Saturday July 26, 2008
Stephen Porter - 10:08 AM ADT
99 SHARING
We all want to share with others and we want them to share with us. Every day strangers will start a conversation with you or you will start one with them. A smile or a simple ‘hello’, just to have them acknowledge us and be acknowledged back means that they have accepted us and we them.
Our emotional needs require sharing and acceptance; our physically handicapped feel this lack every day. People are uncomfortable around them because they don’t know how to relate to them so they ignore them and hope that they will go away. To a handicapped person, their handicap is real and a part of them; by accepting this fact and talking about it, we accept them as they are and who they are.
We move through society looking for those, that we think are worthy, to accept us into their world. Acceptance and rejection do not have to be verbalized to be known; it can be felt and seen by our actions and attitude.
We share a small detail about our self with a stranger and the response dictates weather we think we are accepted or rejected. If we are accepted, we keep sharing and receiving as long as there is a positive, pleasant feeling about it. If it continues very long, we have a friend, lover, buddy, wife or whatever.
If we are rejected, we pull back and withdraw our feelings until that person is and remains a stranger.
We seek out and try to befriend those that we can gain from or those that we want to emulate. We wish to use our friendships to better our position in life so we try sharing with the wealthy, beautiful or charismatic in the hopes that they will accept us and share back so that we can get close to them and become one of their circle of followers.
We reject or string along for our pride those we think unworthy of our attention and friendship, hoping to do better or to impress the ‘more worthy’ crowd.
As we get more distant from each other, we find less and less sharing and more and more using. Women will give sex for affection, men will give money for things that impress others, kids become proud and arrogant because parents want to share their kids’ worlds but not give them any of their own and the individual is told that he is more important than the masses for others to gain from him.
Jesus shared all of Himself with everyone that wanted Him to so that He could become our friend; His personality, time, knowledge, power and parentage in the hopes that we would accept Him and share our lives with Him; our personalities, time, knowledge, strength and His parentage. Those of us that accepted became His friends and those of us that rejected Him went away from Him.
Sharing is a big part of intimacy; not just talking but listening and feeling the emotions of the other. Giving up our comfort zone to get personally involved with the emotions and feelings of others; understanding where they are and what they are going through and willing to pay the cost of sharing their world for their benefit; no matter what their social status is.
Give yourself away and share others lives; you might be pleasantly surprised.
Saturday July 19, 2008
Stephen Porter - 10:14 AM ADT
98 SHUT UP
That’s all you have to do and you can go on living with no problems and no one will bother you. Don’t tell people how good God is or how He loves them and everyone will accept you and make you feel like one of the gang.
Join with them and worry about your bills, your health and your day to day problems and they will see that you don’t have anything that they should be worried about.
Let them go to hell; they deserve it; after all God saved you and not them, didn’t He? If He wanted them to be saved, He would send some one to talk to them; one of those preachers or missionaries, so, because He didn’t, he must not want them to hear the good news that Jesus will forgive their sins and save them.
Ohhhh! I said it; now someone will take issue with me and say that God loves all mankind and will save them all. Soon there will be a big uproar and everybody will have a different opinion and I’ll be ridiculed for speaking about God’s salvation plan.
God doesn’t do that; why, if He did, He would have told me Himself, so, you must be lying.
I’d believe God, if He spoke to me but I won’t believe you. You’re just trying to control me.
So, you talk to God and He talks back; you think your something special and you’re trying to impress me with your stories. Well, I seen what you did yesterday and I don’t believe that was a Christian thing to do, so, God can’t be talking through you. You’re not perfect you know.
They will say anything to get you to shut up.
When you talk about God as if He were real, then you are disturbing everyone’s peace about their sins only being little ones so God will overlook them.
When you talk about God being your best friend and treat Him that way, you show the people of the world that He is real and that they have to deal with Him and His ‘life after death’.
What people don’t know about, they are afraid of and will get angry at someone who makes them afraid.
People talk about their problems in a hope that, by listening, you are sharing their problems and this brings them relief and seems to make their problem easier for them to bear. They don’t want help; they just want their problems to go away; so, when you offer them God’s way to help them, they don’t want it. You’re suggesting that they are weak and can’t handle their own problems.
By talking about what God has done for you, you show them how God helped you and that there is help for them, too.
Every problem that they have, you and I have had. God has helped us and is willing to help them but, unless they are told, they will never know God can help and will likely not think of help from God.
All we have to do is tell the truth about our God; what He has and is doing for us.
Speak up; God is worth it and the people NEED TO HEAR what we have to tell them.
Friday July 18, 2008
Stephen Porter - 9:14 PM ADT
10 LANE CHANGES
There are two methods of lane changes; an old one and a new one.
First, the new one that is being taught in the driving schools and which I don’t use.
In the process of changing lanes, the first thing is to decide weather the change is really necessary. There are so many blind spots around your vehicle that a lane change is a fairly dangerous thing to do, so, if you don’t have to, don’t. It would be safer and wiser to drop back a couple of kilometres and hour and wait for your turn than to take a chance that you’re not comfortable with.
If you have decided that the lane change is needed; then check to make sure that you can legally change lanes where you are or just ahead of you, where you will be changing. [It is illegal to change lanes where there is a solid line between the lanes, through intersections and within about 30 meters on either side of an intersection.]
Having picked your spot to change put your signal light on to tell the drivers around you that you want to change lanes and look for a clear spot to move into in the lane that you are entering. By putting your signal light on in advance, you are asking permission, from the drivers in that lane, to allow you to merge with them. Make sure that you don’t just look in your mirrors for traffic in the lane that you are merging into but glance over your shoulder, too; there is a blind spot just behind your mirror that someone could be in and not show up in your mirror because they are ahead of the field of vision that the mirror is showing you.
The hope is that they will slow down and make a spot for you to move into. The reality that I see is that the drivers speed up to block the change so that you will have to change behind them. They don’t want you in front of them. It’s rude and leaves you slowing down looking for someone to let you in. [This should not have been a problem but, with everyone tailgating, they are travelling too close together for a safe lane change; which means that drivers changing lanes must now cut the other person off just to get into the other lane.]
The old way that I use is that I check my mirrors and look over my shoulder and find the spot that I can merge into before I put my signal light on. Then, when I have found my spot and am ready to merge into it, I put my signal light on to tell the driver behind me in that lane that I am coming over.
I start my move after a few blinks of the light [just enough time to let them realize that I am coming but not enough time for them to speed up and cut me off]
By picking my own spot to change, I can make sure that the spot is big enough for me without depending on someone else to back off. This is important because I know how big I am and how much room I need. I have taken the responsibility of my lane change on myself and not had to rely on someone that might not be experienced enough to be able to handle it.
After making the lane change, gradually back off from the driver in front of you until there is a comfortable distance between you. This not only is safer for you but also leaves a hole in case there is another driver desperately trying to merge into that lane.
Saturday July 12, 2008
Stephen Porter - 9:02 AM ADT
97 PHYSICAL
The physical world is the one that we can see, smell, breath, hear and touch. This is the one that we show others and we spend a lot of time, money and effort keeping it looking presentable to the general public.
We spend extra money and time for fashionable clothes, extra time grooming ourselves into today’s acceptable fashions and extra effort and pain changing our natural look into something that others will approve of.
We have this deep desire to be accepted by each other; especially those that we think are influential and important socially.
Mankind is demanding and cruel in it’s acceptance of an individual. They only accept certain looks, actions and attitudes. Any deviation from their accepted normal is met with scorn, ridicule and anger and, as mankind progresses with time, these standards and acceptances get more demanding and harder to live with.
Mankind hide their physical deformities so that no-one will know and reject them. We ignore handicapped people as inferior and add to their already hard life.
We display great possessions to be accepted or inspire awe in those around us.
We spend huge amounts of time and wealth making our bodies into something that society will accept as normal.
Our entire life is spent displaying an image of a successful and happy person in today’s social setting, so we can feel secure and accepted.
Much stress and personal habits hinge on our feelings about our projected image and we develop harmful and, even, fatal habits from peer pressure.
Or, we accept our lower standards and become outcasts of society; grouping ourselves with others of low self esteem. Letting our physical appearance deteriorate around ourselves and our possessions to join with a group of that nature to be accepted by them, so we can feel normal somewhere.
Every click has its standard that it will accept and anything outside that standard is rejected. Those wishing to be accepted by any click or group of people must act and look a certain way. High society will accept those that act and display wealth and self-importance, low society will accept those that act and display unacceptable and humiliating actions and displays of shocking behaviour.
Our physical appearance is directly affected by our way of thinking [or, as the bible says; our heart] and one can tell where someone’s thinking process is by what they do or how they look. What is important to a person will be displayed by how they project themselves to the rest of society. Our physical appearance is not a shield to protect us from societies scorn but a window to tell someone where their thought process is.
Our physical selves and our possession display are important because of how and why we do it. It will tell all looking almost everything about our inner thinking process and God is watching; what are you silently telling Him?
Saturday July 12, 2008
Stephen Porter - 9:02 AM ADT
9 SIMPLE
People won’t slow down because it is the legal and right thing to do and they won’t slow down because it is the safest thing for themselves and everyone else; they will only slow down if they can save money with the high gas prices.
Let’s simplify the problem with a sale on safe legal driving. Catch the ones that are not doing it and take away their money. That would give them a chance to save twice and keep more money in their pockets.
Saturday July 5, 2008
Stephen Porter - 11:12 AM ADT
96 THE TRUTH
Man is forever trying to rationalize religion. Put it in a box that he can understand and make it into a simple set of rules that he can keep so that he doesn’t have to be continually thinking about it and checking himself, to see if he is doing it right. This way, he doesn’t have to worry about being right or wrong, he just has to follow those set of rules and God will accept him into paradise while he can get on with his, much more important, lifestyle.
God started with a man and they were friends. He added woman and man then had something else to occupy his mind with instead of God. Mankind went to hell.
God started over with Noah and mankind again went to hell after so many generations.
God found Abram and, still trying to find a long-term solution, got some people living for Him instead of religion. It was shaky but working to some extent.
God brought in Mosses and gave the people some laws and they were put in a book; great, they now had something that they could hold and see. They didn’t have to go to God every time and check themselves; they could go to the book and read it for themselves and make up their own minds. God would send them prophets to correct them and hear from God, words that they needed to hear. They soon killed those prophets because their correcting was not the way the people wanted to go; they had the book and could do it themselves. They wanted a king so God gave them Saul, who took them to battles that they lost.
God found David and the people had a living example of how to live right for Him along with the book. A few generations later, the people were gone again; their selfishness and independence taking them to hell again.
By the time God sent His Son, Jesus, to us, the people were so religious and had so many rules to follow that the ordinary person did not have any hope of pleasing the God of the Jews.
Jesus’ words were so different then those of the religious leaders and gave hope to the common man. They were so simple and so easy that the religious, who had come up with over 2000 rules that one had to obey to please their God, killed Jesus to shut Him up and stop this new, easy way to avoid hell and get into heaven.
The truth is too hard for the ‘everyone is going to make it, do whatever you want to’ ultra-liberal religions because there is something that one must do and a lifestyle that one must live; but it is too easy for the ‘3, 5 or 10 step to heaven’ ultra-religious because pleasing God and being accepted by Him is not a repetitious routine that is the same for everybody.
There are people all over the world and in most religions who are doing it right. These few are far outweighed by the rest who only think that they are doing it right.
The simple truth is God will accept all those who want to live their lives His way.
Those that are doing it right are those that keep this ‘want to’ towards God while all around them have taken up ritual, habit, obedience to others, self-sacrifice or some other security to replace the spontaneous requests of our first love; God and His pleasure.
Jesus showed us how it was done by loving His father even when He asked Him to die on a cross at our hand and still love us enough to give us the gift of His death for our salvation.
Love starts in the heart as a ‘because I want to’ and ends in the heart as a ‘because I love, I want to’.
Tuesday July 1, 2008
Stephen Porter - 8:19 PM ADT
8 ‘3 MPH’
When I was younger, about 10 or 15 years ago, there was a thought train that the radar equipment was not accurate so one could speed a little and not get caught.
This was true; radar had an accuracy ratio of plus or minus 1.5 MPH totalling a 3 MPH difference. That’s 5 Km in today’s lingo.
So, you travel 5 Km over the speed limit and don’t get caught. Pretty soon, everyone is traveling 5 Km’s over the speed limit. [It’s that monkey see, monkey do rule] Who are they going to stop, everyone?
Now everyone is going 5Km over the speed limit so, some try 10Km over the speed limit. It’s only 5 Km faster than everyone else and the law enforcement officers get used to this small change. More and more people move up to 10 Km over the speed limit until everyone is now travelling 10 Km over the speed limit. Again, who are they going to stop? Everyone is doing it.
Then we try 5 Km more because everyone is going 10 Km over the speed limit, 5 more is hardly noticeable and is easily reduced when one sees the law around. We have got away with it for so long that a large percentage of drivers now habitually travel 15 Km over the speed limit and are not stopped.
Now we have the bold criminals trying another 5 Km. This means that we now have a group of drivers going 20 Km over the speed limit and only slow down when they see a patrol car; as soon as it passes, they go back up to 20 Km over the speed limit.
This has been going on for so long and has become accepted by so many drivers that 85% of the drivers on our roads are speeding. [I’m being conservative with the 85% figure. I could say 95% and still be accurate.]
These are all people going faster than the posted maximum allowable speed that they are legally allowed to drive and doing it in rain, snow, high wind, heavy traffic and all kinds of adverse conditions where they are supposed to slow down.
Add to that all the new, inexperienced drivers that get their licence every year and the older slower and more nervous drivers and we now have a speed difference of about 30Km on our roads.
Today, in North America, the most dangerous thing that you can do is jump in your car and go for a drive. There are thousands killed every week on our highways and 98.7% of those crashes are caused by going too fast for conditions.
Now consider that the car manufactures are making cars safer and stronger all the time and the road builders are making the roadways wider and safer. The cars are doing more of the thinking for the drivers when it comes to conditions and safety.
Transports are governed so they cannot go fast and are kept in restricted lanes for the motorists’ safety.
We have electric signs warning us of hazards, concrete barriers that keep us from unsafe places and on and on.
It all started with a 1.5 Km variance in an electronic, hand-held device but we proved that people can forget faster than technology can advance.
Saturday June 28, 2008
Stephen Porter - 11:07 AM ADT
95 END
Almost everything in and about this world will end. [The only thing that won’t end is God, His kingdom and His word.]
An end does not mean that it will cease to exist but simply means that it will stop being what it is and will change into something else.
A toy that brakes will become garbage or be recycled into something else, a worn out house will rot or be burned and will become food for worms or pollution or a tree that is cut down will be built into something else; a piece of furniture or a box, maybe.
Even a living soul will change after its human body dies; it will be moved from the dead body to a place of peace or torment, depending on how and why the soul thought and acted.
That’s the point; everything that ends will be changed into something else and have a new beginning.
We pay on a debt and, when the debt is paid, move the money that we are earning, to another bill or purchase.
We buy a car and, when we are done with it, sell it to someone else that will use it or resell it to use it some more or recycle it whole or piece by piece.
We take a vacation that starts at a certain time and ends at a certain time.
There are times when the beginning and the end happen over a period of time; hours, days, years or decades. We decide to sell our house but the process take days to complete; the house is not ours but it is not theirs until that process is finalized.
Our lives started as a spark of life when our father’s sperm joined with our mother’s egg. Our time in the womb ended when we were born. Our limited mobility ended when we learned to walk. Our youthful thinking of ourselves should end when we become responsible for others; marriage, our children being born, our promotion to an authority position or our elderly parents’ inability to perform independently should be this ending.
Our lives should be spent preparing for endings and beginnings but, in today’s world, everyone is trying to keep everything in their lives the same. They want their children to stay children, their income to stay above their outgoing, their home to stay new, their car to stay clean and working well, their health to stay youthful, etc.
We cling to the things of the past, trying to keep them the same so they do not change, because that is how we remember them and know how to deal with them. That is our security; everything staying the same, don’t rock the boat, don’t change, don’t end.
We are continually struggling against the very thing that we cannot stop and hoping, against hope, that we can stop it; instead of expecting and preparing for it.
We are shocked when someone that was sick for a long time dies, horrified when someone who did not care for others kills or is killed by their own actions, stunned by catastrophes that we, ourselves, helped to bring about or overjoyed by an event that we hoped for and were working for, even though we did not expect it.
Every beginning has an end but we spend so much time preparing for the process that we are consumed to the point of blindness for the fact that it will end; leaving what it will become after that end for someone else to decide.
God gave us power over the endings, too, which gives us the power over the new beginnings; now is the time to start preparing for the end, before it happens and give some thought to the new beginning.
Wednesday June 25, 2008
Stephen Porter - 8:03 PM ADT
7 MISTAKES
I want to talk about mistakes today for one good reason; I almost made a big one today.
I was making a left turn and was thinking about my delivery schedule and not about my immediate driving situation. I was looking straight ahead and could see the car coming but it did not register on my brain. All I could think about, besides my schedule, was the green light.
The driver’s erratic driving pattern which was his evasion of me woke me up and I slammed on the brakes.
Thank God we missed. He probably was not happy with me and I don’t blame him.
If we had of crashed, it would have been 100% my fault.
If that driver is reading this, I want him to know that I am sorry and that he did the correct thing by trying to avoid me. Because he was alert enough to drive defensively, we both did not end up in a crash.
The point is, no matter how good or bad a driver you or I are, we will make mistakes every now and again. By speeding, driving where we should not be or not paying attention, we compound the circumstances and increase the chances of crashing in those mistakes. [Calling it an accident eases our mind with that lie but doesn’t change the fact that we are to blame.]
Defensive driving is driving to avoid the other drivers’ mistakes, too. You cannot do that if you are staring at the passing miniskirt, angry at your boss, impatient with the traffic flow or in a hurry because you left home to late.
There are a million and one things to take your mind off what you are doing and it takes discipline to keep yourself focused.
Because of a moment of mind wandering on my part, today that man could be in the hospital or worse, in the morgue.
We all will make mistakes; no matter how good we are or become. Let’s watch out for each other and help each other live through those mistakes that we make so we can think about it and correct ourselves and learn to make fewer mistakes as we go.
Also, the next time someone makes a mistake in front of you and you are put out just remember to go easy on him/her; the next time it might be you making that mistake in front of them and they will have to go out of their way to keep you safe.
Saturday June 21, 2008
Stephen Porter - 11:05 AM ADT
94 SALT
Salt is well known for its ability to enhance the flavour of anything that it is put on, when it is put on our food. It increases the tastes that we love and sharpens the impact that taste has on our mouths.
When Jesus told His disciples to be ‘salt’, He was telling them to enhance the good qualities that He was teaching them, in the people around them. Encourage and support people that lived moral lives, support the truth, encourage respect for each other and those who are given authority and power of/in a situation or position, help those that are trying to do good and honourable things, encourage peace in our groups and safety in our homes and neighbourhoods and be a living example of how one is supposed to live before God and mankind.
Those who do these things will be working in God’s kingdom and for His benefit, trusting Him for their acceptance and position in His realm.
Salt also has a second effect on our food that is not thought of very much with our modern technology. Salt will preserve food and keep it from spoiling. Today, we have freezing, drying and chemicals that keep our food from rotting.
Rotting is a process where the food starts to decay and break down to a liquid to be reabsorbed into the soil to further feed the living plants. Once this process starts, our good, healthy food quickly turns into a poison that cannot be eaten and must be thrown out.
The two qualities of salt do the same thing; there is a place where our food is just acceptable, in the middle, neither enhanced nor spoiled but still nutritious. Going either way from that center will add good or bad, depending on what we add or do.
Food left to it-self will start the spoiling process very quickly and will soon reach a point where even a lot of salt will not matter.
Salt does not do its work passively but is an active agent against decay and actively enhances the substance that it is put on. Jesus also expects us to be active Christians; speaking up for right living, good morals, obedience, proper respect and healthy choices; at the same time, speaking and acting against unhealthy thoughts and actions, unsafe practices, disobedience, disrespectfulness and corrupt morals.
He wanted us to start right away, before decay could start but, because there was not a lot of action for Christian righteousness and a lot of moral decay, our world is in a very serious state of decay.
One grain of salt cannot preserve the entire piece of food that it is on; it can only preserve the area that it touches. You cannot change the world that you see but can make a difference in those people that you encounter each moment of each day.
Have you laughed at your coworkers off colour joke or told him that it wasn’t funny? Did you speak condemnation of a government decision that you don’t know all the facts about or speak up and admit that you don’t have enough information to comment on the topic? Did you speed today or control yourself to obey the laws? [Worse still, did you flash your lights to warn the speeders that there is a radar patrol car ahead of them so they would not get caught for there illegal actions? Jesus said that, if you help the wicked, you are as guilty as they are.]
Are you really salt or just religious? God knows, do you?
