From Pity to Praise

One thing about being a follower of Jesus, He teaches us that you either have to be “all in or all out.” Either you’re in Christ Jesus or in Satan. You’re either saved or lost.

As the world gets darker, it’s plain to see that good vs the bad.

Some people like to tap dance along the fence, not deciding one way or another. They put off salvation. They decline to think of spiritual things, but they acknowledge God and His creation and presence of sin. They just don’t do anything about it. But there is no neutral ground, no safe place from which they can simply watch what is going on.

Some have decided that the wisest choice of action is neutrality.

There are two sides to any fence. Simply put, God is on one side, and Satan is on the other. One side is good and the other is evil. On one side you confess Christ Jesus, on the other you deny Him.

Can they remain neutral? Not unless the choice had zero consequences, like deciding whether to put on your morning toast.

In any meaningful choice, neutrality isn’t possible. Climbing onto the fence rails and balancing is a choice and a precarious place. It is a choice against God, good, and light.

With everything going on in the world today, people may choose to sit on the fence. But when it comes to faith, that seat will keep getting warmer until they are forced to evaluate. Sadly, the only side available will be Satan’s side.

We must not fall into the trap of the world and satan lies for those susceptible to distraction, rationalization, and attractive human wisdom.

In Revelation 3:15-16 Jesus tells us, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot, I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm -neither hot nor cold -I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” This is a warning against spiritual complacency and half-hearted faith, preferring fervent passion -hot, or clear conviction -cold, over useless tepidness.

It’s important to recognize that choice, because it determines which door to eternity will be opened for us.

I for one do not want to hear Jesus say, “Depart from Me, I never knew you” -Matthew 7:23.

There’s a silence that comes from spending time with God. The world likes to keep us distracted to keep our mental chatter at a high level, but God works miracles in silence.

The Bible shows us what Jesus did before He performed miracles or spoke to the crowds. He went off by Himself to pray. Not to complain, or talk mindless chatter, but to sit in silence with His Father. For God to speak to Him, and fill Him up to do God’s will.

I think this is something the modern day church doesn’t teach or sometimes doesn’t even do themselves. I think this is where we go wrong.

God has been laying on my heart to get closer to Him this year. And with the world in chaos, it’s something that will be harder to do than ever before.

The truth is the silence between our mental chatter is the peaceful, often fleeting gap between thoughts, it is a state of quiet awareness that mindfulness and meditation cultivate to offer rest from the constant internal noise, revealing clarity and a deeper cause by observing our thoughts without being swept away by them. This is what I am aiming for this year, not the usual “new year’s resolution.”

The challenge will be not to get stuck. Not to let my voice of the nag, not to, et my mind uselessly loop over the same things again and again.

I believe that our inner voices can be one of our greatest strengths when we can control them. They can take us to a whole other realm. Our inner voices can allow us to imagine different pasts or exciting futures, but they can also trap us in a hell of our own making.

Mental chatter can make it really hard for us to think and perform well, and the reason is that we only have so much ability to focus at any given minute of time. If all of our focus is devoted to our mental chatter, we won’t get much done.

The silence between the mental chatter can provide a break from the constant stream of consciousness that can reduce mental fatigue and stress, that the kind of silence I want to strive for, only in longer intervals.

From a human perspective, we have a hole that seems unfillable. We all dance with the unfillable hole inside of us.

Everyone tries to fill their unfillable hole with different things, money, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, diversion, amusement, work, the list goes on and on. The problem is that we can create, but everything we create cannot fill that hole. So, we try to redefine reality and create a world without the unfilled hole. Our flesh and our world are so broken that we tell ourselves broken is by design. We all fall short.

We need something or someone else to fill the hole. We need the One who created us to make it right. Jesus fills that hole when we choose to follow Him. We reveive eternal life in God’s kingdom and through the Holy Spirit, who fills that hole.

When we truly know Jesus, we experience fulfillment. We will understand the joy and peace when we focus on Him and fill His Holy Spirit. His life and peace fill our unfilled hole. We no longer dance with an unfilled hole. We need not be so focused on our circumstances, or we will join the dance of sin to fill the hole again.

I hope we live in a way that people may see not only our good works, but that we glorify God in heaven when we do.

My life to put it nicely was basically a dumpster fire on wheels for many years and I didn’t understand why and then I realized what was really happening in the world and the things that affect our lives and suddenly it all made sense. I came to the revelation that there was an unseen realm that few think about with spiritual enemies that intended to kill, steal, and destroy our lives.

Paul warns us in 2 Corinthians 2:11 not to be ignorant of Satan’s strategies. “ that no advantage may be gained over us by satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.” We need to know our enemy, know our God, and know who we are in Him, but we also need to equip ourselves with revelation on how to defeat satan and his minions of our souls.

If we ignore Satan, the warfare doesn’t stop. If we focus solely on Jesus, it does not make us immune from warfare. We should absolutely be more focused on God, than on Satan. If Paul the Apostle wrestled principalities and powers, who are we to think ignoring this reality will stop Satan’s attacks.

Havoc on the earth – sickness, disease, murders, immortality and the like is not God’s will. Jesus spoilt, principalities, and powers. But the word spoiled doesn’t mean neutered or made powerless. Jesus plundered the kingdom of darkness. The kingdom of darkness and all the principalities and powers that call earth lost authority over the followers of Jesus. But we still have to enforce the kingdom rule of law on earth.

It is not enough to be baptized in water and Holy Spirit one time. We have to stay filled with the Holy Spirit. As followers of Jesus, it seems that we spring leaks. In the Book of Acts, we can see that the Apostles weren’t just filled with the Holy Spirit once on the day of Pentecost, there were two more accounts of them being filled with the Holy Spirit. If the apostles who were witnesses of Jesus’s ministry on earth, death, and resurrection had to be filled with the Spirit over and over again, how much more do we?

We need to constantly pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We need a fresh infilling. I for one know a little dab won’t do me.

When Satan works to bring death and destruction in our lives, we have to remind ourselves that the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead can live in us. When Satan comes to frustrate God’s purpose for our lives, we need to remember God gives us grace and we need to ask Him for it many times over.

Putting God first causes us to draw close to Him. If we draw near to Him He will draw near to us.

There are some core points to keep in mind:

Closeness to God is intentional. You don’t drift into a deep relationship with God -you choose it daily.

God desires intimacy with us, it’s more than rituals, habits, or appearances of faith.

Drawing near to God changes you, not just how you feel, but how you live.

God always responds to pursuit. When we genuinely seek Him, He promises to draw near to us (James 4:8).

Obeying God matters. Loving God isn’t just emotional, it is shown through obedience and reverence.

The fear of the Lord is a deep reverence, awe, and respect for His power, holiness, and authority, not terror, leading to humble obedience, a hatred of evil, and a desire to live in alignment with His will, and recognizing His constant presence and judgment. It is the foundation of wisdom.

The fear of the Lord brings closeness, not distance.

Hearing God requires stillness and humility. God often speaks quietly, so listening means slowing down and being teachable. This is hard to do, because the world pushes busyness and distraction.

Sin and compromise dull our intimacy with God, even small compromises can weaken our sensitivity to God’s presence.

Our hunger for God must be cultivated. A hunger for God grows when we feed it -through prayer, scripture, and surrender.

Life is tough, but trials can deepen intimacy. Difficult seasons or times often become the moments where we grow closer to God.

I believe the key to drawing closer to God, is putting Him first. This requires making time for Him every day, not out of pressure, but desire. We must choose reverence, obedience, and humility. Letting our relationship with God be personal, not religious.

In Romans 11 Paul describes how non-Jewish believers in Jesus become part of God’s covenant people, like wild olive branches inserted into a cultivated olive tree (Israel ), sharing its root and nourishment, symbolizing unity and participation in God’s promises through faith in the Jewish Messiah, rather than through heritage.

I will share the way I learned this. Here are some key concepts of the grafting metaphor:

• The Tree: Represents Israel and God’s covenant people, with the root being in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and God’s promises.

• The Branches:

Natural branches = Jewish people (Israel)

Wild branches = Gentiles (non-jews).

• The Grafting: God, in His mercy, cut off some natural branches, (the unbelieving ), and grafted in wild branches (Gentiles who believed in Jesus).

• The Result: Gentiles now share in the Spiritual blessings, promises, and life-giving nourishment from the olive root, becoming spiritual heirs alongside believing Jews, united in Christ Jesus.
• The Warning: Gentile believers are warned not to become arrogant, because God’s kindness to them is conditional on their continued faith, and He has to power to graft the natural branches back in, if they return to faith.

This signifies a spiritual union of Jews and Gentiles in the body of Christ.

It shows that the church is not replacing Israel but is part of God’s ongoing redemptive plan.

We receive life from the same divine source as Israel. It’s about spiritual inclusion, not ethnic conversion. Faith in Jeshs connects us to the root, not requiring us to become ethnically Jewish.