“Dearest,” said the wife, “Let’s stop arguing and compromise. I’ll admit I’m wrong if you say I’m right.”

“Okay, Sweetheart,” said the husband, “But, I don’t believe in compromise. And since I’m a gentleman, you go first.”

Then the wife said, “Ok… I admit it. I’m wrong.”

To which the husband replied, “You are absolutely right!”

Then the wife responded with, “But, you just said I’m wrong!”

“No, Darling, suggested the husband, “You, said you’re wrong. I said you are right.”

The wife replied, “Well then, that makes us both right!”

To that, the husband said, “Yes! If only we had realized that before.”

The wife then said, “Before what?”

“Before the vase was broken,” the husband said.

The wife replied, “It’s really only a vase, and better to have lost such a wonderful vase than to have had nothing to lose.”

“I have you. Vases can come and go, but there is only one you,” the husband replied.

“Then, we were both wrong…” the wife said.

“Yes,” the husband agreed. “We both care to be right and are sometimes wrong in how to go about it. That is why we need our Father in heaven to guide our steps.”

“Thank you! You are so wonderful!” the wife responded.

To that, the husband said, “And you’re the most beautiful woman that ever walked the face of this planet!”

Then the wife said, “When you’ve said that before, I really never understood what you meant …”

“I appreciate your modesty,” the husband said.

Where it all Began

   What may on the surface seem to be an honest witness of God’s own Word to Adam and Eve is Satan’s exploitation of the respect in Authority God had with Adam and Eve, and the respect of authority Adam had with Eve to God. Challenging her to challenge God’s Authority through disrespecting their obedience to God through Adam, Satan prompted Eve to respond to him through her own sense of indignation with: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ‘Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.’”

   In this, Eve gave up her respect to Adam’s authority through her initial attempt to counteract Satan’s disrespect to God. Through Satan’s appeal to her curiosity, he thus undermined Eve’s dependence to rely in Adam, for God’s sake, by tempting her pride of personal protectionism in defending herself (which was actually of Adam in God). Satan then took authority directly from Eve’s independently expressed will by responding with the direct lie: “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

   Satan’s ulterior motives through gossip, the stolen attentions of the Word of living, was to use a host of compliance between Creation and his desire to have things his perverted way. People no longer had direct communication with their Creator, so God established a Temple where a faithful high priest would stand in for them unto and to God. Thus, the arranging and sacrificial compensation for people’s fallen-ness was provided via God’s particular presence of Authority transferred to the people through the priests.

   The “limited” availability of God’s will through the Temple necessarily required leadership by the priests in the stead of God’s leadership in direct communication with a man and his wife together. But, in their controlling pride of self-protective dishonesty, God’s presence at the Temple was used as a backdrop for many people’s indignation against others’ failures, to serve the mind's eye. Resulting in a haughty “me first” typing of others, especially ones we are most accountable to and most accountable to us, into compartmentalized perceptions of twisted logic about who is accurate, and who is inaccurate.

   In this, faithlessly rejected is the Word of Living Gospel unto Salvation God supplies, by rejecting people who do not suit the status quo. However, Jesus Christ’s ministry on earth, and His fulfillment of Victory over humankind’s Fall into the knowledge of good and evil, re-established peoples’ abilities to properly and directly communicate with God the Father. Victory is achieved by and through communications with marriage partner, and with respect to the couple’s authority in Christ over their children to guide them into Christ’s leading in their own lives.

   This is why the veil to the Holy of Holies in the Temple was torn in two. In Christ’s Authority there is no longer a need for people to find God’s presence at the Temple (the denominational church organization), through pastoral leadership; to realize the life He has for them to live. Leadership is reinstituted by marriage, in Christ, the way God created it to be. The central message for all living from God, as witnessed to in the Bible, is He does not desire to be taken for granted; “Seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall be given…”

   As people created in His image (‘image’ being the representation of His Truth of being in Christ the Word), we are to be respectfully asked to do what we can do in honor of our very living existence unto God. Taking people for granted who are in responsibility to us in marriage, family, and wider social situations, as if they are somehow obligated by existence to comply with automatic self-directed service to others, rejects the same principles of integrity Satan used to violate Eve’s respect in rejecting Adam’s authority from God, and thereby Adam’s respect for God.

   The Word of Truth of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, is the tree of life and living as all things of our Father in heaven are of His righteousness in creation. The false word of obstinacy, the seed of gossip and self-importance, is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the antipathy of wholeness that is the militaristic communal integration of fallen entities possessed wholly within the bonds of satan. The first man Adam’s subjugation to the seeds of false Gospel was ‘formed’ by the adversary’s clever assignation with Eve.

   Lucifer left his place of God given authority to guard Christ’s mercy seat by transferring his gifts of prominence to the realm of human beings where those same gifts of praise and honest adoration are functionally inappropriate in their application to human endeavors. The ‘right thing in the wrong place’ became the ways and means of people in their attempts to socialize their senses of importance in the face of mortality. Thus, peoples’ survival/continuation is caught in the unbalanced need for livelihood, self protection in the distance away from God’s full and open natural protection, as opposed to giving up life itself so that further generations may have their place.

   In order to wisely reestablish His righteousness through Adam with Eve over satan’s stealth and debauchery, God provided an avenue of respective authority in His promise to satan, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Genesis 3:15. This divine sentence pronounced against satan after the fall of humankind through Eve/Adam was also a prophecy, embracing all mortal times to the close of time; signaling the great conflict through all conflicts to indwell all the races of men who should live upon the earth.

   “I will put enmity…” God declares. This enmity is not created to naturally be entertained. When man transgressed the divine law, his nature became evil, and he was in a ‘love/hate’ catch-22 harmony, and not mindfully in opposition, with satan (“What will ‘they’ think, say, or do about me if I do, say, or think this or that?”). Through his instinctual will of intellect, there exists no enmity between sinful humankind and the originator of sin. Both became evil through apostasy – as satan’s method of rebellion against God became his likeness, so became man in his ambitious approach to gain an advantage.

   The renegade unredeemed to God in Christ person, both religious and non-religious, is never at rest, except as he or she obtains sympathy and support by inducing others to follow their example. For this reason fallen angels and wicked people unite in desperate companionship; deceptively intentional by demonic entities and unwittingly deceived by worldly entangled people. Had not God expressly punctuated His will, satan and man would have entered into an uncloaked defiantly direct alliance against heaven.

   Instead of treasuring enmity against evil, the entire human family would have been united in opposition to God. But, people are born with an inherent yearning to seek God through the natural measure of the gift of faith for living He plentifully supplies. Satan tempted and tempts men and women to sin, as he had caused angels to rebel, that he might thus secure a league in his warfare against heaven. There was no dissent between hisself and the fallen angels who were absorbed into his influence like sugar is dissolved into water.

   Dark angels, demonic entities, operate the courses of cohesive chaos ‘in one accord’ as a reverse of God’s Kingdom unity, together, as regards their hatred of Christ. They wish to be most like Him without being of Him to usurp His place; while on all other points there is necessarily unlawful discord, they are firmly united in opposing the authority of the Ruler of the universe. However, they are intrinsically bound to satan their supreme leader who heard and hears the declaration that enmity should exist between himself and the woman, and between his seed and her seed.

   He knew and explicitly knows that his efforts to deprave human character are ultimately interrupted; that by some means man, for the sake of his woman for God’s sake, is enabled to resist his power. Satan’s enmity against the human race is kindled because, through Christ, they are the objects of God’s love and mercy. He desires to thwart the divine plan for man’s redemption, to cast dishonor upon God, by defacing His handiwork; he would cause grief in heaven and fill the earth with woe and desolation. And he points to all this evil as the result of God’s work in creating mankind.

   But, satan’s fury was (or, is) put to an end before Adam and Eve were ousted from the Garden of Eden. As God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, all time is enfolded into His hands. That means, in the realm of eternal thoroughness, all events of the eons of mortal earthly time are happening at once like a series of all-encompassing interactive fluctuating layers of faith-active attentions. Furthermore, the covering God covered them with, “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” Genesis 3:21, was in actuality the sacrificial Body of Christ God’s Word of Truth of the finished work of Christ, Himself.

   As Jesus Christ is God’s living Word of covering of graceful mercy over the very sedition satan deceptively thrust upon His created peoples, the purposeful intent of the Gospel’s function, in and of the witnessing example of marriage between a man and a woman can be realized. And so it is written, “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” I Corinthians 15:45 It is the expectant grace that Christ implants in the soul which creates in man enmity against satan and his wiles. Without this converting grace and renewing power, people would continue in the captivity of satan - servants ever ready to do his bidding without realizing it is his bidding.

   The new confidence in the soul found through authority over instinctual disrespect for who anybody is in Christ creates conflict with worldly knowing where hitherto had been peace with attempts at self-realization. The power that Christ imparts through properly shared trust in Him enables a man with a woman to together resist the tyrant and usurper of households and neighborhoods. Whoever is seen to abhor the sins of indulging gossip and meddling into other’s affairs, instead of loving it; whoever resists and conquers those indignant self-righteous religious passions that attempt to hold sway within and without, displays the operation of a standard wholly from Above.

   The antagonism that exists between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of satan is most strikingly displayed not in the world’s reception of religion or the church, but of Jesus Christ in the moment at anytime, anywhere people properly honor their familial commitments. His humble example to the masses for true prosperity in living is not so much because He appeared without worldly wealth, pomp, or grandeur that the Jews were led to reject Him. They saw that He possessed power, which would more than compensate for the lack of these outward advantages.

   The purity and holiness of Christ called forth against Him the hatred of the ungodly, not because He threatened their wealth, but because He threatened the reasons behind their purposes for obtaining and holding their wealth. His life of self-denial and sinless devotion was a perpetual reproof to a proud, sensual people. And, again, it wasn’t that their pride and sensuality was sinful… because naturally created appreciation for life awareness (honorable pride) and hearty pleasurable satisfaction (festive joyful intimate togetherness) are created by God in Christ for men and women to properly partake.

   It is the using of others for one’s own advantage, at the expense of those other’s, with disregard for the dignities and respect the bonds of vows produce through honest faithful trust. The evoked enmity against the Son of God is through misappropriation of attentions with and to anyone who does not have an acknowledged authorized agreement with those whom they are responsible to be sharing an agreement. It has nothing to do with social standards, community expectations, local or national laws, or any self-defensive excuses one or another may have to deny their promised partner their due course of knowledgeable intercession with God through Christ.

   No matter how small or large a situation, it is the forthright and honest ‘spirit’ of the matter that matters when attitudes, considerations, and expectations find difficulties with concealing intentions, and/or desires and/or activities. Satan and evil angels join with evil men and women, making them evil, not in producing traditional sinful acts of behavior, those things are simply symptoms of misapplied decision making. And, again, it is not whether the decisions themselves are right or wrong as the world thinks of decisions to do or not do what one does, it is why a decision is made and with who.

   All the energies of apostasy, the twisted and disoriented Gospel message of ongoing salvation, conspire against the Champion of Truth. The same enmity that is manifested toward Christ’s followers, the church in a man or woman’s heart, as was manifested toward their Master when He walked the earth before His crucifixion. Whoever sees the repulsive character of inordinate affection, and in strength from above resists temptation, will assuredly arouse the wrath of satan and his subjects.

   Hatred of the pure ethics of truth in Christ through faith in promises, and reproach and persecution of advocates for proper family structures as designed by God, casting aside devotion’s for a whim of fancy as if cheating is just retaliation for ‘having been wronged’, will exist as long as sin and sinners remain – as long as this earth keeps turning in the present age of mortality. The followers of Christ and the servants of satan cannot harmonize, but the power of redemptive representation is the one beneficial blessedness God provides to those who respond to His call to live the life He gives abundantly in appreciation for His having provided that life.

   At all times, as long as anyone draws a breath of air, there is always an avenue of reconciliation with a loved one who one is promised to. The secure and resolute benefit of longsuffering for Christ’s sake for one’s mate is the witness of His presence in the natural world that, no matter what, there is someone who upholds marriage in the power of faith in Christ no other reality can touch. To those who follow popular media ministries founded in extorting God’s promises for personal prosperity, God knows who those ‘Reverend’s’ are and He knows who you are. (Matthew 23:16-17) One must always remember that satan loves to play God, so if the prosperity principles are misapplied… to whom goes the glory?

2 Timothy chapter 3

As a day goes:

   In the order of creation, all any man has is his word. Anything else that is of a man is manifested by means of God’s grace for natural living subject to a man’s word. When a wedding brings a woman into contract as one with a man, her word unites with his in God’s Word of life giving power of faith-action. Under their shared name, a man establishes his word by promise to his wife and she becomes him, his word, as he becomes her, her word – their shared inspiration. Together, they constitute the central focus of reason material existence is being brought to life day by day, by God for His glory.

   Hebrews 11:3 says, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” When a person is bent upon putting themselves first in order to make his or her contribution to others and society, there is a using of anyone who happens to be convenient to personal causes and concerns. The result brings casting out people who are not “useful” and including people who provide a form of function by compartmentalizing levels of thought-to-be beneficial suppliers to support materialistic ideologies.

   It produces a collector’s zeal formed by experiential positive sensations used in efforts to fill the emptiness from denying ‘undesirables’ due respect in Christ. This false faith inversion of God’s leading, as a religion, takes on a personalized deification of products, events, and time to serve emotional/intellectual desires, at the expense of denying God’s plans and purposes in His fashioned structures for honoring marriage, business, family, and society. When a man is being robbed, his wife is being robbed the same; along with everyone and anyone else who are involved with and in their lives.

   Living through a day is a procedure, a practice, of responding to a word of purpose in actualizing who we are in accord with our loyalties. Prayer, combined with our efforts, is the answer to all things. Prayer is the humbling of the whole of oneself before God where we give to Him our resentment He changes to confidence. Whether people remember to respectfully cooperate is another thing since we all have complaints. When we feel our prayers are not answered or are ignored - rest assured God knows and considers.

   His priority is our eternal place in Him and our earthly cares and concerns are on His 'back burner' of sorts. One of the devil’s names is ‘Misery’ and misery ‘loves’ company in stealing away time, success, and thereby companionship. Our habitual complaining is about conditions of mortal living. Many people go to bed at night complaining and get up in the morning complaining to fight their way into using others to get what they feel they must have. It is like a crying baby holding his or her care taking parents responsible to do what they are already doing as best they can.

   Many people are scattered in their attentions because they do not have a proper and stable focus. The times when we think or wonder why He doesn't protect our interests, it is because He respects everyone's will to do as they wish in this life. Confusion about our desires rests in trying to find a trust in others to validate our whims when others are doing the same. Innocence is not something of our wholeness we lose through education and experience. Innocence is obtained as a gift, through faith, from God.

   Clearly, thoughts and emotions (our changing moods) can exist whether we are living in God's will or not. So, when we choose at any given time to be obedient to what our conscience tells us is right, no matter how we or others feel, in the long run we and they will think and feel in a more appropriate way. This life is not a self improvement journey. It is about respect for God’s holiness through His plan for redemption. Our togetherness is a sharing of God’s will of design instead of a building of ourselves according to the will of our personal intent and pride.

   Happiness is not the goal of life as most people assume. Gladness is the joy of realization God brings to us through our trust of faith in Him to follow His ways and patterns of life for His sake. What is shared by two people, heard by a third person, will mean something completely different. At all times, everything is dependent in, from whom we want to listen. Marriage is working and building, sharing and creating, of a life together in faith.

   Well meaning sensibility about shared living is not waiting to be married until everything is “just right” or holding off a wedding until a man and woman are sure in their securities about each other. Meddling by others in a man and woman’s personal affairs is precisely where liars and thieves take advantage of our magnanimous choices to extend grace and appreciation by manipulating circumstances in purposely forcing acceptance of wrongs to control behavior to their advantage.

   Overprotective habits of older parents with their adult children are honed to an art of matter-of-fact repression and oppression concerning their son’s and daughter’s living arrangements because of their parent’s fears of stepping heavenward. Especially among the elderly, attempts to ‘own’ the dynamics of married privacy between a man and his wife are designed to overcome holding onto independent and shared self-willed mortal living.

   Through vicarious demands centered in need by working emotional obligations against loyalty, these people utilize and many times cause; derision, conflict, and infighting between spouses. Some will employ any real or imagined means with ‘blood is thicker than water’ excuses that undermine life and living exactly where Christ and His redemptive Gospel speaks to His wholeness in respect for liberty through faith in thankful expectations for young, and not so young, marriages.

   Nice does not make right. Only God makes right. Our Creator reveals to us our purpose for being as we live our lives but we lose His way continually trying to find our own. Many times in our search for Him, we are searching for ourselves through His principles with the belief that His principles will lead us to Him. There is a common misconception that being a Christian is to be nice and compliant – considerate, yes, but true Christians are necessarily tough and rugged people, averse to gossip mongering.

   Personal matters are not intended to sate public hunger for sensationalism. The grace of security and protection in privacy God provides for us as a people is in the sanctity of the marriage bond – it certainly helps relieve peer pressure temptations. Any acquaintance who speaks and acts contrary to respect for conscientious family loyalty is no friend. The only situations in life we may properly be completely open about personal matters is a man to his wife, a woman to her husband, and minor children to their parents.

   This is where love is usually misrepresented by tradition, folklore, and religious socialism. All too often love is thought of as a state of being in associated attachments – an emotional owning of self-validation from others and things. Love, though, is doing. Not a doing of empowerment that makes something one’s own that another has, but a doing that arises from acts of will. That is why our personal will(s), aligned with Christ’s will open the doors of God’s creative loving works.

   As it is His will of love to lead and guide our hearts of plenty, it is our direction of will in agreement with a spouse that gives a steady direction of protections. Much human expressions of emotional intensities called love – in reactions to sensational stimulations – is actually selfish in nature while true committed love exemplifies God inner love in our volition of being. Worldly love wishes to make itself richer by receiving gifts that some other can give. True godly intimate love wishes to make another richer by giving all that it has.

   Thus, desire to acquire interpersonal knowledge of private family matters is not in the influential field of relatives, friends, or acquaintances since those circumstances involve a diversion (and thereby a division) from reaching out to our Source of life in faith. Sound decision making comes from honoring our God given structures with respect to our position(s) in the family. A “too close to see” simplicity is found in people’s intentions in their directions of attention. Absentmindedly, parents (households), communities, and governments use people in their enthusiastic generosity as the ball in the battles of fielding their games; scrambling for advantage.

   Still, the artificial advantage becomes loss. When a man or woman is self attentive in their pursuits he or she looks to obtain interrelations that will ensure attention is received. This using of others to feed one’s craving desires for selfish attention causes the others to lose who they are into giving attention to one who is giving themselves attention through their attentions. Because a ‘one way street’ like this cannot sustain itself, the attention seeker looks for anyone or everyone who will provide reinforcement for one’s own self attention giving.

   When a man’s main concern is in giving attention to his woman and a woman’s main concern is in giving attention to her man, both receive and give the proper attentions necessary to maintain togetherness and thrive in their undertakings. Therein lays the foundation of long term prosperity – the real strength of any society’s communities, commerce of business, and the various departments of government of service to the people without unwarranted overstepping across personal and private family boundaries – and neighbors are less suspicious of their neighbors…

   Everybody has needs and everybody has something to offer of God’s gift of life service to others. Nobody can be everything to everybody – only Jesus Christ holds that office. God is a ‘first things first’ Creator who asks us to put Him first. Since His Word was in the beginning, is now, and will be after the end, our word honors Him by putting always first that accepted one with whom we are married. If all any of us has in time, energy, health, resources or abilities and talent enough for just one person, then God is pleased with our work in life for His sake in tending to our marriage.

   The vital difference between Social Individualism and Godly Reality is that productivity to avoid fear of retribution in worldly wisdom is productivity for thankful appreciation that one has a life worth defending. Extended trust brings God’s assistance for His glory, to share with one’s mate, children, extended family, neighbors, and so on with respect to who each person is according to their commitments of promise.

   God’s power over adversity and His bounty of blessings in our lives are His promises to us in Christ. When a man and woman carry their joint faith together as priority, their children have God’s natural active witness of the Gospel of the way of salvation in Christ. It is true the time honored saying, “The family that prays together, stays together.” Some, or a lot, will take issue with this until they understand what it means: "Marriage means to be frank enough not to feel a need to apologize."

   Bear in mind, the above statement applies only to  those married. As we understand our heartfelt compassion for anybody we know needs assistance, reaching out to others is always subject to whether a couple has the capacity to do what they can to help. Ideally, if each man and woman lived by God’s ‘first things first’ order of respect in Him, the entire world would be specifically and personally naturally supplied.

Matthew 6:14-34

The paradox of appreciation: All trees generally behave as trees. But, each of the variety of trees behaves differently from the next.

Matthew 5:12-18

Rejoice and exult, because your reward is great in the heavens; for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you.

Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt become tasteless, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more, save being cast out to be trampled on by men.

Ye are the light of the world: it is impossible for a city to be hid, on the top of a mountain, lying.

Neither light they a lamp and place it under the measure; but upon the lampstand, and it gives light to all that are in the house.

In like manner let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in the heavens.

Do not think that I came to pull down the law or the prophets; I came not to pull down, but to fulfill.

For verily I say unto you, until the heaven and the earth shall pass away, one least letter, or one point, may in nowise pass away from the law; till all be accomplished.

   Reducing confusion about conflicting emotions and mixed up thoughts starts with, and continues with, intentionally putting effort into realizing, as one encounters the moments of a day, that the why of matters matters more than the what of matters while the who of matters is the reason for the why. When what is kept first, the who involved that makes up the various differences with the what of things pushes out the why into oblivion.

   Selfish pride causes what to become why, and who, also, gets stuffed into what. That is how idolatry rears its ugly head in ideas as actuality where intelligent aptitude is misinterpreted as from the same source as clever neglect. In order to keep order in being released from emotional bondage into responsive feeling, and being freed from knotted thoughts into sensible satisfied awareness: who is kept first, why is second because of who, and what naturally follows why.

   In our imaginative desires to be wanted and fulfilled, we define ‘hope’ as wishing instead of trust, ‘faith’ as expectation instead of evidence, and ‘love’ as experiential sensation instead of dedicated devotion. When we place ourselves in God’s hands, He gives to us the knowledge to understand our thoughts and emotions are our natural reactionary aware-nesses to living and are not who we actually are as people with a higher purpose.

   Without trust through faith for who we and our loved ones are in Christ our mind cannot tell the difference between yet to be realized realistic goals and unrealistic dreaming. In God’s reality, as we respond to His leading, our soul person comes to our light of awareness (born again: out from ambiguous physical instinctual compulsions and into spiritually decisive responsiveness) and we realize we have authority over our environmentally driven emotions and thoughts.

   When a person believes in their thinking drawn from emotional import, that person is bound to their emotions and believes their thinking is who they are. Since everyone realizes corrupt thinking needs to cast off its corruption, they assume that education trains the thoughts to bring their emotional well being into alignment with better ways. It is assumed a sense of belonging requires submission. But, submission ruins respect for decency. A true godly sense of belonging negates submission to others' wills.

   Fact is, the process of manipulating and managing thoughts to alter emotional stirrings is where the confusion comes from in the first place. This is why people will speak differently than they think to get what they believe should be; where the pressures to present (or control) an acceptable persona causes one who is confused to cover what he or she is actually thinking.

   Emotional thinking that arises from recognition of one’s shortfalls, in comparison to other’s appearances, causes ideas of inferiority we hope to hide. “They will look at me!” “I will make a fool of myself!” attempts to hide fears relies in self-righteous shyness that is assumed makes up part of our “the world against me”. We fear what people will think of us, and they think of us less because we are playing to what we think they may think.

   Then, we contrive ways to justify our self-doubt with compensating expectations drawn from our mastery over events and others involved in those events. To search for God’s leading from a point of view found in our ideas, dreams, and emotionally changing responses to our and others influences, causes a false spirit of control over circumstances, at the very moment where God is with us to guide our hearts with His loving-kindness.

   He certainly does not want us to slander our commitments to marriage and family in what we allow. But, He is with us even then, to guide our wrongdoing into doing what we do for the right reasons. When we do what is right, because it is right, what we do will be different from what our emotional thinking tells us is right. Commitment to attitude has no sense of consideration that attitude founded in commitment enjoys. So it is that all the nuances of courtship’s outward expressions are God-designed to be relished in their fullness without embarrassment or shame.

   “Everybody wins!” scams are theft scenarios that give the impression of being the dealings of godly fairness. However, the most valuable God given commodity everyone has is passing time. Our daily time of living is continually thwarted by satan, using circumstantial delays by demonic sway, through adversarial bound people. As privacy up-builds trust in distinction separate from public opinion, what we believe we must conceal from our mate is precisely their business to know and no one else’s business for conjecture.

   There is no “Meant to be…” in what people consider punishment for “not measuring up to expectations” since we are given the gift of choosing to follow, or not, the will of God in respecting victory over evil. We put forth our efforts in living by using a “what pleases me” sense of wisdom, instinctual intuitive impulses, to improve ourselves with an ever increasing belief that what we accomplish in experiences is who we are.

   As we collect and discard what we feel is and is not of who we believe we are, we gradually become less of who we are created to be. When we turn to religion to overcome our errors of understanding, we impose our accumulated self-purpose into and onto the message of transformation because we are ignorant to relinquishing our personal vision formed by the world’s perpetual rollercoaster of trauma drama. For points of focus, we nail to soap boxes the feet of those we place in roles that exemplify an out-casting of our self-perpetuating grief.

   Dramatic presentations such as movies, television, music, and sports are designed to take a person through emotional reasoning that attaches one’s ideals of right and wrong with social expedience. This, in turn, causes a person’s dealings with ‘real people’ in ‘real life’ to pivot round a screen play where others are categorized into roles associated with representations displayed in a melodrama. There comes an impulsive demanding to mold others to fit roles one views as fitting in their fantasy schemes of experiential validation and advancement.

   And, out-of-context overdriven accumulation of volatile intensities drives out sensibilities beyond their capacity and leaves an increasing emptiness that screams to be further filled. Untoward demanding such as this antagonizes the actual realistic working identities of who we and others have within us to be. Common is belief in a vague (but often forceful) fatalism people use to explain away out-of-hand issues and situations we find our abilities unable to understand and/or overcome.

   Statements like, “God allowed it, so it must be His will”, “They don’t care”, and “They got what’s coming to them” are not from the wisdom of God through His grace and mercy in response to our faith in Him to overcome those same out-of-hand issues and situations. God is not the author of the evil underlying schisms, betrayals, and all the various ills of our people throughout the ages. People cause the problems because we are slack in allowing His Authority through our will of effort to override dark, subversive, inhuman forces.

   The unknowing blindness most people experience is the use of others to fight ourselves. When we work to have others think well of us it causes us to ignore our shortcomings rather than working on being less selfish. The Bible says God has difficulty forgiving us if we do not forgive ourselves. But, we must not forget where we tend to use others by putting them down to build our own defenses. To avoid seeing false hope as faith, work to eliminate emotionalizing your living through past/future, light/dark, and right/wrong switching in your mind.

   While we are saved not by works, but by grace through faith, it reasonably follows we are not condemned by our works – our separation from life in Christ is by fear through doubt. When our thoughts bring emotions in response, our thoughts respond to our emotions and creates a cycle of fantasy of living unto ourselves that does not react to the reality of who God created us to be with respect to our various places with others in the moment of moments as each day progresses.

   Living in the false wisdom of right and wrong through emotional thinking is a manifestation of the knowledge of good and evil - the fallen nature of the world. Growing into healthy faithful living is not the procedure of focus in letting go of recognized wrongs, it is in recognizing and actively accommodating choices based in a word of promise. Feelings are not emotions. Feelings are our honest and natural reactions and responses to the world around us.

   So, we need not worry what someone else will say or think about our convictions and beliefs - about what we want to do or do not want to do. If we have something to say, we should feel free to say it. If we have something to do, we should feel free to do it. The light of life and its fullness in expression should never consider another’s emotions – while we are respecting who each and everyone else is, unto us, in Christ unto God.

   What He has prepared for us is different, and more gratifying, in ways that what we expect to receive from Him is not and cannot be. Most people do not know that God has a particular plan for them, so they do not trust the moments unto Him as He has promised to guide the faithful as they live. Waffling indecision is the mistake behind the fear of making mistakes and dwindles the precious moments of life away. It comes from viewing money as God’s answers to the imbalances in relational will(s), binding one’s senses of prosperity and use of others to the cheap and convenient.

   Trust God to know what He is doing to bring His witness through our activities. This allows us the freedom to encourage and assist others in their strengths rather than working against their difficulties because of our annoyance over the wrongs we and others are bound to. It is worldly wisdom, not faithful obedience to God, where people use complacency and self-satisfied posturing in touting “positive progress through the school of hard knocks”.

   Again, feelings are not emotions. Feelings are our natural reactive responses to oneself, others, one’s surroundings, and God. Emotions are our physically mortal instinctual reactive responses to internal and external stimuli while feelings are motivated by our immortal soul knowledge awareness. Without understanding the difference through trusting in God in faith in the Gospel of Christ, it is very difficult if not impossible, to keep the intensity of emotions from overshadowing our feelings.

   To take personal authority over the fears associated with folding into peer pressure, only decide to do what you want to do at any given time; no matter what another or others want. If what you decide to do is in agreement with others’ desires, then all is well with the understanding to be matter-of-fact honest with your mate about anything that arises from choices with others. If you do not want to do whatever it is you do not want to do that another or others want, then simply and honestly abstain from compliance no matter any consequences.

   This is another area where God’s design in matrimonial vows has His power of Authority through the joint authority of a man and woman in marriage to hold any others to respect and dignity. Emotions rely in comparisons between the past and the future, both of which are never now, and feelings rely in trusting the present in response to actuality through faith. Appreciating feelings, rather than being driven by emotions, lets us more securely stay in the moment and do as we wish with less confusion about why we do what we do, whatever it is, no matter what anyone outside the marriage thinks or does about it.

   God says He would rather we be hot or cold because if we are lukewarm (two faced; with hyphen, 'two-faced; and without, 'twofaced') He will spew us out of His mouth. Through practice, we learn to help others where they need help instead of identifying with their difficulties and conflicts. Our helping of others not our spouse is not to be considered a bond of commitment with those others because the work(s) is(are) done for God, for Christ’s sake. Living through the emotions of ‘what was not’ and ‘what should be’ while holding others responsible for their own failures, is an attempt to stabilize our expectations. It is easy to be honest about what is right we choose to do.

   Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to be honest about what is wrong we choose to do, so we bind ourselves to separate and additional wrongs in various ways to hide our wrongs as if they are right – most often by making wrong of the right of others. Obligations are inherently never based in presumption because obligations, by their nature, are declarations of promise. The vows of matrimony supersede all other accountabilities, so there is a sense of defensive esteem involving a married couple that does not ignore, but upholds, other’s rights to respect their grace of detachment.

   Overlook who people believe they are to trust God and His grace and mercy. Being in the now by responding to exactly what we wish to do in all circumstances allows destructive processes of the cycle of emotions and thinking to fade away and be replaced by the joy of life in the reality of God’s goodness. Experiential and fulfilling warm emotions come and go dependent upon circumstances. Love, however, is an all encompassing commitment – not dependent upon have and have not.

   With respect to Christ’s resurrection, and the ongoing promises of emotional/spiritual harbor within a marriage, Jesus became our “garbage dumpster” (the term ‘garbage’ has a root meaning: worn out old clothes) on the cross and we become the same for our spouse – knowing that our responsibilities for each other in Him provides intervention. Philippians 4:13 says: “I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.” The more difficulties anyone has in living, no matter what the situations are, the more help they need to overcome their separation(s) from dignity with whom they are dedicated.

   There are only three God blessed authorities in human living where He designed people to honor Him in making decisions for (do the thinking for) any other human being(s): A man who is a husband to his wife, a woman who is a wife for her husband, and parents for their underage children. Steadfast self-sacrificing dedication, in response to God’s promises regarding loyalties and devotions to our loved ones, is often seen by self-serving situational opportunists as a pathetic blind obsession. A man and woman, their marriage, and God Himself, cannot be much respected with anyone in the background “calling the shots”.

   We have the moments of a day to be thankful for the vitality of our awareness as God, by His Son through the power of the Truth of His Word, the Holy Spirit, is alive and vibrant through our being. Let God be God through our efforts. He knows better than we do the reasons for the tasks and experiences He has for us to accomplish. Traditional wisdom says, "Where there is a will, there is a way." Christian wisdom says, "Where there is a Way, there is a Will." With no hidden motive, we realize hope is not an imagination. It is where to be glad is better than to be happy.

   Marriage, according to the Gospel, represents the two edged sword of the Word of Christ. One edge condemns our revealed wickedness of the heart on the Cross, while the other lifts us up into the Resurrection of the Glory of God's Wholeness. Thank God for your husband. Thank God for your wife. Thank God for their challenges because each of us is a challenge. In all situations and conditions, help your mate help you, with God’s help, working through strife into victory.

Zechariah 8:1-12