The End or the Beginning

12/22/2009 This is the beginning of the end. It might sound a little gruesome but it is not meant to be. Anyone of us could and should say this every day. I have known I had leukemia (CLL) for nearly three years. I've also known that it is incurable and will someday require treatment to give me as much time as possible. That time is now. I chose the name "length of days" for this blog because when I was diagnosed I really didn't know how to pray. I think we should and can pray for complete healing but I wasn't sure that's what God wanted so instead I prayed for "length of days," ..... as many days as God would give me.
This blog is going to be about the journey that I am now on. It will hopefully be of great encouragement to you and I hope it will cause you to think at a number of different levels. I make no apologies when I say that I hope this blog makes me and you think in spiritual ways. By my understanding, people are made up of three basic components, physical, emotional and spiritual. The first two of these will cease to exist when we die. The only aspect that has any chance of continuation is our "spiritual" selves. Yet this is the part that people spend the least amount of time on. The one part that has any chance of continuing into life-after-life.
I am a firm believer of life-after-life and am grateful to a spiritual family when I was growing up that showed me on a daily basis that it was truly the most important part of our created selves. I make no apologies, I am a born again Christian, not because I am better than anyone else but because I accepted the substitutionary death of Jesus as a payment for my sins. Not only did I accept this payment but God has showed me that this payment is PIF (paid in full) it is a total work of God.God not only showed me I was a sinner, but he showed me the only way out, Jesus.
Please don't freak out about this or think that this is going to be some rambling monologue of a dying person who is trying to make spiritual amends for his life's failures, (I don't have enough time to list them all and I think they are of little value) but I hope that as I spend time with Jesus He will give me greater clarity to the mystery that is He himself. Most people don't accept Him because most do not understand Him.
Sharing the joys, some fears, and certainly sharing some of the Mystery as it is revealed to me is my desire for this blog. I will share promises that God offers to all in His word, I will share thoughts on the physical side of my life and it's failing and I will most try to offer the hope that is in the "knowing" of Jesus Christ. I am a Christian because of a eternal transaction between Jesus and God the father and myself. God the creator, created me to spend eternity with Him but He also gave me free will to reject Him and His desire for my life, (which I did and we all do Romans ... for ALL haved sinned and fall short of the glory of God). In that rejection I ruined His desire because I lived in ways that I knew He did not approve of (sin) and that sin and all sin caused separation between God and myself because God is so holy that he can not have an intimate relationship with me because He could not accept the sin.
Since he created man and choose His people the Jews there has been a need for sacrifice to repair the damage done as people choose to live in disobedience. His "rules" have always been for our good and yet I often saw them as restricting and unfair and as a hindrance to having fun. I have always like having fun and I have always wanted others to think of me in that way. Never did I want to leave a group of people and have them be happier because I left, but I wanted them to be happier and more positive because I had spent time with them. There are people who take your energy and people who give you energy, I always wanted to be person who energized others rather than demoralize them.
The Jewish sacrifices had their day but they were incomplete. Jesus came to live as man, and to pay the ultimate sacrifice for the cost of sin and that is eternal separation from God. But knowing that Jesus died for the sins of mankind is not enough. Jesus didn't die so that man would be saved but that man could be saved. Therein lies the journey, the quest for a spiritual personal intimacy with God and the key to living in heaven, paradise, nirvana, what ever the hidden dream and hope is of every created being. I will try to share a promise of God on nearly every blog and when God makes a promise He is incapable of not keeping it. Today's is John 6:37 "....... and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out."
Lastly I think a key to living with any joy, hope, or worldly satisfaction is to be a thankful person or one who has gratitude and I will share some of my personal thoughts on this as well as the thoughts of others. A book that I am reading now is called Choosing Gratitude (DeMoss) and I think there is so much truth in its God directed principles. Why should I be a grateful person and why does it matter.
Gratitude is learned and we must be trained to be that way. I think the natural is to be jealous of what we don't have or angry because we don't have what we think we deserve or disenchanted because we think life is unfair. I am grateful for many things and one is that for the most part and by God's grace, I have mostly been thankful, but in the darkest parts of my life (and there have been a number) I have not always been thankful and realize that I need to train and retrain daily as I am on my personal journey. Please join me and DeMoss and others including God Himself as I (we) see the power of living when one lives with a sense of gratitude.
When God shows me my fallenness and my depravity it usually comes shortly after a period of unthankfulness. You can choose gratitude and its benefits or you can choose "the right to be ungrateful) and the bitterness that come, digs deep and does not want to let go." I do not want to be bitter for it is a poison worse than chemo because it destroys the spirit.