MDI (Thespianitis)

 With all the new diseases coming into our culture there is one that seems to be most publicized and, having numerous symptoms, causes allergic reactions and is contagious. It’s thespianitis. It has a central gestation location in a suburb of Los Angeles known as Hollywood and seems to infect personalities whose only skill is to assume personality change when…

Wisdom 49 The Deeper Strongholds

 So far, we’ve touched on the strongholds that may be fleeting and easier to have healed. But there are deeper strongholds that are embedded coming from our home environment. There is nothing more effecting than parental influence. The relationship of mother and father touches the depth of the growing heart in a child. If that relationship is…

Wisdom 48 Strongholds, the Devil’s Conspiracy 

But what about the thoughts, the pretensions, the behavior of others, that are shaped by their strongholds? We’ve mentioned it before but repetition here is a good thing. We have to take our stand in the Holy Spirit who keeps us conscious of the Lord’s presence. Paul again gives us a super list that the Spirit will put into our mind…

Wisdom 47 Strongholds; the Heart’s Hidden Menace

When we consider the immediate responses of people to circumstances in which they find themselves, it is vital we grasp the fact that what motivates those responses comes from deep inner heart reflexes. The heart is the subject. What happens there determines response. What we need to evaluate is the reason for, the purpose…

Wisdom 46 Attitude Under the Microscope

 After compiling that list of attitudinal strongholds in Wisdom 45, a whole other bunch came to me. Snob, calculating, bourgeois, racist, nouveau riche, elitist, but enough. I don’t want to get hung up. I’m sure you got the point. We have developed these strongholds for self-protection because the heart is emotionally fragile. Its walls are…

Wisdom 45 Attitude, Our Twilight Zone

 ‘That guy is just a plain jerk.’ ‘He doesn’t know his head from a hole in the ground.’ ‘Anybody in his right mind wouldn’t have said or done that.’ Ever offered one of those? What was the occasion? Was it a right observation? Was it accurate? Was it said to agree or get agreement or to look good or feel good and better than someone? Perhaps…

Wisdom 44 The Next Step, You and Me

 It’s doing life His way. If we are serious about personalizing Jesus’ mission and ministry in our heart, it is the first miracle at a marriage in Cana that defines our role, being a disciple. His primary mission was the restoration of personal intimacy with God. Through Him the spiritual marriage relationship between man and woman, begins…

Wisdom 42 Back to Basics

 Jesus and His disciples arrive at the wedding on the third day. Mary turned to Jesus and told Him the wine had run dry. He questioned her, “Why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come.” Everyone usually asks why this reply. I believe it is an obvious question to make both her and His disciples aware of the circumstance, what it means and how He will…

Wisdom 41 It Takes a Cross to Make a Marriage

 The shift from religion to relationship becomes a reality when Jesus transforms a wedding ceremony into a miracle ceremony at a wedding in Cana of Galilee (Mt.2:1-11). It makes very clear that God is personally involved in the lives of those He created to be images of Him. It’s His first miracle and therefore His foundational plan to redefine, reorder and restore the…

Wisdom 40 Knowing the Difference: a Transition

 There is no clearer shift than the ones between Jonah and Jesus, the Pharisees and the Apostles, the secular mind and the spiritual mind. It’s like this: Jonah dependent on himself, Jesus on His Father, the Pharisees on religion, the Apostles on Jesus and the secular mind on itself, the spiritual mind on God. Jonah was religious,…