Stirring the pot

My doctors have ganged up on me, insisting that I walk five times a week. While not exactly twisting my arm behind my back to make me, they have insisted insisted that if I want to eat ice cream at  night, I must also walk that day. My solution: A treadmill that I affectionately call a Transformer, a killer Transformer at that.

Today the killer transformer was an answer to a prayer. The killer transformer didnt' work right much of the 15 to 20 minutes allotted to it, as my prayers had been.. First, the time ticked higher instead of lower, an ineffective way to keep track of time since it had me do math while I was dying for breath. I'm not good at doing math under ideal conditions, but doing my goes-intos as Jetro Bodine called them while my hips are doing goes-outas isn't a workable solution. So I stopped, redid the clock and journeyed onward. Then the red button went caplouie, falling all the way a minute into the 100 mile walk it seemed I was on. This time the solution was simple: call my wife Mary to fix it. MARYYYYYYY. She blitzed into the room and popped the reb button into the machine in half a second and away we went again, er, I went. This time the solution was really a solution. I began and I went for another eight minutes... or rather, I blitzed and the solutions didn't present themselves until the the time to stop was evident, about 14 and a half minutes later it really was time to stop.

We really were done, this time with it all.It's time that's outawack.

The Bible tells us in simple terms, there is a difference between serving God and not serving him. Maybe you're read Malachi. In the third of a short four chapters, Malachi writes, ⁶ “I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. ⁷ Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.
“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’
⁸ “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’" Truthfully I have wondered just how we have done so.
“In tithes and offerings. ⁹ You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. ¹⁰ Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. ¹¹ I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty."

Again, I wonder what in the world God is talking about, though truthfully I've not tithed the whole 10 percent of my paycheck. One tenth? Who in the heck does that. Anyway, as far as I'm aware, I have done no allegating of pests for crops and vine. Wadn't me, I want to holler into the sky. You got your, er, death-dealing prophets justttttt a bit confused, er your KILLER TRANSFORMERS mised up." I smiled a little, smerked a bit more. I read more though.

I raead the rest of the chapter, glowing ... ¹² “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty. ¹³“You have spoken arrogantly against me,” says the LORD.“Yet you ask, ‘What have we said against you?’ ¹⁴“You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty"'

¹⁵But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it. Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. ¹⁶A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name ^17"On the day when I act,” says the LORD Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him." ¹⁸And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not."

Well, it seems easy to me. Obey God Almighty and be blessed. We're supposed to have a special relationship, a personal relationship with God. In order to have that, one must know him. Can't serve him if as far as we know, he's the Great Pumpkin. Just won't work.

In order to have that, one must  know something about (at least) the prophets including the one called Isaiah. In order to do THAT, one must open Isaiah. There you go. That's the big ol' plan. Open the Bible and read, preferably slowly.

Count on it. Watch for it. Find time for it. He's coming, He's for real. The clock is turning forward, not backward but front ward. Once that's seen and known, watch the time. And when it hits 0:00 Jesus will be returning to his flock, unless of course you've set the clock on your transformer thingee that way. Then all bets are marching forward at, say, a second per second. then seconds are seconds, but forward seconds.

But that Jesus thingee. That's the big one. If it's marching backward, well, there. I've stirred the pot again.I can't help things by stirring the pot, my Mama used to say.

If Jesus' seconds, true seconds, are piling off the clock onto the floor next to the escalater, or whatever the true name for that gadget is, then and only then are they real, and if they are real, they don't come back. If they don't come back, whehee Jesus is coming. Then they are true Jesus minutes, and they don't count even on an ATT-Bill because true time is gonna stop because Jesus is coming back in glory and the whole thing is going to start over. New Jerusalem and a 1,000-year reign and such. That's not the point of this blog, though. This blog is about our relationship with God.

Those whose lives honored God, the Bible says, got together and talked it over. God said that those who honored God by getting together to talk about him in a profound way, did so by opening in God's presence a book and they were taken care of and listened in. A book "was opened in God's presence and minutes were taken of the meeting, with the names of the God-fearers written down, all the names of that who honored God's name. God of the Angel-Armies said, 'They're mine, all mine. They'll all get special treatment when I go into action. I treat them with the same consideration and kindess that parents give the child who honors them. Once more you'll see the difference it makes between being a person who does the right then and one who doesn't, between serving God and not serving him."

No pot stirring here, just the elimation of dis-unity and the servitued of God. Friends, it will be special, wonderful, greaat I assure you.