JESUS ONLY LOVES THE LITTLE CHILDREN

No Grownups Allowed

And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

 Matthew 18:3

Stop and think about it for a moment...When we are made born again, a brand new spirit, born of God's own Spirit, we are a new born creation shoved into an old world worn sinner's body and soul.   Can you say ISSUES??   We don't "feel" any different, but by faith we are expected to believe we are made different; vastly different.   Why else does Jesus tell us, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children..."???  Jesus knows when the Holy Spirit births a new spirit that spirit is going into an old sinner.  "Change and become like a little child..." is not only some of the best advice anyone ever gave, but, as Jesus clearly says, "Truly I tell you..." it is absolutely what must happen.   As usual, when Jesus tells us, "This is very important for your eternal destiny," we ignore what He tells us, and we fit Jesus into our lives as it suits us.   "There is a way which looks and feels right, but it is the street leading to the graveyard."  (My paraphrase of Proverbs 14:12)   Jesus is absolutely serious.

   

Why does Jesus insist; require; demand that we must change and become like little children?   Well, tell you what, next time you're in your church do a little experiment.   First approach an adult man, and say, "Would you take my hand, walk with me, and allow me to lead you around the church building?"   Don't offer an explanation, simply offer your hand.  Do I need to tell you the response you'll receive?   If you are an adult guy asking to lead another adult guy around by holding his hand you might even get threatened, with physical violence, for trying to hold the other guy's hand.   Okay, so it's not a very good idea to ask a grown man to be part of this little experiment.   So instead approach a teenaged guy, saying, "Would you take my hand, walk with me, and allow me to lead you around the church building?"   Make sure you aks the young man in front of a large group of his friends.   If you are an adult male offering a teenaged male your hand to hold, so you can lead him around, you might even earn yourself a beautiful pair of silvery looking bracelets linked together by a little chain, and locked against your will round your wrists, behind your back.   Okay, okay, it's a bad idea to approach a teenager, offer to hold his hand, and to lead him wherever you want to go.

   

So, alright, let's try something completely different...  Approach the mom of a little fellow, and ask if you can take him for a little stroll around the building.  You can even take the stroll around the building in full view of mom and dad, if that helps.   Offer the little tyke your hand, and see if he'll take it.  See if the little guy will walk along with you, allowing you to lead him by the hand.  Having performed this little experiment myself, I know it works.  The little guy will go wherever you want him to go, even if it takes making it into a fun little game the little one isn't hard to convince.  Even Jesus proved this one to the group of people listening to him teach..."Jesus called a little child to him, and placed the child among them."  Matthew 18:2.  How's that for visual aids?   "Hey kid, come here..." 

 

It doesn't take a theological brain trust to figure this one out.  Where Jesus tells us to go, and what Jesus tells us to become isn't something any adult or even teenager would ever do willfully.

"Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone desires to be My disciple, let him deny himself [disregard, lose sight of, and forget himself and his own interests] and take up his cross and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying, also]." 

Matthew 16:24

Only a little child will do and go wherever he/she is made to go.   "Come and do as I say.  Come and do whatever I tell you to do, but know that obedience will kill you."   Yeah, grownups will line up to do what they're told with the understanding they'll die for their obedience...  NOT!!!  Only a little child will do what they are told to do.  Oh, the little child may even go kicking and screaming, but go they will, make no mistake about it.   Children have no choice, but to do what their parent(s) desires for them to do.   The call of Christ is absolutely a call to to a new life, but there can be no doubt, the call of Jesus Christ is to death as well.   Death to our way of being; death to our way of thinking; death to our way of behaving; death to the ways of all the world around us!

 

If you are born again, just as it for a parent and his little child, God will calls us, places us, and you have NO choice.  Is your mind filling with arguments and excuses?   Has a "Screw You!" type of statement jumped into your mind?  Formulating an intelligent, well written, gentle, but definite, "NO!," kind of comment??  

Christ calls you, and Christ will place you, exactly where He desires.   Nothing of Christ's call or placement will be agreeable to us.  Are you a "Jesus R Us" kid?? 

WHY I WILL ALWAYS BE A BAD PENNY...

Just Being Me

SQUARE PEG SURROUNDED BY ROUND HOLES?

Story of my life...

 Opener of worm cans?

     

Wall to wall worms  24/7/365

Always walking with one foot up on the curb, and one foot off?

 Exactly!

 On The Outside Looking In?

It will always be this way...

I do not fit in, never have, and never will.   I wanna conform, and I'd kill myself to do it.  I can't be a nonconformist.  I remember standing in a long line at a "stop and rob" quickie mart, outside Champaign, IL.  It was the same place I always stopped for gas and snacks for the 3.5 hour drive home.   The clerk was something extraordinary to behold.  She was a very physically unattractive girl.   But what she lacked in natural beauty she made up for with a truly horrific display of multicolored hair, goth clothing, a face so covered with piercings she looked like a connect the dots page from a coloring book.  What the metal didn't cover she attempted to bury beneath layers of vampire makeup.   She was a freak of nature, not mother nature, but a construct of her chosen alternative anti-establishment group. 

 

The scary chick behind the register was a kindred spirit.  The difference between us was she'd found a group who would finally accept her, and she rose or lowered herself, to the level of those who'd accepted her.   I  have never found a group into which I fit, because I do not like willfully lowering myself merely to have a place to fit.  I try, but then God starts confronting me from the pages of the Bible.  I'm not a non-conformist.  I've always wanted to fit in so badly I'd have happily killed myself, nearly did more than once, to conform.   The weird looking clerk found a place to conform, and she exactly looked the part.   "If you can't beat them, and they won't let you join them, then f*** them! And make your own group to fit into", is how that kind of thing works.  

I suppose it could be argued I'd found a place when I self-identified as gay.  But calling myself gay based completely on the premise:  "I feel this way, therefore I am..." has always seemed to be utterly absurd.   In the end I did learn "feelings" should not be trusted in life and death situations.   If a matter is of life and death importance then treat it with the care and respect such situations deserve.   Today I am G.O.D. positive and HIV negative (and negative for every other STD as well).   I refused to settle for less and got more than I'd ever hoped or dreamed I could have. 

 

Someone might say I have found a group to fit into:  The Church.   That isn't true either.  I have never fit into "the church" as we know it.   When I came to Christ I found the one person who had overcome the world, sin, "me, myself, and I," every temporary worldly concern and thing, and a whole lot more!   God has never allowed me to settle for less than what He wants.   God showed me early on the perfect prayer:

"God I want Your perfect will, not your permissive will.  Please God do not ever let me settle for less than Your perfect will.  In Jesus' name, Amen!"

I will always be on the outside of "the American church", looking in.  Does this mean I think I understand all things?  Do you honestly think I am following God, and if you don't look like me, I think you aren't following God???   If I thought you, my readership, didn't have important insights from God, He hasn't bestowed upon me, and believed you weren't truly interested in serving God, I wouldn't waste my time on you.'

God has never given up on me, and he has never given into my demanding tantrums to,  "Just leave me alone!"   In fact the last time I told God, "Leave me alone,"  He told me, "DON'T YOU EVER TELL ME TO LEAVE YOU ALONE AGAIN!"  I have never experienced something that intense in all my life.   The fear of God is more than simple reverence. 

There is a line from the movie The International, starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, which fits what I'm talking about perfectly.  There is a conversation between Naomi Watts' character and her boss. 

 

Naomi Watts:  "We have to find the truth!  And finding the truth means taking responsibility."

Boss            :  "Yes, exactly!  Which is why people avoid the truth at all cost!"

[Those aren't the exact lines, but it's close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades]

The truth is Jesus Christ has overcome the world, and everyone born again, of the Holy Spirit, overcomes the world.  It is the responsibility of the Church of Jesus Christ to allow Him to overcome the world (utterly defeat and destroy the ways of the world) in and through them. 

  

The truth is Jesus Christ cancelled our earthly citizenship the moment the Holy Spirit made us born again.  

"...for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world."

John 17:14 

"They are not of the world, even as I am not of it."

John 17:16

The truth is just as Father sent Jesus into the world, Jesus sent us into the world.  The same call Father God gives Jesus, Jesus gives to His Church.

"As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world."

John 17:18

Before anyone wastes my time telling me, "That's your opinion, Lonnie," let me just say this:  My opinion, until quite recently, has been:  "God, I think You should leave me alone, and let me live out my life quietly.   Wasn't being gay punishment enough for one lifetime?"  The church in America hated or ignored me as a gay man, and they still hate me now.  Telling the American church the truth will only succeed in getting me killed.

I'm not going to die for my opinion.  I'm going to die because the truth means having to take responsibility, just EXACTLY as Jesus commands, and American christians will do almost anything to avoid the truth.  I don't have any choice in the matter.   I've prayed for years:  "God I want Your perfect will, please do not let me settle for less."
  

• I am not a citizen of the world any longer.   "They are not of the world, even as I am not of it."  ~Jesus of Nazareth.  You are either a citizen of Christ's kingdom, or you are a citizen of a worldly one.  Jesus does not allow for duel citizenship.   Jesus said it 2,000 years ago, and since, "God is the same yesterday, today, and forever...," the decree of Christ holds true to this day.  
• The Father sent Jesus into the world to save it, and Jesus sends us into the world, filled with the Holy Spirit, and through us Jesus Christ continues His ministry.  

"For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." 

Ephesians 2:10

"Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father."

John 14:12

To the Christians in America I will always be a "bad penny,"  but if I could have my way I'd like to just quietly sit in the background fitting in.  

One last thing...

I will never again vote or take part in any political party, or political activity, for any reason whatsoever.  I do not have a problem with America in the least.  America is lost, SEE, NO PROBLEM...understanding lost America.   Until the American church, from every sector and denomination, comes together on the steps of city hall;  the rotunda of the state house; and the on the steps of the capital in Washington D. C.   to repent of our sins,  NOT  America's sins, but the sins of Christ followers; saints; Christians.   America is a godless nation, not because of the sins of the lost, but because of the wickedness of those who name the name of Christ as savior.   Once Christ followers start publicly repenting to God and the lost, then, AND ONLY THEN, can we seek God about how He would have us handle politics.   

I am blessed to have been born in America.  I have enormous problems with American Christians who will not give themselves over to following Christ's ways and Christ's agenda.   Too many American Christians have deceived themselves and others into believing God must bless and prosper their self-centered and self-serving agenda.   God blesses and prospers only the work done in and through us by the Holy Spirit.   For God to bless and prosper human agendas and human ways would be to deny Himself; would make God a liar; and make God subservient to human whim.  

For it is written: 

  

"Let the wicked forsake their ways
   and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them,
   and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
   neither are your ways my ways,”
            declares the LORD.

 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,

   so are my ways higher than your ways
   and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Isaiah 55:7-9

 

    

THERE ARE NO LAW ABIDING CITIZENS IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN...

 ...The citizens of the kingdom of God are all GRACE abiding citizens.