everything EXCEPT God...
That relentlessly demonstrated fact over these 10+ years is perhaps the single most significant nonBiblical fact that has kept a fierce fire burning in my spirit toward being as vividly and fiercely active in declaring Biblical Truth as I more or less could these many years.
If following them around most of their waking hours with coffee or tea and crumpets or chocolate covered almonds or raspberry tarts and Hagen Daz or rib-eye steaks or levitated Laz-Y-Boy's--were possible and would help--I'd do it.
If fasting to skin and bones and praying 18 hours a day, 7 days a week were possible for me and would help, somehow, I'd manage a way to do it.
I realize that many Roman Catholics et al hereon see me almost as the devil incarnate. Thankfully, they are wrong, again. I'm flawed enough. Thankfully, by God's Grace through Christ's Blood, I'm no longer near that flawed.
Many such folks seem to think that my motivation is horrendously mean spirited, carnal, even demonic.
The TRUTH is far the opposite of that.
Sometimes, it feels like I haven't learned a great deal for my 63 years of uhhhh burping and bloviating.
Sometimes, it feels like I have a lot of dull arrows in my quiver that seem to fly too often curved or wobbly.
[tears] However, I have learned the hard way and many dozens of times . . . that the very odd bird of rare plumage that God HAS CRAFTED within my skin and even between my ears and certainly within my heart and spirit--that too easily absurd character does have impact on a wide variety of personalities--and often when I least expect it--and often by some of my least winsome qualities and ways.
I've long wished it otherwise. I've long wished that the passionate caring that burns so intensely within me only came out in grandfatherly hugs and gentle Walter Brennen flavored Holy Spirit wisdom. Sometimes I can seem to be graced with and manage that brief--occasionally. Most of the time, my thrownness and assignment is otherwise scripted.
And the pot does not complain to the Master Potter unless the pot wants ground to grog-grit for the umpteenth time and mixed with new clay and begun anew on the whirling wheel of pressure, mud and risk of flying splat on the wall yet again. Thankfully, the Master Potter doesn't do that often--and usually only for effect to make an emphatic point.
I know I'm NOT one size fits all. And that's still too often frustrating and saddening.
Yet, it's NOT my job to be . . . how to say it . . . Yes, I'm to be broken bread and poured out hopefully sweet wine to those who cross my path--even Jesus' hands extended; Jesus' Heart enfolding; Jesus' Truth Freeing. Yet, I cannot be, was not designed to be, am not permitted to be the existential answer or even messenger to every person's every spiritual problem or cluelessness. What a burden of humility that would require!
I can only be me.
[lots of tears] HOWEVER, GOD HAS FASHIONED lil ol very flawed bird-of-rare-off-the-wall-plumage me--even and particularly FOR HIS PURPOSES. And, He IS carrying them out in spite of me and in spite of everyone else. PRAISE AND BLESSED BE HIS NAME.
I cannot construct, as my housemate with my wife once accused me of trying to do--I cannot construct the ideal tailormade swimming pool and under water basket weaving course to solve every person's existential spiritual growth glitch, roadblock.
THANKFULLY that's Holy Spirit's task anyway.
I have chosen and do choose and will, prayerfully, relentlessly choose to be HIS BROKEN BREAD AND POURED OUT WINE regardless of the assaults, lambasts, misunderstandings, outrages, gritches, . . . whatever . . . whether it looks like that to everyone else, or not.
So I persist in declaring as vividly and forthrightly as I can priority messages--such as the highest priority message well above "FLASH OVERRIDE:"
I don't care if every church 'Father,'
every scrap of extra-Biblical document,
every magicsterical and cluster of power-mongering elite,
every monk in every monestary since Noah,
every king, editor, general, admiral, university dean, president & potentate from hell to Alpha Centauri around the world and back said and/or says otherwise--
GOD CHOSE
[not Prottys, not scribes, not editors, not book sellers, not imbibing translators],
Of course, satan has other notions to infect hearts and minds with. "Did God REALLLLLLLLY !!!!SAY!!!! . . .??? Didn't God REALLY MEAN . . . ???"
. . . the mean, deadly
seductive buZtard
[a cross between a buzard and a . . .]
literally hell-bent on destroying to shattered eternal DEATH every believer possible.
.
.
.
GOD'S WORD IS LIFE, ETERNAL LIFE AND SOUL PEACE BECAUSE THE LIVING WORD THE CHRIST IS PART AND PARCEL OF THE WRITTEN WORD--BY WHICH HOLY SPIRIT ENLIVENS AND MATURES, LEADING INTO ALL TRUTH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS THE WILLING COOPERATIVE HEART.
It doesn't matter the sweet wrapping, the layers of white hankies, the Pomp and Circumstance; the angels of light visual displays.
DEADLY IS STILL DEADLY.
HAZARDOUS TO ETERNAL LIFE
IS STILL HAZARDOUS TO ETERNAL LIFE.
Partake at your own risk.
There are no sufficient air-bags
to cushion one's landing in hell.
And even to arrive in Heaven and realize how outrageously one has foolishly, lazily, cowardly missed their personal Mark of the High Calling potential IN JESUS, IN GOD'S LIVING WORD--THAT alone is sufficient cause to ponder most carefully
Thank you for stating the Catholic position so succinctly (in the midst of your post)
Yup. Nailed it.