082126

 

Alive
EVERY READING AT MASS HIT MY HEART DEAD-ON

Adoration HOUR

Mom shop
I become a totally different person when I'm with her and it's so sad and upsetting. I can't seem to stop it or control it, and I'm not even aware it's happening until I get home and my mind "comes back online" in the quiet solitude. It disturbs me so much; it takes a full hour at least to get stable enough to think straight-- and it also demands intense exercise to burn off the accompanying physical stress (the two go together I've noticed).
God how can we change this?  I want to live as a good kind Christian when I'm with her and it just isn't happening.
Is this all just dissociation?


Evening=

INTENSE PANIC after eating.
I feel impending doom, like I've eaten poison.
VERY BRAVELY REFUSING TO PURGE
Trying to use dissociation to my advantage and "detach" from the screaming terror but it's not something I can really do consciously? 
I miss the days when we had so many people alive in the System that I could just call someone else in to manage this. God I miss that so much.
Could we ever have that again? Should we? 



OH BY THE WAY
THE GIFT HAS ARRIVED

YOU'RE PART OF THE FAMILY NOW BUDDY!!!!

Chaos 0 amused that their anchor plushes are going to be next to each other on my bed (I will take a photo)
"He doesn't need to worry. I don't bite... hard"
Laurie saying "that's Genesis talk"
CZ then makes it worse by adding "besides, I only eat gemstones"
Me: "funny you should say that, because I only drink water"
CZ: "BLUE water, even"
Laurie: "you two BE CAREFUL who you say stuff like that around"
(Infi talk is dangerous outside!)

Honestly though I've repeatedly tested negative for bivalve allergies so I shouldn't have any issue with cephalopods...




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https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/kng/hebrews-11.html
⚠️MAJOR MARNING =  DISPENSATIONALISM ⚠️
(i.e. five solas, no unified historical church, premillennialism, Christian zionism, literal interpretation of Scripture, rapture, no purgatory, only 2 sacraments, no pope, penal substitutionary atonement)

This particular verse about Noah delivers a number of ASPECTS of faith that are worthy of being mentioned:
1. First there is the GROUND of his faith: he is WARNED BY GOD.
[His faith begins by HEARING the Word of God (Romans 10:17)– notably a word of WARNING of JUDGMENT. This is actually so significant– our FAITH IN GOD really is only truly awakened ONLY when we are awakened to the REALITY OF SIN, and the ETERNAL CONSEQUENCES of it, and ONLY THIS REALIZATION makes us finally feel and admit our desperate NEED for God, as our SAVIOR. Truly, ANYONE can get to know that God exists through observing Creation itself (Romans 1:19-20), but ONLY if that person perceives the reality of God as its TRANSCENDENT CREATOR, and DOESN'T instead think that Creation itself is divine (Romans 1:21-23)– because THAT error is actually FAR MORE DANGEROUS that people realize, as it ultimately DENIES OBJECTIVE MORALITY, since it denies the reality of God as a DIVINE PERSON, Who is both the STANDARD and the JUDGE. And THAT'S why, terribly and tragically, so many nature-centered religions fall into moral depravity, especially of a hedonistic and "animal" sort (Romans 1:24-28), and in a scarily short time this will INEVITABLY lead to worse and worse sin (Romans 1:29-31), because– to be blunt– any sexual sin throws the door wide open to the worst demons, and sexual sin is far too easily and typically "justified" by pagan mindsets (as our current culture proves). But such sin ONLY gets to this horrific extreme BECAUSE there is NO RECOGNITION OF GOD AS A PERSON, and thus NO ADHERENCE TO GOD'S MORAL STANDARD, and thus NO ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE WARNINGS OF GOD, because they even DENY the reality of SIN altogether, and thus DENY the possibility of JUDGMENT (especially for those that believe in reincarnation, or deny an afterlife altogether). This is so dangerous because THE WARNINGS ARE STILL REAL and yet to a mind that refuses or struggles to admit that there IS a objective divine moral standard, and therefore that sin and guilt and judgment ARE real and applicable to EVERY human being, those warnings will be ignored or laughed off or even violently opposed. They didn't have FAITH in God's EXISTENCE in the TRUE way, even though they "heard" His Words in Nature, because they didn't (or didn't want to) realize or admit that there WERE Words being spoken (which, again, requires a Person TO speak them; instead they thought that apparently nature was only "speaking of itself"??? That alone says a LOT about the difference between pagan religions and the true faith– the former tends to focus on SELF as divine, while the latter focuses on the OTHERNESS of divinity??? Many pagans see nature as "glorifying itself," as being "its own creator" in a sense; and thus as part of nature, they conclude that humans can glory in themselves too, as "everything is god"??? This is where the moral relativism and "my truth" comes in; humans become their "own standards" with no external judge or judgment, and certainly no sin, because self-justification is scarily easy when you believe that your own motives and intentions are pure and good by default– that even if you cause harm to another, it "wasn't intended," or in extreme cases, it "isn't actually harmful at all." But I can't talk about this much as it hurts and I used to live like that and do not ever want those thoughts in my head ever again, even as criticizing them as so deadly. The point is that the TRUTH is that there IS an objective divine moral standard and IT EXISTS IN OUR CONSCIENCE (Romans 2:14-16), if that conscience hasn't been malformed or corrupted of course, and that DOES happen when one "takes God out of the picture", when one doesn't have FAITH in what God has SAID, either through ignorance or denial or deception (Titus 1:15-16). And this starts most easily and most immediately when one simply misses the mark at the most basic level, in attributing creation to itself, and thus undermining the entire plan of salvation. If they cannot hear God's Words in Creation, AS Words spoken by a CREATOR, then) they CANNOT have faith in His WORDS, because they don't have faith in His PERSON. But I've repeated that point enough already. The bottom line of it all is that FAITH IN GOD AS A PERSON (Deuteronomy 6:4) WILL ALWAYS INVOLVE THE REVELATION OF THE FACT THAT WE ARE NOT GOD (Psalm 100:3, Deuteronomy 32:6), AND CANNOT TRUST OUR OWN "WORDS" (Psalm 95:6-9), BECAUSE WE ARE IN FACT SINNERS, AND WE NEED TO BE SAVED, OR ELSE WE WILL BE JUDGED (Psalm 95:10-11). But how do we come to truly know this? ONLY THROUGH HIS PERSONAL WORD TO US– ONLY THROUGH HIS GOSPEL. Scripture and the Church (which are inextricable) are absolutely essential to human life, both temporal and eternal. Without God's revealed Word, we are truly lost. But we NEED to have "EARS TO HEAR", or it will do us no good (Matthew 13:9-17+19, Mark 4:9-15), and we can ONLY hear through faith. That's the paradox. If we aren't willing to hear, we won't (Jeremiah 5:21). If we aren't open to trust, we won't. If we close our ears out of fear or pride or apathy or anger, then we won't hear anything, even if it is being shouted at us.
FAITH comes by HEARING, yes, but SPECIFICALLY by hearing the WORD of God ABOUT CHRIST, Who ALONE reveals the Father to mankind, EVEN when He was only known through the Promise– because the Promise was given in the initial wake of SIN, and for REDEMPTION from it. Therefore, yes, FAITH comes by hearing God's WARNING of JUDGMENT, because that very warning is a CALL to REPENTANCE, and a revelation of a JUST BUT MERCIFUL JUDGE, and the existence of a MORAL LAW that HAS been broken, and the AWAKENING OF CONSCIENCE and the AWARENESS OF GUILT and the NEED FOR A SAVIOR– Who WAS ALWAYS PROMISED to us, and HAS BEEN GIVEN to us, and THAT is the GOSPEL!!! The very FACT that God GIVES mankind a warning IS the heart of the Gospel– "REPENT," and THAT'S how you "BELIEVE in the Gospel"– and you do so BECAUSE "the KINGDOM OF GOD IS NEAR" (Mark 1:15)!!!! You CANNOT repent if you don't recognize the KING!! But because He HAS arrived, we CAN repent, and TRUST in HIM to SAVE us.
In Noah's time, THE PROMISE STILL EXISTED. Sinners could repent because the Promise itself told them that repentance was necessary, by REVEALING that mankind HAD a NEED of a SAVIOR, even to those who had never considered such a thing before. This is the bottom line. The WARNING WAKES US UP TO THE FULL TRUTH, and thus to the FULL BEAUTY AND GOODNESS OF GOD AS SAVIOR. And THAT is the BASIS of our trust in Him– that revelation that God is not only a Person, but a Person Who is personally dedicated to redeeming us from death itself, the result of sin– and Who mercifully takes every opportunity to let us know that we ARE dying, because we ARE sinners, so we can REPENT from those sins and find LIFE in HIM, the life which He has PROMISED through a SAVIOR. This is the foundation of faith because it PROVES that God is GOOD in His Heart towards us, that He CAN be trusted, and that He WANTS us to LIVE and be SAVED and be FREE. He wouldn't warn us if He didn't want us to ESCAPE the danger, and to someone who never realized they WERE in danger, let alone that there was a personal God Who CARES about them closely enough TO warn them, this revelation VIA WARNING is indeed WHERE REAL FAITH BEGINS. Creation can tell us God exists, and that God is good and beautiful, but it cannot tell us that we are in moral danger, and that there is only one way out– albeit one sure and certain Way: the very Word that spoke Creation into existence for love of you. HE is the One Who warns you, because He WANTS to save you. All you need to do is TRUST THAT HE WILL, and thus, like Noah, DO WHAT HE TELLS YOU TO DO (James 1:22)].

2. The TERRITORY on which his faith is FOCUSED: things that were NOT YET SEEN.
[That "YET'" is CRITICAL to faith in God, because WHATEVER GOD SAYS IS CERTAIN. His Every Word WILL be fulfilled. There is literally NO ALTERNATIVE, and that is AMAZING to realize. So if we don't see it NOW, we WILL see it later, either in this life or the next– and FAITH sees ALL things "now," because faith sees with GOD'S eyes in a sense; faith TRUSTS in the FACT that GOD WILL DO IT, and so it is ALREADY "as good as done"! "Not yet" ONLY exists in LINEAR TIME; God exists in the "ETERNAL NOW'" and faith glimpses INTO that, and LIVES ACCORDING TO that vision.]

3. The PRACTICE of his faith: he was MOVED with REVERENCE FOR GOD.
[If we truly TRUST God, we WILL inevitably REVERE Him, for His Goodness and Power and Beauty and Glory and Perfection in literally every possible sense. We will revere Him AS GOD, as the SOURCE of ALL Truth, as TRUTH ITSELF. And that reverence expresses itself in WORSHIP and OBEDIENCE, for those three virtues are ALL the FRUIT of trusting faith, which expresses itself in DEEDS. Faith begets reverence, reverence leads to obedience, obedience enables worship, and worship is ALWAYS lived out in our actions– and I must emphasize that ALL of this MUST flow from LOVE, or it is HOLLOW (1 Corinthians 13:2), because remember, FAITH IS "WALKING WITH GOD" (John 14:15, 1 John 2:3-6, Colossians 2:6-7, Hebrews 11:6)– and that LOVE is what MOVES us more than anything!!]

4. The WORK of his faith: he PREPARED an ark for himself AND his household.
[DIFFERENT FROM "PRACTICE"– THE PRACTICE COMES BEFORE THE WORK, AS THE FLOWER TO THE FRUIT!!!! IF YOU AREN'T PRACTICING YOUR FAITH IN CONSISTENT PERSONAL DAILY FIDELITY AND OBEDIENCE AND LOVE (AS CHRIST'S BRIDE, HIDDEN FROM THE WORLD TO STAY CLOSE TO HIM)– THEN YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO DO THE "GREATER" AND PUBLIC WORKS THAT GOD CALLS YOU TO DO FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS!!! YOU CANNOT "SAVE" YOUR HOUSEHOLD "ON YOUR OWN"; YOU CAN ONLY BRING THE LIGHT OF GOD'S SALVATION TO THEM THROUGH YOUR FAITHFUL WITNESS TO HIM AND HIS GOSPEL. AND THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE IF YOU AREN'T CONSISTENTLY LIVING IN FIDELITY TO THAT GOSPEL ON A DAILY BASIS IN YOUR OWN PERSONAL LIFE– IF YOU HAVEN'T FIRST LET GOD INTO YOUR OWN SOUL TO SAVE IT. OTHERWISE YOU WILL BE A HYPOCRITE AND A FALSE WITNESS. This is terrifying but it is so true. How can you lead others to the Truth if you don't know Him yourself? If God calls you to help Him save souls, how could you ever cooperate with Him as someone who didn't know what it meant TO be saved? How could you ever hope to be a reliable witness, a "preacher of righteousness," if your own life spoke a different theme– if you had been walking without God far too often? The first step to doing God's works for OTHERS is ALWAYS to PRACTICE your faith "for yourself". The two GO TOGETHER. You are NOT exempt; it is a false satanic "humility" that tries to exclude self from God's salvation, on the pretense that "I'm not good enough"! Of course you're not; no one is; that's the WHOLE POINT of MERCY!!! Your job is to be GRATEFUL and respond in LOVE and JOY and live your NEW LIFE IN CHRIST every moment, and ONLY THEN– when you have come to KNOW God through FAMILIARITY, through TIME and CLOSENESS and COMMUNICATION– CAN God use you as His INSTRUMENT, as one He knows exactly how to hold and use so as to bring out the most beautiful music from you. You must be HIS, before you can do HIS work.]

5. The RESULT of his faith: he SAVED his HOUSEHOLD.
[THIS HITS HOME. The ultimate result of ALL faith IS salvation, because our faith is in the WORD of God FOR salvation– for a SAVIOR, for JESUS CHRIST, for the GOSPEL, for the INCARNATE  WORD– and therefore we TRUST that God WILL save us THROUGH Christ, because GOD HAS PROMISED TO SAVE US FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME, AND JESUS IS THE PROMISE. AND ALL OF GOD’S "OTHER" PROMISES BUILD UPON THE FIRST, AND LEAD TO ITS FULFILLMENT, AND THUS THEY ARE ALL SUMMED UP AND REALIZED IN JESUS!!
And there is NO FAITH (OR HOPE) IN HEAVEN, because THATS when our salvation is FULLY REALIZED, and NOT UNTIL THEN.
As for "saving our household" by our own faithful obedience to God– I would say that specifically applies to witnessing to the Gospel. Noah did that in his own right– not only did he believe God's warning ("repent" or face judgment, basically), and act upon it by building the ark (a type of the CHURCH), he ALSO inevitably had been already living his whole life according to the hope of a Savior, according to the "true religion" passed down from Adam to Enoch and now to himself. And by building the ark, as a response to the warning, in reverent obedience to God's command, Noah testified that God was not only faithful to JUDGE, but to SAVE! It was this entire chain of fidelity on his part that his family was saved– not merely by entering the ark, but by the holy life the man that built it had led, so as to make HIS faithful witness TRUSTWORTHY; if Noah had NOT been righteous, there would have been NO reason to trust that he was obeying GOD in this manner! HIS visible and tangible "walk of faith" was the "light" enabling those close to him to "see" that the unseen God he loved and served so loyally WAS real, and WAS good, for Noah's righteous walk SHOWED that this God was WORTHY of faith, and COULD be trusted, and SHOULD be obeyed, for such devotion to Him to bear such fruit! And thus those who knew Noah as such a person were ABLE to BELIEVE in turn that God HAD spoken to Noah, and could THEN believe in those Words of God THEMSELVES, and thus TRUST and REVERE and OBEY Him too. Of course, this was probably so easy for his family; I trust that Noah had raised very holy relations. But this effect of his witness was meant for all those OUTSIDE his family too– to the ones to whom the warning was especially directed. Unfortunately, they did not believe him– instead they only mocked him! They did not believe that God would judge the world like that; maybe they didn't even want to believe that what they were doing was sinful, was something deserving of judgment. In any case, they weren't part of Noah's household. They "COULD have been", in a sense, IF they had REPENTED and JOINED them in their FAITH, but they did not. So it goes for the Church. ANYONE can enter into God's family, into the "ark" of His Son's Body, IF they have FAITH IN HIM as their SAVIOR. But if they don't trust God, if they won't believe the warning, if they don't listen to His Words... then there's nothing left for them but the floodwaters. And yet God gave them a hundred years to change their minds and hearts. Surely He WANTED them to escape the judgment; He WANTED them to listen and trust and obey and be saved. But He would not force them to. The grace was available, but Love must be freely chosen. After all, without love, a relationship cannot last– not even a family. And without faith, without trust, how can you live as a family? How could you ever hope to be saved by God if you did not trust Him to do so– if you did not believe that He loves you?
The result of ALL our faith IS salvation, but NO ONE can be saved WITHOUT faith, and faith saves not one man, but the WHOLE HOUSEHOLD. Jesus Christ became man for EVERY man. The Church is His BODY, His BRIDE. The Saints are a FAMILY. When we trust God's Word, we trust it for EVERYONE, ourselves included, no one excluded, as long as that Word is BELIEVED, and ACTED UPON (James 2:17). There would have been no ark if Noah hadn't built it. His faith opened the door to others. The Cross embraces all people. The Church calls all nations to herself. The Gospel is preached in every language. God is speaking His Promise and His Warning in the same Word, even now, even until the end of time. Will we listen? Will we look? Will we trust in the witness of others, and come to trust in the One they trust? Will we leave the fallen world behind and join the household of faith in the ark?
Pretense will not save us. Either we believe the flood is coming and we act accordingly, or we don't. Only faith results in salvation. And God's household is still the living witness to it.]

6. His WHOLE CONDUCT was a WITNESS of faith: he was JUDGING THE WORLD.
[I think I've effectively spoken to this enough already! Just note that Noah himself was NOT passing sentence on anyone– in fact, BACE attests most tenderly that Noah even stopped working on the ark three times in the desperate hope that maybe God would have reason to "change His verdict" and avert the coming destruction (Genesis 18:23-32) = "[Noah was] interiorly instructed upon God's design to destroy mankind, and he was commanded to build an ark. I saw that Noah grew sad at the announce­ment, and that he prayed for the punishment to be averted. He did not begin the work at once. Again the Lord appeared to him, twice in succession, com­manding him to begin the building, otherwise he should perish with the rest of mankind... It was long before the ark was completed, for Noah often discontinued it for years at a time. Three times did God warn him to proceed with it. Each time Noah would engage workmen, recommence, and again dis­continue in the hope that God would relent." But tragically, this did not happen, for the people did not turn from their evil ways.
HOWEVER I must "stand corrected" here– BACE implies that, contrary to my thoughts, Noah did NOT go to the cities to announce this warning as a "preacher of righteousness" in a literal oracular sense??? First she says, "I saw Noah removing with all his family to... a high, woody, SOLITARY region... No words can express what Noah endured from the malice and ill will of the workmen during the whole time that the ark was building. They mocked him, they insulted him in every way, they called him a fool. He paid them well in cattle, but that did not prevent their reviling him. NO ONE KNEW WHY HE WAS BUILDING THE ARK, therefore did they ridicule him."
So first of all, Noah SPECIFICALLY moved FAR AWAY from settled society to begin this work (smart, so as to be uninterrupted and uncorrupted, to focus more exclusively on God, and to detach more entirely from that world about to be destroyed), meaning that this was NOT something people would just "see as they passed by"; it was apparently NOT a place even readily accessible to men? So this ark was NOT a "public witness" during its construction; it wasn't "that guy down the road with a boat in his yard". Noah was in solitary high places doing this– an obvious type of Christ even so (Matthew 14:23, Mark 1:35, Luke 5:16, 6:12). Nevertheless, he WAS HIRING PEOPLE (from neighboring cities?) to HELP him build it– whether he went out to hire them in person I don't know. But the shocking point is that, neither in the hiring nor in the working, Noah NEVER TOLD THEM WHY THE ARK WAS BEING BUILT???? Even though they obviously realized it WAS a huge boat??? Did they ever ASK??? Or did they just mock and insult him over it, so that he simply kept quiet and felt no obligation to respond, because they wouldn't take it seriously anyway? OR DID NOAH JUST NEVER SAY ANYTHING BECAUSE GOD HAD NEVER SPECIFICALLY TOLD HIM TO???? AND NOAH REFUSED TO PRESUME???? Or would he have sadly realized that such general broadcasting of this holy message would have been "casting pearls before swine"??? AND YET he kept stopping the project specifically because he obviously wanted the disaster to be averted, and yet that couldn't happen unless people repented??? OH WAIT I GET IT NOW, OH MAN– IF NOAH HAD TOLD THESE SINFUL MEN WHY HE WAS BUILDING THE ARK (i.e. TO SAVE HIS FAMILY FROM GOD'S IMMINENT JUDGMENT UPON THE NATIONS), THEY 1. MIGHT HAVE TAKEN VIOLENT OFFENSE AND SABOTAGED OR DESTROYED IT, INSTEAD OF JUST THINKING NOAH WAS STUPID & CRAZY, OR 2. IF THEY HAD FEARED ITS LEGITIMACY, THEY MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN THE IDEA TO START BUILDING THEIR OWN ARKS!!! THIS IS THE SAME REASON WHY RAHAB WAS FORBIDDEN FROM TELLING ANYONE ELSE ABOUT THE SCARLET CORD!!!!
In any case this is sobering. To think, there might be warnings of doom against our own sins right in front of us, but we cannot recognize them, because we're too busy scorning the messenger, or deeming the means too strange to take seriously...]