinced it will come; one day when I will dream no more; one day when I will not remember Ms Davies anymore, whoever she is.

I should go back to bed now.

http://makariotes.blogspot.com

Simpson Guitars

I love guitars; air guitars, acoustic, electric, acoustic-electric, small or big; wood, steel, or carbon; I love the music they can make. There is nothing that compares to sitting down with an axe and just sing my heart out to my God and my King.

Something happens when I play for God; there are no words to describe it, but something happens. It can be a simple chord, or just a few notes, it doesn't matter; the sound turns into something supernatural; it really does something to my brain; tears are usually the harmonies. God made music; and as all other things, He made it for His pleasure.

In one of my cruising trips through the net this morning, I found this guy who makes guitars; I have never heard of him before, but I ended at his website; I clicked one of the links there to listen to a song made with one of his guitars, and it really touched me. Then I saw a link to "the passion" guitar; he basically quotes from Isaiah 53 and gives the gospel out, what a trip.

It turns out he likes one of my favorite Johns; John Piper. It must be a coincidence...

Here is the link:

Simpson Guitars: http://www.simpsonguitars.com/pg.htm

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