I’ve been adding some links to the side-bar of late. (The side bar is that column on the right – if you scroll down past the list of topics, you’ll find links to Divine Truth websites, along with other Interesting Things I like to read!)
Its so lovely to read of the journey’s of my brothers and sisters aspiring to learn and live Divine Truth. Along with their stories, there are other people and things I see and read that I find thought-provoking (or I should say – emotionally-provoking), so I’ve decided to share a few of each in blog posts more regularly.
Here a list of ‘Interesting Things’ that caught my attention of late:
Kenya 2013 – Denis writing “What it is all about”:
“For me personally it feels as if the last five years of my life I have been training for this next phase of my journey towards God and the desire to find the real me. My desire to go to Africa started nearly two years ago after meeting Helge …… who is in Namibia, and now building an orphanage for street children with a desire to have a Learning Center, (I hope to visit her soon) and when I heard about Kenya my heart sang, I had to go. I do not know what lies ahead of me, but I have faith that I will be guided to do the best I can. I pray that I can be humble and love my brothers and sisters for they have got my attention at long last.
God is Good”
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Our friend Fab creates music as a gift. You can download any of his songs for free on his site.
Recently Fab started to blog as well and I really enjoyed his post, God in a Box.
“What I noticed was that we all created this storage warehouse of boxes to manage and control what we feel about each topic. It is safe! Ask the questions that the boxes have the answers for. Not the ones that challenge us, that may seem UNREAL or even fictitious in our Physical world and cant imagine the answer for.”
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Eloisa wrote about parenting in her post Thoughts on Children:
I am experiencing first hand how the cycle continues though, and no matter how hard I ‘try’ to be different or just act differently to what I experienced and what happened to me as a child, I notice I am re-creating it due to the fact that ‘trying’ doesn’t make a difference. The feelings, beliefs, emotions that are in me dictate the outcome positive and negative. The cause creates the effect and if I do not release the cause the effects are going to be the same. And I am noticing this is true in my life at this time!
I know my sister Eloisa is going to have so much more wisdom to share about parenting and children as time goes by – I hope she is brave enough to write some more about it!
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An introduction to Paige & Kerry who are off to Kenya in two days!
“So we began, as young girls, seeking the answers to these and other questions which have guided us individually, and together, on a path of discovery. Thirsting for more over the years, as one question became ten, our yearning has as attracted into our lives the Secrets of The Universe and in turn, the Principles of Divine Truth*. Finally, a thorough scientific, logical, investigative, heart opening, soul inspiring explanation of us and the world we live in. At last, something tangible with which to experiment- and that’s just what we have been doing over the past two and a half years.”
By the way, these girls have their own youtube channel, and their “Little Desert Curry” clip cracks me up.
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Reflection that mirrored some of my own after the Boston bombings:
What separates a death in Iraq from one in Boston
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This one is an old one, but one that stays with me. The author is Lisa, the mother of David, a child with a disability. I found her post “A spark of bravery” to be very moving. I feel it that it displays someone acting in humility as well as bravery.
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This Easter, for the first time, I found myself wanting to speak the truth of what really happened over that weekend over 2000 years ago.
I was a bit down about all the glorification of sacrifice and the misunderstanding about God’s Nature that this injury conveys. God never demands a sacrifice in order to Love us and by believing that Jesus died for their sins, Christians miss the point that Love never demands sacrifice. In fact, they believe just the opposite.
The combining of love and sacrifice seems to be such a common injury on the planet and the real reason it saddens me is that it is such a massive block to most of forming a lasting relationship with God.
Anyway, over the Easter weekend, I just couldn’t find the words to speak eloquently about the emotions I was feeling. I did however realise a new desire is building in me. That is, a desire to share the truth of our first century life – not out of personal interest – but in order that people might come to understand Truths about God, and the possibilities of our relationship with Her.
This new feeling was a turning point for me – and perhaps for this reason I really enjoyed Amanda’s Easter offering entitled “Turning Points”.
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Last, but not least, I like David’s pondering on cognitive dissonance. I admit, I hesitated to include this one, since its kind of about me and Jesus… and I’m still not quite used to people writing about us. (I should probably be used to it – but I still feel shy about it). However I decided to get over myself, because I feel the reality of cognitive dissonance, and how many people live with it on a daily basis.
On that point, I also enjoyed this post that addressed cognitive dissonance of women in the Christian Church.
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That’s all I’ve got for tonight, but stay tuned over the coming weeks when I’ll share some of Joy’s new rap songs for kids!
Notes Along The Way 
We just get over the fear and nervousness of the “press conference”, and literally said to each other, wow that was pretty cool hey, then we jump online to discover our video antics are up there for all to see!!!! Embarrassment plus right now, oi oi oi!!! Ah- well, may as well BE REAL every where, hey!! (Laughing)
By the way- it cracks us up too!!!
Giggle… sorry guys.. I thought you might want to kill me.. but it was just too precious not to share!
Nah- forgiven! We realized its like when you obliviously do a little dance or play in your lounge room as a kid, then realize all these people are watching you!!!
Moment by moment- another gem to feel!!! Thanks.
Mary
Thank you for posting all these links. I followed the Cognitive Dissonance and was well-pleased. I wanted to share with you my response..I’m SOO appreciative of your work right now:
“Wow David, you really found the perfect words here…thanks for expressing yourself. I have just recently discoverd AJ and Mary and feel the same as you…a bit sheepish and embarassed about it but WOW! This stuff resonates and is VERY healing for me to have a “visual” Jesus and Mary. It over-writes some old programming about the suffering “Jesus-on-the-Cross-with bleeding-crown-of-thorns.” The “Invisible Mary” was just as bad! Even though I was not raised with religion, that imagery of suffering and sacrifice and invisibility lived deep within and I re-enacted it on a moment-to-moment basis. I much prefer this surfing, Aussie-speaking Jesus in bright t-shirts and his beautiful Mary….neither being afraid to cry and both telling us to feel, feel, feel. I am just beginning here but I think it’s awesome. ”
thank you for being..I look forward to exploring more of your teachings and blog posts ❤
~Betsy
Thanks Mary. I’ve been finding those blogs through yours and it’s been a joy. I must say that it’s been tough to find like minded folks (so far!) near me, with regards to Divine Truth and it’s awesome to have the internet to build community, even if it’s in reality on the other side of the world sometimes! Ha! When we spread the joy of the process I think is where we can find this incredible space of sharing unabashedly. I love sharing love and truth unabashedly and with joy and humility in my heart. I see people that I speak with connect with that and the fear dissolves. In that space, truth can enter easier without judgment. These blogs that you’re sharing are an example of that. Thanks for sharing them!
Thanks Sister x
In glad you liked my post about you guys, cheers for sharing it. Its been great to get to know you both a little more, even though mostly online 🙂
Anyway, I don’t think God wanted to give me a chance not to find you both and Divine Truth, was reflecting on that today. Just before Yvette talked about you and AJ (the first time I heard of Jesus and Mary reincarnated), I found that book “What’s so amazing about Grace” just lying next to me on the train. I read a few chapters and it warmed me to the unique and beautiful parts of the Christian faith, which I was angry at and it sort of softened me too later that very same day when hearing about you and Jesus first time to pause my judgement and consider “maybe these guys are the real thing”, if only briefly at the time.
Then seriously a few days later after about 15 years of losing contact, out of the blue I stumbled across Claus and Helga on Facebook (I stayed on their farm for 9mths). I called Helga up not long after and guess what she was so excited to tell me about? She knows Jesus and Mary Magdalene! God was really knocking at my door hard, I couldn’t pretend to ignore him even if I wanted to. Just thought I’d share that anecdote.
Mary wrote “I was a bit down about all the glorification of sacrifice and the misunderstanding about God’s Nature that this injury conveys. God never demands a sacrifice in order to Love us and by believing that Jesus died for their sins, Christians miss the point that Love never demands sacrifice. In fact, they believe just the opposite.”
My dear Mary Christians do not believe that God demands a sacrifice in order to love us. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotton son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life”. Its evident God loved the world even before the sacrifice.Therefore, if the sacrifice came after the giving, then it follows that the love preceeded the sacrifice .Secondly, we must remember that the sacrifice was a gift. To embrace it is simply to receive that gift. Even AJ presents it as a gift, explaining that its purpose was to demonstrate the truth of life after death to the Jews. On that is was a gift we agree.
I have noticed that you have many misconceptions about Christian beliefs. Feel free to email me with any questions and I will be happy to eplain things to you from a Christian perspective. After all, I know that you love Truth and don’t want to be misunderstanding or teaching people incorrectly about it. Whatever can create unity and not disharmony is what love would require. Blessings, Kathy from California.
Hi Kathy,
I understand that you feel that you know more about Christianity than I do and I’m not sure if you realise it but you are actually quite condescending to me in this comment. It also seems very clear that you would like me to stop saying contentious things about Christianity. I’m afraid that it is unlikely that I will stop speaking up about the errors many people in the world hold about God any time soon – and this includes speaking up about the erroneous beliefs of my Christian brothers and sisters.
While it’s true that I am very interested in truth (hence my willingness to speak it even in the face of your discomfort), I am not interested in unifying if unity is to be created around a false belief.
In fact, no true unity can ever be achieved unless love is present. And love may only be present when it is founded in truth.
So while love does not ever “command” me, its presence in my heart does draw me honour truth (not unity for unity’s sake).
Unity will occur when everyone has real love within their hearts, and the only way for love to enter hearts is for people to first receive truth.
So actually, our love for others will lead us to speak truth, which for a time may challenge people and create disharmony as they rebel against the truth. This does not mean that the action of speaking truth was not loving – merely that the error exposed by the truth is fighting for its existence. It is a fallacy to believe that love will only bring harmony, or that acting to bring harmony for harmony’s sake is a loving thing to do.
To address the other points in your comment to me:
Most Christians most certainly do base their faith in God’s Love on the sacrifice of Jesus.
Christian doctrine clearly cites Jesus’ death as a sacrifice which pardoned Christians from incurring the punishment of God for their sins. It states that after Jesus’ death – God’s sacrifice of his only son – people were then able to receive God’s forgiveness (as long as they believe in the sacrifice). This is a clear belief that the love of God was not present until Jesus’ death (since before it God wished to punish his children).
The Bible may be contradictory on this point (as it is on many points) but if we are discussing common Christian belief, I feel very confident in my assessment that Christians believe that sacrifice is evidence of love, and that God required the death of his only ‘begotten’ son in order to atone for the sins of his other children.
Here I feel I must remind you of YOUR OWN question of AJ and I, answered in a recent FAQ session, where you yourself ask (my paraphrase) “How can I know God loves me if Jesus’ death isn’t proof of this Love?” Clip with our answer can be viewed in full here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kjJ7yuwjnI&list=PLE-RF2VTnr9gK_YnSjgjGilq-nhZ8T8o_&index=25
So, you yourself have based your Christian faith around the idea that proof of God’s Love was through Jesus’/ God’s sacrifice. Without this, you state that you are unsure as to how you could know that God loves you. So you contradict yourself in your own statements.
The truth is that love does not punish, nor does it require sacrifice in order to forgive. The God depicted in Christianity does punish and does require sacrifice in order to forgive. So while you may argue that you are sure that God Loved before the death of Jesus, your own doctrine and faith, demonstrate a belief that that Love was enabled through a supposed sacrifice.
While you may be able to intellectually infer that God loved before the supposed sacrifice (based upon certain Bible scripture), the basic doctrine still teaches that without sacrifice God was not able to forgive humanity for its sins, or abide with his children. This to me depicts a God who did not extend Love to his children until a certain set of requirements were met – this is CONDITIONAL love and there is actually NO SUCH THING as conditional love – love has no restrictions or conditions inherent in it. If there are conditions, then it is not love.
Second, I must clarify that AJ has never called his death in the first century a ‘gift’ to others. And I can assure you, as someone who was there; his death was a tragic, tragic event that marked our lives forever. His love and teaching were gifts to us all, his honouring of truth was a breath-taking example, but never did he, or I, or others around us, regard the purpose of his execution as a gift he was giving to the world, to us, or to God.
It is true that when a person honours Truth, (as Jesus did in the events surrounding and during his death) there are many things we may learn through observing their experience and example. But your desire to regard Jesus’ death as a gift to be received by all, once again reveals your deeply ingrained belief that his suffering was somehow a benefit to everyone, or to put it another way, that his ‘sacrifice’ had a purpose and inherently gave something to others. This is the subtext of all Christian doctrine and it is false.
Kathy, I cannot agree that I have many misconceptions about Christian beliefs.
Here are some of the struggles I observe in Christians currently on Earth, and those I have observed from the spirit world for some 2000yrs:
– If Christians are to follow the Bible as a guide/ rule book, and embrace and accept all scripture, they must also learn how to juggle uncertainty, intellectual and emotional incongruence surrounding God and Jesus, and manage to support a truck-load of contradictions in their belief systems in order to maintain their faith. This is because the Bible and dominant institutional doctrines are full of contradictions and inconsistencies.
Solid faith cannot be maintained under such circumstances. Just like love, no true faith can be formed unless it is built on a solid foundation of truth. Without truth the demonstration of love and the experience of faith is like a house built on sand – it cannot last.
Most Christians state and want to believe that God and Jesus love them unconditionally, yet they do glorify the ‘sacrifice’ as the thing that made all the difference and saved them from God’s wrath. These things are clearly in contradiction to each other.
Christians want to believe in a God of Love, but their own Bible depicts a God that enacts genocide and orders others to enact genocide. To recognise these obvious contradictions and continue to believe, Christians must alter their concept of love, or abide with a certain level of cognitive dissonance. In both scenarios solid faith cannot be formed, nor can love spring from such a faith, (since truth is absent).
– Sacrifice is glorified as proof of God’s Love. And self-sacrifice in Christians is lauded as proof of holiness, and a sign of love for another. This is a gross error in the understanding of God’s nature and of love itself.
– Christians have a difficult time UNIFYING about anything, for any length of time (evidenced by the massive number of Christian sects currently on earth), because they base their faith in misconceptions about love and God’s Nature.
Many (not all) atheists have more love for their fellow humans and understanding of love than many (not all) Christians.
I don’t mean to pull rank on you here Kathy, but (even though I know that you don’t believe this) I was there at the inception of the Christian faith. I know the beautiful truth it was initially grounded in and I saw even from that time, how people’s injuries surrounding love, sacrifice, God, sexuality and gender immediately began to infect the purity of that truth.
If we, as a human race, are to find God again we must be willing to be humble to our own injuries that prevent our feeling His Truth in our hearts.
The Christian faith as it currently exists is not based around God’s Truth. It most certainly does glorify sacrifice through the belief that the passion saved them from their sins and is evidence of God’s Love. The verse in John states that this sacrifice was an act of love – and it was not. The glorification of sacrifice found in Christian religion, and in the hearts many people from non-religious backgrounds, represents a vast injury in the understanding of the nature of true love.
Any time sacrifice is viewed as an act of love, it is glorified, and this is an error.
Please know that I state all this without malice, or ill-regard for Christians or the Christian faith. In fact, I feel quite fond of many elements of Christianity for many reasons, both personal and because some truth still remains within its teachings.
I see in many Christians that I know, in the past and present, a desire to serve, to love and to know God. If I am to assist these brothers and sisters in this endeavour then I will not be afraid to speak the truth about God’s Nature, and what true love enacts and is built on.
It is only through speaking about, and living an example of these things, that more truth will come to the planet.
And it is an increase in truth that will assist Christians (and everyone) to better serve, to better love and to know God more fully.
I was thinking last night about Kathy’s comment and was reflecting on my own upbringing as a Catholic. Perhaps it’s helpful so I figured I’d comment on all that.
Being brought up a Catholic, for me it gave me this childlike yearning for God, which I didn’t know at the time, but it was the best way to approach God I believe 🙂 So as a child there was a lot of great things in the Christian religion for me, but there was always an undertone of love having to be a sacrifice from my earliest memories as well.
Like the idea that only the poor will go to heaven and the rich should sell all their things and give to the poor to have their place in heaven too. I believe it was said by Jesus, but maybe it was misrepresented – “poor” replaced with “humble” would have made more sense. I always encountered a lot in the Bible and Mass sermons that promoted this view of God and the world, which I feel now is very distorted. That is the idea of us needing to sacrifice ourselves / our desires / even loved ones to appeal and appease God and that is scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments too.
Even the idea of the devil speaks of a God that creates a being that according to the Bible is part of God’s plan – that people have to be tempted and tested to prove themselves to God, which itself has an element of sacrifice to it. But also, as that devil can’t be redeemed, following the logic then, he must have been created as a sacrifice for God’s plan too. The devil scared me as a kid, but I couldn’t ever fully grasp why God would make him too if God was mean’t to love me.
As a child I used to marvel at all the statues in the church but thinking through it some more now, the idea of building great edifices for God, like churches etc. that have taken massive amounts of resources (both natural resources and human labour), points to a feeling of having to sacrifice things to even be able to worship God. If we really felt that God could connect to us directly (without meeting some kind of conditions) and doesn’t require worship, there wouldn’t be any churches at all. But the fact there are millions of them points to this being a strong aspect of the Christian belief system.
The other one I was recently thinking about was the idea of Holy Communion. I was taught that on the blessing of the bread and wine by the priest, it actually turned into Jesus’ real body and blood (Transubstantiation). I believed this as a child and from a child’s perspective, it appeared that Jesus has his body and blood on continual offering so that Christian’s like me could purify themselves. I thought then this was how love worked – this continual sacrifice thing (which giving your body for others is) but I believe now it points to some really dark emotions. Even the words – sacred, sacrament etc. have the sound of “sacrifice” and perhaps have a similar linguistic root.
Anyway some thoughts on my Catholic upbringing might be helpful for this discussion.
Mary,
I was not trying to be condescending in my post. I did go back and reread it after I posted it and realized it could be taken that way, but at that point I did not know of a way to edit the words. Somehow I thought that you would be more understanding though and realize that I just chose my words poorly by mistake, being that we have had other communications in the past which have been quite pleasant. I feel truly quite hurt. I could write a long response trying to further explain myself, and I could do that, but sometimes love asks that we just back away. Ironic that a desire for unity would lead to the opposite. And, Truth can’t be understood until God reveals it to a person. May our hearts be open to it… Please know that you and AJ will always continue to be in my prayers to find the Truth that you seek and may you find joy in abundance in the Lord.
Hi Kathy,
I’m sorry that you feel hurt by my response – but I did not write it with a sense of anger or desire to hurt you. Not at all. I just wanted to be very clear. So my sorry is not to say that I think I’m responsible for your feelings, just that I feel compassion that you aren’t feeling good.
I’d don’t believe its hurtful to point out how another person is behaving if it is done with clarity and without a desire to pull them down or insult them.
In my previous response I did say to you that ‘you may not be aware’ that you are quite condescending towards me. I said this because I know that at times we don’t want to see the true emotional projections that come from us towards others. I have much experience with coming to realise (sometimes a long time after things have been pointed out to me – sometimes quite suddenly – that wow – I really do have that feeling towards… others/ men/ myself). I have come to see the feedback I receive from others, when it is delivered with kindness, as a gift.
I understand that you don’t feel that I have offered you a gift in this instance, and that is OK with me, but I at times I do state what I see and feel in a very firm and direct way because this is what has helped me the most. Because it has helped me, I do it with others, this includes my friends, and people I have never even met.
If you were to examine our past email exchanges you will see that I have often been firm about the issues of truth that I see, but also that I have overlooked some of your quite pointed statements about my lack of knowledge about anything Christian. I felt that it was now time to point out this unloving assumption on your part. I did that with a sense of kindness, and I did put it in a way that attempted to acknowledge the fact that we aren’t always aware of our projections but that this doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
As I was writing to you I felt it was important to stress the issues regarding love and its relationship to truth – that love does not always lead to unity because it must incorporate truth – and sometimes people wish to reject truth. I feel that it is this belief that you have – that love always brings us into agreement immediately – which is being challenged in our exchange.
I didn’t take offense at your condescension (which is an unloving emotions to put onto others) but I did feel that it was important, out of love for both of us, that I point it out. I also felt very strongly that you were feeling challenged and even a little frightened by my stating what I had about Christianity, and your statements that love would command us toward unity, were very much a message that I should only be making statements that bring about unity and a sense of peace. Which (as I explained above), I can’t agree with. When I look around I see that our world is in a mess because there are so many false assumptions about love on this planet. We need a shake up, and to reconsider many of the widely agreed upon definitions of what is right, normal and loving. If these assumptions were so correct, then the world would be a wonderful place for everyone to live in. At the moment, life is very difficult for very many people.
I tried to convey my relaxed feelings about my message to you by simply being myself and my statements like “I don’t want to pull rank” are perhaps a part of my very dry Australian humour which can be a little lost in other parts of the world. 🙂
Kathy, can I wish you the very best on your journey? I hope that one day you will be able to see that my intention was not to be hurtful or inflammatory, only firm for truth.
Your sister,
Mary
As a former (now lapsed) Christian I appreciate the exchange and full explanation given by Mary of her feelings of truth about Christianity. My own experience is that the idea of sacrifice as evidence of God’s love is pretty high on the agenda for most Christians. In the place I went, there was also a lot of emphasis that God loved us even though we were miserable sinners and deserved to be treated differently I.e. harshly and unlovingly by God. The fact that God himself in the form of Jesus paid the debt we should have paid also infers that sacrifice is a loving act. When I went back to visit a church event recently I noticed how drawn and fatigued everyone looked. I realised that the idea of sacrificing oneself as the highest act of love permeates more than the religious life. It leaves us open to guilt trips and over extending ourselves doing things for God (not really) that leave us depleted and out of touch with our own lives. But which cones first, the chicken or the egg. To be open to Jesus death as a loving act we must already have some belief of sacrifice as loving or we wouldn’t be able to accept such a violent abhorrent idea. To view the idea that someone else had to die to save my life doesn’t feel comfortable for me anymore – the coat doesn’t fit.
Amanda
My first thought when I saw you had deleted my comment was that if you really stood for truth you would have posted it. But I understood why you didn’t and its okay. I know I said I was going to leave this alone, but something significant happened for me in this and I would like to share it with you. You see, all of my life my family and friends have said to me that I read too much into things, that I think too much andthat I put words in peoples’ mouths. I do this when I am thinking people have certain intentions in what they are saying or doing that they are not admitting. The funny thing is, although I have been told this all my life, I have never really took it seriously to examine myself and/or change it because every single time I do it I have been convinced that I am RIGHT, and that the other person is simply not seeing the truth of the situation at the moment, and, I feel a sense of duty to HELP them understand!
After I read your emails yesterday, and listed all the things out that you had said regarding my intentions, motives and feelings that were a bit off base, it hit me like a ton of bricks that this is exactly what I do to others . I was like an aha moment, and boy I really got it! And that really is significant because until now I couldn’t see in myself that very thing that I really hated in my own mother (She did it but I couldn’t see I was doing the exact same thing) You and AJ speak of the law of attraction and how that causes things to be brought into your life to help you grow. I think there is some truth to that, how much I can’t honestly say, but one thing I know is that our exchange helped me see the truth of this issue of mine, finally. So, now I am grateful for the exchange because it made me see, and I am sure the memory of this will come to mind at times when I catch myself assuming things . And of course there are the reasons behind why I do it that I can deal with now too. From your end, I won’t suppose to know what motivated you, but it might be worth considering especially in light of the fact that a strong premimse of your beliefs is that Jesus words were completely misconstrued and changed over the years, and your understanding of how this affects the truth and how people perceive things.
Truthfully Mary, my motivation for contacting you was to talk through what I feel are some of the misconceptions about Christianity that are out there. And I do realize that a LOT of my Christian brothers and sisters are not helping things by some of the ways they speak and behave. I felt that if we could gain some ground with AJ being the influencial person that he is, that it would be a good example for the world to see. That’s why I got so excited at your first email about helping Christians. I wanted it to work both ways though. I even went so far as to say that I was wondering if AJ could be Jesus, which, ironically is an example of your point about creating unity around a false belief (because I do not believe he is), and I have learned something valuable from that .It was a prime example of me trying way too hard and compromising myself in the process because of my desire to share with you. Even so, I was never suggesting in my post that unity should be created around a false belief (because I had realized my error from doing that earlier).. Heck if it were that easy we could just give up any belief that is different from anyone else’s and be done with it. Obviously no one with any conviction of any belief could do that.I suppose I also hoped that if all the debris could be pushed out of the way, then only the valid differences would remain to consider, and that would bring about a highter probability that Truth could actually come to the forefront. And yes it was my hope that you and AJ would come to know Jesus. I hope you can appreciate my desire to share Truth, even if we may not agree on what Truth is :).
God taught me a long time ago that the way a message is delivered is very important also. I cringe when I see boisterous demonstrations in the streets or hear “christians” being loud and contentious to others in an attempt to persuade them to their way of thinking. They don’t realize that it pushes people further and further away from theTruth. They call it being bold for the Lord, Mind you I am not saying to be whimps or not assert what we believe, just that our own tongjes can be such enemies to our causes sometimes. The book of Proverbs has a lot to say about the tongue and the damage it can do. Its helpful to give some thought to the benefit of choosing words carefully even if it leaves us with less of a feeling of self edification. (That was a big lesson for me :))
Anyway, I will end this by again saying that I am grateful for what our exchange has taught me. I wish you the best and a happy life. I suspect neither one of us have accomplished what we’d hoped to in this , but my prayer is that we can at least have a warm memory of the exchange rather than a bad feeling in our gut, and can appreciate how God chose to teach us the lessons here in His own way and time.
Blessings,
Kathy
Hi Kathy,
Thanks for being honest about your intentions in communicating with me.
I can honestly say that I never desired to ‘get’ or accomplish anything from our emails and messages other than to simply be myself and communicate the truth that I know, and the things that I see that may be of assistance to you or others.
I have only ever corresponded with you, after you first have made contact with me and have certainly never felt that my role, or intent was to change you or help Christians. I feel that people only change when their hearts are open to truth and love – and the state of a heart (i.e. whether it is open or closed) is something that each individual themselves has control over – and I can only interact without compromise on the truth that I see at any moment. This allows the open heart to respond if it wants to – and if the heart is not open, then I am not phased, and I have maintained my integrity.
I believe that my offering truth and being clear about what I know of God is an expression of who I am and what I am passionate about. I don’t do it to ‘help’ others but I do have faith that if I be myself, with humility and a desire to grow towards God, then the life I live, the words I speak, the actions in simply living my passion and desiring more of God’s Love and Truth, will naturally assist others. This is true for everyone of us. (Such a great design system God has set up I reckon!)
I feel that if I set out to change Christians or any other person, I would be condescending and arrogant and missing the seamless efficiency of God’s system – That is, that if I focus on refining my desires and actions in love and truth, then change will happen
Kathy, please know that I haven’t been upset, or offended by our exchange. If you consider it, we have been in disagreement since you first emailed me many months ago to tell me that I had it wrong about R.J.Lees statements about Christians no longer accepting the gifts of the spirit. My response to you was a clear explanation of what I had meant, and a disagreement with your assessment that I had it wrong (as the fact that the vast majority of Christians reject and are very fearful of mediumship is clearly demonstrated in Christian practice all over the world today). I wasn’t upset but I was clear for truth – a truth that is clearly upheld by current Christian doctrine. All this disagreement did not make me love you less, nor feel less respectful of you. In fact, after you emailed me some questions about Divine Truth, I respected you and your Christian background enough to ask you if you would be OK with us answering your questions publicly, naming you, and if you would like to contribute further questions, which you did.
I feel that you are my sister, and I am very happy for you to hold different beliefs to my own, and I don’t see it as my mission to change that – in fact I would find that disrespectful of your own will, and also quite condescending.
I do believe strongly in being myself, and responding truthfully in every interaction I have with people. I understand that that was upsetting for you in this case, but I cannot modify myself in order to avoid other people’s displeasure – especially as I was not unloving, merely truthful and direct.
I’m glad that you no longer wish to modify yourself and your beliefs in order to have a sense of unity with others, or for any other reason. Knowing yourself, and resisting changing that in spite of fear, loneliness and/ or the desire to get something from others, is a stance very in harmony with Divine Truth.
I stand by my statements about the Christian faith and its widely held viewpoints, and your attitude towards me in various communications surrounding my understanding of Christianity. However I hold no ill-will about it whatsoever, nor any yukky feeling in my gut :-).
I love you my sister, and I wish you well.
Mary