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Sunday, September 6, 2015

Only you decide...

Helen Keller was asked what was worse than having no sight?  She replied, "Having no vision."  Helen Keller, with no sight nor hearing was considered by most of those with both to be "handicapped."  Yet she could "see" the invisible handicaps of those who considered her "less than normal" and themselves "normal."

When I was locked up for seven months in Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital (after four earlier one-month stays at two other mental hospitals), I began to see some things differently for the first time in my life.  In the past I had wanted to care deeply about people, but I didn't know how to do that somehow.  I had asked God to make me a Christian like those in the Bible.  When I refused to admit to Him that I was a sinner, He gave me mental illness and I immediately forgot my original request to become a true Christian.  Now I was driven, like the king of Babylon in Daniel, like a mad-man.  My mental illness was non-stop, 24/7 emotional pain.  It was that pain that God used to reshape me.  I became suddenly aware of the many microscopic and gigantic injustices in the world.  I became aware that "supposedly sane" people were lying, cheating, harming each other, and harming our earth. Though they know better, they do wrong because they only care about themselves and they don't care about others; others who many times have done them no wrong.  It became an obvious irony to me, that though I was harming no one, I was locked up.  Others were disrespecting people, hurting people, destroying the environment, and they were running free.  To add insult to injury, these "sane" people were many times making huge profits by their evil actions.

I eventually got out, got the right medications and started thinking clearly again.  But the pain I had endured from the mental illness and the responses of people to me and my mental illness, left me with a huge empathy for the hurting.  And when Jesus found me, I was hurting, and when I accepted His love, I realized that I wanted everyone in the whole world to have the opportunity to choose (if they wanted) to love this loving man/God back.  First, the world, or rather individuals, needed to know the truth about Him.

He condemns no one (that is what satan does and blames it on God).  He loves everyone (even those who hate Him).  Because He loves everyone He hates what hurts us.  Sin is anything that hurts us or Him.  God hates sin, not people.  Jesus individually and collectively calls all of us to turn away from what hurts us and Him.  And to accept the healing love He offers.  He gives us the freedom and the ability to choose to truly love; with the love with which He freely chooses to love us.  He did not create you to reject you.  He created you so that you could know His love and the joy of loving others with the love He gives you.

In order to do that He created you with the ability to freely choose to love Him or reject Him; because love cannot be forced.  Those who love Him He calls to love all others like He loves all others.  Those who reject Him, reject love and do evil, because there is pleasure in sin for a short time and satan deceives them into thinking that they are "right" and will not be held accountable for their actions.

God loves you with all that He is.  Jesus died a bloody, torturous death because He loves God and wants you to be with them throughout eternity.  Now the choice, the choice Jesus died to give you, is yours.  You can accept Jesus' love and truly love Him and others back; and discover the life He planned for you before He created the world.  Or, you can choose to dismiss this post and continue to believe that you aren't happy because of others' choices (not your own) and that you might as well sin because you haven't found anything better to do.

Jesus and I humble ourselves and beg you to choose Life with God.





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