Sometimes I get discouraged as I was earlier this morning...but the Lord once again lifted my heart!

You know sometimes I get discouraged. I don't mean just with how things are going economically and otherwise. I mean on a more personal level...with my life.

Call it an ongoing mid-life crisis (after all I am 51 years old...I think LOL) or perhaps a poor diet of sorts (I don't eat very well not because I don't have the opportunity to do so but mainly because I hate taking time away from my computer work to go and cook something better than just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches). Maybe a lack of exercise can be thrown in for good measure.

But mostly...I get discouraged for reasons that have very little to do with my circumstances. Mostly I get discouraged spiritually and over how my life seems to be going nowhere sometimes in a spiritual sense.

I mean I get discouraged over my cirscumstances too but not if I am spiritually encouraged. For me..the spiritual dimension makes or breaks the rest of my life. So if I am encouraged there I can endure almost anything. If I am deflated spiritually any circumstances that are difficult take on much more significance and discourage me further still.

So...

When I start to get real discouraged I do what I do when I get to the end of my rope. I cry out to God and bring my concerns before Him.

You know people sometimes think I am more than I really am. That I have been able to get where I am and do the things I have done because of some natural ability or talent that I have.

I may have talents to be sure but the fact is that in my natural self I am an abject failure. I am no better than the worst of sinners.

While the worst of sinners may be a million miles from the the holiness of God I stand next to them at being 999,999 miles from His holiness. From that standpoint...what is a one mile difference between whether I commit adultery, lie, and steal or not! The one mile difference is absolutely insignificant.

The Lord spoke to me this morning and encouraged my heart and I wanted to share some of that encouragement with you all. I am tired of writing already this morning but I will share some of what He shared with me with you.

I read in Luke 5.

The first thing the Lord touched my heart with spoke to a discouragement in me at how despite my best efforts to express what is on my heart regarding what true fellowship among Christians is supposed to be like...not a single Christian locally or otherwise has responded in such a way that the hope of attaining to a more intimate and all encompassing fellowship might have been realized through such contact. Not ONE!

It's like my writing and expressing of what is on my heart both in this blog and in real life to Christians I know has fallen on deaf ears. It's like I have utterly wasted my breath.

And that has been and continues to be one the greatest sources of discouragement to me. How Christians seem to be so incredibly hard of hearing. What I share is reasonable. It is perfectly biblical. It is even acknowledged to be so by all those who hear me. But....but....no one seems inclined to do anything about it other than say ..."Nice thoughts" or "Well written!". Big deal! If what I write does not bring about a renewing of the way fellowship was meant to be it is meaningless. A needless wearing away of my fingers in typing out my words.

I was particularly struck in this morning's reading (the first reading I have done in a while) that Peter was faced with a similar situation. Where he had worked hard to catch fish and caught nothing. Absolutely nothing.

But where the Lord told him to put out once more such that he caught so much that the his boat began to sink.

I must follow the Lord's direction as to what to say, when and where. I will not achieve the desired result on my own effort as if apart from Him I could do it on my own.

The other thing that struck me in what I read is that the Lord means to use something that will catch the attention of others as a way of making the Gospel more appealing to listen to.

In New Testament times He healed the sick. And his disciples did the same thing in His name.

I really believe that He wants to start doing the same today. I just don't know how to see it happen.

There will be no problem in having lots of people to hear what He may want to say through me or other Christians with open hearts IF we begin to see what the New Testament Christians saw, today.

Something else...Jesus Christ did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. I am not to focus entirely on the Christians or those who claim to be so. I am to focus on reaching out to those who are otherwise known as or who see themselves as sinners. That is where the fields that are white for harvest lie. Not among the religious but among the irreligious.

Just a few days ago I had the chance to share some things with my landlord as I have had the chance to do since I got here. It's been very good.

It is such persons, my landlord being one who plainly says that he is not a Christian and doesn't believe it one bit, that are the most open to the living God. They are not open to religious ceremony and baloney but they are most certainly open to a living and real relationship with the unseen Spirit of the Living God.

I need to sometimes take a step back and realize that it is all but nearly hopeless to focus on trying to get religious persons to wake up and smell the Christian roses. For in their hearts they are convinced that they are Christians and before even getting to what it really means to be a Christian with them one must first help them work into an awareness that they are not even a Christian to begin with! A difficult task at best.

And doubly difficult compared to dealing with persons who readily acknowledge right off the bat that they are not Christians at all.

When I say religious persons I am referring to a great degree to those persons who go to Church Sunday after Sunday and who are outwardly religious but who are not disciples of Jesus Christ. Who are not sold out for Him. Who do not walk by faith in their lives and who in truth have no saving or other real faith. Real faith being the kind of faith that is exhibited through an unconditional surrender to the Lord (note that I said LORD!).

Lastly the Lord cemented what I was getting out of my reading this morning through the parable of the new wine.

Where new wine (i.e. a new way of doing things) should not be put into old wineskins (the old way of doing things). But new wine should be put into new wineskins.

New (which are really old as in New Testament ways of doing things) should be promoted among those who are not content with the present way of doing things. With those who are more readily able to see their need for God by virtue of being so empty of anything having to do with His Presence by being sinners. Not among those who see themselves as righteous and having everything and being everything that they are supposed to be.

If there is one thing that I can say about my own life it is that I am intimately aware of how unworthy and undeserving I am of anything from God. Of how often I stray from Him in my heart. Of how much in need of His grace I am. And of how greatly I am a great big, huge nothing apart from His Presence in my life.

I am unlikely to find kindred hearts who realize the same thing among the religious. If I am to find them anywhere it will be among the sinners. The very types of persons that the Lord came to save and which He calls Christians to reach out to with His love.

Once again the Lord encouraged me with all these thoughts. My heart is encouraged and I will continue to wait on God to not only grant me success to the work of my hands in trying to make a living over the Internet but more importantly to the need of Christians to repent, lay down our lives before Him, and rise up...together...to be all that He has called us to be.

It is all in His hands and He knows what He is doing. Not only with my life but with all of those who cherish His Presence and call themselves by His name in truth and spirit.

Carlos