Monthly Archives: March 2014

Faith, Observations

The Looking Glass


In my dreams. Photo by E. Tom Hussey

In my dreams. Photo by E. Tom Hussey

JAMES 1:23-24 – For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

We interrupt this series on values to bring you this message.

I Corinthians 15:49 – Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

A few days ago, I was talking to a friend about how our perception of ourselves affects what we believe is true about ourselves.  For example, I have this self-image of me from when I was in peak athletic condition.

In my minds mirror, I see me as still being fit, muscular, coordinated, strong, with real strength, not bottled strength.  In my minds mirror, I still have long, curly blackish/brown hair, full of waves and curls.  In my mind’s eye, I am still wearing 32 inch waist pants.

What the mirror in my mind ells me.

What the mirror in my mind tells me.

The mind can be a tricky thing, and can lead me to many false assumptions based on what I think is true.  Often, my warped ego guides me to many fallacies and false assumptions.

The other day, I did something I honestly RARELY ever do.  I looked at myself in the mirror.  My first impression was, “Hey!  That’s my Dad!  I thought I buried HIM in 2005!”  But when I moved, so did the man in the mirror.  Then it dawned on my conscious mind, and my ego mind, that is not my dad, but ME!!

It was then I realized why I don’t look in mirrors.  I am not that guy my ego told me I am.  I am the very image of my Dad.

IN THE BEGINNING

When God created us, we were made in the image of God, meaning we looked like he looks.  We were also made in the likeness of God, meaning we used to act as He acted because we saw what he did.

AFTER THE FALL

After the fall, we lost touch with God, and lost what was His likeness.  We were not able to return to our glorified state.  No work we could expend any effort on would make us righteous in God’s eyes, even though we became self-righteous in our own eyes.  The ego can really fool a person.

THEN CAME JESUS

Yes, Jesus is the Son of God.  God said so rather loudly at Jesus’ baptism.  But it was the Son of Man that faced temptation.  It was the Son of Man that asked God to take away the cup.  It was the Son of Man that faced God’s wrath.  It was the Son of Man that rose from the dead to prove he is the Son of God, too.

The Image of Christ

We are asked to be like Christ, but we, on our own are not capable.  The best we can do is try, but we eventually fail.  But the scripture says we need to become like Christ.  Peter was the first person to prove that, if you don’t keep your eyes on Christ, you will fail in your effort to be just like Jesus.  The labor into the rest of Christ likeness was that all Peter had to do was keep his eyes, and faith, on Jesus, and he would have walked on the water, by faith, as he was already doing.

In the Garden of Eden, the wind and waves Adam and Eve faced was the lie that doing something else will make you just like God.  They then doubted they were already like God.  They took their eyes off the facts, and the truth, and considered a lie, and a false premise based on circumstances.  Forbidden Fruit.

THE EXCHANGE

If you will consider this, instead, and accept it as fact, instead of believing what you think you apparently see, you will learn that you are already like Christ, if you have accepted His death and resurrection.  When Jesus became all your sin, you received, in exchange, all that Jesus is.

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

II Corinthians 3:18

It is all a matter of what we focus on.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:5-8  

Just like Jesus died of our sins, voluntarily, we are able to die to ourselves, voluntarily, as we labor into the rest of accepting that, all that Jesus was, we inherited when He arose from the dead.  When we keep our understanding on this truth, when we comprehend this exchange, and when we accept it in faith, no matter what we think we look like, you will look to God, like His Son, Jesus, and you will eventually appear to others to have the likeness of Christ, too.

After all, that is why you weren’t raptured the second you believed.  You are the only Jesus people will see.  When they see Jesus in you, they will want to know what happened to make you this way.

We are transformed in to the image of Christ

We are transformed in to the image of Christ

Let’s Be About It!

I love you in the Name of Jesus

David G. Perkins

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Faith, Observations

Integrity


Proverbs 10:9

 Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,

    but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.

English Standard Version (ESV)

Vocabulary Word: Integrity

FROM THE HEBREW – תֹּם            FROM THE GREEK – καθαρός

Transliteration
tom
Pronunciation
tōm (Key)
Part of Speech
masculine noun
Root Word (Etymology)
Outline of Biblical Usage

  1. integrity, completeness

    1. completeness, fulness

    2. innocence, simplicity

    3. integrity
.
Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon
 Transliteration  Origin
katharós
of uncertain affinity
Definition  [ Thayer’s | Strong’s ]

Thayer’s Definition

  1. clean, pure
    1. physically
      1. purified by fire
      2. in a similitude, like a vine cleansed by pruning and so fitted to bear fruit
    2. in a levitical sense
      1. clean, the use of which is not
Matthew 5:8 – WH – μακαριοι οι καθαροι τη καρδια οτι αυτοι τον θεον οψονται (5695)
                                                                               Matthew 5:8 – KJV – Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see (5695) God.

I hated calculus in college.  Even though Isaac Newton was one of my heroes, and Leibniz was inspired, and is a genius in his own right, calculus was not my friend. Differential equations were hard enough, see for your self:

differential equations

RIGHT?!?

Now, look at an example of an integral equation:

Integral Equations

Even worse, right???

Anyone?

 Well…it was hard for me to do these.  It wasn’t until I audited a class on Engineering Dynamics that I got to see integral equations at work. I went to the book store and bought the Schaum’s Outlines for the Calculus, Differential through Integration, including transformation equations.  I studied it, now that I had a visual idea what it means.  I finally made decent enough grades in Math to move on.  Today, I am researching Vedic Maths (Another blog, another time).

 The moving picture at the top of the screen is an illustration of integration at work.  It shows in form what integration looks like.  Everything moving together, at different rates of speed in order to be a complete, whole, and functional system.  It is pure in that it does not deviate from its’ design.  It’s purity, or innocence is maintained as long as no foreign objects, wrenches, junk, dirt, rocks, etc are introduced to the system.  Throw a wrench in the works, you have a system that is broken, and fails to meet its’ designed expectation.  The timing of the gear’s mesh is perfect for its function.

Each gear is identifiable as being separate from each other…they have their own identity.  They work as one because of their relationship to each other.  Their design is harmonized, and functional, as long as it is being used for its’ purpose.

So, Cates has this one value that goes like this:

“Integrity – We commit “to do what we say we will do.” If that commitment is in jeopardy, we will immediately work with all involved to get back on schedule.”

The first thing I asked myself, when I first saw this is, “How do I measure integrity?”  If some one has integrity, do they have ENOUGH integrity.  However, that question contradicts itself…if you lack integrity to the smallest degree, you lack integrity.

The ethics of hell teach us that we can do the wrong thing for the right reason, the right thing for the wrong reason, do nothing, or in doing something, we may cause more harm than good.  Our society, being bereft of a moral compass is fine with the ethics of hell because, “What matters is your intent, how you felt”.  That makes any outcome acceptable because you meant well.  But I can still hear Grandma Wells telling me, “Little David!  The road to hell is paved with good intentions!”

And she was right.

Because of that exercise in logic, I had to ask myself, “Who here decides what the baseline of integrity is?”  I asked this of myself because of other places I worked.  Other companies are all about the bottom line.  It was “good integrity” in their eyes if you supported the bottom line at the expense of all sense of right and wrong.  To fail to do this, would be a lack of integrity in their eyes.

Integrity, as I think I understand it, is not subject to any ones individual whim, and remains a constant without deviation.  So, who decided what integrity is, anyway???

GOD DID.

I believe the scriptures are the word of God.  I believe that, if it is in the Bible, God wanted us to learn something from it.  For a list of places where integrity is even remotely hinted at, CLICK THIS LINK.

As you can see, I looked up the definition of integrity as used in the bible, both Old Testament and New Testament.  The New Testament does not use the word directly in the Greek language, even though some translations have translated the meaning of the word as “integrity”.  It is still accurate.

 

Let me begin with the Hebrew translation:

Vocabulary Word: Integrity

FROM THE HEBREW – תֹּם

Transliteration
tom
Pronunciation
tōm (Key)
Part of Speech
masculine noun
Root Word (Etymology)
Outline of Biblical Usage

  1. integrity, completeness

    1. completeness, fulness

    2. innocence, simplicity

    3. integrity
.
Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon

Here we see what God intended for mankind.  When we were in the Garden of Eden, we were COMPLETE.  We reflected the FULLNESS of God as we are made in his image and likeness, meaning we look like him, and were supposed to act just like him (That is what likeness meant, His Character).  We were innocent of sin.  There was no corruption, nothing lacking, we had everything we needed to walk after God and fulfill his design for His purposes for us.  In our innocent state, we had no guile, no deceit, no awareness of what we might do wrong.  We were innocent.  We were pure.

That is how God designed us.
THE FALL
At the fall, because we considered Satan’s lie that God was holding out on us, and we believed that lie, we learned what sin, separation from God, illness, and corruption was all about.  We were no longer pure, innocent, complete, full of His glory, and life got really complicated.   Instead of becoming LIKE God (The state we were actually already in), we became like Satan (The State Satan was already in.)
The fall is where we died.  That is why God told mankind that eating the fruit will kill you.  Our soul perished, we were broken.  We had a wrench in the works, and we threw it there.  This is why Jesus was able to tell people this:
  John 3:18 AMPLIFIED : He who believes in Him [who clings to, trusts in, relies on Him] is not judged [he who trusts in Him never comes up for judgment; for him there is no rejection, no condemnation–he incurs no damnation]; but he who does not believe (cleave to, rely on, trust in Him) is judged already [he has already been convicted and has already received his sentence] because he has not believed in and trusted in the name of the only begotten Son of God. [He is condemned for refusing to let his trust rest in Christ’s name.]
Because we were already dead, and if we chose to not believe in Jesus, we are ALREADY condemned because our souls were already dead.  Dead souls is not what God had in mind.

SO, HOW DO WE GET FROM THE FALL TO INTEGRITY???

I am glad you asked.

Integrity, like Attitude, is not something you can fake for very long.  It is another attribute that is often imitated, but never duplicated.  Integrity, REAL integrity lives in a redeemed heart.   Here, I’ll show you from the New Testament:

 FROM THE GREEK – καθαρός
 Transliteration  Origin
katharós of uncertain affinity
Definition  [ Thayer’s | Strong’s ]

Thayer’s Definition

  1. clean, pure
    1. physically
      1. purified by fire
      2. in a similitude, like a vine cleansed by pruning and so fitted to bear fruit
    2. in a levitical sense
      1. clean, the use of which is not
Matthew 5:8 – WH – μακαριοι οι καθαροι τη καρδια οτι αυτοι τον θεον οψονται (5695)
Matthew 5:8 – KJV – Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see (5695) God.
As I mentioned in my last blog on ATTITUDE, after the fall, we lost the ability to naturally have holiness as a way of life.  In order to redeem mankind to a working relationship with God, Jesus had to come here and become all of our sin so that, in exchange for him becoming all our sin, we are given all the attributes of Christ.  If we have accepted this free gift, we are now the Children of God.

BECOMING PURE IN HEART

 Last August, when the Spirit of God filled me and got hold of me, the first thing He did was work at getting my mind right.  It is one thing to intellectually agree that I am saved and am a child of God, but it is entirely a different thing to apprehend this fact in my heart.  To be infused with the spirit, not merely possessed.  This is the first step of integration for the new believer.  You are infused, immersed, filled…down to the mitochondrial level, all the way into the DNA.  Infused with the life of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
That is why Galatians 2:20 says :“I have been nailed to the cross with Christ. I have died, but Christ lives in me. And I now live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me.”  
And why II Corinthians 5:17 says:  “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
When this happens, the world begins to look different. As you permit the Spirit of God to affect change in you, you begin to see things the way God sees them..  You begin to think His thoughts.  You begin to want to do as Jesus did.  And what did Jesus say would happen if you allow Him to graft you into the vine, and if you abide there?
He said THIS:  “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”
Do you see where this heads?  It starts with The Spirit infusing you and guiding you to be like Jesus.  The more you submit to this process, the more you desire this process.  You desire it because once you walk in it, you discover a joy and pleasure you have never known.  Fear is gone, and assurance lives in you.  The laboring in to rest for this comes in where you have to remember that you are dead, Christ is alive in you.  It takes time and effort to get this fact down.  The more you understand it, the more you can walk the walk.  The pruning part of the Greek definition comes in when the Spirit cuts away every unproductive thing in your heart and mind.  That way, you have more resources available for what is left of you.  Eventually, as the graft of you into Jesus (The Vine) solidifies, you will produce good fruit, as Jesus did, and more.

OK, Dave, but can we get back to the Integrity thing???

 

Sure.
Here is what I am trying to say.  Many, many people can emulate Integrity, but in the long run, they either succumb to the fatigue generated from faking it, or they deviate from the walk, even though they think they have integrity, because the source of all things holy is not their source.
A changed heart and a changed mind must integrate with the Spirit so you can harmonize with the will of God.  God empowers you when you surrender to the gentle work of the Spirit.  It eventually feels effortless compared to how it used to feel to fake this attribute.
Like Love, Faith, Grace, Mercy, Attitude, etc, Integrity must come from the heart and infuse your thinking.  When that happens, you will walk the walk.  You cannot walk this walk without the power of the living God who, in the form of the Holy Spirit, dwells in you, and infuses every aspect of your being.   HE does this, not you.  You simply become Him the more you submit to His love and guidance.

WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

There are plenty of times I want to deviate from God’s will for my life.  Every time old habits or my old flesh try to come back to life, I have to labor back into the rest of God.  I do this by knowing and proclaiming the scriptures, and through prayer.  My old self  lied, cheated, stole, and, basically, broke every commandment that existed.  I even made up commandments so I could rebel against them, too!
Now, I am filled with the Spirit of God, and I genuinely want and desire to be like Christ.  Fortunately, there is nothing I have to do but submit.
Integrity really is how you are when no one else is looking.  What you do with your thoughts and intentions when you are alone reveals your true character.  Unless you have allowed the will of God through the power of the Holy Spirit to change your heart, you cannot fake integrity for very long.
THe big challenge is when your public life and your private life actually harmonize with the will of God.  THIS is what having integrity really means.  In the case of CATES, having this integrity means always keeping your word, honoring your commitments, being pure in your intent, and having your work ethic match your intent.
This is how it is in God’s kingdom, too.
If you struggle with integrity, chances are there is a part of your heart you hold on to, and do not let God transform.  The lack of purity there will always, in one form or another, manifest itself in your daily life.  This is a tough one.  It is tough because, even if you are aware of this discrepancy, no matter how much effort you put into changing it yourself, the change will never take place.  Not with out you submitting to the will of God.  This is what it means to labor to rest.  Give up your will, and deny your self, and see what it is that God wants to do in your life.
I have never met a living soul who regretted walking in the life God made possible through Jesus.  But I have seen misery in many forms from people who think they have it all together but don’t know Christ.
Do you want integrity?  Do you want it to become easy to obtain?  Trust the finished work of the cross, and let the Spirit of God lead you to this…after-all, it IS why Jesus said His yolk is easy, and His burden is light.
Now, Let’s be about it.
I love you in the name of Jesus.
If you have a prayer request, please write me by filling out the form below.
Love always,
David G. Perkins

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Faith, Observations

What Were You Looking For?


what-we-see-depends-mainly-on-what-we-look-for

Philippians 4:8-9 ESV

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”   Galatians 5:22-23 ESV

ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING!

When I was a teenager, my Dad decided it was time for me to learn how to fly one of his several airplanes.  Considering my driving history, I thought he surely had a screw loose, somewhere.  By time I was 16, I had already totaled a few cars.  Still, I do love to fly, and had always wanted to fly right seat with my Dad on his adventures.

Our airport was the municipal airport in Plainview, Texas.  At over 3300 feet, altitude, the airport has a whole lot of sky to fling your airplane into.  Dad made sure the wind was relatively calm before he would let me take off.  The high plains are very windy much of the time.  There is a saying in Lubbock, Texas (45 miles south of Plainview), that if the wind ever stopped blowing, everyone would fall down.  Wind is a fact of life, there, and you adjust your walking by leaning into the wind.

Taking off into the wind made flying that much more fun, as I had to generate less lift with the engine.  Flying in the wind, however is a challenge.  This is where the word attitude comes in.  In flight, your attitude is the approach you have to take to flying in the wind, ESPECIALLY when you are landing an airplane.  Landing an airplane on a calm day was challenging enough for me, but landing in high wind was a contest between me and the wind to see who will master my aircraft.  This is when attitude becomes everything.

When nature threw strong wind at me, I had to turn the airplane into the wind on approach to the landing strip.  This is called “Crabbing”.  I am approaching a runway almost sideways, and at the last-minute, I correct my attitude so I can land moving in the right direction.  Another factor in landing attitude is that I could approach the runway only in a narrowly defined angle.  This is called the “Glide Path” .   As you approach the runway, you will see a group of lights.  If my glide path is too low, I will see three or more yellow lights.  If my glide path is too high, I will see red lights, if my glide path is correct for the landing approach, I will see green lights.

Maintaining the right attitude for landing is everything, too.  I am already crabbing in to the runway because of a wind situation, and I also must keep my approach angle right.  If I am yellow on approach, I will not land on the runway.  If I am red, I will land too far in on the runway to keep from overshooting.  I must crab in on a green light.

While I am worried about those two aspects of attitude, I also have to make sure my wings are as level as I can keep them on approach, and that my nose is not too high, or too low.  So, there are possibly 4 parts of attitude I must pay attention to when I am landing.  Overdoing or under-doing any part can mean a bad landing.  Bad landings can complicate your life in ways you don’t need.  It was all about attitude.

 

“WELL, THE METAPHOR IS OBVIOUS, ISN’T IT?”

I hope so.

At CATES (Where I work), one of the twelve principles we live by is: “ATTITUDE – We choose to be positive”.   If you want to approach a subject and land on it with successful outcomes, it helps if your attitude is positive.  Being positive makes all the difference in the world.  It is fairly clear, after over 8000 years of examination, that God has given us the ability to affect the outcomes of every aspect of our lives, simply by determining what we believe is true about it.  Our beliefs change every aspect of our life.  If you believe things will always go wrong, then you will experience that outcome.  If your approach to your fellow-man is negative, then you will reap the benefit of your view of others, and have no genuine friends.

Attitude is one of the very first things the Lord had to really work with me on.  I was a negative and pessimistic individual, whose attitude was reinforced by the outcomes of my life.  My assumption was that I was right because everything always turned out exactly as I thought they would.  God showed me that attitude is a choice.  How I choose to approach anything will directly affect the outcomes.  Attitude is a choice.  It is a habit.  It comes from the heart.  It becomes positive when you learn to look at the world differently.

 

“HOW DID YOU DO IT?”

I’m glad you asked. I didn’t.

My attitude about life, work, love, marriage, co-workers, clientele, family, or anything didn’t change until I fully understood what the finished work of the cross gave me.  When I accepted that Jesus BECAME all sin for all time, and took on the wrath of God in our place, and in exchange, God poured on us all the benefits of being His child, an heir to the throne, a member of God’s family, a love beyond measure, and total forgiveness for all my sin, I finally understood what it felt like to see the world and people the way God does.

I learned to love because God loved me enough to bury my sin with Jesus, and raise my dead soul into a new life.  I had been born in the spirit.  Where I was dead, Jesus’s resurrection gave me life in Him.  The Spirit of God cleansed me and changed my attitude. I began thinking new thoughts.,  I loved for the first time.  I saw people as my brother or sister.  While I am aware of my and others continuing failures, I felt only love for them, and chose to show grace and mercy.  It was easy to do this because this was what God showed me.

So, frankly, I didn’t change my attitude.  Experience has taught me that, I can fake a good attitude only so long, but whatever is hidden in my heart will become manifest over time.  On my own strength I do not love long, I show no mercy or grace, and my attitude is very rotten.  Since I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, I am able to be like Christ and love, show grace and mercy, and look for opportunities to give with a positive attitude.

 

GUARD YOUR THOUGHTS

 

I cannot, by my own strength, maintain this loving attitude.  Only when I guard my thoughts am I able to be filled with this powerful love.  I can break my connection to God simply by going back to my old way of thinking and behaving.  God leaves this up to me.  The way I maintain a good attitude is by staying in the word, praying continuously, and submitting to Gods love and will.  It is only by the continual renewing of my mind that I can be a blessing instead of a curse. I am confident in Christ enough that I know I am weak, but Christ in me is infinitely strong.  If I catch the old self trying to assert his attitude and beliefs, all I have to do is remember that my old self died with Christ, and my new self, the child of God, is who lives through Christ.

Attitude is a choice.  When the blowing wind of earthly things challenges my attitude, when the weight of the world wants to crush me, when my co-workers decide to be peevish and negative, when a thoughtless and selfish humanity threatens to ruin my day, I simply remember who I am in Christ, and ask the Spirit of the Living God to sustain me so I can be a witness to all the things that would otherwise drag me down.  A simple choice of attitude can turn things around, and your witness can cause others to want to know where you have this strength of character.  Then you can tell them why you are joyful in the face of adversity, and strong when temptation desires your soul.

Think on the good things of God continuously, and you will see the world in a very different lite.

It is all a choice, a labor into the rest of the finished work of Christ.

You will always get what you are looking for.

Let’s be about it

I love you all,

David G. Perkins

PS – Click HERE to see how the Bible addresses ATTITUDE.

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Faith, Observations

Have I Really Thought About It?


hands-heart

Proverbs 27:19 As a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the person.” (NLT)

Proverbs 23:7a “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…” (KJV)

Luke 6:45 “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” – Jesus (ESV)

It is time to get back into the swing of blogging.  I cannot use the excuse, “We are moving” because, well, we have moved!  Verb tense informs me I am out of excuses.  If you have followed my blogs, you have seen me go from being strongly antagonistic to Christians and Christianity, to finally realizing what the full measure of God’s grace is.  God’s grace, accomplished through Jesus’ finished work on the cross, removes my excuses for hate, and for hell.  I either must acknowledge that all things were finished when Christ said they were, or I must choose to defy the living God and call Him a liar.  In my case, I not only accept that what Jesus did on the cross was a complete work of grace and mercy, but I confess with my mouth that, when Jesus was raised from the dead, He proved He and He alone has authority over life and death, including my own. This makes Jesus my Lord as well as my Savior.

Now, when I am confronted with a problem, a trial, or a temptation, I ask myself, “Did Jesus die of this too?” , and “Did He die this death for me?”,  The answer, being “Yes!”, leads me to a trust that, because of the finished work of the cross, I can rest in the assurance that therein lay the power of the Spirit to bring me into harmony with the will of God.  That trial, temptation, or problem takes on a different meaning in that light.  This happens because, as I labor into the rest of the finished work of the cross, I am infused with the same Spirit of God that raised Jesus Christ from the dead.  I now live because Christ lives in me.  It is by the power of the Spirit of God, and the grace imparted as a free gift, that I am able to go from someone who hated God, and was openly at war with Him, to someone who is more than willing to submit to His will.  I see submission as a strong desire, not a law, or a rule.  I see it as a labor of love.  The more I am infused with His love, grace and mercy, the more I desire it.  The more He shows me these things, the more I want to give them away to people who, like me, who do not deserve it.  It is for these people Christ came to this earth.  Not for the religious, or the righteous, but the lost.  And I was lost.

Where He Leads

If you have read my earlier blogs, you know that God used my sudden unemployment to get my attention.  I had actually started praying and reading the Bible just a few months prior to my getting fired from the Military Base.  During my unemployment, God led me from being a complete monster to being one of his own children.    The first thing God restored was my walk with Him.  The second thing God restored was my marriage.  What wonders and miracles were seen during that time.  The third thing God dealt with was my willingness to go where HE sends me, not where I want to be sent.  I had sent out over 500 resume and applied for over 300 jobs all in a very defined territory.  I wanted to live in Colorado springs.  Failing that, I wanted to live in any dry, arid environment.  I hate humidity, and prefer drier climates.  The end result of all my searching was crickets.  I spent almost 10 months trying my best to get a job in that defined territory.  After months of futility, I had given up.  I was, by this time, not only jobless, but we were homeless.

After I gave up trying to find a job, Sandy and I prayed.  I remember this clearly.  This was one of the most honest prayers I had ever prayed.  I told God, “I give up, God!  I quit!”  I was tired of getting no results.  All I wanted was to go do what ever it was God wanted me to do.  Sandy is my witness.  3 minutes barely passed after I prayed,  when I got a phone call from the person who would eventually be my boss.  There was one problem…the job is in Houston.  I had no desire to live anywhere NEAR Houston.  It is low land, and very humid.  Summer there is a whole new definition of hot and sticky.  God must have been mistaken…right??  Wrong.

One of my prayers, during my job search, was that, if I had to return to the secular world, and not be a full-time minister, that God would lead me to a company where the work environment is not hostile, where people behaved in a civil manner, and it was OK to be a Christian.  I wanted a job at a company that made no bones about their values, and those values were based on strong Christian values.  When I had given up trying to get a job in the mountains, and asked God to find a job for me, and I received a call within 3 minutes of my praying that prayer, I ended up at this company that describes the exact environment I had asked God to lead me to.

From Found to Discipleship

So, here we are, caught up with each other.  And I see that, now I am no longer lost, God has no intention of letting me bask in the answered prayers I just described.   When God saves you, He has no intention of letting you remain the same.  His goal, through the power of the Spirit of God, is to transform you into the very likeness of His own Son, Jesus Christ.  And you have to start somewhere.  Where is He starting me?  Remember that I prayed to be allowed to work in a company whose values are based on Christian values?  The expectation of this company is that I will live by 12 values that they put on the back of each business card, and openly declare in everything they do.  These 12 values are what this series will be about:  

The 12 Values:

INTEGRITY

COMMITMENT

TEAMWORK

(Be) PROACTIVE

ATTITUDE

RELENTLESS

DISSENT

IMPROVEMENT

DO UNTO OTHERS

ORDER

DISCIPLINE

RESPONSIBILITY

HOW DO I THINK ABOUT IT?

Cognitive acknowledgement and understating are, at the minimum, a requirement.  If, however, I want to BE these virtues, and live them, they must be more than well-defined words for me.  Over the next few weeks, I will be taking on each virtue, and describing how God infuses a submitted heart with the ability to not only desire to do these things, but to actually do them.  This is not because I have already learned them, or live them as well as I can, but because I have been shown in clear terms that, where the heart is, therein lay the treasure.

It all becomes a choice.

Care to join me?

Let’s be about it.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Proverbs 4:23

In the Name and the Love of Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior,

David G. Perkins

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