Love Our Enemies

Ever thought about loving your enemies. No, not that "I love everyone" type of love, but the kind of love that means making a difference in your enemies' lives. Jesus taught us to love our enemies. The best example is near his death.

Jesus was in the garden, praying for a reprieve from his death sentence. He knew the guards were on their way and in a few hours, he would be tortured, and later killed in a most brutal way. The first tool of his death would be the guards leading him away.

Peter, in his zeal for a physical Messiah, cuts off the ear of one of those tools.

Jesus knows these are the men who will escort him to his trials. He could easily let that man suffer for his part in His death. Instead, Jesus rebukes Peter and repairs the man's ear. He heals his enemy. He has compassion for His enemy.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I believe I would be less likely to be so kind. Loving our enemies is all about seeing them as God's children. I often fail in my quest to be a loving member of God's family. I forget that each of my enemies are my brothers and sisters.

In this time of grace, where God sent His only Begotten Son to us, it seems like such a small sacrifice for us to start learning to love our enemies. We can start to make a world vision to take small steps toward making our world a little nicer by making our enemies' world filled with love.

The first step? Find the person you think you could never love, and begin praying for that person. Ask God to give them peace and love, to bless them, and bring a life of happiness between you and your enemy.

try it for a week and let me know how it goes.

Hope and peace to all of you... Allen

Christians often spend enormous time getting ready for Christmas. We spend hours shopping and decorating. not to mention the time spent cooking and cleaning. When we compare the time we spend on Christmas tot he time we spend preparing for Easter, it pales in comparison.

Sure, we buy our kids toys and we read the Easter story. We bake a meal for the family and the festivities roll through like any other Sunday. Not that I want to diminish the importance of any family gathering, but I want to point out a few things.


First, Passover. Passover is a time celebrated as far back as Israel's captivity in Egypt. The Hebrew nation began to commemorate this special season as a time of learning and fellowship, as well as a time of bringing families closer together. Families took special notice of the grace extended to His people. And in case you haven't noticed, we have been grafted into the House of YHWH and are His people.

Shouldn't we give Passover a look?

I was an adult before I really realized that the Lord's Supper had special meaning because the Passover had special meaning. I was also an adult before I realized that celebrating the Lord's Supper should include the elements of the Passover. Why? you ask.

Well, I'll tell you. We are celebrating our own passover. Instead of passing over our first born males, we are celebrating the passing by of our own lives. The Angel of Death will not stop at our house when we are right with God. The Jews celebrate being freed from the Egyptions. We celebrate being free from sin and its grip on our lives.

Lastly, we need to stop thinking of Easter as a time of firsts, but as a time of many. The Jews celebrate Passover each year as a renewal of their faith and the reminder that their world changed in a night. It is a time when they renew their faith in a God who is capable of great works in our life.

We, too, should think of Easter as a time to renew our pledges and our beliefs. Seeing such a miracle happen in our lives can bring forward a new time of celebration and hope for the future.


I urge you to pick this year to learn as much as you can about the Easter season and to experience it as the first Century church did. The internet is full of good information about Passover and Easter. Make this Easter special. Then continue to work to make our Savior's sacrifice and important event.

until the next time...

Followers

You might notice I have added a Follower's gadget to the left of this post. I have added this benefit to the blog for the convenience of the people who like to keep up with what is happening here.

It is simple to sign up and is really painless. The one millionth customer to sign up will get a free set of steak knives, hand delivered by me. If you win, please bring your own cigarette and blindfold.

I am hoping for three, count them, three bloggers in the next two or three years. Let's see if I am right.

Oh, and did I mention that you get to put a picture of yourself on the page under followers? Pretty cool, huh!

Till then....

There Is No Light At the End of the Tunnel

We all look to see if the light at the end of the tunnel is a train. The brilliance of the sun shining into the dark hole is comforting to all who wish to remove themselves from dark, moldy holes in the ground. Sometimes, however, it is night out and the sun doesn't shine.

Case in point, this blog. I may never see an end to ministries in the nudist world. Not in my lifetime. But that doesn't mean we are not making progress. For some of the time, we can believe there are some good things happening. Other times, we see nothing good coming from our labor. Of course, labor is its own reward.

Noting there are dark times and times of light, we can anticipate both the good times and the bad.

With this in mind, I would like to look back at some of the good, the bad, and the-- well really bad.

First the bad. Nudism still has a taint about it. Neither the world nor the Christian community accepts us for the what we are. Most see nudism as a related activity to sexual gratification. We have not done our job to make sure people know what we do. It is unlikely this will change until we start to cast light into our world so that the community around us can see us for what we are.

The really bad. There is some truth to the fact that nudism attracts a bad element. Just a short google search away from this blog will take you to a place where you can see all kinds of sexual wrongs being done in the name of nudism. As little as 30 years ago, we had tons of exploitive nudist magazines proclaiming the free lifestyle of nudity, all the while presenting young teens in provocative positions and in compromising sitautions. Coming from a 100-year-old tradition of wholesome nudist beginnings, we can see how the freedom to worship and love God and to appreciate His creations has turn ugly.

The Good. We are starting to make a difference in the nudist community. Churches are starting in our resorts. Bible studies are popping up in people's homes. We are praying for one another. Many of the us are looking for ways to serve in our communities to make the whole of the community better.

So, what is this all about? Well, maybe it is time we shine a light in the tunnel instead of trying to see by what falls through the openings.


First, we need to open up to the world. If you are not telling your family about your Christian beliefs, there is a problem. If you are not telling them about your nudist tradition, there is a problem. Covering up either causese you to walk in darkness and allows others to only see a small and mostly errant side of both. We need to shine a light on our lives so that there is no question what nudism is about. For those who would do us harm out of ignorance, the truth will set us free. When all people can see our way of life and see what there is that makes us thrive on God and nudism, there will be no doubt as to our intentions.

Second, we need to share our Christian lives with the community in which we thrive, the nudist community. Shine the light on our lives so that all can see the benefits.

How can we do this? Easy. Let our everyday events tell our story. When you sit down to eat, be thankful and take a moment to pray and thank God for your food and ask him to bless it. It need not be gaudy or loud, just a simple silent prayer is sufficient. It honors God and it tells the world you are serious about this. Take a moment at the end of every day to say thanks to God and to pray for your friends, family and enemies. Take the opportunity to help others in Christ's name. Thank God even for the things you did not want. Accept God's decisions even if there is a "no" in the front of them. And lastly, go to church, become a functioning member and actively encourage your church to use you.

Lastly, we need to tell our churches we are nudists and why. If you don't know why you are a nudist, it is time to consider the question. If it is for sexual reasons, perhaps you should leave the nudist world. If it is because od gave you a gift of nudist lifestyle, shouldn't you let the church know about your gift?

Shining the light on our world will do two things. It will make us feel better and releive most of our fears. Second, it will let the world see what we are about. Both are great results. It is a win win situation. Third, it will allow us to self police our community. Remember the people here for the wrong reasons? They exist because we keep our world in the dark. Expose it to the light adn these creeps have no place to hide. They will leave. That's a win-win-win situation.



Till next time...

Nothing new under the sun. We hear that all the time, but I am sure there must be some new things popping up all the time. If there isn't wouldn't the world be a terribly dull place to exist?

In our sphere, we might find new things occurring all the time, perhaps a new twist on an old theme. We might see many new faces wander passed us on the path to wherever they are going. I sometimes wonder if the sun doesn't actually make sure we see the new things that pass us. If so, the statement above is wrong.

To be fair, there re very few new things. There are things are are new to us. We see them for the first time and, to us, they are something new and refreshing. Remember the first time you saw color television? Yes, it was new to you, but it might have been a movie that was shown in theaters in color many times before. New to you, old to movie goers.

In a freaky way, I have a new concept. Not new to the world, only new to me. What if the United States suddenly began to make marriage arrangements similar to the New Testament times, where the family arranged for children's marriages. There would many problems already solved before they started.

Today, we are struck by the number of people out of work, a sea of new mortgages being foreclosed on, and a the economy suffering from poor planning by a generation too used to the good life to wait for their share when they could afford it.

In the first century, AD, parents arranged a marriage for their children. They knew the children better than anyone and could make better judgment decisions that the kids themselves. Parents knew enough not to let the kids start out life unprepared.

For a guy to claim his bride, he had to have learned a trade. His father was responsible to make sure he could earn a good living before the son could be married.

Next, he had to have built a house for his family to live in. He had to acquire land and build a structure to shelter and protect his new bride and the coming children.

Lastly, he had to prove to the bride's family that he was capable of heading up the household and providing for their daughter in the manner proscribed in the marriage contract.

This brings us to an interesting point. The marriage contract spelled out what was to happen to each party during the good times, the bad times, and what was to happen if the marriage failed. Knowing in advance the cost of getting out of a marriage is a handy thing to know before you begin breaking off a relationship.

For the bride's family, they were responsible to make sure the wife was pure and wholesome. She was to learn to be faithful even before the two young people married. Next, the bride would learn to cook, clean and run a household's daily functions. Gardening, shopping, and raising her children were responsibilities she had to master before she was allowed to marry.

In the end, when a couple got married, the family had eliminated much of the hardships of marriage before the couple wed, making it easier for them to begin their life together. I personally believe these lessons were the key to successful marriages.

In the past few decades, we have experienced the loss of these skills in marriage. This loss has made our divorce rate soar. If parents today begin to make sure they no longer shirk this responsibility, the divorce rate will return to normal and our children's lives will be much happier.

For those still waiting for information on the upcoming Relationship weekend, plan for the first weekend before Valentine's Day. I have not finalized all the details yet, but I am pretty sure this will be the date. We will begin the weekend on a Friday afternoon. If you are going to attend, please plan on taking the day off on Friday and joining us for some great fun. I will let everyone know when we have registration open for the weekend and all the details worked out.

Thanks again for listening. Till next time....

Most of our lives, we trust God for heavenly things, and trust ourselves for everything else. The world of believing in God rest mainly in the areas of life we feel we don't have any control over. Faith healing, finding miracles, and saving the planet from utter destruction are the territories given over to God. We like to think we can handle the common cold, the poor, and all those pesky habits we hide from the light and allow the world to think we have fixed.

From a personal standpoint, I fit this category nicely. The things I believed I could handle without God's help was enormous. Even when I had come to the point where I decided it was only God's love that could handle this, I run back over and pick up the problem again.

It is a matter of trust. Do we trust God completely? Or do we trust ourselves more than we trust God?

The answers are more telling of our faith than our own abilities. If we don't have the faith enough to believe God can handle any problem we have, how can we say we believe that God is all powerful, all knowing, and all loving?

The truth is all of us lack the faith for some things.

I have seen a church where their members have the faith to pick up snakes and not be hurt. They certainly have more faith in God's control over snakes than I do.

The good news is that God is willing to help us even in our lack of faith. If we look back at the man who Jesus promised to do healings, we see that the man cried out, "Give me faith to have faith." This man had enough faith in God to ask for the faith he needed.

Our Christian world needs this kind of faith.

The Civil War and Decisions.

In the great War of Northern Aggression (the Civil War for those above the Mason-Dixon line), people spent much of their lives trying to survive the tragedy and heartbreak of wartime existence. There was the constant fear of your wife\husband\child\parent dying from some disease or malnutrition, the daily routine of finding enough food to supply your family something to cure the hunger pains, and the overall lack of human kindness. This country was a third world country surviving on sheer belief that God would prevail.

You might ask yourself, "What does this have to do with a good old naked walk with Christ?" and you would be hard pressed to find an answer.

Simply, there are struggles we survive that tell us we are in God's path. We come through the other side and see the fruits of our labor. We hear the calling of our Lord and have traversed the terrain to find His special love waiting on the other side.

In Job, we read about such a struggle and find that Job finally lived in the luxury God can provide for those who persevere.

But often, we find we are heading in the wrong direction and we need to stop and take stock of what we are doing. Balaam and his donkey are prime examples of how God works to stop us from hurting ourselves and realize we are not persevering in God's path, but are heading directly in the path of death.

For those not familiar with Balaam, he was a prophet of God, but not of Israel. He was sent to curse the Israelites and to stop them from continuing their taking of the promise land.

His donkey stopped before and refused to move forward. Balaam tried to force his way forward, but an Angel, unseen by Balaam, kept the donkey from moving forward. When the angel was revealed to Balaam, he learned just how close he had come to death. (The account of Balaam is told mostly in Numbers. It's a good read.)

All of us have a donkey that keeps us from trouble from time to time. God places people of objects in our path to help us stop and look at the situation. Learning to see these signs is important. Balaam was slow to see it. He almost died.

Today, just like with the Civil War, God places these objects, sometimes a person, others a series of events, to keep us from harming ourselves or others. Our lives are influenced often by what we consider coincidences and happenstances, but are no less than the hand of God protecting us. Whether it be an angel protecting others at a cost of our life, such as with Balaam, or a small child who begs us to stay home and play a game with him, there might be a reason for this behavior.


One thing for us to watch is how these events occur. I am sure there are donkeys who refuse to go further, but with Balaam, he had been riding this donkey for some distance and the donkey stopping was something strange and out of character. When we encounter something out of the ordinary in our path, it is an indication we need to stop and look at what is ahead. Is it of God, or are we being warned away from harm?

Secondly, we need to see where the smart people are heading. If you are on a ship and everyone suddenly jumps overboard, you might want to follow and ask why later. The crowd probably has a better understanding of the situation and is acting upon what they know. With Balaam, the countries around him had already abandoned their towns once the Israelites began destroying everyone who remained behind.

Third, a good solid prayer in the heat of the moment is not a bad idea. Some people call the flare-prayers, flares sent to God to ask for directions. He is faithful to guide us. If He has sent an angel to stop your progress and you stop before the angel cuts your head off, certainly God will help you wander your way back to His will.

A little common sense goes a long way with this type of work. If it looks like a Devil trap, it just might be. If God seems to be holding you back, He just might be. If you have to manipulate a situation to make it work, perhaps you are manipulating God out of your plan. Think before your beat your donkey into submission. Balaam almost lost his head over that silly little animal.

Until the next stroke of... well, common sense hits...

Allen