Psalm 107:6,13,19,28

6. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress.

13. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them from their distress.

19. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them from their distress.

28. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distress.

Preface

Success and failure result in direct measure to the degree of responsibility we accept for the conditions and consequences of our lives.

Those who've enslaved themselves to fear will not recognize themselves as being so. If asked, "Do you live afraid," they may say and truly believe they don't. But most people associate fear with the feeling. The fear I'm talking about isn't something one consciously feels. It's a state of being, a disposition of thought collectively recognized as what passes for being "normal," a dubious moniker about how the world thinks we're supposed to think, feel, speak and act in any given situation.

People may feel the emotional discomfort caused by acting independently or running afoul of the world's social expectations, but people rarely awaken to their independent conscious Self amid such discomfort. They tend to blindly allow the emotional "nudge" to redirect them back in line. And then when that line leads to its well-known and expected misery and misfortune, the next "peer pressured" nudge says to blame something or someone else for these results. Or to just assume it's an unavoidable aspect of life.

Likewise, those who've been given a greater measure of faith, or who've cultivated more faith within themselves, may not consciously be aware of, nor be able to articulate why they think, feel and act the way they do. They may not verbally attribute any spiritual or religious aspects to it, just being vessels for God's light through example. They're more in tune with the Spirit than with the ego, the ego being the thing they feel most uncomfortable engaging with, giving voice to and exemplifying. Such people intuitively recognize the way of fear as being something they don't want anything to do with.

The faithful usually recoil in dismay from what the way of fear thinks of as "normal," while their heart reaches out to those so bound and for the victims of fear's actions in the world.

Faith can clearly see that there's a difference between the one who acts and the action, knowing that we don't do anything independent of the thoughts we think and that many people in fear have no idea that they are not the basket of thoughts with which the world's covered their light.

People who live according to the dictates of fear's "way of being" are easily recognized by their refusal to take responsibility for:

1) the consequences of their behavior, and

2) their born-into life circumstances.

Those puppeted by fear shirk responsibility, not seeing themselves as "refusing" to take responsibility, but insisting that it's impossible to do so, instead giving their life over and allegiance to "it's not my fault."

But faith recognizes consequences and circumstances as two different types of opportunities: The first, for personal growth; the second, for community investment.

Regarding the first, faith sees clearly that action "A" results in consequence "B." If I don't like or want consequence "B," then I never again commit action "A." And if I want to be forgiven and freed from consequence "B," then I commit a different action; for example, action "A's" opposite, over and over again until the old consequence "B" is crowded out and replaced with a new, desired consequence "C."

But it's more than just committing a different action. It's committing to what the different action represents. It's remaking the material of our ideas, attitudes and beliefs--our thoughts and emotions--into the source material of faith. We remove the basket, allowing our light to shine.

When we learn how to do better, we can choose to become better, as defined by thinking new thoughts that generate within us greater levels of peace, joy and gratitude. This allows us to garner desired life results from speaking and acting differently in response to events and circumstances, keeping us from engaging in the type of reactions to events and circumstances that the state of fear would call "normal." Consequently, our life is protected from becoming more miserable.

Different actions create different results. This is an absolute law that no force in the world can stand up against. But the thing is, it's the degree of commitment to those different actions that determines when the different results will manifest and how long they'll last. If I try something different for a couple of days, weeks or months and give up in impatience (a fear-based response), then whatever gains I've made, whether I've seen them manifest in my life or not, will fade away, being crowded out by the actions born from my return to the familiar.

Fear returns to the familiar because it's driven by habit. Fear's lazy, wanting to think and act--live life--on autopilot. Though it hates the environmental circumstances and the repeating life events that come from living that particular set of habits, it would rather be miserable in what's "easy" than free in what's deemed as "hard." Fear cannot see the "challenge" of doing things consciously--what's demanded of internalizing new habits, making new ways of doing things into a new "easy"--as easier than the difficulty that comes with living an extremely difficult life in miserable conditions.

Fear prefers ease within over ease without.

If I stole (action "A) and was imprisoned (consequence "B"), then, while inside prison, I commit to a life of giving of possessions (providing for those in need), and of time (teaching others in prison and society the value of earning's actual benefits over stealing's perceived one's). These new action "A's" come to represent a broadcasting of seeds that eventually result in the harvest of: 1) others inspired to have the courage to live in this way; 2) being considered for and receiving early release from prison; and 2) the opportunity freedom provides to expand giving to and inspiring others in need (consequence "C").

But fear wants its cake and to eat it too. It desires immediate gratification without having to pay the inevitable back-end cost. And it hates that reality doesn't work this way, raging against the back-end cost in the same way that demons hate God not allowing evil and darkness to rule supreme.

Regarding the born-into life circumstances, faith reveals that we find ourselves in the environment in which God purposes us to make the most meaningful impact. If I'm born into wealth and privilege, then I ask: How can I utilize this abundance of opportunity 1) to multiply it and 2) to best address the specific societal woes that speak loudest to my spirit?

If I'm born into poverty and hardship, then I ask: 1) How can I utilize this lack of abundance to create opportunities? 2) What specific issues exist that I'm most inspired to solve? and 3) Which purpose-driven person, born into wealth and privilege, aligned in inspiration, am I to reach out to and partner with?

But fear is a weapon of mass destruction wielded by ego. And ego takes responsibility for nothing, except insincerely, as a manipulation tactic. Ego attacks unwanted consequences and life circumstances with:

1) hate,

2) blame, and

3) reactions,

all toward making life worse for ego's vessels of fear and their inevitable victims.

Fear will use abundance as an excuse to amass and hoard. Fear's life philosophy is "Get all you can, can all you get, poison the rest." And fear will use its inherent state of poverty as an excuse to steal, kill and destroy, ego's tools for spreading poverty into the spaces of wealth, driving abundance and opportunity out. Then fear blames those in wealth for its state of being in poverty.

Spiritually, abundance is defined by opportunity--those we make for ourselves and those we find available in a particular geographical area. Peace, order, work ethic are symptoms of Spirit within these areas. Light resists and often keeps the darkness at bay. But where there's a lack of opportunity, or where darkness is working to destroy opportunity zones, that's where fear spreads, and those people spreading it are allowing their fear to destroy themselves and everything and everyone around them.

Fear debilitates a person's drive, like flipping a switch, turning off the energy of work ethic. It makes the work seem impossible that people must do to obtain the knowledge and to create the opportunities to pull themselves up and out of the societal environments built and maintained by fear.

Faith sees the people who daily break free from the mindset that perpetuates impoverished environments. Faith recognizes that poor neighborhoods are creations born from and engines that run on the fuel of fear.

Change the fuel to faith, and the engine's inhabitants will rebuild themselves and, by extension, their environment into an opportunity-rich zone. When the shift is made from F2F, then busy work shifts to productive work; working to just survive shifts to working to thrive.

Fear blames faith for the conditions and events that fear creates and faith has nothing to do with.

Faith doesn't believe, but knows fear is poverty's only culprit and oppressor of the poor.

Faith also knows that fear is the only enemy to those rich with opportunity.

Fear steals and ends up with nothing. Faith gives and ends up everything. But it's in how it gives that makes the difference.

Fear kills and aborts. Faith heals through work, and taking precautions, preparing against unwanted consequences, choosing life and love over death and judgment. It just depends on where we are on the fear-to-faith spectrum that determines how far forward we're able to look before committing to a course of action and how willing we are to take responsibility for what happens.

Fear diligently chips away at meritocracy with the pickax of envy. Fear's mentally, emotionally lazy, resisting change to routine with impatience, frustration and pretend distress, while hating God's inviolable universal law that we reap what we sow. Fear defines equity as: 'I should have what you have without having to do the work you do to have it.' But fear's adherents don't realize that the only place such equity is found is in concentration camps.

The whole world would have to become an equal hellscape of unimaginable terrors for fear's divisive, lazy, hateful ways to achieve their dream of equality for all without working for a living.

We build and maintain our surrounding environments from the inside out. A person of faith can be dropped anywhere in the world and within five-to-ten years build an Eden. A person of fear, allowing fear to imprison them with insecurity and a lack of direction, would: 1) lay down and die, or 2) steal, kill, destroy their way to a prison cell or to being murdered.

Fear is synonymous with "flesh." The Greek word for flesh is 'sarx,' which refers to 'the sinful state of human beings,' as represented by a power in opposition to the Spirit. This "power" is directly experienced by what we call fear and doubt. (Other verses using 'sarx' in this way include: Galatians 5:13,16,17,19 and 24; and 6:8.)

"Flesh" can also be thought of as animal. And "Spirit" can be thought of as who we actually are, that part of God breathed into and possessing the animal vessel. Where the animal is made from the material of the world, the Spirit is an extension of God, made of the kingdom of heaven, which is not a place but a state of being that transcends and encompasses the world.

The flesh and Spirit dichotomy represents choice. This is actually the only place where free will exists. This choice is one between:

1) animal or God;

2) limited or unlimited;

3) bound or free;

4) darkness or light;

5) death or life; and

6) fear or faith.

They're interchangeable. And all choices we make, no matter how seemingly insignificant, are seeds that invest in either flesh or Spirit.

If life was thought of as a scale, the number of seeds we place on one side verses the other determines what our surrounding environment looks like, from the inside out, from the quality of our thoughts and feelings, of our relationships, of the work we do, of the neighborhood we live in.

"You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself' [Leviticus 19:18]. If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other" (Galatians 5:13-15).

Fear argues, the acid of "being right" poured on the glue of love that holds humanity together.

Faith chooses the glue, seeing arguing about anything at the expense of love as ridiculous. Trading love in for "being right" is no different than trading gold in for coal. Faith clearly sees how anything that invests in the erosion of humanity's connection only serves to bring all humans--the right and the wrong--closer to their annihilation.

If I allow fear to disconnect me from my neighbor I shoot myself in the foot.

Imagine: We discover a technology that measures the exact amount of oxygen available on the planet. This technology is also able to determine the amount of oxygen needed to support all terra firma oxygen-breathing life.

Now see a jumbo-tron, like those at sports arenas, set in a major city, displaying these two numbers side by side--earth's current oxygen level and the level needed. Every time a plant or tree is cut down, the jumbo-tron accurately reads the slight loss in oxygen production. If we can, for example, externally see the direct result of us cutting down the rainforest, the oxygen levels lowering closer and closer to the level needed for life, would we stop cutting down the trees?

If we're in SCUBA gear underwater, and an oxygen gage reveals we're almost out of air, will we dive deeper or swim to the surface?

But on our jumbo-tron gage, what if we see the oxygen level lower to the necessary-for-life level and not care? Do we keep going until all of life on the planet starts suffocating?

Love is equated to oxygen. Love's the unseen spiritual substance that connects all of humanity together. Trees are to oxygen what the Spirit is to love. The flesh, as the physical manifestation of fear, is what cuts the Spirit down, lowering love's levels.

As the flesh-based rate at which our collective, world-wide everyday choices rises, the love-based rate falls. The ease or difficulty with which we breathe is then measured by how much effective leadership their is in the world, by how much war and threat of war is present, by how much harm people commit against people, and by how much the Ten Commandments are violated, or the seven deadly sins are committed.

As flesh increases Spirit decreases...in our lives, in the world. Put another way, as fear increases, faith decreases, leading to humanity's suffocation and death.

"For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want" (Galatians 5:17).

Paul then shows what the flesh and Spirit look like.

"The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God" (Galatians 5:19-21).

And what is the "kingdom of God?"

"The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or "There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20-21).

The kingdom of God isn't a place with geographical boundaries. Instead, it's the work of the Spirit in our lives and our relationships to each other. God's kingdom only exists in what is being done in our hearts, as revealed by the fruits of the Spirit.

"By their fruit you will recognize them" (Matthew 7:16,20; Luke 6:44).

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ... Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other" (Galatians 5:22-23, 25-26).

Paul wrote again, this time to Titus, "Remind the people...to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone.

"At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another" (Titus 3:1,3).

The way of the flesh is the way of politics. There is no Spirit, no love, no God in arguing, division, one side claiming "right" while calling another side "wrong." Any place where such fruits exist, there is only ego and fear, the idols of self put before the connection and health of the whole.

When we turn on the TV does its daily messaging reflect the way of flesh or Spirit? Of fear or faith? What it messages, it teaches, generation after generation. But due to the nature of tolerance levels, how they become more and more numb to externally-based negative stimulation, the visual depictions that reflect the way of flesh and fear have to become more and more graphic. The darkness has to be made darker to appeal to darkness's insatiable hunger contained within the black-hole of the flesh.

When we look inside at the "TV" of our mind, what type of thoughts does it predominantly think?

When we look at the "TV" of our heart, what type of emotions does it mostly feel?

When we look at the circumstances of our lives, what portion remains from what we were born into and is maintained by the circumstance's culturally adopted ideas, attitudes and beliefs (our thoughts and feelings)?

How much of my surrounding environment results directly from the actions or inactions born from my internal states of being? And how much do the changes that take place within this environment reflect the changes that take place within me?

Most media teaches flesh and fear, the way of the world. And the more people who generationally look to this messaging as their manual for how to think, feel, "live my life," the faster we work toward our collective annihilations. Until then, individually we come to swim in the chaotic seas of emotional turmoil, suffering and teaching our pain as "The way things are" unnecessarily, out of ignorance.

Psalm 107's Theme is: "Thankfulness to God should constantly be on the lips of those whom he has saved."

Where the Theme for Psalm 103 is "What God does for us tells us what he is really like," Psalm 107 demonstrates gratitude for the things from which God saves us. Specifically, Psalm 107 speaks of people in four different types of challenging circumstances and how God rescues them:

1) Wanderers (107:4-9),

2) Prisoners (107:10-16),

3) The Distressed and Sick (107:17-20), and

4) The Storm-Tossed (107:23-30).

In today's time these examples would be called:

1) Homeless, who're poor, thirsty and hungry;

2) Incarcerated;

3) Sick, as a consequence of personal behavior, such as promiscuous and unprotected sex, drug use, harmful dietary practices, etc.; and

4) Work-related challenges.

HOMELESS

Solomon wrote, "the Lord does not let the righteous go hungry," (Proverbs 10:3), and "Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth" (10:4).

Matthew wrote, when differentiating between working for money and working for God, "You cannot serve both God and money" (Matthew 6:24). He's speaking to the deleterious affect of working from the psychological frame of mind of worrying about income over working while confidently assured that all of our needs will be met.

The same sentiment is captured in Steve Jobs' observation, "Do what you love, and the money will follow." When we listen to our Spirit's prompt for the type of work for which God made us in the womb, following that path that'll meet regularly our sense of life purpose, while making a meaningful contribution to society, all our needs will be met. The material gains will just be icing on the cake.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?" (Matthew 6:25) Here we're being told that life is made better when life is given the primary focus. If we take our eye off of life, narrowing our focus down to just the small individual parts found within life, we do so at the expense of the bigger picture. The body goes to where the mind flows. What we don't focus on we lose sight of.

This would be no different than being given a million dollars and then pulling out of it a couple of pennies and believing that's what's needed to achieve a million dollars. But we already have the million! Yet the world's perspective of fear will keep people blind to the infinite bounty they've been given.

Mark Twain wrote that there are only two important days in our lives: the day we're born and the day we learn why.

If we don't yet know our purpose, then our purpose is to find our purpose. The arrows that point to our purpose reside within us. These arrows are our: values, interest, personality and skills.

The overlaps of these four aspects of our makeup reveal our "Why." Once revealed, then we're called to invest in gaining knowledge in this specific field of study. Once gained, we then invest in the field itself by working in it and adding to its body of knowledge.

Jesus said, "The 'knowledge' of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them" (Matthew 13:11-12).

The "knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven" is the knowledge of "how things work" awakened inside of our hearts and minds as a consequence of spending time in meditative, prayful study. It's learning the mind hacks of faith that allow us to achieve our full potentials as God-created beings. And these "secrets" reveal themselves through the Word and to the world through the work we've been called to do.

This is the same as recognizing that the knowledge people have gained about money management, investing and building a successful company is what's made them financially independent. And such people shouldn't hold it against others who've not yet acquired such knowledge. But too it's a recognition that if others do learn this information, they too will be able to use it to pull themselves out of poverty, giving themselves the ability to likewise help others. But for those who don't learn how to manage their money correctly, whatever they have they will end up losing. And their lack of knowledge about such things will be why they lose everything. Once we learn this, then it's our responsibility to learn what we have to learn and to turn that knowledge into new habits that reflect disciplined responsibility in the life area of money management.

The more knowledge we gain the more knowledge (know how) that'll be given to us. But we can learn what we don't know how to do by doing it, or we can learn by studying the field first, then applying that knowledge, transforming the theoretical (from books) into the practical (from the direct experience of doing the actual work ourselves). Either way, we come to a point where we have to start investing our "Why"--our purpose--into the world.

Our talent tends to serve as our reason for being here. As Jesus said about the man who, before going on a journey, entrusted his wealth to his servants: "To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability: (Matthew 25:15).

One "talent" was worth about 20 years of a day laborer's wage. This means the first man received 100 years worth of wages in one day. The second man, 40-years worth. And the third man, 20-years worth. On this day each one of them learned there "Why" for being born. Now they had to live it. And by doing what they were 'born' to do, they would find that they did what they 'loved' to do. This love translates into earning more than they could have ever earned while doing work that they hated. ("Earning" in this sense means more than just monetary income.)

Hate will never generate the degree of output that love will.

To live one's purpose is to invest it.

But to invest our talents often calls for us to eventually step in faith away from our day laborer's wage. Our day job may provide for one's basic survival needs. But this represents the bottom rung of the abundance ladder. And it's the number one cause of a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. Adherence to a disliked, or even loathed day job is an expression of fear that impersonates "being practical," masquerading as "playing it safe." And rarely does it meet our day-to-day emotional needs, leaving us miserable, growing more so by the year.

Survival jobs that serve no purpose beyond just paying the bills kill many of us from the inside out. They make us view life through the lens of "Life is hard," defining this statement as 'Something I don't want to do, but just put up with for responsibility's sake.' But "playing it safe" is the most irresponsible thing a person can do.

We were all built to extrapolate the unknown from the known, through our respective callings. No one's ever been built to engage themselves in the known.

Failing to invest our talents builds fragility into our lives. The stress makes us more susceptible to anger and disease, threatening relationships and our ability to keep living. The first sign of an emergency wipes us out, leaving us with nothing.

Homelessness is always just one medical emergency or layoff away.

"The man who had received five talents went at once and put his talents to work and gained five more. So also, the one with two talents gained two more. But the man who had received one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid" what he'd been given (Matthew 25:16-18).

As the parable communicates, we'll always make far more from investing our talents--doing what we love--than we'll ever make from playing it safe. By burying our talent within us under the weight of self-imposed chains of limitation, we only earn ourselves excuses and loss of even that which we do have.

For example, when income relies only on our work output, the moment we stop working for any reason--accident, layoff, medical emergency, death--the income stops. From that point, everything that relied on that income for continued existence--house, car, food, etc--goes away.

People who position themselves in this type of existence are represented by the person who buried their talent. (Often our talents are buried beneath a mountain of debt.)

Fear chooses busy surviving. Faith chooses productive thriving. Fear spends. Faith saves.

Those of us who choose faith believe and invest in our talents. We recognize these as God given and use them to make our lives, the lives of others and the world better.

"For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully (Romans 12:4-8).

Our functions take countless forms. But each and every form is a vital piece of the whole of humanity.

"Tell all the skilled workers to whom I have given wisdom in such matters that they are to make garments..." (Exodus 28:3). The tailors who made Aaron's garments were given wisdom by God in order to do their task. They knew their purpose and they lived it.

"And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills--to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts" (Exodus 31:3-5). What if Bezalel chose fear over faith and, not wanting to risk upsetting God and Moses by messing up, shrank back from investing the talents for which he was chosen? (Moses made every excuse he could think of to avoid living his calling, essentially arguing with God. (Exodus 3:10-4:17))

"And he has given both [Bezalel] and Oholiab...the ability to teach others. He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work..." (Exodus 35:24-35). "So Bezalel, Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the Lord has given skill and ability to know how to carry out all the work of constructing the sanctuary..." (Exodus 36:1).

"Huram was filled with wisdom, with understanding and with knowledge to do all kinds of bronze work. He came to King Solomon and did all the work assigned to him" (1 Kings 7:14).

Wisdom is best defined as "knowledge in action." The wisest of us build a life from doing what we love. Such building will never result in homelessness, thirst and hunger.

Passion creates results that provide for us long after we're no longer physically capable of working.

Living a life that's not in alignment with our purpose for being born, is a life that fails to resonate with the immense joy of the Spirit within us. Such a life is no different than being homeless, as a wanderer lost in the wilderness, confused and struggling unnecessarily against the elements of surrounding conditions, avoiding the very purpose that the struggling serves to find. But the moment we commit in our heart to the designation of our purpose, crying out within us for help, God reveals himself through our deliverance.

Our purpose is our home in the body of humanity during our time on earth.

So this reveals the formula, so to speak, for deliverance. It doesn't come if we're only asking for deliverance from the trouble we've created for ourselves, if we have no intention of committing to the path that'll actually pull us out of the trouble and into a joyful, abundant life. (Jonah wasn't spit out of the fish until he agreed to do what he was called to do. (Jonah 2)) Why would God help us out of problems that we'd still be intent on recreating for ourselves with renewed commitment to the very way of living that created those problems in the first place?

As Einstein wrote, "We can't get out of problems using the same thinking that got us into them."

Just by talking about what we really want to do in the world, we quickly experience ideas and meet people and are presented with unexpected opportunities, all specific to the realization of our passion's dreams come true. (These type of experiences are a part of God's nature called 'Hashgacha Peratit,' Hebrew for Divine Providence, which reveal themselves more as our spiritual consciousness expands.)

Our talents point to our calling. And our calling is the place in which our heart settles.

Finding and living our "Why" fills us with an overwhelming sense of belonging. It's our place in the world where we fit and make a meaningful impact. From this we know only gratitude for the gift of living, for the Lord's "unfailing love" (Psalm 107:8).

If we're not feeling joy for being alive, then our talents are being wasted.

In prison I found freedom in the joy of helping people realize their "Why." And for each of those who did, not one has returned to crime or prison for any reason.

INCARCERATED

"But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden" (Genesis 39:20-21).

The commentary points out, as a prisoner and slave, Joseph could have seen his situation as hopeless. Instead, he did his best with each small task given him. His diligence and positive attitude were soon noticed by the warden, who promoted him to prison administrator.

Fear asks "Why me?" interpreting unwanted events as personal attacks. From this perspective, fear seeks excuses to complain and to fill self up with the painful feelings of anger, rage, sadness, hopelessness, impatience, frustration, or apathy and numbness. What type of actions do we think will come from such thinking and feeling? Productive, helpful ones? Or ones that can only make things worse?

When negative mental states are chosen in response to events and circumstances, such internal suffering gets piled on top of the challenging events and circumstances. Complaint, for example, is a great way to dig self deeper into the perceived mire. It's like getting hit twice, once by the event, then again by our response to the event. But this is part of a natural process. Negative attitudes confound things further by turning others against us. It's one thing to be in a harsh situation. It's another to make oneself miserable because of that environment. Then it's a completely different state of affairs to isolate oneself in that environment by chasing people away or burning bridges with rage.

This is how people "awfulize" events, turning one thing (the event) into three things (the event, the negative feelings and the isolation).

But Joseph had faith. He epitomized the maxim, "When life gives you lemons, make lemon aid." Instead of seeing events as happening 'to' him he saw them as happening 'for' him. And so he sought out the opportunities hidden inside the challenge. He looked for and found problems within the prison he could help solve. He minded the details of his work and added value.

Joseph's way of faith stood out like a beacon amid the other prisoner's way of fear.

Light will always stand out in the dark. Even someone committed to the way of darkness and pain looks up at the night sky and sees the stars, whether appreciated or not. (When has anyone looked up and admired the dark spaces in between the stars?)

Whether it's literal incarceration, or places that at times feel imprisoning, such as one's job, home, town or school, the way out of prison has the best chance of presenting itself in response to us:

1) looking for a problem that bothers us (the emotional state of being bothered being it's own sort of sign),

2) committing to finding a way to solving the problem, and

3) taking each task that presents itself, minding the details of doing them to the best of our ability.

My brother and I saw many abuses occurring in the legal system, people being wrongfully convicted or illegally over sentenced. We taught ourselves the law, helping people file their appeals. Over 20 years of doing this resulted in us getting back a total of nearly 2,000 years from the DOJ. We helped people get the sentences for which their crimes actually called and in many cases we secured immediate-release orders. (My brother's primary focus was justice. My primary focus was the people involved, and how my decision to help could effect those in society. So I fought for justice for those who fought for freedom within themselves, those who showed that they were committed to adding value to society and not be released to just cause harm and catch a new criminal case.) Our success rates have everyone coming to us for help.

But legal work is my brother's calling, not mine. Mine's reflected in my Life Mission Statement: "Teacher: Help people break free from personal chains of limitation." This reveals that we can be good at more than one thing, but there's going to be only one thing that consistently, daily meets our emotional needs.

I look at the language of failure and criminality, as once expressed by me, and is still being expressed by those who've not yet been taught a different way to think, feel, speak and act. And I work to solve this problem by providing others the tools that broke me free within myself from the chains that limited me. I rarely meet anyone who doesn't respond positively to the information. They realize that it's what they've always been looking for. And I've been blessed to see hundreds of people over the years self actualize, be released back to society and make incredible positive impacts in their respective communities.

I invested what was invested into me, garnering a return. And the return--people's lives saved--helps me invest more, toward more lives saved.

We invest the minutes of our lives as if they're gold coins, instead of trading time in for hours each day watching others live their dreams on TV or hand-held devices. By making such a trade even overwhelming odds will be reversed in our favor.

The anonymous author of Psalm 107 wrote that those in prison "cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress" (107:13). These prisoners were actual criminals. They rebelled against God's commands and despised the plans of the Most High (107:11), which are euphemisms for people who, instead of investing their talents, stole, killed and destroyed, or, like Jonah, ran from the plan for which they were born.

The only way they cried out and were saved is if they:

1) took responsibility for their past actions,

2) looked for opportunities to put remorse into action, being of service to others in prison, and

3) committed to doing good work in freedom, to follow the path of their passion, solving the problems that speak loudest to their Spirit.

They built a reputation as being reliable. They earned back the trust they had hurt, doing whatever it took for as long as it took to prove the integrity they built from the source material of remorse.

Many people say they have faith, but live according to the world's dictates of fear. Paul wrote, "Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering" (Hebrews 13:3). If people in society truly knew what happens in the prison system; what their nearly $100 billion dollars worth of taxes pay for, they'd know that "those in prison" are not remembered, and no one (who's making a difference) is putting themselves in with them. Society would demand a complete overhaul of the entire system, or a refund of the taxes they paid.

Crime is a symptom of internal suffering. Yes, it expresses itself as arrogance and selfishness. But these are the masks worn by insecurity and a lack of purpose. All four states--insecurity, lacking purpose, arrogance and selfishness--represent the suffering of the lost and misguided. Suffering that can be healed with compassionate mentorship, if only such was built into the culture.

Then of course there are the innocent who've been wrongly accused, or politically kidnapped, like Joseph (mentioned above) or Mandela (in Africa), or those who've been serving decades solely because of the color of their skin.

Jesus said that when we visit those in prison, we're visiting Jesus himself. (Matthew 25:36)

To "remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison" is empathy. To visit them in person is compassion, which is empathy empowered to action.

I am one of the "Some" who "sat in darkness," a prisoner who's suffered "in iron chains" (107:10), because of my rebellion. Soon following my arrest, I fell to my knees in torment for the harm I caused others. I sought not freedom but forgiveness, wanting to return home to God's love. The way of the world proved to be only the way of pain--the way of manufacturing it in self and then pouring it out onto others. In crying out, two exemplars of faith, strangers, reached out to me, asking if they could visit. God answered my heart's cry with their arrival. And their compassionate mentorship revolutionized my life.

I've been trying to pay their example forward ever since.

I've never wanted to be given freedom, but only to earn it. I broke the social contract, badly hurting society's trust. By giving my life to God I gave it in service to the people. And I've been working in that service, according to the calling placed on my heart, for 23 years. In this time the people's representatives have said that I've earned some of their trust back. Faith in action changed my circumstances for the better, bringing me favor with prison officials and the court.

Sowing seeds of faith grows change into our lives, giving us opportunity to sow even more seeds of faith.

And, as the psalmist writes, I too give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind. The active, contributing way of faith breaks down "gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron" (107:16).

If someone imprisoned desires freedom, then their desire must be action oriented--actions being the seeds of faith--toward helping set those likewise imprisoned free. But only when people are free on the inside are they then able to remain free on the outside. I've watched God do both, many times. And in witnessing the light come on in people, seeing their realization of the Way; seeing their transition from F2F, I then help them achieve early release.

If we don't give it, then that means we don't want it, whatever "it" may be. "It" could be friendship, money, love, healing, freedom, knowledge...the list goes on and on. "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you..." (Matthew 7:12). Giving what you want says that you already have it. And that faith moves you into new positions and it moves mountains to bring more of what your giving to you, so that you have more to give.

SICK

The Lord said, "If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you" (Exodus 15:26).

Understanding God as "The way things work," we realize that the Lord isn't a person with "eyes" like those we have. As the underlying force from which nature exists and in which works, our eyes are God's eyes.

Biblically God has three names:

1) Elokim, which translates as the Divine Force in nature. This name is plural, representing the One within the many. Genesis's account of Creation uses this name as the Divine Attribute of the creative process;

2) Hashem, which means the infinite, transcendent unity beyond nature; and

3) Ani, or Anochi, which means I Am, essence, beyond beyond, within within, beyond within, within beyond.

Exodus 6:2-3 says, "God also said to Moses, "I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself fully known to them."

In verse two, in the original Hebrew, God communicates to Moses that He is Ani, Elokim and Hashem.

Elokim is telling Moses that there is only One (Hashem), and that One is the Ultimate 'I AM' of Ani.

As Rabbi Dovber Pinson explains, when translating the Hebrew:

"Elokim is connected with nature, creation, multiplicity, and time-space consciousness. In [Genesis] it is Elokim who creates the heavens and the Earth. ... Elokim is associated with the attribute of 'din,' judgement. This quality manifests within the Laws of Nature such as gravity and the cycles of life. Natural Laws are universal, indifferent, and unapproachable by humans seeking respite from their [(nature's)] tyranny. If you touch fire, you get burned. If you are underwater too long, you drown. Elokim is plural indicating that it is through the creative process that multiplicity, as experienced in nature, is brought into reality. Elokim is the Divine Immanent, the aspect of the One that is always present within the many.

"Hashem represents the Infinite aspect of God that is beyond nature. The four letters that comprise this Name, when rearranged, can spell the Hebrew words for past, present, and future, indicating that this name transcends all concepts of time. Hashem is associated with the attribute of Mercy. It is to Hashem that one directs their prayers for healing, salvation, help, or miraculous intervention. Hashem is understood as the Infinite aspect of God, but also paradoxically represents an approachable aspect of infinity. If nature is cold and indifferent to suffering, Hashem is personal and compassionate.

"Ani, the third reality, is the 'I am' of God, so to speak. This is the unity between Elokim and Hashem, between nature and miracle, between time and eternity, between me and You--leaving only us, only One, only I, Ani. Not much can be said about Ani. It is to Ani that the psalmist directs the words 'To You silence is praise.' No description is sufficient because any attempt to describe Ani, even just saying Infinity, is, by definition, a limitation.

"Ultimately, Ani is the equanimous backdrop, or fertile ground of being, upon which the dynamic interplay between Elokim (Nature) and Hashem (Spirit) manifests as reality, dream, existence or illusion--depending upon your perspective. But the main point is that Ani is both beyond and within all Names or Attributes. Ani is transcendent as well as immanent, and also neither." (From "The Garden of Paradox.")

The way of the world, of fear, shifts us into Elokim, the aspect of God represented by the cold indifference of Nature.

In Psalm 107, the homeless, imprisoned and sick achieved these results as the natural consequences of living in fear, according to the ways of the world. This fear calls God's instructions as too burdensome, because it means not engaging in the dramatic behaviors that cause temporary sensual pleasures and feed the ego. Fear defines such pleasure as "life," and thinks of any direction to avoid such as a call to not truly live.

But God's only pointing out that if we touch fire, we'll be burned. Just because it glows beautifully doesn't mean we should touch it. If we step off of the rooftop, we'll fall. Just because the view is amazing doesn't mean we're to step into it. The principle is: Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. As the General from the Art of War, Sun Zu, said: First, count the cost.

The cost can be a habit the behavior may set, or the precedent established.

But this principle extends further. It reveals that, for example, if we put our faith in institutions to provide our superficial wants, we open ourselves to the shifting political or monetary concerns of other people. We open ourselves up to be manipulated and used by others who want to benefit themselves at our expense. This is no different than building one's house on shifting sands.

Not to mention, the consequences of indulging in the things that people in the world call "living" are far worse than the consequences of living faith as expressed by faith's ideas, attitudes, beliefs, and by faith's words and actions.

This doesn't mean we don't have fun. (Only fear can't fathom what "fun" looks like outside of harmful behaviors.) It just means that faith's fun is very different than fear's fun. How? As determined by the long-term side effects. Fear fun results in poverty, sickness, homelessness, joblessness, loneliness, addiction, greater vulnerability to being assaulted, car wrecks, drowning.... It also results in cynicism, pessimism, untrustworthiness, hopelessness...the list goes on.

Such fear often presents itself as the fear of missing out on what those in the world culture find "fun," which, in its many known forms create more and more instances of unnecessary failure. And then what? Blame God for the failure? If so we're only blaming the nature of how things work. This would be no different than blaming gravity for falling when we step off of the roof. Flesh (fear) operates in the same realm of cause and effect.

But Spirit transcends cause and effect.

When people say that they don't believe in God, I ask them to tell me about the God that they don't believe in, because I guarantee that I don't believe in that God either. Then they usually say something about all the bad things that happen to people in the world. But those things are caused by people who live according to fear. (Many things happen to people because, from a position of fear, they fail to do their due diligence before making big choices. They don't think through the steps. In such instances people are confusing "super optimism" with "having faith." But "super optimism" is ego's misrepresentation of faith. Real faith minds the details. It's patient, taking the extra time to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's." It insists on doing things right, even if that means it takes longer to get all of one's ducks in a row before starting.) So what the unbelievers are actually saying is that they don't believe in fear, because fear is the only thing operating within the Elokim realm of creating all the bad things in the world.

To not believe in God because of people's short fallings is no different than asking that the laws of the universe be violated every single day; for physics to cater to the arbitrary whims of every single person at the same time. It's like wanting life to be a video game, expecting us all to have the cheat codes to give everyone infinite lives or invincibility shields. People should walk on water, fly, live forever, never fail. People should be made to never cause harm to anyone else in any way, purposed or not.

People who say they don't believe in God are people who chose to interpret some past event in their lives in the worse possible way. They blame God for whatever happened to them, having not learned the powerful lesson of taking responsibility for the events that occur in life; even if--especially if--the event wasn't their fault. Then unbelief morphs into ego's gas-lighting, which says things like, "I want to live life on my terms," which is impossible. Nature can't be escaped.

The irony is, physics, Elokim, actually does cater to everyone's whims. We use our God-given power to create in the world according to our faith or our fear. This is another thing that can't be escaped: Thoughts lead to emotion. Thoughts and emotions together color perspective. Perspective and the decisions born out of it determine what events are going to predominately occur in our lives. And it determines the environmental life conditions we find ourselves living in. Whether we want this to be true or not.

It's just right now we're still children learning. As we come to understand the difference between faith and fear, we come to grow up. Over time we get better at creating from faith, realizing its superiority. Then the things that people use as reasons to be mad at God fall away.

But the maturation process is hindered by the amount of fear that's advertised through media and television, teaching its examples to the young. Most of them aren't being taught anything else by anyone else.

In other aspects of our life, if we eat a diet predominated by junk food, or intake more calories than we burn, and fail to exercise, we become obese. Our health falters, as it does with not getting adequate sleep, water, or calming moments of peace.

What about sex? Elokim, as the Law of Nature; as "How Things Work," says 'Pleasure from sex is given so that we'll be motivated to reproduce with our spouse. Reproduction is the primary purpose of sex, any and everything else being a secondary consideration.' Though sex serves to build and maintain the bridge of connection between a married couple, the two becoming one, as we become one with God, sex is an action that says "I want to reproduce," whether we want to accept this or not.

Spiritually, to have sex with someone is to marry them. The two become one.

The rules, regulations governing this is Elokim's expression of how things work. Doctors today mirror God's "rules," e.g. minimize the number of sexual partners. Why? To protect against STD's. But fear says "Don't miss out on anything. Have as much sex as possible." Fear sees sex as a cure for loneliness. It's thought of as free fun. But no action is free. All actions are seeds sown. And superficial connections don't align with our true, underlying nature. The act produces psychological and emotional changes that find superficiality confusing and painful. And in order to counteract these states we have to harden the heart, resulting in the promise of a deeper connection feeling like a threat.

Why? Because going deeper demands a shift from F2F. And fear will make the afraid very scared of letting go of the illusion of control that fear creates. (Only faith reveals how we're in control.) But the afraid won't be nearly as scared of an "unwanted" pregnancy or STD, despite the act of sex being a statement that says "I want to reproduce" or "risk catching something." They're far more afraid of a meaningful, long-term commitment to one person. Why? Who taught us to view the world with eyes that say 'If things don't work out, or if someone let's us down, then this should make us feel terrible inside. And we should avoid terrible emotions at all cost.' Who said we don't have a choice in how we interpret events? The maturation process from fear to faith reveals that if we're let down that's just part of life. We learn and move on.

In faith, the external doesn't control the internal. Only our choice of what to think and feel does.

Likewise, the afraid fear being without junk food more than being sick. They fear missing TV shows more than exercising or improving life conditions. They fear being without their vices more than the vices' inevitable negative consequences. The afraid define control as being able to gamble life away.

The "fools" through their rebellious ways" (107:17) were those who didn't understand Elokim, the natural way things work. Consequently, they misaligned themselves with who and what they are, suffering "affliction because of their iniquities."

But only when the natural consequences of their behavior compounded to the point that the cost outweighed the perceived benefit did they then realize their error. Fear says, 'The things that happen to other people when they behave the way I behave won't happen to me because it's never happened to me before.' (Fear loves to use the "it's never happened to me before" justification to do about anything. But it's the number-one cause for most of the woes that we humans experience in our lives.)

So the afraid drink and drive until they kill a family. They care more about a text on their phone while driving than they do about their life and the lives of anyone else, actions speaking louder than words, intent and sentiment.

Now overwhelmed, realizing all the warnings equally applied to them as they did to everyone else, "Then they cried to [Hashem (Spirit)] in their trouble, and [proving themselves committed to the way of faith] He saved them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them; He rescued them from the grave" (107:19-20).

But have we? Have life conditions become difficult enough for us to actually question our life choices? Have we taken responsibility? Or do we still deny fault, blaming the world and God for providing options to choose from that result in us inviting trauma into our lives? (If we're still able to blame others for anything, then life's not yet become difficult enough for us. But no worries. For as long as the willingness to blame resides within us, that willingness will make sure that our life achieves the proper level of overwhelming misery that'll help us shift from blame to responsibility. Then we break free. We learn how to become infinite, co-creating with God, changing the condition of our lives and the lives of many others.)

We change poverty into prosperity by learning and providing the tools for renewing the mind.

Faith, as a shifted-to state of being, values life too much to bet its peace and opportunities for abundance on rolls of the dice. Faith lives responsibly. Before sex, it asks: Will this risk the loss of my marriage and family, the loss of my health, or a pregnancy I'm not ready for?

Will starting to drink risk alcoholism, personal vulnerability, or driving drunk?

Will drugs lead to addiction, DUI, or arrests?

If the answer to these questions is 'Yes,' then faith isn't going to invite the unnecessary risk into one's life.

Vices have side effects. Faith considers these, like a chess player who considers the consequences of moving the King.

WORK-RELATED CHALLENGES

All work comes with challenge. It's why it's called "work." But there's truth to the quotes, "When your vocation is your vacation, then you've found success"; and, "When you love what you do you never work a day in your life." But effort is always involved. Change demands it--change of self, like learning something new, and change of the environment, like putting a book, product or business into the world that didn't exist before. (To put something into the world, everything in the universe has to shift to make room for it. And the universe has built into it a system of making sure that we're committed to what we're building by making it not easy to just move the universe out of the way.)

Passion is a big part of finding one's purpose. "Passion" comes from the Greek word 'pentho,' meaning 'to experience a painful sensation,' of an emotional nature. "Passion" is defined as a strong feeling; a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object or concept. To be 'passionate' is synonymous with being 'enthusiastic.'

When we're passionate about something we're doing in life, it meets a deep-seated emotional need within us. That need is always connected to an envisioned goal that screams within us, compelling us to make it into reality.

Passion is an emotional pain that motivates. Faith knows such pain as an enjoyable part of personal growth and progress toward the achievement of an envisioned goal.

Passion is a storm of peace.

Fear, on the other hand, locks people into work that fails to meet their primary emotional needs. Unless their most important 'end' values are security and safety, and money is the sole 'means' value believed to make them feel safe and secure, then money as a primary driver will garner only misery. Why? Because money will fail to achieve any sense of life satisfaction.

Jesus had passion. No amount of suffering and emotional turmoil would keep him from accomplishing the goal for which He came to earth. Carpentry served its purpose for its time. It would have provided job security. But it would not have met his emotional needs. Jesus had to make a career shift from safe to faith in order to live his purpose for being here.

So do we.

Also the disciples had passion. Their work was more important than any amount of hardship or setback suffered. Their goals more important than any temporal world interests. In fact they celebrated the pushback encountered and the lack of interest in the things the world found of interest. The disciples recognized the world's resistance and their own ability to put first things first as internal progress toward the goal of expanding the light into the dark.

One of the main signs that a career choice is one's purpose is, when we encounter challenge, frustration or setbacks as part of the work we do, these make us feel more excited and motivated to acquire the lessons presented in these events and use the new information gleaned to jump forward with greater effort.

But suffering emotional turmoil from doing a job that fails to meet our values creates a storm of misery within us that depresses faith, tempting us to sink down into fear and dampening our light, life and love. We're demotivated when we fail to gain any meaningful results from suffering , leading us to do the bare minimum at work, in our relationships, and in our life pursuits.

Like with the "merchants on the mighty waters," (107:23), experiencing the ups and downs of the sea's waves, "in their peril their courage melted away" (107:26). The worst thing they could have done was lose faith, the only thing that would rescue them. But when the fear became unbearable, when "they were at their wits end," "they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distress" (107:27-28).

If what we're doing for a living, or if the relationships we're in, cause extreme emotional swings, lifting us to only crash us down, are we passionate about what we're doing, or about whom we're with, or are we afraid?

Does the chaos serve us, carrying us forward toward an achievable goal, or does it keep us trapped in a stagnated state that promises only loss and setbacks with no chance of life getting any better?

The sea merchants represent the only group of "some," out of the four groups, who allowed external conditions to change their internal state. The three other groups of "some" created the external life conditions in which they trapped themselves from their internal states. The homeless, the prisoners and the sick all became so by choosing to live a life according to the dictates of fear instead of according the natural flow of a life inspired by faith. The afraid fight with egotism against having the best that life has to offer in order to settle for the "best" that fear has to offer. This equates to trading a feast on the table for crumbs on the floor.

But whether problems are caused from the inside out, or from the outside in, shifting us from fear to faith, or faith to fear, it all occurs in 'ani,' "I am." We're never outside of or invisible to this all-encompassing, unifying aspect of God. The moment we shift focus from nature (Elokim) to Spirit (Hashem), inside 'Ani,' through Christ, Hashem hears us and His unfailing love and wonderful deeds are made known to us.

So, in closing, let's awaken this love in us through our deeds for those we hear cry out in fear and pain, helping:

1) house the homeless,

2) provide means for the hungry and thirsty to feed themselves (while feeding them until they get to that point),

3) by visiting and mentoring those in prison,

4) by visiting and providing means of healing to the sick, or

5) inspire those living their purpose to not lose courage, to believe in the vision placed on their heart and help guide "them to their desired haven."

Psalm 91:5-6, 14-15

5-6. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.

14-15. "Because he loves me," says the Lord, "I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him."

Preface

When we try to comprehend the InInfinite Unlimitedusing energy analogously to describe God can help our minds obtain a greater conceptual understanding. Also, this mental exercise helps us understand why we have, on one hand, examples of spiritual unity and, on the other, examples of religious division.

"God is light; in Him, there is no darkness" (1 John 1:5). Generally speaking, in a phenomenon called wave-particle duality, light energy exists as both wave and particle, depending on observation. When thinking about our relationship with God, and God's with us, this phenomenon helps us differentiate between ego (fear) and Spirit (faith) approaches to prayer. If God is thought of as being a wave until observed (in prayer), collapsing God into a particle, then God's seen as concurrently Universal and personal.

The 'wave' side can represent God as "The Nature and Characteristics of How People and Things Interact with Each Other and The effects of These Interactions," or, simplified, as "The Way Things Work."

"The Way Things Work" represents a state of being that possesses infinite potential. There's no limit on what God can do and on how God can do it. This is the "image" of God, from Genesis 1:26-27, in which we've been made.

The error occurs when we return the favor, making God in the image of our limited beliefs. This happens when we, first, internalize the world's fear-based ideas, attitudes and beliefs of limitation and lack. Then, second, we project this corrupted image of limitation onto God. This would represent us collapsing God down into a personalized particle that bears no resemblance to who and what God is and we are.

Faith is the criteria by which God works through people (1 Samuel 3:8-9). God's provision is as large as our faith (2 Kings 50:24). Faith grows with exercise (Genesis 50:24).

Faith understands that the more we get to know God the more we get to know ourselves. How do we get to know God?

Faith is a particular state of being--confident-assurance. This state reveals its existence within a person through specific types of action. Actions are how we sow seeds into our life. Actions are the loudest form of prayer; they're made inside of God, whether we're conscious of this being, or want this to be, the case or not. Faith actions are heuristically inclined. They're contribution driven and they bring about new positive experiences in our life. These experiences are the fruit of our faith-sown seeds. And the forms that this fruit takes are God's way of revealing Himself to us.

What God does and provides is who God is.

Fear also reveals itself by the specific types of action it takes. Fear actions are problem focused. They cause the repeat of old experiences.

God opens and introduces more of Himself through new experiences. Though all experiences occur inside of God, only faith experiences come from God personally. Fear experiences, on the other hand, are a consequence of "The Way Things Work."

There's the wave. And there's the particle. The wave is Universal; as in, the rules of the Universe. The particle is personal, the "rules" of faith and love.

As we stretch ourselves, leaning out of our comfort zone, into the unknown toward the accomplishment of positive, pro-social goals, the resulting new experiences expand our mind and heart. And a mind expanded by a new faith-inspired experience can never return to its original dimensions.

Fear interrupts faith's pull toward expansion by holding us back from taking service-oriented actions. Fear's most common interruption is the action of inaction. No action means no growth. If we're not growing, we're stagnating. Stagnation brings about misery, corruption, sickness and death. Why? Because this is "The Way Things Work."

For example, why is the Dead Sea dead? Because it's stagnant, stationary, stuck. It's water in a salty rut. It doesn't move. Not only is it dead, its waters are poisonous to drink. In survival circumstances, it's known that it's safer to drink from running water than from standing pools.

If our ears were mouths would we want to drink the words scooped from stagnant waters?

Love is a river of life. Fear is a pool of death.

But fear traumatizes memory, inducing amnesia. It causes us to forget who and what we really are, the Image after which we've been made. Consequently, our unlimited capabilities in love compress down into limited expressions of insecurity and complaint. Opportunities for action, in the eyes of fear, begin to take on the form and feel of calls for inaction, turning opportunities into annoyances to shrink back from, neglect and forget about.

Light and water, being interchangeable terms, get stifled and dammed by fear. They're energy. And when trapped behind our fear walls, this energy churns within, tearing us apart mentally, emotionally as it screams to live its purpose through us into the world.

If only we'd get out of our way.

We're never actually unlimited. Fear only imprisons people with limiting beliefs. It's the nature of limiting beliefs to blind us to our full potentials as human beings. This is how limiting beliefs work. They limit.

Unfortunately, to the extreme side of the limitation spectrum, throughout history there are a few individuals who give control of their mind and heart over to the ego, allowing ego to use fear to wield their unlimited (wave) nature. When this occurs, the enemy has made them into potential weapons of mass destruction. (For example, consider Hitler or other historic mass-casualty vessels.) Fortunately, according to "The Way Things Work," it's built in that such individuals will always be consumed by their consumption, destroyed by their destruction. There's no way around it.

There is no light in destruction, but there can be destruction in light. (We can see what happens in the light, but destruction can't see what's happening inside of itself.) God's not a vessel with borders like a human body. Where we think in terms of there being an "inside" of us and an "outside" of us, there's no "outside" of God. It's all inside.

If we break our mind free from ego's anthropomorphic practices, refusing to project fear's world perspective onto God, then interpretive misunderstandings of bible verses and their resulting religious divisions and wars would become rare, if not an outright thing of the past. (Love and faith cure division across the board, no matter what specific religious text a group adheres to. "The Way Things Work" will always transcend interpretation.)

Interpretations mirror those doing the interpreting, reflecting how far they've matured on the maturation path from dark to light; fear to faith; judgment to love. But interpretations are never the actual thing being interpreted. The map is not the territory. It's a two-dimensional rendering of the real thing. This means that arguments between interpretations are arguments between people standing at different vantage points. Love prompts us to find the missing information beyond our vantage points, recognizing that contradiction is just how "The Way Things Work" lets us know that we're not seeing the whole picture. In this way, love bridges the gaps, showing each individual how to learn from their neighbor.

Fear, though, concludes the small piece it sees is the whole thing and ego demands the other pieces are wrong. But the peace being looked at is a verse in the bible, which is the whole bible. A part of God is all of God.

Wave and particle.

Faith sees the particle within the context of the wave. (The verse in the context of the bible. The life event in the context of love. The interpretation in the context of the Truth.) There's never been a particle that wasn't wave. And all particles, whether events, people, circumstances or things, exist temporarily--for as long as it's known about and maintained by a human mind--before collapsing back into the wave. The particle was always wave, but just some of the wave that solidified part of itself to "spike" outwardly into a personal experience shaped by someone's faith or fear.

Put another way, imagine a large clump of clay. Any part of this clump can potentially be molded into an imagined object. So think of an image, say a giraffe. Now, without separating any clay from the base clump, shape some of the clay into a mini giraffe. The clay is the wave. The giraffe is the particle. But, for our conceptualization purposes, when we forget about the giraffe, we "release" it to dissolve back down into the clay.

Poverty is a state of mind. Its results in the world are the forms shaped out of the clay by the hands of fear. Put another way, external conditions point to internal states of mind. Likewise, wealth is a state of mind that works in the same way. Part of how the process works: Fear perpetuates ignorance, demotivating people, hurting people's ability to do the difficult work of breaking out of the poverty mindset. Faith does the hard work of dispelling ignorance with acquired wealth-generating knowledge, which reshapes the landscape of our mind. And, as Dr. Wayne Dyer says, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." External reality gets reshaped into the life of one's dreams.

Fear doesn't want to hear this, because ego refuses to take responsibility for its vessel's life. This is because the megalomaniac nature of the ego refuses to consider itself as being "wrong." Consequently, unwanted life conditions can only be someone else's fault. Fear seeks blame. And the forms that blame take become the bars with which the blamer imprisons him or herself to the unwanted conditions.

We decide, whether consciously or not, what we "tell" the wave to collapse into in our lives, using either fear or faith. And the "hands" we mold with are called actions. If we're predominated by fear, as determined by the type of thoughts we most often think, emotions we most often feel, words we tend to speak and actions we take, then, according to "The Way Things Work," these God-provided tools of brain, heart, tongue and body will work together to create a lot of terrible events and circumstances. And then, to add insult to injury, fear tells us that "This is just how life is," defining this statement as "Life is hard" instead of the more accurate "Life is what we choose to make it."

Interpretatively, the life built and experienced by fear would be sung by a Psalm writer as "God [The Way Things Work] will visit [insert list of terrible things] on the wicked."

Why wicked? Because "Fear not" is commanded more than anything else except for its opposite, "To love." To fear anything in the world is:

1) to make an idol of it;

2) to say we don't know, trust God (showing we place more of our trust in the occurrence of fear's envisioned worse-case scenario than we do in God's established promise to protect us from such); and

3) to put ourselves in a state of fear, making it impossible to be in a state of love.

Faith, when utilized responsibly, expands awareness, revealing the existence of our choice and ability to make life as God always intended.

It helps to think of bible verses as the particles collapsed from the wave (God) by the Holy Spirit through people. A more specific way to say this would be, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:1-3).

But religious divisiveness and denominational splits occur when people separate individual verses from the whole, or when they collapse interpretations of isolated verses that fail to account for the rest of the bible. Either way, this would be no different than molding the giraffe, cutting it from the clump and believing the clump had no connection to the giraffe's existence.

God (the Word) collapsed Itself down into flesh, Jesus. Jesus collapsed Himself down into the bible. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us" (John 1:14). To cut out a bible verse in order to give form to an interpretation that fails to account for other bible verses would be like cutting Jesus into pieces. Consequently, a church builds up around one of Jesus's fingers, another builds around Jesus's foot...part by part, church by church. Until love is minced into shredded shards of ego.

This is fear's way of cropping out context, narrowing focus to emphasize and promote independent agendas at the expense of faith's purpose.

But when we awaken to who and what we are, what God actually created in His image, concepts of "separateness" and "division" fall away. And what falls away with them?

Fear. At least, our adherence to it. Like the anonymous Psalm writer of today's verse, and the other Psalm writers, they recognize the threat of negative internal states. The threat of believing and giving themselves over to fear. So instead they live more responsibly, quickly shifting within themselves from the pull of the dark back into the safety of the light.

We come to realize that the Word looks and reads very differently to eyes alighted with faith than it does to eyes dimmed and divided by fear. For example, the Word reads differently with "us" in mind than it does with only "me" in mind.

Also, regarding prayer, when "personal" is defined as "humanity as a whole" instead of as "me to the exclusion of the rest," our prayers results differ dramatically.

Faith serves as the key, unlocking the Spirit within us, allowing us to understand the truth to which the written words of the bible point. The words awaken what they represent inside of us. This awakening occurs as both revelation and new life events, always corresponding to ignorance falling away. And along with ignorance, goes its accompanying darkness and all imagined monsters that ego projected onto the void of the unknown.

The Truth is Light. Light is knowledge. When knowledge floods in, removing ignorance, we're fundamentally changed within. Such change is marked by our true Spirit Self more fully inhabiting the vessel in which we reside, filling in the space that ignorance left behind. To expand internally results in our light expanding into the world.

How?

By the example we set, in the way we carry ourselves, in word and in deed.

Without faith, the bible is more like an encrypted computer file that, on the surface, appears to read in our native language, but, from a strictly human perspective, will never reveal that to which it points. Instead, it'll only reflect, and be used as an excuse to perpetuate, the misinterpretations comprising the world's philosophies.

Faith sees the individual letters of each of the bible's words as the interconnected mesh points of a gossamer net. Faith allows us to see through the net, behind its weavings, into what the net holds within it.

Fear sees the net, and goes no further.

Put another way, the Word can be thought of as a stereogram. A stereogram is created when a pair of two-dimensional images are overlaid in such a way that, when viewed by defocusing the eyes, allowing one eye to see one of the images at the same time the other eye sees the other image, a "hidden" three-dimensional picture reveals itself. If we look at the Word like we'd read a novel, on the surface it provides fascinating stories. But if we overlay those stories, one atop the other, looking at them together, "defocusing" the eyes--in order to see the whole instead of the individual--something more profound reveals itself:

Love is given contours, made three dimensional, like a structure suddenly builds itself inside of our heart and mind. We experience the structure directly. Then faith abounds eternal.

Fear will never provide the means of seeing the Word from the Spirit's perspective.

As a micro example, Exodus 34:7 says, "Yet [God] does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation." But just before this, it's written "And [the Lord] passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, 'The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin" (Exodus 34:5-7).

John wrote, "God is love." "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:16,18).

Through fear's eyes, these verses seem contradictory. Fear reads two-dimensionally, like a robot.

On one hand, "[God] does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation."

But on the other hand, "...fear has to do with punishment."

On one hand, "...God...abounding in love...maintaining love," forgives wickedness, rebellion and sin. And "God is love."

But on the other hand, "There is no fear in love."

If God is love and there's no fear in love, then there's no fear in God. If fear has to do with punishment, and there's no fear in God, then God has nothing to do with punishment.

The degree by which the world's cultural programming has adversely affected us will determine how "wrong" this conclusion about God feels, or how "right" it resonates with Spirit as Truth.

Fear operates from the position that people are going to sin and the only way to prevent this is to threaten hell and damnation--punishment. The focus is sin and punishment, and so they get more sin and punishment. Consequently, by focusing people's minds in this way, fear succeeds in becoming a stumbling block to people, preventing them from obtaining a clear understanding of faith. And so fear serves darkness's goals of minimizing the light.

Faith focuses on love and forgiveness. Consequently, we cultivate more of these within ourselves, giving more to others, getting more in return.

We get what we fight for in life. Fear focuses on the negative. Faith on the positive. If I were to overlay a different example atop the differentiation between sin/punishment and faith/forgiveness perspectives, what sort of insight will form? Consider: Fear says "fight against cancer." This places one eye on action (fight). And the other eye on the problem (cancer). The only way the brain can interpret this is: "fight [for] cancer," because it drives our thoughts, words and actions toward what we focus on. Cancer ends up being the focus of our faith. So we get more cancer.

But faith says "fight for a cure." This makes the brain shift. The eyes blur, one looking at "action" (whatever form the "fight" may take), and the other simultaneously looks for a solution (cure). The faith combination causes the brain to think in ways and see things that the fear way of looking will never allow.

There's a military teaching that says, "The target determines the weapon, and the weapon determines the path." What we aim at determines the weapon we can use to hit our target. And the weapon we choose limits us to how that weapon can hit the target.

In regards to punishment, it's nearly impossible to willfully sin; as in, commit some wrong or harm against self or another, from a position of love. Because love serves as the focus of the eyes: one eye focuses on self or another, and the other eye focuses on being in a state of love.

It's much easier to commit some wrong or harm from a position of fear and punishment. One eye's on self or another person, the other's on judging some disagreed-with action they've done, defining them by that action. This is how fear strips self and another of being made in the image of God. Fear makes people into the image of a temporary action committed in a brief second of time. Fear doesn't reveal:

1) what went into the person committing the action;

2) what the person did within themselves after committing the action (regret, remorse, prayer for forgiveness, they having learned their lesson);

3) the totality of all the actions the person's ever committed up to that point in their life, and all the actions they will commit after that moment in time. (Fear doesn't realize, if it's going to judge action, then it has to judge all actions. Not just one to the exclusion of all others. This is yet another way fear reveals it's directed by the ego. It's only concerned about the narrowed perspective of what it finds right and wrong as it pertains to personal interests in the moment.); and

4) who the whole person is. (We're complex, nuanced beings.)

Put another way, faith does good for good's sake, and sees the best in people. "Good" is part of faith's identity. "Good" is highly valued.

When fear does good, it tends to either be self serving, or because it's afraid of being punished for doing wrong.

Externally, faith and fear behavior may look the same. Internally, though, things look very differently. And where faith has lasting power, being who the person is, fear always runs out of steam, being unable to maintain the identity fraud for long.

What fear doesn't realize, not wanting to do wrong only because of not wanting to be caught is mirrored in the behavior of cockroaches that run when the light in the kitchen is turned on.

When we put together the above points, we're given deeper insight into what it means when it's said, 'Spirit expands the mind's eye.' This expansion reveals the Truth to which the definitions of the bible's words collectively point.

Instead of seeing God as a human being, the Truth points to God being the inviable laws of the universe, its aspects, characteristics and actions, each of which have corresponding words, labels.

When we're able to overcome ego's fear, breaking free from fear's limiting psychological, emotional narratives, Spirit comes flooding in. And with Spirit comes truth, and the truth sets us free 'from' the way the world sees and does things. Simultaneously, truth sets us free 'in' the world, to live life in a way that helps others likewise break free.

Consider our example verses from Exodus and 1John. In the eyes of the Spirit, no contradiction exist. The meaning of the Exodus verse is captured in the Jack Canfield quote, "If we do what others do, we get what others got." This represents "The Way Things Work." The Exodus verse is actually synonymous with what Paul wrote, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers" (Galatians 6:7-10).

If we:

1) connect together:

Exodus 34:5-7

1John 4:16,18

Galatians 6:7-10;

2) decrypt the surface text with the key of faith; and

3) "look" at our three verses inside the expanded contextual space of "The Way Things Work";

Then the Exodus verses point to the simple explanation: Children learn from and emulate their parents. That's it.

Parents sow their example into their children. The children are going to, more likely than not, adopt many if not most of their parent's ideas, attitudes and beliefs; their behavioral responses and ways of social interactions; and their spiritual perspective and practices.

Also, another way to say Exodus 34:5-7, would be:

'But, because of The Way Things Work, it's possible for the cycle to be broken. A child, in this family line, can acquire an outside mentor, or notice how someone else sows and what they reap. This child could then decide "I want that instead of this."'

If the parent/child cycle adheres to the way of fear, then they'll only know generational hardship and misery.

Because of "The Way Things Work," fear can only sow and reap fear. It can only know life as the environment it's created for itself.

But it's the same for faith.

Two very different resulting life environments, but both occur inside one governing law of the universe: We reap what we sow.

So, from this we get three other laws:

1) We sow from within;

2) How we sow sets the example for our kids;

3) Our kids end up reaping into their lives what we reaped into ours.

When we learn this, if we want better for ourselves and for our kids, this "want" will express itself by sowing different ideas, attitudes and beliefs; different reactions and responses to life events and circumstances. We'd sow a different example.

God is the same no matter what. Love is the Environment in which we all operate. The rules of existence--The Way Things Work--are primordial, all pervasive and inescapable.

Fear's insanity is primarily found in the delusion it generates that anyone can ever act independently of or contrary to The Way Things Work. (Not one human being is a giraffe disconnected from the clay.)

______________________

By translating today's verses from the Hebrew we're provided with greater insight and understanding of the message being conveyed. This is because we're not just "reading" the Word, which equates to visually skimming the surface of the water, projecting onto it the images we desire to see reflected back to us. (The egoic approach of "I tell It what It means.") Instead, we're diving in, in order to churn up the source material from the depths that went into making the surface words comprising the Word, including today's verses. (The Spirit approach of "It tells me what It means.")

This represents the choice between ego and Spirit (fear and faith), the choice between "my meaning for the Word" and "the Word's meaning for me"; between the superficial and the profound.

The superficial, personal interpretations, which tend to lean more self-centered, are what lead to disagreement, argumentation and division, none of which are fruits of the Word nor of faith and love. Such interpretations become idols that are given more importance than Christ. And to make an idol of what one believes a biblical passage should mean allows fear to keep a person trapped in the interpretation at the expense of Light, Life and Love. This practice is like choosing an item in the cart over the cart and the horse.

"And quarreling arose between Abram's herder's and lot's. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time.

"So Abram said to Lot, 'Let's not have any quarrelling between you and me, or between your herders and mine, for we are close relatives" (Genesis 13:7-8).

On the surface, it appears that the quarreling was between Abram's and Lot's herders over the amount of available real estate. But a deeper look reveals it was based on a mis-interpretation on how much land was actually available.

Fear narrows perspective to see lack. Faith expands perspective to see provision.

Lot's herders "saw" "...the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great..." (13:6). They saw with eyes of fear.

But Abram asked rhetorically "Is not the whole land before you?" He saw with eyes of faith.

Abram was Lot's uncle. And Abram had to point out to Lot and the herders that the land was more than just the plot they cohabitated--It extended out beyond the horizons for as far as the eyes could see. Abram's question to Lot essentially asked, 'Why is your perspective so narrowed?'

The way that Abram demonstrated faith in response to his nephew's fear set the following examples for how faith operates:

1) It takes the initiative toward resolution;

2) It gives others first choice, even if that means not getting what we want; and

3) It puts family peace above personal desires.

Also, these examples demonstrate a way to achieve a united front when surrounded by a common enemy. Where Lot allowed ego and fear to limit his perspective to petty self-centered concerns, threatening unity, Abram saw the big picture, knowing that the last thing Lot and Abram wanted was to become a house divided. Giving into internal weaknesses would have only created weakness in their external life circumstances, risking attack from the Canaanites and Perizzites.

There's a disturbing trend occurring in TV and movies reflecting both weak story-telling skills and a complete lack of understanding of how fear and faith works in emergency circumstances. When, for example, two friends are being shot at by a group of burglars breaking into their house, while ducked and covered and under fire the friends think that this is the perfect time to rehash an old argument about some perceived petty wrongs of the past. The airwaves are flooded with this type of visual messaging: One's personal, petty concerns are far more important than existential threats.

If the trend helps with anything, it's to have the audience wonder: Is that really the best time to have an argument?

Why would it be good for the audience to ask this question? Because it shows they understand the last thing that should be on anyone's mind when there's a threat to life is superficial social matters.

But are people asking this question? Do we see more or less examples in society of people putting life before a sense of having been wronged?

If there's conflict, fear sees it as a conflict between people, focusing in on the other person as being "wrong." Faith, though, sees it as a conflict born from out of a misunderstanding about the conditions on the ground. Faith finds resolution through communication intended toward finding the missing information and gaining understanding.

Jesus didn't just believe, but knew that the people beating, torturing, mocking, ridiculing and crucifying Him didn't know what it was they were really doing. Because if they had, they would not of done it. Knowledge based on reality and Truth destroys belief based on thoughts and feelings.

As the NIV Commentary observes, rivalries, arguments and disagreements can be destructive in three ways:

1) They damage goodwill, trust and peace--the foundations of good human relations;

2) They hamper progress toward important goals; and

3) They make us self-centered rather than love-centered.

So, "Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, 'children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation'" (Philippians 2:14).

The truth is: According to "The Way Things Work," argumentation is the opposite of positive action. A person is considered favored by God if they're action oriented over argument oriented. And a person is considered cursed by God if they're argument oriented over action oriented. This is because of one reason: If we look at the lives of both, side by side, the action-oriented person will always have better relationships, better income, better provisions, better protection, better health and fitness, and make more of a contribution.

The one who argues will try and fail to argue with the one who acts, the arguer attempting to make a case about how unfair it is that the actor has a better life.

Fear doesn't realize: This is an action-oriented universe. God is nothing if not consistent on this point. But fear is lazy. And, by its very nature, lazy hates action.

First, today's Psalm verse doesn't say "You might not fear." It says "You will not fear." Who is it that will 100%, definitively not fear?

"Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High" (Psalm 91:1). Whoever "dwells" in God will "rest" in his shadow (protective cover).

How can we dwell in God in order to obtain this level of rest? The most effective way is to "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances..." (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:4-9).

Our life can become a wordless prayer of perpetual gratitude and joy, transcending the baser level fluctuations of our circumstances and feelings. Joy and thanksgiving can be our response for both 'victory and gain' and for 'defeat and loss.'

All on the same day Job loss his livestock, staff and children. "At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said:

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised" (Job 1:13-21).

Job showed both his overwhelming grief and his faith together, at the same time. But he 'chose' faith. To have used great loss as an excuse to choose the way of fear would have only achieved making the loss forever. In fear, no chance for restoration is given.

Faith restores. Fear makes worse.

Job chose to weather the storm of grief beneath faith's protective covering. He didn't allow a fear-internal state to conquer his faith-internal state. This points to the Devil's primary attack being not against Job's loved ones, material resources and health. These things were external proxies, means to the Devil's primary target--Job's heart and mind.

The real war was internal, not external. Faith, though, never compromises internal states in response to external events, because faith knows the external is only a projection of the internal. Faith knows that if it uses temporary negative external events as an excuse to change one's internal state-of-being into negativity, then such external events become permanent.

Fear loves making temporary loss into a permanent, repeating state. This is how it defines "getting revenge" against faith, despite faith having nothing to do with loss.

Faith recognizes there being no greater revenge against fear than love. (Fear wins when it's won us to its side by thinking, feeling, speaking and acting the way it does. It's made us into another one of its puppet soldiers in the war against the light. How? By getting us to blame the way of the light for what the way of the dark does to us.)

David embodied faith. He communicated this point when he said, "You, Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light" (Psalm 18:28). David was surrounded by evil, but that did not matter for as long as he didn't allow their internal state to be an excuse to become his internal state. And any time David noticed that the external circumstances threatened to create an internal shift from faith to fear, David called out, shifting back to faith immediately.

David was no fool. Nothing and no one was worth trading light in for darkness, no matter how much grief, sadness or anger felt in a moment.

"For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light" (Psalm 36:9).

But we're talking about internal states that manifest from how we interpret events and words. "The unfolding of your words gives light" (Psalm 119:130).

Jesus said, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness."

The "eye" is how we see things. Fear creates an unhealthy perspective that interprets bible verses, people's words and events in the worst, most destructive ways.

Faith provides a healthy perspective.

So how we interpret things helps us realize the position from which we're looking, from either fear or faith.

The anonymous author of Psalm 91 reveals a healthy eye. The Theme is "God's protection in the midst of danger."

"A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you" (Psalm 91:7).

Why do they fall? Because they choose to look with the eye of fear and live according to how fear thinks and feels. Consequently, fear blinds them to "The Way Things Work."

"You [the adherent to the way of faith] will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked" (91:8).

We can recognize the punishments of the "wicked" because we used to live as they do and suffer as they suffer. (Even free, we still make mistakes, at times falling into moments of doubt and fear. Only after suffering unnecessarily as a result, we realize how we've messed up. But we forgive ourselves, learn and bring more prayer and mindfulness to those moments when they occur again--they always occur again--so that we can respond more courageously, with faith.)

It's only when we broke free from doing the things that cause the avoidable types of suffering did we then gain the objective perspective to see our past errors in thinking in their current ways of being. We've lived on both sides of the fear/faith fence, where others have so far only lived on the fear side. This is why we understand, for example, that they don't know what they don't know when they become defensive and angry at us who live free. When they say things like we don't know them or what they're going through, we used to use the exact same words for the same reasons they do: defensive phrases, weaponized as manipulation tactics designed by fear to push others away in order to protect the ego from risk of losing control over the vessel that's being defensive and afraid.

And who are wicked?

Those who choose to live according to the dictates of and have allowed their perspectives to be warped by fear. These are the people who've consequently allowed themselves to live from the negative mental, emotional states that fear creates. They are the vessels in and through whom pain and suffering occur in the world.

And how my heart reaches out to them, knowing well that pain, wanting us to be finally free of it...because we can be. Freedom is 'right there,' a gossamer film away.

"Wicked," from the Hebrew, 'rasa,' directly translates into "wrong." The bottom line is, the only thing "wrong" any person can "do" is to believe and follow the thoughts and feelings that come from any place within not founded in a state of faith. ("...everything that does not come from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23)) Why? Because, first, the only available alternative to faith from which human beings can operate is fear. And, second, it's only from our internal states do we get either the tragedy and traumas or inspirations and healings visited on people by people.

When we look at life on earth, from the micro of our own lives to the macro of human interaction on the whole, all we see are the interactions of either fear or faith (ego or Spirit). In any given moment a person is either inspiring light or darkness, giving or taking, helping or neglecting, healing or hurting. They're either "active light," "active dark," or inactive, which is often darkness's most destructive expression.

Fear says "That 'person' is bad," using any number of descriptive terms, such as 'racist,' 'piece of garbage,' terrible' .... Whatever the form the terms take, they only accomplish one thing: They point back at the fear, pain, darkness internalized by the person using the insults. And fear, seeing only the external things within the system of "The Way Things Work," without actually seeing the system, singularly focuses on the person, fear being unable to consider the underlying states within that it's helping perpetuate.

Faith, concerned with the state of the vessel it (faith) inhabits, sees that the person isn't 'bad' trying, for example, to learn how to become good, but instead is broken, trying to put the pieces back together again.

And faith, when concerned about others, understands that if we see someone as they are (fear's past-present perspective) this can only contribute to them being that and more. But if we see someone as they can be (faith's future-present perspective), then this will help them become that and better.

For those who choose hate over love toward any other human being, they (the haters) are the only ones in the 'rasas' (wrong). They're the one's filling the ranks of those who'll fall around those who remain standing in light, life and love.

When we love the one whom the world despises, whom, if we were in fear, we'd also despise, our love says little about who they are. Our love also doesn't support or encourage darkness. Light cannot cause darkness. Only fear does that. Our love more than anything else speaks about the love within us. It's how Love shines into the dark, allowing fear to know what faith looks and feels like.

This is how we get revenge on darkness. Love excises darkness from the vessel it inhabits, like sun and rain helps the seedling buried in the dark soil break out and grow above the surrounding shadows and cold.

To hate another vessel only makes the darkness stronger, in both us and in those hated. To hate someone is the same as placing a covering over them, blocking out the sun and rain, preventing them from growing, keeping them buried.

Jesus, showing what love looks like, laid his life down for the vessels of darkness, getting revenge against the darkness that used the vessels it inhabited to murder Jesus.

Another way to write today's verse and say the same thing would be:

"[Love] will not fear:

1) the terror of the night,

2) the arrow that flies by day,

3) the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,

4) the plague that destroys at midday.

How can "love" and "you" be interchangeable?

"Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness....' So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them..." (Genesis 1:26,27).

"God is love" (1 John 5:8).

If we're made in the image of God, and God is love, then we're made in the image of love. Hence, if "you" will not fear, then "love" will not fear.

"Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ...there is no fear in love" (1 John 5:16,18).

Love will not fear the terror of night.

From the Hebrew, "fear" is 'yare,' meaning to 'revere.' To revere means to show honor and devotion to.

"Terror" is translated from 'pahad,' which means the 'feeling' of fear.

"Night" comes from 'layla,' meaning a 'twist' (away of the light), an occurrence that figuratively represents 'adversity.'

In other words, 'We, who are love, will not give honor and devotion to the feeling of fear, the only adversary that, if revered, twists off the light within us.

And what's the highest form of worship? Choosing the way of light and love over darkness and judgment when darkness and judgment rear their heads inside of us. To actually do the internal work of stopping mid negativity, despite how real and necessary giving into it seems, and instead making ourselves choose love, we worship God in a way that rises thousands of miles above any, all material sacrifices. And such worship opens the floodgates of heaven.

But what helps fear get in the way of us making such a choice?

Ego is a master of double-speak. It'll take a statement that, at its depth, represents the truth, but twist it, wringing out the profound, leaving behind words that only go ink deep.

By doing this, ego builds in contingencies to keep people imprisoned by fear. Its use of double-speak wires fear-based associations to the terms and phrases used. (As Neurologist say, "Neurons that fire together, wire together.") Then, when someone encounters the truth, whether spoken or written, it'll sound and look just like the lie. (The words are the same, but the meanings differ dramatically.)

The Devil attempted to do this with Jesus in the desert. (Matthew 4:6-7) One verse, two attributed meanings. One meaning presented from the depth's of Jesus' faith; the other, from the shallowness of the Devil's fear. It's telling that the verse's true meaning was achieved when attached to another verse. The Devil quoted Psalm 91:11,12. Jesus responded with Deuteronomy 6:16.

The Devil tried to get away with using a verse in isolation to support fear's selfish desires. People do this still. If they're angry, which is a heightened state of fear, they'll choose anger's conclusatory thinking and beliefs over love. And they'll grab a verse from the bible, using it to support their position.

For example, if a loved one is murdered and the victim's family uses this as a justification for hate and revenge against the murderer, ego will use one verse, usually "eye for eye" (Exodus 21:24), taken out of context and to the exclusion of its corresponding verse where Jesus teaches to do good to those who wrong us (Matthew 5:38-48).

The hate/revenge response wouldn't even exist if not for the world of fear teaching it generation after generation, from parent to child, from media to household. And a verse out of context is used only to help feed the internal fires of hate to support the murder of the murderer. The justifying verse, used in this isolated fashion, disconnects it from its actual meaning and the rest of the bible, like the giraffe being cut from the source clay, or Jesus' finger from the rest of His body.

Faith, according to just "The Way Things Work," makes it impossible to narrow the brain and heart in this way. Faith makes it impossible to not see the rest of the truth comprised of love, forgiveness, our call to not murder (even by proxy), to not support and promote the ways of fear and the world, the very ways that led to the loved one being murdered in the first place.

But fear has promulgated itself deep in the human psyche in regards to 'Do to others what they've done to my loved ones,' embedded all the deeper, feeling so strongly to be "right," despite its hypocrisy, illogicality and contribution to the very thing it purports to prevent, when sponsored by the state and federal governments.

But this isn't about a position for or against the death penalty. That makes no sense. This is just another example of the dual meanings that exist in single terms when looked at by fear or faith. Importantly, this is about how when we recognize we're operating at the state of fear--sadness, rage, grief, confusion, hate, violence--and we recognize the thinking and conclusions about life that fear generates, such recognition reveals the presence of choice. This choice was always there, but a mind practiced in predominantly the ways of fear would never have been allowed to see it. But once seen, we're far more able to shift over into the state of faith--peace, love--if only to check in, to see from an alternative elevated perspective, allowing us to make a complete, informed decision.

This is about us not having to buy into, believe and be taken over by and controlled like a robot by fear and its raging internal storm just because it so happens to make us feel strongly about something.

We're not our feelings, a point made obvious by the fact we can change them in the middle of their expression just by changing our thinking or the focus of our mind.

If I am the emotion then who's the "I" that changes the emotion?

Faith reveals the primordial states that exist prior to the introduction of any thoughts and feelings. These primary states are God. The more time we spend in these states the more like our original intent we become. In this way, love, and its expressions of forgiveness, peace, acceptance, spread into the world. The less likely we become hybrid creatures of faith and fear, exercising faith only when it's emotionally convenient; when our bought-into fear beliefs aren't stirred up.

Faith doesn't just 'not' spread the ways of fear, it can't. It'll never exhibit an example of fear in the world for others to emulate because there's no fear in faith.

Becoming more ourselves, more faithful, is the most powerful, revolutionary act people can do. Nothing else will ever be as effective to mitigate and eventually cure fear and its fruits--judgment, punishment, bias, prejudice, intolerance, impatience, annoyance, hate, violence, murder, crime, sickness, neglect, and homelessness....

But as long as fear 'feels' right, and ego keeps control over minds and hearts by convincing them that the only important thing is to make someone else wrong, the issues that plague society will continue, at the expense of what the protestors protest for.

Protesting from fear turns the protestors into that which they're protesting "against," making it more prevalent in the world. Fear shines darkness out of darkness.

Protesting from faith turns the protestors into that which they're protesting "for," making that more prevalent in the world. Faith shines light out of the dark. (2 Corinthians 4:6)

So, as today's verse communicates, the light will never fear the dark, nor anything that happens in the dark. The light will call on the light, and the light will save the light.

Psalm 86:7

When I am in distress, I call to you, because you answer me.

Preface

The way of fear is the way of division. Think about a knife slicing a tomato on a cutting board. The knife is fear. The tomato is humanity, collectively representing all human beings. And the cutting board is the world.

Faith, on the other hand, has the tomato and the board, but no knife. The tomato remains intact, whole.

Fear produces a specific type of thinking, predictable thoughts that produce predictable emotions, behavior and beliefs.

There's an order of creation that originates from within each of us, one thing that sequentially leads to the next in the same way every time, like a set of predetermined dominoes.

We only get fear from the ego, the first domino in the line. The ego is a false sense of self. It's a figment of the imagination, a mask constructed to act as a shield behind which people hide from hypothetical emotional harms that may occur in the future. It's what the world teaches children to shape and mold within themselves to serve in place of God, no different than sculpturing an idol.

One of fear's most destructive victories over humanity is its establishment of the belief that anything external has the power to control what we think and feel internally. (We really need to flip the script on this.)

Fear severely handicaps people's ability to think and feel independently of the circumstances and events that exist and occur external to them. It's in this way that fear serves as the world's tool for teaching lazy cognition. Fear's like a tranquillizer to the brain, dampening its activity down to near zero. Fear says, 'Let the world show you how you should think and feel, then imitate accordingly.' It encourages us, through example and peer pressure, to turn conscious awareness off and trade it in for falling asleep behind the wheel, resting easy in the driver's seat of long-established bad habits, which only make life unnecessarily difficult. This is no different than being made into an animal, or robot.

As many people do today, the Israelites exemplified this process over and over again.

Whether conscious of it happening or not, we worship what we see in the mirror. How? When we choose to look with the eyes of the Spirit, we see God, as he made us in His image. And our worship is exemplified by the internal work we do to break free from fear's imposed chains of limitation and come to see our reflection in the mirror align more and more closely to the reflection of Christ who looks back at us.

When Christ looks in the mirror, the only reflection He sees is that of each of our faces.

As an exercise in expansion, what if we read the following verses in the provided order? We'd see how revelation expands the mind and Spirit in real time:

1) Genesis 1:26,27

2) Romans 1:22-23,25

3) Colossians 1:15-17

4) Romans 8:29

5) Colossians 3:9-10

6) 2 Corinthians 3:18

7) 2 Corinthians 4:6

8) James 1:22-24

9) James 3:9

10) 1 Corinthians 13:12

But when we choose to look with the eyes of the ego, we downgrade ourselves to the image of an animal. And so we feel compelled to make a god that more closely reflects how we see ourselves.

(As a side note: For relationship purposes, this process works similarly between people. We're attracted to those who're most reflective of how we see ourselves in the mirror of our mind. If our confidence or self esteem is low, for example, then our standards lower and we find interest in someone with low self esteem. But if our confidence is high, we'll find that we're attracted to someone who's also highly assured. As confidence raises, our image of ourselves shifts, changing the type of person with whom we can see ourselves.)

It helps to think of ourselves as having four eyes, two that are activated with faith and two that are activated with fear. When one set is turned on, the other's turned off. And the world looks very different through faith than it does through fear. It's the difference between being grounded in the light or untethered in the void of space, states we can toggle between in the blink of an eye.

The Israelites repetitively turned off their faith eyes, turning on the ones of fear. Consequently, they'd shift from Spirit to ego, seeing in themselves more animal than a divinely-created being. (The form the animal would take was dictated by the cultural example to which they were exposed.) And then they would turn their backs on who and what they truly were within.

When leaving Egypt, the Israelites jumped back and forth between God and a cow, Egyptian society having told them that the golden calf was god. The livestock that God created for them to rule over, (Genesis 1:26), they made to rule over themselves.

Today, instead of a cow, scientists work hard at making monkeys out of us all.

Fear focuses in on the external and material. And the more externally minded a person is, the more neglectful of the internal they prove to be, causing all hell to break loose in their life. Health, environmental and relational conditions degrade and die.

Faith, though, focuses on the internal and spiritual. Analogously, it's the difference between hardware and software; a Newtonian engineer and a quantum physicists. Except, with humans, the internal determines the state of the external, not the other way around.

So fear comes from ego. Then from fear we get judgment, the next domino in the line. And judgment falls into bias.

Bias presents itself in different forms, such as being prejudiced for or against others, having preferences that paint people as being either less or more, being racist or tribalistic.

It's important to note that fear will often confuse tribalism for racism, when the two are actually different. Modern expressions of tribalism are a preference for the known, familiar practices of a specific sub-culture, which can be represented by diverse races. Racism believes that one's race, based on the color of their skin, defines a specific culture and is superior to another race and its stereotyped culture. There are many who're accused of being racist, who in fact have no issues with the race in question. They just don't identify with a sub-culture, no matter what diverse group of people number its ranks.

Only fear has the capability of reducing human beings down to the color of their skin, and defining 'culture' by that color. For a mind and heart expanded by faith, it would be too emotionally uncomfortable to attempt compressing life and love down to such limited superficial considerations. It would feel like what it is: compressing the unlimited down into a box of limitation. In the face of the reality revealed so clearly from the elevated perspective provided by faith, such limitations don't make sense. They look like insanity.

From the different forms of bias we get hate, intolerance, impatience, anger, sadness, rage...all the emotional states that, if thought of as energy, would be signal scramblers of what would otherwise be our intended states of peace, joy and love. Negative emotions disrupt and muddy the water of Spirit. They divide the heart.

It's from these emotional states we get violence, all forms of crime, infidelity, addiction and war. It's also how we get genocide, Holocausts, internment camps and slavery.

Following these steps, from the ego to violence, reveals how fear leads to sin--falling short of our intended purpose here on earth--and death. It reveals how people become oppressors and oppressed, and make socialistic, communistic and tyrannical sub-cultures into national cultures...just before they collapse.

Fear, then, really is a state of dis-ease. It's a virus spread only by people. Ultimately, without fail, as demonstrated throughout all of recorded history, fear ends with the destruction of all infected races, tribes and cultures. Fear does not discriminate against any of the people it directs to discriminate against each other. It ensures they kill, steal from and destroy each other equally.

Fear's results are born out of the tomato cutting itself into smaller and smaller pieces, people splitting themselves off into smaller and smaller groups, based upon disagreements between the group-defining labels. It's sibling rivalry to the extreme. A nation of people is a family, despite how much "fun" they put into dysFUNction. But, when fear predominates perspective, it's a family intent on using world-based ideas that place style over substance, form over function--surface considerations that destroy substantive connections.

Fear trades the profound in for the superficial.

What the eyes see become what's chosen to worry about, over what the eyes don't see. Fear highlights the differences over the commonalities. And then we tear ourselves apart.

There's no faith, love or God in this practice. It only represents an acceleration toward the members of ALL the in-fighting groups tripping over and collapsing in on themselves, positioning the nation to be overtaken by an outside force.

Having something against another is how we cut ourselves apart. Fear's division results in those feared being hated, killed, oppressed and enslaved. And all the labels for which each represented group fought so strongly become the last thing on the minds of any of the surviving members, because now the substantive things they took for granted--food, water, clothing, shelter, health, safety, freedom--have all been stripped away.

But there's another line of dominoes. Faith also produces a specific type of thinking, predictable thoughts that produce predictable emotions, behavior and beliefs. We can only get faith from the Spirit. Spirit is the true underlying force given to each of us at birth, and it's activated; more like, unleashed, only by faith.

The word "spirit" is used in three different ways in the Bible.

1) 'Spirit' is translated from the Greek 'pneuma,' which means: a 'current' of air. It's taken from 'pneo,' meaning to 'breathe' hard. It represents the immortal rational soul of a human being, implying 'vital principle,' and mental disposition. This is what God breathed into us at our creation and at each of our births.

2) 'Pneuma" is compared, though not to be confused with, the Greek word 'psyche,' which also translates to mean 'breath,' but in this case to breathe softly. This too implies 'spirit,' but of the mortal animal sentient principle only. It's from this spirit (small "s") we get the term 'pyscho,' which means a cold inanimate breeze; to voluntarily breathe gently. This term tends to be used to describe the animal spirit.

3) Then there's the Greek term 'zoe,' which means 'life,' stripped down to 'mere vitality.' This is used to represent the spirit of plants.

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17).

"...the Spirit is the truth" (1 John 5:6b).

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:31).

The truth sets us free from the chains fear binds us with and the path through hell on earth it forces us to follow.

Where fear leads to destruction, imprisonment, oppression and death--whether by self or others--faith sets free. Where fear cuts apart, faith reunites, heals and makes whole.

From faith we get love. Love is acceptance and unity, from which we get patience, gratitude, empathy, compassion and loving-kindness. And these in turn consistently result in long-term healing, safety and peace.

Where the labels born of fear intend to divide, the labels that come from faith unite. Where fear places the greater focus on surface differences, to the exclusion of what's in a person, faith focuses in on the more profound differences born from what makes us all the same.

Faith looks at another person and sees first and foremost family. And that connection is chosen to be more important than any past action or current philosophical or political difference insisted on by the evil of the ego.

If anyone's confused about whether or not they're operating from a place of fear, they only have to consider the internal fruits--the quality or nature of the thoughts and feelings they most often have and entertain--and the external fruits--the type of events that most often occur in their lives and the circumstances in which they frequently find themselves.

If thoughts and feelings are predominantly negative--judgmental, accusatory, condemning or hateful--for example, maybe toward people who think, feel and believe differently on political issues, then fear controls. (It's ironic that, despite how great fear is at dividing people into increasingly smaller and smaller groups, it does a terrible job of separating the vessel from the disagreed-with label the person within the vessel has adopted.)

Love is not agreement. In fact, more often than not it's the ability to agree to disagree. Love can agree to care deeply for each other 'because' we think and feel differently about what world issues are important. Moreover, it's the investment in the support of our ideological opposites, contextually recognizing we all march together to our individual death beds.

The most effective way to ensure that the cause for which we passionately fight fails is to hate a person who stands in equal support of the opposite position. Why? Because, if they're likewise more predominated by fear than faith, our hate--whatever form it takes--will make sure that they do the same toward us. Then it's no longer about the cause. The cause only becomes a mask the ego wears, behind which the fight becomes focused on "winning," whether we or they are right or not. The cause gets placed on the back burner, and we end up canceling each other out.

But if they're predominated by faith, then what's our positions of fear going to be able to achieve against them? They're going to extend only love in response to us while the quality of their sincerity is going to win greater support from society. We'd be like ripples from a puddle crashing against the side of a mountain. Puddles evaporate in the light of the sun. Mountains don't.

But if we're both operating from faith, then the problem we wish to address gets solved faster, as we approach it from more than one angle. And both sides become stronger.

By 'support for opposites,' this isn't saying love supports hate, or faith supports fear, or Spirit supports flesh. Light doesn't "support" the dark. Light changes the dark to light, and it needs zero amount of force and argumentation to do so. It knows itself with unquestionable faith and just fills the void, no force needed.

Support for opposites is love's way of seeing the person, made in God's image, independently of the current en vogue issue(s) of the century. (In the next century, they will all be different, but love will remain.) So let's solve problems, but not by creating the far worse one of tearing each other apart.

Ego only wins when everyone it controls loses, so it makes the feelings of needing to "win" very strong. Its control comes from convincing people that the feelings to win at any cost are 'their' feelings. And people too often mistakenly put more faith in emotional content that leads to failure than they do in spiritual direction that leads to success. (How often do we see in the news "thou shall not kill" lose to someone having felt strongly that they had to murder someone? They chose egoic emotion over spiritual direction, and the enemy laughed at its victory over both the victimizer and the victim.)

The feelings serve only the ego, not the people involved. (We wouldn't knowingly allow an enemy to walk us off a cliff, but it happens everyday.)

Whenever fear's involved with the creation of Lose/Win, Lose/Lose scenarios, no one actually won. Fear won and we've all lost.

This isn't saying anything against competition. Without competition we stagnate and die. David's prayers point to the place within us from which we enter into competition. Spirit reveals itself present amid the endeavor when everyone involved benefits. Win/Win scenarios can only be achieved with Spirit's involvement.

Love reveals what fear makes impossible to see: There is no opposite position. (We're all people made in God's image, standing on earth, endowed with talents intended to edify each other.)

The concept of "opposite" results from False Evidence Appearing Real (F.E.A.R.). And it conveys that both parties are missing a vital piece of the puzzle. It's that missing piece that ends up bridging the gap between both sides. Until it's discovered, the issue hasn't developed far enough to reveal all of its pertinent details, and we don't know what we don't know. (Fear will never help in the development of anything.)

Ignorance is ego's playground of discord. It's the darkness that knowledge's light purposes to dispel.

Faith directs us toward the benefits that result from loving those we compete with, encouraging each other to make one another stronger. Spiritual competitions recognize: 'If I win, I win. If I lose, I win, because I learned how to do it better next time.'

Spirit recognizes growth never has to stop.

Fear creates insecurity, cutting growth off through dishonest means when it feels it's ahead. One of fear's favorite rules states "Get out while you're ahead." It settles for incremental gains with long pauses in between each advancement.

Faith inspires two competitors to help each other. It's counterintuitive to the the way fear sees things. If I keep making sure that my competitor doesn't fail; for example, pointing out mistakes they make that may lead to their professional demise, and they do the same for me, we create Spirit's 'Triangle of Victory: We--the triangle's two base points--win, and those we serve--the top point--wins.

But faith's connected to God, who's not a zero-sum game. There's more than enough to go around.

Fear's connected to faulty premises about the world, convincing people that there's not enough for everybody. But Faith would ask, "Not enough what? #2 Pencils? Not everyone wants #2 pencils, but there are enough of them for that parentage of people who do."

But fear loves hyperbole. It sensationalizes. Fear imagines a few people to be everybody. And, buying into this, fear's adherents end up handicapping the rate at which they're able to be of service and they introduce actions born from enemy emotional states that lead them off a cliff.

A simple way for someone to determine whether or not they're caught in fear's net is to ask if they're honestly excited for life. If life's not seen as a gift worth celebrating, then this points to one thing: There's an issue within. There's more of the world's way of looking at life than there is of Love's way.

And a primary contributing factor for a lack of joy is found in the failure to recognize: If we see an external problem in the world, then the only reason we've been positioned to see it is to purpose toward solving it, but only while simultaneously supporting in our heart others similarly positioned in front of their own problems to solve. (Fear covers people's eyes with the blindfold of complaint. No one's ever been positioned to complain or condemn...these are fear practices. Faith acts.)

Once we exercise the courage to 'live' the purpose that's been set before us, it's then that we step down from the river's bank, into the flow of life. And it's there we experience, many of us for the first time, an indescribable sense of satisfaction.

But while we remain standing on the sidelines, our heart's divided. And a natural, unavoidable consequence of a divided heart is a disconnection from our joy. To be unhappy is to have allowed fear to shatter focus into a countless number of things to complain about, things we use to justify recoiling from those most in need of light; or from unwanted circumstances calling for our action and growth.

Imagine if Jesus only helped those who were like Jesus. But who did He choose instead? He loved those whom most everyone else hated.

Fear is an idol that works hard in the world to replace God. Worse, it then acts as a filter through which it tries to make God appear as everything other than who and what He actually is and represents. Fear's an idol that teaches how to blame. Then fear directs blame toward the only One who had nothing to do with fear's mis-interpretation of whatever unwanted event occurred. This is like seeing someone rob a bank, then randomly picking someone from the Yellow Pages to blame.

Flooding the body with fear's negative emotions has a terrible side effect of turning the heart into stone. But fear will distract us from noticing what it's doing to our hearts by flooding the screen of our eyes with a million reasons to complain, while cultivating the faith-destructive belief that the heart has to be hardened for self-defense purposes.

There's nothing more self destructive a person can do, nothing that leaves a person more vulnerable to pain, misery and attack, than a hardened heart.

What fear doesn't reveal is that only it connects our emotional states to the expectations we hold for others. Love only has expectations of ourselves. And when we align ourselves with that which is God, then we're about giving all that He represents to others in the same way He gives to us; the same way the sun gives us light and the clouds give us rain--unconditionally. (Matthew 5: 45)

The sun and rain are given equally to all. And this giving is a vessel of God's messaging to us. How far into fear we've allowed ourselves to fall determines how difficult being like the sun is thought to be. But how successful our lives become is determined by how courageously we lean into and break through that wall of fear, in order to get back into the thriving, protective space of love.

Imagine soaking a sponge in water. Then putting the sponge in an oven preheated to 500 degrees. All the water evaporates while the sponge hardens and burns.

The water is life, its proverbial molecular makeup comprised of empathy, compassion, patience, discipline, peace, joy and love. The sponge is the heart. The water is what allowed the heart to feel, care and be sensitive to the Spirit's prompts that help us stay in a place of light, life and love and to know if or when we risk encroaching into the territories of darkness, death and becoming judgmental.

A sopping wet sponge is no different than a heart that overflows with all that is good and true. Such overflowing happens from the inside out; it's internally inspired, not externally justified. And only faith--that inner calm confident assurance found in knowing we're loved, safe and provided for--opens the heart faucet, pouring the truth into, for and through us to the world.

We give water to the thirsty. Their thirst called out to our open, listening heart. We heard, felt their distress and answered them. This type of giving (re)connects us to them, while providing the initial sprouts of faith for them to tentatively give likewise in the future and reconnect to us and others in turn.

Our distress calls are answered because we answer the distress calls of others. This is what faith, love and God look like here on earth.

The Theme of today's Psalm is: "Devoted trust in times of trouble."

God could trust in David's faith as David could trust in God's faithfulness.

David's prayer provides deep insight into the dynamic nature of his connection with God. If prayer could be likened to making a telephone call, then the question becomes, 'How can I keep the signal strong and the line open?'

First, David states "I am poor and needy" (86:1). But he's an anointed king with abundant material and human resources. At the beginning of his reign, "... David knew that the Lord had established him as king over Israel and that his kingdom had been highly exalted for the sake of his people Israel" (1 Chronicles 14:1). And toward the end of David's reign, "With all my resources I have provided for the temple of my God--gold for the gold work, silver for the silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron and wood for the wood, as well as onyx for the settings, turquoise, stones of various colors, and all kinds of fine stone and marble--all of these in large quantities. Besides, in my devotion to the temple of my God I now give my personal treasures of gold and silver for the temple of my God, over and above everything I have provided for this holy temple: three thousand talents of gold (gold of Ophir) and seven thousand talents of refined silver..." (1 Chronicles 29:2-4).

How do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory points?

First, David isn't referring to a lack in material wealth. He's referring to an internal emotional state.

Second, David knows that anything, everything he has he's been given "for the sake of his people Israel." None of it is his. All of it belongs to God and is to be used in service to God's people.

David's aware that he has nothing without God, the Source of everything. It's humility at its most profound. He's essentially saying, 'Without you, Lord, I quite literally have nothing.'

Faith expands the mind's eye, revealing within the scope of its vision how everything that exists, all the visible and invisible details, are born out of, exist within and inherently contain God. "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible" (Hebrews 11:3).

Faith provides perspective. Perspective leads to understanding. Understanding brings about humility. And humility starts the process of opening the phone line for prayer.

But, once humility is established, what connects the line in the first place and keeps the signal strong? David says:

1) "I am faithful to you" (86:2);

2) "I call to you all day long" (86:3);

3) "I put my trust in you" (86:4);

4) "I will praise you...with all my heart;

5) "I will glory your name forever" (86:12); and

6) "I serve you" (86:16).

This is who David is. It's as if he had asked, "What do I get someone who has everything?" This is the answer. We give God: faith, commitment, trust, praise, glory and service--the natural results of love. But too, by saying these things out loud, David's placing himself in the singularly focused mental/emotional states that his offerings represent. It's like powering up a radio and tuning it, in readiness to give and receive a message.

"And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6).

Once David's focused his mind and powered himself up, he strengthens his faith and clarifies the signal further by describing God:

You, Lord:

1) are forgiving, good (86:5);

2) abound in love, compassion, grace and faithfulness (86:5,13,15);

3) answer when I call (86:7);

4) are incomparable in deeds (86:8,10);

5) are above, greater than all other gods and nations (86:8,9,10); and

6) are my deliverance (86:13).

In this way, David's established who he is and who God is, activating the receivers on both ends of the spectrum, making the two into one.

Another way to think of this is, by juxtaposing David's aspects with those of God, David creates an alignment, like pointing a phone antennae at a communication satellite in space. It allows David to shift from F2F, ask God for what David needs and know that God will deliver. And once his focus has shifted from the problem to the solution, David asks God to:

1) hear and answer my prayer (86:1,6);

2) protect and save me (86:2);

3) be merciful to me (86:3,16);

4) give me joy and satisfaction (86:4);

5) teach me (86:11);

6) give me an undivided heart (86:11); and

7) show me your goodness (86:17).

If David had maintained his focus on the problem and presented this same list in prayer, he would have received nothing. Why? Because his focus would have been split between fear and faith. Divided hearts and double mindedness achieve nothing.

David established himself as someone who regards the way of faith, differentiating himself from those who do not.

People who have no regard for faith can only serve fear.

David wrote, "Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God; ruthless people are trying to kill me--they have no regard for you" (86:14). (See also Psalm 54:3; and consider Psalm 36, which contrasts examples of fear with God's characteristics.)

Their lack of humility and compassion revealed that they operated according to fear instead of faith. They served the idol of their egos.

"...trying to kill me" could just as easily be translated into "trying to make me like them"; "trying to get me to choose the world's way of fear over God's way of faith." To someone who truly understands just how dangerous such a shift would be, the internal battle would be terrifying. (To a lesser degree, it would be the equivalent of living in a dangerous neighborhood and choosing to get rid of the alarm system and the locks and opening all the doors and windows before going to sleep for the night.)

No one would knowingly make themselves so vulnerable, but people unfortunately do so all the time. So it's powerful when we choose to encourage people to Fear Not, have faith.

Faith sees life like a master Chess player, able to predict the results of multiple moves ahead. Fear's more like Checkers; it sees only the move it wants to make right now, giving little to no thought to the consequences.

This helps us not make fear's mistake of confusing the ways of fearful people with the ways of God.

We're not human beings here to have periodic spiritual experiences. We're spiritual beings here to have human experiences. But all experiences are intended for one purpose: to leave things on earth better than we found them. Like with moving a dial by a degree, we're to help elevate our collective spiritual consciousness higher, out of the darkness of ignorance, into more of the light of knowledge and understanding.

From the quantum realm, to the space in which we find ourselves in light and sensory engagement, to the universe at large; from the unseen to the seen and all the spaces in between, spiritual laws coalesce and govern everything, having designed and coded existence itself to protect, support and elevate those who give regard to how things are supposed to work and who act accordingly. The people who do this experience the best that life has to offer, receiving more opportunities for joy, abundance and love.

We end up receiving far more fruits of the Spirit than fruits of the flesh over the course of our lifetime. It really does just come down to which do we want more of; moreover, which do we want more of for others.

But for those who follow the world's teachings of fear, who allow fear to blind themselves to how life actually works; for those who swim against life's purposed current by working to benefit self at the expense of others, taking instead of giving, tearing down instead of building up, hurting instead of healing, sowing fear and darkness instead of faith and light, the underlying governing system also has a built-in process for fixing such malfunctioning pieces in the life machine.

David's Psalm is a recognition of how things work. He's providing the recipe for having prayer heard and answered. When we ask for something specific to happen here on earth, we:

1) must believe God exist;

2) must believe we've already received what we're asking for;

3) cannot hold anything against another human being (AKA, we cannot choose pride over humility);

4) can't have a divided heart;

5) can't ask just for our own benefit; and

6) have to have been living in service for both God and others.

Jesus said, "...whatever you ask for in prayer, 'believe that you have received it,' and it will be yours" (Mark 11:24). But He immediately followed this with "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins" (Mark 11:25). In other words, faith alone may provide salvation for our souls, but while we're still here on earth it doesn't allow us to get whatever we ask for if we're holding something against another person.

We can't receive the fruits of faith while remaining beholden to fear's influence. (Where fear may say, "But you don't know what they did to me," faith finds the idea of "did to me" impossible.)

"God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble" (James 4:6, paraphrasing Proverbs 3:34).

If we're holding onto a grudge, negative judgment, or unforgiveness against another person, not only does this do absolutely nothing against them, but it scrambles our phone connection with God, getting in the way of Him hearing us when we pray. So why use someone else as an excuse to make our own lives unnecessarily more difficult?

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures" (James 4:1-3).

"But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do" (James 1:6-8).

"With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water" (James 3:9-12).

David heard God and followed His directions, so God heard David and answered. But for those who don't follow the way of faith:

"They cried for help, but there was no one to save them--to the Lord, but He did not answer" (Psalm 18:41).

What is it that those who follow the way of fear find so difficult to do?

"This is what the Lord Almighty said: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.'

"But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets" (Zechariah 7:9-12).

"When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen," says the Lord Almighty (Zechariah 7:13).

And consider "Wisdom's Rebuke":

"But since you refuse to listen when I call and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand, since you disregard all my advice and do not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you; I will mock when calamity overtakes you--when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you.

"Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord. Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm" (Proverbs 1:24-33).

David chose to fear the Lord instead of fearing the world. The 'fear' of God equates to the fear of hurting the heart of someone we dearly care about. It's reverence, like that we'd hold for a beloved parent, child or friend. Consequently, David was empowered to follow God's commands.

"And this is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love" (2 John 1:6).

Walking in love can only garner more love. But ego prefers judgment and punishment over love, and so those who follow ego's commands create in the world and reap for themselves more judgment and punishment. It's just the nature of the universe, how things work.

Think of it like this: If we cause pain and suffering and are faced with the consequences of our actions, should we pray to have God to save us from the consequences so that we can continue uninterrupted in our work to cause pain and suffering? Of course not. But too many people want to commit terrible actions against others without being held accountable. And so they "call out" to God; afterward, instead of taking responsibility for their actions, they get mad at Him for not preventing the consequences they brought on themselves. This is the type of thinking that fear produces.

Knowing this, David did not wish to fall prey to fear's insanity. He did not want to risk having one foot in the world and one in the Spirit. He asked God, "...give me an undivided heart..." (86:11).

This is our prayer. And God responds, "I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will then go well for them and for their children after them" (Jeremiah 32:39).

"I will give them an undivided heart and put a new Spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 11:19).

"Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new Spirit. Why will you die, people of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!" (Ezekiel 18:3-32).

A divided heart, if not made whole, ends up becoming a heart of stone. But when faith is activated and love springs forth, "I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26).

"You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Corinthians 3:3).

And how does fear lead people down the road to a divided, hardened heart? Through complaints about and arguments with each other.

"Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, 'children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation'" (Philippians 2:14, quoting Deuteronomy 32:5).

A symptom of a "warped and crooked generation" is grumbling and arguing. These are how negative internal states reveal their existence inside of a person: They complain and argue. It's the language of fear. It's ego saying, "Look at me. Here I am inside this vessel. I've taken over the controls, and they have no clue that they're asleep at the wheel. In fact [insert evil laugh] this vessel, made in the image of God, actually identifies with what it's complaining and arguing about. It thinks these are its issues, not knowing it's me, Fear, the whole time."

The thing that motivates us to pray for and make ourselves available to such vessels is that we can recognize, from when we were likewise trapped, the pain they're in and the pain they're visiting and will visit onto others.

If we take anything away from today's verse and David's example, it's that prayer is similar to any other field of study. If we've never before looked under the hood of our car, we've neglected to observe all preventive-maintenance demands, we possess no mechanical know-how, then, when the engine dies, how likely will the engine, or God, hear our begging of "Oh, not now. Please, please, please start" just because we experience a strong emotional desire to not have our routine interrupted?

If we really didn't want the engine to break down, then we would have observed the rules of preventive maintenance. (Ego gets immediately offended at even the suggestion. It thinks, 'It'll work until it doesn't.' Then it'll grumble and argue about it not working, blaming everyone and -thing other than the only one responsible.)

"Want" is a verb, not a noun, which means it's an action, not a feeling.

Like with what it takes for someone to learn how engines work, we have to learn how prayer works if we want to be as good a mechanic of our lives as master mechanics are to our vehicles. What's interesting is that the more of these rules we learn, they too serve as preventive maintenance, making us less likely to have to go to God to bail us out of our own created troubles.

But one of the worst symptoms of fear's corruption is a cavalier attitude toward personal responsibility; especially, as it pertains to minding the details. This is synonymous with David's observation, "...they have no regard for You," (86:14), and with Solomon's recording of "Wisdom's Rebuke" (provided earlier in this chapter).

Jack Canfield said, "If we do what others do, we get what others got."

If we eat only junk food, fail to exercise and fail to get enough sleep, are we going to get the same results as an Olympic athlete? If we neglect the details for becoming an athlete, how much prayer will result in God making us into one? If we can't do our part, actions being the language of faith, they speaking louder than words, then we're telling God to not do His part.

It's the same thing with the car. If our chosen action to not act--to not get the oil changed regularly, to not check that red flashing light on the dash--then we're choosing to find ourselves broken down on the side of the road. (Action equals faith. In this case, our faith action is saying: 'Break down on the side of the road,' and so that's what we get.)

Our actions are the loudest way we pray to God, louder than our words and feelings by themselves will ever be. Because actions, not our words and feelings, are the only thing that communicates the existence of faith within us.

David's examples point to and call forth the integrated teachings exemplified throughout the bible. A primary one is when Jesus said:

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me'" (Mathew 25:34-40).

What we give to each other we give to God. Giving to those in need is the loudest form of prayer. It ensures that God, in turn, gives to us. It's just how the engine of faith works. This is how we keep it running strong, ensuring that it never breaks down on us, leaving us stranded on the side of the road.

I say "yes" to every request for help that comes to me, because I choose faith. I recognize each person showing up in my life as someone sent by God, and so I do what I can with what I have where I'm at, knowing that I'm not just helping that person, but I'm also serving God. In turn, every time I ask for help it's always made available. Not because of anything I do, but because everything I do points to and is an expression of faith. The faith opens the two-way line.

I give of my time and resources to those in need. And I'm often amazed at God's genius ways at providing for my needs, and even my wants, when I don't ask for them. (They never come in a way I could have fathomed with my wildest imaginings, a way that God communicates to us that His mind is greater than ours and sees far more than we'll ever be able to.)

I've come to realize that the want rising in me is it's own form of prayer for those of us who're fully open and available to give from faith.

But if we're open to give we have to be open to receive. Arrogance and pride will sneak in and try to rob someone else of their blessing if we refuse to accept the help God's placed on their heart for us. Saying "no" to them is a quick investment in having God say "no" to us. So it's more powerful to just say "Thank you." Also, because God never answers prayer in a way we'll ever be able to foresee, if we're asking for something specific, we can't be biased toward how it's supposed to show up. In fact, it most likely will arrive in a way that'll tests an area of weakness within us. If we say no, maybe because it involves some work that falls outside of the usual day-to-day routine, or represents an inconvenience in another way, then we're saying no to the very thing we're asking for.

Last, whenever someone calls to me I hear and answer them. I make it a point to stop whatever I'm doing and listen. Sometimes this means to just be there for them. Many times it isn't convenient. Often people show up at the worst times. I'm always in the middle of doing something. But the Spirit's prompted in my heart a revelation: 'Nothing's more important than the human being.' This has opened existence up for me in a way that fear would never have considered, allowed, nor thought possible.

Acts of presence and kindness trumps all.

And one of the most powerful forms of sacrifice to and worship of God is choosing connecting with the person who shows up over the feelings of annoyance or impatience that may initially arise because we think we don't want to be interrupted. (How many times have we snapped at our child or a loved one, causing them a micro-trauma and teaching them the lesson of snapping, because we'd rather be on the phone or working at the computer? What if God told us, "Not right now, I'm busy." Or, "Stop it. Don't you see I'm in the middle of something!?") I expand mind's awareness beyond the task at hand to include the person who's shown up in my life. Consequently, fear's annoyance melts away. Faith's acceptance floods in.

And whenever I call out to God, He answers me.

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Psalm 78:53

[God] guided [His people] safely, so they were unafraid; but the sea engulfed their enemies.

Preface

Fear has its own language. We recognize fear as much by its words as by its actions. One of fear's favorite words is "impossible." Often fear will use this to retreat from life in the moments that matter, to contract and shrink within self, to bind and limit self-further and further over time.


Internally, fear locks people's minds in a sort of Iron Maiden for the brain, tortuously confining them to the arrogance of painful limitation.


Externally, fear binds people's wings to their sides, believing this keeps them safe from the risk of falling. And then they call anything that looks like flying "impossible" so to remain "safe" on the ground in the pain of resisting their nature to soar.


Imagine being fitted with a straitjacket at birth, bound by having the world's fear imposed upon us, calling the miraculous freedom in love that we possess in faith 'reckless' and 'insane'. Consider how this jacket would stifle the growth of our love and contribution.


Parents will share with the next generation the guide that leads to either personal freedom, or personal imprisonment.


Asaph, one of David's chief musicians, teaches by praying out loud in song. Today he reminds us of the history of faith and fear, of remembrance and selective amnesia, of "impossible" running up against and being overcome by "Im possible."


It's a matter of shifting the space in between the letters of the word. In this way we change our language from F2F. We change the meaning of things, how our mind thinks, unlocking a latch on the Iron Maiden's grasp, allowing for more expansive thinking to seep out. Consequently, the bindings around our wings fray and loosen, giving us some wiggle room. The pain of fear-imposed limitations alleviates. We can stretch and move a little more, in ways never before imagined possible.


We discover room to breathe, realizing it had been there, intended for us, waiting the whole time. And the room is called 'unlimited possibility.'


A friend who knows me well, years past sent me a birthday card. On its cover we're shown a drawing of a square box with a small opening on one side. Inside the box a bunch of butterflies flutter around. Outside the box flies one butterfly.


"Why do you fly outside the box?"


"Because I can."


"But we 'know' the box. We're 'safe' in the box.


"That's why I fly outside the box. Where you're safe, I'm free."

As an introduction Asaph tells us that he's going to share a parable, that he will "utter hidden things" (78:2).


"Parable" is defined as 'A simple story told to illustrate a moral truth.' (This would mean a truth that relates to principles of right and wrong in thought and action.)


The word "parable" is translated from the Hebrew 'masal,' which means to 'rule,' or have dominion over the mind, having 'superiority' in mental action. But this represents a state of mind that's acquired by remembering or learning the examples of success and failure established by those who've lived before us, our Spiritual ancestors.


By learning what other people's faith has allowed faith and love to do in, through and for them; especially, in the face of what fear would think of as 'impossible' or 'hopeless,' we give our mind an expanded space of possibilities that fear would never allow. Consequently, we give permission for events to occur in our lives; especially, when we need them most, events that aren't necessarily bound by fear's limited expectations as dictated by past experience and a toddler's understanding of the laws of physics.


It's important that we're not confused on this last point--Our understanding of the laws of physics, of "how things work," has only expanded equal to that of a two-year old's growth from being a new-born baby. We have barely scratched the surface.


Only when the laws of the spirit are studied and understood will physics begin to rapidly reveal its "hidden things."


Asaph's phrase "hidden things" comes from the Hebrew 'hida.' This directly translates into English as 'a puzzle.' And it's used to mean 'a trick,' and 'conundrum.' Its root is 'hud,' which means 'to tie a knot,' and 'to propound a riddle.' It's also been biblically translated as "dark sayings."


By "dark" or "hidden" Asaph means forgotten to those who've been told before, and unknown to those who've not yet been informed. His goal is to dispel the darkness of ignorance with the light of knowledge. But he's not wanting to just give information for the purpose of informing. This would be like painting a single coat of watered-down water-based paint on an oily surface. Little to nothing would stick.


There's a difference between informing and educating. Asaph purposes the latter, to provide the information he's about to deliver in such a way that it'll trigger the reasoning, analytical parts of our brains, like when we're presented with a novel, intriguing puzzle.


Just by prefacing what he's about to say with 'I'm going to give you a puzzle,' we approach the information we're about to read from that point onward from a different psychological state than we would without the prompt. It serves the same rhetorical purpose of the drill sergeants call of "Attention!" letting the soldiers know that everything the sergeant's about to say next is important.


Asaph's first order of business is to essentially communicate: Those who forget history are destined to repeat the same mistakes made by those in the past and to suffer unnecessarily the same consequences. But too Asaph wants to show us that, by learning what people before us did wrong and right, we can progress as a society more rapidly if we stand on our ancestors' shoulders, picking up where they left off, instead of wasting yet another generation's worth of time giving into the same fears, making the same mistakes.


As a society, we're either allowing fear to keep us running in place or introducing just enough faith to inch our way forward, or we're finally getting fed up enough to tip the scales toward faith in order to wind sprint into the future of heaven on earth...and beyond.


Asaph's call for attention was a call to expand understanding. Psychologically it's been said that "a mind expanded by a new idea can never return to its original dimensions." Generational expansions--obtaining greater levels of freedom from fear's Iron Maiden hold on the mind--has an accumulative, compounding effect. And one of the symptoms of expansion is a results-oriented person and society.


The expansion of faith reveals that actions come to carry more weight than words. (For those who're predominated by fear, the opposite is true. This is how we can recognize a predominance of fear in a person: They make promises that they don't keep. And they make excuses for why they didn't keep their promises.)


Faith confirms what Benjamin Disraeli wrote: "Man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creatures of men."


And what Edmund Spenser observed: "It is the mind that maketh good of ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor."


But what steers the mind?


Either fear or faith.


Then where do we acquire either one of these driving forces?


From the type of information, we most often pay the closest attention to, we choose to learn from and, importantly, we act on. Information gets packaged and delivered in either the promise of pain or pleasure, whether by someone else whom we choose to believe or by our own estimation.


"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." (Marcus Aurelius)


"Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action." Here, Orison Swett Marden points to what Moses (as highlighted by Asaph), and later Jesus, demonstrated.


These powers are the thoughts and emotions born from out of faith.


"Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith." "Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would" (Jesus, speaking to the Centurion, at Matthew 8:5-13).


The Centurion believed that Jesus's power to heal could extend to the Centurion's paralyzed servant.


"When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, 'Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven'" (Jesus, before healing the man on the mat, at Matthew 9:2).


"Jesus turned and saw her. 'Take heart, daughter,' He said, 'your faith has healed you'" (Matthew 9:22).


"Then He touched their eyes and said, 'According to your faith let it be done to you'; and their sight was restored" (Matthew 9:29-30).


With each example encountered a chipping away occurs at the hardened clay of the ego that serves as fear's cover over our light. Simultaneously the light of faith expands itself within fear's shell, spiderwebbing it with hairline fissures, weakening fear's ability to prevent the light from exploding outwardly.


"Then Jesus said to her, 'Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted'" (Matthew 15:28).


In each case in the New Covenant the people heard, saw and then brought the faith inspired within them to Jesus. And this faith was the catalyst for God to remove from them the barrier or limitation they had endured prior to faith's introduction. Faith revealed that the type of barriers and limitations found only in fear were unnecessary.


And during each healing, there were witnesses present, of whom it's said, "This amazed everyone, and they praised God, saying, 'We have never seen anything like this!'" (Mark 2:12).


How many times has fear used nearly the same phrasing, "I've never seen it done before," as "proof" that something needed or wanted can't be had or will never happen? This is how fear tries to manipulate people into believing that the past dictates the future.


Imagine if Henry Ford said that a car could never be built because no one had built it before.


And what about the numerous contemporary examples of "spontaneous healings" encountered by doctors, healings deemed to have no known scientific explanation for occurring?


Fear doesn't need to see in order to believe, as it often likes to say, because it doesn't believe no matter how many times it sees, as displayed by those freed from Egypt. (It could be said that this is the generation being referenced when Jesus said, "A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign..." (Matthew 16:4)) It's been shown that signs and wonders don't inspire faith in those who've committed themselves to positions of fear, but that faith inspires signs and wonders.


Fear is afraid to believe, because it's already taken a position on what it believes, has intertwined its identity with that belief and now finds avoiding being "wrong" more important than being healed. It's the same thing for those who find being "right" more important than being in a relationship or being "respected" more important than having their job, or their freedom from prison.


People brought faith to Jesus and received life and healing. God, through Moses, brought signs, miracles and wonders to His people, and they complained, made idols, worshiping other gods, and received sickness and death.


The "hidden things" Asaph writes about are defined by him as "the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders He has done" (78:4). Asaph's talking about the forgotten or unknown history of God's deeds. He's using irony as a form of rhetoric, with the implication being "Let me state the obvious for you."


The first deed listed is "He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the Law in Israel" (78:5).


The wise recognize the value of having a mentor, someone who always makes him- or herself available to provide principles for successful living. The statutes and Law are God's mentorship; His guide for us.


Today many take the law for granted, not realizing that when first introduced to people it was like being given a technological advancement far greater than electricity or the iPhone. Before such direction, people banged about in the dark, driven by any fear-based thought and feeling that arose.


If "technology" can be defined as 'a better way of doing things,' then the commandments and Torah given to and through Moses meant for the Hebrews what an intergalactic time-traveling spaceship would mean to us today. It was revolutionary on a scale of miraculous proportions.


What would harnessing fire of meant to the caveman that first discovered how? Or the lightbulb to Edison? What did Freud's discovery of Psychoanalysis mean for the development of the field of Psychology?


Recently we've seen in some cities people repeating the mistake of forgetting the past. As if conducting a social experiment, a few elected officials work tirelessly to dilute the law's value, demonizing it in order to remove its applicability. Consequently, they're getting a glimpse of the beginning expressions of human nature as it existed in the world prior to the law's existence. It's to people like this Asaph sings his prayer.


The escalating pockets of crime are only bubbles in a pot of water being brought to a boil. A symptom of the neglect of our youth.


Though not there yet, we still having time to course correct, if these cities stay the course they're on, it's inevitable that the water will boil over. This is when the scales tip to there being more people committing crimes than people obeying the law, which then rapidly devolves into the city's implosion.


This isn't a political issue, it's a spiritual one. It's fear and darkness working hard to dispel the tools of faith and light. And it does this generationally, by what it exemplifies for and teaches those who'll become the next generation.


It's important to point out that we're not to put our faith in the law, but in love. It helps to think of the law as the package in which love resides, present for those who've not yet matured within themselves to the point of love. It's a guide, like a life coach, that get us to that point.


It's a tool purposed to help with our maturation process.


Without love being the primary aspect of the law's mentorship, then it's not easy for people to make the connection between the two. Consequently, the system ends up representing only judgment and punishment, void of empathy and compassion. And when those in society who're more susceptible to internalizing disappointment, loss and trauma receive the law as a teacher of judgment and punishment, then these are the tools the law's told them to use in turn.


It's only in the "law and order" cities that marry this with compassion and mentorship where the best results occur.


We get more of what we focus in on. If a system focuses in on crime, defining a person as a criminal, then they're going to evolve their systems to make more criminals and crime. This is how systems of fear work. But if a system focuses in on the heart of the person behind the crime, defining a person as someone who's been hurt and--having not had the mentorship they obviously needed--recognizing that they visited that hurt on the society that hurt them, then the system will evolve to make less criminals and crime, and more contributing human beings.


It's true that only hurt people hurt people. It's also true that "If we see a person as they are, they'll be that and worse. But if we see a person as they can be, they'll become that and better."


But for the cities that "catch and release" people who're currently bound in the darkness of fear, trapped in the throes of the pain they're visiting onto others, their release isn't helping anyone. These cities take the law for granted, as well as both the people hurting and those being hurt.


Maybe the officials are creating a problem that didn't exist before in order to present themselves as the solution.


Or maybe the officials assume people naturally embody the light and guidance of the law within themselves. Or they only think of the law as something stripped of love, like what Jesus recognized in the Sadducees and Pharisees:


Jesus said, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former" (Matthew 23:23). Jesus points to a law plugged into faith, and away from a law connected to fear.


Or the officials think that if they don't like the people who represent the law, then the best way to protest is to return society into the Wild West, which really is only a political expression of a child having a tantrum.


Jesus said to the crowds and to His disciples: "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So, you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach" (Matthew 23:1-3).


Fear confuses the 'person' who breaks the law for the 'law' the person broke. This is because fear compromises rationality, narrowing thinking, making it lazy. It's the same confusion represented by throwing the baby out with the bath water.


Fear confuses correlation with causation.


Faith sees that the law stands separately from the hypocrite who's supposed to represent it. This is because faith expands the space in which the mind's able to operate, allowing for sound reasoning and compartmentalization.


Or maybe the elected officials are just giving the people what they're asking for, letting them experience firsthand Asaph's lesson.


But it appears that the officials involved fail to recognize, first, there are plenty of historic examples of societies living with little to no measures of personal accountability. And second, they don't seem to understand that our society is fed teachings of fear nearly 24/7. There's barely an information platform of any form that doesn't predominantly highlight or promote the worst examples of fear's nature. And 'examples' are humanity's most effective teachers. They're what make a culture.


If the information infrastructure was developed to the point of predominantly highlighting and promoting examples of faith expressions, then we as humans could evolve the mind and heart to the point of becoming an embodiment of faith and its corresponding expansion of love. This, then, would represent a sociological maturation that would allow for not the removal but the fulfillment of the law. (Then and only then could we be deemed an advanced, civilized society.)


This is what Jesus pointed us toward when He said, "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12).


Love is the fulfillment of the Law (Romans 13:10).


"For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).


This reveals a maturation of faith exemplified by people progressing over time. It points to the direction that we're supposed to be heading, instead of making the same thinking, behavioral mistakes made by generations past.


But until we tap into, learn from, and wire ourselves for faith and love, the law, as an expression of love, is necessary. Without the law, this nation goes the same route as every nation before it--total, absolute destruction.


What Asaph would refer to as sin, most today refer to as crime--the actions that fall short of or violate the law. Like those bubbles in the water, crimes can only be committed in the society from out of which they're born. There's a collective responsibility that few people wish to acknowledge. With little to no contextual guidance, citizens have no problem inundating the impressionable minds of the next generation, from birth to their early 20's, with millions of visual examples of rape, kidnapping, robbery and murder. They call this innocent entertainment. In their ignorance of how the mind develops and works, these same citizens are shocked and outraged when a percentage of these youth pour out of themselves into the world that which has so bountifully been poured into them.


The truth is, there's a percentage of children who're more sensitive than others. They feel more. As a result, they're more prone to internalizing, holding onto the disappointments and hurts they experience. They lack the coping mechanisms most others may naturally have or be able to organically develop. Negative events are recalled more graphically than positive events for these kids. Then they grow up in an abusive or neglectful household. Or they gain the attention of a bully. Or life happens as it does for those predominated by fear. And they have no mentor to provide any alternative positive guidance, teaching the youth how to skillfully, pro-socially process the events that occur in their lives.


Each new pain internalizes and compounds, building inside like the magma of an active volcano. This contributes to a lack of self-esteem and, resultingly, a lack of purpose. These together are the ingredients for criminality. (You can't get acts of violence without these.)


The law's purpose is that of mentorship and guidance; at least, it's supposed to be. But if it's not taught or given to kids, then how are they to have it within themselves to consult and pull from? They grow up in body, but they're only as old as they stopped maturing within themselves, which is the age of that first traumatic event they encountered and failed to properly process.


One thing's for sure: The world never takes a break in teaching kids the ways of fear. If society fails in doing its job, then what lessons of faith do the kids have within themselves to mount a defense against the lessons of fear? Little to none.


Biblically, people connected to God through the law. The glue that represented this connection was faith. And this connection allowed them to expand the way their minds saw themselves, providing a perspective above the individualistic level. They had an understanding of how the bad actions of one person could adversely affect everyone else. For example, at Joshua 7, the selfish actions Achan caused devastating results to all of the Israelites. (Review Chapter 25 of this book for more on Achan.)


God sees us as one. Love says, 'I am my brother's keeper.' (1 John 3:11-12) Jesus said, "Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! (Matthew 18:7) "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come" (Luke 17:1).


Asaph recognized this, stating: [God] decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which He commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children" (Psalm 78:5-7).


Why?


Because the universe adheres to the laws that govern it. If it did not do so, it would then and only then represent true chaos. And we are part of the universe. If we live in violation of the laws that govern life, then we unravel the order of our lives into chaos.


For example, a man predominated by fear may, externally, have every material provision made available to him. His neighborhood's streets are clean and crime free. There's a regular trash and mail schedule. His refrigerator is always full. Water is readily available. He has a routine he likes and can count on. The bottom three levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs are met. But then his girlfriend breaks up with him. Having never learned how to process everyday life events like this properly, he interprets this one event to be the end of the world. Through fear's eyes, the breakup makes life look like it's in complete and total chaos.


Fears kept this person from entering into the upper two levels of the Hierarchy, which can only be entered with the key to faith.


Fear's unable to separate the one thing from everything. In fact, one of its primary identifying features is how it will have someone exclude everything that exists in life in the face of one unwanted event. It's like someone stubbing their toe in the morning right when they get out of bed, then deciding that one event means the ENTIRE rest of the day is ruined. All 20 or so hours that have not yet occurred, are now ruined because of that one event that took one-tenth of a second to happen.


If anyone is curious to know whether someone's internal scale is weighed more heavily toward fear than faith, then this is one of the symptoms that reveals it to be so.


Asaph's purpose is to provide perspective, like an immortal historian standing atop a mountain, watching the cycles of humanity play out over the course of thousands of years. Asaph points out the Atari "Pong" game people used to play, bouncing back and forth between faith and fear; between annihilation and enslavement, and freedom and abundance; between empires rising and empires falling. Over and over and over again, for the same exact reasons.


Yes, with this perspective, we can say that each back-and-forth bounce of the ball resembles one rep, like with curling a weight when exercising. The expansion-and-contraction reps over the course of thousands of years represent fear/faith antagonistic muscle sets, each one progressing us incrementally forward, to where we are now, contracting once more.


But we don't have to.


Imagine if we were to decide to provide this perspective to our children, giving them a bird's-eye view, teaching them that we no longer have to contract. We can just support each other's unique contributions toward uninterrupted expansion. If we provided the tools of empathy, compassion, loving-kindness along with this information, humanity would progress in 50 years farther than it has from its beginning to now.


If not for this recurring obsession with the way of fear, Egypt would have invented the car alongside the pyramids. And we would have already established settlements on other planets.


The statutes and law teach us how to govern and come to understand the inner workings of the mind and heart. And how it's from these we establish the ideas, attitudes and beliefs; the preferences, drivers and convictions; the perspective and emotional states, that create the world we live in.


Each one of us comes to recognize ourselves as a vital, unique piece in the puzzle of humanity.


The statutes and law are a "how to" manual for getting the best results from life, as the manual in the car's glovebox shows us how to get the best results from our vehicle. The difference between the car and us is when we wire ourselves habitually in accordance to life's best practices, it activates God's Spirit in us to open secrets of God's "obvious" hidden things, revealing they'd been right there, staring us in the face the whole time.


Revelation explodes, like a Big Bang occurring in the brain, revealing how ridiculously unnecessarily hard we'd up to this point been making our lives. The Iron Maiden falls off, broken into pieces. Everything just shifts into alignment, love--real, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 love--ignites. And then we see how the world's manual of fear, that had bound us to our own personal back-and-forth rep count for so long, is binding others. And we recognize them as extensions of ourselves, and us as extensions of them. Having been exactly where they are, is it any wonder we'd want to help them trade one manual in for another?


Why did "the men of Ephraim" turn back on the day of battle? (78:9) "[T]hey did not keep God's covenant and refused to live by His law" (78:10). In other words they chose the world's manual of fear over God's manual of faith. They chose chaos over order. Loss over gain.


"But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back." "But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved" (Hebrews 10:38-39).


The men of Ephraim chose fear over faith and made themselves as part of the club of people who shrink back. They had the external tools they needed to win, being "armed with bows," but they lacked the internal tools, having failed to "keep God's covenant and refused to live by His law" (78:10). So they contracted.


Comparatively, the people God freed from the bonds of slavery in Egypt bare little resemblance to the people whom Jesus helped according to their faith. But the latter stood on the shoulders of the former.


We wouldn't have the faith we have today if not for God's example to those who had little to no faith in God yesterday. Asaph lists all "the wonders [God] had shown [the Hebrews]." "But they continued to sin against Him, rebelling in the wilderness against the Most High" (78:11-17). Despite all that God had done for them, "they did not believe in God or trust in His deliverance" (78:22). Yet He provided for them the desires of their every complaint.


God did this through them for us. His actions, like all actions, were seeds, sown to become our faith today.


The Hebrews whom God delivered through Moses were all but stripped of their faith and humanity beneath the generations of oppressive slavery they endured. They'd been torn down to the base animal instincts of being solely concerned about food. But God showed that He had to start anew, meeting His people where they were as an investment in the next generation, and each successive generation that would come after. God's actions were a statement of 'Do what you can with what you have where you are.'


Asaph emphasized the Pong effect of God's people bouncing back and forth from fear to faith, faith to fear. They'd pick up the world's fear manual and operate according to that until it led them to the only place it can take anyone: loss, misery and pain. From this place they'd cry out to God for help, though just to get out of the trouble they'd gotten themselves into.


"Yet He was merciful, He forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time He restrained his anger and did not stir up his full wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return" (78:38-39).


When the Hebrews were brought out of Egypt there was a moment when they stood in "the valley of the shadow of death," the space in between the known and the unknown, the past and the future; between "impossible" and "Im possible." They had to shift from living according to fear to living according to faith. The known past was at their back and the unknown future in front of them. And on the other side of every miracle provision and protection provided, they returned to the way of fear.


How many people do we know who aren't happy unless they're miserable? For them pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain.


Though the Israelites constantly fought against faith with fear, God kept taking care of them like a mother feeds and protects a colic baby. God did this for 40 years on a journey that otherwise, if they'd just believed, would have taken about four days. This is because the adults of the group grew to know only reliance on their Egyptian oppressors to provide for their needs. But the children brought out of Egypt and those born and raised in the wilderness grew up knowing only reliance on God to provide for them.


The scales of consideration within the second generation weren't split between slavery and freedom. They weren't weighed more heavily toward the provisions of captivity. The second generation wasn't institutionalized.


In one generation faith matured to where it needed to be to get God's people from Moses to David. And then it matured further from David to Jesus. And now from Him to where we are today.


We don't want to take for granted the "how to" nature "hidden" behind the law. It has only ever pointed to love as being our source of guidance. Once we internalize the source, we become a walking prayer, a living Psalm. Our life comes to embody the purpose of the law:


"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.


"Love never fails" (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).


This is the parable, the "superiority in mental action," that changes everything.

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Psalm 71:20,23

20. Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth, you will again bring me up.

23. My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you--I whom you have delivered.

Preface

At the point of our birth God gives to each of us a specific measure of faith. As with anything of value, it's our choice to either tap into it, invest it and expand it, or to bury and forget about it, covering it beneath deeper and deeper layers of fear. The choice we make depends on if we either 'respond' or 'react' to the events and circumstances we experience and in which we find ourselves along the course of life.


The choice of faith allows us the choice of response, a proactive approach to problem solving and interpersonal exchanges. A response is measured by the degree of control present. The mindset of faith provides a greater measure of control. We're able to drive our thoughts, feelings, words and behavior. Over time we cultivate our 'ability to respond,' which is how we get responsibility and become responsible.


But the choice of fear pulls us out of the driver seat of our body, leaving 'reaction' in our place. This is how we give control over to fear's emotional demands, surrendering ourselves to the base animal instincts of the vessel we inhabit. Reaction by its very nature is negative, possessing only the ability to worsen problems and harm relationships. Fear handicaps our ability to respond, like a broken arm prevents an archer from shooting arrows on target.


Faith allows presence of mind to remain active amid any event or situation, showing us how to engage the moment in relationship to the ultimate goal we've set for ourselves in the future. This is like aligning the arrow's nocking point (past) with its tip (present) and these with the target (future).


In other words, faith prevents us from losing objectivity and from getting off track on our way to the primary objective of our life's mission.


If thoughts and feelings, such as those represented by fear and the flesh, would represent a momentary subjective redirect of our aim, threatening to pull us off target and compromise long-term goals, faith returns to us our internal conscious controls. Where fear stirs up the waters of emotion into wind and waves, threatening to cast us about and drown us, faith separates us from ego's connection to the storm, providing the means to look at the storm instead of identifying with it. Then, by us no longer 'being' the storm, we see it for what it is, quieting its threat to ridiculousness.


Fear only looks at the wind and waves. Faith looks at the end goal. (At Matthew 14:28-31, Peter did both, garnering the different results both bring.)


From the time we're born to when we've achieved old age, our mission is for the expansion of our faith. This expansion corresponds with our ability to forgive and love. It's about removing the fear that the world taught to us. The more of it that's removed, the more of the intended faith fills the void left behind. Then fear eventually is no longer present in any way that allows it to hinder faith's expression of love.

The anonymous author of today's Psalm ("the psalmist") wrote that God "made me see." This comes from the Hebrew "ra a," to 'see,' which interestingly is also used elsewhere in the bible to mean "make to enjoy," e.g., Ecclesiastes 2:1,24;3:13;5:18, and to mean "joyfully," e.g., Ecclesiastes 9:9, Solomon being the only person to use it in this way. Solomon lets us know that this connotation exists inside the term, revealing an inherent choice present in how we can 'see' the troubles that arise in our lives.


"Troubles" comes from 'sara,' which represents the enemies of the internal emotional, physiological feelings born from extreme fear. 'Sara' is the emotional states of sorrow, anguish, distress, annoyance, and it's these feelings' accompanying tightness of chest and stomach pangs, translated as equaling those of childbearing.


"Many and bitter" come from 'rab' and 'ra.' 'Rab' means both 'abundance' and an 'archer' ('projection,' to shoot an arrow). Getting hit with negative emotions, then, can be likened to getting shot with an abundance of arrows.


The enemy cannot get us to hate unless he can first get us to fear. Then he has to walk us up the ladder of fear through its incremental emotional expressions to get to the point of hate. He prods us, so to speak, up the ladder with arrows of emotional pain. And there's only one defense against the enemy's arrows: the shield of faith. So "...take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one" (Ephesians 6:16).


'Ra,' like with 'sara' ("troubles"), is also used for the emotional states of misery, sad and sorrow. But it has the added direct translation of 'bad,' 'evil,' as expressed as spoiling by breaking to pieces, making good for nothing. Analogously, a cup is useful. Smashing it makes it useless; at least, for its intended purpose.


It's through negative emotions, which are considered 'evil,' that the enemy smashes us to pieces, rendering us as God's vessels useless to the world. How else to turn the light off than to teach us through the world's example that we're supposed to feel negatively out loud in reaction to any and every single slight, offense or wrong we witness in the world? To do this is to replace the shield of faith with an open, receiving chest, ready and willing to be shot with every one of the enemy's arrows.


It's difficult to mustard any positive output when weighing ourselves down with pessimism and cynicism.


Any emotional state that hinders or handicaps our purpose of faith and love is considered 'bad,' 'evil.'


The psalmist tells us that he has experienced, and is experiencing, the type of feelings that he recognizes as enemies to his faith and to the ultimate aim of his life.


First and foremost, the psalmist says, "In you, Lord, I have taken refuge" (71:1). It's from this primary position that the psalmist says, "Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel." When looked at side by side we realize that he's saying that he doesn't want to think and feel the way they do. He doesn't want their troubled, internal states to become his internal state. Instead, the psalmist wants his faith to be stronger than fear in order to prevent those in and of the world from pulling him down to their level.


From where he sits, he can clearly see that he's far better positioned than they are. The height reveals the lifestyle circumstances and consequences of both positions at the same time.


If a dog is in a hay loft positioned to overlook the pig sty and it looks down at the pigs wallowing in the mud and waste, is the dog wrong for not wanting to go anywhere near that sty?


People, though, go down into the sty all the time. But too there are those who realize, like the prodigal son, that they could have a far better life in the lough above.


The perspective of faith provides a view that those in fear lack, providing the psalmist with the clear vision of what their way sounds and looks like, and of the life consequences such a way receives. And, sanely, he doesn't want anything to do with the way of fear.


And not going down the path of fear means first and foremost taking responsibility for our thoughts and feelings, having the negative ones corrected the moment they arise inside the body. Why? They're recognized for what they are: enemies trying to lead us down those paths that end in only destruction. This is the only purpose that negative feelings serve, in actuality, practically speaking. Any argument for them to the contrary can and will only come from the lowered perspective of fear itself, which is the enemy arguing for the enemy.


Destruction fights for destruction.


Rehabilitation works for rehabilitation.


Faith makes us into a sentry, standing guard over our mind and heart. Knowing how important such a job is, there's literally nothing and no one we'll allow to lower our guard when it comes to what thoughts and feelings, we permit ourselves to entertain.


If only the world knew that it's not actually cool or helpful to have a negative feeling, opinion, or some catering to outrage in response to the events and circumstances with which it disagrees. This only starts the route toward a solution with a new, exasperating problem. It's like trying to cure a stubbed toe by hitting the thumb with a hammer.


The societal programming of fear is actually how nations are destroyed. We don't get division and hate and people making weapons of war to kill people without first entertaining within us the mental, emotional states born from out of fear.


The only way we can become like those in the world is by ruminating on, marinating in, and engaging or identifying with the thoughts and emotional states that they have predominantly storming within them. The world's not been properly taught the danger in which it places itself by entertaining such internal strife, nor the importance of learning how to extricate itself from that strife in real time.


Given enough time, the internal can only ever become the external. Learning this, we become hyper-vigilant about what we allow to go on within ourselves. But it's only with the mental/emotional state of what we've come to label as "faith" that we can position ourselves to maintain such vigilance. We have to rise above and outside of fear's destructive storms in order to change them into faith's productive calm.


We first learned how to create such storms within ourselves from the world's example. At some point we were called to freedom, being shown the way of faith. That call could have come as a result of simply no longer wanting to put up with the unnecessary hardship that fear tends to make of our lives. But once free, we learned the way of freedom, experiencing results that we, in our previous state of imprisonment, would never have thought possible.


Faith doesn't allow us to have anything against the people themselves, but it reveals they, like us, aren't intended for the type of thinking, feeling states that only serve to generate excuses to not forgive, to not love, to hate, divide, hold things against and to break what is united (all of us) in God into pieces, according to compartmentalizing, judgmental labels.


By dividing ourselves we conquer ourselves. By breaking ourselves into smaller and smaller pieces, we render ourselves useless.


To say "faith doesn't allow" doesn't mean it forbids. It means, when we're in the state of faith, our perspective's been elevated to a height that allows us to see more, possess more understanding, rendering the lower perspective levels of seeing things a mental, emotional impossibility. It would be like an adult looking at a baby and thinking, "I wonder how it would be to poop my pants?" Knowing better, it's not a mess we'll create.


Or it's the difference between children having a tantrum because they don't understand why they're not allowed to play with the rattle snake and the parent who's not going to get anywhere near the snake.


Jesus' faith was such He could look at all of the people screaming at Him, beating, torturing, crucifying Him, and say "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). Even the smallest aspect of fear would have pulled His mind, emotion perspective down a notch, making this level of faith an impossibility.


"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (Galatians 5:6).


To get to this level we have to do the internal work that allows our faith to mature fully. This work entails us letting go of the world's fear practices of holding grudges, wanting revenge and to see people punished. Fear wants to see punishment only from a state of hate, giving no thought to nor having any desire for affording the party's restoration to life, their rehabilitation and redemption.


"Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted" (Galatians 6:1).


"This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:17-18).


This should be a daily affirmation, helping us elevate our perspective and redirect our focus whenever it falters and gets off aim.


[Jesus] said to His disciples, "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?" (Mark 4:40)


"If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying, 'I repent,' you must forgive them."


In response, "The apostles said to the Lord, 'Increase our faith!'"


First, His teaching is for us to see where we are on the ladder of faith. It's not an excuse to be the brother or sister who's constantly sinning and repenting.


Second, what would our response have been to someone letting us down over and over again? Would we have asked for more faith in order to have the internal means to keep forgiving them? Or would we have indulged our lack of faith and cut them off with the typical fear-based justifications taught to us by the world?


The apostles recognized in that moment that their fear outweighed their faith, the latter not yet being where it should be to know love and forgiveness at the level Jesus spoke about.


"You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'" (Galatians 5:13-14).


Faith sees from the perspective of us toward others and the world. Fear sees from others and the world toward us.


From youth to old age the psalmist practiced faith over fear in response to many life challenges.


"For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother's womb" (71:5-6). The latter point he makes is a revelation that only a mature state of faith provides. It's a realization, from the cultivated place of gratitude, that love is the first cause behind the processes of life. And this is the big-picture view to which fear blinds the mind's eye.


"I have become a sign to many; you are my strong refuge" (71:7). His consistency in faith over fear established him as an example within his community. He was a light, revealing a superior way to living for those who, without his example, may have only lived according to the limited dictates of the flesh, not knowing there was a better way. Because of this, he could call on God's help, who'd want to protect one of His lights in the world, preventing it from being dimmed for any reason.


If everyone learns and follows the way of the world, we'd wipe each other off the face of the planet. And it's only the way of fear that leads to that.


The psalmist consistently differentiated himself, as one awakened in faith, from those still asleep in the ways of fear:


"May my accusers perish in shame; may those who want to harm me be covered with scorn and disgrace" (71:13). The psalmist isn't calling for the bodily death of those who lodge false accusations at him, revealed by his desire for those who'd intend him harm to essentially be embarrassed.


Analogously, fear can be thought of as a set of frequencies found along a spectrum. Each frequency has its own name. At its lowest frequency, fears expressed as shame. At its highest, it's known as pride. False accusations fall around the higher resonances of fear, such as 'desire,' 'anger,' and 'pride,' each one a sequential step up the frequency ladder from the one before it. It's from these levels we get either jealousy, or competition for attention, for a position, or for material or reputational gain.


"Scorn" and "disgrace" are consequences received by peers in the community who're also operating according to fear's dictates. These peers, in line with their vibratory levels, relish opportunity to make fun of, ridicule, look down upon or scorn and condemn someone else in the fear club who's caught and made to vibrate at a lower frequency.


If someone is operating at a level that has them lodging false accusations or threatening harm against someone of faith were to suddenly have their frequency dropped to the level of shame, such a downshift would equate to that person effectively dying to who they were, becoming a new person who's represented by the lowest frequency.


Shame lacks the energy to accuse or commit violence. Its energy is too 'depressed' to do much of anything.


The psalmist asked for those aligned against him to essentially have the wind knocked out of them. Only then, at fear's rock bottom, may they realize the error of fear's way and look to seek out the light of faith's example and choose a superior way of living life, one that brings inside and out more peace, joy and love.


Comparatively, in the next verse the psalmist writes, "As for me, I will always have hope, I will praise you more and more" (71:14).


There's no hope in shame beyond wanting to be cured of its debilitating pain. And the only cure is sharing the reasons for and exemplifying gratitude and love.


Today's verse is just another way of saying, 'Whenever my position within Your lofty heights of faith and love falter or begins to fall, I realize I've taken the consequences of living according to faith and love for granted, and I return my conscious, awareness back to first cause.' Sometimes we have to be reminded to shift our focus back to minding the roots of the tree, instead of putting all of our focus on the fruit it produces.


The psalmist shows us the difference between complaint and gratitude. Fear collects and catalogs the challenging events and circumstances experienced in life, for the purpose of bringing them out and displaying them for all to see through the narrative of complaint. This feeds fear's ego, making it feel unique, like no one else understands 'what it's been through,' as with the child's perspective of it being the only one who knows hardship and pain. But faith records each victory experienced over all the challenges life's thrown at us. It's in this way either fear or faith is invested in and made to grow.


One of the things that fear fails to see is that the person through whom it complains is still here to complain. And that continued existence means that victory had to have occurred. Fear, again, like with the child's perspective, believes that 'nothing bad is ever supposed to happen to me.' Faith, on the other hand, as with Solomon's implication for the word "troubles," welcomes the challenge as the life coach needed to get our focus back on track and to expand our faith in order for us to become a brighter example of love and forgiveness, if only to prevent the world from destroying itself.


"Our hope is that, as your faith continues to grow, our sphere of activity among you will greatly expand..." (2 Corinthians 10:15).


"We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing" (2 Thessalonians 1:3).


The expanding "sphere of activity" is the activity of love. We can not grow faith without experiencing a corresponding expansion of Spiritual love.


Similarly, Leonardo da Vinci observed, "Great love is born from great knowledge of the thing loved."


Abraham, over the course of his many years, was able to gather many experiences with God, getting to know Him more and more. Consequently, think of Abraham's example of faith following God's promise to Sarah and him that she'd have a son:


"Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead--since he was about a hundred years old--and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised. This is why 'it was credited to him as righteousness.' The words 'it was credited to him' were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness--for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead" (Romans 4:19-24).


Two key words Paul provided are: "fact" and "strengthened." Abraham's age and Sarah's dead womb were facts. In the face of these facts, even over the course of waiting for years for God's promise to be realized, Abraham's faith only strengthened. It never faltered. But another key word is "persuaded." How would have Abraham been persuaded, if not from the compounding effect of trust cultivated through having never been let down.


If I without fail kept 99 promises in a row, representing every promise I'd ever made, would you suddenly doubt that I'd keep the hundredth promise? Or would the 99 persuade you that the hundredth was as good as kept?


Fear, on the other hand, likes to say, "At some point you got to face the facts"; especially, when personal timetables are at play and not being met. Fear interprets this statement to mean, 'Give up on faith that it'll work out as promised and give into fear that it won't.' But why? To save ourselves from 'being let down?' The shift to fear is the only thing that can let us down.


Consider the difference between the synagogue leader, Jairus, and the crowd of people in his home: "...a synagogue leader came and knelt before Him and said, 'My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.'


"When Jesus entered the synagogue leader's house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes, he said, 'Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.' But they laughed at Him. After the crowd had been put outside, He went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up" (Matthew 9:18,23-25).


The synagogue leader, like the psalmist, and Abraham, had strong, unwavering faith. Based on what? The crowd relied solely on their limited past experiences. They failed to connect the girl's situation to what they'd heard about what Jesus demonstrated repetitively He could do in many other seemingly impossible situations. Jairus relied on his love for his daughter, which inspired a future/now vision of Jesus being able to raise her from the dead. He saw what could be done, so he saw it as having already been done.


Such an example of faith embodied what Jesus instructed when He said, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mark 11:24).


Believe that we have already received it, knowing the future is now. That's the shift.


And since faith and love and forgiveness are interconnected, Jesus continued, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins" (Mark 11:25). If we lack the faith to forgive, then we lack the faith to believe that we've already received what we ask for in prayer. It's impossible to have one without the other. They're inextricably linked.


Fear says to drink poison in order to hurt someone else. The poison is unforgiveness.


Faith says to stop taking ourselves so seriously, throw the poison away and get on with our lives.


The psalmist could not have both held anything against anyone else and seen the future as now. He wrote, "My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you--I whom you have delivered. My tongue will tell of your righteous acts all day long, for those who wanted to harm me have been put to shame and confusion" (71:23-24).


"Whom you have delivered"--The future spoken in the past tense; his deliverance having already happened. This represents a confident assurance developed over years of collected experiences of having been delivered from challenges in the past.


"Have been put to shame and confusion"--Again, the future stated in prayer as the past.


Faith establishes the future as the past in order to celebrate in the present. And no one died, giving those who wanted to harm the psalmist opportunity to repent and know redemption.

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Psalm 59:16
But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble.

Preface

Gandhi said, "Every night when I go to sleep, I die. And every morning when I wake up I'm born again." What he was saying here is that he lets go of the past, resetting life, making it brand-new at the dawning of each new day. Gandhi refused to carry the issues of yesterday into today, including grudges and unforgiveness.

How much more so should we?

But for those issues that carry themselves over into the next day, meeting us again the moment we wake up, these pull more powerfully at our attention. They serve as either opportunity to activate our faith, or to allow the issue to ignite us with fear, burning away our sanity and wellbeing.

Procrastination has a way of letting us know how important something really is to us. If we're inclined to put off till later something we tell ourselves should be done now, then it lacks any real sense of urgency; by extension, any sense of importance, as demonstrated by our behavior.
If we don't procrastinate, putting anything and everything that's not the issue to the side, in order to see the problem solved, then that tells us the thing we're trying to see handled will either bring to us or threaten something we highly value.

David reveals how he addresses the more pressing issues "in the morning," having them carried away, like dawn's light breaks through and carries away the darkness from the night before.

We see this phrase used more than once throughout the Psalms, "in the morning."

David sings it here, in Psalm 59, in response to Saul sending men to watch David's house in order to kill him.

Heman sings it at Psalm 88:13, when he was going through Job-like challenges, seemingly everything being against him with no relief in sight.

David had also sung it at Psalm 5:3, in response to his enemies spreading lies about him.
Elsewhere, when Moses first "took his seat to serve as judge for the people," they'd show up first thing in the morning to plead their case and to seek God's will" (Exodus 18:13,15). The more pressing or important the issue, the earlier they arrived.

"Morning is translated from the Hebrew word "boqer," which, directly, means 'dawn' (as the 'break' of day). It comes from 'baqar,' meaning to 'plough,' or 'break' forth. The same word is used elsewhere as to 'search,' and to 'seek out.'
To 'plough' means to open or break up, or to move through, like a ship ploughing through the waves.

"In the morning" is always used during particularly intense emotional responses to very dangerous or seemingly overwhelming threats or life circumstances. The implication is the degree of urgency prevents sound sleep, having them up and in God's face first thing. As their eyes open in the morning, they awaken with an appeal to God already on their lips.

Also, by saying "in the morning" as part of their prayer, they're adding emphasis, essentially telling God, "This is how important this is, how distressed I am. Before anything else, I'm coming to you, God. Nothing else matters."

It's saying, "I'm putting God first in my mind, heart and in all I do, refusing to do anything else--brush my teeth, drink a cup of coffee, shower, go to work, eat--until the turbulent waves of my internal mental, emotional state are calmed, returned to peace.

This sort of prayer ploughs through the waves of internal turmoil.

 
With his song, David's showing us the importance of turning over the topsoil of the ego, getting us to the fertile soil of the spirit below, trading the old in for the new. It cuts through fear, searching out, demanding faith, knowing only then with the change of the internal will the external circumstances be changed in turn.

We have to think about how the internal affects the external. In times of peace and plenty too often people allow themselves to take things for granted. They lose their sense of urgency. They assume life will always just be an expression of abundance. This in and of itself may not be an adverse position to be in, unless the foundation of its reasoning has transitioned to one of world, material causes.

But stagnation is the equivalent of death. If we're not growing, we're dying. And the process of dying calls forth trouble, in order to get us to 'turn over' the dry, crusty topsoil our lives have become, to make the soil receptive again and primed for new seeds and growth.
Routine invites disruption of routine. God does not do predictable. Only humans living in fear do.

By maintaining the internal state of crediting the limited expression of reality to the energetic manifestation of matter, while excluding the energy comprising that matter and the Source from which that energy comes, is to force blinders over the mind's eye. It's like putting 'thinking' in a box, predetermining imagi-nation's boundary lines, reducing this greatest of all 'nations' down to an errant thought.

"Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."
"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible" (Hebrews 11:1,3). Said differently, what we see with our physical eyes was not made from anything we can see with our physical eyes.

David understood this. He didn't place the threat presented by Saul's men above faith. What he saw in the world (Saul's men) only reminded him to look at what he saw in God (the refuge and protection of love). In this way, he chose faith over fear. He chose what he imagined, so to speak, over what was being presented to him.

 
David had the seen reality of the threat. And he had the greater unseen reality of his protection.
"In the morning" also means to earnestly seek. The writer of Hebrews tells us, "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek him" (11:6).

There is nothing in life that'll be made better, no problem solved, no issue resolved, no threat neutralized, with fear. "Faith is confidence...and assurance...." It is not timidity arrogantly dressed up in a costume of humility.

To try to pass a low self-esteem off for humility is the way of the wolf puppy that grows up to wear sheep's clothing.

Faith is bold, despite any initial undercurrents of fear. It's the water that extinguishes fear's destructive fire.

To say "in the morning" is to say 'enough is enough'; I'm not putting up with this anymore. It's time for a new beginning.'

Think of the excuses that we make to keep our lives imprisoned inside unwanted conditions:
> It'll be difficult.> It'll be risky.> It'll upset my friends.> It's beyond my capabilities.> It's never happened before for me.> It's too much work.> I can't afford it.> I don't deserve it.> I'm not strong enough.> I'm not smart enough.> I'm too old, or too young.> I don't have the energy.> I'm too busy.> I'm too scared.> The rules won't let me.> I don't know how.> No one will help me.
These and excuses like them are what fear sounds like. They serve as bars on a cage we build around ourselves. It's how we trap ourselves in a stationary position, which is how we identify ourselves to the enemy, making us available like bait in a trap we set for ourselves, readying ourselves to be devoured.

Peter wrote "Cast all your anxiety on [God] because He cares for you." Then he immediately qualified this, saying, "Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:7-8).

Fear is an unsound mind that the enemy can exploit, using it against us, leading us to be conquered.

This actually corresponds with Jesus' Parable of the Loaned Money, when He said, "For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them" (Matthew 25:29).

The man who received one bag of gold was afraid. He gave himself over to his fear, using it to create excuses for why he didn't do any work, failing to invest it in any way. He was specifically referred to with the interchangeable terms "wicked, lazy" (25:26).

Traditionally, "bag of gold" is translated from the Greek as talent. One talent was worth nearly 20 years of a day laborer's wage. This is what fear looks like. Fear works harder, where faith works smarter.

The man received 20-years' worth of wages in one day and, instead of turning it into the opportunity that faith would have clearly revealed it to be, he traded it in for continued poverty and unnecessary hard work. The external behavior, along with his later admission, revealed his internal state of imprisonment to fear. And this state has encoded in it the DNA of the only consequences it can generate increased loss, labor and hardship.

A survey was conducted of lottery winners, that thing that many poor and afraid think of as a solution to all their problems. Over 95% of them were bankrupt within a year of winning. When the external meets the internal, it's the internal that determines what happens to the external. Not the other way around.

If we believe we lack, then we will lack.

Comparatively, let's consider: "A faithful person will be richly blessed, but one eager to get rich will not go unpunished" (Proverbs 28:20). This clearly points to different internal states.
"The stingy are eager to get rich and are unaware that poverty awaits them" (28:20).
"Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth" (10:4).

Godliness is not to be confused as a means to financial gain.

"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it." "Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs" (1 Timothy 6:6-7,9-10).

It's the "love" of money, not money, that's a root of all kinds of evil. Money is only a tool, no different than a hammer, or, for that matter, a hand.

The mention of "Some people," those who've wondered from faith, implies the counterpoint that there are people who, though working for money, still maintain first and foremost their faith. And their faith is revealed by them not being stingy and by them working diligently.

 
Faith puts the Source of wealth before wealth, whether wealth arrives or not. And faith understands that it'll arrive when the faithful who've proven themselves need it to expand light, life and love in the world.

Whether it be money or assassins, as was the case with David, he saw Saul's men as an opportunity. David turned over the soil of his heart, to dig into the nutrient-rich, life-giving soil deep within. He pulled the seed of opportunity out of Saul's threat, sowing it within himself and, by extension, back into the world, toward the harvest of God's glory.

David invested in faith, in confident assurance, and reaped an abundance of protection and wealth.

But he recognized wealth not as his, but as God's provision. David saw himself in need of only God, without whom he considered himself "poor and needy" (Psalm 86:1). From that state of humility, David would call out, "Save your servant who trusts in you...for I call to you all day long. Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you" (86:2-4). He trusted in God, not in money and not in the army that God put under his command.

 
David equated wealth to his internal state, not his external possessions. He sought solely to rely on love's faithfulness, asking for "an undivided heart" (86:11). David did not want to be split between faith and fear. Uncompromisingly he chose faith. As what can be thought of as an unintended side effect, wealth, in the forms of prosperity and protection, came to him, revealing God's faithfulness in and through David for his faithfulness in God.

By choosing faith over fear, he reaped faith's rewards.

So, considering the above-list of fear-based excuses, which of these would prevent any one of us from doing whatever we could to extinguish ourselves if we were to suddenly catch fire?

If we're on fire, what would we do to put the fire out?

 
Equate that fire with being miserable in life, dissatisfied due to knowingly not living the life we know we should, failing to follow the passion of our heart. What if the misery is associated with suddenly realizing that we're about to lose our family due to having put a job we hate before them? Or if we can't shake our sense of dissatisfaction, a feeling that seems to only grow stronger, like a throbbing migraine, because a cause in which we know we should work pulls strongly at our heart strings, a pull that competes with our sense of safety found in a routine we know well and can't stand?

There are only three available responses to any unwanted circumstance: To accept it, to change it or to walk away. (Notice that there's no listed option to sit in it and complain.) Which of these three will extinguish the pain we're tired of enduring, helping us usher in the dawn of a new beginning?

Faith operates according to a different set of excuses. Instead of chaining Self down with reasons to not do something, faith frees the Spirit, by saying things like:

> It'll be easy, recognizing that the challenges encountered toward the accomplishment of a worthy goal are far easier to shoulder than the challenges associated with leading a seemingly meaningless life.

> It's worth the risk, the potential gain being greater than anything that'll be lost.

> It's worth the time invested, since that time will be spent one way or another. Might as well invest it toward a better tomorrow, than waste it toward keeping unwanted life conditions in place.

> It'll inspire my social circle, or develop a more supportive one around me, naturally, organically getting rid of the crabs preventing us from getting out of the bucket.

> I'm more than capable, having the unlimited power of faith on my side.

> It will happen, because I'm able to see it having already happened in my mind's eye.

> It's not too big a task, being in God less than a grain of sand.

> I'm connected to the Source of abundance: Faith.

> I deserve to live in love and faith.

> I'm strong enough, being more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus.

> I'm the perfect age of "Right Now."> I have the energy of being alive.

> The fact that the task has been placed on my heart means I have the time to accomplish it.

> I'm confident and assured.

> I'll change the rules from those of fear to faith.

> I will learn how to do what I don't know how to do by doing it.

> I will ask for and receive the help needed, it already being provided and waiting for me to just seek it out. 

Faith just sounds different, using different words than fear, revealing a different mind and heart. It looks and behaves in a way that garners better results than those reaped from the sowings of fear. Consequently, our life ends up looking very differently in faith than it does in fear; especially, in the contributions we make in our respective communities.

There's faith for salvation, which leads to heaven after life on earth. And then there's faith after salvation, which leads to a large measure of heaven on earth while on our way to heaven afterward. Many will possess the former to the exclusion of the latter, living a life closer to that of hell in fear on the way to heaven after death.

Why not work smarter than harder and choose faith for both during and after life, speaking and acting accordingly, reaping the benefits of bringing light, life and love to those around us? The benefits include joy, protection and the opportunities for the provision of our needs. And these benefits aren't ours, so they're not ours to mess up. They're provided by God as a natural consequence of our way of being, ensuring that our faithful, inspired state is supported and maintained in order to keep love's light shining brightly through us without fear's interruptions.

So, if any distractions of trouble present themselves, threatening an interruption to the outpouring of the joy otherwise springing forth within us eternal, then we must recognize what we've allowed to seep inside of ourselves that's invited such a threat to visit our lives. Quickly shifting back from F2F destroys the external negative reflection of its corresponding internal state, allowing the light to chase the fog away, restarting us at the beginning of another day, everything once more made new.

And in response we'll yet again be inspired to sing in celebration of God's strength. We'll awaken to dawn's light chasing away night's darkness with a song of praise, grateful for understanding even more fully the value of our fortress and refuge of love.

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Psalm 53:5

But there they are, overwhelmed with dread, where there was nothing to dread.

Preface

If we're not living faithfully, then we're living fearfully.

Both faith and fear envision a future that doesn't yet exist in the now, and they guide our steps toward it as if it's a foregone conclusion. They're differentiated by feeling. Faith envisions a future for which we become excited. Fear, though, envisions a future that makes us anxious, adding fear to fear.

Faith imagines a future that reflects the building or provision of something of benefit to others and self. Often, it's an event or a circumstance never-before created by the faithful person involved. The ways to bring about that which is believed in are numerous, providing choice among avenues. And, when achieved, it's something that has either a unique or rare signature in the world, leaving a meaningful mark.

Faith imaginings will often result from:

1) Gratitude, for overcoming a hardship, inspiring us to empathetically establish a way to either prevent others from having to suffer in the same way, or to help them overcome the challenge as we had;

2) A need, toward providing a solution to a problem that people or the environment regularly encounter; or

3) Inspiration, to lend added support to an already-existent person, platform, service or company, helping ensure that their contribution to society lacks for nothing, or encounters as few interruptions as possible.

Faith, being solution oriented, adds lasting value.

The successful achievement of the thing believed in serves as a catalyst to turn faith into absolute knowing, for that thing. As air becomes moisture, and moisture, through cold, freezes into ice, an idea becomes faith, and faith, through action, solidifies into physical reality.

This process expands faith. By accumulating enough direct experience of shifting faith in a goal to the realization of the goal, we cultivate faith into our default response to new ideas; especially, when their realization would contribute to society. We think, 'Because of God's help, I was able to bring one good idea into reality. So now I know, with His help, there's no reason I can't bring about another.'

Put another way, achievement produces a compounding effect on faith. But we have to see a goal through to its achievement. Only then do we come to connect with the experience of doing so, embedding "seeing it through" inside of us. (If we give up at any point along the way, the only thing this embeds is 'giving up.')

Conversely, making our fears come true also has a compounding effect on fear.

Fear imagines a future of loss or harm to self or others. Anxiety or distress ensues, triggering an irrational, panicked reaction void of any substantive heuristic value. There's no expansive quality to fear, as it's incapable of extending beyond well-being concerns for self. These concerns lack reason, coming, as they do, from base animal instincts; as such, being more robotic in nature, limiting thinking to only one option--the extrication of self from the situation. Consequently, there's no unique or rare signature, leaving, if anything, commonly encountered harms that only over-exaggerated fight, flight or freeze reactions can create.

Fear pollutes the process of future imaginings by stirring in only the worst of past experiences, idolizing these as fortune tellers. Then ego gets involved, demanding to hold onto the past, in order to maintain its weaponization against the present. And, to cater to its need to "be proven correct," it projects the past onto the threat, ensuring the threat and the projection align. Self-fulfilling prophecy ensues. Then the worse-case scenario is brought into reality.

In response, the fear says something along the lines of "See? I told you. This always happens to me." And with that, like a volleyball player, the ball's set up to be spiked again.

This is how those bound by fear build a bubble around themselves made wholly out of the limited number of past experiences they've collected. Encased in this way, the past repeats itself, nothing new being allowed to happen.

The only mark fear makes in the lives of others, or leaves on the world, is one of trauma, loss and pain.

First, Psalm 53 is a near repeat of Psalm 14. The message was found important enough to be included twice.

David begins Psalm 53 by writing, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good" (53:1).

Paul echoed the same thing, quoting Psalms, saying, "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. ...there is no one who does good, not even one" (Romans 3:10-12).

This message was in response to people choosing fear over faith. They didn't exactly think of it in these terms. Instead, they thought along the lines of, "I'm a good person." And then they defined this by comparing themselves to the deeds of others, saying something like, "I'm not like ________________ (insert person's name)," or "It's not like I've ever hurt anyone or committed a crime." And then they assume, because of this, they don't need faith in God. From this, as evidenced by the reactions they demonstrate, they conclude, more from the position of denial, that their "I'm not a criminal" mindset will protect them from:

1) someone they love dying;

2) someone with whom they're in a relationship from betraying their trust, or leaving them;

3) losing their job; or

4) being robbed or attacked by someone (who's in pain, bound by the dark, controlled by the ways of fear).

Fear assumes immortality, or defines death as a personalized attack from God. Fear sees, for example, someone cheating, or being unfaithful, as God not liking them. In fact, from fear's perspective, either God, whom fear doesn't believe in, or life (God's pseudonym), is to blame for anything unwanted happening over which fear has no control.

Faith says, "Tell me about the god you don't believe in, and I guarantee you I don't believe in that god either."

Fear assumes God to be some caricature of Kim Jung Un, or Putin. Though God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.... So God created mankind in his own image..." (Genesis 1:26,27), fear responded, 'Let me return the favor.'

The many aspects and characteristics as One made us equally nuanced and complex. Faith doesn't limit judgment to defining self, people and God according to what unwanted events or acts have or haven not occurred. Only fear excludes the uncountable details of the forest for the sake of narrowing down to a few select events committed by or near a small number of trees.

This is how we get families broken apart, divorce, polarization in politics, and the division (and collapse) of a nation.

Love is what Leonardo Da Vinci is to the Mona Lisa. Fear is what a caveman is to cave paintings. The difference is in the degree of allowance for detail.

The thing that fear can't realize is how good we are, according to ever-shifting legal allowances that govern a society and culture according to base pain and pleasure considerations, isn't what creates safety or prevents harm. It's fear itself that creates its imaginings for the future.

There are three layers to this:

The first is comprised of those who're committed atheists, relying on the limited knowledge acquired from only personally had experiences to survive life. They replace God with science, which is like replacing an adult with a toddler--thousands of years of revelation verses hundreds that have barely scratched the surface.

Some people in this group could be highly intelligent or educated (not necessarily the same thing). Nearly all are recipients of some traumatic event(s) they lacked the emotional IQ to process and are scared to death to let go of (two different ways of saying the same thing). For example, they blamed God for their mother dying, and so now, as some sort of revenge-based coping mechanism, they say He doesn't exist, as if this will get Him back for what they think He did.

This group places their faith in money, the neighborhood they live in, first responders, self-defense classes, guns, alarm systems, bullet-proof vests, their peers...the numerous though finite worldly material considerations.

Most of their fear driven actions are investments, aimed at not being taken advantage of in some way, or at protecting themselves from natural events outside their control. Fear refuses to accept that there's a law in the universe that says, 'As an Oaktree produces acorns a human produces action.' This is as true as gravity or electromagnetism. The difference is, the actions we produce are fertilized with the emotional content behind them.

What David was saying in today's Psalm is, 'All the actions to avoid the envisioned things dreaded invest in their creation in our life.'

Cal Jung observed, "What we resist, persists." It's about where we place our focus, which determines what we're going to feel. And what we consistently feel subtly influences our steps, directing the overall course we take and destinations at which we end up along the way.

The second layer is comprised of the tennis balls. These are the ones who bounce back and forth between fear and faith. They tend to be predominantly both in and of the world, but they've awoken just enough, like one eye having slightly cracked open, to allow for a little light.

They invest a lot of their thoughts, feelings and actions in the way the world does things. But sprinkled in, in certain moments, they choose faith.

When the consequences of their fear-based world-directed way of living life generates one of its return ripples, it comes back as a tidal wave of hardship and loss. In response, sometimes they shift mind, heart and action to expressions of faith. This shift can interrupt the wave pattern, mitigate its affects, or allow people the ability to weather it until it's passed. And when it has passed, after the passage of some time, when faith conditions have become the positive, peaceful expression that it represents, and the passage of time has returned the tennis balls to the state of taking faith's fruits for granted, they shift back to aligning their mind, heart, behavior with the way of the world.

This is who the Israelite's were. It's who most people are, the many who think of themselves as people of faith. They're faith convenient. They're really 80 or more percent fear, with the rest being faith, when it's all they have to turn to. When the Israelites realized that it was their internal state, not some country or nation, that brought them into and kept them trapped in external slavery, oppression and pain, the Israelites would shift. As a result, the surrounding conditions shifted with them.

We're only truly free once we've obtained freedom within. (And no one is free who's bound by blame.)

But otherwise, for people operating at the second level faith is something of last resort. Where people stuck at level one have no understanding of how life is actually lived from the inside out, attributing life events to randomness or luck, people at level two will at least suspect that there's something more at work. This suspicion will lead them to periodically make the shift from F2F, proving suspicion true. But as long as they're tennis balls they'll keep allowing themselves to be bounced back and forth between faith's acceptance of responsibility for life and fear's blame of external factors "outside of my control."

To sum so far, at level one, fear tries to use fear actions to get out of results created by fear. This brings to mind Einstein's observation that we can't solve a problem by using the same thinking that created it.

At level two, fear creates life problems. Then, those who know about faith turn to it to change the conditions of their life. For as long as they're committed to faith-generated action, faith results arise in place of the fear-fed results while simultaneously the problems atrophy and die away, they no longer being fed, cut off from that which sustained them. Faith, in this way, at this level, solves problems by addressing the root cause, a superior approach to fear's reactionary focus toward only managing the symptoms.

And then there's the third level, that which is comprised of those of us whom finally understand the interplay between the internal and external. We're done with unnecessarily creating dread to be overwhelmed by, recognizing, despite the appearance of a storm on the horizon, there's no storm in the reality of where we're sitting, standing, working in this moment now. And the "threat of the storm" vanishes, taking with it the storm itself.

For example, only fear of war creates actions born from out of that fear. This means, no matter what creative justifications made for defense or offense, they're all actions directed toward the focal point of a war made by the interpretations of fear.

There's a military acronym, "O.O.D.A.," phonically pronounced as "ooh-dah." It stands for Observe, Orientate, Decide, then Act. Depending on what level we're at--one, two, or three--our observations will either consistently orientate us toward the potential problem seemingly building on the horizon or toward the consistent solution to all potential problems. We'll then make a decision based either on fear, as dictated by the perceived problem, or faith, knowing the solution is the past, present and future. And then we'll act accordingly, the actions chosen being the seeds we sow into our life.

The seeds, then, can only be either born from fear or faith, investments for a return of more problems or toward the maintenance of the solution.

The "solution" is a life predominated by blessing (happiness) and abundance. (Predominated; as in, more moments of joy, happiness and security than moments of sadness, anger and insecurity.) The "problem," whatever the form, is a life predominated by misery and lack.

Paul wrote, "...everything that does not come from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23b).

But what is sin? Biblically the word is used 447 times. In the Old Testament, 10 different Hebrew terms are used. Two of these, 'awon' and 'pesa,' are each used only one time, at 1 Kings 17:18 and Proverbs 10:19, respectively. One Aramaic term, 'hattaya,' is used only once in the bible, at Ezra 6:17. And 'Sin,' the name of an Egyptian town and its surrounding desert wilderness, is used six times.

In the New Testament, four Greek terms are used, three of which translate the same, all of them coming from the word 'hamartano,' meaning to 'miss' the mark (and not share in the prize). One term, 'anamartetos,' used only once, at John 8:7, is a derivative of 'hamartano,' and means 'sinless' (that is without sin), used when Jesus said, "Let any one of you who is without sin [who's never missed the mark] be the first to throw a stone at her."

Likewise, nearly all the Hebrew terms come from the word 'hata.' Directly translated into English, it means 'to miss.'

Returning to what Paul wrote, he's letting us know that anything that doesn't come from faith, then can only come from fear. And this means anything from fear falls short of, or misses the mark.

What is the mark? Paul also wrote, echoing David's observation in Psalms 14 and today's Psalm, 53, "... for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..." (Romans 3:23). The "mark" is the Glory of God. God's glory is the bull's-eye and, at the same time, it's the prize we can all share.

What is this "Glory" that comes from God? The prize for which we've all, in our own contributing ways, been called?

Love.

Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air" (1 Corinthians 9:24-26).

And Paul wrote to the Church of Philippi, "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13b-14).

Imagine if we evolved our faith to the point of letting the past go, ours and others, and competed with one another in who could love each other more. But the only way to do this is to let the fear go, which is the only thing getting in the way.

Tony Robbins wrote, "The only thing that keeps you from focusing on what you want is fear."

And Peter Diamandis observed, "Without a target you'll miss it every time."

Goal. Focus. Target. Three words with one meaning about which Paul writes in regards to faith.

Apostle Paul was familiar with Greek society. One epistemological explanation of the word 'sin' provides that it was originally used in Greece as a unit of measurement during archery competitions. Whether or not this is the case, it does serve as a perfect analogy that helps us gain a deeper understanding of just what 'sin' is.

It's believed that knots were tied equally distanced from each other along the length of a rope. Each space between two sequential knots represented one unit of 'sin,' similar to today how marks on a ruler provide the measurement of inches.

When an archer's arrow fell short of the mark (the target's bull's-eye), the knotted rope served to measure the distance from the arrow's point of landing to the center of the bull's-eye, determining how far the arrow sinned.

I once read a military teaching that said, "The target determines the weapon, the weapon determines the path."

A goal is a target. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go back to sleep, all the possible choices we have available to us to make on any given day represent our quiver of arrows. And whether they be word or deed, action when we should be still, or stillness when we should act, the actions we take represent arrows we have shot either aimlessly or at a specific target.

But no matter what, even for actions defined as 'aimless,' every decision a person makes is an arrow fired toward a goal of some sort, whether consciously realized or not.

Many people will set new goals, like New-Year resolutions, but then soon return to shooting their arrows at the old, familiar targets from before. Imagine setting a target in front of us. Then, standing in front of it, we nock our arrow to the bow's string, draw back, take aim and, just before release, we turn 180 degrees, facing opposite our target, and fire at some old target we've shot a million times before. Not because we wanted to shoot at it--want is a verb and our action says what we wanted--but because, like a robot bound by programming, it just felt too uncomfortable to exercise an action independent of the dictates of a habit.

Fear, then, would have been in control, keeping us bound to receiving the same unwanted results maintained by making the same decisions, taking the same actions aimed at the same old targets.

By having fired our arrow at the old target, how far did we "miss the mark" of the new target?

And if the mark, the bull's-eye, is God's Glory, and if anything not done from faith misses that mark, then only actions taken in faith toward the prize of God's Glory hits the mark every time.

Paul revealed that he hit his ultimate target of God's Glory every time he took a step toward and spoke a word about the message of Jesus Christ. That was his mission. What's ours? What's our passion, our reason for having been born? As Paul recognized, whatever our mission, it'll be comprised of sub goals. And our sub goals can each be sub-targets beneath the umbrella of our primary long-term target. Each sub-target established determines the path our feet take.

Our steps are actions directed at targets established by either fear or faith.

It's interesting that the primarily used Hebrew terms for 'sin' simultaneously mean: Guilt, punishment and the offering given to atone for having missed the mark. 'Hata,' for example, is to both 'miss' and to 'expiate.' (To 'expiate' means to give satisfaction for, to atone.)

The cure simultaneously arises at the same time as the disease.

'Sin' is the crime, the punishment and the action of faith we take for redemption.

This would be like saying, 'The presence of perfection is inside the moment of imperfection.' What or whose presence, then, is always present to immediately atone for us having gotten off target, getting us back on target?

What does a good parent always have present for the toddler who gets off target?

And does our child decide to believe that we don't exist when the dog bites them, or when the electrical outlet shocks them, or when we don't allow them to have their ball to play with, because it's time to go to bed?

In fear, everything we do is going to be off target, falling short of the bull's-eye of love.

We can never say or do anything from fear and it achieve love. People can mis-label it as "love" all they want, defining their actions born from fear as love, but they'd only be perpetuating a lie that's long fallen short of the mark and caused a lot of hardship and pain.

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God" (1 John 4:7). Here, John is making known a profound, yet simple point--it's impossible to say, both, "I love you" to someone and to say "I don't believe in God." This would be no different than saying "I don't believe in the love that I love you with."

Just like it's impossible to say, "I love God," and then to say, "I hate ________ (insert person's name)." This is the same as saying "I love what I hate," or "I hate what I love." (Either way, it's saying the same thing.)

It's actually impossible to have it both ways. But the world, through fear, does not want to hear this.

This is why I wrote at the beginning, 'Tell me about the god you don't believe in, and I guarantee you I don't believe in that god either." The problem is one of mistaken identity, an identity built out of human fear.

The love that we feel and share with our child, sibling, parent, friend or partner IS God. Anything outside of that is fear and has nothing to do with God.

"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them" (1 John 4:16).

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love" (4:18).

Either I have the only misprinted bible, or these statements are true.

People who say "I don't believe in God" are people who're trying to punish love for what people who choose the way of fear do to each other. What people of fear, who're obsessed with punishment, are saying, "If love existed, then there would be no war, and the terrible things that happen to children wouldn't occur."

This is how off the mark fear's perspective of things is.

Love, faith, God are synonyms.

Then what's hate synonymous with?

Fear, flesh and 'world.'

Paul wrote to Timothy, "For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline" (2 Timothy 1:7).

If God didn't put fear and hate in us, then who or what did? And shouldn't that be who those in fear should blame? (Love lacks the emotional capacity for blame, blame failing to contribute.)

If we want to know what the byproducts of what God's put in us, read Galatians 5:22-23. This is what faith looks like.

If we want to know what the byproducts of what fear looks like, read Galatians 5:19-21.

In fear, we only end up making enemies out of people who in love would have been friends and allies. From this, as David intimated in today's verse from the position of disappointed exasperation as if to say, "Why can't they see what's so obvious?" we realize that fear ends up overwhelming us at the individual and societal levels with a dread that's completely avoidable and unnecessary.

Without investments made in fear, we can never receive anything in return that'll ever make us afraid. Just like without investments in the stock market we can never receive a financial return from it.

First, nothing external to self has the power to make us feel any emotional state within us. We have to learn that this worldly practice of giving one's internal agency away does nothing other than make us into puppets to other people and events. And once they have that control, they do not mean us any good. They only mean for us to do them good, according to their own selfish desires.

Second, anything that appears "scary" to those inclined toward fear would, for those of us inclined toward faith, appear harmless. Its presentation would be no different than the presentation of a cloud in the sky, in response to which we'd go about our business, competing in the competition of contribution and service in each of our own unique ways, according to our gifts, as the cloud harmlessly floats by, unable to reach us.

One event, two different actions born from two different base causes. Fear would have allowed the cloud to turn our internal emotional state into that of being threatened. This state, in turn, would have made the cloud become a threat. Then fear would have placed us on a collision course with it. But faith would have turned attention inward and upward, seeing the Glory of God. Our internal state would have been allowed to remain intact, secure, confident, assured. This state would have either dissolved the cloud altogether, or outside of our awareness had it move off somewhere else.

At the second level, when adverse, challenging things happen, say, our house burns down, the car's wrecked, internally, we shift to the fact that we're fine. We choose peace, knowing that our family and we're okay. The material stuff doesn't matter.

But at the highest level of faith, protection extends beyond just the wellbeing of our family and ourselves, into the material stuff.

Fear will say, "But the world doesn't work that way." Faith, though, has always responded, "And whose fault is that? The fact is, it's always been meant to work that way."

And it's our job to work toward achieving this goal, trading in unnecessary dread for the prize of love. (We're only going to get from life what we put into it.)

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Psalm 57:6-7

6. They spread a net for my feet--I was bowed down in distress. They dug a pit in my path--but they have fallen into it themselves.

7. My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music.

Preface

The "Theme" of today's Psalm says, "God's faithful help and love in times of trouble. When we face trials, God will quiet our hearts and give us confidence."

Why would God do this? Because it's the internal state that determines outward results. If an external threat presents itself, first and foremost we determine if it's either going to make good on its threat or be solved by how we respond inside of ourselves.

With the fog of trouble, no matter how "in the thick of it" we may find ourselves, the dawn of sun's light changes the conditions on the ground. It's what happens within the midst of the sun, from within its internal state, that generates heat and fire. There's a catalyst that occurs, creating an ignition that provides light and warmth.

If we find that we're feeling confused, frightened, overwhelmed, all being elements of the fog, then faith serves as the catalyst that turns on our heart's light, chasing the fog away. And with it goes the dark and cold.

David is showing us that our heart is the sun, and faith activates gratitude. Faith turns the music player on, each challenging event an opportunity for the spontaneous creation of a unique song of praise. The song is the light that shines from out of us, what David calls in other Psalms the "horn of salvation." Like a weapon, it chases away the underlying root cause of the darkness from out of which the trouble manifested in the first place.

Trouble is the symptom. Fear is the underlying cause. Remove the cause, the symptom goes away.

The internal dictates:

1) what comes at us in the world, and

2) whether the threat's able or not to achieve its objectives.

When we truly come to understand this, we'll be far more mindful of, taking greater care with, the thoughts we entertain and the emotions we allow those thoughts to create. Why? Because we (finally) realize these are the things that get funneled through our faith toward creation, or through fear toward destruction.

When we integrate the original Hebrew into today's verse, we're provided with more insight about David's perspective, being better able to see the underlying source of the message from which his words came.

They 'kun,' built up a 'reset,' network of people committed to get rid of me, to 'pa ama,' impel me to leave. I was 'nepes,' unable to breathe, like the breath was knocked out of me. They 'kara,' plotted to bring me down, to 'siha,' make me lose faith. But it was them who lost their arrogance, having it snatched from them, exposing the fear beneath, which led them to 'napal,' perish in the very way they hoped I would die.

My 'leb,' the center of my feelings, will and intellect, is 'kun,' built up; it is established as an edifice. I will 'sur,' sing looking at you, God, and 'zamar,' sing and play the harp, celebrating you in song and music.

It's revealing that David used the same word, 'kun,' for both his enemies ("spread") and for himself ("steadfast").

Being controlled by the drivers of fear, such as greed, jealously and hatred, David's enemies set up an external network of like-minded people, organizing them toward the goal of preventing David from taking Saul's place. The language implies that they came from the position of "Who does this guy think he is?" As if David was some undeserving upstart.

The Pharisees and Sadducees saw Jesus in the same way.

Similarly, many take this position today. For example, when people have worked for years at a job. They think that time on the job should automatically make them worthy of promotion, maybe to manager. But then they learn that someone new at the company will receive the position.

Fear will place concepts of seniority above those of competent work ethic. Fear's unable to consider that, if someone does the bare minimum, is a source of toxicity or complaint and fails to add value to the company, then there's no way that upper management or company executives of a successful business will promote them. Fear has the perspective of the child who says things like, "But I was here first." Fear corrupts the concept of "fairness," defining it according to its own selfish wants at the expense of what's best for co-workers and the company.

If the decision makers are discriminating, then that's their fear being made manifest. And there are systems in place to ensure their discriminating steps lead them into the very circumstances that their bias intended for others. Our faith will reveal the truth. Light will reveal what's being done in the dark.

But fear rushes to fix problems, making them worse, because it's too impatient for faith to fix them the right way. Fear is the way of shortcuts, where faith takes its time, minding the details.

Otherwise, in the work setting, fear wants to take without having earned, having given little to nothing. We have to make sure we're not on this side of the equation, if we're honest about wanting what we want in life.

Faith recognizes that company decision makers will take particular note of and invest in someone who adds value. It's in their interest to do so. But we have to recognize that a key part of the value we add will include intra-personal relationships, being someone with whom upper management would want to work. And a positive, solution-oriented attitude goes a long way toward this.

No one at ground level accidently falls and lands on top of a mountain.

Everyone is self-made, but only the successful admit it.

And so, the person passed over for the position, instead of considering why; again, unprofessionally, immaturely (symptoms that point to why they weren't a worthy candidate for promotion in the first place), they conspire with like-minded co-workers to make the new-hire's life a living hell. This is them throwing a tantrum. But in doing so they never realize that they're only setting things up for their own termination.

And then fear will have a tantrum in response to its previous tantrum putting it in the unemployment line.

But someone with work ethic will never want for work. One of the life manifestations of faith is the energy and drive to go over and beyond the job for which a person's been hired. Faith is by its nature actively inclined. It expresses itself in the workplace by looking for ways to save the company time and money, and to increase service or product quality. Such a person will never be passed over for promotion.

Companies will do whatever they can to retain great employees, considering they're the number-one thing cited by business owners as being the most difficult thing to find. It's not a cliche that it's hard to find good help these days. To find it is likened to finding treasure.

And when is gold ever thrown away?

God's no different. This is just a manifestation of His character. As mentioned above, it's the nature of faith that more positive actions generate more positive results. Jesus equated this to being the Kingdom of God itself, when teaching about the investment of one's allotted talents. (Luke 19:11-26)

The same thing plays out with founders, through the process of industry disruption. The old way fights the inevitability of its own demise, everything it does to prevent itself from being replaced by natural progress serves to only accelerate the new way achieving its victory. Take the horse-and-buggy industry, for example, when the car came on the scene. Or the Taxi Cab industry in the face of Uber. Every single human advancement in history reveals this truth.

Faith envisions. Fear stagnates. Faith is elegant. Fear is clumsy.

The contrast between David's and his enemies' examples is shown by David establishing his 'kun' within. David understood that internal focus was the better way, surpassing the external. He knew that the external could only come from within. So, he allowed God to build up his heart. Consequently, David's motivations and drive came from a service mindset, thinking about what he could do for others, how he could make conditions on the ground better for everyone. He took his job seriously.

Saul represents the old way of basing life on the external, living from the outside inward. This way is slowly, but consistently being done away with. People are waking up to its inefficiency in all aspects of life. And as light expands, darkness retreats.

Side by side, what David observed was: They conspiratorially established corrupt people toward vying for positions not earned. David established his heart toward praising God with song. They spread a net. David spread music. And, counterintuitively, the results speak for themselves. Being the center of discipline and emotional intelligence, when the heart is built up by faith, it'll always overcome worldly structures built by fear. A heart controlled by fear lacks discipline and emotional IQ. Whether family, career, health, whatever area in which one defines success, the quality of fear as a general contractor will always be lacking.

In this way, the heart represents the foundation upon which our lives are built.

Israel was God's company. He appointed Saul to run it. Saul chose fear over faith, making him a terrible CEO. The company suffered. Saul terminated himself. And David took his place.

It's believed that David wrote Psalm 57 in response to the time he hid from Saul in a cave.

Saul was God's anointed king. But he was ambivalent, stuck at a stage of internal conflict through which many of us must pass. It's when fear and ego war internally against faith and Spirit. This represents the outdated old way of doing things fighting for continued survival against the new, better way.

What makes it better? The realization of more desirable life consequences, for ourselves, others and the earth.

But this transitory wrestling match is one of the reasons why people find making the shift from F2F so difficult. It takes some work to establish new habits of thinking and feeling, the necessary components for new behavior. Of course, this is where the Holy Spirit helps, providing prompts and reminders at each conflict point. But we still have to make the choice. And the ease or difficulty associated with this choice is determined by the depth of emotion linked to our reason 'Why' we've awoken to the option for garnering new results in our life in the first place.

If the reasons are weak, it's more difficult to choose the new over the old. The feelings associated with facing the unknown fail to compete with the feelings associated with the known, when our reason "why" to make one choice over the other stands on shaky ground. If the results of the known haven't yet brought us enough pain, or caused us enough loss, then it's more likely than not the familiar will be chosen over the unfamiliar. Why? Because when feelings of fear of the unknown still serve as the primary reason for making a decision one way or another, fear will win out over hope for something different.

It's nearly a cliche to observe that when people are given the choice between feeling safe (even amid long-experienced unsafe life circumstances) or being free, they'll choose safety.

But why? Why have we enslaved ourselves so blindly to feelings; especially, when they so often lead us astray, into life results we don't want anything to do with? The answer: The world, its ideas, attitudes and beliefs, has lied to us about their meaning. Fear makes the terrible mistake of confusing emotion with identity, when in truth the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

But if the reasons are strong for our sudden shift toward wanting something better for our lives, no amount of old habitual prompts and pulls of familiarity will be enough for us to ever again direct our steps down a path toward more of the same pain and suffering we've come to be sick and tired of, and repulsed by. Shifts at this level are considered micro born-again moments, the profundity of the internal change being so deep and absolute that their life results shock the blind expectations of those who think they "know" the person changed in such a way.

Imagine what all of Saul's friends must have thought when they suddenly encountered Apostle Paul.

Family and friends who're predominated by fear will not like a person in their life changing in this way. It offends their ego. Only those who actually love the person will celebrate an overhaul, or upgrade, of identity.

I've met numerous people who've course corrected to the path of personal development. They've told me about their experience, when they hit their threshold point for life misery, how they just felt something switch inside. They were done. And they completely changed to a lifestyle of sobriety, and to one of contribution.

I know their story.

Sun Zu said before going to war, count the costs. At first, they had no idea that they were even in a war. But when they hit that wall, it knocked something loose. For a moment they had a glimpse of the truth, like clouds parting to reveal a sun they before never knew existed. This peak at reality showed them that the way of fear costs far more than anything it promised in gain. It costs more than anyone has the ability to pay. And so they weren't going to pay a single moment more of their life.

They've told me about how their "friends," the ones they used to get drunk or high with, or with whom they broke the law, would try to prevent them from leaving the fold, so to speak. They encountered pushback, manipulation attempts and outright hostility. This is when it was realized that nothing makes an addict who's still stuck in the throes of addiction more afraid than being shown by someone, they've long known that all the reasons and excuses used to stay the course of addiction and crime don't actually hold up in the face of reality. And that fear will sometimes come out as rage.

But for the one who's found freedom at rock bottom, their change is marked by a new light in the eyes, filled with hope and vision for a brighter future. Life becomes something to look forward to again. Their language changes, they carry themselves differently, their energy levels increase. They become alive for life.

They shift from taking to giving. They do whatever it takes to stay sober and know redemption.

Fear can only think of these states as being impossible, or in some way unrealistic. It criticizes and makes fun of freedom, mocking joy from the confines of misery. This is no different than people dehydrated in the desert laughing at people drinking water in the forest.

Fear only wants the unrealistic state of complaint, ridicule, annoyance, impatience, anger and sadness. Fear works to convince its adherents that making self-miserable with opinions and negative feelings will in some way fix things over which they have absolutely no control. But what it doesn't reveal is that those things only exist because they're created from people who're bound by those very same negative opinions and feelings about others and the world.

Faith fixes the issues by changing our internal state. The only true way to change darkness to light is by first becoming light within. We change ourselves into the change we want to see. And the light from this reveals the path forward, our purpose in life.

Unfortunately, King Saul missed out on all of this. At one moment he'd listen to fear. The next moment he'd listen to faith. But ultimately, he gave the greater weight to the words of his advisors, who only had their own interest at heart.

Controlled by fear, greedy to curry favor from Saul at the expense of David, corrupt people would feed Saul's dark side in their attempt to prevent the arrival of light and integrity. And Saul allowed them to do it.

Corruption sees integrity as a threat. Corruption prefers to create and maintain a corrupt system, so it can wallow in it like pigs in mud and waste. The last thing the corrupt want is for integrity to be introduced into the system. If the system is cleaned up, they believe they won't retain their source for ill-gotten gains. But what they never realize is that systems of integrity thrive at far higher levels than those of corruption.

In other words, fear makes the corrupt blind to the fact that they steal, kill and destroy for crumbs on the ground, fighting tooth and nail in resistance against being able to eat gourmet meals at the table. They're so focused in on the crumbs, they haven't a clue about the meal they're missing out on.

David's consistent example in word and deed would make liars of the liars, revealing them as such. In the presence of truth, Saul shifts to his spiritual, faith-based side.

When our words and actions reflect the depth of our character, building a reputation that fails to align with the false accusations lodged against us, then our response to attack will disprove their words. We must stay calm, focused and consistent. Such attacks are like a test. They hope that their lies will cause us to do something out of fear, providing them with substance to what they're saying.

It's like with Satan told God that Job is only faithful because of God's favor. But what Satan couldn't see was that God's favor was a result of Job's character, the depth of who he was as a person. Satan believed that if that favor were removed, Job would curse God. Satan could only see in others what he saw in himself. Job proved true to his character, disproving Satan's claim.

When we're true to ourselves, love will appeal to other people's preference for love over hate, winning their support of light over the darkness.

When Saul pursued David to kill him, David chose to respect God's wishes and lean toward the side of forgiveness and love, responding by cutting off only a portion of Saul's robe. This definitively revealed that when given the choice to kill or preserve life, David chose to preserve. (1 Samuel 24:4)

There are many who work hard to address specific problems in society. Over time those who work from a place of passion and with sincerity of spirit tend to end up in positions of leadership. But as time passes, some of these people will allow their small measures of power to corrupt them. Or they make small compromises that build up to bigger ones each time they make them. The behavior that then comes from corruption will itself lead to their demise. Faith understands this, and trusts the system. When necessary faith will speak truth to power, as David did to Saul in the cave. But as long as they're in power, faith will recognize the source of power above the person.

No one can be in a position of authority without being under authority. Only authority grants authority. And only authority takes authority away. And lasting, meaningful authority has as its source faith-based ideas, attitudes and beliefs. Its words and actions are made of the stuff that represents humanity's highest ideals.

When we live according to these ideals, we thrive. But when we fall short of them, though we may have an initial short-term gain, we end up losing not only all the gains, but everything else we had prior to the rise.

David's behavior aligned with the ideals of faith. In the cave, he set an example that appealed to Saul's better angels. This revealed that Saul had good in him, as we all do. And David's good resonated, quieting fear's corrupted narrative in Saul's mind.

Saul was like a radio receiving bad reception. But as soon as he was moved in the vicinity of a power source that boosted the signal, the reception came in crystal clear.

The problem, though, was as soon as he moved away from the signal booster, the distortion would return.

Many of us have people in our lives who inspire the best in us. And too we have places or practices that we either think of as fun in the moment, or we're afraid of letting go, but overall they make our lives miserable.

If we truly understood what this was telling us, we'd pay attention. We'd make it a point to invest our time with what makes the signals within us most clear while avoiding the "Dead Zones" that give us only static.

Saul came at David with fear, but ran into David's faith. David's faith changed Saul's fear into faith. What Saul was afraid of--David taking Saul's throne--became Saul's wish. He lent his support, saying, "I know that you will surely be king and that the kingdom of Israel will be established in your hands" (24:20).

Saul recognized David's faith-based behavior, David sparing Saul's life when he didn't have to, as the behavior of someone greater than himself. Saul knew that if their positions had been reversed Saul would not have possessed such spiritual fortitude.

But Saul would continue to vacillate between fear and faith, like changing the TV between two channels. But by having sold out to the dictates of fear, everything he did in an effort to prevent David from becoming king only served to set everything up perfectly for that event to take place. A victim of his own schemes (28:17), he lost his sons (31:2) and, boxed in, with no way out, he committed suicide (31:4).

It's interesting that, in his moments of clarity, Saul was obsessed with David not wiping Saul's sons out when David became king. Saul asked for oaths to this effect. And then Saul's actions ended up being what caused the murder of many of his sons by the hands of his enemies.

Saul's fears were like a siren call that ensured what he feared came bulldozing into his life.

Saul's only one of many such cautionary tales. Everything that happened to him was avoidable, if only he'd chosen the better way.

Likewise, everything the Pharisees and Sadducees did toward thwarting Jesus only served to help Jesus achieve the very purpose for which he came.

And so David officially stepped into his prophesized role as king. Why? Because he watched only one channel. He didn't allow for static or distortion. He valued clarity. And so David only entertained one narrative in his head.

Time and time again we see David exercise the shift from F2F. First he observed "I was bowed down in distress." Then, by the next verse, "My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast" (Psalm 57:6-7). Like an according, as soon as he saw that he was contracting within himself he said, 'Oh no, I'm not going out like that," and then he immediately started expanding outwardly.

This shift triggered God to quiet David's heart and fill him up with confidence, the equivalent of dawn's light breaking over the horizon's line, chasing away night's darkness (57:8) and any lingering remnants of the fog of fear. From here, there was only reason to give praise. Nothing in the dark could reach him in the light. He was safe.

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Psalm 56: 3-4,10

3-4. When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise--In God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?

10. In God, whose word I praise--In God I trust and am not afraid. What can man do to me?

Preface

As we've been learning, faith has its own language. And so does fear. In fact, when we look at how we think and speak, and when we listen to the words and "listen" to the actions of others (actions being the words of the body), faith reveals that the language of fear points indirectly to faith.

Fear's nature, if we live in and by its dictates, is designed in such a way to make life extremely uncomfortable. It may serve the purpose of a caution sign, letting us know to just take an extra look, but it's not meant to be used as some base material to construct hypotheticals about the future toward which we should direct our steps. As spiritual beings who're made in a realm where faith rules supreme, such hypotheticals is a dangerous way to live.

Jesus spoke about language, saying "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him" (Mathew 12:33-35).

The "brood of vipers" spoke the language of fear.

And Paul wrote, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen" (Ephesians 4:29).

David's language has always been the words of faith overcoming fear, edifying himself spiritually, and now all of us.

The bible provides an introductory header for each of the Psalms, giving us the "THEME" of that Psalm. The theme of today's Psalm says:

"Trusting in God's care in the midst of fear. When all seems dark, one truth still shines bright: When God is for us, those against us will never succeed."

In other words, trust is the light that overcomes the dark.

'Trust' is defined as the "assured reliance on the character, strength, or truth of someone or something"; "to permit...to do something without fear or misgiving." (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus, 2006). Trust is synonymous with 'confidence,' 'assurance,' and 'faith.'

The author of Hebrews writes "Now faith is the confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."

Trust helps expand our understanding of 'faith' in a practical way.

We know that trust isn't something we give away lightly. It's earned. As its definition implies, trust is won when something or someone proves reliable. For example, we psychologically approach turning the key in the ignition of our car differently for a car that often fails to start than we do for a car that starts every time. We approach the reliable car with trust, in the form of unquestioning expectation. We approach the unreliable one with pessimistic hope--a hope born of fear, rendering it false and unhelpful.

The next time you go to turn the key in the ignition, pause to bring a moment of awareness to the state of expectation that's normally unconsciously present at the instant of the key's turning. Then ask, "Where else can I apply this feeling?"

We approach people the same way. We walk up to reliable friends, family members, co-workers, and employees; also, companies, service providers and product manufacturers, carrying within us a very different mental, emotional state than we do when we encounter those who've proven themselves unreliable.

The people in our lives who're most unreliable are the least trustworthy. They're this way because they rely more on the ways of fear than on faith. If actions speak louder than words, then fear speaks a completely different language than the language of faith. They are as different as night and day.

For a history lesson on the language of faith, read Hebrews chapter 11. And it reveals the results of choosing to "speak" faith over fear.

Fear has this profound way of stripping people of follow through. It depresses energy, creating the sort of internal emotional discomfort that people use as an excuse to give up, cut and run. They'll show disloyalty, bail on their commitments, break their promises and fail to pay back what they've borrowed. Their short fallings after the fact always fall into the category of having "meant well" and "good intentions." And they meet their side of responsibility with cliched justifications that, to those of us who know better, reveal them to still be like children. They've not yet done any of the necessary work to cultivate the inner strength we associate with mature self-discipline.

"When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said" (Numbers 30:2).

Instead of delivering on its promises, fear only delivers excuses for why it can't. It won't keep its side of the bargain, but only after it's received what it wanted first.

So, when someone representing the nature and characteristics of fear asks us for a loan and we know the loan will:

> be put toward some selfish want,

> benefit no one else,

> address no actual needs, and,

if they were to receive the loan, we know they'd pay us back with only excuses and stories, do we give them what they ask for?

The answer is no. Light doesn't feed darkness. It doesn't enable it to remain in the dark and help the darkness become worse.

It's true that "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves" (Romans 15:1). But this means to not do anything that would lead them into sin. It's not our job to provide others with the means to fall short of the mark, helping them stumble their way through darkness.

But if we hate the person, we'll give them the loan...or the money we know they're going to spend on drugs or alcohol, or the place to stay because they refuse to take responsibility for their own lives and find a place of their own. If we give in, that's the best way to ensure that:

1) They never learn how to become trustworthy; and

2) They'll never realize how to live life according to faith, our "help" serving to only keep them bound to living in fear.

How? We get in the way of the natural process of how the way of fear leads to challenges so great that it comes to represent a fork in the road; that point when they're made to choose, to continue down the same path, bringing them to death, or to change course, taking the new road that leads them out of the dark, into light and life. On the new road they stop relying on others at the expense of themselves, relying on God instead.

But if we hate them, giving them the loan, then we're not in the light anyway. So, it's just dealings between two people in the dark, working together to keep each other down, like crabs in a bucket.

But for those who aspire to walk in the light, and who currently do so, the resulting expanded perspective provided by faith will clearly recognize how giving them the loan would only hurt them, contributing to keeping them bound. We'd also see how, through them, others could end up being hurt too. But in denying them the loan, would this make us in their eyes unreliable and untrustworthy?

Fear will utilize the limited number of manipulation tools on its toolbelt to get what it wants. It'll beg, cry, scream, argue, insult and threaten. It'll throw tantrums, break things and maybe even threaten violence, hoping we have insecurities into which it can break, like a computer hacker looking for weak points in the code. Maybe there are pockets within us with which their fear identifies, believing it's in these through which it can undermine our resolve, having us just give it what it wants.

It's often in this way how otherwise faithful people, who may still maintain unresolved deep-seated complexes of guilt and shame, will give into the demands of those who refuse to help themselves. But giving in in this way does more to assuage the struggling faithful's feelings than it does for the one who's performed their state of artificial need.

It weakens faith to give into fear's call to help self at the expense of another. Wanting to make ourselves feel better at the cost of another's wellbeing helps no one.

Also, fear will say things like, "You call yourself a person of faith? A spiritual person? You're not loving, because if you were you'd help me."

True love stands strong amid the storm and waves, but fears easily unmoored.

But of course, what fear can't see, what it doesn't want to see, comfortable in its blindness in the dark, is it's because of our faith we can't keep them imprisoned by ego's parasitic nature. Faith wants them free from the belief that the only way they can survive in life is if others pay their way.

If we weren't loving, we'd give them all the rope with which to hang themselves. Because it's only a matter of time. Fear has no expiration date. It doesn't age. It'll stay the course until the person it's inhabited, and controls runs out of time. Eventually they're going to be old, left on their own, having no one else to do for them what fears always prevented the afraid from doing for themselves. And then what?

If faith provides us the means to see the consequences of other people's fear, then how much more so would God be able to see? People come to God in prayer out of fear all the time. But rarely do the afraid come to him in faith. What the afraid have difficulty realizing is that fear is selfish, and there has never in the history of humankind been a prayer answered that was given from the place of fear. There's always had to have been a shift.

Fears based on a hypothetical about how something may happen in the future but isn't happening now. If we receive a diagnosis of a terminal disease, fear sees dying, but we're not dead yet. (Faith sees living.) If a missile is headed toward the country, fear sees it hitting, exploding. But it's not done so yet. (Faith sees it getting shot out of the sky.) If an armed robber jumps out at night in a parking lot, fear sees getting shot. But the guns not fired yet. (Faith sees rescue, or the gun misfiring, or the robber as someone who needs help allowing love to win the day.)

In any event, we have choice to see how things are going to pan out. What's it say about the culture of society today if there's a greater degree of worst-case hypotheticals than the best case? (Fear says that things normally don't work out...amid our lives of abundant opportunity of which fear prevents us from availing ourselves, or simply amid the abundance we take for granted and ignore. But this is just what fear sees. It's not the reality.)

Einstein said, "Imagination is just a preview of coming attractions." Case in point, Job said, "What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me" (Job 3:25).

Fear is the base cause of things not working out. And faith is why they go right.

David, as with everyone in the bible who've ever had a prayer answered by God, would use fear as an opportunity to shift from F2F. Then from faith he'd pray. And it wouldn't be for him. It would always be for God's glory and for others.

"When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise--in God I trust and am not afraid." In other words, when he's afraid he shifts to trusting in God and His word. And when he's in a state of trust, he's no longer afraid. Then he asks for what he wants. The comma between "afraid" and "I" changed everything.

We've heard about the shifts that have occurred in the lives of the prophets and disciples. How most had checkered pasts, having done some truly terrible things to others before faith and love awakened in their hearts, transitioning them from the dark into the light. And there are few people on this planet who aren't at least familiar with the song "Amazing Grace." But how many people know its origin story?

John Newton was a slave trader in the 1700's. He worked up to becoming a captain of his own ship. But, with a ship filled with captured slaves, making his way across the ocean, a storm hit. The boat was about to capsize, threatening to drown everyone on board.

Up to this point, John Newton had never before put his faith in God, having always been a true representative of the darkness. But on this occasion fear shifted to faith and, on his knees, he called out to God for mercy. The storm suddenly calmed and from that point forward Newton devoted himself to God.

At first, ironically, because of his past, the church wouldn't approve him to be a minister. (Ironic, because I guess they didn't know how Jesus chose his disciples.) But faith won out. Newton ended up being a disciple for God's love for over 40 years. And he became famous for the hymns he wrote, including the one we all know so well today. Amazing Grace was his story.

Also, he spent his time as a minister speaking out against slavery and worked tirelessly as an abolitionist. And he lived to witness the British Empire abolish slavery in 1807.

How do we think the church would have received him today?

God saw the commitment in Newton's heart. He saw his faith and was faithful in return. Rescued, John traded in the terrible ways of the dark for those of the light. He wrote, "I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders." And, like David, he became a psalmist.

Faith shifted his perspective, revealing what he'd not been able to see before.

Throughout the lives of those in the bible, we see trust, and the lack thereof, play out into real, practical ways.

Ruth had established a reputation for being reliable, someone trustworthy. Inspired by this, Ruth's mother-in-law guided Ruth through actions taken in faith. When trust and faith in action met, Boaz took notice, becoming Ruth's redeemer. (Ruth 2:11-13)

David's ability to shift from fear to faith made him trustworthy to God, someone He could rely on. And so God responded in kind to David's reliance on Him in more examples throughout biblical history than this chapter could ever hope to contain.

Paul wrote, "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us..." (2 Corinthians 1:9-10).

In the midst of the most difficult of life's challenges, shifting reliance on God allows His deliverance of us. And the more times we make the shift, the more reliable God reveals Himself to be especially, when we have no idea how we'll be rescued.

Those are the moments when God really shines.

But fear relies on self to the exclusion of faith, to its own detriment. And it's more inclined to do so when we're wealthy, and/or strong, healthy and good looking. This is why Jacob made it a point to emphasize to Dan that he maintains his trust in faith and love, being careful to not have his trust fall to his own strength and ability. (Genesis 49) These are things he was born with, had no choice over receiving, meaning they came from God not from anything he did.

The young wealthy man who spoke with Jesus didn't want to give up his wealth for eternal life. He didn't realize that what he had would have been a drop in the bucket to what he would have received. His faith in riches made him poorer than he could have ever imagined.

But even if people are considered poor and homely, relying on self alone is like the quarterback relying only on himself, to the exclusion of all the other players, to get the football into the end zone.

It's just him against the entire opposing team.

The Hebrews whom Moses led out of Egypt couldn't enter the Promised Land because, despite God's reliability toward them, they were never reliable in turn. It was a one-sided relationship, like that of an unrequited love. The Hebrews refused to give up trusting in themselves and their dirt and gold moldings. They saw delay as abandonment and denial, making them impatient and tantrum. (Hebrews 3:19)

But the Hebrews' children knew only reliance on God, having been born just prior to the Exodus and during the years of wandering in the desert. By not having the bad habits born out of the fear instilled by the Egyptians, these children went into the Promised Land with the faith born from the only experiences they knew: They knew they could trust God to provide for all their needs. They saw delay as a bigger provision on its way, this having always been the case.

Fear thinks "I want it now," being afraid of missing out on something in the moment. Fear's nature is impatience.

These feelings of missing out and impatience can combine into jealously.

Rachel wanted a son, something for which she'd prayed for years. But her prayers were motivated by jealousy of her sister, Leah, with whom she had a sibling rivalry defined by who could have the most sons. Rachel and Leah saw childbearing as a competition. Being impatient, not trusting God's timing, Rachel had her husband, Jacob, sleep with a long line of servant girls, getting them all pregnant, claiming the children as her own.

Jacob should have known better, having learned the lesson of this mistake from his grandfather, Abraham. Sara, impatient to have a son, had Abraham sleep with one of her servants. The child born out of this union ended up creating interpersonal family conflict with bitterness and jealously.

Only Isaac, Abraham's son, and Jacob's father, waited patiently, trusting in God's timeframe to bless his wife Rebekah with sons. Though barren, she became pregnant with twin boys. (Genesis 30)

But once Rachel and Sara let go of their fear-based reasons for not trusting in God did He then let them get pregnant.

Or what about the example of Saul? When our trust shifts from God to the strength we have in numbers and to our past victories, we make numbers and the past our idols. This affects the way we think and approach present and future challenges. Saul learned this the hard way.

King Saul had a larger force, but was defeated by the Philistines because he didn't trust in God, trusting in himself instead. And when the smaller force attacked him, realizing that, without God, he was like the quarterback with no teammates, Saul grew afraid. And this fear spread like wildfire through his men.

But Saul's son, Jonathan, having only himself and one young armor-bearer, said, "Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or few." Jonathan cultivated a practice of faith in God that allowed Jonathan to get fear's claims of impossible out of God's way.

Jonathan's example is echoed by David's words, "What can mere mortals do to me?" (Psalm 56:4) Paul then follows up, writing "What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?"

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:31,35,37-39).

The anonymous Psalm writer wrote, "The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?" (Psalm 118:6). It was from this perspective that, when hard pressed, he cried out to the Lord, and was then brought into a spacious place.

Have we ever felt like things were closing in? Like we just need some room to think, to breathe? These aren't feelings born from external conditions or events, no matter how badly we want to attribute outside blame. Nothing external lives inside of our bodies, the only place in which our feelings reside. They are our feelings, nothing and no one else's. They are our responsibility. We interpret the outside through fear or faith and the feelings respond accordingly. And if we choose fear, then fear constricts. It closes in.

If we shift to faith, faith expands, creating for us inside of ourselves a spacious place. In this space, it doesn't matter what's happening around us: we'll feel within as calm as a day alone at the beach, even if it was total chaos outside.

A master swordsman once taught that a fight to the death is no different than drinking a cup of tea. He was talking about the internal emotional state. Calm was a consequence of faith. And faith meant victory. Fear, on the other hand, meant death.

"Faith comes from hearing the message..." (Romans 10:17).

"Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through Psalms, hymns, and songs from the spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts" (Colossians 3:16).

We believe, first, by hearing or reading the testimonies of others. The more we expose ourselves to, the more we come to believe. When belief awakens or expands within us, it opens us up to options we never would have believed existed before. Options we suddenly become aware of. One such option is how to awaken and exercise faith in our own life. And, at first, choosing that option initially demands a degree of courage that cannot be understated. Because the only way for something to be made new, the old has to be torn down. To remodel a house, for example, the first step is demolition.

In this way, for us, the moment we stop being who it is we believe we are is the moment we start becoming who we were always meant to be. But the only difference between old houses and ourselves is, the old falls away in direct proportion to the building of the new. The focus on building the new builds it, and the old just falls away on its own, not receiving the attention it needs to stay alive. By not feeding it, it's unable to keep making a mess of our lives.

The practice of shifting from fear to faith is a campaign for life, a life worth living being the end result. A life of this incredible peace and joy that predominates one's days. But to get there, the initial attempts to shift may compete with the pull of old habits created by fear. This pull is like an enemy saying, "Please, don't go. Stay here with me in the dark. Let's stay miserable together." So making the choice to step with faith toward the light can at first feel very uncomfortable. Like when we've long practiced not trusting anyone because once in the past one person did something to hurt us, so we've decided to hold onto that one hurt forever, blaming anyone and everyone for what that one person did by visiting mistrust on them all. To suddenly realize the immaturity of this choice and to open up to trusting someone can at first seem like a Herculean task.

But this feeling is present in the face of any change. If we understand that it has no superstitious prognostication--it does not portend foreboding--but only represents, from fear's perspective, laziness, then it's easier to laugh at the silliness of the feeling, or to be angry at it, like that of an enemy who's disrespectfully trying to hold us back from finally achieving our agency, our freedom and our full potentials as spirit-beings who've come here to have an amazing human experience, through the good and the bad.

On the fear side of the equation, the feeling's name is "resistance." It makes its presence known anytime we're ready to shift from one internal or external condition to another. For example, it asserts itself in the face of getting out of a toxic relationship. The same exact feeling arises when we change the way we interlace our fingers when clasping our hands together. If naturally our left thumb ends up on top of the right, then, if we try to change the hand position to result in the right thumb being on top, the "feeling" arises.

The mind/body gives no great or lesser weight to the toxic relationship or which thumb's on top. The feeling is the exact same. Maybe not in intensity, but that's the difference between pouring a cup of water on our head or a bucket. It's still the same water from the same source.

People mis-interpret this feeling as being fear. And it's this feeling, and only this feeling, that people use as the primary reason to stay in jobs and relationships, at educational, health/fitness and socio-economic levels that they hate. It's the feeling they use to prevent themselves from forgiving, going back to school, starting their own business, or getting up on the stage or in the arena of life.

But on the faith side of the equation, the feeling's name is "readiness." It is and always has been our body's way of saying "I'm ready and able." But by people not taking the time to learn this, they've allowed fear to dictate the defining of the feeling in order to build in resistance to our light and life expanding.

"You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. ... But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet" (1 Thessalonians 5:4-6,8).

We protect our heart with faith and love. We expose it to devastating injury with judgment and hate. Living life from fear is no different than driving drunk.

We protect our mind by trusting in salvation. We corrupt it with apathy. Thoughts and feelings are God's tools, the ones we give Him with which to build our lives. And we can see this when we look. To build from thoughts and ideas based in fear would be no different than trying to build a house when drunk.

We don't have to "see" the source of our protection to know that it's there. "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--His eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). The unseen reveals itself to us every single moment of every day through our shifts to faith, or from our shifts to fear.

It's been famously said "Everyone is self-made, but only the successful admit it."

Words of experience point to our indirect evidence of God's existence in our lives. Reading and hearing the testimony of those in the bible inspire faith. Faith in turn allows God to move in our life, these movements becoming our direct evidence. The name of God's language, as pointed to by biblical testimony, can present itself as what we call today "coincidence" and "synchronicity." This is no different than God speaking to nearly everyone in the times of the bible through the stones of the Ephod and casting lots. Or through ravens, a donkey, a rock, a vine, a whale and all the other ways that God's spoken to those of faith. By them listening, we read about them today.

When we're open to seeing Him speak to us, faith strengthens further, giving us the means to be successfully made, resulting in the addition of our testimony to His-story.

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Psalm 55:4-5,16-18,22

> Problem:

4-5. My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen on me. Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me.

> Solution and Result:

16-18. As for me, I call to God, and the Lord saves me. Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice. He rescues me unharmed from the battle waged against me, even though many oppose me.

> Lesson:

22. Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.

Preface

As if peering out at horizon's line from a mountaintop, let's visualize the landscape of our life, imagining the steps of our feet as stones dropping atop the waters of the ocean. Try to follow the ripples as they run out away from us, considering their 360-degree effect on the world, however minute, across the space of time from now into the far reaches of the future.

It can get overwhelming pretty quickly, the mind being unable to hold all the possibilities. But that space in between now and tomorrow is where choice resides. And where there's choice, there's God, the creator of the light that's separated from the dark. God is on the outside of that space, and inside the waves creating their smallest of changes to the whole of life on earth itself.

We can never truly know the far-reaching results that'll come from out of the decisions we make today. But we can know the nature and quality that those results will contain, by the nature and quality of the seeds that went into their sowing.

If we truly understood the difference between decisions made from fear, as represented by the fruits of the flesh (ego), and the decisions made from faith, the fruits of the Spirit (love), we'd avoid fear-born choices like the plague. We'd be repulsed by them.

This doesn't mean we won't feel fear, but there's a chasm of Grand Canyon proportions between feeling something and using it as a motivating factor for action. Feelings and actions are actually two mutually exclusive things, though ego will do everything it can to keep people blind to this fact.

We can see the difference between the two as exemplified by David's life, in how he uses his emotions instead of allowing them to use him. And how these contrasts against the moments he falls short, when he allowed feelings to take over.

The difference between fear and faith is also revealed by the subtle shift that David makes when he experiences fear.

Furthermore, David's history and Psalms provide us a small peek, more of a hint, of how God sees our lives. Being outside of time, He sees us before we're born, all the days of our lives from beginning to end and after we've left this car we've been using to drive around down here on earth. Our story is His-story, one He enjoys reading. In David's case, we can see the faith-inspired decisions made by David and the ripple effects created by those choices. And we're shown the same for his fear-based choices.

The scar of David's decision to do what he did with Bathsheba and, afterward, to her husband, Uriah, adversely affected how he parented his sons. And his short fallings as a father resulted in profound personality flaws in his sons that contribute to them making their own poor decisions. Their actions manifested from out of David's ripple effects, creating their own. And these resulting effects, in turn, brought about events leading to the decline of David's kingdom.

If we seek out and encounter enough examples, like the one set by David; for example, by reading the biographies of great yet flawed people, the big-picture view of a person's overall life provides us with an opportunity to acquire faith's expanded perspective and consider what the biography of our lives would look like. Would it be a story of darkness or light?

Of the 75 Psalms attributed to David, it's believed that he wrote five of them during the time of his son Absalom's rebellion and his friend and counselor Ahithophel's betrayal, as recorded in 2 Samuel 15-17.

David exemplifies what it means to overcome fear with faith. His entire character profile reveals him as someone who's very in tune with his feelings. David had cultivated his emotional states to be messengers, having given them over to God.

Feelings and emotions served him, not the other way around. God could reliably use David's feelings like a home's security alarm system. When things were good, safe, David would feel the "All Clear," and the external environmental conditions reflected this. But when things were going wrong, whether from David having done something he knew he shouldn't have done, or when people conspired against or planned to attack him, alarms would go off.

Because his heart and mind weighed on his inner scale far more heavily toward faith, rather than fear, events on the ground always unfolded in such a way to make sure David knew beforehand that someone was about to move against him.

But there's this particular aspect to David's faith that, in a seemingly paradoxical way, makes it incredibly effective toward revealing and maintaining his connection to God. Anytime he learned that people planned to come at him, fear would nearly overwhelm him. But, when we look closely, we realize that this fear never had anything to do with those representing the threat.

As implied by the words of his prayers and behavior across all his writings, David's first question was always, "Have I done something wrong?"

He recognized that the outside world mirrored his status with God, so when a threat arose, he'd immediately consult with God. And if an attack was imminent, he'd retreat strategically, get to safety and then check in with God, see where this was coming from.

With some space in between him and the threat, if he learned it didn't arise from some misdeed on his part, then in continuation of his faithful state he'd receive instructions and act accordingly.

Faith never acts impulsively.

But regarding today's verse, Psalm 55 is a bit more nuanced regarding how David's trouble came about.

First, David experienced some extreme mental, emotional distress. We cannot be reminded enough that what we think about we feel about. Negative thoughts can only create negative emotions. And then mind and body conspire to create negative action.

Action is how we sow seeds into both our spiritual and earthly lives. Our life circumstances grow around us from these seeds. It does not matter what circumstances we're born into--David started out as a shepherd boy. And it does not matter what experiences we suffered growing up in those circumstances.

The past does not dictate the future. Only our actions do--constant, habitual, repeating actions. And these are born from the thoughts we most often entertain to the point of cultivating them into emotionally supported beliefs. Faith allows a degree of our conscious awareness to always remain intact in response to even the most threatening of life events. This objective nature of faith creates a sort of fear of fear.

Fear is the worst enemy we'll ever have enter into our lives, a thousand times worse than any external event. It runs us face first into the jaws of the lion.

Faith, though, leads us to say, "Nope! I'm not going to entertain that for a moment." And then we do something amazing--we shift our attention to God. Even if to say, "Hey God, I know you got me." And then we just stay there, in that headspace.

The shift changes everything, as its results attest, in David's life, in mine, in all of our lives.

And David was a shift master.

But it first started with his thoughts.

"My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught" because of people in David's life proclaiming themselves enemies by their angry words and threats (Psalm 55:2-3).

Then it sank into David's heart.

"My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen on me" (55:4).

And the emotional turmoil builds, intensifying, a sign of rumination.

"Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me" (55:5).

The negative pressure of his internal emotional environment becomes so intense he considers tapping out, running away. (55:6-8) But this wouldn't represent a strategic retreat. It would be a complete avoidance of responsibility, with tail tucked between legs. And though it may of helped in the moment to express the feeling into words of song, as a coping strategy, David's faith predominated his spirit, rendering quitting a non-starter.

Then David shifts. He says, "Lord...." He's allowed "stinking thinking" and its resulting emotional turmoil to stay rent free in his head and body long enough. His spirit rose up and chased them out with a single shift in perspective from the problem, with its multitude of words, to the solution, with a single word.

He gave the problem over to God.

But what went into the making of the issue that had come into his life? That's where the added nuance of the fear/faith dynamic resides.

The problem came out of David's parenting.

Absalom was David's son. And though David did great things, and he did some horrible things too. And when it came to parenting, he made mistakes. And the reverberations of those errors rippled across time into the moment we now find him.

David, as a father, wasn't much of a disciplinarian. He did not punish his first-born son Amnon for the terrible sin of having raped his sister, Tamar. (2 Samuel 13:14) Then, two-years later, David's son Absalom murdered his half-brother Amnon for what he'd done to Tamar. In response, David did nothing to Absalom.

David's failure to act in response to these two events marked the beginning of his undoing.

Imagine if people who've accumulated so much pain, allowing themselves to be overtaken by the darkness of its fear, were allowed, in their spiritually compromised state, to visit that pain onto others anytime they wanted, knowing they'd not be held accountable. If not addressed immediately, their darkness will metastasize, becoming worse over time.

Crime demands meaningful intervention.

David's sin with Bathsheba led to Amon's with Tamar. And this, in turn, led to Absalom's against Amnon. Being left unaddressed, Absalom went on to rebel against David, marking the beginning of the decline of David's kingdom, as prophesied in 2 Samuel 12:10-12.

Ahithopel was a dear friend of and trusted advisor to David. But Absalom's conspiracy against his father only really began to grow strength when Absalom was able to turn Ahithopel against David.

David lamented, "If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were rising against me, I could hide. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship at the house of God, as we walked about among the worshipers" (Psalm 55:12-14).

"Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me" (Psalm 41:9).

The event of Ahithopel's betrayal brought David to pour his hurt out to God. But it also served as a prophecy of Judah's betrayal of Jesus (John 13:18).

Faith provides us with an expanded perspective and profound understanding of the ramifications of our actions; especially, when it comes to the kind of friend we choose to be.

Fear narrows perspective to view an action in isolation, cut off from consequence and effect, believing it to effect little to no one beyond the scope of the act itself. In fact, it's so narrowed in view, it often can only see the immediate gratification, or short-term gain, providing no consideration of long-term costs.

David was learning this lesson in real time.

Following Absalom's successful political campaign to win the hearts and minds of the people of Israel, a messenger informed David of this fact.

"Then David said to all his officials who were with him in Jerusalem, 'Come! We must flee, or none of us will escape from Absalom. We must leave immediately, or he will move quickly to overtake us and bring ruin on us and put the city to the sword" (2 Samuel 15:14).

This marked the difference between giving up and a strategic retreat. David had no plan in place, having just received the news. He knew he was Absalom's target, so by relocating away from the city he wouldn't put innocent people at risk while at the same time providing him time and space to figure out what to do. And there was the complex situation of this being David's son, whom he loved (2 Samuel 13:39), not wanting to risk being put in a position to kill or be killed by Absalom.

And David had to consult with God, to determine if this attack against David was justified or not; if God would intercede on David's behalf or was this to be his end.

But before leaving, David's faith still seeped into his exit.

"The king set out with his entire household following him; but he left ten concubines to take care of the palace" (2 Samuel 15:16). The act of leaving the concubines behind was a statement of faith, "I'll be back."

And it's telling that David's household followed him, he leading the way. This contrasts with Absalom, who "provided himself with a chariot and horses and with fifty men to run ahead of him" (2 Samuel 15:1). Absalom trailed his men.

Faith leads. Fear follows. Faith risks self first toward the protection of others. Fear risks others in order to protect itself.

And faith leads by doing. People who hold within themselves that type of relaxed self-esteem, the inner sense of confidence most indicative of a power source of faith, who get out front of the pack in the race of life by just working more diligently, consistently, with a strong sense of focused purpose, are people who catch up with and run alongside the best of the best in their respective fields. They end up becoming the authority on the subject. As such, others interested in that field, or just in the dynamics of success, will want to follow the leader of the pack. They're inspired by such a person, their example of a purpose-driven life. They wish to learn from him. And they want to be a part of what the leader is building, to contribute to the purpose in some way. Successful action instills faith in others, inspiring them to get out in front of the crowd, to also be a contributing force for good.

But fear leads by command. It does little to nothing. It's representatives often haven't even left the starting point of life, stuck in stasis. But, due to their lack of confidence and not having the things they want just magically fall into their laps, they build up a resentment against true leaders. It's as though fear says, "How dare they get things in life from working hard for it when I can't get the same things by doing nothing." And having nothing but fear within itself, that's the only tool it can use. It instills fear into its adherents, forcing respect. This power structure never lasts because it's not aligned with the true underlying nature of the people involved. Though these people made themselves into fear's puppets, fear will never standup in the long-term against the human spirit.

And then it's at this time that David reveals how he viewed the events that occurred in his life.

Then the king said to Zadok, "Take the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the Lord's eyes, He will bring me back and let me see it and His dwelling place again. But if He says, 'I am not pleased with you,' then I am ready; let Him do to me whatever seems good to him.'" (15:25)

Faith expands the space of the heart, filling it with a confidence from which we achieve humble, uncompromising integrity. Within this state we're provided with an enhanced sense of honest responsibility.

Fear's sense of responsibility manifests as self-blame for things that the person had no control over, had nothing to do with, or for the consequences of what someone else has done. For example, parents blaming themselves for their kids becoming sick with a terminal disease, or for them having some genetic anomaly.

Fear will find any opportunity to destroy self with undeserved guilt, if only to serve the enemy by dimming or cutting off the person's light.

Fear keeps people so caught up with the self-obsession of emotional floggings, it leaves no space for an opportunity to look up and outward and consider someone else for a change.

Fear sees a commitment to helping others as an unwanted interruption to its committed work of hurting self.

Faith cures self's pain by curing the pain seen in others.

David knew this. He wouldn't of been capable of blaming himself for something someone else had done. Judgment is the opposite of love. And in a state of love, he trusted in God's love to know how best to see and handle the situation at hand.

This was a perspective gained from taking responsibility for his past mistakes. But, by recognizing that his children's failures were a reflection of his failures as a father, David found it difficult to generate the level of anger needed to spark action against Absalom.

So David called on God instead. Being heard, faith making the telephone connection strong, God rescued him. And from this, David let's us know: "Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken."

When our children turn against us, or when close friends betray us, we experience a terrible pain in our heart. For those with no faith anchor, such an event can completely unmoor them, casting them about, lost in the sea of life, drowning.

But for those anchored by faith's inner constant amid the ever-changing external events, pain is, first, a call to shift perspective toward love. Second, it's an opportunity for empathy, providing us with insight into just how important it is to be a truly loving son or daughter to our parents or guardians, and to be a great friend. And this has a rollover effect, making us into the light of all of our relationships.

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Psalm 50:15

"The Mighty One, God, the Lord speaks (50:1a)... 'call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.'"

Preface

An attitude of gratitude is one of the clearest indicators of a heart that's filled with more faith than fear. It reveals an elevated, expanded perspective, one that allows us to see more of what we do have and of what's been done for us.

A heart predominated by fear--a state not necessarily felt by the person affected--sinks a person's perspective down into the roiling masses of misery and pain--the turbulent water of the stormy sea. We know of such unfortunate souls by the words they use. ("For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of." (Matthew 12:34b)) They speak of how they see things in their life. Whenever they think they've found a sympathetic ear, they give account of past negative events that they hold onto, pulling them out, brushing them off, like badges earned in a war.

Fear imprisons people with the words "Look what I've been through," as if they're the only ones who've been through anything. They feed their ego--the whole point of fear's charade--with their audience's head nods, sounds and words of commiseration.

Fear has made an idol out of sympathy.

This isn't referencing those of us who do encounter internal storms and find our way through with songs of gratitude and praise. This is only in regard to those who define their lives, and everyone else's, in terms of misery and pain, believing that there's nothing else but darkness.

Regarding sympathy, it's ego's facsimile of faith's empathy. Where empathy feels another's pain, sympathy holds the sympathetic emotionally one-step removed. It's ego's way of pretending concern while looking down on the person in pain. It falls in the same family of 'pity.'

But compassion is a different thing altogether. Its empathy empowered. Where empathy actually feels what the other person feels, compassion is empathy in action. It's the drive to do something to either alleviate or remove the other person's pain.

If we see someone choking, empathy puts food in its own throat to choke with them. Compassion, though, performs the Heimlich maneuver.

God is love. Love is a verb. It's action. Love is compassion. And faith activates love's compassion in us, keeping us in an elevated state of readiness to help others in need, whether we realize we're in that state or not. (We only truly know where the faith/fear dynamic stands within us in a time of crisis. If we freeze or run, then we have work to do, and that's all the freezing, running means.)

People use the context of "Look what I've been through" to accuse others of not understanding. Ego loves saying, "You don't understand what I'm going through!" (Children use it all the time, whether they're eight or eighty.)

Fear directs people to use their limited number of past negative experiences as the building material to construct a filter through which they can look at their lives. It's in this way that fear's able to project the past onto the present and into the future. (This comforts ego, ensuring it's able to prove itself "right.") Consequently, fear sees only what's lacking and what's wrong with others and the world, allowing it to marinate in misery, like a pig in mud, grateful for nothing.

But the giving of thanks is faith's loudest form of praise.

Imagine that we're sitting in a restaurant. Hearing a commotion, we look up and see that someone is choking. Without hesitation, we act, coming to their rescue, saving their life. (Though, afterward, it goes without saying that they need not remunerate in any way, there being no recompense more valuable or meaningful than life.)

But even for people who're most in love with misery, choking strips away the charade. They only want that which they've been freely given and have taken for granted--air. Because one, choking is real pain, and they much prefer self-manufactured pain to the real stuff, as their choking reveals--they forgot about how nice it is to just breathe, because they never acknowledged it nor gave thanks.

If we keep something out of sight, eventually it goes out of mind.

And two, with a chicken bone thrown into the gears of fear's movie reel of past hurts, momentarily turning it off, there's this primary part of them, their true Selves, that's suddenly able to see things clearly--"I want to live!"

And then the bone's dislodged.

Does the ego come rushing back in, refilling the new clarity of vision with fear's old fog? Or do they, their true, underlying Self, jump into the expanded space, shifting from F2F?

Fear will try to narrow the mind's eye, zooming in on choking and nearly dying. It'll add this event to its list of excuses of why life's miserable. The fog that closes over the mind of the afraid will put them back into their stupor, in which they continue their old walk-through life, like a zombie. They'll have stripped from their short-term memory the moment that they wanted more than anything to breathe and live, giving no reflection to what such a want might mean.

And they'll never acknowledge to themselves that they were saved, because that wouldn't fit the narrative.

But faith will expand the mind's eye, creating an Ebenezer-Scrooge shift like when he saw Tiny Tim dying. Or like what happened to Saul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3,18,20). Light floods into the darkness, chasing it away. Our heart expands to bursting.

But from our perspective, when the person we saved turns toward us, what would we find more meaningful? Them offering us money or to do some work for us as thanks? Or just gratitude, a hug and an offer of friendship?

God gave us life and saves us every day. Freely providing the air we breathe, along with the countless other provisions without which there'd be no life on this planet.

Every moment love waits ready to spring into action. It surrounds us with unlimited opportunities to be blessed, which means to be happy. If we'd just get out of our heads and knock the scales from our mind's eye, we'd know what it truly means to be free.

Jesus said, "I have come that [we] may have life and have it to the full."

Where fear is a thief that steals the joy and happiness from life, faith provides us with the awareness of the blessings that abound.

Ezra wrote First Chronicles in about 430 BC, recording events that occurred about 600 years earlier. It parallels Second Samuel, serving as added commentary while emphasizing the religious history of Judah and Israel.

In 1 Chronicles 6, Ezra provides a list of the temple musicians, and their lineages. "These are the men David put in charge of the music in the house of the Lord after the ark came to rest there. They ministered with music..." (6:31-32).

"Here are the men who served, together with their sons: from the Kohathites: Heman, the musician...and Heman's associate Asaph, who served at his right hand" (6:33,39).

From today's verse, Psalm 50 was composed by Asaph. He "ministered with music." This was Asaph's ministry.

In his song, Asaph contrasted between true and false faith, revealing that, if we're to give God anything, He'd prefer that it was sincere trust and thanks, the highest expressions of praise coming from the heart.

God, through Asaph, says, "I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills" (Psalm 50:9-10).

Asaph says, "Sacrifice thank offerings to God" (50:14).

God says, "Those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me..." (50:23).

David says, "I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hooves" (Psalm 69:30-31).

From the Hebrew we come to understand that we 'zabah,' sacrifice the way of the flesh (fear). The flesh represents dishonor, abuse of position, or being a follower, and a lack of character. This is the lower base-level of the animal nature. Instead, we trade this in by 'halal,' celebrating 'sem,' God's honor, authority and character. We 'gadal,' make these appellations, his very namesake, larger, magnifying them through 'toda,' "thanksgiving," the extension of the hand in open declaration of adoration.

In this way, gratitude for something magnifies it, making it expand within ourselves and, by extension, into the world.

It's interesting that the Hebrew word for "thanksgiving" directly translates into 'an extension of the hand.' This is the same sort of action taken by all the sick people of Gennesaret when Jesus visited them. They knew that if they could just extend their hands and touch His cloak they'd be healed. (Matthew 14:36) And it was the same for the "woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years." She came up behind Jesus, pushing through the crowd just to reach out her hand and touch His cloak. (Matthew 9:21)

Jesus said to a man with a shriveled hand, "Stretch out your hand." So, he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. (Matthew 12:9,13)

In other words, thanksgiving is faith in action. It's what heals us, saves our life, and it's the gateway through which we're able to help others.

What if, when we went to save the person from choking, they pushed us away, not wanting our help? Some people are, metaphorically, scared to death to give up their choking state. They've held onto their extreme discomfort for so long, they don't know any other way to feel. It's become a security blanket. It's like people who, right before succeeding at something, go out of their way to sabotage their life, in order to maintain failure. Their comfort zone is hardship and pain.

Some of these severely hurting people may even give a perfunctory showing of sacrifice, maybe to appease someone, or to manipulate others into believing they're someone they're not.

But God is only concerned with the heart, the place within the center of our being from out of which all of the seeds of a person's life sow.

"Make a tree good and its fruit will be good or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. ... A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him" (Matthew 12:33,35).

And the good or evil is first and foremost revealed by the words we speak. And so it is with our words of thanksgiving. But what are words without action? The greatest statement of counting our blessings is by extending a hand to the poor and needy.

There's no great "thank sacrifice" that better reveals the faith of our heart.

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Psalm 49:5

Why should I fear when evil days come, when wicked deceivers surround me--those who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches?

Preface

Does the tree count its wealth in the number of leaves on its branches? Does it take credit for their growth? Or is it grateful to the sun and soil, and to the Source of these? The tree provides a home to birds, fruit to animals and people, shade to those who sit beneath its canopy, all without asking for anything in return.

The sun gives of its light freely from within itself, needing nothing from us to do so.

The earth provides us with everything, but what do we give it in return?

Fear looks out at the world and sees only what's missing. It wants without giving. It takes without earning. It believes in giving nothing, even when wealthy.

Fear asks only what others can do for it.

Faith sees that blessings abound, all that God's giving us in and through life; all of life's sustaining gifts and opportunities enlivening being alive. Faith recognizes that we come ready equipped with everything we need within us to create opportunities to give back to the world abundantly.

Faith asks only, “What can I do for others?”

Today's verse is provided by the descendants of Korah, the temple musicians and assistants established by King David. In their Psalm they give a message for everyone in the world; categorically, to both rich and poor alike (49:1-2). Their objective is to provide us with the meditation of their heart toward the goal of us gaining understanding. (49:3)

The understanding of the difference between having a little or a lot of material wealth and having faith in the big picture of life is the only thing that differentiates us humans from the animals.

"People who have wealth but lack understanding are like the beasts that perish" (49:20).

At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you."

Solomon answered... "give your servant a discerning [understanding] heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong."

The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, "Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for--both wealth and honor--so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings" (1 Kings 3:5-13).

Solomon asked for understanding. Why? Because first, he was grateful to God for all the kindness shown to Solomon's father, David. And Solomon was grateful for God's kindness to him. (3:6)

Second, being a young and inexperienced king, Solomon wanted to know how to carry out his duties. (3:7) He wanted to do the best job possible for God and the people.

So, Solomon revealed that he had a heart of gratitude and responsibility. He understood that these were far more valuable than any amount of material wealth, revenge, or added days to the length of his life.

To have asked for money would have shown he feared going without, lacking faith in God's provision.

To have asked for revenge would have shown he feared being attacked, or that he was insecure and petty, lacking faith in God's forgiveness and protection.

To have asked for long life would have shown he feared sickness or death, lacking faith in God's healing and care, or lacking faith in God putting eternity in his heart.

And all three of these were concerns for external, flesh-based things. Solomon revealed he considered the internal.

"If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do" (James 1:5-8).

As Solomon did, James teaches we can to. But he points out the difference between asking in faith, with confidence (and maintaining the focus of that faith), and asking in fear, with insecurity or timidity, vacillating between if we will or won't receive what we ask for.

James delivers this as a contextual prefix to understanding the difference between internal states and external socio-economic conditions.

"Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. But the rich should take pride in their humiliation--since they will pass away like a wildflower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls, and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business" (James 1:9-11).

For a flower, its pedals represent both its wealth and beauty. For people, its money and youth. What the scorching heat does to the flower, time does to people.

There's nothing wrong with having money, just like there's nothing wrong with a flower having pedals. The problem arises when we shift our focus from faith in our provider to faith in the provision. This is like trading eternity in for a blink of the eye.

Upon blooming beautiful pedals, imagine the flower saying to the sun, the earth and the water, "Now I no longer need you." When put that way, we can see why such a complete lack of understanding represents the conscious equivalent of a dumb animal.

"People, despite their wealth, do not endure, they are like the beast that perish. This is the fate of those who trust in themselves, and of their followers, who approve their sayings. They are like sheep and are destined to die; death will be their shepherd (but the upright will prevail over them in the morning)" (Psalm 49:12-14).

This is a particularly salient point in today's social-media era, when people put more trust in the number of followers they have, fearing not being seen and "Liked," than they put in the provider of their life; but to, in what they're paying forward to others.

The difference is in the receiving and giving. Fear of being without gives in order to receive. It's transactional. And both the giving and receiving are materially focused. But faith gives outwardly from what it already possesses within. It looks for nothing for the benefit of its ego or material return, because such isn't the point.

The faithful are wealthy despite income or bank balance. This is true for even millionaires.

We start out rich. And if our cup overflowing brings back to us wealth, then it's wealth being given to God, the One who's giving through us that which overflows. It's a return on His investment.

Faith understands this. And this level of understanding reflects an inner awakening that differentiates vessels of the Spirit in heaven from vessels of the ego on earth.

Wealth is just God's way of saying to the wealthy that He's providing through them something of need to the world that'll generate greater means to provide more of that something. But as soon as the wealthy claim what they receive as theirs and stop using it to edify others, they cut off the Source of their income. Or, when they die, all they had accumulated ends up in the hands of strangers.

"Their forms will decay in the grave, far from their princely mansions. But God will redeem me from the realm of the dead; He will surely take me to Himself" (Psalm 49:14b-15).

"Do not be overawed when others grow rich, when the splendor of their houses increases; for they will take nothing with them when they die, their splendor will not descend with them. Though while they live they count themselves blessed--and people praise you when you prosper--they will join those who have gone before them, who will never again see the light of life" (49:16-19).

No one's seen a U-Haul truck in a funeral procession.

Solomon recognized that God has "set eternity in the human heart," (Ecclesiastes 3:11), yet, regarding the body, "The fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals" (3:19).

That's a tough pill for the ego to swallow. Because it's unable to tell the difference between the eternal and the temporary. Fear narrows all of existence down to only the material, physical realm, confusing one for the other.

But it's all about the source of our understanding. Those who're 'of' the world, living in fear, are no different than animals. But those who're 'in' the world, but not 'of' it, living in faith, carry eternity in their heart.

Eternity is one of the names of God. And "Everything God does [in and through us] will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it" (3:14).

Satan tested Job's faith by taking Job's possessions and children. Job responded in faith, recognizing that anything, everything he had came from God. Job was like the flower who knew where the source of his existence came from.

He said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.

"In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing" (Job 1:21-22).

What would our response be? Who would we blame if we suffered similar losses? Our response to these questions would reflect where faith stands on the scale of our heart when measured against fear.

Those with a greater measure of fear, place their faith in family and money to the exclusion of the provider of these things. And those with more faith place their trust in the Source from whom family and wealth come.

Without life, there's nothing. And no one can claim they own life, no matter how much money they gain. But who gives us life? Who has it to give? (And how much would the richest people in the world pay to get more of it, yet can't?)

This is why David's son, Solomon, and David's musicians, the descendants of Korah, equated people who thought that they were the source of their wealth with dumb animals. Because such people are essentially saying that they're the reason the sun shines, the trees grow, the heart beats and the galaxy spins.

Compare Job with the wealthy young man with whom Jesus spoke:

A man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"

"Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments."

"Which one?" he inquired.

Jesus replied, "'You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Jesus told him to keep God's Ten Commandments, but then listed only six of them. The ones He listed all deal with how we relate with others.

"All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"

Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly I tell you; it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:16-24).

Jesus saw into the heart of the young man, already knowing what commandment he needed to understand, the first and greatest of them all: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'" (Matthew 22:37-38).

Why is the second like the first? Because love for others is how the first is revealed to exist inside of the person's heart. It's the external expression of the internal state.

When talking to the young, wealthy man, Jesus said "Give to the poor." And when talking to the disciples, He said, "It is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven."

Moses wrote "Give generously to [the needy] and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land" (Deuteronomy 15:10-11).

Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you..." (Matthew 26:11).

Jesus also said, "The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

This provides a better understanding of what Jesus told the wealthy man.

The poor will always be among us. They are God's litmus test of whether we are living according to faith or fear. And they are faith's opportunity for us to be blessed by the work we do for them.

The kingdom of God is within. We enter the kingdom of God (our heart). From there, we pull out the actions that reveal that we place our trust first and foremost in God, the source of our wealth. These actions are expressed as love for our neighbors, loving others as we love ourselves. And the best way to show this love is to joyfully help the poor and needy.

Fear operates from a negative belief in lack, which is what the wealthy man was concerned with. It says things like, "No one's ever given anything to me, so why should I give to anyone?" Or it says, "I'm poor. I'm the one the rich should give to." And as long as they hold these beliefs, they'll remain poor, and will only become more so over time. It's their beliefs that make it so.

People predominated by fear want to receive without giving and end up losing even the little they have.

People predominated by faith give from what they desire and end up gaining more than they know what to do with.

And the whole of this automatic, built in process points to the state of our heart. Faith provides an understanding that fear will never have, and fear will always be poorer for it. And it's from this understanding we get the answer to the question we started with:

"Why should I fear when evil days come, when wicked deceivers surround me--those who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches?" We don't have to. The system put in place by God will take care of them. They should never even become our focus, beyond encouraging them by the example of faith's light.

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Psalm 46: 1-3, 10

1-3. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

10. He says, "Be still, and know that I am God."

Preface

Great military leaders, like David in the past, or those in present times, exemplify a level of faith that transcends the fear of harm to or the death of the body. They know that those under their command look to them as the example to imitate in a time of crisis.

A leader's calm will be the calm of those around them. It's a statement louder than any stated command could ever be.

Calm begets calm.

When everything around us seems to be falling apart, but amid the seeming chaos we see someone walking as if on a leisurely stroll, unaffected, it's impossible to not wonder why. The very wondering of it has the profound effect of pulling us out of our panicked state, if only for a moment.

Even amid a major earthquake, if a pink hippo comes running past, it'll give us a moment of pause. And inside that moment fear would have dissipated, if not outright vanished. Why? Because the mind's worse imaginings were interrupted, like hitting pause on a movie.

It can't think of two different things at once. A weakness, or a gift, that we can use to our advantage if we chose to.

The hippo reveals that earthquake had nothing to do with our fear. Only the thoughts we chose to entertain did.

But for those who are desperately attached to the need to be afraid, holding onto it as their security blanket, or as some sick badge of honor, they'll conclude anyone calm in such conditions is insane. Ego needs the need to freak out to be the only way anyone should respond.

But for those who have even the smallest inkling that the fear is what's insane, it being a feeling that they don't want anything to do with, they'll wonder if the person at peace knows something that they don't. Maybe they have an antidote that they could receive. They'll look for answers, asking, in one form or another, "What do you know that I don't?" And that's faith's opportunity to replace the unknown with the known, helping people dispel dark with light.

We can provide the means for people to live from the inside out, instead of from the outside in, to lift themselves above the chaos, and to help them walk atop the waves of the stormy sea and remain unaffected by the wind. We can show them the way to the place of stillness within.

When we integrate the Hebrew through today's verses, we're provided with some interesting insights:

God

  (Elohim), the divine, creative force--the (plural) One within the many--that is manifest within nature,

is our refuge

  (mahesh), a shelter in whom we trust and confide, into whom we flee,

and strength,

  (oz), our secure, bold, mighty power, as expressed in, through and by our praise,

and ever-present

  (masa), existence who's come forth, revealing Himself through His

help

  (ezrat), meeting us right where we are, standing with us, protectively surrounding us, when or wherever we find ourselves

in trouble

  (sara), the moment our bodies generate a physiological fight or flight response, the tightness in chest, heart and breathing, the narrowing of vision, as when we come to feel like we're stuck between a rock and a hard place while pressed against the point of a knife.

Therefore, we will not fear,

  (yare), given the choice between the base animal instincts of the body, as expressed by the lower-range feelings associated with fight or flight (in response to some outward event we credit for their cause), or, because of or despite these feelings, to strengthen the resolve of our reverence for God, we'll choose reverence, re-establishing and maintaining our focus on our faith in God's love,

though the earth

  (eres), the established way of the world

give way and the mountains

  (har), those seemingly established things in people's lives on which they've come to rely, and take for granted, such as limiting beliefs, or the systems that give a false sense of security, or their health, family or source of livelihood

fall

  (mot), shaken unexpectedly and cast away

into the heart

  (leb), the center of human emotional intellect and will

of the sea,

  (yam), the roaring mass of humanity's sudden terror,

though its waters

  (mayim), the dispelled waste

roar

  (hama), have a tantrum, and complete meltdown

and foam

  (hamar), boiling up, fermenting with scum, glowing red with rage, the challenge of change applying pressure to the afraid, bringing up and out of them into the world the volatile byproduct of their fear.

and the mountains quake

  (ra as), the believed to be unshakable, invincible earth and sky undulate through fear

with their surging

  (ga awa), the swelling of their majestic arrogance, revealed, by their falling, to have been only ornamental

He says, "Be still,"

  (rapa), relax, loosen up, let the tension out,

"And know"

  (yada), see and teach

"that I am God."

In other words, because of who God is, when everything in the world seems to be falling apart, threatening to collapse around us, though those of the world, bound by fear, lacking faith, freak out in terror and start to riot in the streets, we don't have any reason to be afraid.

We know, all we have to do is be calm, breathe and watch what God's about to do.

We'll be the ones who'll be perfectly safe, helping those looking for a way out of fear find their way in faith.

Our example of meeting outside events with internal calm will aid in bringing stillness to those around us. Our centeredness will make us a visual broadcast station, a fingerpost pointing toward refuge. In this way we're able to teach people peace.

Jesus exemplified this to his disciples.

In one example, shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw Him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear.

Their lack of faith at this point in their lives caused them to be taken over by the misinterpretation of what was happening. Fear made their imagination run wild. And their delusions were made worse when someone hollered that it was a ghost.

At first, they feared the storm sinking their boat and drowning them. But Jesus was like the pink hippo. The moment they saw Him, the last thing they were thinking about was the storm or drowning. But, having no past experience with what they were seeing, lacking the ability to explain something they'd never seen before, fear filled the space of the pause created in their minds with an explanation of superstition.

Fear limits explanations to only personal experience. And no one person has the number of experiences necessary to explain much of anything.

But faith wouldn't have felt the need to explain anything.

But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage. It is I. Don't be afraid."

Why do so many people in the world hear the message "Don't be afraid," and yet never truly wonder at what that means? Parents say it to their kids, friends say it to each other. But in all cases, when the smallest of unwanted events occur, most if not all are nearly drowned by their fear. They not only believe the fear, but they think of it as who and what they are. They become it, allowing it to take them over.

"Lord, if its you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."

Peter, being Peter, the sort of adrenalin junky of the group, was the first to make the radical internal shift.

"Come," Jesus said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"

He shifted his attention away from the light, toward the dark. Instead of maintaining his focus on Jesus with faith, he looked at the wind and waves. His imagination began to run wild, envisioning, no doubt, sinking into the water and drowning. And as fear enveloped his mind, correspondingly he sank into the turbulent waters, making his worse-case imaginings come true. His self-induced mental illness accelerated his rate of decent toward being overwhelmed and possibly dying.

But, immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught him. "You of little faith," He said, "Why did you doubt?"

When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret. And when the men of that place recognized Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to Him and begged Him to let the sick just touch the edge of His cloak, and all who touched it were healed. (Matthew 14:25-36)

It's interesting that this is how chapter 14 of Matthews ends, right on the heals and in the context of what had just happened in the boat on the water.

The faithful brought the fearful to Jesus. And those fearful who shifted from F2F, as they took the small action of reaching their hand out to touch Jesus's cloak, were lifted out of the fear that, up to that point, they'd been swimming (drowning) in for their entire lives.

The sea and water are often analogous of crowds of people. Stormy waters are groups of people who're operating according to the belief systems built by fear. Their lives are filled with heartache and anger.

So those who reached toward Jesus's cloak outwardly demonstrated an inward shift that lifted their perspectives above where they'd been before. And with this came an expanded, more informative view. No doubt they'd all said afterward, "This whole time I've been blind!" They hadn't realized just how much they didn't know. And like those people who'd brought them to come see Jesus, they, being newly freed from the dark, experiencing life in the light, would have been compelled to tell others who still languished in the dark.

The shift is the first step up the ladder of faith toward the elevated calm that comes with the practice of choosing faith over fear in each of the small events that happen in life. As an example, someone cuts us off in traffic and, the initial knee-jerk reaction, some remnant of fearful habits of old, we may get flushed with anger. This in turn may activate ego, taking hold of our mind and heart, maybe even controlling our body with associated negative behavior.

But having had that first shift into faith, we're given a measure of space, a sort of gap between external event and internal reaction. It's in this gap where the Spirit of love lives. At first, it's small. But the highest form of worship is found in that moment when all that fear, of being disrespected, of the imagined "what ifs" that never came to pass in reality, when everything inside of us is screaming for us to beep the horn, flag him the bird, cuss, rage, scream or drive erratically, but we, our true spiritual selves fight our way out of that storm and into the refuge of the gap and choose to send love and a prayer instead.

It's that sort of storm that David most often calls out to God to save him from.

That clawing and fighting to get into that space in between makes doing so the next time just a little easier. And by getting into the eye of the storm, into the refuge of stillness, we will have edged the gap open just a little more, giving the Holy Spirit more room inside the temple of our body. More of Him means that much less of the world. More of Him means we drown less and are able to breath more. We come to know what it means to finally be in control within ourselves. To have free will, maybe for the first time. To walk on top of the storm instead of being cast about, beaten up by it.

And the more of Him, the more amazing things we start to see happen in our lives.

We're no longer fear's robot, reacting to the external world's events in its negative predictable manner, according to cultural programming. And as we keep choosing faith over fear in the most difficult of moments our choice muscles get stronger. The calm within expands. And then, before we know it, when everyone around us is freaking out over the smallest of things, we're able to be a voice of reason, available to help guide them through through the dark of their fear, out of it, and into the calm they have residing within themselves.

Our calm becomes contagious.

Calm begets calm, and God becomes able to move more in the world through all of us, reaching out, grabbing us before we sink too far.

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Psalm 41:2-3
They are counted among the blessed in the land--He does not give them over to the desire of their foes. The Lord sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.

Preface

In yesterday's chapter we dug into the message of the verses as revealed through some of the original Hebrew. This allowed us to explore the enemies of internal emotional states with which David was most concerned.

By turning his attention back to faith, he was given victory over the enemies that fear produced within him. These enemies were: distress, grief, hurt, misery, sadness, sorrow, being vexed and wickedness.

Whenever we find ourselves feeling as though the walls of emotional darkness are closing in, the most powerful weapon we have in our spiritual arsenal is action. We have internal actions we can take. And we have actions that involve investing into the betterment of others.

Regarding the internal actions, the moment painful emotions begin to well up within us, the worst thing we can do is follow the world's lead. It teaches to "feel" them fully. But wallowing self-indulgently in a vat of poison isn't the answer. And giving them expression into the world may seem to provide a measure of relief in the moment, but it's temporary. And expression will only wire the practice into the body, embedding it deeper, making it stronger while simultaneously spreading the dis-ease into the world through the example we set.

Our actions are teachers to the world, whether we want them to be or not.

The world's teaching about the handling of negative emotional states comes from a lack of spiritual understanding about what the feelings represent and what they immediately begin to create into the lives we lead in the world.

What rises within us starts to manifest in related events in our lives, because we tend to sow into the world from our internal emotional states. For most people, feelings direct behavior.

First, we are not to fear negative emotions. That's just replacing one idol of fear for another, doing more of the same. And it just delays us taking the simple step of shifting from F2F.

Second, we're not to repress feelings, which would be the internal mental action of fear. Repression is like a panic response, trying to forcibly "push" negative thoughts or feelings out of the mind, or back down into the body, out of sight, out of mind. But the more a feeling is directly resisted, the stronger it becomes. (Try not thinking of a pink elephant.)

A law of the universe is "What we resist, persists."

Our shift to faith relocates our conscious awareness to a quiet, relaxed space of objectivity. And it's easier to make the shift if we first flip our attention to breath, the in-Spirit. It's from here we're then able to stand outside of any negative thoughts and feelings that arise. And by doing this, we come to realize that, though occurring within the body, they're "objects" of a kind that exist external to "us," our true spiritual selves that exist before thinking and feeling begins.

Faith provides this sort of transcendent perspective. We can see dark feelings, or feelings of any kind, like watching clouds flout by in front of the sun on an otherwise beautiful, blue-sky day. They come and, when not engaged with, they go.

We're just sitting in our Adirondack chairs sipping iced tea, hanging out with Jesus, finding the clouds' desperate fishing expeditions amusing.

Negativity is needy. It'll do anything for attention.

But if we look at the light of the Son, and in that light send love to the clouds, we initiate a process of change. Over time we turn the darkness into more light, dissolving the clouds from within.

These are internal actions that we can take. But when we marry these practices with the external actions of helping those in need, it's like igniting a supernova.

Free of the world's darkness, we experience what it means to be 'eser,' blessed through giving.

The opportunity to do "for one of the least of these," (Matthew 25:40), is seen for what it is: being able to do it for love. It's a celebratory event that David reveals garners us six promises.

Yesterday we considered the first two. The remaining four are:

3) We are counted among the blessed in the land;4) We're not given over to the desire of our enemies; and 5) The Lord sustains us on our sickbed;6) He restores us from our bed of illness.

In the third promise, "We are counted among the blessed in the land."

Here "blessed" is translated from 'aser.' It's interesting that this expression was used nearly 3500 years ago. Because it means to 'be straight,' 'level,' 'right'--happy.

When asking people how're they doing, I often hear them respond "I'm straight," or "I'm alright." In other words, we're still saying we're 'aser' without realizing it.

"Level" implicates a level mind, a balanced internal state. Faith is a centering point that keeps us from being knocked off balance from everyday life events. (Though they may not be every day for us at the individual level, they are at the collective level. Only ego narrows perspective to feed itself with the feelings born from thinking that we go through anything in life alone. One of fear's favorite tag lines is "You don't understand what I'm going through," because ego desperately wants to feel special.)

A committed, focused center reveals the need for us to, for example, "... no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work" (Ephesians 4:14-16).

"...when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do" (James 1:6-8).

In faith, when "each part does its work," action speaks louder than words. Having "regard for" the poor and needy, from the internal state of being blessed, sets an example for others, showing them the joy that comes from doing work that edifies those around us.

'Aser' (blessed) also means to "go forward, be honest, prosper."

So, being counted as blessed in the land, means to be a sort of lighthouse that's lifted up and provided for abundantly by the surrounding community we serve.

"Land" is taken from 'eres,' which means 'to be firm.' It can mean the 'way of the wilderness,' or 'of the world.'

We bring light to the way of the world, positively effecting others. Faith prevents the world from influencing us with its ideas, attitudes and beliefs that would only dim our light, adversely affecting us.

In the fourth promise, "We're not given over to the desire of our enemies."

"Desire" comes from 'nepes,' which means the enemy's 'will.' It directly translates to 'a breathing creature'--the mental and physical force of a living animal. The applicable definition is 'beastly appetite.'

"Enemies" is translated from 'oyeb,' 'hating an adversary.' It's derived from 'ayab,' to hate (one of an opposite tribe).

This means that the "enemies" mentioned aren't people. It's hate. And only those in the dark represent the opposite tribe of the light.

In other words, the fourth promise assures us, when we joyfully help out the poor and needy, we'll not be given over to the beastly appetite of hating those who're still lost and hurting in the dark, knowing not what they do.

It's difficult to hate people at the same time we're working side-by-side with God with helping people in need.

Without this understanding, as we covered in PART I, how would we of interpreted the promise from a surface reading? What does this promise mean for us now?

An example like this helps uncover the subtle nature of fear. It's like sodium. Fear's an implicit bias, embedded into the social fabric of and actively working to undermine society. It thinks in terms of the material external. So what it reads gets filtered through the bias, making the reader, for example, think of enemies as actual human beings.

To flash back for a moment, the third promise essentially says that we'll be happy in the places where the people around us are miserable. Not because they're miserable, but because we see life differently than they do. This will allow the living example of our happiness to help lift others out of the dark. We're their opportunity to realize, maybe for the first time, that there's a better way of seeing things.

This leads us into the fourth promise, which is telling us that the celebratory happiness we receive from the Spirit due to our good works will ensure that we won't look down upon, make fun of, mock, judge or despise people who, lost in darkness, live according to the way of pain and suffering.

We'll be saved from doing what those in the fear of the dark do all the time toward each other and toward people in the light.

In the new covenant, the Greek word for "enemy" is 'echtho.' This too means 'to hate,' and it means 'Satan.' As God is love, the enemy is hate, which is Satan.

Human beings themselves are not hate or Satan, despite pop culture's obsession with painting God's likeness (us) with a broad judgmental brush.

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:43-45).

When Jesus spoke "You have heard it was said," He wasn't talking about anything written. He was talking about the Pharisees, who had mis-interpreted Leviticus 19:18, which says: "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." The Pharisees interpreted this to mean that they should love only those who love in return. Moreover, they incorrectly concluded that Psalms 139:19-22 and 140:9-11 meant that they should hate their enemies.

And so they taught to others this error in interpretation, resulting in an echo of hate, reverberating violence, murder and war across time even into today.

Fear warps the way people's minds work, affecting the way the mind sees. When people in roles of authority hold within them pockets of hate, their minds will look to the law, a policy, or an isolated event, anything it can find, for justification to support their hate. And since we'll always "find" what we look for, considering that, how the brain works, we predominantly see what we believe, a warped perspective will warp what it reads.

This is why it's so important to develop the ability to discern between what we hear and read and how we interpret it.

We don't want our underlying fears to bleed in and risk turning light into darkness. Because, as history has proven, we'll never know how far an incorrect conclusion will carry across history, nor the degree of harm it'll inspire others to cause.

Instead of avoiding the enemy "hate," the Pharisees gave themselves over to it, wielding it as a weapon, often to quell disagreement.

The Pharisee's fear told them that if someone disagrees with what they say, then the human beings behind the disagreement were the enemies. The Pharisees didn't know that they had made themselves into puppets for the enemy the whole time.

"But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" (Luke 6:27-28).

"But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked" (Luke 6:35).

"Do not repay anyone evil for evil" (Romans 12:17).

"On the contrary: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. ... Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12: 20-21).

How else will light be able to differentiate itself from darkness? If light does the same thing that darkness does, then what makes it light? What would make those in fear interested in the light if, when they look for rescue from the dark, they only find more dark wearing "light" clothing?

If someone's on fire, they look for water to put the fire out, not more fire.

In the fifth and sixth promises, which go hand in hand, "The Lord sustains us on our sickbed; He restores us from our bed of illness."

"Sustains" is 'sa ad,' meaning 'to support,' comfort, strengthen.
"Sickbed" is 'deway,' meaning 'sickness,' but figuratively it means to loath, be sorrowful, languishing, unable to create life.
"Illness" is 'holi,' meaning malady, anxiety, grief.

Every promise so far listed results from us partnering with God in the care of the needy, the work that's most important to His heart. When we do this, God promises that we'll find support during those times we feel down. We'll receive comfort when we are:

sad, lacking the drive to get things done, and worried about the future.

"In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. And she made a vow, saying, 'Lord almighty, if you will only look on your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head."

When she prayed, her lips were moving, but she prayed silently, from her heart. Eli the priest saw her mumbling and thought she was drunk. Not surprising, considering she'd not been eating, and she'd been in emotional turmoil for a while. She couldn't have looked well.

But in response to the priest Hannah said, "I am a woman who is deeply troubled. ... I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. ... I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief."

Eli answered, "Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of Him." And after doing just this, "The Lord remembered her," and she became pregnant with Samuel.

(1 Samuel 1:10-20)
When emotionally distressed, she was thought to be drunk. But once Eli learned that wasn't the case, the first thing he told Hannah was "Go in peace." Then, in peace, "may God...grant" what she asked for. (1:17)

In the state of sorrow, she only received:
1) ridicule from her rival for not having a child (1:6-7);2) a worried husband (1:8);3) a loss of appetite (1:7);4) a downcast face and being confused for a drunkard (1:14); and5) no child (1:7).

But, after Eli's words, Hannah shifted from sadness to peace. From F2F.

Then she received:
1) a return of her appetite and healthy looks (1:18);2) a reconnection with her husband (1:19);3) her prayer answered.

"I will refresh the [sorrowful] and satisfy the faint" (Jeremiah 31:25).

"But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:14).

Hannah was first refreshed by changing her internal state. And then pregnancy resulted.

And when Jesus spoke to the woman at the well, his use of the term "thirst" was analogous. He was talking about the difference between fear and faith.

Fear generates within people a general sense of dissatisfaction. This feeling, at best, presents as a low-grade craving, one that sort of vibrates as background noise in the body; at worst, self-sabotaging compulsiveness. It's vampiric in nature, always seeking external experiences that'll satiate the thirst.

Because fear keeps people in compromised emotional states, de-pressing them downward, they seek out external stimuli that they hope will lift them back up. But the upliftment they receive comes from a comprised source, providing a sort of false light. It serves to only compound the de-pression, by developing dependence. The upliftment’s reach lower heights, demanding more stimuli. But more begins to fail, by design. Eventually no matter how much stimulation in which people engage, the only thing achieved is lower lows.

Addiction results. But the addiction is to the feeling of upliftment, not to the randomly available means by which the feeling is achieved.

Nothing external is lasting. Fear eats at even the best of experiences like piranha, tearing bite-sized chunks out of relationships, jobs, opportunities until there's nothing left. But the cravings remain.

The means by which the woman by the well got her high was new relationships. She loved falling in love, but the high she received from the experience didn't last into the commitment part. She'd have to look for a new man. As Jesus pointed out, she had been married five times, and the man with whom she lived wasn't someone she was married to. It was in this context that Jesus spoke about the different kinds of thirst.

When we shift from F2F, faith's not externally reliant for stimulus. It achieves satiation from within. Inside of ourselves there's, for example, an endless well of love that we can give away.

And it's the giving it away that gets us high. In fact, the more we give away, the more that springs up within us to give away, by design.

Fear is only concerned with what it can get, always feeling as though it needs more.

Faith, though, is about what it can give, knowing that there's plenty more where it comes from.

As David wrote, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing. ... He refreshes my soul. ... my cup overflows." (Psalm 23:1,2,5)

David knew that our eternal spring for peace, joy and happiness resided within.

Whenever we find ourselves sick with sorrow, grief, anxiety, regret...it'll always be traced back to having downshifted into a state of fear. And the fear will always take the form of desire.

Wanting things in and of itself isn't fear. It's just that fear can only create desire for external things. And when this desire leads the enemies of sorrow and grief into a person, it's because we either want something we don't have, or have something we don't want.

There's no other base cause. Realizing this, though, provides us with "actionable intel." As the fifth and sixth promises share, by helping others, giving to them what we desire, we'll receive it in turn within ourselves.

We'll be restored and sustained into eternity.

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Psalm 41:1-3

Blessed are those who have regard for the weak; the Lord delivers them in times of trouble. The Lord protects and preserves them--they are counted among the blessed in the land--He does not give them over to the desire of their foes. The Lord sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.

Preface

There's what a person said. And then there's how we interpret what they said.

Too often people hear the internal replay of a person's words, as its been (re)translated with newly assigned meaning, instead of having heard the person's actual words. Rarely do the two align.

The speaker would be right to ask for what's 'said' to be what's heard instead of what's interpreted by the listener.

Communication is one of the most important bridges for love. How can I say I love you if I choose to listen to my interpretations of what you're saying over what you're saying? To do that would only communicate to you that I don't care about what you're saying.

It's the same with reading.

Fear hears, or reads, what it wants or doesn't want, either in the worst possible way, or in a way that's most beneficial to only the self. It takes what's real and morphs it into illusion, in order to align with some narrative that serves the ego but ends up bringing misery and harm to the relationship, or to others in the world.

It's the source of misunderstanding. And actions born from misunderstanding can, at best, produce unwanted results, or, at worse, nuclear war. And then ego leads the person to blame others or God, blinding the person to the fact that their results were theirs alone. Fear says things like "I had no choice," reflecting the narrowed aspect of its thinking.

Faith, though, gets us closer to the source of original meaning. It's not weighed down by past negative events that those who're predominated by fear insist on holding onto and carrying with them into the conversation. Faith doesn't interpret events in the worst possible way, it doesn't hold on to past challenges, because it recognizes that all events, present and past, come out of, thus are created within God.

This is one of the most difficult aspects of faith, seeing things as they are instead of how we've been taught to interpret them.

But if something exists, it's a part of existence. And Existence is good. ("God saw all that He had made, and it was very good," Genesis 1:31.)

When we start out framing an event in this way, we orientate our minds and emotional states differently to the event than fear would.

First, we look to delve into it deeply, like treasure hunters searching for the golden nugget known to be hidden within. We're aware that this gold, a valuable message, is customized to our particular personal growth needs. And upon acquiring it, it'll change us in such a way to open us up to the opportunity to do something good for others in the world.

As has been famously observed, "A mind expanded by a new idea never returns to its original dimensions."

And then, second, there's no negative thing that ever "happened 'to' us." In the future from now we'll only come to remember the event as something that happened 'for' us, because by then we'll have experienced the 'why,' having allowed ourselves to. We will have come to know the joyfully inspiring results of the past event as seen in the eyes of our work in the hearts and minds of others of whom we've been in support.

Negative means, in essence, to negate, make less. Could love, or faith give power to darkness to make us less? If we do, our light dims, and darkness wins a little more ground in the battle for inches. The true power of love is in its ability to shine brighter when fear comes knocking, when fear throws from out of itself the nightmares it hopes will send us off screaming.

Fear responds to the nightmares by automatically assuming the worse. (To even call it "nightmare" is fear at work.) It's good at the knee-jerk reaction. And so it molds events into its assumptions, twisting into something terrible what's come to us as the clay intended for us to shape into a future good.

Though the event in and of itself may be a terrible act of darkness, if we use it to put into ourselves hate, it won.

Hate sends bullets that love catches, turning them into flowers.

To call the dark deeds that others may do good refers only to what we can turn them into. How else can light win?

What the devil intended for evil, God uses for good.

How would we interpret what happened to Jesus?

This is how many mistakenly throw back in God's face what He offers them as the answer to their prayers. They didn't recognize the packaging in which the answer came.

Fear demands that its prayers be answered in its preferred ways. And missing the answer over and over again, fear then erodes the mind of its host, filling the person with resentment toward God and the world because "He never answers prayer."

Fear threw every answer away.

Faith, though, allows for a more relaxed internal state of expectancy. Because we look at God first, each thing that comes into our life could be the answer we seek. And already knowing going in that God can only answer prayer in a way completely new and unexpected to us--how else are we to know its Him--we receive that which fear would deem as an unwanted challenge as our celebratory means to victory.

And as time passes, with hindsight, we're always shown how that unexpected thing ended up being the crucial step that led us to the next step we otherwise never would have achieved. And then from there, as they say, the rest is history.

We didn't get caught up with, and destroyed by, fear's misinterpretations.

We listened to what God said, instead of to what we wanted His words to mean.

And this made all the difference in the world.

In today's verse, when we 'blow it out' with its original Hebrew, like how Tony Stark from the Avengers would use augmented reality to "blow out" a mechanical device, such as an engine, in holographic fashion, in order to see how the individual parts relate to each other and work, we come to realize that what David meant by his words isn't necessarily the same meaning we'd get from them with only a surface reading of the English translation.

How could we? David's interpretations of his feelings and surrounding life events would be informed by very different considerations, as dictated by environmental and cultural conditions.

Our limited ability to get as close as we can to the message toward which his words point is best improved with some etymological digging. Such digging is an action of faith, a form of prayer in motion, to which the Spirit responds, leading us to the insights we were always intended to find.

For example, considering that meaningful details can get lost in translation, the first word of the first verse, "Blessed," when asked, people tend to define it in general materialistic terms, like "to be well provided for," or "to store up treasure in heaven," or "to be physically healthy and safe." But the actual word that was used here is 'eser.' This is Hebrew for 'happiness.' And it's used in the excited celebratory sense of "How Happy!" like we'd feel when re-uniting with a dear loved one after a time apart, or when being told there's no longer any trace of the cancer, or when the judge rules "immediate release," freeing the prisoner, or when winning the lottery.

This is what it meant to David to both possess the gift of 'sakal,' the intelligence to teach, guide, and be given the opportunity to help the 'dal,' poor, weak, oppressed, hungry and needy.

Fear in today's world internalizes itself into the anchoring weights that we call mistrust, cynicism, pessimism and hair-trigger impatience. These express themselves in the forms of annoyance, ridicule, anger and dismissiveness. If each was its own anchor, connecting separate chains to our soul, imagine how weighed down our Spirit would be.

If we were a boat intent on crossing the ocean of life, and our engine was enthusiasm, what toll would it take on our engine, trying to run at full throttle, dragging all those anchors behind us? How far would we get before giving up, losing faith due to fear's weight?

So imagine how few anchors David allowed himself to be weighed down by in order to have a level of enthusiasm that equated helping those in need with winning the lottery. But that's the thing: For David, it meant more than all the worldly treasure on earth.

First, he knew that by itself, money didn't protect him from anything. It doesn't bring our loved ones safely back to us after a long trip away. It doesn't cure cancer. It doesn't set the prisoner free.

Money doesn't cure the state of poverty that a person carries within them.

When it's sitting on the table, it does nothing.

Money's a manufactured thing given psychological meaning that holds only the reality of a synapse firing between two neurons. But even that firing is an event born from out of the source of all existence.

Without God, there'd be no neurons. No energy. And without that spark, money would hold less value than a plate of spaghetti.

We learn from David: those of us who're not weighed down by the world's anchors of fear; those of us who now consciously do the work of breaking free from the chains of limitation that we had unconsciously adopted when we didn't know any better; those of us who aspire to realize his enthusiasm for life, David teaches us that it's through such unfettered happiness that:

1) The Lord delivers us in times of trouble;

2) The Lord protects and preserves us;

3) We are counted among the blessed in the land;

4) We're not given over to the desire of our enemies; and,

5) The Lord sustains us on our sickbed;

6) He restores us from our bed of illness.

So no wonder why he was excited for the opportunity to align himself with God's wish to be of service to those in need.

But then there's how we interpret the words of these listed promises as we overlay them upon our individual life stories--the meaning we give them.

But what's the meaning they give us?

By first discovering their intended meaning, the one existing prior to our individual, temporary issues of the day, it's as though we've listened to God first, what He has to say, before listening to the track of our personal interpretive replay. Consequently, we start from a more sound foundation.

We're guided, instead of running ahead blinded by misunderstanding, careening alone headlong into a wall. We use patient mindfulness to move side by side with God, allowing His prompts and course corrections to lead us to exactly where our heart cries out for us to be.

It's a very brave way of surrender, one that fear will never be comfortable with.

In the first promise, "The Lord delivers us in times of trouble."

"Lord," in Hebrew, is YHWH, the self-Existent, or eternal. YHWH comes from 'haya,' meaning to 'come to pass.'

This means that David's telling us that we're delivered from trouble by the 'Existence that relies on nothing to exist, having no cause; the eternal, from out of which everything comes to pass; the first cause, upon which everything relies.

"Deliver" comes from 'malat,' which means to be smooth. This implies escaping by slipperiness, to release, rescue; specifically, to bring forth young, 'emit' sparks.

This would mean that the Lord delivers us from trouble like a doctor delivers a baby from the womb. To leave a baby in the womb past the time for delivery would cause the child to become distressed, suffocate and die.

What at first served the child, now threatens to kill it; if the child doesn't escape the womb, move into the next stage of life, it won't survive. And that transitional moment from old to new for those afraid can be terrifying, since fear fills the void of the unknown with nightmare imaginings. The worst source of misunderstandings.

What may have once been life providing--maybe the only home we've owned, job in which we've worked, person with whom we've been--has now become suffocating, seemingly killing us, or suddenly lost to us by events outside of our control.

The 'trouble' is telling us that it's time to be born anew. It's the spark we need to get fired up for life, to bring light and warmth to the world in a new way.

What's interesting is that when most people read the word 'trouble, they don't think "opportunity" for new opportunities. And they rarely read or hear it to mean what it actually means in the way it was communicated to us. Instead, people will project some current external event occurring in their life onto the word "trouble." But how does this say "I love you" to the One talking to us?

"Trouble," as its used here, comes from 'ra,' which translates directly into "bad," or evil. And other terms used for 'ra,' where 'ra' has been used throughout the bible, are 'distress,' 'grief,' 'hurt,' 'misery,' 'sad,' 'sorrow,' 'vex,' 'wicked.'

When put together, we realize that David's talking about being delivered from negative feelings. These are the enemies about which he most often wrote and sang being saved from.

The enemy within.

Why? Why would sadness and grief be synonymous with bad and evil? Because these are the things that the world, from the perspective of fear, drown themselves in.

Neurons that fire together wire together. The more times we fire a particular set of neurons the more we turn ideas into the reality of physical brain matter. We literally build it into ourselves.

It's like building a radio receiver. When fear builds the receiver's circuit-board from the material of grief, sorrow, misery, sadness, then it ends up being wired to receive only messages that speak that language.

Little to nothing else can get through.

God doesn't speak in the language of fear. It has nothing to do with who or what He is.

"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them."

"There is no fear in love."

This means, then, there's no fear in God.  Any moment a person's shifted down from faith into fear is a moment they've cut off their connection to God, like turning the radio dial, cutting off the broadcast we were just listening to.

"But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:16-18).

Ever have someone do something offensive and want to see them punished? If punishment comes only from fear, then where's the fear coming from? It doesn't come from God.

"The Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline" (2 Timothy 1:7).

Discipline over self includes taking responsibility for the type of 'thinking' we practice and the emotional states that only thinking creates. (We can't get an emotion without an underlying base thought.)

"We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5).

How? We make an internal commitment to catch ourselves whenever we start to ruminate on dark thoughts. Then we have some pre-planned thinking points on which we can redirect our focus. And, in support, we engage physical cues, calling on the body to help, such as smiling and standing, or sitting tall, with posture straight, shoulders rolled back.

If the negative thinking was triggered by something that someone bound by fear in the world said or did, we, first, remind ourselves that "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?" (Hebrews 13:6, quoting Psalm 118:6,7)

This reminds us that our point of focus determines the type of thinking and feeling we practice and wire within us.

Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. And the body doesn't know the difference between practicing a golf swing or a thought. The brain doesn't judge good or bad. It just does and builds into us what we tell it to, and it works hard to make us really good at what we do over and over again. Its system purposes to make our repeated behaviors into automatic responses, so that we don't need to use energy to think about it anymore. It says, "I got you. I'll make sure that anytime even "A" happens, according to your programming, I'll then make you feel emotion "B."

By reminding ourselves to become conscious about our point of focus; essentially, waking ourselves up in the middle of some habitual rumination, helps position us within ourselves in a way that "...the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."

We wire in a security system.

Then, being consciously, properly orientated with faith, "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things" (Philippians 4:7-8).

So that person we've allowed to rub us the wrong way, could it just be we've mis-interpreted the message of why they're in our life? Instead of practicing seeing them as a pain, what if we recognized them as the life coach God's provided, giving us opportunity to practice addressing that something within us that has the capability to feel that way?

Shifting perspective in this way from F2F sets us up to then, second, recognize that the person who said or did whatever they did was actually just crying out for help from within their bound state. It was an opportunity to see the person with eyes of the Spirit and for us to open our hearts to love.

It wasn't an opportunity to sink into insecurity, defensiveness and ruminations of hate or violence.

People, every single one of us, are walking, talking construction sites. Every moment we encounter another human being, we have to ask ourselves, "Am I going to tear this person down further, or contribute in some way toward building them up?"

When they're angry, what would light do to darkness if we saw their attacks as pain?

David, along with nearly every example of faith with which we've been provided, knew that the only enemy there could ever be to him was the enemy within. His thoughts and feelings determined his direction of focus. And he knew that putting himself in negative emotional states would create and draw to him expressions of those feelings in the world.

It was fear itself that sent David running back into the protective arms of faith.

Nothing external to him could ever be an actual threat for as long as he remained centered within.

"What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

In the second promise, we're told "The Lord protects and preserves us."

"Preserve" is translated from 'samar,' meaning to hedge about as with thorns, to guard.

In some countries, people build thorny hedges with which to surround themselves when camping, sleeping outside in the dark of night. In the middle of the enclosure they build up their fire. Together these keep them safe from predators.

A thorny hedge and a bright, warm light. The outside reflects the inside.

It's interesting that the governor's soldiers "...twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on [Jesus's] head" (Matthew 27:29). Though fear intended it to mock, faith recognizes it as 'samar,' a hedge of thorns surrounding His mind, guarding His thoughts from those around Him. They could only attack the body, but He could maintain His focus within, unaffected, held on faith and love.

Jesus knew the only enemy would be thoughts that negated love toward those around Him who were so clearly trapped in fear's terrible pain. So He did what He had to in order for them, and all of us, to have a way to break ourselves free from fear's violent pageantry.

We see how much pain they carried within themselves by how much they poured out onto Jesus.

'Samar' is synonymous with 'haya,' which means 'to live.' It's used to keep alive, recover, repair, restore, to save life. This is what Jesus accomplished by guarding His thoughts. Imagine what it would do in our own lives.

*****************************

Part II will be provided tomorrow. Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear from you.

God's blessing in and around you...

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Psalm 37: 39-40

The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord; He is their stronghold in time of trouble. The Lord helps them and delivers them; He delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in Him.

Preface

Fear has a way of infusing people with a degree of panic. No matter its level of intensity, when people are generally predominated by fear, there's always this low-grade background vibration of panic within them.

This state warps their sense of time. They're like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, always late, rushing to nowhere.

Fear makes it seem like there's not enough time for anything. One of its favorite lines is "I don't have time for that." It often says this quickly, as a way to fight against and keep themselves blind to the truth.

Fear wants nothing to do with reason. It just wants things done in the fastest, easiest, least demanding and least annoying way.

So, it hurries through everything, missing and messing up details every step of the way. Because of this, people often have to work harder, longer, while still getting less done, due to the rework they end up having to do.

But what happens when they fail to mind the details associated with maintaining their relationships? Or the lives they build that other people may in some way depend on, like with their job, or a company they've built?

Conversely, faith's operating philosophy is "Take your time. Be patient. Mind the details. Do it right the first time." Faith achieves a deep sense of satisfaction from building life in this way.

When today's verses are expanded by their original Hebrew, we're provided with greater insight and understanding. Re-written with the Hebrew, David is telling us:

The 'tesu a,' personal and spiritual deliverance; the victory over and freedom from trouble, for the 'sadiq,' just and lawful people who keep their reputation clean, comes from 'YHWH,' the eternal, self-Existent breath of life.

He is their 'ma uz,' strong, fortified defensive fortress, which is 'azaz,' firm, brave and enduring, when feeling 'sara,' distressed from being closed-in emotionally, whether from imagining something going wrong, or from some adversary found out in the world.

'YHWH,' the eternal, self-Existent breath of life--existence itself--'azar,' surrounds and provides aid to 'sadiq,' the just, lawful people of integrity, helping them 'palat,' slip away and escape the 'rasa,' bad people who do wrong and make trouble.

'YHWH' opens the 'sadiq' within, making them wide in heart and mind, resulting in victory and safety, because they 'hasa,' boldly, confidently; even, carelessly, confide and unquestioningly place their trust in Him.

When we unquestioningly trust in someone, we don't give a second thought to whether they'll somehow let us down or do something wrong. We don't even consider 'how' they will be there for us or will carry out the task with which we've trusted them. We just know that we can count of them, that they'll be there, and they'll get the job done.

As we would for them.

We have faith in them, because they've never let us down before. They've consistently shown themselves reliable, whether as a family member, spouse, dear friend, employee, or co-worker.

This level of blind, bold, careless confidence represents a loving, patient and powerful faith. It's built from making a deep connection with someone, getting to know them through real-life experiences.

Psalm 37 provides us with numerous side-by-side comparisons of faith and fear. It shows us what they look like, giving us real-life examples of how they're expressed, from the emotions we feel to the behavior's others display.

But the overarching message David's giving to us is similarly analogized by the story of the tortoise and the hare.

Faith operates from a disciplined, slow, steady pace. It's focused on doing things in a way that'll ensure they last. At its purest, when in action, Faith is methodical. It minds the details, refusing to compromise and leave accumulated gains in life vulnerable, exposed to collapse and loss.

Fear doesn't operate like this at all. First and foremost, it's both lazy and greedy. This represents a life-destroying combination. It drives people to move fast, in short bursts, usually taking advantage of short-term gains. But these come at the expense of long-term, lasting results. Fear justifies unscrupulous behavior, shortcuts and dis-honest dealings to get ahead.

And in the short-term, it may appear that they, like the hare, get way out ahead. Fear builds up money, collects the big-boy toys, and, by all appearances, creates an extravagantly lavish lifestyle.

But they've lost all integrity. Bridges were burned. Their social circle narrows to hyenas, feeding off of the scraps of their life while they await their chance to take it all.

The gains came fast at the expense of longevity. The details weren't minded. The head of a certain crypto-currency fund comes to mind. What looks big, beautiful on the outside, like Swiss cheese, it ends up being ripe with gaping holes within. Moreover, everything is built on shifting sand.

It's only a matter of time before it all comes crumbling down.

"I have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a luxuriant native tree, but he soon passed away and was no more; though I looked for him, he could not be found" (37:35-36).

This is why David tells us to not fret (become angry), or to be envious of those who acquire material wealth, or the promotion, or favor, by doing wrong.

Anger and envy are expressions of their own kind of fear. Anger says that I don't trust that they'll be held accountable. Or that our faith lacks, believing that we can't win against them doing things the right way.

Envy is just anger wearing a different mask. It's born from frustration at having to do things the right way to get the things we want from life, hating how much longer the right way seems to take.

Fear focuses in on the immediate short term. From such a perspective, fear creates internal dialogue points based on "it not being fair."

But God through David is encouraging us to broaden our perspective. We're being told that there's nothing to worry about. On the one hand, fear's rapid short-term gains do not mean that faith's way isn't going to succeed doing it the right way. And on the other hand, when we truly think about it, how "Existence" works, fear's way of doing things is going to run into all sorts of trouble.

Those who operate from fear live for the moment with no eye to the future and no consideration of how many people they're hurting and will hurt.

In faith, we see the truth clearly. We don't want to work so hard to build a family, a home, or a business, and risk every step of the way having it all fall apart.

Faith is smart. Its expanded and fearless perspective rejoices in wisdom. And for those who connect to this in a real way, realizing firsthand the comparative truth of it, "in times of disaster they will not wither; in days of famine, they will enjoy plenty" (37:19).

Faith is future oriented. So, it builds in today what will outlast us tomorrow.

So "do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes" (37:7). There's no need to. Time will take care of them.

"Trust in YHWH [Existence] and do good" (37:3), and "wait patiently for Him" (37:7).

Stay the course. Slow and steady. And as surely as we breathe, we'll win the race.

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Psalm 34:4,6,17-194

"I sought the Lord, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.

6. "This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; He saved him out of all his troubles.
17-19. "The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all...."

Preface

We all have troubles. Some more than others. They're a natural part of life. There are internal troubles, like a troubled heart or spirit. Our minds may trouble us with worrisome thinking. And there are troubles we encounter in the world, for example, like the ones born from buying into the "Rat Race" of getting into debt and erroneously believing our home is an asset, having positioned ourselves to be unable to cover the cost of unexpected expenses, like the car breaking down.

There are health troubles from working a job we hate, sitting most hours of every day, eating unhealthy food, exercising little, or not at all.

But there are troubles we had no role in creating.

It's important that we're able to discern the source of our troubles. By gaining this ability, we better position ourselves internally when we're ready to shift in the moment from F2F.

We'll understand what troubles are calling for us to make a personal change in our attitude or behavior, and from what troubles God will save us.

David was being pursued by Saul. Fleeing from Saul, David "went to Achish king of Gath" for help. This was where the Philistines resided. But upon being captured by Achish's servants, David learned that he'd get more trouble from Achish than help. So, when he was taken to the king, David "...pretended to be insane...he acted like a madman..." resulting in Achish wanting nothing to do with David. (1 Samuel 22:10-15)

After his release, David wrote Psalm 34 (an acrostic poem, the verses of which begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet).

God promises great and many blessings to us. But most of these promises require that we do our part. As Psalm 34 outlines:
1) God will set us free from fear (34:4,6),2) deliver us from shame (34:5),3) guard and defend us (34:7),4) show us His goodness (34:8),5) supply us with what we need (34:9),6) listen when we cry out to Him (34:15),7) and redeem us (34:22).

We open ourselves to the receipt of God's blessings when we:
A) trust Him (34:4,10);B) cry out to Him (34:6,17);C) take refuge in Him (34:8);D) reverence Him over fearing the world (34:7,9);E) refrain from lying (34:13);F) Turn from the type of things people do from the place of fear, and instead do good works, make good decisions and value peace over drama or conflict (34:14);G) are brokenhearted, humble (34:18);H) and serve those who need help (34:22).

If we go to work, expecting to be paid, but refusing to do any work, what do we think is going to happen? Or do we expect others to do for us what we refuse to do for anyone else? The system of life is in and of God. So why would God work differently?

God will either offer escape from trouble or assistance in times of trouble for those who call on Him. But what does it mean to call on Him?

God's always right there, ready, waiting for us to turn our attention away from the trouble and toward Him for help. As soon as we make that shift within, everything within us and around us changes, whether we see the initial machinations of the change or not.

Our shift of attention toward God is in and of itself an action of faith.

First, the shift to a state of faith pulls us up and out of the negative emotional turmoil occurring within us. This provides an objective, expanded view of the trouble we find ourselves faced with. It's the difference between standing waist deep in quicksand, sinking fast, and being pulled out and up by a Coast Guard helicopter, suddenly having the view of the whole landscape. Elevated, we're given the ability to see where the dangerous areas are, allowing us to avoid them.

Second, the faith action of looking for help from God, kills ego within us in that moment. In its place, humble vulnerability rushes in. But too this creates the faith-based environment, the heart position, in and from which God can operate.

It's how we align ourselves with God and give him permission to move in our lives in a specific moment to address a specific issue.

But this only works when the trouble arises from us living some portion of our lives in support of others from a place of love, or if the trouble we're encountering isn't a direct consequence of seeds we've sown.

"Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:7-9).

We recently read about when David sowed from the flesh. He slept with another man's wife, Bathsheba. When she became pregnant, David had her husband, Uriah, killed. When God, through Nathan, called David out for his sins, he said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord."

First, to cause harm to any human being, or to benefit self at the expense of another person, is no different than doing these things against God.

We are Him. He is us.

Nathan replied, "The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die" (2 Samuel 12:13-14).

This isn't something God did to the son born to David. This is something that happened because of what David did. It was a consequence of David's actions. God's outside of time. He sees past, present, future as one. God let David know before it happened (from David's perspective) what has already happened (from God's perspective). God wanted David to understand that his selfish behavior has unintended, unwanted, unforeseeable consequences.

God didn't want David to fail to connect the baby's death to David's misdeeds.
And to the point of discerning prayer, "David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. ...he would not eat any food...."

"On the seventh day the child died" (2 Samuel 12:16-18).

All the pleading, fasting, self-abuse in the world will not, necessarily, stop from happening the direct consequences of our actions. This is especially true if there's no sincere commitment to never behave in the same way in the future.  ("Sincere commitment" is not defined by empty promises born from out of strongly felt emotions that result solely from wanting to avoid unwanted consequences.")

Today many pleadings to God take the form of wanting to not take responsibility for one's actions. It's the prayer of the adulterer committed to cheating, but not wanting to lose their family. The criminal committed to breaking the law, not wanting to go to prison. The partier wanting to score some drugs, not wanting to be robbed, beaten, taken advantage of by the dealer.

Such pleadings are like farmers sowing acorns, but crying out to God for tomato plants, not wanting oak trees to show up in their lives. And then they keep sowing acorns, getting angrier and angrier at God for all the oak trees.

These aren't the type of prayers represented in today's verses. Instead, their message lets us know that, on the one hand, when the righteous seek, call or cry out for help, they'll be heard and find the help they need. The righteous are those who live responsibly, from the "3 L" place of light, life and love, but find themselves suddenly, undeservedly poor, brokenhearted, or crushed in spirit.

On the other hand, in this same Psalm, David writes "Evil will slay the wicked" (34:21).

Verse 19 doesn't say "The wicked person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all." This would violate the law that "God cannot be mocked."

The direct consequences of our actions are God's angels whom we encounter along the path we're on while we're in the throes of the underlying drivers of those actions. They show up, as they must, as statements of God's love. The consequences are warnings that attempt to get us to course correct.

I've lived God's attempts to help me redirect my steps, ignoring them all until I couldn't any longer.

Imagine rafting down a lazy river. We find it boring, too slow. So, we enter a side branch of the river, the current of which is much faster. We see a sign that says, "Rocks Ahead," but we're having too much fun to stop. We ignore the sign and crash. But we suffered only minor bumps and bruises. We thought, 'That wasn't so bad,' not getting the gist of the message.

We jump back in our raft, wade back into the chaotic waters. The white-water increases, the current speeding up. Another sign comes into view, "Twenty Foot Drop Ahead." But we're still having too much fun. We ignore it. The fall nearly drowns us, but we survive. Instead of gaining insight or wisdom, we become emboldened, arrogant.

Over time conditions become rougher, more dangerous. Then we see "Waterfall Ahead." Our ego's cultivated false sense of invincibility carries us right over the edge, to permanent injury. Now we're a paraplegic.

We spend the rest of our time afterward doing what? Blaming God, angry He didn't at least give us a warning sign? Would that seem insane? It happens every single day. Or do we take responsibility for our actions, want something more profound for our lives? Commit to and allow God to do a good work inside of and through us?

Along the entire river's route there were turn outs, endless options to get off the path to the waterfall. But the "fun" was all we allowed our mind's eye to see. And pride went before a fall.

Praying to God to remove His angels is to pray for Him to divide Himself against Himself. It's the equivalent of asking the gears in a finely constructed watch to stop doing what their very nature was designed to do. The warnings are part of God's system. They're a part of the creation of everything.

Not wanting to be warned or redirected from the path to misery and death would be the same as not wanting the earth to revolve around the sun.

Parents may provide their kids with money for them to buy drugs, because the parents have confused fear and avoidance of conflict with love. But God actually loves us, suffering from no such confusion.

So, by bringing an informed, mindful approach to prayer, we can ask why is this trouble coming at me? If it's of our own making, we confess our wrongdoing, say we're sorry and accept our forgiveness completely (once and forever). And then we commit to never falling short in that way again. Then we can accept the punishment or ask for help through it and for strength to endure. But if the trouble truly has nothing to do with us, or anything we've sown into the world, then God's word rules. Cry out, look to Him, expecting the trouble to be removed. And it will be.

If we've done something wrong, and we sincerely realize the error of our ways and commit to a life of contribution, putting action to faith will move God's heart. He'll see the truth of our heart, and alleviate the punishment, lessening it, or taking it away altogether. This will allow us to write a song, maybe one from out of how we live our lives from that point forward. Another song that serves to inspire new generations to come.

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Psalm 32:7

You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

Preface

Often when we read of the praise given for having received deliverance from enemies, we're actually reading about people's gratitude to God for helping them get through internal emotional pain and freeing them from it.

Having less external distractions to use to escape from being mindful of life in the moment, people from the bible were connected to their internal states. They felt deeply and gave their feelings meaning. They used their feelings to let them know how things were in their lives. And they recognized that if things weren't right within, then things would not be right in the world around them. They took responsibility for their feelings and for the effects of negative feelings on themselves and their communities.

Today people ignore, bury, repress, power through negative feelings. Or they spread it like an ideological virus. But rarely do they consider their meanings. And chaos soon ensues.

David knew the adverse effects that guilt would have on a person. He recognized it as he is having disconnected himself from God, making him incredibly vulnerable to the world. Consequently, he would accept any amount of punishment, pay any restitution, do whatever he had to do to return to peace.

Guilt is a destructive force that demands we free ourselves from or be destroyed by it. And the only way to be free is through forgiveness. And the only way to know we're forgiven is by faith.

When expanded, today's verse reads:

You 'satar,' hide me by covering me. Your concealment 'sitra,' serves as my protection. You will 'nasar,' be my guard, watching out for and protecting me. You make sure I'm able to persevere when I've 'sar,' allowed fear to make me narrow minded, emotionally compressing myself into a tight, cramped place within my mind and heart.

You keep my heart from hardening into stone, preventing me from starting fires, or causing harm.

You 'sabab,' surround me and turn me away from fear back to faith, helping me change the direction of my attention from that which torments me, back to looking at you. And when I do, I 'ron,' shout for joy, delivered from the pain I felt. Having 'pallet,' escaped the suffering I endured, being free from the prison of my emotional torment, I 'ranan,' sing for joy.

David was racked with guilt for his horrible misdeeds against Bathsheba and Uriah. (2 Samuel 11-12)

Uriah was one of David's soldiers. The only good thing Uriah had was his service as an honorable soldier and his wife, Bathsheba. David, walking atop the palace roof, saw Bathsheba bathing. Finding her beautiful, he sent someone to learn who she was.

Though he was told that she was married to Uriah, he didn't care. He chose his lust over what was right. David slept with her.

Bathsheba became pregnant. She told David. And so he conspired to have Uriah killed, so David could have her to himself.

God was not happy about this.

Through the prophet, Nathan, God told David, "I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in His eyes?"

Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord."

It's important that, when shown the wrong he'd committed, David immediately acknowledged that he had sinned. Though he committed the sin in secret, when confronted he didn't compound the sin by lying and trying to cover things up. He also didn't try to make justifications or excuses, claiming some sort of special privilege as king.

David knew that if anyone should have known better, it was him.

This is why people tend to be far more upset when politicians, judges and the police break the law. Not only do we recognize from history that one unchecked abuse of power can and most likely will lead to another, but we also expect more from them. When legislators and representatives of the law break the law, we're aware that they have a more profound understanding of what they're doing.

The law purposes to protect and serve all of us by being the written representation of how we can protect and serve ourselves and others. It's from the law we're able to build the social contract between us all, allowing us to establish a general sense of trust and integrity amongst ourselves. This, in turn, gives us the sense of safety that allows us to function in society.

If no one felt safe, no one would leave their house. No work would get done. There'd be no progress. Society would collapse.

David's actions did more than just destroy the innocence of Bathsheba and cause the death of a faithful, honorable man. As God's representative to God's people, David's selfishness risked all the people of Israel and Judah losing faith in him. This could have caused many to turn from God, choosing to think, "If the king, God's own, can do it, then so can I." Then rape, murder, or who knows what crimes would have spread.

But the evil done in the dark, God brought into to the light, and used it for something good.

David took responsibility for his actions. This did not mean he avoided punishment. He was punished severely. But the only punishment he fasted and prayed in hopes of avoiding was the loss of the child born from his transgression.

He did not fast, pray toward avoiding the other punishments that would be lodged against him.

This revealed that, though he committed horrible actions, he wasn't beyond redemption. In his remorse he thought of others before himself.

David did all he could to make things right. He revealed his sincerity of spirit with remorse in action, resulting in him being forgiven. And he never committed acts like that again.

With forgiveness came freedom from guilt.

Guilt is a terrible thing. It's caused more evil in the world than any other force on the planet. Throughout the bible it is recognized as the primary thing from which people must be broken free.

All of the bible, all of life, is based on the choice between light and dark, faith and fear. When we operate in the light from faith, life just gets better and better. Then we're positioned and motivated to help others. But for those who operate in darkness from fear, life just gets worse. And they end up only making life worse for others.

But the one thing, the universal principle that runs as an unbroken thread from the first verse in the bible to the last, is forgiveness.

Initially, light and faith was maintained by keeping the law. The law was external to people, appealing more to their minds, rather than their hearts. The old covenant Titans of faith loved the law, rightfully so. They made the connection between keeping within its boundaries and the incredibly rewarding life that resulted. But being human, they still fell short of the mark.

As we all do.

There are moments when we all choose dark over light, fear over faith. These moments may represent minor transgressions, or serious breaches of the social contract. But in either case, the only option those in the Old Testament had to atone and be forgiven was to conduct an animal blood sacrifice, or the killing of the perpetrator of some crime.

Washing away sin with animal blood would come with the unwanted side effect of creating a psychological dichotomy that could not be sustained in the long-term. It was a placeholder until people evolved their understanding enough for them to be ready to receive the originally intended sacrifice. Animals were simulation before the real thing.

First, it was only when people were told what not to do when sin rose up in them to do it. "Through the law we become conscious of our sin" (Romans 3:20).

"For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting" (Romans 7:7-8).

Being careful to not do a thing directs the mind toward the thing. And what we seek we find. What we give attention to, grows in our minds. And where the mind flows, the body goes.

Second, the law "can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all and would have no longer felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins" (Hebrews 10:1-4).

The most important observation is, "...and would have no longer felt guilty...."

Guilt is fear on steroids, and more psychologically corrosive than any emotional state in the human condition. People use it to turn from the light in shame and 'punish' themselves as unforgivable in the dark. Only ego says things like "unforgivable." It's the mindset of extreme arrogance to say that God's incapable of forgiving, considering what He sacrificed "once for all" to be forgiven.

Guilt is a common tool used by the enemy to render the light in a person useless, preventing them from using it to help others. The devil wants people to spend as much time as possible beating themselves up over something, keeping them as far away from forgiveness as possible, while they marinate in guilt, like soaking their soul in a vat of acid. And once in the dark, a downward spiral ensues that tends to turn people toward murder, either via suicide or against others.

Forgiveness is guilt’s only cure.

Like a curse, guilt was known in the days of old to be avoided at all cost. No one sane wanted anything to do with it.

When Isaac lied to Abimelek, saying his wife was his sister, Abimelek asked why he lied. What if someone had slept with her, "and you would have brought guilt upon us" (Genesis 26:18).

Regarding the guilt of murder, the only thing that could remove it was to kill the person who committed the murder.

"Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it" (Numbers 35:33).

"You must purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood..." (Deuteronomy 19:13).

And guilt isn't just something suffered by the murderer. It was also something that's suffered by the victim's family members. "...clear me and my whole family of the guilt of the innocent blood that Joab shed" (I Kings 2:31).

But as things evolved, "then the bloodshed will be atoned for, and you will have purged from yourselves the guilt of shedding innocent blood, since you have done what is right in the eyes of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 21:9).

Guilt was, and remains today, something that must be avoided at all costs.

David said, in regard to his sin with Bathsheba and against Uriah, "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer" (Psalm 32:3-4).

"Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.' And you forgave the guilt of my sin."

Guilt made him feel as though his bones had wasted away. Guilt made him groan in pain all day long. And when he shifted from fear (of being found out, of being held accountable and embarrassed), to faith (that God would forgive, heal him of his pain and balance the scales of justice again by holding him accountable), David's guilt of the sin was forgiven.

Guilt was the trouble from which God protected David. The revelation that confession removed the guilt forever, brought David to shout in joy, singing songs about his deliverance.

He was punished. He did all he could to make amends. But, beyond these, guilt nearly destroyed him. He wanted to be whole again, one with God in love and with the people.

David wanted trust and integrity to be restored.

This moment in time was revelatory, as an evolution in human understanding.

First God proclaimed to Moses that his loving nature is forgiveness.

"And [the Lord] passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, 'The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness...forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin'" (Exodus 34:6-7).

Usually, such forgiveness came after ceremonial blood sacrifices of animals.

Then it's revealed to David that confession alone is enough, the precursor to faith, not works, as that which forgives.

And then "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). The last blood sacrifice was given once for all, for always afterward. And He whose innocent blood was shed, was shed to atone for the blood of all innocent blood spilled, providing the means through faith for all lands to be purged of guilt.

1) To Moses, God proclaimed He was forgiveness;

2) To David, God revealed His forgiveness through confession alone; and then,

3) To the disciples, and all of humanity, God forgave through the sacrifice of his Son.

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).

One of the consequences of David's actions was God was going to have done to David publicly, in the light of day, what he had done in secret. He accepted this without question or complaint, ready to do whatever necessary to make amends and return to the light.

This stands in contrast to those stuck in the dark by fear. Fear doesn't want its deeds exposed. Not only do people in the dark try to avoid the consequences of their actions, but they avoid facing what they had done and feeling guilty. (See John 3:19)

Fear keeps them bound in the dark. But faith in love and compassion keeps us free in the light. And when we're free within, we're able to help others likewise find their way from the dark to the light. Our examples, like David's; our songs of joy, are their lighthouses, showing them how to avoid the rocks and find their back way home.

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Psalm 31: 6-8

...as for me, I trust in the Lord. I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul. You have not given me into the hands of the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place.

Preface

If we knew that bullies only saw their own fear and insecurities inside of us, and it was those things, not us, they were attacking, would we be more inclined to try to change the minds of the bullies, or change the fear within us?

What if, by changing our internal state, they no longer could see themselves in us? They no longer had anything they could attack.

David faltered in his faith, which invited people to talk behind his back, plot and conspire against him. At first, he looked at them, considered their whisperings, and fell deeper into fear. This made them more emboldened, like wolves sensing the terror of prey. But, realizing what was happening, he changed his internal state, shifting back to faith. And, to the bullies, David disappeared. To David, the bullies vanished as if they'd never existed in the first place.

When we expand today's verse with the original Hebrew, David's telling us:

As for me, boldly, with confidence, I 'batah,' quickly step into you, God, my refuge, in faith; I do not run away from my enemies in fear. I then 'gil,' spin around, brighten and become happily lighthearted in your 'hesed,' the beauty of your lovingkindness, for in my piety you 'hasad,' treat me as an equal.

You saw my 'oni,' depression, how miserable I was, and you knew the 'sara,' the tightness of my 'nepes,' breath, the difficulty I had breathing. You did not give me into the 'yad,' hands of the enemy, saving me from being overtaken and controlled by idol worshippers. You have led my 'regel,' feet, giving me the strength to endure this emotionally challenging time in my life's journey.

You've expanded the 'merhab,' space, within and around me, giving me the freedom to relax and breathe.

People spoke against David behind his back. They whispered amongst themselves in the dark, conspiring to take David's life. They spoke arrogantly against him, making false accusations and telling lies against him.

These idol worshipers started a campaign against David, against faith, attempting to weaken his position so to be able to set traps against him.

David's enemies were the worst kind of bullies, cowards who plotted together behind the scenes. Exemplifying their true lack of faith, and the fear that controlled them, they were incapable of coming at David face to face.

Considering the life of faith that David led, and all he did as a representative of God and His people, when David learned about what these evil people were doing, initially it hit him hard. He felt shattered, saying "I have become like broken pottery" (31:12). This is the type of thing that would occur to someone who deeply cares about others; to someone who feels betrayed.

It looks like David had at first fell victim to the evil of fear, being nearly overcome by its Sirens anguish, distress, sorrow and grief. In this state, his eyes began to fail (31:9). Fear's debilitating affect, the narrowing of vision, would have been particularly devastating for someone like David. His faith had long provided him with an expanded view of love and light. Fear would have felt like being cut from God...from himself.

He observed, "In my alarm I said, 'I am cut off from Your sight!'"

Fear "blinked" David out of God's sight, and into the sight of David's enemies.

David's strength began to fail, his bones grew weak (31:10).

In his emotionally compromised state, David's enemies responded with contempt, openly despising him, no doubt judging him weak. They would have seen this as their opportunity.

And David's closest friends, instead of being there for him, reacted with dread. Where faith would have held their eyes and hearts open, allowing them to see a human being, a dear friend in need, fear instead turned their eyes inward, thinking only about what would David's state mean for them, what they may lose.

They were worried about the wrong thing.

But David, being David, didn't stay shattered for long. He shifted from F2F and did the work of faith to put the pieces of himself back together again.

First, he cried out for help. Not so much for God's help with the enemies. That would be externally minded. In faith, they don't justify our focus. David knew that he needed help with that which would reignite the source of his connection--faith.

So, he put his hope in the Lord. From hope, he sang God's praises, which sprung open within David a familiar love, like turning back on a living fountain.

Then, right when the enemy surrounded David, closing in on him, God showed him the wonder of His love.

And once more in the shelter of God's presence, God hid David, as he hides us, from the people who, if they could see us, would want to do us harm.

If people are talking behind our backs, telling lies about us, making false accusations, it's one thing to ask "Why," but faith makes "Why" a rhetorical question. Because in faith we realize that negative gossip is how we're initially warned that our faith is slipping. It's like an alert, letting us know that our internal state is dimming, making us register on the radar of those who reside in the dark of fear.

It's an opportunity. Not one to feed the fire of fear by becoming defensive, personalizing the behavior of others as an attack. Nor is it opportunity to start to envision what horrible things that our would-be tormenters may do to us. Only the ego sees and speaks in this way. And if we go directly at people who're more possessed by ego than love, they recognize this behavior as their language. They see it as an invitation to escalate.

Feeding darkness with darkness makes it grow. It only makes things worse.

Faith shows that they don't know what they're doing. Recognizing this provides opportunity for the elevated perspective of love, as Stephen revealed when, while being stoned, he said, "Hold not this sin against them," or when Jesus, being crucified, said "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." These enemies, clay pots shattered by fear, they have no clue why they treat others the way they do. They're blinded in the dark, driven to chaos by their own pain.

So, no. Instead, the alert is an opportunity to do some soul searching. Have we become so busy with work and life demands that we've neglected our bridge of communication with God?

The world's insidious. It seeps in through the cracks formed by neglect. And given enough time, the bridge's integrity weakens.

Yes, it'll give us warnings, like people's negative attention suddenly shifting toward us, or through close calls where harm or death could have occurred (but, notably, did not).

If we recognize the external as the arrows they are, pointing to the internal, we'll go within and do the repair work.

We'll make the bridge strong again.

Otherwise, the bridge will eventually collapse from the weight of the world's fear that accumulatively came in and built up on top of it. Then we'll blink out of God's sight, so to speak, fear not being in nor of God, it hiding us from him. Correspondingly, we'll suddenly find ourselves vulnerable in the dark, people and events conspiring to surround and snuff us out, like the last vestiges of a candle's flame.

Thankfully David provides us with his example. We're all human. We all get caught up, take things for granted at times, and forget. But it's good to know, when things start to go wrong, when trouble brews on the horizon, that we've been given the ability to recognize it for what it is, that we've veered off path, are able to course correct and make the shift. We can put our hope in love, change our internal state. As David did, and Jesus, we commit our spirit into God's hands. And in doing so, the external world changes with us, our light dispelling the dark, creating around us a safe zone, a spacious place.

And then we're free and safe again.

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Psalm 27:5

"For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock."

Preface

On any day when someone, spoiled, made evil by having been broken to pieces, walks into the vicinity of our lives with the intent of causing trouble, we won't be afraid. Why? Because we'll be in faith. Within ourselves, inside the tabernacle of God that is the human body, we will be hidden and elevated, standing high on a firm, unshakable foundation.

When we look at the Hebrew and Greek meanings comprising the words of today's verse, this is what we're being told. It's teaching us about internal states.

People who interact with the world from a position of fear will interpret life's challenging events in the worst possible ways. Fear personalizes, internalizes, defining things as being unwanted attacks. Fear blames, condemns and uses loss as an excuse to hate others, the world and God. Fear says, "I'm good and right. Everyone else is bad and wrong." It believes that no one can be trusted.

Fear thinks in terms of having "taken hits," and each "hit" has broken some aspect of the person's belief in 'good.' Each hit's narrowed the person's perspective down to tunnel vision, seeing every person as a threat and every opportunity as another chance for something else to go wrong, to not work out.

Such a person walking through the world is a powder keg, ready to "go off" on anyone at any moment. They carry anger in their posture and on the look of their face. Seeing their seething when they walk into a room, people notice that something's "off," saying "Here comes trouble."

But for people who interact with the world from a position of faith, they interpret life's challenging events in the best of possible ways. Faith shows how the things that happen occur outside of ourselves. Most events would have happened even if we didn't exist, or if we weren't there to witness them. Where fear puts itself in the middle of drama and opinionates on everything that happens within the vicinity of the five senses, faith sees God and extricates itself from the situation, having no opinion at all.

Faith knows that events can happen independently of ourselves. Faith doesn't allow for the narrowness of perspective that would make someone think that they're the hero or victim of their own story--the center of the universe. Faith sees that we're all part of something bigger, and none of its personal. Everything is temporary.

There's no hate outside of human fear. Only people turn the fear they choose into hate.

But from faith...it just opens things up inside.

We can see an event, or encounter a person, that occurs or does something that, in fear's eyes, would be deemed disrespectful. Then in a knee-jerk reaction, vision narrows, seeing only the event, framing it in terms of hate. Next, fear produces and directs a movie reel of fantasy, imagining scenes of revenge, or the most horrible of things happening to the person.

But for those of us who've made it a point to practice faith, right in the midst of the movie we can hear the Spirit of light whisper, "Hey." Then we, our true self, can awaken to ourselves. We turn the ego off. Vision expands, letting God fit into the frame. Our mind and hearts open up to love. We can then "look" at the underlying fuel that went into the creation of the dangerous ruminations. We can see these residual effects of the sickness with which the world's fear infected us. And then we send love to our heart and mind, making our light within brighter, burning more of the darkness away.

Maybe the sickness is a result of having taken some hits in life. At the time, not knowing any better, we mis-interpreted the events. If our soul was a clay pot, we'd feel like we'd been shattered. But when we make the shift; especially, in real time, the light of life re-assembles the pieces of us. And it's in that process we come to recognize the brokenness within the person who disrespected us, and so many others who're lost in the world. We realize that they'd only just been telling us that they're hurting too.

Our pain drew us together. Looking for trouble can be defined as searching for help.

The Hebrew word for "Trouble" is 'ra,' which means 'bad' or 'evil.' This is taken from 'ra a,' to 'spoil' by 'breaking' to pieces.

Another way to read today's verse would be: On any day when someone who's been spoiled and made evil by having been broken to pieces walks into the vicinity of my life, they won't be able to see me. God will hide and elevate me within the house of God.

There's a formula operating behind the scenes of each and every one of our lives. It's mathematical in nature, a law that's universally present. If written out it would look like: E x (R+-) = R(squared). If spoken, it would sound like: Event multiplied by Response (whether positive or negative) Equals Results (squared). (The Results are the life consequences of the response chosen.)

From the Spirit we get faith. First and foremost, faith generates love in response to any event. From the elevated position of faith-produced love, we manifest characteristics of God that are recognized as values. These values take the names of: Unity, acceptance, tolerance, forbearance, patience, compassion, loving kindness, expansion, edification, creativity and contribution.

The primary tool of the enemy is the ego. It's from the ego that we get fear. First and foremost, fear generates judgment, the opposite of love, in response to any event. It's from the lowered position of fear-produced judgment that we manifest the characteristics of having spoiled ourselves, these being recognized as valueless. We label these characteristics as: divisive, rejection, intolerance, impatience, inhumane, hateful, contractive and isolating, destructive, denigration, stagnation and parasitic.

As the saying goes, "United we stand, divided we fall." Put another way, Love builds up and stands on firm footing, judgment tears down, crumbling atop a foundation of shifting sands.

"Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand" (Matthew 12:25). (See Also Mark 3:24-25; Luke 11:17.)

Addressing divisions, Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, saying "I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that...there be no divisions among you...." From their divided state, they quarreled among themselves, in response to which Paul asked, "Is Christ divided?" (1 Corinthians 1:10-11,13)

If not, then it's impossible to be both divided within oneself and in Christ.

Paul continued, having observed that "What we have received is not the spirit of the world [fear], but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us" (1 Corinthians 2:12).

It's an informative contrast, then, that Paul goes on to say, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in 'evil' but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails" (1 Corinthians 12:4-8).

To repeat, "Love does not delight in evil." The word 'evil' here is translated from the Greek 'kakos,' which, when directly translated into English, means 'worthless.' It's the same word used for: 'bad,' 'harm' and 'ill.'

'Kakos,' in Hebrew, is 'ra.' This is another way of saying that love does not delight in 'displeasure,' 'distress,' 'grief,' 'misery,' 'sadness' or 'sorrow'--all words translated from both 'ra' and 'kakos'. 'Ra' also means these states are "Good for nothing." We're to "hate what is evil; cling to what is good" (Romans 12:9).

First, nowhere in these translations do we see 'people' listed. The list only includes negative emotional states of being and attitudes. "Hate," in this regard, focuses on the underlying cause within a person, not on the person.

Second, what do we make of 'grief,' 'sadness,' and 'sorrow' as being synonyms for types of 'evil' that we're to hate? It could only be when such feelings are the result of lacking faith. (Consider Matthew 8:22; 12:48-50.)

John wrote to us that "God is love," and that "Love comes from God." Then he wrote again, "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." Importantly, "There is no fear in love." Why? Because there's no fear in God. "But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:7,16,18).

Punishment results from judgement. Forgiveness is the consequence of love. 'Kakos/ra' is how people too often punish themselves and others, mistaking certain emotional states as being expressions of love. In truth, though, they're fear. For example, we cannot make ourselves poor enough to make the poor rich. There's no amount of sickness we can take within ourselves to heal one person. And there's no amount of sorrow we can make ourselves feel that'll make someone else happy.

Faith's choice, then, is loving-kindness.

"Love must be sincere" (Romans 12:9). "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23).

For those of us "who live by the spirit," if or when we catch someone in a sin, we are to "restore that person gently" (Galatians 6:1).

Put together we see that we're to hate evil (negative/sad emotional states), but gently restore people. In other words, hate the sin not the sinner. Evil represents the internal emotional content that colors perspective and influences action. And people represent the image of God. Faith doesn't confuse the two.

Fear hates people, often judging them. People predominated by fear, as internally expressed by emotional habit, see its characteristics within themselves, but only as a projection onto others. Fear makes others into our mirrors, reflecting 1) our states of being and 2) our worldly actions (Galatians 5:19-21).

When those who judge awaken to love, the way they see themselves changes, but as revealed through the way they see others.

We live from the inside out, though fear does not want us to know this.

Love makes us light, softening our features, brightening our eyes, changing how people see us...and how they don't see us.

We're made invisible to judgmental eyes, we not having within our love any of the characteristics that hate would see reflected back at itself.

This is how we're hidden in the 'ohel' (shelter) of God's sacred tent (tabernacle). 'Ohel' comes from 'ahal,' which is another way of saying 'to be clear.' Hate sees right through us. 'Ahal' is also used to mean 'to shine.'

Clear is invisible, egoless, the light shining uninterrupted from within and through us into the lives of others. In this state we reflect those who're in love and who're looking for love. And we're blind spots to those who're in hate, looking for an expression of themselves to hate.

It's in the moments of fear that we're made visually available and vulnerable to fear's judgments and attacks.

"God is love." This means love is the shelter that protectively hides us from and sets us upon a 'sur,' our Rock, a strong foundation and an elevated position of strength. "In the shelter of [God's] presence [He] hide[s] [us] from all human intrigues" (Psalm 31:20). Fear can only have designs on its adherents.

If it seems that people are plotting against you, then there's an internal fear of being plotted against. In this small area of the heart, we've made ourselves vulnerable. The outside is letting us know what areas within we still need to work on.

Electricians, when installing a light, can connect it to a "dimmer switch." When pushed all the way down, the room goes dark. But with each degree it's lifted, the light gets brighter, dispelling more and more of the dark, revealing more details. With the switch slid to the top, the darkness is gone.

From the perspective of love, it can be said that the light protects the darkness, by removing it from sight, making it impossible to see. Moreover, it protects the room from us using the darkness as an excuse to fear the room and judge it as being unsafe. The light reveals the room is safe.

But as soon as fear is chosen over faith, the dimmer switch lowers, plunging the world into darkness. And the shift downward shatters unity, taking that which is seen clearly to be united in the light, and 'ra a,' breaking it into pieces, rendering it 'good for nothing' in the darkness.

This shift works according to the formula E x (R+-) = R(squared). When we look at people; especially, people with visual characteristics of the unknown, seeing them from a faith-expanded perspective through love's fruits of the spirit, and when we likewise respond to life events, we help cultivate exponential results of spirit in the world.

With enough seeds, we plant a vast orchard. Positive responses to events equal positive results.

But when we view people and events from a fear-contracted perspective through ego's fruits of the flesh, we cultivate exponential results of distress, sorrow and grief in the world.

We help break the clay pots, shattering the light they contained, like snuffing out the sun, helping cultivate division among what otherwise would be the united whole.

We know when ego's getting an edge over our spirit when we suddenly find ourselves identifying the whole of a person with a single action, or misdeed they've committed that we disagree with. Such a narrowing of humanity cuts out all the good that is God in the person. It limits a lifetime to a few seconds.

Darkness only wants to see the dark. Being lazy, it's content with using one blotch of dark paint to color over the entire world in a single brushstroke.

The light doesn't need paint or excuses. It just is.

Each day we meet here we're shown choice: How we respond to life's events is how we proclaim to the world the way we want to be responded to with fear and judgment or faith and love.

How others are responding to us lets us know how we're responding to life's events.

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