CHOOSE

Today I ponder on the legacy we shall each leave behind. There is always a point where each of us must make a crucial decision that will be etched into our history. I walked through the histories of many great men and women in the past. A few years back I was invited to write the life story of one special woman who gave her best years to others (strangers in a remote land). I met some who know her well in her past life as a successful banker and the people group in the remote backwater war-ravished land whom she has loved so dearly and relentlessly that she has given up her past life decades ago to become one of them. I asked her why? She said she loves them because she knows Jesus loves them. A childhood friend of hers said he believed she wanted to leave a legacy behind.

Your choice may be to continue staying in the comfort of your vineyard at the safe shady valley below with gentle breeze or to continue climbing up to the high summit where there is strong wind and brilliant light from the sun. I pray you choose right.

Joshua 24:15 And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Deuteronomy 30:18-20  18 I announce to you today that you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; 20 that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them

John 15:16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.

Joshua 1:7-9 New Living Translation (NLT)

7 Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them, turning either to the right or to the left. Then you will be successful in everything you do. 8 Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. 9 This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

remember the ten plagues that struck selectively

Today we are reminded that the ten plagues only struck those who chose not to believe and acknowledge the righteous God whom Moses and his people believed, the same God we believe.

Take note the idolatry arrogant heart of Pharaoh caused him to make foolish and self-destructive decisions. He exalted himself above the righteous and holy God. Pharaoh did not fear God because he thought he himself was god. While he comfortably indulged himself in his luxurious palace wining and dining opulently, his people suffered in prolonged incremental fear and torment. He had no love or compassion even for his own people. Why was his heart hardened? He was obsessed with keeping an ample supply of cheap/free labor the miserable enslaved Israelites provided to perpetuate his wealth and related social-political power. He was consumed with jealousy of Moses, a former prince of Egypt, now the formidable great transformer leader championing for the justice, freedom and wellbeing of the Jewish nation.

Moses, on the other hand, after his miraculous encounter with God, was truly supernaturally transformed into a great and courageous leader who at the age of 80 would leave his comfort zone and even stick out his neck for the love of God and God's own people.

What happened in the end? "Exodus 12:⁴⁰ Now the sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. ⁴¹ And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years—on that very same day—it came to pass that all the armies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt."  The rest is history.


The life of Moses produced good fruit that lasts to eternity. Pharaoh's life? Plagues and burning.

The Ten plagues in charts:

Paul’s warfare and weapons

We finally reach a key survival tactic, how do Christians win wars? Apostle Paul is really an expert in this field judging from the long list of challenges he went through and his always emerging as the victor and not the victim! I have done a simple chart with the key Bible verses from 2 Corinthians 10. Please read the whole chapter for a better understanding. Paul’s other letters speak of how we can control and train our thought life. For example, Philippians 4:8 is a good place to start your meditation.

Philippians 4:8  (NKJV)

Meditate on These Things

8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

2 Timothy 1:7  (NKJV)

7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

power and authority : treasure in jars of clay

Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;) (Galatians 1:1 KJV) Paul had been given unique authority from Christ to be his representative and the founder of churches (see Acts 1:21-26). In his letters to the Corinthian Christians he identified himself as “an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.” His apostolic ministry was clearly evidenced by the authority and the life transforming revealed words and power of the resurrected Christ. As a closing to my notes on a meditative journey in 2 Corinthians I have done the following chart on the subject of power and authority. My notes on the Bible verses are in brackets.

1 Corinthians 15:24 Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. (All authorities on earth will come to an end)

2 Corinthians 10:8 For even if I should boast somewhat more about our authority, which the Lord gave us for edification and not for your destruction, I shall not be ashamed— (God-given authority to men is for constructive and not destructive purposes)

2 Corinthians 13:10 Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the authority which the Lord has given me for edification and not for destruction. (same as above)

1:18 [Christ the Power and Wisdom of God] For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (The salvation message is the power to save and transform)

1:24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (The resurrected Christ is the power and wisdom in us)

2:4 And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, (Paul’s speeches are confirmed by deeds of spiritual power which manifests in physical realm)

2:5 that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (man’s words are powerless; power of God makes things work)

4:7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (We are so privileged to be chosen for His glory)

4:19 But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills, and I will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power. (No use to boast about your ministry unless your words can be confirmed by God’s power)

4:20 For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. (God’s kingdom is about power in deeds that confirm His words)

6:14 And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. (God’s power raises the dead; power of God is the only source of life)

harp and lyre delusion effect on Christian worship congregation

Some Christian groups have adopted a religious practice to use harps and/or lyres only for worship services some claiming that in heaven these are the only musical instruments. But reading the following Bible passages from Daniel 3 we can note that harps were commonly used by pagan kings and priests for idolatry practices too. In addition it is believed to have possibly body, senses and mind control effects on the worship congregation. We pray that the Spirit of Truth reveals to those who have been subject to this influence.  Ask why you choose to continue in it.  Knowing the truth will set you free. (John 8:32)

Bible Truth:
Daniel 3 (excerpts) Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian king made an image of gold and set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. He required all his subjects to fall down and worship the idol when the music played.
“Then a herald cried aloud: “To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that at the time you hear the sound of the horn, flute, harp, lyre, and psaltery, in symphony with all kinds of music, you shall fall down and worship the gold image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up; and whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast immediately into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.” So at that time, when all the people heard the sound of the horn, flute, harp, and lyre, in symphony with all kinds of music, all the people, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the gold image which King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.” But the three friends of Daniel refused to follow this decree. They would rather die than to bow down to the golden image. They were then miraculously saved by our God.

Random information on the origins and ancient uses of harp and lyre quoted from various Internet Googled Sources:

According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes created the lyre from a large tortoise shell which he covered with animal hide and antelope horns. Lyres were associated with Apollonian virtues of moderation and equilibrium. Legend also tells the tale of Orpheus, the son of Apollo, whose “rich clear words and the silvery notes from his harp were so enchanting that they … had a magical effect on everything around him…

The harp has occupied a place in myth, legend, and lore for as long as it has been around as an instrument. Perhaps because of its powerful effect upon the body and the senses, including it’s ability, when properly played, to transport the listener to an elevated state of consciousness. It is not surprising that the harp appears as an important symbol in several cultures. Because of its association with the “divine” and “ethereal”, many mythical creatures are often depicted playing harps, including angels, mermaids, sirens, gods, elves, and so on. On ancient Crete is where the harp or lyre was first invented and where you will find the first depictions and images of various Cretan Gods, Goddesses, priests, and priestesses, playing the harp.

For this “divine” reason, the harp would become one of the main symbols for these people who we know of by the names of the Cretans, Phoenicians, Ionians, Minoans, Arcadians, Atlanteans, Persians, Greek Hellenes, Hebrews, Scythians, Saxons, Angles, Irish, Picts, and Celts.

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1 John 4:1
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Gender Polarization and alignment

Gender polarization is an ancient monster that has reared its ugly head menacingly and is increasingly prowling around looking for victims to devour in this time. But I cannot remember my siblings and I being deliberately brought up in the polarization way. We were just flowing with life and circumstances.

In my family the women could appear stronger than the men. For example, when a gigantic venomous monitor lizard (or viper) entered our house the men (my dad and eldest brother) ran away and my mom was the one who took up a weapon (a long sharp metal something) pierced the head of the monster and pinned it to the ground. She shouted for the man folk to return and deal with the threshing dying beast. They had no clue what to do. So she instructed them to fetch a tough huge sack so she could cast it into it, tie the sack up and ask them to cart it to the back yard and burn it to ashes. We children were stunned and awed by the cool, composed, tough and bloodless execution all done without display of any emotion on her part.

If my eldest sister was home she probably would have run away too. As for me? I neither fled nor fought. I was just a curious eight years old bystander. Courage is not gender specific. When we kids grow up and have our own family we have displayed immense courage too when needed to protect our loved ones. I cannot think of any specific trait labelled gender-specific in my family.

No, my mom was not a superwoman of gigantic size and prowess. She was a beautiful, intelligent and knowledgeable average size business woman. She was considered the best dressed woman for all time in the oil town where she lived most of her adult life. She rose to the monster-killing occasion when needed. Her goal? Protect her little chicks (including a toddler and an infant) like a mother hen does. After the incident she sat down and continued her afternoon tea as if nothing had happened. Then she instructed us to return to our homework. She was capable of and focused on multitasking as the circumstances required. That was my typical mom.

So where do all these ugly scenes of gender polarization out there come from? Knowing where they come from helps us to resolve them or kill them, just as my mom did with the “monster”.

What about running to the street and crying wolves? You may be too late. The monster (mobster) is really big and evil out there and its sole purpose is to use you and other human to steal, kill and destroy everything human value and love.

What is the solution? This is a question for every Christian to turn inward and ask oneself. One thing I know, aligning with the polarization monster will not bring salvation or deliverance. Whatever you do, if the outcome is creating more divisiveness, more hurt and more destruction, then your alignment is with the death monster and not with the super-abundant life that God has promised and given you and your loved ones in Christ Jesus.

My solution? Come to the point where our sole identity is in Christ. Start afresh from this equality foundation. Unshakable. See yourself the way that God has made you in Christ changes how you think about yourself and that matters most. God is a lot more concerned with where you are going than where you came from. God is in the spiritual realm. He has the best thoughts for you. Why don’t you go to Him for your inner healing instead of calling out the dead and let other more destructive men use you for their ends?

Just thinking aloud: mind deception and truth

My thinking has a lot to do with where I go in life. God is a lot more concerned with where I am going than where I came from. God is in the spiritual realm. He has the best thoughts for me. If I do not begin to think there, I cannot go there in the natural. But if I begin to think in a different realm, that is, the spiritual, my thoughts will help me go there and bring back to the natural every spiritual blessing and prove the perfect will of God in my natural life.

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The way we think influences the contents we speak of. Some people may prefer their life colors remain in varying shades of grey. But there are times in lives we stand at the watershed between truth and untruth and need to make a clearly demarcated decision.

A current news event has stirred up my memory of a story I read sometime ago about a young woman uncovering her unmarried aunt’s reason for remaining single. She still could not forget her first love from junior high school. She did not marry him because she was ambitious and felt that he could not possibly give her the financial freedom she yearned for. They separated and lost contact for decades. She became a famous commercial artist in her own right. The young niece did some sleuthing and finally tracked down the man in question. He turned out to be a very successful but reclusive industrialist manufacturing highly sought after exquisite glassware. He had married, divorced and remained single. He soon detected this young girl stalking him and confronted her. Here is the anti-climax: when she told him she was trying to reconcile him with her aunt, he categorically denied having ever known her aunt!

What really happened? The girl was disappointed and puzzled. The aunt told her the name of her first love and this man bore that name. But this man had no idea who the aunt was and denied ever loving any woman of that description. The girl finally found and showed him the faded photo of her aunt and her young lover from high school. It dawned on the industrialist that the young man was his classmate and good friend then. Apparently the aunt remembered a wrong name. The girl was shocked. All these years the aunt was stalking/thinking of the wrong man when she kept abreast of news about his development and achievements in life.

But what happened to the other man? The undistinguished real lover? The girl eventually found him, an ordinary man at his death bed in a hospice. He had married, propagated, widowed, retired and lived with his grown-up son and family. He thought she was her aunt because of the resemblance. In the story she let this poor man hold her hand until he breathed his last.

I know my memory cannot be classified as totally objective, factual, accurately organized and stored like untempered computer data. I used to think otherwise. But one day my younger sister unknowingly challenged the accuracy of my facts. I overheard her recalling a historical family incident to our younger relatives. I remember everything just as she narrated except for one crucial fact. In my memory I was the hero who did that act of charity. In her narration she became that charitable person! How can that be? I was stunned. I stayed silent. Either one of us has to be wrong. Who is it? She is an honest person. I know that as a fact. So am I. But one of us remembers an untruth.

What affects my memory? How do I remember things? I use ways to memorize different details, often by associations which are not entirely reliable. Despite being a very careful reader of maps, when I am driving in a less familiar terrain (and without GPS), suddenly realizing that some familiar landmarks have changed without my previous noticing, I would find myself stopping my car in the middle of the road, pulling aside to figure out where I am on the map, because I cannot rely on my internalized auto-pilot system anymore.

I personally find that faces, names and places are the most difficult items to synchronize when recalling. Often I have to put memory pieces like jigsaw puzzles (real and imagined?) together to form a coherent (in my thinking) narrative picture. Association can be misleading and deceptive too like the story above of the two young men and their names being mixed up in the memory of a young girl.

Being fond of writing and reading words, I realize that my thinking formulates pictures the way I see them in my mind which is in turn influenced by many variable factors, some real, some unintentionally and often unconsciously creatively imagined. After awhile, I even speak as if they are real. I am thankful that I have a family and loved ones with enough common sense and who are not afraid to point out where I err in this memory-recalling processing task.

What matters is how God sees us. Knowing how He sees me and aligning with His view will be the best guide for every aspect of life. What about memory? Leave it aside unless it fits the following happy thoughts.

So keep your (my) thoughts continually fixed on all that is authentic and real, honorable and admirable, beautiful and respectful, pure and holy, merciful and kind. And fasten your (my) thoughts on every glorious work of God, praising Him always. (Philippians 4:8)

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Education gives us facts and knowledge. But wisdom gives us the abilities to use knowledge for good productive purposes -doing the right thing, with the right people/object, at the right time and place, producing the right outcome. A successful businessman described how he was saved from a financial disaster through the operation of wisdom instead of knowledge.

Here is his experience with the supernatural wisdom.
He talked about a business deal that he was looking about buying this entire apartment complex. He said the financial numbers looked great. Everything looked really good. He said I kept wanting to do it and the more I prayed about it, the Holy Spirit said, “No!” And he said I know when the Holy Spirit says no the Holy Spirit says no. “We had signed a letter of intent but we had not signed a contract on the property to buy it. And so I went to see the vendor.” He said, I prayed some more in the Holy Spirit because it looked really good in the natural. And the Spirit of God on the inside of me said no. And so I said, “We are not going to do this.” The vendor just went ballistic, crazy. But three months later or something the city condemned the building and they had to move all the people out of it and for months they did not get their money. It would have been a complete financial disaster. The Holy Spirit knows things that we do not know and if we listen to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will keep us out of trouble.

Where do we find wisdom? We find wisdom in Christ. Christ lives on the inside of you, and you can learn to draw from your spirit on the inside.

Colossians 2:3 (NKJV) in Whom (Christ) are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
1 Corinthians 2:16 (NKJV) For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:30 (NLT) God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (TPT) For God made the only one who did not know sin to become sin for us, so that we who did not know righteousness might become the righteousness of God through our union with him.

Who you are affects what you do. So, if you see yourself as righteous, having been made by God “the righteousness of God in Christ”, there are certain places you will not want to go and certain things you will not want to do because that is not who you are.