THE ANATOMY


OF A

FAITH ACT


"Faith at the Speed Of Thought!"











OPENING (the) DOOR(S): A TAPESTRY OF FEAR AND FAITH


I've discovered that overcoming and opening the door are the same thing. Aren't our lives cluttered with instances of overcoming? Doesn't it seem like we're always trying to overcome something? I was giving overcoming a lot of thought recently, and I put it into a "thought formula", if you will, known and used for quite a while.

Lo and behold, I found a wonderful balance between God and Satan. Good or Bad. Positive or Negative. Call it anything you want, but it seems to be a two-sided process. One side appears to produce happiness, while the other appears to produce stress and anxiety.

Now, every time I get a chance to examine fear, I take it, because I've discovered that all my stress is based in fear. Every place I look in my life, where I find stress, it's founded on some fear. Even concern, if you will. I'm talking about fear in the most generic application. I don't mean frightening experiences and horror shows; just plain fear, which covers even things as small seeming as embarrassment or apprehension.

Another way to describe fear generically, is to call it a feeling that produces withdrawal. In response to some stimulus, the threatened person gathers himself together for flight or fight, the embarrassed person shyly retreats into his chest. Fear usually manifests itself as a separation from the stimulus.

Well, I've discovered a little way to investigate my fears in a very objective manner. In the process, I uncovered a thought chain; of how things seem to happen, how they work with me.

What I'd like to do now is start constructing a graph to illustrate the thought process, it's options and results. Get a plain piece of typing paper, and we'll talk through this thought process.

Orient the paper with the long side horizontal, and at the top center write in easily read letters, Y O U. You can consider that Y O U as me, or you can think of it as you, in which case you may want to write M E instead of Y O U. The choice is yours. However, I feel that by using Y O U, instead of M E, I make the paper an observer talking to me. I can allow that to happen because I'm not afraid of the paper. When I see that big Y O U up there, the paper helps me examine a fear of mine in a non-judgmental way.

Additionally, it's a very helpful tool to speak of yourself in the third person. "Oh, she did that." "He's going there again." It's kind of fun, and sure lets a person look at his action without taking on a load of guilt; if, for instance, he was trying to quit smoking or the like. OK, let's get on with our chart.

Y O U is where the thought-concept originates. We'll outline this thought process as it leads into fear and where it then takes us.

Let's start with a generic idea. It'll be some physical action, something we think of to do. It might be taking a trip, or a day off work, buying a new car. Something you'd like or want to do. In other words, this generic concept is getting the thought of something to do.

Now we have something to write under the Y O U, so draw a small arrow pointing down. Under the arrow let's write C O N C E P T, to represent you having the idea to do something. You may want to qualify by inserting in parentheses, “the idea to do some thing.” Under C O N C E PT put another downward arrow.

The next major part in the thought process is when you commit to do the action. Of course, contained within this section may be found research, though not necessarily so.

I call this level P O I N T of C O M M I T T M E N T. That's what you'll write under the arrow. This is a very interesting part, because of what happens next. Actually not what, but how it happens. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Here's another way to define the Point of Commitment. Simply stated, it's when your thinking on an idea passes from observation across the line into serious consideration. It seems to me that a definite line exists between just looking a concept over, allowing some feelings about it, and actually considering it, judging the possibilities. That line is the Point of Commitment.

Straight down out of P O I N T of C O M M I T M E N T is another arrow pointing to the word R I G H T E R. Let's recap.
There's You. You have the Idea to do something. At the point that your idea becomes more than objective observation, and you start to serious consider doing this thing, the next thing that happens in your thinking is that what I call my Righter comes in.

Some people call that Conscience. I guess we all have our own little names. I call it my Righter because, very simply, it's always got the right answer. Not because it's some big moral judge that sits up on my shoulder and tells me when I'm "being bad." This Righter is an all-inclusive, seemingly separate entity that's here with me all the time. Whenever I seriously consider a idea or action, and want an answer, he's got it. I call it a he. He advises me on morality, helps me find things, and just generally has any answers I need.

Now, at the Point of Commitment, in this thought process, the Righter comes in and gives an evaluation of the result of the idea, how it's going to turn out! In other words, he comes in and says, "OK, sixty-five percent of that will work, but thirty-five percent won't.” Depending on how much against the grain, if you will, my plan goes, that's how much my Righter gives me a feeling of instability about that thirty-five percent. That thirty-five percent is the shaky, unknown, doubtful part.

We've all experienced the same kind of fear when standing at the edge of a diving board for the first time. Precarious is an apt word. So is unstable. I've started more than one project when the Point of Commitment brought fear in a wave. The wave usually says to me, "That's wrong. Don't do that." But look. I've noticed that no matter what level I'm on, no matter what project I want to start, no matter what little idea I have, as soon as I give it serious consideration, my Righter comes in and says, "This is how your idea stacks up to Truth." He just brings the Truth in and says, "Here It is."

Most of the time, on my normal stuff, my OK stuff, I hear very little from my Righter. I don't get an evaluation from my Righter on how I'm eating my dinner; those kinds of actions. I might get an evaluation from my Righter once I reach the Point of Commitment on what to make for dinner. He may come back and tell me how much of that meal I can handle. If it's spaghetti, no problem. He says, "Go for it, spaghetti's great."
But the darn guy is always right there, if you'll pardon the pun, and at the Point of Commitment he comes in, evaluates the project, and tells me basically how much of the thing can go wrong and cause me stress if I don't make some changes. He's no big brother sitting on my shoulder beating me over the head with a crowbar telling me, "You can't do this, and can't do that." That isn't what it's all about.
He's sitting up there as a guide and help to you. The way it works is, when you reach the Point of Commitment, a little evaluation thing goes off. It helps you find the holes in your plans.

This guy doesn't bother much at all. He "lets" me do almost everything. The percentage of holiness he points out to me is in the low teens. Eighty-five percent of all the things I commit to are OK, on average. As most folks, my life is largely taken up with eating, sleeping, working, reading, TV. I hope I've given you a fair idea of what I call a Righter. Whatever it's called, everyone's got one.

Now, we've got four steps in our chart. You have an Idea, you seriously consider it reaching the Point of Commitment, and your Evaluator tells you how much of the action might go haywire if you don't make some changes.

Now comes the really tricky part, because the next thing in the thought chain is a little bit muddled, so for better understanding, we'll jump one place on our chart. The little arrow that points down from the Righter doesn't lead to this next word. The next word is Rationalization. It's the place where Rationalization is, but for the sake of a clearer understanding, what we need to do is insert, Fear before Rationalization. So you might put F E A R in parentheses just under the arrow, and let it wait there while we talk about Rationalization.

After you Righter evaluates your plan, then the Rationalization starts. I'm noticing that as soon as I make a commitment to do a thing, my Righter come in and shows me that maybe fifteen percent is out of line. Perhaps there's some little glitch in the process that I have to focus on. Normally, that little glitch is shown to me as an image. Once I see the image of what's wrong with my plan, I then know how to fix it. I'm sure you've heard it said, "Knowing the problem is knowing the answer."

Here's an example common to human experience. Doing the dishes. I'll run down the scenario, and we'll overlay our thought process as it applies to doing the dishes.

OK. You're at your house and you're doing the dishes. Picture yourself standing at the sink doing the dishes. This particular time, for whatever reason, you have all the silverware on a plate from the last meal, a common occurrence. Next you lift the stack of plates and dump the silverware into the hot soapy water. Nothing else is in the water at the time. Also into the soapy water go four steak knives from dinner. Should you consider leaving the knives there, at the Point of Commitment your righter will come in and says, "Ding. Something's off in this plan. There's a possibility that some stress will occur from this action unless you change it somehow.”

In plain terms, you might see an image of yourself reaching into the sudsy water later and cutting yourself on one of the knives. The possibility of injury is compounded by the fact that the dishes are going on top of the silver. The silver gets a good long soak on the bottom of the pan, and the dishes get a nice soak too, while you wash the glasses.

When you dumped those sharp knives down into the bottom of the pan, committing them to that murky, unknown territory, it would be an easy thing to forget them and cut yourself. After all, you've been reaching in fishing out glasses, salad plates, and dinner plates. You might forget. You might not, which is why your Righter doesn't make big stink about it. He just lets you know that there's a chance you'll cut yourself.

With those knives down in the hot water, it's going to take some extra effort to get them out. You'll have to carefully spread the suds apart with your hands so you can see down through the water and pick out just the knives. Maybe the water's so hot you be forced to get the tongs to fish the knives out. In short, to get them out now is going to take extra work and bother.

At this point Rationalization comes in and says, "I'll remember." How many times have I put knives in the bottom of my dishwater and said I'll remember, and picked up a fork before I remembered. You know what I mean? I do that all the time. I've got a really good way around it that I'll tell you later. Again, when you reach the Point of commitment to leave those knives in there and, "Ding". The moment you recognize that the process is set, that's when your Righter shows up.

That can happen even when you pick up the plate of silverware. You see the steak knives. You know what you're going to do. You certainly know that you picked up the plate of silverware to dump it in the dishpan. When you see those knives, that's your Point of Commitment. You see, at that moment a whole new plan sprang into being. The old plan didn't consider the knives. Now here they are and it's time for a new decision.

Let's say you didn't see the steak knives until the plate was over the hot water. That then becomes your Point of Commitment. Your Righter will show you a scale by which to judge this plan.

One step further. If you didn't see the knives until they were falling into the water, that moment becomes your Point of Commitment. "Watch out. You might cut yourself," says your Righter. Haven't you had a similar experience?

Now what I have to do is go through all the hot water. I made it extra hot so that the silver would get a good soak. And the dishes would soak and get extra clean.

When I work with the cups up on top, I can pretty much keep my hands out of the water. I don't have to reach under the surface. But the knives are all the way down on the bottom of the pan. It's hot down there. I don't want to put my hands in there. Well, "I'll remember, I'll remember." Sure.

The point is, that the rationalization that I'll remember or whatever is based on the extra hassle that's involved. The rationalization is what will allow me to overcome, in non-real, abstract terms, the amount or percentage of the "offness" of my plan of putting the knives in the soapy water.

If my Righter comes in and says that ten percent of my plan won't work, I rationalize ten or more percent to balance that "offness". I try to make it OK. I'm not saying there's anything really wrong with that. Just take an objective view of it. Look at it as it happens.

The rationalization, as I see it, comes mostly out of my convenience: places like my comfort. I see myself rationalizing around my financial status. I find then that all my rationalization comes out of these selfish wants. When I follow a rationalization to it's source, I always find it keeping company with my pleasure, comfort or fear.

I realize that it 's hard to think of being selfish in our example with the dishes. However, if you just want to say "self interest" instead of selfish, that's pretty much OK. Comfort oriented isn't inclusive enough for me. Here's what I've done to clear the water for myself.

I've taken all the bite out of selfishness, and used it in the generic sense of desire. More specifically, desire in excess of simple need. Not all desires, just those that are taken to excess. For instance, the desire for a drink, a smoke, a dessert is not in itself excessive. None of those things is bad in moderation. Everything has it's own point of excess. Things aren't inherently bad or good. They just are. They are perfectly themselves.

When you cross the line into excess, you make a conscious decision. Every time we make conscious decisions we have to deal with our Righter because that's the Point of Commitment I've been talking about. The decision is the commitment, and calls up a model for us to use in the evaluation process.

Getting back to selfishness, remember that it's way down on a low level of simple excessive desire, behavior that crosses into the territory that your Righter has defined as improper.

Your Righter holds up, as I've said, a mirror of the Truth. He holds up the Truth to your plan and YOU do the judging. It is very important to note that the Righter does no judging. Only you.

Now we're not in very deep territory just yet. We're only as far as our evaluation based on our Righter's Truth and the following rationalization. No action has taken place. All we've done is think about it so far. Remember our chart?
There's you, you've had the idea to do something, you looked the plan over, passed the point of commitment into the realm of serious consideration of the success of the plan, your Righter has shown you a one hundred percent plan and your rationalization department has cranked out at least as many "good" reasons why it's OK to ignore the deficiencies you see. Our steak knife example was deficient by ten percent. There was a one-in-ten chance that we'd get cut.

Rationalization would help us overcome, some other way, going through the extra hassle of getting those knives out of the hot water; which is the one hundred percent way of avoiding cutting a finger later. That's the only way to relieve that apprehension that your Righter has called up.

Remember also that you'll probably get an image as part of the process. You'll see yourself getting cut. We're informed three ways. We find out roughly how off our plan is. We get some distinct feeling. We get some visuals. Let me digress.
I've noticed something neat about this image of stress. I like that term, image of stress. It's usually the image of what's going to happen to cause the stress. You see yourself getting cut rather than taking the knives out of the water or bandaging the cut later. Here's what I've noticed. You ALWAYS get one hundred percent of your plan back. Let me go slow here to explain that.
You have a plan, you're going to carry it out, and it'll be successful to a certain extent. Maybe you'll succeed to fifty percent, a hundred percent, or thirty percent. Anything less than a hundred percent success will result in stress. If you want to go after something, you want to go after it one hundred percent. You'll want to be one hundred percent successful.
If you only get ninety percent of your plan, then ten percent of the plan didn't go right. That ten percent will show up as stress. The plan is a one hundred percent plan. It contains the potential for one hundred percent success or failure. Satisfaction or stress. Like it or lump it, we get back one hundred percent.
Look at it as a water tank, one of those big railroad tanks. The water tank is empty. It isn't worth a darn. Who cares about an empty water tank. You can't use any empty water tank. Well, you have the idea of filling up this water tank with water. "Hey, if we fill up this water tank it'll be worth something. The water will be valuable. Water is worth something. Nothing, isn't worth anything."
So you start filling the tank, but you only get it ninety percent full. I know you're way ahead of me. I know you don't have near the problem looking at a ninety percent full water tank that you had looking at an empty water tank. Now you've only got ten percent emptiness. What an improvement! Don't you still have that ten percent of nothing? That didn't go away. There's always a hundred percent of everything in everything. It's fascinating where this leads.
Every time you figure out a plan that invokes your Righter, and you go ahead on a ninety percent plan without tuning it up to a hundred percent, that ten percent is going to come out. That ten percent doesn't get left behind.

Ninety percent of doing the dishes works great. But, ten percent of doing the dishes this time is going to cause some "emptiness", some kind of stress. Success in doing the cups, saucers and plates causes no stress. It only causes satisfaction. The ten percent is yet to come. And let me point out that the stress doesn't get saved up to come out the next time your dishes are dirty. I've found that the stress always stays strictly in its own context.

Let's take a look at how that ten percent might come out. You may not cut yourself. This is the way it happens to me. As I said earlier, I reach in and pick up a fork. Then I remember. Then I get scared. Have you had that happen? I pick up the fork, and then I realize that I could have gotten a knife and cut myself, just like I thought I would at the very beginning, and that little thrill goes over my body. Fear is what it is. Then comes the wave of relief mixed with embarrassment. I didn't cut myself, but I feel stupid.

I've got another one for you. I reach in, having forgotten, I grab the same fork, by the tines rather than the handle. Thinking I've cut myself, I go through the same process of remembering, relief and feeling stupid.
When that little jolt happens, that's my payback, my ten percent stress. I pick up the fork, I get that little hit of fear, and I say what we've all said at sometime, "I knew I'd do that!" "I knew that was going to happen." "Why didn't I listen to myself!?" It makes me laugh out loud to think about it.

There's no free lunch. That stress is going to come out. Let's get back top our chart. Here's where we sit.

We've got our Righter coming in with a ten percent chance that we'll cut ourselves on the steak knives. It accompanies that with an image of how that might look as it happens, allowing us to know how to relieve that stress. In other words, we gain understanding of the problem and thereby are able to solve it; we take the steak knives out of the water. So, the Righter tells you the problem, you flash the answer, then Rationalization comes in based on fear. Remember we mentioned that before. Fear.

Now we have to define fear. Fear in this instance is the comfort we talked about. It all ties in with wanting to do it the easiest way, the most convenient way, the way that's the most comfortable, the way that's the least work. The easiest way. "Don't give me anything difficult to do. I want to do things eeezzy. I want to sit here where it's nice. I don't want to get up and walk over there. I'll just sit here, where it's nice." All of that stuff is trying to get me out of work. I hate to do work. When my Righter comes in and says, "Don't do this it'll cause a problem." I say, "Yeah, but gee, I've already done that, I don't want to take the whole thing apart." Well, I don't really have to take it all apart. I can just take this side off, adjust that a little bit, and put it back together. Sure, that's some extra work, but it'll be lopsided if I don't. Here's what Rationalization will say, "Yeah, but I'm right in the middle here and I wanted to finish. If I take that apart, it'll take an extra twenty minutes." If I'm feeling a bit strong that day, I'll say, "Ohhh, OK, I'll do it." I have those problems all the time. We battle it out.

But it's all just me being selfish. Giving in to simple desire. The result, of course, is that the water tank doesn't get filled. How much ever comfort I take out of the process, always comes right back to me as stress. It's really easy to find the stress once you get an objective view of it. I find, that every time I track down some stress that I notice I'm experiencing, I always find some selfish little decision at the other end. It’s some selfish little thing that was a bit of extra work, which would have taken a little longer. "Oh, the knives are in the bottom of the water. But, I don't want to put my hands in that hot water." Well, I don't have to put my hands in the water; I can go get the tongs. "Oh, but they're in the drawer with all that other stuff. They'll be all tangled up with the eggbeater. I just want to sit here where it's nice." That's what happens to me. I'm just pandering to my selfishness when I do that. It looks excessive to me. What's the big deal about having to go fish the tongs out of the drawer, then picking the knives out of the hot water? What else have I got to do, but to take care of those
kinds of problems?
How does fear enter into that? The rationalizations are all based on some kind of discomfort, inconvenience, or apparent financial loss. Especially when it comes to our money, we make extra sure we're covered. Any time I start to protect myself and act out those rationalizations by not doing the extra, by pandering to my comfort, convenience or wallet, that’s how I'm defining selfishness.

Every time I try to cover my act, I get in trouble. Every time. I believe that but I don’t know every time I get in trouble. I don’t know every time I am covering my act, obviously. But any time I can trace any stress in my life backwards...all you have to do is trace that stress that you are experiencing in the subject area you are experiencing it. If it has to do with doing the dishes, all of a sudden you cut yourself, well there is your stress. That is a clear example. You said earlier, I knew I was going to do that. Actually that is too clear of an example, but you can picture yourself cutting yourself on the knife and trace it real easily to the decision to leave it in the water. A lot of times it is not that clear. It is too clear for the example we are talking about. But every time I trace mine back, I stay in that same subject area. The stress that you feel is in the context of doing the dishes. So the decision that tried to twist for your comfort or convenience or my comfort or convenience way back down the line, in the past, that decision had to do with the context where the stress happened. If you cut yourself doing the dishes then the decision had to do with doing the dishes not going to the store. Your decision to go to the store had nothing to do with you cutting yourself on the steak knives at the bottom of the dishes in the water. It was leaving them in the water, in the context of doing the dishes. So in that respect you have a real good key to start with.

If you are feeling stress in any particular area, stay in that area and trace all the moves you made in that particular area alone backward to the very first time you ever thought about doing whatever it is you were doing when you had this stress happen. It is a pretty easy thing to do once you get on to it. Anyway, it sure has helped me to understand how all that works. My Righter comes in and tells me about how much is wrong with it then how I fix it immediately comes to mind and then I start to rationalize around how much work it is going to be or extra effort it is going to be to fix how much is wrong with the plan and try to rationalize that wrongness away and go on with the plan anyway just for my own convenience. And again, all that is just based on fear. I know you are probably waiting for an explanation for that. Fear of what? Fear of not having everything you want: your convenience, your comfort, not having enough money. I got to be careful so I will be sure to have enough money. Billionaires do that same trip. Well maybe just one more million, I have to be really secure. Well, maybe I’d better get another pillow in the closet while I am in here so I will really be comfortable out there on that football bench, on the bleachers when you are watching the football game. The benches are hard so maybe I’d better take two pillows. Two pillows would really be nice and soft to sit on. Well I get to picture this person who said that about the two pillows with these two bed pillows, these bulky cumbersome bed pillows at a football game trying to hassle them around up and down the aisles and through the crowd with these two bed pillows one under each arm and a program and a can of beer and popcorn and whatever. They will be more comfortable while they are there sure, that is absolutely true, but isn’t it a little bit excessive? One pillow, especially if it was a bed pillow is enough isn’t it? I mean a cushion is good enough isn’t it? With all the hassle that is involved getting them through the crowd and wrestling them around in and out of the car and having them drop on the pavement. All that extra work you are going through, that is what you are paying with. There is no free lunch. Every time I act purely out of my own self interest, it comes right back to me in the same area or context in which I made the selfish decision. It is amazing. It is just amazing that every time I look back there it is my own comfort, covering my act. I am afraid I will have to do a little extra work. Afraid I’ll not be able to just sit here where it is nice. That doesn’t make sense. It is hard to deal with in words like fear and afraid with just little things like doing the dishes.
But anything that might hurt you in any way or cause you any little inconvenience at things. If you take those kinds of things up to a big, big scale, you run into fear right away.

Let’s take the dishes example up a ways and see what happens. Now instead of a plate of silverware and four steak knives, you have eighteen very sharp, high quality paring knives. And they are all over the bottom of the dishpan, there is eighteen of them and all their little blades are just right up there. Who cares how they got in there. I know you are not stupid enough to put them in there and neither am I, but let’s say they got in there. Just try to put a magic “if” on here. Let’s put ourselves in that same position.

“Oh hey, throw that tray of stuff in the dishwater will you Jack, while you are out there? “
“This one here on top?”
“Yes, just get the one on top.”
“Oh hey, I just dumped a tray of eighteen steak knives in the dishwater.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that tray, I meant the other tray.”

Well, they are in there regardless. Now there are eighteen of them down there super sharp. They are all sticking up in all different directions having a good time. You can go ahead and put the dishes down on top of them, then the cups and the saucers and things and then try to do the dishes that way. I guarantee you get down below the top level of cups, you get the cups out of the way and now you have the saucers and the bowls that are on top of the plates, you are already going to start to feel your way down in there real good. Now let’s say you some how or other make it through all the saucers and you are down to the plates. There are only about four plates in there and all these eighteen sharp steak knives.

Well, can you imagine yourself reaching in there and trying to get those plates out of there? I am going to go in there real gingerly. I am not going to just reach in there and grab that plate. Now I am getting to the point of fear. I could hurt myself. I don’t want to hurt myself. OK, this is where it is tricky. Take that way, way down on a low level. Take all the frightening, horrible stuff out of fear and it becomes self-interest, selfishness, mine.

Why do kids say “mine”? Because if it is not mine, I do not have any. I don’t have any. I want some. I need some. I want some. Fear of not having as much as you think you should have whatever that is. We all have our own standards about how much we deserve. Now that is another comedy in itself. But whatever your standards are, it doesn’t make any difference. You want to make sure you get your due. I certainly do, if you pardon the pun. I am going to get everything I think I deserve. That isn’t true when I really start to think about it, but that is my first reaction. OK, then out of selfishness or a very generic thing called fear, we come to a point of overcoming something. As we said at the very, very beginning, Now this is the point of overcoming. There is a point of commitment and now there is a point of overcoming. We have gone through all this process. We had this idea to do something. We reached to the point of commitment where observation of the thing became serious consideration and possibility at which time your Righter comes in and gives an evaluation of how much can go wrong with your idea and even throws in gratis an image of how much stress, not only how much stress, but what kind of stress can happen with this process I am going to do. He holds up the truth and I make up my mind. I do the judging. The Righter doesn’t do the judging. Then we have the rationalization that is all based on convenience and comfort. Now we haven’t done anything yet so at that next point we write down Point of Overcoming. Because this is where we split. We overcome, but we can overcome two different ways. This is the real neat part. I tell you anytime you get a chance to objectify your behavior and take a look at it, do it. Just do it. If there is any way, a tool that you can use to objectify your behavior, use it. So you can take a really good look at it and not be judgmental and not get after yourself, and not let a bunch of tradition beat you over the head and keep you away from looking inside and seeing the good stuff that is in there and how to get it out and the bad stuff that is in there and how to get that out, and how stupid it is and how much better off you are without it, use it. Boy, I jump every chance I get to do that.

Now here we are about ready to put into action the plan. We haven’t abandoned the plan. Ninety percent of it was good. We are going to put into action the plan and we are going to, somehow, we are going to overcome that fear. We are going to overcome that fear of cutting ourselves on the knives there at the bottom of the dishwater. So now in our diagram, underneath rationalization, we have to put two arrows. One goes to your left and one goes to your right. Right under the arrow that goes to your left, we will put: Overcome Righter. One way you could term that would be a fear action. The action that we are about to do is a fear action, actually. Over the arrow that goes to your right, put the words, Overcoming Fear. Overcoming fear, that is a faith action. Now that can split off into two different directions but we will talk about that in a minute.

Let’s look at overcoming your Righter. Over on the left side we have come to the point of action in the plan. The point of overcoming: I maintain that you overcome on both sides. Either you overcome the fear or you overcome the Righter When you overcome the Righter, the thing we call the Fear-Action, I maintain that I am not overcoming just some little voice that happens to be inside my head. I am not overcoming a little conscience. I am not overcoming some guardian that sits on my shoulder to beat me over the head either. What I am overcoming is God. I consider my Righter the same as God. Now here is how that works. Oh he has God in his head. That is true in the sense only that we all, I mean all human beings. We all human beings, we all have that little spark of God in us when we are born. When we are conceived the spark of God is there. That little human spark of God that every human being has, is connected right straight to your Righter. That is your conscience. That is your Righter. That is all those right answers. That is all those objective evaluations of all our different little ideas that we come up with. That is that little God, that human thing that tells you when something is right and wrong that people normally call conscience. OK, that is a little piece of God that is inborn. That is in every human being. Every human being has that little spark of God and that is your Righter. If that is a spark of God and that is your Righter, then by overcoming your Righter you are overcoming God.

Now here is another way to think of your Righter. Here is another way when I think of my Righter. My Righter is my game plan. It is my rulebook. Again, I don’t mean somebody sitting on my shoulder. I mean it is my rulebook and nobody can know all the rules to the whole game. Even the umpire has a rulebook and studies it. He never stops studying his rulebook. There are too many rules to follow. One game gets so complex you can’t know all the rules. The game of life ain’t no football game. The game of life is a little bit more complicated by a couple of smidgens. In the game of life you have a big rulebook. All the ideas that I could ever have, all the fancy little schemes, all the notions, all those tiny little flashed concepts of things that could happen, would happen, fantasies – all of those things would fill volumes and volumes. How are you going to know the rules that would govern every one of those actions? You can’t have a rulebook that big. But all that stuff in your head, it is all in your Righter. Anything you can think up to do, He will give you an evaluation on. Anything! I believe in my Righter in that sense. Your Righter being your rulebook, I believe that God made that little Righter in us, gave us that little spark of Himself that knows the best way to do anything. Knows the place to find anything. My Righter has helped me find stuff. I maintain that God gave us that little spark and it acts as a rulebook. It has a rule in it for anything you want to do. For your whole life long, anytime you have a question about anything you want to do, He has the rules right there. He has Truth concerning your question. He holds up truth the minute you ask Him. He holds it up and you say, Oh, I see. Hey, wow! Ninety eight percent, wow, go for it. What do I have to do just to get rid of that two percent? Oh I see. Far out OK here we go an extra five minutes work and we will be done. It is just that simple. But you know about simple things. Simple things are very, very difficult. Well, I hope I have made the point that your Righter is really God. It is really that little spark of God in you. And when you overcome any part of a plan that your Righter tells you about, that you should change, you are overcoming God. Well, when you overcome God, in effect, what you are saying is, at the very, very least, as nice as I can be about it, the very least you are doing is saying, “Well, OK God. I hear what you say about the steak knives and I understand that. I know and I hear what you are saying but I am going to do it this way anyway. OK I don’t want you to be offended. I am going to do it this way anyway. I heard you, but I .... You are telling God that you know how to do things better than He does, plain and simple. And you know you don’t. I get mad at God sometimes because He won’t beat me over the head with it. He won’t beat me over the head with His rightness. He just never does it. I come to the point of commitment, my Righter comes in faster than a “Google search, and says ding, ding. Just flashes a percentage of a concept, an image and then just lets it rest. It doesn’t try to overcome all that rationalization I throw out. You know it is really hard to follow a suggestion. I wish He would beat me over the head with a two by four sometimes. It would make me a little more aware of myself. What else can we call overcoming God and feeling and acting as though we know better than he does? Why would somebody. I mean you don’t just purposely choose pain do you? I don’t. Who would possibly on purpose chose pain? Oh, I think I will dump these knives in here so I might get cut. What? That is ridiculous. Nobody is going to chose that on purpose. I mean no. But that is what I am trying to show. That when you overcome your Righter, that is what you are doing. You are overcoming the Righter with an action based on fear, based on your comfort, based on you are going to do it anyway.

Well, I guess you know, I certainly know, that when you tell God you know better than He does, that is a sin. As a matter of fact, I have looked around in a lot of places for sin and I can’t find any place but one. I just can’t find anyplace but one for sin. There is only one definition of sin. And that is going against God in a way that says you know better. Anything you do consciously against God’s rulebook, your Righter, anything, that is a sin, plain and simple. Well, here comes the really hard part. We have to back way, way, way up to fear and rationalization. Remember we said that fear and rationalization on the low levels come out of comfort, convenience, selfishness? (a very generic definition of selfishness) Now what? When we see that final action based in that little bit of selfishness, when I overcome by my selfishness, what I know to be right to do and get those knives out of the water. When I overcome that, it is just based on a little bit of selfishness. But, you see the connection between the selfishness and the overcoming the Righter. And overcoming Righter being overcoming God and overcoming God being sin and selfishness linked right in and now we can come to the conclusion that it is a very easy thing to say sin is selfishness. That narrows it down really good. And I tell you it helped me so much. Sin is selfishness. Now my definition of selfishness remember it can be as much as simple desire. As soon as you cross into excess where it is for your personal gain, your convenience, your comfort. When you cross that line that is selfishness. Plain little simple desire, selfishness, is sin.

Oh boy, well you know what happens when you sin against God? You pay. There is no free lunch. You pay. God is not sitting on your shoulder waiting for you to make a mistake, beat you over the head and make you pay. Let’s not get that idea. He doesn’t do that kind of stuff. What He did, He made the world to run a certain way. He gave you the rulebook right in your own head. And every time you want to know if you are doing something the right way, the way it should be done, the way God created it to be done, you just ask your Righter and he tells you how to do it the right way. He tells you how much of the plan you’ve got already in your head, is off to the side of the right way, the way the Creator planned that kind of a thing to be planned. God has done all this stuff already, remember, see? He created all this stuff, He created all the people. He knows how people act. He has done all the things you have ever done. He has done all the things I have ever done, He has done all the things I will ever do. He knows all that. He knows exact right way to drive a car. He knows the very best way to do the dishes under the exact circumstances I have presented to Him right now. He knows all that stuff. He has been doing dishes for thousands of years, see. Poor guy. Send Him some Ivory liquid or something I guess. God with dishpan hands, what a concept. But he knows all those ways and He gave us, in that little spark of Him, the rulebook that tells us. Hey, He has more important things for us than for us to ask Him how to do the dishes. He says, no get away from Me. Don’t bother Me with that stuff. Here take this little spark. It gives you all the rules, everything you ever want to know. That will take care of it. OK, but look, my selfishness is overcoming my Righter and when that happens I am overcoming God and that has to be a sin. It has got to be a sin. Ahh, now sin is selfishness plain and simple. Every time I am a little bit selfish, that’s a sin. And there is no free lunch and I pay. And every time I have pandered to my selfishness and tracked it down, I have found it caused some stress. Some kind of stress in my life, some sadness, some lack, some frustration always winds up in some selfish little diddly decision I have made for my own comfort. Now the only thing I can conclude, is that if my Righter is God and I am overcoming my Righter, and sinning against God, that’s what is happening, that is where my stress is coming from. My stress is just getting paid back for my sin, for my selfishness. And that is only the beginning. That is only the tinny weenie little beginning. We will talk about that in a minute though. Sorry, I didn’t mean to get so serious on you just a minute there. Back to our chart.

OK, on the right hand side we had an arrow and we were overcoming fear. Well, now we have to find out how we do that. You know, overcoming the fear, overcoming the rationalization, going about doing something and getting away from, getting out of, getting rid of that ten percent that your Righter said about the knives in the bottom of the dishpan. There are two ways that I see you can do it. You can do it or not do it. Yes, that is true. You can do it or not do it. Well, if you do it, then that means remember the image that your Righter flashed, about the stress involved and what was going to happen. And then immediately you judge and then after your judgment is made, you know what will relieve the problem. You go to the drawer and get the tongs, and get them out and come over and take the knives out of the water. Take the knives out of the water. You won’t have the stress of hot water on your hands and you won’t have the stress of cutting yourself later. So you’ve got the image of what to do about it. You know what to do about it, so you do that. That is the do it part. You can either do it or not do it. You can do something else about it, you can do what is called a faith action, a faith action. You can base that faith action on lots of things. You can base that faith action on your sense of time, which is God given anyway, and say OK, I’ll tell you what. I am going to do dishes for ten minutes and when ten minutes comes, I am going to stop what I am doing and fish out those steak knives. And you can do that. And for ten minutes you can do the dishes, and stop. I’d almost guarantee that your clock, your on board clock if you will, will go off and you will be reminded in ten minutes. My on board clock works that way. Well, some how or other you can do the action or when you don’t do it, you can faithe. That is a faith action. Faithe F A I T H E, but faithe is a very special kind of word. Doctor Gene Scott made it up. Faithe only pertains to a faith action that is based on God’s word. Faithing is acting in faith of God’s Word or His promise. Well, the same way we overcame the Righter, we overcome the fear by acting as though the fear was unfounded. It didn’t exist if you will or exists but is no threat. I like that a whole lot better. The theory is there, the possibilities are there, but there is no threat. You are completely free and no stress. There is no threat to you. That is a faith action. It is kind of like pretending, kind of like that, except not. Because faithing is based in God’s word or God’s promise, you’re giving your actions to God in a sense. Your saying, “God there is this possibility that exists for me to be hurt, for something to happen, for some stress to happen in my life, for something to go wrong with this project. I am going to start doing this project anyway and I am going to ask Your help so that when it comes time for this obstacle, this fear to be overcome, it won’t touch me. I’m going to base my actions in the faith, in the belief that You will help me get around this obstacle”. See, sometimes the obstacles that I ran into I don’t have control over, you know. I mean if I go up on the hillside at nine o’clock at night and pray for an hour, and come down with nothing but good star light, knowing that I could have had a flashlight on the way down a half hour earlier and said my prayer someplace else. I elected because of the place, to say my prayer in that place because I felt better about it and take my chances walking down the hill so to speak. That is the way it would look to somebody else. That isn’t what I did. I acted in faith. I stayed there beyond dark acting in the faith that God would provide me whatever was necessary for me to make it through all of the rocks and high grass and the hidden stones down the hillside the one hundred and fifty yards to level ground and the house. And of course, He led me down the easiest possible path. The least dangerous, I stumbled once over one stone, stumbled just a little bit not tripped, not even any where near tripped. I was careful on the way down sure, but I wasn’t panicked. I wasn’t feeling my way on my hands and knees. I couldn’t see anything. There was no moon, absolutely none. The sun was down, way down. It was like ten o’clock. But I recognized, I had been up on that hill a lot, and I recognized the way down, the best way down. And lo and behold, there I was on the best possible path down that hill through some rocks, not a likely path either, between rocks, mainly between rocks, around some rocks here and there and wound up making it down. Just perfect, see. That happens to me all the time. Well, you overcome by trusting in God’s Word. What has that got to do with the dishes? OK, here is how you do it with the dishes. Some people don’t like this because they think you are testing God. Don’t you believe that. You don’t test God by striking up a relationship with him. You don’t test God by showing active trust in Him. You don’t test God by continuing a trusting action based on one of His promises, His word, words to you; based on His faithfulness. You don’t test God by making a faith connection. You don’t test God when you faithe. Remember, you didn’t dump the knives in the water deliberately.

So don’t let’s get hung up thinking we are testing God. Here is how we do this with the dishes. OK we are back to the steak knives, the steak knives in the water, OK? How can I get God in on the process of eliminating that ten percent possibility, that ten percent chance of stress that is going to come to me. That stress that will come back to me because there is no free lunch, that ten percent Oops I almost did it. How can we give, I hate to say give it to God. How can we activate God and get His help, His help to relieve us of stress? In other words, we will shoulder ninety percent of the burden Lord, will You please help out with this ten percent? I can’t do this ten percent. Now in the choice of the dishes, analogies break down. Sure you can help it, you can go get the tongs and fish them out of there. Sometimes it is too late. But, in this instance, it is not too late and it is not a test of God. What you are doing is asking for his help to strengthen your own faith. This isn’t some little parlor trick; God is on display at the dishpan. Don’t even begin to think that kind of stuff. The knives are in the pan. Now you have done this before. You are not particularly fearful about the thing, but there is the possibility. You put the knives very carefully all in one place on one side of the dishpan. I do this all the time. On the other side of the dishpan is where all the forks and knives and other stuff goes. So when it comes time to reach for the silverware, all those knives are in one place. And when you reach, even if you reach to the wrong place automatically all the knives are going to be there and you will remember putting them there at least that or if you reach down, you’ll grab silverware instead. Something. I do that all the time. But there is still a slight chance that there is the possibility you are going to cut yourself, if you forget see. If you remember they are there and reach in carefully. There is no problem now, the water is cold. Big deal, it isn’t cold it’s cool, it’s cooled way down. You know, you can reach right in there and feel real carefully and take your time. You don’t have to jump in with your hand, pluck it back out in a hurry because it is too hot. No Problem. If I could only see, if I could only remember before I went to pick that knife up, any of that silverware up, I would have no problem. Well what do you know. See that is something I can’t control. I have got something I cannot control. Anytime you can find something you cannot control, you better rejoice. Praise God I found something I cannot control. Ha! That is a wonderful concept. Because now every time I got something I can’t control I can give God a chance. I say hey God, here we go I can’t do this. I can finally use your help. That is the trouble with most Christians now a days, they try to do it without God’s help. That is all right God, I can handle it. I can do this, that, and the other thing all these good works. See. You got to get God’s help. OK, well every time you find a place that you can’t handle one hundred percent by yourself one hundred percent. You haven’t got it covered. There is no way you can cover that one hundred percent, there is a chance to faithe. There is a chance to lay down that extra percentage on God. Let Him bolster you up. Let Him take some of your burden. Boy, when you are out there pushing your car, trying to get it started by yourself, running along side trying to jump in, trying to steer, trying to turn the ignition back on, trying to get the clutch, trying to fumble it into gear, boy you are so thankful when some good Samaritan comes off the street, the sidewalk and gives you a little push to get you up back up to speed so you can jump that car into gear. He gives you that extra ten- percent. Well, that is what God will do, if you ask Him. You ask him by faithing. OK you can’t control your memory. Can I? Can you? Nobody can control their memory. How many times a day do I forget things? OK, back to that. I can’t control that. I can’t one hundred percent be sure that I am going to remember. I can’t tell you the times I forgot. How many times I picked up the fork, you know. I know I forget. I know I can’t possibly be one hundred percent sure that I will remember where those forks and knives are, you know. I might cut myself, but God can remember. See, God’s perfect. He has done it all before. He has done dishes all His life. And He really knows the best way to do them, see. Not only that, He has the best memory of anybody you’ll ever know. God’s got the best memory in the whole world. See. If you ask God to remember something, He’ll remember it. He remembers, he remembers back to your great grandmother. He remembers back to Adam, even before Adam. I’ll bet a lot of these memories He’d like to get rid of. But God remembers real good, real good. You know you might even have a friend over and you might be doing the dishes and you might say, “Ooh, I just dumped those knives in there and I might forget would you remind me? Would you remind me to, you know when I get down a little ways and I start pulling dishes out there, would you remind me that those knives are in there and I can get them down there when the water is a little bit warmer instead of real hot?” And your friend might comply. He might remember but you know down deep in your heart, that you can’t trust his memory one hundred percent just because he isn’t doing the dishes. He might be standing next to you yakking, talking or drying whatever. You can’t depend on his memory any better than you can yours. But, you can depend on God’s memory. Boy that is so difficult to deal with. You and I both know that you and I can depend on God’s memory.

The rub comes in that God to the outside world to any on looker. They can’t see him standing at the drain board. The dishes aren’t jumping up and down in the dish towel like in the Topper movies. And the dishes look like they are drying themselves. Nothing is happening. You don’t see God. You don’t see His memory in action. You don’t see any of that like you do a friend standing there. You don’t see that. That is where the rub comes. We all know He has the perfect memory. He can remember anything, anywhere, anytime. But, we can’t see Him. If we could see God, boy. Imagine what it would have been like for David. How he wouldn’t have been afraid at all. You can’t tell me David wasn’t afraid of Goliath. He wouldn’t have been afraid if he looked back and seen old God up there on the hill with the Israelite army. King Saul up there waving him on saying: Go ahead, go to it David. Go get him, I am right here. I’ll throw a thunder bolt when I have to. It will be alright. Let’s go, right on man. See, sure, but God didn’t do that stuff, see. He just lets you know that He is perfect and that you can trust Him. And the rest is up to you. You are the one who has to do the trusting. He is trustworthy, but you have to do the trusting. You have to trust in His trustworthiness. Put your life on the line sort of speak. Even doing a simple thing like the dishes is putting your life on the line. You are putting your body into action based on this faith, this trust in God. The physical movement is in itself hanging your body on the word. OK, what’s God’s word? God’s word in this case amounts to I have the best memory in the world. I can remember to remind YOU when to take those knives out of the water. I can do that. Sure, hey, that’s little enough to ask, you know. You trust me, I trust YOU. You know we work together that way. So before you start doing the dishes, what do you do? You activate your trust in God that He has a good enough memory to remind you at the proper time: take those knives out of the water. And He will tell you I guarantee it. I guarantee it with all my heart. He will tell you the very best time to do that. Now, normally what happens when I do this kind of thing, I flex my faithing muscles, test my faithing wings so to speak. Whenever I do this kind of thing, He gives me that reminder right on time, right on time. He is so punctual, I can’t believe it. He is a paradox. Most of the time He looks like He doesn’t have a clock. You wait around for years for Him to do something and nothing happens. And this other stuff, He is on the moment. He is on the second, right on time, boy. I mean He is a God who’s word is forever settled in heaven. If He says he will give you guidance, He will do it. Well, I never listen to the first suggestion. I’m doing the dishes and it says: knives... bing…just that…that is all it is. It almost goes by and it is gone before you know it. You don’t even hardly notice it go by. Knives…bing. You know, my little dinger goes ding in my head and uh and I get the concept of knives. I know what that means. Oh, well I only have two more plates to wash or some other little thing, I can’t do that this very second without stopping what I am doing and doing it. So as soon as I finish this, I will do that. I did that all the time. I would say, “no that was me, that wasn’t God. No, no that’s gotta be me. I’m being paranoid because, I mean, I still have three plates left here I don’t have to fish around behind these plates.” “Well the water is warm enough now, you can reach right in there easily and find it.” “Yeah, but I have these three plates to do now. I can do this. Naw, that is just me, I’m anxious. I’m trying to monitor my faithing and monitor God and check up on Him and see if He is really going to give me a reminder. That is just my own, you know.” Well then I do one more plate and now I get another reminder. I’ll get another ding that says knives. I’d better do it that time. I’d better do it that time, boy. If I wait three times, then I have to say, I knew I was going to do that. But, it is amazing, it is just absolutely amazing I can’t tell you. I give this part of the job up to God. I say, “Look God, I can’t remember on time when to get these knives out of here. I would like to have them soaked that would be best, you know. Then the way I would like to do it is this, let these guys soak real good like the other guys, that’s good with the plates and things. Then what I will do is, I would like to have you remind me or tell me when the best time in this process of doing the dishes is for me to go after those knives and get them out of their way so I don’t cut myself. I’m putting my safety in Your hands in the trust that You have promised guidance for anything I want to do. It is right there in Proverbs 3:6. It says that if I will acknowledge You in everything I do, that You’ll direct my paths. You’ll direct the way I do stuff. You will give me Your guidance so I’d like to claim Your guidance and promise tonight, Lord. And ah, ask that You overcome my inadequate memory and remind me when to stop and pick these knives up at the best moment.” Well, that’s faithing. That’s striking up a relationship with God. As I go through all of the dishwashing process, what I am doing now is my active part of faithing, is not thinking about the knives, but about doing the dishes that are there to do and not the knives. Not being afraid of the knives while I pickup a plate and drop it in the other side of the sink and break it. I am able to focus on doing the dishes, doing each one to the best of my ability and getting it as clean as it is going to be rather than thinking about the knives and wiping around and not even think about the dish while I am doing it and maybe missing a piece of caked on I don’t know…whatever. It let’s me focus on the next part of the job, the job at hand with all my focus, thereby allowing me to do a better job on the rest of the dishes. And that only results in more satisfaction. You get them done faster. You get them done nicer. You don’t drop anything. There are all these bonuses that go along with that. The biggest bonus is this total freedom of spirit. I have total freedom in my attitude that I don’t have to worry about those knives because God is going to tell me when to stop and get the knives out of there. Now the big responsibility, like I said before, is to take that first suggestion. Maybe I shouldn’t even be telling you all this stuff because you start doing it, you are going to start missing suggestions and you are going to get hurt. You know. I get hurt all the time and it is wonderful because every time it turns out like that, I get a really clear example of how faithing works and how I listen for God’s suggestion and to pinpoint when he gave me the first suggestion and the second suggestion. Now the continuous action of doing the dishes in the spirit of not worrying, not concerned about those knives is the constant action that keeps the connection to God alive, the faithing. You see it is all over the New Testament. Paul talks about nothing but faithing. Pistis, it is an action world. Pistis is the word they always used in the New Testament. The word that Jesus used was Pistis. It means action, the action that I am doing while I am doing the dishes. As I focus on the dishes and not on the problem. Every time I focus on the problem I fall out of my faithing mode. When I negate that thought, put that problem, that fear, the picture of those knives aside and say, “no I’m not going to look at that”, all I am going to do is wait for God to tell me. I’ll know when he tells me it’s time to take out those knives. That’s what I am going to do. And you keep that connection going until He says knives in His small still voice and barely a suggestion. Now the responsibility is again take that suggestion, act on it now. Act on it the first time. But, look at this bonus, now we found out what to do about overcoming your righter and what that is, sin and selfishness. And what faithing is when you overcome that fear and that wrongness in the project by bringing God in on the action so He reminds you to get the knives out. You stop what you are doing, get the knives out and it is taken care of. You have trusted God. You have taken all the stress out of the whole process. You felt no stress doing all the rest of the dishes. And now that the knives are out of there, you won’t feel any stress because you won’t be able to cut yourself on them. We have those two things that have happened and a lot of good has come out of that, ok? Here is the real interesting part at the point of all of this. When you faith, when you act consciously in trust of God some how some way by claiming one of His promises that you can do this thing that needs doing, with His help and you can do it a lot better with His help than without His help and you start doing the action, God starts helping. That sounds too simple, I know. God starts helping. Well, what is that? How is He able to help then? God doesn’t come down into history and time very often. He doesn’t come and pick your car up and drive you to Eureka yourself for you. He isn’t in the habit of doing that stuff. He isn’t in the habit of letting me read my book while I am driving to Eureka and He takes the wheel. I have to do all that stuff. He doesn’t do that physical stuff. Well, then He doesn’t do anything at all. Of course He does. What does He do? Obviously He does something. When you get down to the point of taking the knives out when He says knives, you have seen Him do something. He did something. He reminded you. It was clear as a bell.

You’ve got this concept – knives. Stop doing the dishes, take the knives out. God in action, wonderful, hey that is beautiful. It still doesn’t say how he worked. How did he work? He worked through you, right? He worked through me. His suggestion some how or other, his suggestion came and bing I had this thought in my head clear out of no where and the next thing I knew, there was this thing that said knives. I noticed after the fact. I was sitting there and then this thing happened. I had nothing to do with it.

God said knives. That was His spirit. Wasn’t that God’s spirit? Wasn’t that something of God that you trusted in? Something of God that came in and gave you that reminder?
Isn’t that what was happening there? What gave you the reminder? You didn’t have it in your head. It just came in. It must have come from God. How does God? It must be part of his spirit. I think that follows, I really think that follows. The actual thought, the reminder that comes to me to take those knives out of the water is the Spirit of God in action. Well, glory hallelujah. I have just found a way to get God’s Spirit in me anytime I want. Do you know what that means? Do you realize that every time God’s spirit comes into me part of my salvation is worked out? Every time God’s Spirit comes into me it’s my payback, my feedback from God that tells me from Him without any doubt that He’s there and He’s helping and He wants me to be good. He wants me to have things that are nice. He wants to help me. He will do things for me. He’s on my side.
“If God be for us, who can be against us”? Anyone, if God be for us? He parted the Red Sea. He killed everyone in Egypt that was a first born son. The first born of the cattle were killed in Egypt. The book of Jasher says first born of the statues. Jasher says in the morning were found on the ground broken. Nobles had statues of their kids. The statues of the first born were broken in the morning.

God is real. He’s there, he’s personal. You can call on Him. He will help you. He for a trusting action in Him, for recognition of His way, for recognition of Him and His creation and trust in that, He will give you His Spirit. He’ll put His Spirit inside you. He’ll give you His salvation. Every time His Spirit comes inside me, it makes me a little better person. It gives me more strength. I can go on to another hard thing that I have to do and know, and know that He will help me. I can pick out a project that I can do for God if I can be able to discern what God’s work is and I can forge ahead with that project knowing, not seeing but knowing that God will provide what I lack to get this thing done for Him. All I have to do is ask. Jesus said ask anything, anything, not just forgiveness of sin. Ask anything of me and ye shall have it. Anything. Ask me and I will help you remember when to turn the oven off because you don’t have a timer and you don’t want the blueberry turnovers to burn. Hahaha Don’t worry about that crummy oven that’s might be 50 to 100 degrees too hot and when you put the blueberry turnovers in the oven and you set the timer for twenty minutes, which should be five or ten or fifteen minutes, probably fifteen minutes before the blueberries are done and you come out there to check them after twenty minutes and they are already burned, sounds like a time for faithing.

You can’t control the stove, so you can ask God to help you out. Show Him that you trust Him to remind you, to tell you. You can be clairvoyant man, see. You can be a mystic. “Hey whoa. I don’t need a clock. Put those things in the oven. Just tell me, tell me when you put them in and let me see the process and I’ll sit around over here and I’ll tell you when to take them out. They will be done just right”. Haha. People talk like that they throw in the nut house. It’s magic, magic. But that is exactly the way it works, exactly the way it works. You must know somebody who never uses an alarm clock and always gets up on time. I mean within three or four minutes of the time they want to get up, and that can be different times. “Oh, I always get up at seven sharp. I haven’t used an alarm clock for years. I don’t know, I just always wake up at seven. I normally get up at seven, sometimes I get up at, you know, six thirty, but I don’t never use a clock, no.” There are people like that all around the place.

God’s Spirit. God’s Spirit comes into you when you faithe. How’s that happen? My idea is that when you consciously act, remember it is a verb, you got to be in action, physical action of some kind, not sitting thinking, physical action. When you are in the middle of this physical action, God is able to put His Spirit in there and mix it around with yours and make everything to come out better than one hundred percent. That is the way it always happens with me. I always find that when I am faithing, I’ve got bonuses. There’s always a bonus. Everything always happens a little bit earlier, a little bit more efficiently. It doesn’t cost as much. You get it for nothing. You just happen to be there at that particular time when you would have gone in the afternoon according to your own plan, they would have been gone. Those things happen every day, all the time to me. Every time I can faithe, I get a bonus. So your faithing action is what opens the door. I mean God’s Spirit is out there all the time. You know. It’s what holds this whole thing together. It’s God’s whole total energy that we see as the physical things around us. God created all of this out of His own energy. It still is His own energy. It is being maintained by Him at all times. In that respect, we are all part of God and God is part of us. But we are still separate beings. But God’s Spirit is omnipresent. It’s all encompassing at all times for ever and ever amen. Well, if it is always there, we always have it don't we?

Uh Uh Uh Uh. We have that little spark sure, our rule book, our rule book on life. We have that spark, we always have that but we don’t have this other thing. We have to figure out a way to get that in. How do we get that in? Well, if it isn’t there, see here’s the evidence about it’s not being there all the time, in us all the time. I can do the dishes and take my chances. I might get cut and I might not. I can do that without God.

I can know consciously that I am not asking God to remind me when to take those knives out of the water at the proper time. I can try it on my own. No problem. And I can be successful a lot of times. But I won’t have His Spirit and I will get back that ten percent of selfishness every time, every time. When I don’t get back that ten percent of selfishness, is when He comes in and helps me take that burden away. He takes off that ten percent and then I don’t get it. I get the reminder. The Spirit is the reminder.

If I don’t ask for the reminder, I don’t get it. If I don’t ask for the Spirit, if I don’t act in faith that it will come, I don’t get it. It’s got to be the Spirit. The Spirit, but the Spirit is there. It must be the asking and the action that allows the Spirit to come in. It is always there and all we do is open the door. Like I said in the beginning overcoming is just opening doors, opening doors. I ask His guidance in the way of a reminder to take the knives out of the water. His Spirit comes in and delivers the message. I’m acting in faith all along. Each one of my actions is backed up by the Spirit as He gives me the extra ten percent of a positive attitude and I don’t have to think about those knives because I am free in the Spirit of faithing and free in God’s word that says, “I will remind you to take those things out. I will remember. I will help you.” I have that freedom every second that I am doing the dishes. He takes the worry out of each little moment. I never have to think about the knives again because He will take care of it. All that freedom. The loss of that ten percent of the possibility of me getting cut all along through the whole action is God’s Spirit at work. God’s Spirit in me working. My attitude of dependence. My trust in God lets the door swing open and He rushes His Spirit in and adds it to what I am doing. Isn’t that wonderful?

But here is the other side; remember we had a balance. I thought you might have forgotten about that, huh? We came out from fear and rationalization and to the point of action and then we overcame our righter or we faithed. We overcame the fear and acted in some kind of faith action and we brought God in on the action and received some of His spirit. We opened the door. What happens when we overcome the righter? We left that sin and that selfishness going around in a circle by itself. Overcome the righter, that’s sin. Sin winds up in stress. Stress is all caused by selfishness. Overcoming my righter, becoming sin causing stress, round and round and round. Well, if the action and the process is universal, it’s got to work both ways the same. If you will pardon that colloquialism. If we faithe and open the door then when we overcome our righter, our fear action instead of our faith action, we open a door there, too. We’ve got to open a door. If it works for the faith, it’s got to work for the fear. Oh, I guess you are way ahead of me now. What door is it that we open? If we open the door of faithing, and God’s Spirit comes in and a lot of good falls out the bottom somewhere, then what door do we open in our fear action? What door do we open when we sin? And once that door gets pushed open, and I use the word pushed on purpose, you’re overcoming. You are pushing against your rightness. You push that door open. Once you push that door open, there is a chance that there is another spirit that can come in through that door. There are two different doors, your faith door and your fear door. You open that fear door, you push that open and you might reap a whirlwind coming through that door.

It might be a blizzard, a blizzard of blackness if you will. You give access to darkness, access to satan. Satan is over against that other door. And if you don’t believe in the devil, you will. Now, what is the point of all of this? What is the whole point? The point is, you can look at this little diagram.

Out from overcoming your Righter, we put a long equal sign and that ends in sin. Put that off to the left – big long equal sign that ends in sin way over on the left hand side of the page of our diagram. And then I drew a little door in there and a big flat headed thing that pushing at the door and satan sitting behind the door and a little screwy whirlwind with an arrowhead on it coming through the door. And on the other side faithing, overcoming fear, an arrow leads into an electrical buzz with lightening bolts and things coming out of it and behind the electrical buzz is a doorway that swings inward toward the faither instead of outward. Then God’s Spirit is arrowing into that buzz and there are three whole big arrows of good dropping out of the buzz. That is good with three big arrows dropping out of it. Which kind of ends our graph, our chart. But doesn’t end the discussion…ahh…so satan is out there just waiting to get in and in our daily life we’ve got this picture, we’ve got this wonderful little picture here that says that when we give in to our rationalization, and our selfishness…see I don’t say that satan comes in every time. That is the good thing about faithing. You faithe and God being such a good faithful God, He puts His Spirit in you every time you faithe. You figure out how to faithe and He will give you a lot of opportunities and all you have to do is recognize them. And He will put His Spirit every time, every single time but I don’t believe the devil does that. I don’t believe that the devil meddles in your life as much as some people like to believe. What is satan’s job anyway? Satan’s job is just to defeat God. Defeat God what? Defeat God from saving anybody. That is what all those satan movies are about, sign away your soul to the devil. Well, that is what he wants. Anyway that he can affect your soul and keep it away from God that’s what he’ll try to do. Now if you aren’t going to heaven anyway, he’s not going to bother with you. Your rationalization doesn’t mean a thing. Your little bits of selfishness doesn’t mean a thing. He’s not going to come in and meddle in your selfishness. He’s not going to meddle in your crime. He’s not going to meddle in the things you do against God. Why bother with that stuff? See? But, you open the door and when the door is opened, people walk in. They just walk in. When you open the door, you let in whatever is on the other side. And why take a chance? Huh? If the local newspapers are full of nothing but robbery, burglary, second story men, you are going to lock up aren’t you? You aren’t going to leave your door wide open and walk away. You are going to lock your door. I’m telling you when you act in selfishness, to overcome some inconvenience, some little comfort, some little financial distress, some little apparent difficulty, some laziness; every time you act that way, every time I act that way it’s a sin against God. It’s recognition of our attitude that we can do it better than God. We can do it in spite of God. “Yeah, God I hear you. Yeah, but I am going to do it this way.” I do it in spite of God or the other way, you. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. It opens the door to let greater things in. God gave us a rule book. It is just so simple. So simple.

Don’t open the door. Don’t open that door on that other side. But, look here, you see the thing is now I’ve got this little chart and it is all down here in non-judgmental ballpoint pen. Now these little squiggles and these little words, they tell me in a very non-judgmental way, and a non-threatening way. They are telling me there is a good way to go and there is this other way to go. And if you, you act in selfishness, you are only opening the door and when you open the door somebody bad might come in. Why give place to the devil? That is all it says in simple terms. Don’t give place to the devil.

You don’t have to faithe, but don’t give place to the devil. In the case of our dishes, you don’t have to faithe. You can go over and get the tongs, get the tongs, fish the things out of the water and you won’t cut yourself. No faith action involved at all. Strictly human effort accomplishing a project, taking care of the ten percent. The barest little minimum that you can say is that you acknowledge, you acknowledge your righter. You acknowledge the fact that there was some little lack in your plan and now you have righted it. You have admitted that you copped to this ten percent that might have caused you stress. There is no trusting God that way. That’s not trusting God. That’s not special indwelling of the Spirit. God doesn’t send His Spirit to – you don’t need help to do that. That is the point. You get back to that, only the places that you can’t handle. If you can handle it, what do you need God for? See? That is what faithing is all about.

It’s places where you’ve got to have God. You can’t do it without Him. See? That is where you faithe. You don’t need God to go over there and get that pair of tongs out of the drawer and fish those knives out of the water, not at all, ok? Ok, so do that. At least you recognize that in overcoming and pandering to my selfishness, I am going against God and I am opening the door. I’m opening the door to darkness. Every time. See, all the little bits count up. Every time I rationalize, every time I go against my righter, those little bits build up and soon I get into a habit of it. Pretty soon I am one of those kinds of people who everything is always going wrong and I don’t know why. I can’t understand this, you know my car is always breaking down, this and that and I can’t hold a job. Well, you damned fool, listen to yourself. Listen to your God given sense. Listen to your righter. Ask Him a question and then know that He is the Truth and don’t be so damned lazy. Get off your butt and do a little extra work and do it right and it will come out fine. Trust a little bit.

Don’t open the door. Don’t open the door. It is so dangerous. Open the other door. That’s what Jesus was talking about, “I am the door. I am the door to God. I am here to show you faith action. I am here to show you the ultimate trust in God’s Word. I am here to lay down my life on the promise of a God that you can’t see, and you can’t hear, that He will raise me up out of the grave pure and whole in three days. I am here to show an on looking world with physical eyes, this physical body be murdered, crucified and raised pure and whole in three days and rise from the dead living in flesh.”
Don’t you know He did that? Christ was raised from the grave by God. Christ didn’t raise Himself. I think a lot of people have that idea. Christ didn’t rise from the grave; He was raised from the grave. (sings here) He arose He arose Hallelujah Christ arose. Well yeah He arose in one sense only in one small sense but I don’t like that term arose. It is too misleading. It makes you think that He did it by Himself. He couldn’t do it by Himself one hundred percent without God’s help anymore than any other human being could do it one hundred percent by himself without God’s help. We can’t live one hundred percent by ourselves without God’s help. If we could, we wouldn’t have any stress. We wouldn’t be selfish. We could do everything that we need to do and we wouldn’t have any problems. It is that we can’t do. We are imperfect beings. We can’t do everything we want to do or we think we ought to be able to do. And when we can’t, we try too hard. We wind up with a lot of stress. Just call God in and I don’t need to do anything. Open the door to God’s Spirit. Faithing. Faithing will do it.

And that is what Jesus was talking about. He acted in trust. He faithed on God’s Word and through His example, we now can know how to get to God. You can’t get to God through the Jewish law. That was just a specific part of Christ’s message. He came to show the Jews, particularly because they had God’s law, that the law wasn’t really how you got to God. The law was just the rules of the game. How you play down here. You get to God through trusting actions like Abraham did with Isaac and all those other trusters of God, the heroes of faith in the Bible. Jesus’ message was faithing. That’s the good news. Gospel means good news. The good news is we can get to God. “Hey, you guys, I have good news, we can get to God. There is a way to get to God. How about that? What way is that? Faithing. “OK, Jesus how do you do that?” “Well, I’ll tell you what. I heal a lot of people. Those people all get healed by faithing.” “Oh, yeah! Wait, wait, wait. All those people you heal, tell me what they did.” “Well, they faithed.” “ Well, what’s that?” “They acted in trust of God’s healing power. They acted in the trust that God being a God of healing would heal them if they did some action.” ”Yea, yea, yea, what action did they do?” “Well, ok” there was one woman who had an issue of blood and she figured that all she had to do to activate God’s healing was to touch the hem of my garment. That is all she had to do. She did that. He turned around, He said, “your pistis, your action, your faith action based on God’s promise of healing has made you whole. Your action has made you whole.” He didn’t say, “I just healed you lady.” He said, “Your action has made you whole. Your faithing has made you whole.” We can get God’s Spirit. Jesus message was if we act in trust of God’s Word, God will put His Spirit in us and bring us salvation, healing whatever else. “ And my biggest (Jesus still talking), and my biggest act of trust, that I was crucified and after three days was raised from the dead, the message will go to every place for thousands of years. All through history people will hear.” That example will live through history as an example of a trusting action based on God’s word as a means for God’s Spirit to come into you. And when God’s Spirit is in you, that works for your salvation plain and simple. In that respect, Jesus is the door. His message is the door to God. No one comes to the Father but by Me. The way I did it. You want to get to God, do what Jesus did. Do what He did, never mind what He commanded. Do what He did. His commands were the same as God always had down there. That’s not good news, that is old news. That’s not good, that’s bad. The law, you cannot keep it. It drives you to drink. All you have to do is act in trust and you get God’s Spirit. Oh, what a relief. Jesus is the door to God.

Well, there you have it, God’s Spirit. There is one last thing about this faithing stuff. God has promised in the New Testament, God has promised in the New Testament through Paul and other writers that not only for our trusting action down here on earth will God put His Spirit in you down here and help you out, but He will also count it somewhere else as good stuff for you as righteousness. Somebody’s making up a tally someplace. Somebody’s keeping a record. I don’t know how, I don’t pretend to know how that’s happens, I don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make a hill of beans how that happens. Any scenario you want to put on it is ok with me as long as the basic, fundamental concept that’s talked about in the New Testament is recognized. That concept is, that when you faithe, when you trust God, He makes note of it someplace else. That’s all, He just makes note of it. All the times you have faithed in your lifetime are on record somehow,. And that’s what we talk about when we say treasures in heaven. Building up, building up. That is a sore point with a lot of people. Building up treasures in heaven. OK.

We have to get in a quick review before we run out of time. We have opening doors. First there is you, remember way back there. You have an idea to do something. When it becomes more than just an observation, we hit the point of commitment and we go over the line into serious consideration of the possibility of doing the thing. Immediately your Righter comes in. With me, my righter comes in, tells me how much of the plan is likely to go off to the side, gives me an image of the kind of stress that is involved, can come back at me, holds up this mirror of truth and let’s me judge whether or not my plan measures up or doesn’t measure up. Right away, as soon as I find out the amount of the plan that doesn’t measure up, my rationalization starts to balance out that plan and out of the fear that I am going to lose some of my precious little comfort or convenience or money, I act in selfishness and overcome the little warning of my righter and sin against God or let the devil in maybe through that door. Open the door to the devil. Or, I can act in trust of God and ask Him to handle the part of the project that I can’t, that is impossible for me. Now that is important. It has got to be the impossible part. There is no way I can be one hundred percent sure, ok? You can be a lot surer but you can’t be one hundred percent, that’s the key. Ninety eight percent sure is good enough. That’s great! I mean most of the time I am only forty percent sure. If you can get up to ninety eight percent sure, that is wonderful. The two percent that is left is what you are looking for. That is your loophole to God. If there is two percent you can’t be sure of, you can’t control, you can’t be positive, there you go. You can get a little two percent faithe in there. So you can trust God’s action, take that two percent and open the door to God’s Spirit. He puts His Spirit in you. In the first place a, whole lot of good drops out and He notes it down someplace else, you’ve been a good kid. I’m telling you the way God works things out is, is awesome. Once you figure some of this stuff out, you start saying, wow, hey this God, this God knows what He’s doing here. He really knows how to make a life. Everything is neat and orderly and all the rules are there and He has told me how I can live and get along down here with no problems at all by just listening to that little spark of rightness that He’s has put in me and the information in the rule book. I can live a wonderful life down here and have almost no stress in my life at all just have a happy, fulfilled, satisfying life. What a God! Boy, what a God! And not only that, He has told me how to get to heaven. Oh, did you hear that? He told me how to get to heaven. He said, “trust me I’ll put my Spirit in you. You keep trusting me, you are coming up. I’d like you to live with me for a while. All you have to do is trust what I say.”

Faithing. Faithing will change your life. It changed mine. Thank God, in Jesus name.

opendoors1.jpg - 72764 Bytes






I love mail.

Come Home