Who

1st Corinthians 15:31-58

   People are no different than we ever were except for devolved genetics due to accumulated sinfulness and evolved technologies due to accumulated sharing.

   We become, and are, the responses to our acceptances and rejections at any given time. The complete person of who God intends us to be is finished through the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is not the same person we know we are through our experiences in flesh life. The paradox of identity that causes most of our confusion rests in the priorities of desire.

   There are two, contrary each to the other, general modes of thought considering the birth of people into the world:

1. A child is born purely innocent and accumulates any difficulties and maladjustments to healthy life from parents, others, and environmental surroundings. This presumes the life of a child, as a person grows, matures, and lives out the remainder of his or her days, contains a finite nature in service to the world and its society in a way that focuses on the personal worth of the individual‘s contribution to the collective of the human race.

2. A child is born without the qualities of intentional virtue and is, by egotistical nature, opposed to his or her acceptance of the fullness of life for Christ’s sake. He or she has moment by moment opportunities to accept or reject an awareness of a God provided identity to fulfill. This presumes the life of a child, as a person grows, matures, and lives out the remainder of his or her days, contains an eternal nature and position of and under the authority structure of God’s creative design.

   Children are born with a dual, or paradoxical, blend of identity awareness. The temporal, or instinctual flesh, awareness of identity is of the self and others combined with all the nuances of influence of the surrounding physical environment. The eternal, or spiritual, awareness of identity is of the self and others combined with all the nuances of influences from God and other beings not human. The “who” of anyone is a sorting out of the priorities of influential authority.

   There is a third identity complete and whole in the work of Jesus Christ everyone now living on this planet has yet to experience in its fullness. The finishing of the finished work of Christ is being manifested and brought to fruition in our lives day by day. The Cross aspect of our place in Christ has already been completed where He put us to death. So, we are living in the death-ness of our mortal existence unless or until we accept the message of salvation.

   The Resurrection into Life in Him is ours for the asking when we understand Who He is and what He has done for us. People have a mortal and immortal enemy in the person(s) of Satan who works diabolically to seek out the light of truth showing forth in response to salvation. Then, a battle ensues over our steadfast faithfulness as long as we are interned in the mortal flesh.

   It takes two parents, working together, to raise a child. Without the structure created for the stable marriage witness to children, a child is open to the varied and scattered examples of the broader community.  Free association to influences without guidance causes conflicts against an integrated understanding where habitual emotional turmoil becomes an ever increasing drive to resentful ambition.  “Community parenting” leads to role playing (feigned sincere involvement) where manifold attentions force a child’s responses of decision to surrounding circumstances with situational ethics.

What

Isaiah 60:1-10

   People are vessels of response. Accepting the physical world of fact of life as the basis of known reality leads people to accept and reject anyone and anything it is believed will benefit and/or deprive a sense of self existence. This sense of self existence sees thoughts, emotions, feelings, and decisions as one’s own with the intent of finding satisfaction through personal success and dissatisfaction with frustrations and opposition.

   A self possessed individual is opposed to unseen influences, ideals, and purposes because of a feared threat to emotional security. But, emotional security is the pitfall to realizing a life of faith. The humanitarian perspective, the societal collective of mortal factual living, deems happiness as the goal of life with self assertion, physical and emotional health, financial security, and world peace as the foundation for the purposes of actuality.

   This is where religion is observed to counteract our insecurities about the unseen, unknown, and the larger than our perceptions can comprehend, resides. The well adjusted humanist man and/or woman has no perceived need of religious observance because facts and figures rule their heart. This miscue in building a better world for the human condition can be found in the denial and rejection of our reasons for existence via a lost sense of priorities.

   Accepting the Work of Christ in our behalf gives to us an understanding that the focus of our intent in living causes us to realize there is a validation to our concerns about causes and effect. The physical world of fact of life is understood to be a result of the decisions made, and not made, by misgiving our inherent authority to forces and influences we do not understand. We no longer find ourselves outside an ongoing revealed knowledge of the Love of God as He imparts His life to us in accordance to our reliance in His expectations. Without interacting with the ever present understanding brought about by Christ’s faith through us, we seek our justification in deciding our own worth by categorizing our changing perceptions of varying worth of others.

   Identifying with one’s own (and other’s) thoughts and emotions causes us to believe we are what we think and that our feelings are a part of our emotions. An event, with information from our surrounding environment (including our physical body), causes a reaction in response. A noticing of this reaction brings thoughts that give rise to feelings, these feelings bring reactive thoughts that give rise to emotions, and the emotions validate more thoughts to take some sort of action to accept what pleases us and reject what displeases our involvement with and to the event.

   Our concept of who we are is deceived into believing our awareness comes from the identity we have allowed to be ruled by our thoughts and emotions. But, since we can choose our thoughts and we can choose to be emotional or not, this gives to us a conflicting understanding that our identifying with our thoughts and emotions is not who we are. This is where we find a sense of power to decide and powerlessness in indecision, a false faith in a secret way, of our own stance of will as opposed to the pressures of others to do to us what we are attempting to do to them. We were wrongly taught that self realization is the key to life.

   Our responsibilities and other’s responsibilities to us are interlinked in Christ as everyone is one with Him in His death and resurrection. Denying His reality through pride of self causes us to assume we are personally independent via our independent right to choose our will. Life is about influences of authorities. God has a structure of authority one can find in His witness to us, the Holy Bible throughout (and, for that matter, the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution) tells us of an adversary who works to corrupt and undermine God’s plans for each of us and the position(s) we have with and to others.

   The focus of the influences of adverse attack against our sensibilities of respect for the levels of God created authority is our thoughts and emotional feelings. It is an ongoing invasion from within - not from without. The way our thoughts and feelings are augmented and affected by the fallen angels called demons is not to ruin our lives except in spite against a just and benevolent God Who creates according to Truth. It is not God Who allows the evils in the world, it is our God given inappropriately stolen authority that empowers the adversarial intrusions in life. God’s wrath over indecency brings a mockery through the demonized soul, most usually opened by traumas imposed on the individual as a child, of a worldly influenced attitude: “Hey, when I get mad, I can do whatever I want to and blame it on someone else!”

   The expressions of the symbols of the languages of humankind are not truth in and of itself and can only present Godly or godless intent - most often of a dual ‘nature’ where a Godly intent is subverted by the intent of the flesh as influenced by the twisting of our respect of integrity according to the positions of authorities with regard to the definitions of church, marriage, and family. At all times, the primary target of the adversary and his hoard of demonic pressures (perverted messengers) is to use our God provided authority over our thoughts and emotions. Faith to recognize God has a better plan for our lives than we can devise, brings our thoughts under submission to rules that are meant to not be broken and feelings that respond properly to the events at hand.

Where

Ezekiel 17:1-10

   The arena of spiritual interaction, the intents and purposes of holy protection and diabolical exploitation, is played out within each and every one of our mortal physical bodies whether we choose, or not, to accept the fact. God designed us, man and woman, for a specific purpose according to gender. But, the body in which we reside is not who each of us is even though the body transmits, reflects, and presents the symptoms of our identity. This is not to say a woman is in a man’s body or the inverse, this is to say all the various aspects and qualities of the physical body we are indwelling were designed by God to honor Him with regard to our responsible use.

   It is obvious there is a source of corruption within us because no one is perfect or self created. Pointing to others as the source of our corruption has the egotistical effect of removing our own responsibility - though our abilities to function in a corrupt and adverse social system may become hampered to the end of our giving in to the usual (not norm) of our social plight. The only perception of self creation anyone can claim is a deft and clever manipulation of the environment and others to become personally and socially successful. But, this “success” relies on a surrounding culture and the ultimate compromise and settled categorizing of judgmental acceptances and rejections. It accepts mortality for what it is and must, by its pragmatic nature, reject the immortal reality of the soul.

   In order to deny the reality of eternal responsibility, the judgmental rejections of what isn’t “me” is applied to others who do and do not fit the patterns of the deception of accepted self worth. These are known as friends and enemies and become fences of fearful illusion against the victory of accepted protection. Many have suggested to “make friends with your demons” in order to ease frustrations and emotional conflicts, but appeasing the pressures to fold into the fantasy of self perpetuation serves to increase the very aggravations we resent.

   Because of misinformed, misaligned, and misjudged motivations, the purposes inherent to any situation as we encounter the moments of life, are being maneuvered, manipulated, and maligned to suit the whims of an invasive race of unseen unholy beings. Each of our human bodies is an ongoing battleground of sway between health and corruption. Any activity set upon to please the self without regard to Who God is and the expectations He has for us, automatically by default, is in service to the enemy of humankind.

   The adversary feeds and “lives” through subjugating our desires to his (their) identity and intent. So, the justifications we tout in defending a right to do as we wish enable and reinforce the wishes of the controlling adversarial way. However, we have the freedom to do as we wish within the realities of Christ and His restitution to God in our behalf. The difference is the doing we wish to do is from the source of righteousness with regard to the inadequacies of the temporal bodies we inhabit.

   Service to the instinctual yearnings of mortal life can find a justification through the grace of mercy provided by God in and through His Son if we respect the rights of others to their own acceptance of the rules of conduct. In this, we may indulge certain non-deadly sins (lest there is misunderstanding: the Ten Commandments portray the sins of deadly magnitude based in the principles of respect and dignity as children of God) in the course of a day as is our right to partake, in moderation with gratitude, according to our understanding under God’s blue sky. This is not a license to sin, it is an acknowledgement that we are imperfect in an imperfect world where the reasons for what we do are more important than what we do.

When

Romans 1:16-32

   Now is the time to come to the aid of respect, dignity, and honor. There has never been in our lives another time away from now. We look at the past and work toward the future and lose our now in the process. When we get to the future it is then now and the accomplishments somehow do not have the depth of validity we had expected. When we realize there is a God Who knows the "past" and "future" (all time is simultaneous) much better than we do, we can trust Him to see us through the nows of our life to bring us to a future that will be a fulfillment that is truly meant to be.

   As children we were disobedient, rudely self involved, sneaky, and disrespectful to the position of authority our parents held. Still today we are the same unruly children in our heart of hearts because we haven’t grown to respect our own place under the authority of obedience to the purposes God designed for us to inhabit. We do not know how to honestly admire and adhere to the appreciations of the simplicities and grandeur of the awareness of life God so generously gave to us to live. We feel we own our bodies and the self awareness of the light of understanding as if we created our volition and purposes ourselves.

   Our own children are at a loss to know a better way because our example of a right way is corrupted by the actions and words that deny our own place with respect to others and the authorities everyone exists to appreciate.

   When we do as we do with the self assured pride of the results we desire, we are forgetting the results we wish to achieve are opposed to the results God may have in mind for us. It happens when we hold others responsible to behave in a way that will be an example for us to follow. It gives to us a projecting of responsibilities into the hands of others we can then blame when our own pitfalls overcome our expectations. The solution to this is to recognize and honor the positions of authority we hold, as well as the positions of authority others hold, without regard to whether or not the others are dutifully honoring the position(s) they hold.

   This gives to ourselves and others the benefit of the doubt of the trials and tribulations of life and allows the open and honest discourse for forgiveness and reconciliation. It does not mean we are to overlook the irresponsibility of ourselves and others as if there is an unsaid, anything is okay, grace of absolute forgiveness - “don’t say anything and it doesn’t matter”. It means that when we are caring enough to take the responsibilities of others we are bound to through marriage, family, and parentage not to overlook a wrong or an indignation, but to provide the understanding and strength of faith to allow God to see us through any obstacle and endurance.

How

Luke 22:28-37

   The Bible says Jesus Christ died and rose again for everyone so that none should be lost. He became the way to life for the worst person that ever walked the face of this planet. So, the direction of the Gospel is to honestly deliver people from their difficulties instead of forcing them to become the identity of their problems. It is the hidden source of our motivations and ambitions that cause us to be self protective at the expense of others.

   The flare of resentment that emotionally feels like self defense is a defense of the personality not us that has infiltrated our identifying direction to seek a right authority. The defense of right and truth should never be for one’s own justification while the defense of right and truth for the sake of the Gospel and God’s loving kindness will allow our unjust justification in Christ to manifest its reality in our heart and activities.

   We have undeserved forgiveness for everyone and everything they do (including ourselves) but it must only be given in response to a genuine request. If forgiveness and condemnation are bandied about freely to keep the peace at any cost, as if there has been no wrong in one and a devastating wrong in another, the forgiving act itself enables the wrongdoer to wrong us and themselves again - and the condemnation of the wrongdoer removes the opportunity of the Gospel of Christ to be the Gospel it is.

   Unwarranted forgiveness responds to the diabolical forces within us and others and denies us the right to resist negative internal influences. Warranted condemnation denies a wrongdoer the right to deliverance and denies a victim the right to witness God’s power over evil. Paradoxically, many of the wrongs done to us are acted out wrongs through an individual by invading inhuman entities that have overwhelmed the intents and desires of the inhabited person to affect a disordering of Godly seeking and works.

   Many times the demon(s) will depart residence within a person after the damage of intrusive destruction has been accomplished leaving the person holding responsibilities for acts they themselves have no inclination to do. This puts us into an area of confusion about what to do concerning ourselves and others and the wrongs we know we have been struggling to avoid. The only way to overcome the circumstances of the troubles we and others struggle with, no matter the specific act or atrocity, is to learn to see the difference between the person and the infliction that causes us and others to act as we and they do.

   All people are created for Godly purposes while demons, fallen angels, are disembodied spirits exploiting human beings for a physical host to inhabit, in order to strike at God for being God. An argument over any matter is a battle of will and control to alleviate the fears of inadequacy. People, unwittingly identified with the indwelling dark entities that tell them what to like or not like, tend to adamantly defend a right to self assuredness in their wrong. Repentance is not an emotionally remorseful deprecation of self in humility because the emotional intensity corresponding to the depths of wrongful acts attempts to justify a part of oneself that does not belong.

   The emotional aspects of realizing harm done to self and others certainly do exist but there is a numb and empty feeling of despair and disenfranchised nothingness that can overwhelm an individual when a harmful indiscretion is fully understood for what it is. The frustration and anger one has for oneself overtaken with temptation can rise up to seem by the observer to be a vehement denial of the wrong done when it is a denial of the source of the wrong. This is precisely where a responsible, reasonable, ally and representative of the victim has an opportunity to lift the troubled individual out and away from the evil being(s) holding sway.

   The responses, negative and/or positive to the realizations of guilt, need guidance to repentance. Punishment and restriction usually reinforces and drives the identity of the wrong into the wrongdoer and we label the person for the hurtful act they have allowed while intensifying the victim‘s trauma through a deepening sense of permanence. Once someone has a label over their persona, their treatment by others continues to take into account the wrong they have perpetrated because they have become a projected symbol of the wrong within ourselves we want to not see the light of discovery.

   This fear builds upon mistrust and requires the stages of healing to invert into stages of suffering where the driven in damage looks to reinforce itself with more damage. As the levels of fear and fallen expectations of securities interlace with our awareness of the moments around us, we find ourselves weakened and open to the same intrusive evil beings that affected our assailant. When we infiltrate someone with Pavlov style emotional behavior modification manipulations, we are usurping God's created avenues of healing. Ignored in the persuasions of "positive progress through restrictive pressure" is our natural process of choice with understanding reserved for expressive redemptive responses to the Gospel of Christ.

   Since disgust for oneself for allowing thoughts and emotions to reign our compulsions blinds us to the avenues of healing and deliverance, the disgust of others for our plight increases the intensity of our bondage. This deception transfers a portion of the evil of the spiritually crippled attacker into the victim of harm. As disappointment, despair, anguish, and spite build from resentment concerning the trauma of insult and injury, retaliation against the source of tragedy, because of the tragedy, sets out to avenge what could have been but is not longer. This is precisely the process that eventually brought the acting out maniacal intruders into our lives to the state we so vigorously despise and it is the preconditioning used by demons to infiltrate once again another human being.

It is commonly assumed demons reside in a single host, and some do, but more often demons travel from one to another quite rapidly and at will. The protective grace of God seems to be weak or absent while we are deceived into wondering if there is a personal and caring God, and at the same time holding the concept of real live active demonic influences as inconceivable. This posture of doubt combined with the resistance against fact ‘creates’ an atmosphere of denial of the faith we so desperately need to allow God to perform the promises He declares.

   Stealing for example, because it encompasses all onerous intrusions into a person‘s life, liberty, and property, has at its core a pleasure into pain distortion of our natural sensibilities. We oppose ourselves by opposing others because we are opposing God and His plans for our reliance in His way.

   When we treat others as we desire to be treated as children of God, we realize we are fighting against an adversary, an enemy, of our souls. This is where “nice seems right” can be a delusion of manipulation to validate a wrong another is struggling with by validating the right of anyone in Christ to be free from their torment. The respect for the position of ourselves and others according to their place in God, marriage, family, work, and government - in that particular order as an ongoing awareness of priority, gives to us an understanding of community health as God intends it and allows the emotional aspect of self esteem to realize responsibility through our reactive responses to the moments at hand.

Why

Ephesians 6:11-12

   “A place for everyone and everyone in their place.” Freedom, founded in responsibility, has the joy of steadfast strength of purpose away from the bondage of misunderstanding and selfish defense. Rebellion, founded in irresponsibility, has the excitement of determined self destruction away from the duties of understanding and selfless acceptance.

   In the Garden of Eden the only right of decision Eve had when confronted with Satan’s challenge to her authority in Adam was to put Satan on hold and call Adam into the conversation. Her innocence to deceptive pandering would have exonerated her error except she knew the decision to allow God’s authority through Adam to be undermined was wrong. Partaking of the forbidden tree was the second disobedience to the order of life after the first casting aside of her position in Adam. So a fascinated interest in progressive pluralism and diversity is at the core of all conflict anyone is experiencing.

   When we align our interests and activities for God’s sake, instead of cultural pressures and temptations, we will find His love for us removes our love for money as a replacement for the solutions He created for living. Interestingly, the functional positions of associates to managers and owners of a privately held successful modern business is an example of God’s structure of representative authority for us to understand. Employees are compensated well for their contributions to quality products and service. An investor held public corporation changes the load compensation of integrity of each individual in a company, and the quality of service and/or products produced is reduced, in prioritizing profits over the functional purposes of a business.

   There is a traditionally esteemed respect for commerce that upholds business values in the term "customer" that has fallen to the greedy and degraded calloused label "consumer". Money is a means of exchange. Where does that means of exchange come from? The only actual source of money, so it can be used as an exchange, is labor in all its forms including the tools we have devised to do our work for us. But, a tool cannot get paid, so the value of increase from the device is transferred to profit to the company. Greed and self assuredness causes the benefits of the value of tools to be withheld from the laborers who work to operate the machines by transferring the benefit to the company investment share-holders.

   As profits are esteemed in priority over the laborers who are the source, the temptation is to eliminate the costs of labor with the assumption that the tools will uphold the balance. Thus, as people are out of work, they do not have the means of exchange called money to buy the 'products' companies so need to feed the investor's desires. It's where money for money's sake denies the reason money exists in the first place.

   Truth is all inclusive as it is of creation and life. Self determination is exclusive in its destructive posturing in the divisions of the hierarchies of order and peace. The separation of church and state, as is declared in the United States of America, can only be understood from the perspective of a man and his responsibilities unto God through faith in Jesus Christ within the founding purposes of his country. “We the people” established a witness of God’s victory of salvation as a way of life for a people to adhere. Despite its struggles with humanism, and the clever domination by secularist infiltration organized religious denominations are crumbling to, and not because of it, the USA is the premier power of positive persuasion on the planet.

   Religious observance, in the minds and hearts of selfish and perverse mortal egos, fails to comprehend to recognize their bonds of rebellion outside faith in the finished work of Christ. Thus, as a person or group accepts belief systems that appeal to the senses of common fascinations with a particular brand of desire, the truth of Christ crucified and resurrected in our behalf loses the connections of faith unto life for God’s sake. Then, any belief in anything or anyone seems appropriate because it relieves responsibility to the convictions of the heart by replacing reverence and awe with the entrapments of reactionary pleasures to offset the pains of exclusion from reality.

   The knowledge of good and evil reestablishes itself at the service to the adversary of success, in the name of success or acknowledging a misconstrued viability of multicultural religions, just as the pattern(s) of divide and conquer attack has invaded our designed blessings of existence throughout the centuries. The strength and integrity of the United States of America in the world today is because of God’s response to faith in action of the founders’ Christianity. To say the USA is strong because of the tenacity and determination of the people and/or the principles of democracy without acceptance of the Christian religious aspects of why the country is successful, is to say a man’s wife is self contained and has no need of her husband.