Showing posts with label truth and integrity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label truth and integrity. Show all posts

October 1, 2018

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)

March 7, 2018

A call to women to walk in Truth and Integrity

Babylon
Women may not know their action can influence the rest of the world. Some women may be thinking of supporting and voting to the number one power position of an apparently very popular woman in their nation. Little do they know by their action if succeeded would propel that woman to possibly number one power position of the human world. I would urge you to look at the reality behind the popular facade. The word that looms in my soul and spirit is: BEWARE.
Women and potential women voters make up at least half of the world where women are given the legal franchise to vote at par with men. This is a formidable force. Man, you better take note! Women’s votes can propel a liberal nation into the state of the Biblical Babylon just as prophesied over two thousands of years ago. I am reminded that there are godly and ungodly women. Godly women of faith whom I have written in this blog and evil women who bow to a different god.
How should women differentiate between the two? Look at the real motive behind your vote. Are you aligning with God’s plan or are you driven by your own agenda? Who is your God? Jesus says, “Look at the fruit.” “Look at the popularity.” (Matthew 7:13 Enter through the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and spacious and broad is the way that leads away to destruction, and many are those who are entering through it.) I pray we all hear the true God!
I pray we all become more responsible and careful with our words. Globally… A person’s word may not influence others but it does speak to oneself and leads one to believing in deceptions that harm oneself and even others.
The Bible verses that I received today are from Jesus in Mark 13:33-37, “Be on your guard [constantly alert], and watch and pray; for you do not know when the time will come…[Watch, I say] lest He come suddenly and unexpectedly and find you asleep.
And what I say to you I say to everybody: Watch (give strict attention, be cautious, active, and alert)!
Revelation 17:5
And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
Jesus has specified that the fruit that the Bible refers to:
Condition One: Before anyone can claim he or she can hear God and follows God’s will and bears good fruit on earth, he or she must acknowledge that Jesus is the only way and truth to God.
John 14:6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Condition two: Fruit decides whether one enters God’s kingdom or not.
Matthew 7:19-21
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
Condition three: Fruit relates to Truth, all Goodness and Righteousness.
Ephesians 5:9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth),
Condition four: Jesus specifies that the fruit God is looking for relates to the supernatural transformation of one’s life through hearing, understanding and believing the Word of God. The Word of God refers to only the Christian Bible.
Matthew 13:18-23 “Therefore hear the parable of the sower: 19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom…23 But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”

This article was originally posted in:  https://kingdomofgodaughter.wordpress.com/

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Mark 1333: truth and integrity matter

Today I am sad to be reminded how human mind can be so limited that we tend to forget the big picture when the enemy lures us to pick on the nitty gritty of stuff he displays with a fanfare, dangling like a carrot in front of the donkey’s nose. I really cannot believe my ears when I watch the current campaign of a popular young (in age comparatively) yet veteran (in terms of two decades of being an elected representative) politician who represents hope and justice in a small nation. He performs well and I fully agree with the pertinent economic and legal issues he raises about his country’s political scene. But he made a slip when he commented on the election of the greatest nation in the world.

I am disappointed that he did not do a thorough study (being an obviously brilliant oratorial lawyer) on the other nation before he passed that comment on the final choice of the presidential candidate. No doubt he intended to make the point that every vote mattered as around 40% did not vote. He omitted to mention the fact that 62,979,636 voters had voted for the winning candidate. He also erred in making the presumption that the 40% dormant votes could have been in favor of another candidate!

I pray we all become more responsible and careful with our words. Globally. I have readers from nearly all the nations of the world who have internet access and those who read the downloaded articles sent to them by their loved ones. I do not presume to know all but I maintain my belief that the truth and each individual’s integrity matter. In my seven decades of life on earth I have come to the conviction and conclusion that each word we speak really matters. A person’s word may not influence others but it does speak to oneself and leads one to believing in deceptions that harm oneself and even others. I do agree with the young politician that every vote counts. So it is time to register your vote and turn out to vote with the care that it may mean a life and death matter to you and your loved ones, and the survival of your people and nation.

The Bible verses that I received today are from Jesus in Mark 13:33-37, “Be on your guard [constantly alert], and watch and pray; for you do not know when the time will come.
It is like a man [already] going on a journey; when he leaves home, he puts his servants in charge, each with his particular task, and he gives orders to the doorkeeper to be constantly alert and on the watch.
Therefore watch (give strict attention, be cautious and alert), for you do not know when the Master of the house is coming—in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrowing, or in the morning—
[Watch, I say] lest He come suddenly and unexpectedly and find you asleep.
And what I say to you I say to everybody: Watch (give strict attention, be cautious, active, and alert)!
a portraitIt’s common to wonder what causes someone to be a sociopath as we watch in disbelief as the sociopath lies, manipulates, harms, and feels no empathy for anyone. Trying to teach empathy and emotion to a sociopath is like trying to teach a cellphone to cook a pizza. If it sounds ridiculous to teach a phone to cook a pizza, it’s because it is. A phone isn’t wired to cook, and it’s not bothered by this fact. Likewise, a sociopath’s brain isn’t wired to feel empathy or other emotions, and like the phone, the sociopath isn’t bothered about it.
Quoted from an answer in Quora about dating a sociopath: She will lie about almost everything, and if you ever call her out on it, she will deny it vehemently…to the point where you start to question yourself and your own memory.
She will create a LOT of drama. She will…
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