Your last 15 minutes is the most vital! As a minister for God for now almost 40 years, ordained as a Pastor for over 30, this is such a tricky place to walk. It is the “narrow road” that Jesus talked about. You guys said it well, especially with the “BE CAREFUL” warning. Can’t lay rules for others (and you didn’t) but man it’s a tough road to walk. But as you said, the entire focus is on the development of that intimate relationship with God. Good job guys.
I really like this description of fasting and praying during a communal observant moment that there was a movement of God where God was doing something important... But they didn't know what it was. But when they discerned from others in their community that something was happening, they communally fasted and prayed for direction and insight from the Holy Spirit, as a collective body of Christ. That is brilliant!
Set hour prayer reminds of me being on a US military base when the US flag is lowered. When revelry plays, and if you're in the military, you have to stop what you're doing and salute the flag you can see being lowered. If you're driving, pull over. I've been with my dad when he's trying to get off base before it plays to avoid it.
The feeling of “shame” can be transformative if it is dealt with appropriately, the same can be said other “feelings” such as “anger, jealousy, envy, lust, greed, pride, vanity, & laziness”. As most of us may know, all these feelings can be dealt with in seriously inappropriate maladaptive ways. But to feel shame for doing good deeds anonymously is, itself “shameful”. The reason I bring this up is because although having a pure motive for doing good deeds is our goal here, it is also our goal to have a pure “living” faith, that the invisible one we pray his name be consecrated and sanctified sees us and rewards us. The other difficulty here is that although good deeds can be positively reinforced with temporal rewards we know our good deeds are rewarded by our Heavenly Father if the rewards are stored in Heaven as indicated by the beatitudes, which does not seem to be positive reinforcement, but rather positive or negative punishment from the World, thus the cross we are asked by the Word of God to bear.
The Holy Spirit provided some insight for this, as you were teaching on this parable about not letting the right hand know what the left is doing while you are fasting.... And the Holy Spirit told me that this particular passage has to do with whenever you are choosing to fast, even though one part of yourself is struggling. Perhaps with that fast or focused on that thing, don't let the other parts of you become affected in a way that it creates this outward sign so that everyone knows then what you are doing as though you're trying to seek unwarranted attention. And I think that makes a lot of sense! That when we Do fast, it is in a way that we don't act like it's affecting our whole life and it's horrible. Because that's not the point. LOL so don't let the right hand affect What the left hand is doing. Don't let one aspect of What you are doing affect the other aspects of what you're doing in your daily life... Just go about your day is normal, but while not eating! And of course oftentimes we give that money to the poor and we have a focus of giving our surplus to those in need and being generous on those days and times. But again, don't be doing it for extra attention so that everyone around you knows... Because then you're letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing! And it's unnecessary. It shouldn't affect anyone else except for those whom you are giving to.
I'm possibly quite an extreme overthinker. There are things I get stuck on when trying to read various verses, and wanting to do good is probably one. I have ideas that seem to align with the Bible that I'm passionate about, things that would benefit others (hence 'aligning with the Bible' (to keep it brief)), but things that I can't do by myself but am stuck alone at the moment unable to start. The way I've been created and been affected by the circumstances in my life, I'm hyper sensitive to various emotional stuff, to other people's future misunderstandings, and the patterns that repeat that they seem oblivious to, amongst other things. The big solution(s) I pray for would prevent, or at least significantly reduce, these unforeseeable (for seemingly everyone else but me in this small group) misunderstandings that lead to arguments, etc from everyone assuming the other party is being malicious in some way, etc, but on looking at them all, I would also benefit in many ways, because the solutions my brain can come up with are win all round with the power of God backing them, if He would back them. Dramatically reducing these misunderstandings would relieve a huge source of anxiety for me, so does that make asking for these misunderstandings to be prevented selfish? I don't want my entire energy reserve for the day to be depleted before getting out of bed just from thinking about how people are potentially going to upset each other without any idea they're doing it each day, and I wouldn't suffer emotionally if they weren't seen by me to be suffering emotionally. Additionally, the solutions would enable me to contribute using the skills God seems to have given me, but it also means acting through personal passions as well, so there's something desirable there, and I have no idea what it is that's attracting me to it. Is it because I can love God and represent Him to others in a deeply passionate way, applying my creativity within His creation as He applied His to His creation, or is it more pursuing a passion which can be made to fit living for God? In feeling overwhelmed and feeling like my life isn't going anywhere despite waiting for answers, I've tried to reach out a few times from my current years long isolation on this farm, 4 years since at college (haven't returned to anything since 2020's mandatory isolation), and 7 years since meeting with other Christians specifically (a scripture union during lunch when at school), years longer since attending a church due to 'iffy' feelings about some of they ways it operated, at the time children took communion classes (I think that's what they're called) at a certain age and were asked to stand at the front of the church once they completed them, which made me feel uncomfortable and my brain linked it with the 'praying on the street corner' type mentioned here, so I stopped attending after I sat in a communion service, ate and drank that week as I felt up to it that week unlike the previous month, only for a family member to pass a comment to/through another family member about how I shouldn't have done that having not taken communion (the classes or registered as a member or something, I don't know exactly). I felt personally compelled to take part that week, and thought it was a personal relationship with Jesus that counted, not communion classes or other traditions, so that was uncomfortable and upsetting to hear. I had no idea how to find a church that wouldn't 'violate conscience' (if that's how it's put in a few verses), and I really didn't want to make a poor decision and end up with another deeply painful negative experience (everything emotional seems to be extremely amplified for me vs how others present, even though I don't look even slightly emotional a lot of the time, I seem to feel it doubly so inside). It was through this separation from church denomination and speaking with someone in the CU/SU group through school that got me to this channel, which deepened my faith a lot from school, but now it just seems to have stalled without much idea of direction to go. That went a bit off what I was hoping to say about me reaching out. Basically, the strong pattern recognition/correlation saw significant negative events seem to happen every time I reached out seeking help. A low point in college saw me turn to the 6 free counselling sessions they offered each student. Session one, a radio presenter my mum was fond of (always on when commuting to work, great personality, related to her when talking about childhood experiences, etc on air) died suddenly at a relatively young age. Session two the next week, a close neighbour died that day suddenly, having been taken into hospital the night before which I didn't realise until told after. Session three, the next week, the same day of the week as the second session was, driving to the session it broke over the radio that there had been a serious road traffic collision on a road near home, which sent a shiver down my spine. On leaving the session that day I found out my cousin had been involved in that collisions and was hospitalised, and I think he is still experiencing some issues from those injuries 4-5 years later. That tainted the rest of the sessions, so nothing beneficial came from them despite the guy being pleasant to interact with, although I left allowing him to assume he had achieved an improvement because I didn't want to dishearten him that I wasn't planning to come back. Issues piled up with me again, so my mum tried to reach out to a minister on my behalf via email a year or so later. Within a fortnight of contacting him, while after a few days I started to consider talking with him, he died from a very sudden heart attack. I avoided reaching out for a long time since, until I got even more overwhelmed after feeling as if God had broken a promise with me (which I know isn't right), so I tried to reach out to the church I used to attend, but in a indirect way with prayers to not destroy anyone else's life, so through a 'prayer request' thing on their website (which I wasn't sure they still used, hence choosing it, thinking if God wants me to get help, someone will get it, and if not, it can just disappear without a trace instead) at the end of last year. No response. However, the issues didn't go away, so falling apart again by easter, I emailed the church email this time, again begging for no harm to anyone if it wasn't His will. A week nearly passed with no response, at which point I made a desperate prayer for miracles if I wasn't going to get a response, on which day I got a response, but it read like a generic, 'refer you to another department' style of thing, a well meaning person, just one who was out of their depth, forwarding my email to the minister. My catastrophising brain dreaded the possibilities, so pleaded that unless they were going to have a Daniel-esk vision into how to help, see the email gets lost, just my email specifically, mistakenly pasted into spam or something and autodeleted at midnight on Sunday night or something (they said they'd forward it on the following Monday), and I've gone the rest of this month, almost 3 weeks now, without a reply (however the minister has done 2 or 3 Sunday services (watched on UA-cam after they were up live) since, so I guess the disappearing email method happened. During the past few weeks though our dog stopped eating and had to be put down due to suspected widespread cancer (1 large obvious lump on her belly, but the vet said its placement wouldn't cause the other issues, like the lack of eating, and balance issues she was also having). I try to ask for help, it fails. I try to just tick over with doing basic farm tasks, it fails. I try to pray for the miracles to change things, time passes, seemingly unanswered prayers, but when I watched the services, a thing that jumped out at me was a quote from William Carey repeated the past 2 weeks as part of the children's talk, 'Ask great things of God, attempt great things for God'. I feel I can only wish I had the energy to attempt anything vaguely 'great' for Him. With my brain that just points back to the big things I've been praying for for years, which God would obviously know would happen, so if those aren't His will, why allow/enable/not prevent/do that? The last service covered the portion of William's life where he got effectively sponsored to spread God's word, as if to point out what I'm missing from making my extremely resource intensive ideas happen, and so triggering the simultaneous contradictory trains of thought of this overthinker wondering if 'asking great things of Him' is actually His will or not. Yeah, oversharing in a UA-cam comment under an American video while living in Northern Ireland isn't very effective, but at least it's more action than sitting down the yard waiting for a Christian or three to be guided in the gate of a random farm in the middle of nowhere, maybe. God has the power do do anything, yet I seem to have less and less of a clue what He's doing in my life every day.
@carolmartin2768 Thank you. This reply has had some interesting timing that I unfortunately don't think I can accurately put into words, certainly not without producing an even longer reply than the original comment, but it is one with positive feelings associated with it so I'll see where it goes from here. :)
I read your whole comment and am amazed by your endurance and faith. It reminds of Job, which is obviously not a comforting comparison, but hopefully an honoring one. I pray that your church community, as the body of Christ, would invite you into fellowship as they should. And I pray for you, that you would have faith in the right people, and especially in God, to share your struggles with boldness and wisdom.
Praying so others see you makes me think of football games where praying almost always seems to be for looks. Also rodeo channel it seems like every person being interviewed says the exact same thing and that God has blessed them and thanking Him for their performance. Seems like each one is just copying what people want to hear.
Your last 15 minutes is the most vital! As a minister for God for now almost 40 years, ordained as a Pastor for over 30, this is such a tricky place to walk. It is the “narrow road” that Jesus talked about. You guys said it well, especially with the “BE CAREFUL” warning. Can’t lay rules for others (and you didn’t) but man it’s a tough road to walk. But as you said, the entire focus is on the development of that intimate relationship with God. Good job guys.
I really like this description of fasting and praying during a communal observant moment that there was a movement of God where God was doing something important... But they didn't know what it was. But when they discerned from others in their community that something was happening, they communally fasted and prayed for direction and insight from the Holy Spirit, as a collective body of Christ. That is brilliant!
Thank you.❤
Very good, as always. God bless you Tim and Jon, God bless you fellow listeners.
And you as well
22:09 yeahhh more like, it such that your heart is set on God's love that you show compassion to others, without an ulterior motive
Cannot wait for your next episodes about the prayer, keep up the good work!
Set hour prayer reminds of me being on a US military base when the US flag is lowered. When revelry plays, and if you're in the military, you have to stop what you're doing and salute the flag you can see being lowered. If you're driving, pull over. I've been with my dad when he's trying to get off base before it plays to avoid it.
Very good! Thank you. May God continue to bless you as you bless others.
Thank you for the informative video. Love learning from you guys. 🙏🏿💖✝️
Thank you!
The feeling of “shame” can be transformative if it is dealt with appropriately, the same can be said other “feelings” such as “anger, jealousy, envy, lust, greed, pride, vanity, & laziness”. As most of us may know, all these feelings can be dealt with in seriously inappropriate maladaptive ways. But to feel shame for doing good deeds anonymously is, itself “shameful”. The reason I bring this up is because although having a pure motive for doing good deeds is our goal here, it is also our goal to have a pure “living” faith, that the invisible one we pray his name be consecrated and sanctified sees us and rewards us. The other difficulty here is that although good deeds can be positively reinforced with temporal rewards we know our good deeds are rewarded by our Heavenly Father if the rewards are stored in Heaven as indicated by the beatitudes, which does not seem to be positive reinforcement, but rather positive or negative punishment from the World, thus the cross we are asked by the Word of God to bear.
The Holy Spirit provided some insight for this, as you were teaching on this parable about not letting the right hand know what the left is doing while you are fasting.... And the Holy Spirit told me that this particular passage has to do with whenever you are choosing to fast, even though one part of yourself is struggling. Perhaps with that fast or focused on that thing, don't let the other parts of you become affected in a way that it creates this outward sign so that everyone knows then what you are doing as though you're trying to seek unwarranted attention.
And I think that makes a lot of sense! That when we Do fast, it is in a way that we don't act like it's affecting our whole life and it's horrible. Because that's not the point. LOL so don't let the right hand affect What the left hand is doing. Don't let one aspect of What you are doing affect the other aspects of what you're doing in your daily life... Just go about your day is normal, but while not eating!
And of course oftentimes we give that money to the poor and we have a focus of giving our surplus to those in need and being generous on those days and times. But again, don't be doing it for extra attention so that everyone around you knows... Because then you're letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing! And it's unnecessary. It shouldn't affect anyone else except for those whom you are giving to.
I'm possibly quite an extreme overthinker. There are things I get stuck on when trying to read various verses, and wanting to do good is probably one. I have ideas that seem to align with the Bible that I'm passionate about, things that would benefit others (hence 'aligning with the Bible' (to keep it brief)), but things that I can't do by myself but am stuck alone at the moment unable to start. The way I've been created and been affected by the circumstances in my life, I'm hyper sensitive to various emotional stuff, to other people's future misunderstandings, and the patterns that repeat that they seem oblivious to, amongst other things. The big solution(s) I pray for would prevent, or at least significantly reduce, these unforeseeable (for seemingly everyone else but me in this small group) misunderstandings that lead to arguments, etc from everyone assuming the other party is being malicious in some way, etc, but on looking at them all, I would also benefit in many ways, because the solutions my brain can come up with are win all round with the power of God backing them, if He would back them. Dramatically reducing these misunderstandings would relieve a huge source of anxiety for me, so does that make asking for these misunderstandings to be prevented selfish? I don't want my entire energy reserve for the day to be depleted before getting out of bed just from thinking about how people are potentially going to upset each other without any idea they're doing it each day, and I wouldn't suffer emotionally if they weren't seen by me to be suffering emotionally.
Additionally, the solutions would enable me to contribute using the skills God seems to have given me, but it also means acting through personal passions as well, so there's something desirable there, and I have no idea what it is that's attracting me to it. Is it because I can love God and represent Him to others in a deeply passionate way, applying my creativity within His creation as He applied His to His creation, or is it more pursuing a passion which can be made to fit living for God?
In feeling overwhelmed and feeling like my life isn't going anywhere despite waiting for answers, I've tried to reach out a few times from my current years long isolation on this farm, 4 years since at college (haven't returned to anything since 2020's mandatory isolation), and 7 years since meeting with other Christians specifically (a scripture union during lunch when at school), years longer since attending a church due to 'iffy' feelings about some of they ways it operated, at the time children took communion classes (I think that's what they're called) at a certain age and were asked to stand at the front of the church once they completed them, which made me feel uncomfortable and my brain linked it with the 'praying on the street corner' type mentioned here, so I stopped attending after I sat in a communion service, ate and drank that week as I felt up to it that week unlike the previous month, only for a family member to pass a comment to/through another family member about how I shouldn't have done that having not taken communion (the classes or registered as a member or something, I don't know exactly). I felt personally compelled to take part that week, and thought it was a personal relationship with Jesus that counted, not communion classes or other traditions, so that was uncomfortable and upsetting to hear. I had no idea how to find a church that wouldn't 'violate conscience' (if that's how it's put in a few verses), and I really didn't want to make a poor decision and end up with another deeply painful negative experience (everything emotional seems to be extremely amplified for me vs how others present, even though I don't look even slightly emotional a lot of the time, I seem to feel it doubly so inside). It was through this separation from church denomination and speaking with someone in the CU/SU group through school that got me to this channel, which deepened my faith a lot from school, but now it just seems to have stalled without much idea of direction to go.
That went a bit off what I was hoping to say about me reaching out. Basically, the strong pattern recognition/correlation saw significant negative events seem to happen every time I reached out seeking help. A low point in college saw me turn to the 6 free counselling sessions they offered each student. Session one, a radio presenter my mum was fond of (always on when commuting to work, great personality, related to her when talking about childhood experiences, etc on air) died suddenly at a relatively young age. Session two the next week, a close neighbour died that day suddenly, having been taken into hospital the night before which I didn't realise until told after. Session three, the next week, the same day of the week as the second session was, driving to the session it broke over the radio that there had been a serious road traffic collision on a road near home, which sent a shiver down my spine. On leaving the session that day I found out my cousin had been involved in that collisions and was hospitalised, and I think he is still experiencing some issues from those injuries 4-5 years later. That tainted the rest of the sessions, so nothing beneficial came from them despite the guy being pleasant to interact with, although I left allowing him to assume he had achieved an improvement because I didn't want to dishearten him that I wasn't planning to come back. Issues piled up with me again, so my mum tried to reach out to a minister on my behalf via email a year or so later. Within a fortnight of contacting him, while after a few days I started to consider talking with him, he died from a very sudden heart attack. I avoided reaching out for a long time since, until I got even more overwhelmed after feeling as if God had broken a promise with me (which I know isn't right), so I tried to reach out to the church I used to attend, but in a indirect way with prayers to not destroy anyone else's life, so through a 'prayer request' thing on their website (which I wasn't sure they still used, hence choosing it, thinking if God wants me to get help, someone will get it, and if not, it can just disappear without a trace instead) at the end of last year. No response. However, the issues didn't go away, so falling apart again by easter, I emailed the church email this time, again begging for no harm to anyone if it wasn't His will. A week nearly passed with no response, at which point I made a desperate prayer for miracles if I wasn't going to get a response, on which day I got a response, but it read like a generic, 'refer you to another department' style of thing, a well meaning person, just one who was out of their depth, forwarding my email to the minister. My catastrophising brain dreaded the possibilities, so pleaded that unless they were going to have a Daniel-esk vision into how to help, see the email gets lost, just my email specifically, mistakenly pasted into spam or something and autodeleted at midnight on Sunday night or something (they said they'd forward it on the following Monday), and I've gone the rest of this month, almost 3 weeks now, without a reply (however the minister has done 2 or 3 Sunday services (watched on UA-cam after they were up live) since, so I guess the disappearing email method happened. During the past few weeks though our dog stopped eating and had to be put down due to suspected widespread cancer (1 large obvious lump on her belly, but the vet said its placement wouldn't cause the other issues, like the lack of eating, and balance issues she was also having).
I try to ask for help, it fails. I try to just tick over with doing basic farm tasks, it fails. I try to pray for the miracles to change things, time passes, seemingly unanswered prayers, but when I watched the services, a thing that jumped out at me was a quote from William Carey repeated the past 2 weeks as part of the children's talk, 'Ask great things of God, attempt great things for God'. I feel I can only wish I had the energy to attempt anything vaguely 'great' for Him. With my brain that just points back to the big things I've been praying for for years, which God would obviously know would happen, so if those aren't His will, why allow/enable/not prevent/do that? The last service covered the portion of William's life where he got effectively sponsored to spread God's word, as if to point out what I'm missing from making my extremely resource intensive ideas happen, and so triggering the simultaneous contradictory trains of thought of this overthinker wondering if 'asking great things of Him' is actually His will or not.
Yeah, oversharing in a UA-cam comment under an American video while living in Northern Ireland isn't very effective, but at least it's more action than sitting down the yard waiting for a Christian or three to be guided in the gate of a random farm in the middle of nowhere, maybe. God has the power do do anything, yet I seem to have less and less of a clue what He's doing in my life every day.
@carolmartin2768 Thank you.
This reply has had some interesting timing that I unfortunately don't think I can accurately put into words, certainly not without producing an even longer reply than the original comment, but it is one with positive feelings associated with it so I'll see where it goes from here. :)
I read your whole comment and am amazed by your endurance and faith. It reminds of Job, which is obviously not a comforting comparison, but hopefully an honoring one. I pray that your church community, as the body of Christ, would invite you into fellowship as they should. And I pray for you, that you would have faith in the right people, and especially in God, to share your struggles with boldness and wisdom.
What version/translation of the Bible do y'all quote/use?
I believe that Tim does his own translation.
Praying so others see you makes me think of football games where praying almost always seems to be for looks.
Also rodeo channel it seems like every person being interviewed says the exact same thing and that God has blessed them and thanking Him for their performance. Seems like each one is just copying what people want to hear.