Lovewillbringustogether’s Weblog

These are dangerous words.
Very Dangerous! You have been ‘warned’
I do not know if the person reading them will read them ‘rightly’.

Gamble Everything For Love

gamble everything for love
gamble everything
put it in a place you keep what you need
you can gamble everything for love if youre free
you gotta gamble everything for love

baby are you cold?
are you cold baby i could wrap you up
wrap you up in my love
if you wanna you can gamble everything for love
if you wanna you can gamble everything for love

tell me are you feeling lost? have you crossed
into places that you never knew to get through?
tell me are you gonna cry all night?
tell me the truth and ill tell you the truth
if you gamble everything for love
youre gonna be alright
alright

make a list of things you need
leave it empty
except for number one - write love,
gamble everything
keep it under lock and key
if you wanna you can gamble everything for love

love me with an open heart
tell me anything
we can find a place to start to gamble everything
we can set this thing apart
cos were gonna
gonna gamble everything for love

tell me do you lose your way each day?
are there people you dont recognize?
do they lie?
tell me do they make you feel too real?
tell me the truth and ill tell you the truth
if you gamble everything for love
youre gonna be alright
alright

you can go your own way
you can go your own way
you gotta go your own way
if you gamble everything for love
if you gamble everything for love

gamble everything for love
gamble everything
put it in a place you keep what you need
you can gamble everything for love if youre free
you gotta gamble everything for love

tell me are you getting hurt?
is it worth it?
tell me are the people strange?
do they change?
tell me are you letting go?
do you know?
if you gamble everything for love
if you gamble everything for love
if you gamble everything for love
youre gonna be alright
alright

The Video shows the ‘usual’ pop concept of Love - i would replace either the man/woman in the clip with God (depending upon if you are male or female).

God is Love.

Ok - I started this and i’ve had it with starting things i don’t finish, so the sooner i get these over with the sooner i can begin dedicating this Blog to my first love - LOVE!

Bear with me huh?

The Third Sin, alphabetically, is Gluttony, which is not in my KJV at ALL?? (So why does the Pope insist upon making this an issue??)

Gluttony is defined as: eating and/or drinking to excess
- a greed for food.

I feel this probably also extends to ’spiritual food’ or a desire to sate our many other ‘desires that are of our ego and not of God.

I mention Spiritual food as i do not believe that eating TOO much of this at once is good for us - in the same way that we are only meant to eat a certain amount of ‘food’ at once to give us sufficient time to digest it all for our own benefit. Determing just how much of this kind of food is good for us at one ’sitting’ probably varies from person to person and how ‘familiar’ they are with previous foods of this kind.

I think the key thing to consider here is when is ‘enough’ truly enough? - At what point do we turn our ‘plate’ away while we gain the full benefit of ‘digestion’?

Ok - so remember the Point Here - which is to bring to mind our own ‘Sin’ or error we commit in this area (as y’all feel is, or is not appropriate) and ways we have found to overcome them - for the benefit of ourselves in our own lives and for the benefit of those who read and/or lurk here

I’ll go first: My most vivid memory of personal gluttony was back in my 20’s - I was working in an office and a lunch had been planned for a workmate’s celebration. We went to a Chinese Open Buffet at a very swish Hotel in the City, close to our office!

Did i mention i LOVE the many delicious flavours of Chinese food? and that i LOVE deserts and they had a wide range of the more ‘traditional’ desserts like Chocolate Mousse, cheesecakes, pavlova (Aussie Meringues which are Heavenly!) cakes and ice-cream and puddings and… you get the idea?)

I had a plate of ‘entree’s; i had two plates of ‘mains’ (and i mean plates made with MOUNTAINS of food!) I HAD SEVEN plates of desserts (a personal never-to-be-repeated record!)

I ‘waddled’ back to work about two and a half hours later (we only were allowed a 2 hour lunch ‘limit’ during which we were to have lunches spread over the whole office - half an hour was the ‘norm’)

I managed to stay at my desk for a full ten minutes or so in the afternoon before i found a very real and urgent need to sit at a much smaller ‘cubicle’ for the remainder of my ‘working’ day.

It taught me a valuable lesson and i never repeated or attempted to repeat the practice.

Gluttony has it’s own punishments for us humans.

Are we all able to pay them due attentionand LEARN from them??

Over to you.

This should be the FIRST lesson in ‘Witnessing 101′.

Why has it taken 2000 years for someone to write what is - to all atheists at least - fairly obvious, as plain as the nose on our face perhaps - we just ‘over-look’ it, it seems.

Thanks again Joe!

… and thanks also to ‘Ethel‘ (a Who in the What now?) for the re-jiggered link

A blogfriend of mine has written a thoughtful post - it has the benefit of being from a fresh perspective - one many of us may not be familiar with - but i think it contains much wisdom and we probably all can get something out of it - if we had not grasped it or looked at it like this before.

Thanks Brainy!

“For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known.”

or as Chris put it:

“Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”

READ what Paul says there. St Paul who was the greatest single contributor to our New Testament Scripture (in terms of number of books Authored).

There can be NO DOUBT that Paul had received the Gift of Holy Spirit - that He believed on Jesus - and yet what did he write of Himself???

“ALL THAT I NOW KNOW is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely!!!”

Let no Christian fool themselves they are greater than Paul was in his writing of Our Scripture.. He knew everything INcompletely - and that includes Jesus.

Our Understanding is INcomplete! That which we believe in IS complete - we are not - yet!

OK - i said a little while back i would explain more my ‘thoughts’ on Anger and why i included it ( incorrectly as it turns out! ) as a Deadly Sin when i meant to refer to the D.S. of Wrath (why His Holinesses, the Popes, refer to Wrath as a Deadly Sin when the Bible often refers to the Wrath of God i am not fully sure - seems it is ok to do as God’s Son does - just not as God does?? But Jesus IS God ?( I get so confused by Religious dictates sometimes!).

I was recalling that the Lord hates Seven Things and assumed without checking that these would equate directly with the Seven D.S.’s - but i was yet aghain - wrong there.

Proverbs 6:16 - 19 tells us those seven are:

17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
19 A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

Clearly these don’t match with:

Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Slothfulness and Wrath (Anger).

In Fact swift feet and slothfulness seem diametrically opposed and lying is mentioned Twice as a thing God hates but is not mentioned as a D.S.??

Ok - so a bit of confusion in my mind (as normal! ) and as a few kind people have also pointed out - God ( and even Jesus) get Angry from time to time (The Lord of the OT gets angry quite a lot of the time it seems?)

So why is it NOT OK for us to get angry?? ( or we should at least ‘rein it in a little’ and get SLOW to anger!)

Because - when we HUMANS get angry - pretty much most of the time we ‘lose’ (some or all) self-control - and that is a VERY bad thing to do indeed in my humble opinion.

When we get angry we leave ourselves Open to attack by - for want of a better word - Satan.

He uses those moments, and similar ones - when our emotions can just ‘run away with us’ and lead us to do less than Christianly things to one another - or ourselves, or to any living creature, to establish himself within our minds and digs down into our subconcious where he lurks - biding his time.

Anger is a sin - a time when we operate more from selfish personal ego than from Chraitable Christian Faith - it may not be a Mortal sin - but for us - it is a very dangerous one that we rarely ‘use’ in anything like ‘God-like’ control.

I don’t recommend it and advise doing all we can to remove it from us - as difficult as we will all find it while living in a less than perfect world.

Largely by way of my more ’secular’ background and youth, i have never been ‘Big’ on Witnessing - also has something to do with my belief that the Way to God is a highly personal thing for each individual and i have little, if any, right to impose my beliefs upon others. (hard as that is sometimes to believe! )

Sometimes though, the Spirit just moves me and an irresistable thought comes into being.

Sometimes i even feel the need to share it. It happened this week.

There are a number of people lately who have had profoundly GOOD effects upon me and i am happy to have found them and happily give them Credit and credit is indeed well and truly ‘due’. (though none of them will believe that to be true, or ‘deserved’, i am sure)

So Alece, Darla and of course, Tam I stand in awe in witness of His Power and Glory that i see expressed through you to all those you are in contact with, constantly. I am in your debt.

And just so’s people won’t think me one who can only be ‘turned’ by a pretty face…

Brent and Chris - same goes for you, two, Dudes!

Hallelujah

There are others out there I am blessed for meeting, of course, - i don’t mean to diminish you any - but if i ever had to have a ‘last supper’ i’d choose to spend it with the five above ( ok - you can all bring your spouses )

 …and chocolate would be on the menu! Possibly as a ‘main’

..and it is a given that there will be Vege’s and they are to be finished before you get any desert! - I’ve seen the way some of you eat and you’re gonna have ONE decent meal before you pass on.

I saw a mini-doco on the French town of Lourdes last night on TV and it got me a little mad, and also got me thinking - a dangerous combination to be sure!

You probably all have heard something about this place, now a ‘Mecca’ for the desperately sick and hopeful seeking cures for what ails them. Some EIGHT MILLION visitors every year, and growing!

I find it an interesting commentary on the ‘validity’ of Lourdes as being THE place where miracles are granted that, while, it has been a place of pilgrimage for over 150 years, Wikipedia declares the Vatican has confirmed that a total of 67! are ‘unexplained ‘ cures (man cannot explain them, so far). They are investigating another seven thousand or so claims ‘worthy of interest’.

Out of what must now amount to something near 100 million seeking their God’s sympathy and compassion (many of whom are repeat visitors coming once a year for decades in some cases) it is hardly ‘overwhelmingly’ obvious this is a place where miracles are granted. It is certainly a place where statistically there is a better than ‘usual’ chance of a cure simply by reason of the fact that so many sick people show up there - hope attached.

One of the things that got me feeling a little ‘mad’ (angry, even) was one ‘true believer’s’ comment that he was “110% positive that it was the spring and the waters that were the source of the miraculous ‘cures’ “

Jesus makes it clear to one and all in the New Testament that it is by our FAITH we are healed - if we had Faith as a mustard seed (a very, very tiny thing - but ‘alive’ and can grow into a full-fledged plant, full of powerful ‘flavours’) Matt Ch 9, Matt 17:20, Lk 17:6, amongst others.

Yet supposedly religious people who believe in Jesus ‘totally’ (and whom i am bound to believe READ their bible’s) can make declarations like the one above - it is the water that cured me!

Am I the only one who sees this as a kind of blasphemy - denial of The Saviour’s recorded word?

It is our Faith - our heartfelt belief - that allows God to send us the ‘cure’ for what ails us… or rather, not send it to us, since it is there always, but allows us to accept it and not spend all our time rejecting the True and Faithful Word of God while we listen to our, and our friends, earthly complaints.

It is more than this though - we are ‘responsible’ for virtually everything that ‘befalls’ to us in our minds and bodies. While we do not ’cause’ ‘accidents’ ( some do happen) directly, we attract certain conditions to ourselves through our unending daily ‘choices’ we make in our lives - what we ‘choose’ to pay attention to and surround ourselves with.

God offers us an infinite range of choices and we ’select’ the ones that we do for all the many reasons that we have - often as a result of our ‘culture’, community and close human connections.

So is it necessary (or even helpful) to invest time and money visiting the place a 14 year old girl claims to have seen her vision (a total of almost 20 times)?

Or is our Faith something that needs to come from withinside of us - and not from a bottle of spring water?

Do we need to let Jesus and our Faith spring up out of and through us - not out of some Pyrenees soil.

Maybe by learning Humility and how to listen and pay full attention to the God Bandwidth that is there in our background ‘noise’ 24/7/365.25 we can avoid our own distractions and dis-ease..

 … accept the cure that is always on offer anywhere our hearts are allowed to feel it?

One other thing i think is important to consider…

While anyone who is ill usually asks ‘Why Me’? and wants desperately to be free of the pain or inconvenience or both their illness causes them…

How many of us ever think - The Lord allows me to be this way for a reason? Am i doing what His Will requires while living in this condition? or am i constrained wholly and solely by my own ‘will’ and my focus on the negative - wanting so much to be rid of what i find myself with - a burden - a yoke?

 Do we ever consider modifying our lives so as to remove the many things that lead up to the inevitable outcome of our present circumstances?

 If we live constantly in a ‘polluted’ environment - a cure for the illness caused by that environment is hardly likely to last very long - if at all.

“Meditation is not just a practice. Meditation is a natural state. It’s an actual channel in our consciousness, a bandwidth of tranquility, energy and joy that reveals itself when we learn to pay attention. Once you discover how to tune yourself to the meditation bandwidth, it will empower your life from within.” -Sally Kempton

It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts inside your head. - Sally Kempton

More on this as i research further but for now i would like to open your consideration to a possibility that God broadcasts to our minds every moment of every day on ‘The Meditation Bandwidth’ while each of us mostly receive and transmit on our own unique wavelength, Channel 7 say?

Do we just tune in to the bandwidth to grab the headlines? to get the whole editorial? or not at all, we just pretend we do to others? (and perhaps to ourselves?)

Can we fine tune our transmitting and receiving so that our frequency is 100% within the bandwidth 100% of the time (maintain a perfect meditative state on the God bandwidth)?

How much of our time would we require to develop such a level of perfect harmony with God’s Mind/Will?

Is it necessary that we do? Or is it OK if we spend most of our mind time solely within our own ‘channel’ providing we don’t do ‘nasty’ things to others?

What, if any, is a satisfactory mix of ‘us’/Him in terms of our mind’s frequency ‘tuning in’, that we are prepared to dedicate ourselves to fully working to achieve??

Do we, in our need to care for our family’s/self ever, or most often, consciously choose to place such activities ‘above’ that which we choose to ‘give over in ourselves’ to Him and His daily broadcast?

Should we learn how to be in a constant meditative state of prayer so that He is Always our first thought/priority??

Dare we?

Did Jesus?

(I believe He Did!)

While many may feel that prayer is their ‘contact’ with God (and indeed for some it can be) I believe it would be extremely impractical for most of us to stay in ‘prayer mode’ all day, every day. I do see a difference between what most of us think of as prayer and meditative prayer or a meditative state - a meditative state can be maintained while we engage in any and all activities - but only by those who have dedicated themselves to the ‘perfecction’ of achieving and understanding this fully.

 ( No - I do not claim to be one who has done so! However, I should like to reach such a stage one day.)

OK here is the post i promised before - the one with the question. - Simple this time.

And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before the LORD, and FASTed on that day, and said there, We have sinned against the LORD. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpeh.(I Sa 7:6)

And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before the LORD, and FASTed on that day, and said there, We have sinned against the LORD. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpeh. (2 Sa 12:22)

But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with FASTing; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom. (Ps 35:13)

Is it such a FAST that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a FAST, and an acceptable day to the LORD? (Isa Ch 5

 And when he had FASTed forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. ( Matt 4:2)

And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they FAST. (Matt Ch 9)

 Find more of your own examples - there are many.

My question?

When was the last time you followed Christ’s example (and those of many others) and fasted? Went without? (food mostly) for as much as 24 hours?

I confess i have not done so voluntarily out of a desire to cleanse my ’self’ and please God and myself by walking in His ways for around three years or more now.

 I intend to rectify this oversight and love of my life over the life of Christ before Dec 25th.

Any of you have a reason to join me??

A simple yes or no will suffice and remember to do it ‘in private’ - no need to let the whole world ‘know’ about it.

I merely offer the ‘challenge’/question.

Do you ever fast? other than when going for a blood/medical ‘test’?

Would you do so voluntarily? To be more like Him??

 We need faith AND works remember. either one without the other doesn’t get us to where we say we wish to ‘go’.

I would advise you to remember to keep up your intake of the water of life during any period of fasting and not to try to do too much, too soon - we have grown weak in the last 20 centuries - 24 hours should do to begin with - you can work up (slowly!) to 40 days and nights if you feel a personal ‘need’, i guess?