Subtle it seems. Just do like a good, saved Christian and you will be on the right track. The subtle thing is that doing is not correct, become is the right thing. Not becoming either, Become. It’s in a passage that stands out in my book printed around 1611. It is found in the updates to history in the 12^th chapter. It was written by a manual laborer who was in Antioch at the time. I can get more specific if you contact me (gatorjack75@gmail.com)

Quite a few people in a meeting house heard this distinction between do and become and it was yet another world changer for everyone who read and reads it. Especially for me.

I felt if I was doing well with my life and becoming more and more like Christ, I was doing OK. There’s that word, doing again. Little by little, not getting mad in certain situations. Doing that forgiveness thing better. Giving now and then and even listening instead of talking.

On the straight and narrow road. Sounds right. Getting in the ditch and off track now and then. Like the path of Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s progress. Gradual improvement and maybe I would make it into Heaven, whatever that means. What would I do there? Be transformed into perfection? Why would I want to be in His presence when all I have is the questions of why.

It is been said so many times “How can a good God condemn people to hell?” Another one of those logic arguments that assumes an incorrect premise. Yes He is good. Impossibly good. We cannot even come close to knowing how good. The mad/sad angry God, good cop/bad cop thing.

We are already in hell, we just don’t know it. You have heard of the fallen world we live in. It’s true. It’s more than fallen, just look at your attitude and life. Just like mine. The details are very different and they are always the same. Trauma, pain, betrayal and hatred to start with. From birth to death.

I give in and rage at Jesus, alone in our car when I go by a home of the local lord of our land. Arrogant and bribed by Chinese destruction. Hatred and frustration. Another why is it like this? Just when our small farm is so beautiful and the air and water being offered to a foreign power. For money. For more power.

I am raging and now, caught suddenly with a light, coming into the car. Brilliant and yet soft with comfort and giving me a glance to the left to that hated family. He loves them too. He knows everything and gives me what I have been ignoring for decades. A way out, a way to an incredible and impossible thought of understanding. A blessing in my spirit that washes out the anger and pain and replaces that wound with a gentle sight of just another fallen man like me. Trying so hard to survive his past. Not awake yet and there is hope in my faith. As Paul has taught me when he was in Ephesis. Grace to that farmer because now I have Faith which is the very gift of God. Faith in love, faith in his embrace. Faith in the impossible love He has for me and him.

I met with that man several times, trying to convince that powerful and successful farmer of his foolishness and destruction. It didn’t work. I gave him a gift which he told me to give to his son just emerging from the machine shed. Sitting on his golf cart like a golden throne. The memory of anger and disbelief from my spirit. Now transformed in the love I was trying to give. Not giving with a smile and a knowing of the love You Lord have for him in his life too. I was not able to understand the world you created and Your people that live in it. Especially me. Flooded memories now as I drove past years later. Same place, same magnificent farm now seen by me as another man’s treasured home. Wounded in many ways, just like I was.

Not awake yet but as my old hero, George MacDonald taught me: “And why would the good of anyone depend on the prayer of another? I can only answer with the return question. “Why should my love be powerless to help another?”

Listen well and pray for the flooding of His Holy Spirit to all men. The gift of faith and the New life freely given. Go tell it on the mountain, here and there and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born.

It’s pretty good. Jack Gator