My Little Inspired Book – Inspired thoughts plus

My little Inspired Book

Let everyone know I am not a writer and way out of my comfort zone.
Book lay out

First need to know some meanings of words as used in this book.
How “We The People” make up part of Jesus so we are part of GOD.
How free will and responsibility and Devine Justice Work in this world.
Divine Mercy how it works and where does it come from.
How we have failed as people, as government, and as church
What we must do to change “We The People”, the government, and the Church.
Conclusion

Just so everybody understands that this being written is a miracle In itself. One way to say it is to tell what happened years ago when I was in the sixth grade. That was the year that in my school you could get straight A reds ticket, The Big Red Machine time frame. Well I set my goal on getting them and when I got my report card I had straight A’s in all but two subjects; Language arts and Spelling, they had D’s. From then to this day I try never to have to write anything because it would reveal my stupidity! Well I think you can see why God had to well over two years to get me to type the first word of this that seems like a book to me. Please forgive all grammar, spelling, and other writing mistakes.

Vocabulary for this book

Divine Mercy – It is the mercy God is free to give that is created by the Eucharistic sacrifice of the cross.

Evil – the complete absence of God (This does not exist on Earth)

Love – Choice

Emotion – is the brains automatic summary of your decisions in similar situations.

Government – An institution set up by people so as to live in society. This institution has no values or morals. ALL guiding values and morals come from the people and not from the institution itself. When the institution itself makes its own morals and values, it becomes church. Example: When the government decides it has the right to make the people accept that an action by some (homosexuality) is equal to (heterosexuality), an already accepted norm.

Chapter one WE THE POEPLE

I am going to start by making a statement that most people will disagree with and might even say is anti-theological. That will be OK if you will keep an open mind and will allow it to come full circle where you should be able to see it is just another level to the meaning of God’s great plan of salvation. Did you know that each and every person has a little part of them that make up the complete Jesus Christ? Whatever YOU want to call it– your soul, your mind, your inner self, your being created in the image of God, or your Heart; but everyone’s part and God the Father’s part and God the Holy Spirit’s part make up the total of Jesus the Son of God! IF YOU WILL AGREE WITH THAT STATEMENT, YOU have just made the world a better place! Wait what just happened? What did I do?

It all started way back before God created Adam and Eve, God knew that too much of a good thing was still not a good thing. God the father is full of power and mercy so he could just hand out mercy all the time but that would not make heaven a better place; it would someday destroy it. In his great wisdom he made an auto check for himself to make sure mercy was handed out with justice. What do you think that was? The Angels, the vast worlds, the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, or maybe the Devil? Stop reading for a moment and think about what was said so far in this chapter, maybe even reread it.

Have you got a thought yet?

Let us look at an example. If you had a truck that had 5000 gallons of water, and there were 50,000 people that just found out that the water supply for them had just gotten poisoned. You don’t know how long you have to make the water you have last. You don’t know the people personally; you don’t know what mob mentality could cause them to do, etc.. Are you going to go in there with your truck with no plan of how to distribute this water fairly? Of course not! You could do more damage than good.

Well God had a plan too. His plan goes to the very essents of one of the mysteries of God. You know of the mystery of three persons yet one God. For those of you who don’t, it is where there are three (for lack of a better word) individuals that work so much in unison that they are one in being. You don’t have to understand how it happens, that’s why it is a mystery of the faithful. What if God saw that as so good that he carried that to the extreme and made one of those persons of God to be made up of every body’s ( I am going to use the term soul) soul? This would mean that WE THE PEOPLE are present in the Eucharistic sacrament. WE THE PEOPLE do have a direct path to God. This means WE THE POELPE are all tied to one another and God. Can you imagine Jesus communicating to the other persons of God what we are all saying and doing? Can you see the immense torment Jesus goes through as WE THE PEOPLE exercise our free will? Another way of saying this would be IF we, in our human state, could tie into our soul enough to be one with it, we would be able to feel all the joys, pains, and all other free will choices all humans are making. When Jesus did this, his human body died! But he saved mankind with his free choice to love as God (which he is part of) does! Think about it how many times have you heard read or felt that “we the faithful are Christ on earth” or “We make up the body of Christ”. Have you ever heard by doing this we participate in the Eucharistic sacrifice? If we truly and fully participated in that sacrifice and not just symbolically, then we must have died at least in part on that cross at Calvary. By ALL of us making up part of our savior Jesus Christ we could have truly participated with him on Calvary.

CHAPTER 2 DIVINE JUSTICE, FREE WILL, and RESPONSIBILITY

Do you understand God’s plan of good and evil? Most people say that God allows evil, but if you understand God’s plan, then you know that is not what has happened. If God allows evil, then someone had to create it, and evil, by definition, (THE ABSENSE OF GOD) would serve no good value to God’s Kingdom. So, in that case, God would have created something that has none of his redeeming values in it. God is all good, so that could not be, he does not create evil! I am sure you have heard of the term Divine Justice. What is it? How is it carried out? Who is in control of it? Boy, these are some good questions. Try to answer them so that they are true to all and are good for all. That would be God’s requirement, don’t you agree? Let us go and try to answer these questions.

First, what is it? Divine Justice can be summed up as God has given us a prescribed path to follow with prescribed results. When we decide (freedom of choice) to follow or obey that path we get the good results; however, if we decide (freedom of choice) to do something else, we will be punished according to the rules set up. Think about this for a minute: it gives us our freedom of choice which is mandatory if we are going to make up any part of God. It punishes us by the same set of rules for the same action, which some people call fair, others call it equal and it is across the board for all.

How is it carried out? Have you ever heard the phrase “Life happens?” Some people say it as “Shit Happens”. Every decision you make is either for God’s kingdom and will or against it. We all have experienced this because we all know there is no human that has never made a mistake. Remember, for every good decision we make “Life happens” as well. What I am saying is that as we exercise our free will, we choose what happens to us. If we choose for God’s kingdom, God, whom we are a small part of, rewards us. If we choose against God’s kingdom, God, whom we are a small part of punishes us. This is where it also gets extremely complicated.

Let us try to use an example here. Let us say your spouse is an alcoholic and you see him or her stumble into your back yard on his/her way home from getting drunk one night and he/she falls down and passes out there in the yard. At this point what is the right choice for you to make?

Go out and bring him/her in so he/she can recover from the night and be better in the morning so life can go on as it has been.
Leave him/her out there to suffer the consequences of his/her actions.
You get pissed at him/her and call the police to report a person that looks like they are passed out laying in your yard.

I am sure there are some people that would pick each of the above A, B, and C as the right thing to do for God’s kingdom. Which is right? I can make an argument for each one of those to be right and back it up with Bible verses. Can you see now where the complication comes from? Let us leave it here for now; however, some will begin to see where divine mercy needs to be in the picture.

Who is in control of it (Divine Justice)? I believe God is in control of it because he is in control of all. Saying that, I also believe that God loves handing out mercy to one and all of us always, which creates a conflict. God would love to hand out mercy all of the time so that justice would not need to be given, but that would not be good for heaven or us. I don’t have the inside workings but I believe this is the area that Lucifer plays a redeeming role. Somehow he helps God stay true to divine justice even after divine Mercy came into the picture.

Now that we know what divine justice is, I hope it will be easier to understand free will and responsibility so let us look at that a little closer. Free will basically means we can choose. We can choose to drink water or not, to eat or not, to be nice or mean to someone, ect. We make thousands of free will choices a day. God trusts us with the power of choice every moment of every day. (WOW! that’s a lot of trust or love or stupidity.) Oh wait – there is a problem! If we bring divine justice into the picture, we have to take responsibility into play here. If we exercise our free will, we MUST be able to defend or at least be responsible for our choice to our God, whom we are a small part of. As you can now see, everything we choose we are responsible for, and must accept our reward or punishment under divine justice.

Let us see if we can summarize this so far. Divine Justice was what Adam & Eve knew for salvation prior to eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree. You see, they knew what was GOOD but could not understand evil. They did have freedom of choice which is critical in all of this, but it was the choice of known good or the unknown (until they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil). With the choice, of known good or the unknown you can have happiness but never Abundant Joy. Divine Justice can be summed up as God has given us a prescribed path to follow with prescribed results. When we decide (Freedom of choice) to follow or obey them, we get the good results, however if we decide (freedom of choice) to do something else, we will be punished according to the rules set up. One of these rules we know of is with the action of Original Sin, the penalty that we must all die came into play. God doesn’t choose what happens to us – we do! God makes sure justice is done and Satan’s role is to make sure God’s all forgiving personality doesn’t cheat the system. We could compare this to the Old Testament of the Bible.

CHAPTER 3 DIVINE MERCY HOW IT WORKS and WHERE IT COMES FROM

I believe the next five paragraphs to be inspired by the powers of God! They came to me before I actually started typing this book, paper, or whatever it ends up being.

Let us look at what Divine Mercy is: It is a deeper level of love than Divine Justice. It gives us more choices AND more responsibilities, which with Divine Justice has its own reward and pain. Some of the rewards Divine Mercy gives us are Abundant Joy, True Deep Happiness, The Most Intimate relationship we can have with our God. You may have thought you were happy and blessed before, and you were, but with this understanding the sky is not even the limit. This is a very limiting example of this but I am sure we all know married couples that are happy and life goes on just fine. Then we also know smaller number but at least that one couple where they are so extremely happy and always are thinking of the other partner and have some much fun and you just want to stay in their company because it is just so right and brings joy to your being. That, though very limited, is like the difference between the living in Divine justice and living in Divine Mercy.

Divine Mercy does come with a price! Divine Mercy cannot happen without Divine Justice (the base). To keep the Justice in the order something must be freely given by humanity so that God can multiply it and freely give it back to humanity multiplied many times over. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS MEANS? This means we, as one, have the power through our Lord and his mother to FREELY offer our sufferings which, in turn, can save many more people. We can take part in the Eucharistic Offering of our Lord on the cross. We now have that opportunity and as members of Christ’s body that responsibility. The thing that MUST be remembered here is that WE (each one of us individually) must offer it up freely and with no restriction, so that the powers in heaven can use them as needed.

When Satan encouraged and got Adam and Eve to commit the original Sin, he thought he won the power to become bigger or better than God. Little did he know he was playing into God’s hand and allowing us to become more like God and to be part of God in a whole new way! Satan loses and God WINS!!!!!!

How does this Divine Mercy originate or get created? It is in our freely offering of ourselves to our Divine God and team in heaven. There are different degrees of this. Martyrdom is obviously one of the highest forms of this; we offer everything, every ounce of our being, as well as every idea we have ever had to heaven’s team. There are smaller ways to do this: you suffer pain (physical, mental, financial, emotional, or spiritual) and you take the time to consciously offer it freely to our Lord, and he can bless that and feed many like he did with the fish and the loaves. Please take the action of CHOOSING TO OFFER IT UP!

Let me try to bring this to a more earthly level if I can. Knowing that when we try to do this, we limit the power of the big picture of what we are communicating. Maybe after I give this example, we should go back and reread this section to this part, so we can get the unlimited importance that was said above. Well here goes my try. The best way on earth I can think of the trinity is like when a mother and father have their first child. The three of them kind of become one yet are three, like the trinity. What if that child dies for some reason? I never had to experience this first hand of a child that was born and I was able to hold, THANK GOD. I have seen the pain it can cause and yet it is nothing to the pain of having everything of value you have (including people, things, and hope) which is what Jesus must of felt like as we struggled with Divine Justice only. Remember WE make up a large part of him! Remember The Father and The Holy Spirit are also feeling this because they are part of him as well. They, the Trinity, came to the decision (freedom of Choice) to be strong for one another so that Jesus could martyr himself in a most heinous way and he could take our pain and consequences away by use of Divine Mercy. NOW WE must remember that we are part of him so we must share in that suffering of our own free will or at least console Jesus while he is suffering, that is the Eucharistic sacrifice. Now go back and reread this section until this paragraph.

CHAPTER 4 HOW WE HAVE FAILED AS POEPLE, AS GOVERNMENT, AS CHURCH

As I am starting this chapter I don’t know where to start. I don’t mean to offend anyone or organization but when you talk about failures you usually hit nerves that do just that. I will say now that I apologize, but if we stay cool and grow from it, it is good in the long run of God’s Kingdom. Amen.

Let’s just start with some things. As people, how do you make decisions? Do you think about the kingdom of God? Do you think is this an act I can offer up for the creation of divine mercy? Do you act on emotion or the way you feel? Do I take short look back into me and if so why? Do I choose based on me, my comforts, or wishes on earth or for eternity? Now look at society and ask each one of these questions. How do WE THE PEOPLE make decisions? Do WE THE PEOPLE think about the kingdom of God? Do WE THE PEOPLE think is this an act we can offer up for the creation of divine mercy? Do WE THE PEOPLE act on emotion or the way we feel? And so on and so on. Stop here and truly think about these things for a bit.

Do you or Do we know what our purpose for being on earth really is? If you can’t answer that question then that is where you/we should start. When I was young in grade school I remember being taught that we were on earth for the sole purpose of getting our soul to heaven. Well I believe most people hear that and really don’t know what that means. It is like in chapter 2 and the right response for the alcoholic spouse. I mean some people could tell you which response A, B, or C is right: No, nobody can without a lot more information for each time it happens. Pope John Paul II said in his theology of the body document I think something like, “the body, in fact only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it” (TOB 19:4). There is a lot in that statement but if you understand it you might have your purpose or mission statement for life. As you can see knowing this purpose or mission statement can help you to answer the questions in the beginning of this chapter. (How do you make decisions? Do you act on emotions or feelings?) When you started to read this book, you thought this shouldn’t take long, Well, I am challenging you write your mission statement right now. I will share mine but I want you to know it took me months to get it to what it is today, but once there, I have not changed it in years. You should also know that each mission statement should be different and personal to each person. Mine is as follows:

I am on this Earth to learn, apply, and experience the benefits of God’s success principles: As I learn, apply, and enjoy them, I am to teach others. I will do this though a process of duplication, education, and prayers. By doing this I will achieve a well-balanced life; (Financial, Social, Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Balance), as well as help others achieve their balance life.

Your mission statement should be broad enough to encompass everything in your life now and in the future, but specific enough to give you guidance. I think it was Harm Smith who founded the Franklin Company in his book that taught his time management system that gave me the guidelines on how to work on your Mission Statement. Remember a mission statement is NOT a goal! It is rather a statement of WHY! I am on this earth WHY? = My mission statement.

Let us move on now to the questions of what are my/our values and morals? Do you/we value that we are part of Jesus? If you don’t believe it, you CAN”T value it! People have all kinds of values, power, money, comfort, feelings, etc.… A value is something that holds meaning for you. If that meaning is so strong that you would give or at least risk your own life to preserve it for yourself or mankind, then you know it is what Harem Smith called a governing value. Those are the values that you always want to consider when you make a decision. Can you sit down right now and list yours? If you can’t how can you make value based decisions? What do you stand for? If someone like a politician presented you with a plan, how do you test it? Does it stand up to your long term and short term values, or is it a slow erosion of them? Oh! Did you see that as a practical way of using it in life! Another way would be decisions on how to or what to do when raising your child. Is this good for them long term and short? Values come into play! I am not going to tell you that you failed or did well, but if you are honest with yourself, you will admit, like me, you have work to be done. God knows no one is perfect so he is good with that. We need to have a base line that cannot be eroded away by our emotions. Wait what do I mean by being eroded away by our emotions? To understand this we have to go back to the definition of an emotion as I believe God has given it to me years ago while praying on a retreat.

Emotion – is the brain’s automatic summary of your decisions in similar situations.

Stop and think about this. Many people think that emotions are automatic and we have no control of them. If you take that stance, then if you believe love is an emotion or you can fall into love then you also believe that you can fall out of love even if you really want to stay in love! Emotions change, and if you don’t have any decision-making control of them, why could this not be so? (Have you come up with an answer for that yet?) You have often heard the saying something like, “It is ok to feel angry but it is how you act while you are mad that counts,” or “you can feel mad but you must be accountable for your actions.” Both of these statements have a degree of truth to them, but they both speak of a shortfall we have: WE GOT MAD. Back to the question of falling into and out of love, why could this not be so? If we don’t have a way of choosing, we lose our free will, Period!!!! God gave us our free will. It is our job to use the tools he gave us (emotions) to help us. If we don’t, they will hinder us, and maybe even drive us crazy.

Ok, that is good, but back to having a base line that cannot be eroded away by our emotions. How does that work? I am going to try to use an example to help understand this. A little background first. You are working for a company and have a good relationship with them. They are a large company, several hundred employees, and you work in the office area. (You can use any area just change the items to the appropriate ones in that area.) You are working along then one day you realize you brought a pencil home with you, no big deal. A few days later you have a pack of thumb tacks that you were using in your pocket and you leave them at home for the kids. A little while later, you come home with the stapler in your computer bag that you used in a different part of the plant that day. On cyber Monday you use the work computer to order Christmas gifts for the family. This all happens and it is not a big deal so this goes on for years and the company is still happy with your performance and you are happy working for them. The question is, are you stealing from them? Most people I talked to about this say no it is expected and figured in to the cost of doing business. According to dictionary .com to steal means to take something from others. Did you steal? If you didn’t answer yes immediately to that question, that is where Emotions come into the picture. What was the meaning of an EMOTION =the brain’s automatic summary of your decisions in similar situations. What has happened is your brain summarized your action and said well stealing has more parameters to it than taking something from another without permission. I know some of you are justifying your action right now, it is OK. You did not mean to change the meaning of stealing but you did: it now has clarification associated with it. What if you, over time, did the same thing with what it means to help people, or what government should do, or what God wants?

Now you are probably wondering if emotions are good or bad. The answer is neither or both depending on how your mind is trained to work. Having emotional love for your spouse is very good. Sometimes using that split second emotional decision to fight or flee could be lifesaving. On the other hand, having passionate loving emotions for another’s spouse might not be too good. Never checking to see where your emotions stand with your mission statement or governing values could lead to some very bad logic or justification of your action which would be very bad.

So the question is have we failed to safeguard what God has given us as people to help us become the best part of Jesus Christ we can?

AS GOVERNMENT

I mentioned government before so let us look at that. The first thing I need to do is copy the definition I used in that section of this book because that is how I will use the term.

Government – An institution set up by people so as to live in society. This institution has no values or morals. ALL guiding values and morals come from the people and not from the institutions itself. When the institution itself makes its own morals and values it becomes church. Example: When the government decides it has the right to make the people accept that an action by some (homosexuality) is equal to (heterosexuality), an already accepted norm.

It is my opinion that our government has become the church of equalism. Our government is no longer of, by and for the people but is trying to control, hinder, and use the people for purposes not intended by God. Notice the government is doing exactly the opposite of the teaching by Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the body.

Let us look at the definition and ask is it helping us live in society? Most people would have to answer that yes in that, for the most part, we are not going around stealing things from our neighbors or killing them. Would most of us say it is doing a fantastic job? Maybe not, look at all the problems that are being talked about out there. If you ask if they have any values and morals, you might get all kinds of answers on that one. Do the values and morals come from the people? If we believe God has given us a free will and that is key to our relationship with him as part of him, then we need to say the government has to ensure that right of free will. IS IT? Question: did Social security ensure free will or start to make us dependent on government? Does it have us responsible for our old age or does it make our employers partially responsible? Do we have a choice to participate or is it forced on us? Does it control our actions? If you said no, then I must ask have you or are you doing anything with the thought that it would help or hurt what you receive in your S.S. check? If you answered that question yes then you are being controlled. You can go on and look at welfare, employee perks, trade deals, environmental issues, labor laws, taxes, etc.. On most of the topics just mentioned does the government say equal is fair? What is the meaning of equal and the meaning of fair?

One dictionary has it as:

Equal is alike in quantity, value, rank, ability, etc.; even

Fair is 1) free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice 2) legitimately sought, pursued, done, given, etc.; proper under the rules

As you can see equal is not often fair and fair is not often equal. Let us use the children’s story “The Red Hen” to think about this. For those of you who don’t know it here is a short summary. A red hen and her chicks decide they are going to make some bread, so she gets her chicks and go out and gather all the seeds to make the flour and the water and other ingredients as well as the wood for the fire and everything they need to complete the bread. Along the way they meet all these other animals (cow, fox, cat etc.…) that ask why they are working so hard doing the task at hand. Each time an animal ask the hen would tell them and invite them to help. Each time the other animals always came up with an excuse for why they could not help. Lo and behold, when the bread was done, all the animals came by hoping to get a piece of the bread. As they asked, the Red Hen reminded them of their excuse and said that her chicks and herself would eat it just fine and they should go on their way. If this would be in The Church of Equalism AKA the government each animal (the red hen, her chicks, the cow, the fox, the cat, etc..) would get an equal size piece of bread, even though only some did the work of making the bread. Would that be fair? Why or Why not? Equalism rewards one section by making them equal, while using the people that do the effort to get to that point. The theology of the body says what? The opposite of love is using someone for our benefit. Do taxes treat people equally, fairly, or neither? Some people say taxes are a form of charity; I say charity cannot be forced or it is not charity! God gave us a free will because love cannot be forced onto or from anyone; IT can only be given by a choice. Does Obama Care, for example, give us more or less free will? Does it give us more or less freedom of values and morals? Are WE THE PEOPLE making value and moral decisions or is the government acting as church forcing them on us? Let us think about this. Is the money that makes ACA (Obama Care) possible given by choice by people as an act of charity or is it forced on us by laws or taxes? That answer is obviously not charity. Free will has been taken from us, therefore it is in contrast to the teachings of Jesus that we are responsible for taking care of each other. The more practice we get at something the better we should become, so if we are denied the chance to practice acting like God, how can we become more like him? As you can now see this is a way the government has caused us to be more dependent on them and less independent with responsibilities like God designed us to be. Now the big question is: are we AS PEOPLE failing and the government is trying to fill in the gaps or did the government create the gaps so they could be in control instead of the people?

As Church

As I looked up the definition of church on dictionary.com it gave 17 different definitions. This told me that they really don’t know the definition. So what do we mean when we say church? It has to include all the people, clergy or hierarchy, traditions, etc.; but yet it is much more. For the sake of this article let us just deal with the part that it teaches values and morals. When I started this chapter I asked if you knew your values and morals in the as people section, Well if you could not list them I can say this is a fail as church. I believe the churches should be teaching us to know and define these for ourselves. Just imagine how just that fact would have changed this book! Now let’s go bigger How would that knowledge changed your life over the years? Now go even bigger what about your friends’ lives? We can go on and on and ask how would of it changed this country or even the world????

When I read the paragraph above after writing it the first time, the main thought I had was boy do people really know what a value is? You can’t answer the question until you know the meaning of a value. A value is something that holds meaning for you. If that meaning is so strong that you would give or at least risk your own life to preserve it for yourself or mankind, then you know it is a governing value. If it would help you understand I will share some of my values and how I have them written down.

Governing Values

1) I am eager to learn GODS Success Principles and apply them to My Life.

Clarifying Statement – God wants us to live life and live it abundantly. He has Natural laws that he created as he created the universe, that if followed will give you true happiness!!! They are hidden from those who stagnate, and made known to those who take action with faith and hope. This is an ongoing process of searching them out, then acting on them always to continually receive its blessings.

– ) I read Daily from Gods Word

– ) I pick out laws and promises that are in the Bible and other inspired teachings

-) I look forward to the future with hope

-) I look for what is common in all successful people.

-) I communicate what I believe I learn to others

2) I value all positive Relationships and try to make all Relationships Positive, Especially the relationships with my Wife & Children.

Clarifying Statement – A positive Relationship is one that challenges, encourages, empowers, comforts, and gives truth and life to the people involved.

-) I aid Polly in becoming the best person she wants to become.

A) I see the good things God has given her, and compliment her daily.
B) I allocate time for her regularly.

-) I help each of my children to be all they want & can be.

A) I see & know their good traits and acts and compliment them on them.
B) I spend time with them and teach them God’s success principles about life, God, and Money

3) Freedom of Choice – Enslaved by no 1) Person 2) Activity 3) Thing

Clarifying Statement –

-) No person shall be able to manipulate what I must do

a) Having the capability to hurt or hinder any area of my life if I don’t do what he says – when he says it.

Example: 1 contractor that feeds business into you = about 50% of your total income could threaten to take his business elsewhere if you don’t – do bids in x number of days ; start a project on a particular day; compete a project on a particular day; ect. (you need the money to make ends Meet).

-) I shall not agree to an assignment that requires my personal being on a long term non excusable condition.

a) Sit on a board of directors on civic group that if I miss 1 meeting I will be given task to accomplish or be kicked off the board.
b) Being employed by someone that makes overtime mandatory & without notice.

-) I shall not purchase anything that will require:

a) Payment – this causes your time to be mortgaged for the future.
b) Ongoing & continuous attention by myself – a horse without a care taker – you must be there to feed and care for it daily.

-) I shall not lock into only one way of thinking. Example: one political party’s thinking

3) Giver

Clarifying Statement –

-) I’m going to compliment each person I converse with, when they deserve it.

-) I encourage others to achieve their goals.

-) I share what I have with others

a) Knowledge
b) Attitude
c) Resources

-) I look for opportunities to share that that will blossom with fruit, not just blossom.

Maybe here is a good time to make us aware that values and virtues are two different things. A virtue is more on the lines of a quality or characteristics that a person has that are desirable. We are not talking physical as much as Mental or spiritual. Some examples might be, integrity, truthfulness, or honesty. People can have qualities that are undesirable but they are not usually called virtues. The following is my written list of virtues that I am trying to master in my life.

Clete’s Virtues to Live By

Honesty:

Clarifying Statement – I always pass on & seek only what IS true, Not what is portrayed as true.

Integrity:

Clarifying Statement – I do what I say I will do and I will commit myself to my Mission Statement, planning or goals, and Values.

Receptive:

Clarifying Statement – Positive Minded, Eager to Learn GODS Success Principles

Freedom of Choice:

Clarifying Statement – Enslaved by no 1) Person 2) Activity 3) Thing 4) Ideology

Gratitude or Thankfulness:

Clarifying Statement – I will see all, as gifts from my Creator.

Giver:

Clarifying Statement – I will give to each person that which they need from me gladly.

Moderation:

Clarifying Statement – I will avoid extremes in all that I do – Work for balance.

Order:

Clarifying Statement – All things will have a place & all my Values have their time.

Tranquil:

Clarifying Statement – I will not allow my thought processes to be interrupted by Provocations, Accidents, and other life disturbances.

Efficient:

Clarifying Statement – I will always be doing something useful – cut out unnecessary actions – Waste no time.

As you can see I have a single word for the virtue then I follow it up with a statement so that if I fall into the trap of society changing the meaning ,it will pull me back to what I meant it to mean to keep me going in the same and hopefully right direction. I am not going to say the church has failed in teaching virtues, but maybe they have not maintained an environment where we know how to use them well in our own lives. Obviously this falls on the whole church, hierarchy and body, to create maintain, and protect this environment.

A second way the church has failed is it tried to farm out its responsibility. When the church said the government can administer the care for the poor or aged, whether they knew it or not, they said you can take away our respect as teachers of values and morals, as well as the belief that we need to believe in a God because government became that God. Two more effects of this are the people have less money to GIVE donations with because government TAKES taxes for their church, and people don’t know the good rewards that God can give for choosing the right thing. Less free will put to use. A political post on social media said, “Wanting everyone to have healthcare and food does not make you a communist, socialist, or unpatriotic. It just makes you a good person.” If you look at that statement you see that the fact that you want that to happen makes you a good person, when in reality it is when you, not your neighbor, makes that happen that you become a good person. Do you see the difference there? When the Church farms, the care of others, out, The Church does not become the good guy. It tries to make the institution of the government, or the neighbor, to be the good guy. Institutions can be neither good nor bad. Only when an Institution becomes something other than it is, can it become good or bad. Other areas this one decision has affected are: numbers in church, the rewards of being appreciated and needed, tax status of the church, which affects the message of the church, etc..

Look at the faith life of the church and tell me if all the above has been diminished how will that affect the faith life?

WHAT WE MUST DO TO CHANGE

The first thing I am going to say to do is Pray. Prayer is a deliberate choice you make or fail to make. If you go back to the definitions section, you will see that Love is defined very simply as CHOICE. So in deciding to pray we are acting out a Love act. The more love acts we do, the more Godlike we become. It is like the old Indian tale that talks about all braves have two wolves inside them, one good, one bad. These two wolves are always fighting to control the brave. The chieftain then asked a little one if he understood what he was saying and the little one said yes but he would like to know which wolf wins in the end. The chieftain just said, “The one you feed.” I believe you can see the connection.

Have you taken the time to write down you purpose or mission statement as I told you to do earlier? While you are writing it, how about listing and defining your values. I think you can see how this will help your decision making be better. You see, one of the next things that must change is our decision making process or method. If you go back and look at the definition of emotion which many people interchange with feelings, you will see that it is just your mind’s conclusion of how you thought in what it believe as similar situations. To demonstrate this, let us use the spouse who passed out in the back yard story I shared earlier. If the first time you read that you picked an answer, YOU ARE PROBABLY DECIDING WITH FEELINGS OR EMOTIONS! Did that last statement surprise you? Why can I say that? It is because there simply is not enough information there for you to make one of those decisions if you look truly at the facts! You see Satan does not have the power to create as God does, but he does have the power to deceive, and is very very good at this. What this means is, if Satan, society, or even a government or church, can get you to do something small, often enough, they can get you to change your belief without you knowing it. This was done by using your emotion or feelings to manipulate your thoughts. Now you might also have to deal with justifying your previous statements or actions, or admitting you made a mistake. By using your emotions and feelings those same groups will use PRIDE to keep you thinking the new way. You did not consciously choose to change your mind, but by not safeguarding that belief, you did. The pencil from the employer example that I shared earlier might help us understand what just happened in your brain, if you make decisions with emotions and/or feelings. I believe you can now see that if you don’t take time every so often and look back through the facts God taught you and recommit to the WHY of those facts, you really are not in control as much as you thought. You could be thinking you are believing what God wants you to, when in reality you are believing something different. What you are saying now may or may not be true even if you believe it to be. The longer you live making decisions with emotions or feelings that Satan has hijacked the harder (but not impossible) it is to truly see your God given values. I have use the word “value” a lot but what is it? How would you define a value? A governing value? A God given value? I believe it was Harem Smith of the Franklin Day Planner System, said it something like, a value is a principle or quality of high priority. If we accept that answer, which I think is a fairly good one, then a governing value is a principle or quality that we choose to live by. Notice WE CHOOOSE = freedom of choice. Then also a God given value would be those values given to us by God that we CHOOSE to live by. If I were to die right here and every person, or at least a large number of people would come to understand and change to God given value thinking, the world would change faster than any of us would believe.

If we make the first two main changes then we will see at least one more that needs to change. That being; we must stop the government from acting as Church! The government was never meant to take care of the everyday needs of the people, that is the churches job! The people in order to live in a peaceful society must make, and experience the responsibility of making the God like choices, so as to experience the reward. The more that happens the more we teach, accept, help, console, etc. our fellow mankind!

Earthly Author

Clete Muhlenkamp