The Establishment of Peace, Pt. 1

Ronald Weinland

October 20, 2018

Last Sabbath we had a sermon entitled God’s Mercy. It was a sermon that bridges what we are covering today with what was covered before the Feast and during the Feast. It was about the fact that God wants us to understand He is desirous of pouring out mercy upon us, or at least upon those who truly want it. You have to truly want it and desire it. During the prayer there I couldn’t help but thinking about the comment about mercy and the desire that we have, the thankfulness we have that God offers that to us, and then I thought about the mercy seat of God and that it’s there if we’ll go before God, and understanding what it says in scripture about those who need it, in essence. When do you need it? When do you need to go before the mercy seat of God?

The reality is we need to go before it continuously; we truly do. We need to go before God’s mercy seat on a regular basis. That’s what we do when we repent of sin, when we want help to change, when we go before God and ask for mercy, because we believe it, we know it, we know ourselves, we know what we need and so we cry out to God. God is letting us know because of the things He gave us before the Feast and during the Feast that this is a very important time that we exercise that, candidly, more than ever before in our lives to prepare ourselves for what is ahead and for others to be shaken, to be awakened out of a lethargy, out of the courtyard with the desire to be in the temple.

So before we continue I think it’d be good first here to be reminded of one of the verses that was covered last week that truly says it all for this specific moment in time. It’s Hebrews 4:16. You can just jot it down; I’ll read it to you. As God is now offering us grace and mercy in a very great way to, again, all who will receive it. That’s a choice.

Hebrews 4:16—Let us, therefore, come boldly... That word has to do with a freedom that we have, to understand a liberty, a freedom that God has given to us that others in the earth don’t have, but we have it. I was thinking this morning, what an incredible thing to know that every time you go before God’s throne that that partition is no longer there that separated us from the ability to come before God, to go before God any time. The high priest was only able to go into that area of the temple once a year on the Day of Atonement. What an incredible thing to understand we can go there any time we choose, just as a high priest who went in once a year, except with far greater meaning for us because of our calling, because of what God has given to us, the impregnation of His holy spirit. Sometimes it’s hard for us as human beings to grasp what we’ve really been given, even with God’s spirit.

So again, it says here that we are to therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, to understand the very reason it’s named here a throne of grace is to understand it’s about a desire from God to give us mercy, to give us forgiveness of sin, to give us favor, to give us help whenever we need it in life. He loves us and He wants us to come before that throne of grace, and then we have to choose to do so if we really see the need, if we really want to do it. Choices, choices.

Again, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Well, we always need that help. That’s the reality. We always need forgiveness of sin day in and day out. That’s the reality. But we have to be able to see that as a reality, that that’s what I need, and when I am told that there are things I need to look at more deeply in my life then I need to do that in my life. Which I am doing, which all of us need to be doing, to examine ourselves more closely, to repent more quickly, to cry out to God because there are things so deeply embedded in us that we just have to fight and fight and fight for what is right. We truly do. But we have to see those things in order to fight for what is right.

Well, we’re going to continue now in a new series. You know, before the Feast it became clear that there was a subject that needed to be addressed in a series after the Feast, which is this one here. It’s a subject that was mentioned in the series Trust in God and the series that followed, Healing and Trust in God. Then in the final part of the drawn out series A Mind of Thankfulness it was spoken of again. It was spoken of throughout the Feast. It’s just that this series is going to focus on this a little more closely as a specific focus.

We’re going to begin a new series by reviewing a section of scripture that was covered, again, in the series entitled Healing and Trusting in God as this is the focus of this new series entitled The Establishment of Peace.

We’ve gone through all these sermons to get to this point. To me that’s an awesome thing sometimes to see how God leads and guides and directs those things that He gives to us, that He teaches us Sabbath by Sabbath, holy day to holy day, and I think of all these sermons that spoke of this because it has so much to do with what we need to see.

The Establishment of Peace, and this is Part 1.

Isaiah 57. Again, this was in that particular sermon, Healing and Trust in God. It’s been spoken of before. But here in verse 18 it says, have seen his ways and will heal him. Awesome! Speaking of mankind God says, “I’ve seen his ways. I know his ways and will heal him.” We’ve focused a lot upon that, what it is that God is doing to heal us, to heal the mind. It’s about the mind that has to be changed. It’s about the mind, a sick mind that needs to be healed because the way of man, the mind of man has to change because it’s the opposite of the way of peace. It’s the opposite of God’s way of life. There are things that we have to see in this very deeply so.

God’s desire from the very beginning has been a focus and a vision of establishing peace once He chose to take it away. God made that choice to take away peace. That’s an awesome thing to understand if you know why God did that. That the Great God of the universe, the great God Almighty said there is no other way to have a family but to start by doing this. That’s an awesome thing. It’s in God’s great mercy, in God’s great love, in God’s great plan, something that very, very few comprehend. Those who were scattered after the Apostasy don’t have the slightest inkling of all this. They don’t have the slightest grasp of all this.

How blessed are you to be able to understand these things about God and to grasp what God has been doing, that He sacrificed peace from the beginning of His creation for the sake of His family? It’s an awesome thing and I marvel at it. I marvel what God’s blessed us to see and to understand.

I have seen his ways and will heal him. That’s God’s plan. He made us physical for a purpose. He made us as carnal human beings for a purpose, to experience evil first, to experience the opposite of peace first as human beings so that when the time came for God Almighty to begin to draw us to a different way we’d be able to more objectively, more truly, realistically be able to say, “I have lived one way. I see another way and I want that way of life. I don’t want what this world has to offer. I don’t want the way of selfish, ugly human nature.” That’s how we’re so blessed then. God draws us and calls us and we begin to see something has to change.

I think of something that is going to be covered in the next part of the series about the world. For 6,000 years this has been a major lesson for all of mankind, to experience that which is the opposite of peace. The world has done a jam up job of that. Every war, incredible, what we’ve experienced. What’s amazing is there is no other way for God to create Elohim, His family except that we should experience these things so that we can make the choice when the time comes. Do we really want what God has to offer us? Do we really want His way of life, the only true way of life? Or do we want something else? Or do we want it to come in a different way, which is something else? Which, some who are out in the courtyard want it a different way. They want it their way, see, whatever that might be, which isn’t God’s way, and they have to make a choice: Do I really want what God tells me? Do I really want to latch on to that and make the changes I need to make because I want His way? I am sick of mine because mine only causes misery, unhappiness, drama, drama, drama in life.

I’ll tell you what, that word means more to me and it’s taken on greater meaning as time goes along here, especially in what we’re going to cover in this series as well, because this world is the epitome today of the word drama. We in the Church have sucked up too much of it in the world. We truly have. It affects us and that is the opposite of peace, it truly is, the exact opposite of peace! Awesome to understand that.

I have seen his ways and will heal him. I will lead him also... Then there’s a choice as to whether anyone follows and who follows. And I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him (them) and to his (their) mourners. It has to come to a point in time where inside, if not inwardly as well but even outwardly at times for people to come to a point of mourning, of loathing what this world is like, of loathing one’s own nature, of loathing the ugliness that’s in this world. All the politics, all the garbage, all the things in the news, all the backbiting, all the stabbing in the back, all the evil things that are being done – and then to come to a point in time where you just hurt for the world, you hurt for the people and the suffering that’s out there.

It’s like all those people coming up from Guatemala and coming through Mexico. They want something better. Your heart goes out to them but what can you do? In the world, the way it is, what can be done, because given an opportunity, candidly, most of South America would live here if they could or they would want their government or their place to have the kind of wealth and the kind of prosperity that’s here and to get away from the squalor and the cartels and the corrupt governments that they’re under. They would love this!

Then in Europe they’re experiencing some of the same things because there are people who want to get away from the corruption of government, from the fighting and from the wars and from the evil that exists in the countries they’ve lived in because they see something that’s definitely better than what they have. Can you blame them? Little children, your heart goes out. And what are the answers? Well, they’re squabbling about those things. The reality is they don’t have the answers. They can’t solve this. Europe can’t solve what is happening to them and this country can’t solve what’s happening there.

Is there a need for a change? Amen, there is, absolutely. Thank God He’s about to change it. Thank God!

...and restore comfort unto him and to his mourners. I create the fruit of the lips... Again, of things spoken, of that which has to do with life, of what people see, what they think, what they believe.

It goes on to say, Peace, peace... Peace, peace! Because this is what it’s all about. This is what healing is all about. Once the mind is healed, once the mind has been transformed, once we’re in the God family there is peace. One way, God’s way, which is the way of peace. Not until then is there peace. As long as we’re in this human form there is battle. Even when you’re begotten of God’s spirit there is that battle between drama and peace. That’s the reality. That’s about as simply put as you can get it.

Mr. Armstrong talked about the give and get way. Same thing. It’s just being stated now, today, a different way – drama and peace. It’s what we look forward to having. It’s what we desire to have in life. Peace.

Peace, peace to those who are afar off, because God has a plan. There are those who are way far off yet in the Great White Throne, of those who have lived nearly 6,000 years ago all the way up to the present. They’re afar off! But God has a plan for bringing them to peace because He knows their ways and He’s going to resurrect them in the Great White Throne and give them opportunity for peace. They’re going to be resurrected to a world that’s under one government and has been for a thousand years. The world will have so changed you can’t even begin to comprehend what it’ll be like.

Technology? Ah, we haven’t seen anything! We’re barely scratching the surface of things that God is going to allow mankind to have by the time we get to the end of the thousand years. He doesn’t have to come down and take care of the deserts and the mountains of those things that are going to be changed.

Sometimes I think we have felt, because we haven’t really grasped the depth of God’s plan, that somehow God’s going to come down and just change everything for us and make the desert bloom like a rose, you know, blossom like a rose and blossom like a flower, whatever, you know, and all of a sudden you can plant anything out there and it’ll grow in its season. No, man did to this earth what we did. We created the Sahara desert. We created the problems that are in so many parts of the world and that can be reversed! They’ve already proven that. Science has already proven in certain areas of the world if you do the right things you can reverse the process of what we have screwed up, if we’ll just do it God’s way! Amazing! So the Romans and other went in and stripped parts of Northern Africa and the desert grew and grew and grew.

I think of going to Ephesus in Turkey. We went to visit some places where Paul had journeyed and some of the things written there, a book written about it, the book of Ephesians, of Ephesus, if you will, speaking that part of the world, and some of the construction of buildings that they have there, the rock, of the great library that was there and used to be one of the greatest libraries in the world. Then there were wars and things that happened and I think most of that ended up in the Vatican that wasn’t destroyed.

But anyway, it used to be a port city. A port city – Ephesus. We walked out in the area where the rock had been made where ships came in and docked and there was nothing but land where all that rock was. For eight miles, minimum (I think they said eight; it seemed like it was a lot longer than that) out to the sea, it used to be that it came all the way in. But because the Romans came in and stripped everything out of there it gradually silted in through time and nothing was there and it pushed that great area of a sea that came up into there, and rivers that were big (to that port city). Amazing! All because of what man did.

We have made this earth; we have so messed things up. I think of farming today and what it’s like in this country and how the soil has been ruined and we get chemicals instead. We get things done with food, the genetics and everything of what they’ve done to produce a lot but no value in it whatsoever, and then ways of causing it to grow that only hurt human beings. It doesn’t help. We get all this (you know what it is) in our bodies. We have a lot more problems today than we’ve ever had with human health, though we have so much knowledge of how to address much of it. So we take one chemical or a lot of chemicals and put it in here and then we have other chemicals that pharmaceuticals have now to help counteract some of those things, you know. Awesome, you know! (I’m being facetious.) We’re just one pile of walking chemicals. Incredible!

So God has a plan to heal the earth, and what’s going to take place in the Millennium is about that process. We have to be healed. The human mind has to go through a process of being healed. Once this is offered to the whole world at the same time then mankind can begin to work at healing this earth.

God isn’t going to just come down here and just make it all peachy keen and hunky dory for us! In the very beginning you know what it says? There are going to be people out here just burying bodies for six months! For six months cleaning things up after a war because it’s going to be so atrocious. He doesn’t come down and just take care of the problem for us. We have to learn what war does! We have to learn what the ugliness of drama does, because on a small scale it leads to that. It leads to war, world war in this case.

People have drama in their personal lives, therefore, they have warring in their personal lives and then nations can’t get along and they war with each other. That’s why we have a third world war coming. It’s amazing what you read today in the news.

They’re finally, some of them are finally, starting to wake up to the reality that we have a trade war going on! You can minimize it and try to make it sound like something better than that and we’re just taking care of our own interest and whatever, but I don’t care what you paint it, what you call it, it’s a trade war. I’ll tell you what, every other place on earth is learning to hate us more than they have ever hated us before in this country. They’re taking some of it and they’re reacting to it and they’re “supposedly” making some nice gestures because they have to for their own selfish interests, but all this is going to blow up before long. It’s because of what’s already started right here. We’re starting it. There really isn’t any other way. It has to take place.

So God has a purpose... Peace, peace to those who are afar off and to those who are near. It’s only near when it’s one’s time to be drawn, to be called. Right now that’s us. We’re the ones who are near because it’s our time. There aren’t many of us, but we’re really, really close.

I find this so exciting, that during that war and during the time of the Seven Last Plagues God is going to so humble this earth that they’re are going to be millions, upon hundreds of millions who respond to that, and then when God begins to pour out His spirit and offer His spirit to them that they can begin to see and understand certain things that are happening and understand certain things they’ve heard or are hearing, that all of a sudden there is a great desire to see what God manifests and to see and to understand that His Son has come to this earth and a huge army with him. It’s an army. That’s how it starts out. They’re going to be a part of what takes place in changing this earth, the Government of God.

Peace, peace to those who are afar off and to those who are near, says the LORD (says the Eternal), and I will heal them. Beautiful verse! It says so much. It explains the plan of God, if we understand it. Healing, healing of the mind, healing of the earth because the mind becomes healed or begins to go through a process of healing. And the result? Peace. Peace because we’re able to address our ways.

So this last verse says so very much and it’s clearly revealing that peace is the result, the product of God’s healing. What an awesomely beautiful thing to understand.

You know, I briefly mentioned that we’ve been given understanding that God sacrificed in order to create His family. What an incredible thing, to know that you’re going to create an angelic realm, and what an incredible thing to know that to one of those angelic beings, three are made archangels, but one is going to be made more powerful, more beautiful, with more ability than all the rest, and God knowing that those beings who were created, that there would be a choice of disagreement. We don’t know how long this went. Millions, billions of years? We don’t know. But it was a long, long time. But He knew that within time that there would be the choice made of a disagreement with Him because He was going to create something greater. He didn’t reveal that to them for a long, long, long time.

Just like there are things that God doesn’t reveal to us. Just like there are things that for 4,000 years that people never understood nor grasped and then all of a sudden Christ came along. Joshua the Christ came along and revealed so much more about God’s purpose and God’s plan. Then a Church began. It’s incredible how God has molded and fashioned life to bring us to this point in time.

God sacrificed knowing that by His creation of giving free choice that there would be those in time who would choose something different than His way right in His angelic realm. God knew this! He knowingly sacrificed peace knowing that there would be the choice of some of His creation, because of the way it had to be created with free choice, that they would turn against Him. That’s mind boggling. War in the angelic realm would be the result.

That’s what happened. Things I can’t comprehend. Things we can’t comprehend. Things that Daniel spoke of in scripture of how they fought, Michael and Gabriel and part of the angelic realm fought against Satan and the demons. I don’t understand that but God allows war. He allows for this fighting to take place. He allows the angels to still learn. They’re still growing in their understanding and comprehension of things and they have learned much in the past 6,000 years, primarily those, speaking of those who remain faithful to God, becoming stronger in what they believe and what they see and what they’re living, whereas the others are becoming weaker, more defiled, uglier as time has gone along.

God sacrificed peace and He did so in the creation of mankind, knowing exactly what mankind would be like because it was His intent that mankind be exactly like we are, selfish. Isn’t that amazing? You try to tell that to a Protestant world and they think you’re just loony tunes as all get out. God did that to us? Yeah, He did. He made us physical for a purpose and for a reason. Well, why didn’t He just make us in the God family in spirit from the very beginning? Well, you know what, you have to go through this first. You have to go through calling. You have to go through a bit of a mind change. You have to begin to have this mind transformed and begin to understand things about God’s plan, and then in time you’re able to begin to fit things into place because God’s helping you to fit them into place like a big puzzle (like Mr. Armstrong used to talk about). Then all of a sudden you see a picture that’s getting more beautiful, bigger all the time, clearer all the time, and it’s astounding.

I think of the City, Jerusalem, and the great meaning that God has helped us to come to see in time that’s contained in the very choice of the name of that city, Jerusalem, because so much is about the last part of this word here, “salem” or “shalayim,” speaking of peace. It’s a word for peace. This became the place that was the capital of Judah for a time, all of Israel for a time, I should say, and then Judah later on, the capital both on a physical plane and on a religious plane. It means so much. “Salem,” or “shalem”; it has always been recognized as meaning “peace.” It’s been understood as the city of peace when you put it all together. We understand that.

But the first part of the name is from the Hebrew word “Yeruel,” which means “founded by God.” We’ve never really focused on that, in that respect. Jerusalem is seen, known as the city of peace because of the last part of the name, but the first part is so important to understand as well, “founded by God.”

The Hebrew name “Yerushalayim” literally has the meaning “foundation of peace.” God starts out with something physical to teach us something on a spiritual plane, something that has to do with His plan and purpose for the future and it’s beautiful.

Just like the name Israel, we as a Church were so hung up on the physical aspects of it that when we used to go to Revelation and read about the 144,000 and there was 12,000 from each tribe it was like, well, there have to be literally twelve from Gad, Naphtali, Asher, and on and on it goes, so that they make up the 144,000, because this is a literal, physical thing. The reality is that it wasn’t at all. Then when it talked about a great multitude this has to be something different than Israel because it’s a great multitude that no man can count, therefore, it has to be something different than the 144,000. So at the end we’re going to have 144,000 plus a great multitude that must be a lot greater than that! We’ve had to learn, no, no, no, no, that’s not true. It’s a spiritual thing, the structure, the building of Jerusalem, or that city, Mount Zion, if you will, or different ways of expressing it, Israel, spiritual Israel, some of the same kind of terminology that’s used, has to do with a name, that it’s of God, that God’s the one who has formed everything, planned everything, purposed everything, and it’s in the names that just come out in different ways to say some of the same thing in the plan of God and what He’s doing in creating His family. It’s awesome when we understand it in that light.

Israel, we understand. Yes, there was a physical Israel. It doesn’t matter who it would have been they would have been horrible in their example about living God’s way of life. All the tribes of Israel have lived lousy lives when it came to God’s law and God’s way of life.

So again, “Yerushalayim” has the meaning “the foundation of peace,” a city founded by God, and He is going to establish peace. It’s beautiful, it truly is. God is the one who is going to establish peace. The foundation is from God. He’s the one from the very beginning before anything was ever created, “This is what it’s going to be.” He knows how to create it, how to make it. Incredible!

In the sermon last week about God’s mercy we went through the verses in Hebrews 12 that addresses correction that’s given to us by a very loving Father and why such a thing is necessary. We’re going to go back there because there is more to those verses that we need to review or continue on with, that we need to grasp more deeply.

Hebrews 12:9—Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them respect. Shouldn’t we much more be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a brief time chastened us as seemed best to them. A reality, even in that there is a lot of selfishness because that’s what we are as human beings. That’s all we have apart from God, is to be able to rely upon our own thinking, our own way, and knowing that something has to be addressed in life. Not necessarily always knowing the best way of doing it and so forth, so we so often as parents have to learn the hard way...if they learn. It’s not an easy thing because there is no school where you go to find out how to be a parent, how to rear your children. There are all kinds of children. There is such variety.

I remember, I can’t help but think about a minister one time that got up in Niagara Falls and gave a sermon (he had two young children), and going through and talking about children and talking about things you needed to do and how you needed to do it. My wife and I had a bit of a conversation about it as time went along there and discussed some of it because he had two children who were so passive that he really didn’t know what it was like to rear a child who wasn’t passive. Now, if he’d had one that had been very active and into a lot of things he would have had a different perspective. So what he taught you could tell was through an experience of not having that greater experience of different kinds of children, of what children can be like and what they are and some of the different things you have to address because you can’t do everything the same way, you can’t judge everything the same way. It’s difficult. Hope that makes sense to everyone.

Again here, it’s talking about certain correction, guidance, and direction that parents give in life and it’s making the point we gave them respect, how much more God Almighty? How much more the Great God of this universe, the Father of life who has all power and all might and who loves us with a love that we don’t really grasp without His help, without His spirit. Then with His spirit we begin to see it more and more, we begin to see what God is like, we begin to see, you know, it’s the very mind. That’s how we come to love God because we come to see more clearly that communication that He has with us, of that word that’s being manifest in our minds, in our thinking that we’re able to see the Word, the Logos, the revelatory thought, the thinking of God that He shares with us.

Just like what I shared a minute ago that God has given to us to understand, about how He sacrificed peace in His great plan, of going through all that, and why He did that in the angelic realm, why He’s done that with mankind; because of His love because that love leads us to something far, far greater and it doesn’t come easy. We have to be changed. With that comes a lot of correction because our way is totally wrong. Our way is totally selfish. It isn’t God’s way. He says, “Your ways aren’t My ways. My ways aren’t your ways. My thoughts aren’t your thoughts.” All that has to change.

For they indeed for a brief time chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit... In other words, God knows what He’s doing with us. We’re in the hands of the Great God of the universe and He knows how to mold and fashion things in our lives and with us, and by guidance and direction and correction, and admonition and encouragement, and all the other things He gives to us that help to mold and fashion us into something different. He knows how to do it. We don’t. So it’s for our profit, for our benefit, something better to come as a result of that if we will yield ourselves to the process. ...that we might be partakers of His holiness. So that really gets down to the nitty-gritty of it. So we can be partakers of Him, His holiness, His being, His life.

Now no chastening for the moment is considered to be enjoyable, but painful. It’s hard, it’s difficult, the things we go through in this human life that we have to address. ...nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable—Peaceable!— fruit of righteousness unto those who are exercised or trained as the word is, by it.

Verse 12—Therefore, lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths...straight paths for your feet, unless that which is lame becomes, as it is, not just “be” but becomes turned out of the way, as a result of something then, but let it rather be healed.

Now, this is kind of an awkward translation. We didn’t address this last week but we’re going to today because it’s translated without understanding of the intent of what’s being stated here.

The word “but” as an example here, “but let it rather be healed.” This word “but” here is wrong and gives a completely wrong focus and meaning to what’s being said. It’s the word that more fully carries the general meaning and thought of “and,” a-n-d. It’s going on here and adding something when it says, “that which is lame be turned on the way and...” it goes on to say something else, because the other word tends to throw it in a different direction and with a different thinking. It’ll lead you to the wrong conclusion of what’s being said here.

Then the word “let it,” “let” “it” were just added to give what the translators thought it was saying, and these aren’t even in the Greek. Incredible! So again, the word “rather” is okay if you know what is being said. But even here it’s most often translated as “more” or “much more.” Now, you might go back later on if you want to go through this again, but I’m just going to read it as it is.

Here is what it’s actually saying: “And make straight paths for your feet (unless that which is lame be turned out of the way), and much more be healed.” That’s what the desire is. That’s what God’s desire is, is that we be healed because of something that we go through, a process, that we make straight paths for our feet, that that is our desire, that’s our motivation, because we don’t want to be turned out of the way because of not living right, because of not making straight paths for our feet. If we are making straight paths for our feet much more than, obviously here, we’re able to go through a process of becoming healed by God. That’s what it’s talking about here. So it’s interjected something in between the thought here of making straight paths for your feet and being healed. That’s how we’re healed, by changing our ways, by changing the crooked paths we have of our ways to walk the straight and narrow, if you will, God’s way. It comes through chastening.

Continuing off from where we left off from those verses then from last week: Verse 14—Follow peace. It goes along with the same thought here of making straight paths for your feet because this is what you’re to focus upon. Follow peace with all, with everyone, and holiness... This has to do with that which is spiritual. It’s something that requires God’s spirit and God’s help, because that which is spiritual has to come from God. ...without which no one will see the Lord.

Looking diligently... “Looking diligently.” What does that mean? You’ve got to examine your life continually and you can’t just drift along. Since the sermon last week one more has been disfellowshipped and one more suspended. This is going to go on, I know, okay? How soon, I don’t know, but it’s coming. Because you know, what in so many of these cases its things that have gone on for years of letting down. And that’s what happens. People can become so weak that they’re not dealing with the things they need to deal with in their life. They’ve lived it for so long they can’t even see it, of what needs to be changed, though they hear it.

I would think after a while that even this thing of tithing, that it would be settled. Some with whom you work with sometimes for a long time, they go right back to the same blindness and stupidity as before. That’s a warning because God is not allowing this to continue on.

He’s not allowing wrong relationships, things you think maybe you’re getting by with. God’s going to manifest things one way or another. So that’s why I mention that because these are the things that affect the thinking of people. These are the things that bar and keep people from coming into God’s Church when even their minds have been opened up to the truth, that I have experienced many times in visiting with new people, that their minds have been opened up to the truth but a relationship, sex, and money, those are the things that human beings respond to in the most powerful way, of making some of the most important decisions in their life. What’s more important? What do we really want?

God allows us to have what we want and He won’t give us what we might think we’re going to be able to get by drifting along, by not changing certain things that we know we’ve been told need to be changed. But somehow the mind just gets to a point where it just doesn’t jar anymore, it doesn’t shake anymore. In many ways that kind of boggles my mind but yet it doesn’t because I know the process.

Those things should sober us to reality, all these things that are taking place right now before the Feast, during the Feast, and now after the Feast. Every one of us, every one of us, must be looking diligently at our lives! You can’t do that in a lukewarm, lackadaisical, drifting kind of spirit. If we’re just going from Sabbath to Sabbath, holy day to holy day and not looking at our lives and knowing and crying out to God, “I know, I see what needs to be changed,” and crying out to God for help, it’s over with. C’est la vie. It is what it is. The time is now. It’s not next month. It’s not next year. It’s now. No matter what happens next year the time is now. Judgment is on God’s house now in a way that I’ve never known it to be. All because time has caught up with us. All because we are the ones living at this time, we are the ones living at a time before His Son returns. The Church is going to be of a certain caliber, of a certain mindset, of a certain desire.

Some of the garbage that’s going on out there and the rebellion against God, and the lying that’s going on, God is bringing it to an end. He’ll do it one way or the other. Some of it’s going to be cleaned up toward the end here just in some horrible ways. It won’t be through something that I have to do as a part of my job, it’ll be something that God does directly. I think of those who didn’t go in the promised land. They all died.

What a horrible thing to get to a point where we have opportunity, the impregnation of God’s spirit, and then we treat it so shamefully sometimes.

Looking diligently lest anyone fail of the grace of God. I think of that for now more than ever because there has never been a time where God has inspired things to be said, where He’s given us a focus like He has now. There’s never been a time since 1969, since I’ve been in God’s Church, that I’ve ever seen anything like this or experienced anything like this as a minister.

Lest anyone should fail of the grace of God. And I think, what a horrible thing, because God’s grace is something He wants to give. He desires with all of His being, He called us for the purpose of receiving grace, and we’re the only ones that can cut that off. Our choices are the only thing that can stop that from coming into our lives. I think what a horrible thing to not receive it. That’s why I said what I did in the beginning, “For those who will receive it, mercy, grace.”

...lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble/annoy you... Just get to a point where sometimes things begin to annoy people. I think of the word “drama.” It may be getting to the point where it’s starting to annoy some. “Is he going to give a sermon without speaking of drama?” No, I’m not until God says go on with something else. That’s good in many ways. I hope we understand that, that we’ve got to come to a point in time – now, I’m saying this a little facetiously but it may be true – that if we hear something for a time after a while ,“This is the focus, drama, drama, drama. I’m tired of drama,” that’s good. Get tired of drama. Get so SICK of drama that you hate it so much that you don’t want it in your life anymore! That’s the point.

We’ve got to come to a point where we so hate drama that we start making a change. We will not make a change unless we hate it. Individually and collectively. That’s the way with any kind of sin. You’ve got to hate the ugliness of whatever the sin is. You’ve got to come to a point where you so detest it. Through that process then of hating something to that degree then the mind can work toward wanting to change that, to thinking differently. That’s a beautiful thing, the fruit that can come, the fruit of righteousness, the peace that can come by yielding to this process.

...looking diligently lest anyone fail of the grace of God. I think what a horrible thing to happen, and yet it’s happened to thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds, I don’t know, of thousands of people in the past 2,000 years who were given an opportunity. “Many have been called but few have been chosen.”

...lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, sometimes in relationships. Because peace, a lot of it has to do with relationships, relationships with people outside, speaking of the world, that don’t understand the same things you do whether it be on the job or elsewhere, relationships and how we think toward them and things that we might begin to allow to annoy us to a point where it begins to adversely affect our thinking in a wrong way, in a way that God doesn’t want for you to think. You know, Christ plainly said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” Stephen basically said the same thing while he was being stoned to death, “Don’t lay this sin upon them.” Basically, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” Same sort of thing.

Think what an incredible mind to be able to deal with the world around us in such a way that we don’t get drug into the drama. They’re living drama and they can’t help it, but we don’t have to live that. We don’t have to allow wrong feelings and wrong thinking to annoy us, to get on our nerves, to bother us to a point that it hurts our relationship and our thinking toward them. We should be able to deal with everything around us. This is a battle because none of us do this perfectly by any measure. We have a long way to go, every one of us.

You want some change to focus upon? There is some change to focus upon, to look diligently at. Because we have a lot of things we do in mixing with this world. How do we deal with that? How do we work with that? Are we at peace? They may not be but you know what, we should be. So much of it has to do with how we deal with it.

And thereby, it says here, many be defiled, lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau... So I think of terms like spiritual idolatry, spiritual adultery, where we place other things before God – idolatry – where we lift up other things above God in the sense we make choices other than what God tells us to do, spiritual adultery or the fornications, it talks about here, some other way than what God says, any other way and mixing with that and bringing it into our life is a spiritual adultery because we should only have God’s way in our life. We have to always, as it talks about here, looking diligently, in that respect, examining our lives closely, asking God for help to see. Because there are some things we can’t even see until God shows us. I mean, most everything is that way that has to be changed. God just has to show us and to cry out for God to help us to see the ugliness.

...or profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. You think, now how dumb can that be? A great physical birthright that you will treat so cheaply as to have something for the moment because you want it, whatever that might be, and yet it happens all the time in God’s Church, that we on a spiritual plane can choose something that we want and if we’re not careful sell everything else away—after all that’s been said—because we want something else so much above and beyond what God offers us. I think what a sad, sad commentary on human nature and mixed with the blessing of God’s spirit in our lives, because they don’t mix. There is a battle that has to take place. If we’re not battling there are problems.

Verse 17—For you know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, for a change of mind. He really didn’t want that. See, that’s the problem. ...he found no place for repentance, though he sought it – not repentance, the blessing. Some want the blessings, but they don’t want to do what it takes to get there. They want something else. They don’t want to change their way. They don’t want it enough to address the sin. They don’t want it enough to cry out to God for help to change the thinking of the mind, see, because there is the battle. Beautiful verses here.

For you know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, a change of mind, though he sought it, the blessing, carefully with tears. You know, sometimes we can come to a point, maybe even of separation from the Body, and we can be mournful because we miss the friendships, we miss what we had before, and there can be tears over it, but not change. That’s what’s happening too often out here, and not change, not real repentance.

That’s why it boggles my mind to think that we can go through something and address things so clearly, so succinctly about some of the most basic of God’s law. Again, I’m referring to things like tithing because you can’t get any more basic than that, and the Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath. But tithing we know about.

Now, it’s not that we go through it and scrutinize it, but some things become obvious. Some things are just obvious. And candidly, God reveals them. It’d be good if we could learn that. God’s in charge of His Church. He reveals things. He reveals things to His ministry, of things I know.

Like I had one person at the Feast come to me and ask, when he acknowledged that he had certain sin in his life that he came to understand more deeply because of a sermon given there, and wanted to know, he said, “Did you know that I had this, that I had done this before?” And I basically said, “No, I didn’t.” Then a little bit later we crossed paths and I said, “I wanted to make a bit more to the story. I didn’t know specifically what it was, but I knew you were having problems. I knew.” It doesn’t take rocket science, especially with God’s spirit, especially with as many years of training that God has given. That doesn’t even take into account that which is far more important – God’s holy spirit that He gives to do the job.

God reveals things, but we have to make the choices. That’s why I can’t overemphasize enough the reality of how God works with us. God doesn’t just come down and tell us every sin we have in our life and say, “This is what it is. This is a book,” and start unrolling a scroll. No. Thankfully He doesn’t do that. We couldn’t take it. We get a little bit at a time of what we can see. We generally start when God calls us with some very physical things – Sunday and Saturday, Christmas, Easter, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Feast of Tabernacles and on. We start seeing some of these. We deal with them more on a physical plane than we do on a spiritual plane, candidly, in the beginning. Tithing, how we do our finances. We start addressing some on a physical plane. Later on, sometimes much later on we begin to understand the spirit of those things. God doesn’t just unload on us all at once; thankfully, it’s a little bit at a time.

Sadly, we don’t seem to receive sometimes the things that we really need most in our life when it comes to certain change and to certain things we need to address on a spiritual plane.

Isaiah 57. So it takes a lot more than just tears when we don’t get something we think we should want or think we would like to have and come to a point in time then that we are told we can’t have it.

Sometimes people have read this verse up here in a very wrong way because they don’t understand. It wasn’t that he was trying to find “a place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” They think that it’s about repentance. No, no. He didn’t repent at all. He just was sad he couldn’t have his way and the blessings that go with it. That’s what every person does when they go their own way, live sin, wallow in sin, when they know there are things they have to address and cry out to God for forgiveness of. One day there will be some weeping and gnashing of teeth if that doesn’t change. There will be tears to think what was given up. How foolish. How foolish.

So the question becomes how much do you want what God is offering? Is there place in your life, in your thinking for change in mind and how you are to seek God’s way, the way of peace? Because that’s what this is about. It’s a question of whether you are willing to follow after peace because that’s a choice. We have to decide do we want to follow after peace? Is that what we really want or do we want to follow after drama? There are too many in God’s Church caught up in drama still. You’ve got to hate it. You’ve got to want to see what produces peace, how can I have peace? How can I address things of drama around me and not get swallowed up by it and let it become a part of my drama in my life then? We all have that battle, of that which we have to address in those areas.

Does anyone allow bitterness, distress, antagonism, resentment, cynicism, a negative mentality, drama to fester that then begins to produce trouble or annoyance in one’s life? Because that’s what we’re talking about. It’s not peace. You have to want peace. You have to follow. There are things you have to do to follow after peace. It doesn’t just happen.

Isaiah 57:19—I create the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace to him that is afar off and to him that’s near, says the Eternal, and I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest. We have to realize here that there are two ways of life, the give and the get, the peace and the drama, and they’re opposed to each other, they’re different. Or peace and war; you can say it many different ways because drama is a kind of war in our human lives. It’s a war against God’s way of life.

The reality is is we all have portions of this in our life and God wants us to understand here it’s wicked, it’s evil. It’s evil. Selfishness that I’ve talked about in times past, it’s evil. It really is. It’s not the give way, it’s the get way. Selfishness is get, get, get. Drama is about the same sort of thing. It’s just saying it in different terms so we can understand.

But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot west, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. What a great way of expressing it. Mire and dirt. Things that get so troubled up and it just stirs things up and it gets cloudy, and instead of pure water, clean water, it’s filthy water. That’s akin to what our lives can be like. It can either be crystal clear and blue, refreshing, something you want to drink, or it can be something that looks pretty bad that you don’t want to partake of, you don’t want to be a part.

But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace to the wicked, says God. So where there is wickedness, where there is evil, where there are these things that exist that are opposite of peace, well, obviously it’s not there then.

Peace is the product, the result of living God’s way, of coming into unity and oneness with God and His ways. That’s as simple as it gets. We can say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” What does that mean in your daily life? Where is that not at work properly in your daily life?

So again, hopefully we are getting a little tired of hearing about drama. I wish I had that little llama up here. I’d squeeze him. Because that’s what it’s about, it’s about seeing what it produces. You squeeze it and you see it, it’s there in our life. We ought to see it that way. If we see it that way then it’s not a pleasant thing to look at; it’s not a pleasant thing to smell. That should want us to get rid of it ever more so.

So hopefully we’re getting to the point where we’re really starting to hate the thought of it, that we’re seeing it more clearly for what it is when it pops up in your life. Because I’ll tell you right now it’s happening every day. It happens every day one way or another in your life around you, somewhere in thinking. We have to cry out to God to be able to see it. Any kind of sin that’s out there, sometimes you just have to cry out to God, “Help me to really abhor the ugliness of it; to see it and to abhor it,” to get to where you really detest it. Because the more you can detest it, I guess you should say, the uglier that it is to you, the easier it is to fight against it, the more the desire is to fight against it, to be on guard against it, looking diligently then day by day.

So again, the reality is that peace is the opposite of drama.

I’d like to read what an elder sent to us in the most recent monthly elder’s report. He said, “I was trying to understand exactly what you meant by drama recently. Initially it might seem like drama just happens to us because of trials in life and can’t be helped. But I realize that this is not what you mean. I found a definition in the Urban Dictionary which helped me, which I quote here in part: ‘A way of relating to the world in which a person consistently overreacts to or greatly exaggerates the importance of benign events.’”

Now, this is good on a very physical plane, but it goes much, much deeper than this, and I hope we’re beginning to see that. Much, much deeper in the definition that God is helping us to see about what drama really is, because it’s everything that is the opposite of peace.

It goes on to say here in this definition: “Typically ‘drama’ is used by people who are chronically bored or those who seek attention.”

Now, sadly in this world children are growing up bored, and because of technology and so forth it’s a huge problem. What can I say? And how bored are you when you’re walking down the street and you’ve got to look at yourself and you’ve got to put yourself in these different poses? That, to me, it’s sick. What is our life turning into when we turn in so inward that we think like that? I think some people misunderstood when I talked about selfie sticks. They are fine to have, just don’t use them like the world. Selfies are fine to take. It’s a good way of taking a picture, sometimes, when someone isn’t there to hold a camera, but you can sure go too far with it too, can’t you, see?

It’s like this thing of texting. I’m constantly seeing people when you drive who are texting. People who are at the light and people honking behind and they don’t know what’s going on. It’s like, “Oh, it changed. I went through another light,” because they’re in a different world. People are bored with life, trying to find ways of not being bored. We get caught up in it if we’re not careful.

As it says in this definition here, “Typically ‘drama’ is used by people who are chronically bored,” or just bored, or even just a little bored, doesn’t matter, “or those who seek attention.” Sometimes people seek attention. The selfie stick – put it out there for everybody else to see. Let the whole world see it on the Internet. “Look at me! You don’t know what you’re missing out on! Look at me!”

Going on: “People who engage in ‘drama’ will usually attempt to drag other people into their dramatic state, as a way of gaining attention or making their own lives more exciting.” What a sad scenario that we might get caught up in drama to add a little more excitement to our life. That’s just not good that we would get caught up in drama in such a way that we bring it into our lives, live it, that somehow it adds something to our lives to make it more enjoyable, more exciting? I’ll tell you what, this is happening. It happens way, way, way too much.

So he went on to say, “So I think drama is used to drag people away from what’s important and distract them by things which often involved conflict, finding fault, and things which are opposite to God’s way of life.” Absolutely! See, this is what we need to be in tune with, to understand how it can affect our lives in a very negative spiritual way. “Hence, I note the importance of staying away from gossip, politics, and taking sides.”

Important. It affects our judgment. It affects so many things in life of how we think, and yet we live in an age where this is at such a height it’s just mind-boggling. Hopefully we see it.

So we went through the Internet. There are so many things on the Internet that are geared to helping people with drama today. 5 steps, 7 steps... They’re out there, of dealing with things of drama. I just put it in and plugged it in to see what’s out there and so much of the world is only beginning to recognize that there is an issue here in society, and hence even some of the definition you find, it still goes back to drama. It’s like a play. Anyway, something on a stage, something that’s produced on TV or a movie. You think, no, let’s get on with the word today. Help me to see what drama is today. How does it affect life? Well, it just about affects everything that’s out here today in how you’re live your life and how you think that stirs up your life.

So many people have been drug down in God’s Church by drama it’s not even funny. If we allow certain things to pull at us, on the outside especially, and we allow that into our lives, it carries a horrible, horrible toll spiritually.

Anyway, there are numerous things on the Internet that are geared to helping people with drama. I’m going to quote excerpts from one such article with a few of my own inserts along the way just to clear it up, clean it up a little bit.

Here it is: “Drama often begins with an assumption from someone, a negative interpretation of a situation, person, or event that leaves a person feeling hurt and wanting to share their pain with others.” Hmmm. Don’t you just love it? Don’t we have enough trial in life, enough pain in life, enough suffering in life without trying to share the rest of it with the world?

I think of what’s going on in politics today and I think of people’s lives that are so messed out up there and what they’re involved with and the bitterness and the anger that’s being festered up by it, and all that’s so negative and the opposite of peace indeed.

Going on: “However, it’s important to remember that you and you alone are in control of your emotions and thought processes.” I thought, “Wow! That’s pretty good.” That’s awesome advice. No one can make a person angry except one’s self. No one can make you happy except yourself. You are in charge of your mind; no one else is. No one makes you do anything or think a certain way. No one forces you to do that. But we choose. We make choices all the time. Awesome!

“So it’s important to remember that you and you alone are in control of your emotions and your thought processes.” No one else causes us to get mad. I hear somebody sometimes, even within the Church about different things that have happened, and I hear, “Well, so and so did this, they did that,” and then all hell breaks loose. A war breaks out and they hate each other, they loathe each other, they can’t stand each other, they can’t be around each other. Think, in God’s Church? And sometimes even in marriages? That just boggles my mind! How can that be? How can that exist in God’s Church? The reality is it really doesn’t. Not really. We’re on the outside, we’re not in, in that case. We’ve cut ourselves off somewhere if that happens. These things that can happen in relationships. We need to understand.

Going on here: “What somebody may have done or said to you was a fact, it happened.” That’s, in other words, how we think. “Now it’s your responsibility to choose how you’re going to interpret the situation.” We all have choices to make and we all judge in different ways. We have to be careful how we do it.

Going on: “So then, are you going to make assumptions about why this person did or said what they did?” Because people do all the time, make assumptions, think they heard something a certain way, interpret something a certain way. There are constant things like this that go on in communications where people misunderstand or choose to interpret it in a different way. I don’t marvel at it, it’s just human nature. Sometimes you watch the news and you know exactly where people are coming from. Questions that reporters ask and you know exactly what they think and what they’re trying to make the picture be, what they want you to see. It’s not that that’s what’s really happening but that’s what they have interpreted it to be, that’s what they want to see it as and so that’s what it has to be. The questions, they can’t help themselves, they’re prisoner to it. Do we do that? Can we be that way in our lives? Do we adopt some of that in our thinking, in our actions and how we treat one another and think about one another?

Going on: “You may make assumptions about their motives.” Oh, that happens regularly. Whenever there are disagreements a lot of times people have made assumptions about someone else’s motives. You can’t know someone else’s motives unless they just flat out tell you, “My motive, my intent is I really dislike you, and because of that I called you that name!” They don’t go back and tell you things like that. But we do that as human beings, we make assumptions about motives. Someone is in our thoughts. There are only two now, God Almighty and His Son, that have that ability, that they know the thought and the intent of the heart, the mind.

So again, “You may make assumptions about their motives, their inner thoughts, how they intend to make you feel.” It’s from us! We can only know our own thoughts and intent and motives. Well, we really can’t without God’s help, not genuinely so.

Going on: “When you do this and choose to interpret their actions negatively you’re creating a drama without fully understanding the entire situation, causing yourself and others only more hurt.” It kind of gets down to working on a physical plane with people who have drama in their life and they don’t get along with one another, they don’t get along with someone, whether it be in a marriage, whether it be in a work relationship, whether it be someone else in an organization, even a Church or whatever it might be, just basically people not getting along and with relatives or whatever, some relative, whatever it is that comes up in life.

So sometimes people just create drama without really understanding the entire situation and make something bigger than what it really is, or just get caught up in it. Why do that? If somebody else chooses to live it, that’s their choice, but I’m not going to be a part of it.

“Another significant cause of drama is miscommunication in the use of sly comments, sarcasm, and gossip. There is no constructiveness.” Now, this is something we need to pay attention to because this happens way, way, way too much in God’s Church sometimes. We have to be very careful of various kinds of comments, of sly comments. Sometimes things can be said with a bit of truth mixed in it, of something you’re trying to communicate, and then making it kind of frivolous and joking or whatever it might be. You have to be careful what you say and what the motive is behind what is said, what comes out of the mouth towards someone else because it can cause problems, it can cause hurt in relationships, it can cause people to be hurt. Do we have to be on guard to that? Yes, because we’re human beings and we do stupid things and we allow stupid things to come out of our mouth sometimes because of our own emotions and feelings.

Sarcasm? It’s not a good thing to use on a regular basis by any measure. Once in a while? Be careful. Be careful of being sarcastic in comments that are made because sometimes there is something deep behind that. You have to be careful. Gossip, talking about others. There are some things that just shouldn’t happen in life.

Going on: It says here, “There is no constructiveness in those things, and such things only serve to heighten the confusion and misleading information that drama thrives on.” I’ll tell you, and drama does thrive on drama. It just gets bigger and bigger. That’s why I like that one about the water’s being stirred up and all this junk that gets stirred up with it, the dirt and everything else that’s there. That’s what it’s like, just getting something bigger to scoop it up with.

“To an extent we are all a result of our environment and the people with whom we surround ourselves. So if we’re experiencing extended periods of drama in life it’s probably time that one question the environment and the people in it.” I thought that was pretty good. Because we have to make choices, and sometimes we put ourselves in situations or places that aren’t healthy for us, and sometimes it’s wise to make changes to that in how we deal with it in life.

Anyway, I just wanted to read some of that so we really, really hopefully get more and more to the point where we really, really, really, really hate drama. Because it sucks! And it exists way, way, way too much in God’s Church. You’ve got to hate it to get rid of it. You’ve really got to hate it to not want it to be a part of your life or to want it out of your life. You’ve got to loathe it and see it for what it is and become aware of it around your surroundings.

Ask God for help. Just ask God. Just try this. Ask God for help (be careful, ask for mercy in this), but ask Him for help to see any kind of drama that exists in you and around your life, in your life around you in your surroundings, but also in self because we all participate in it. If you don’t understand that and don’t see that ask God for help to do so because it’s there, it exists just as a result of having selfish human nature that we have. It exists.

Let’s turn over to 1 Peter 3. So again, I hope we’re grasping some of this, that the reality is that peace is the opposite of drama. Generally, we just think of peace and war. Now, those are two great extremes indeed, but it doesn’t have to be to the extent of absolute all-out war. There are things that lead up to it just as there are things that lead up to being able to have peace. You have to follow peace. For peace to exist there are many things along the way. For war to finally exist there have to be many things along the way, and it’s a lot of drama.

Just like what we see between nations right now, a lot of drama going on out there in the South China Sea. A lot of drama going on in Europe right now. A lot of drama going on between, you know, migrants of various nations, of people wanting to get into various countries. So much so that they’ll risk their lives on a raft that you’d think you’ve got to be insane to get into to cross a sea that can be so treacherous at times.

1 Peter 3:10. Now, this is a paraphrased quote from Psalm 34, but we’re going to read it here as Peter refers to this. Verse 10—For he who wants to love life and see good days... Now, we want that. We want to love life, the kind of life that God says we can be a part of and experience and have. And to see good days? I don’t want to see bad days. You know, we want to see things get better, and we realize there’s so much change that has to take place in this world, but even in our own lives.

...let him refrain his tongue from evil. So we have to be careful of what comes out of our mouth toward other people, what we say. I just think of that one word “gossip” alone that has been in times past. I don’t see it to the degree it used to be in God’s Church by any measure because God’s Church has come a long, long way in so many of these things. Just like so many have commented about the Feast, about the closeness of people in the Feast this year, being at a height that so many have not experienced in times past to the same level as it is now. That’s a good thing to see the growth that’s taking place. But there is more that we have to do because of getting prepared and ready for what’s going to take place in front of us and why God wants us to address these things even more so in our lives right now.

But I think of this thing of gossip, especially when there used to be churches of 300, 400, and 600 scattered. Well, right here in Cincinnati, there were five churches here. 1,600 finally out of all five when they would come together for a holy day or whatever. And boy, do I remember the gossip back then sometimes. Things where people were saying between one Church and another, and some of it from the ministry, candidly, of this minister and what he did, and this minister, what he’s doing. It just solidified things that shouldn’t exist that God showed me that this should not exist. It shouldn’t be. It’s not reflective of God’s Church. It went through the Body.

So, he who wants to love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no deceit. You’ve got to be on guard. You’ve got to look diligently. We’ve got to be close to God and ask God for help to be on top of this and to realize we’re going to do things by habit on a regular basis. The more we see what we’re doing wrong the more you have to cry out to God for help to change it, because we’re creatures of habit and there are things we do and have done that we just have to face and change right now.

Verse 11—Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace. So it’s a matter of choices we’re making, of going through a process here of wanting peace and pursuing it. For the eyes of the Lord are over/upon the righteous, and His ears are unto their prayers. This word “and” again, should be “and,” which is better here – and the face of the Lord is upon those who do evil. So God’s face sees it all. God, in other words, sees it all. He sees those who do evil and He sees, His eyes are upon those who are striving to live right. His prayers are open unto them, in that respect, speaking of the Church.

Again, peace is something you have to seek after, it’s something you have to work after, it’s something you have to pray about and help you to see the joy, the fullness, what it does to the mind.

How do you describe peace in your life? How often do you really experience it? To what degree do you experience it in your life? And what does it mean to you? Because peace is a beautiful thing. When you’re at a point where you’re maybe at the most in the sense of being in harmony with God and oneness with God, and when you see that isn’t the case because of things that are happening or things you have done, things you have said, actions you’ve done because of careless human nature, you’ve got to fight against those things and cry out to God for help to be something different.

I wrote down a few words here, something about drama that I wanted to comment on, of words that are associated with it, words and actions such as distress, stress, agitation, confusion, disagreement, hate. What happens in a person’s life when these things begin to be festered up in the thinking, in the mind? Drama starts coming up. It starts coming. It rears its ugly head. It’s going to emerge out of here. Peace doesn’t come out of this.

That’s why I think about what it says, I think it’s in James; “Where do wars and fighting’s come from?” It’s this thinking. Today it’s like saying, “Where did drama come from? Where does drama come from?” Because when we think of wars we tend to go beyond that and we think of nations fighting. Well, there is a lot that happens before you get to that point and it starts in families. It starts in families. It starts in how individuals live in their own life, whether they be single or in families, it starts here. That’s where it begins. If we don’t, which the world doesn’t and people don’t, understand a difference there and they’re living that in their life then that’s why it gets stirred up as it does and leads into wars, candidly.

Anyway, stress, agitation, confusion, disagreement, hate, discord, jealousy, envy, worry. Now, I’ve seen these things and dealt with these things in counseling with people or dealing with some of the problems and situations that have crept up in the Church. It doesn’t take long. It just happens because we’re a human being. It happened last month or so here leading up to the Feast, during the Feast, and after the Feast.

...jealousy, envy, worry. They’re going to produce something if you allow them to exist in your life. They’ll break out into drama. You can’t help it.

...fighting, arguments. That just screams drama already. It’s there. It already exists. It’s manifested.

...overreaction, stirring dissention, being negative, inflating the negative, being pessimistic, a willingness to believe or see the worst, hopelessness, distress, gloominess, feuding, disputing, misjudging. As I’m going through this I think, I can’t help but think of the news and politicians and governments right now and what the world is doing, because these things exist. They exist on a personal plane then in people’s lives as well.

...misjudging, judging harshly. You think these things don’t exist in the Church, in our lives sometimes, of things we need to see and ask God for help to fight? Especially, we all have different personalities and different thinking and different things that have made us what we are and we have to cry out to God individually as to what it is that our battles are.

That’s why I’ve talked about the 1, 2’s, and 3’s. Don’t forget the 4, 5, 6 and on down the line. But there are those that are the top of the list that we should know clearly because you know why? Because they’re just smacking you in the face on a regular basis because that’s who you are.

...being pessimistic, a willingness to believe or see the worst, hopelessness, distress, gloominess, feuding, disputing, misjudging, judging harshly, condemning, cutting down others, critical, divisiveness, conflict, troubled, contention, turmoil, strife, unrest, and on and on and on it goes, just drama, drama, drama, drama. It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere in the world around us, everything that’s the opposite of peace. So again, peace is the opposite of all these things, two totally different ways of thinking and being.

What way of thinking do you want? What is it you’re following after? What is it that you want with all of your being? Hopefully it’s peace.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1