Category: Language of Thought

Christians often blame God for not being present in their lives. People often cry out: IT SEEMS YOU HAVE GONE MISSING, LORD! If only I could hear You, Lord! If only I could see You! If only You would speak to me and reveal Yourself to me!

I am pretty sure the Lord will answer us with the following words: I am always with you, My child… if only you would believe that and spend more time with Me.

I am in you… if only you would learn to hear My voice.

I did not mind when you switched on the television last night, I looked forward to our time together afterwards… if only you were not so tired and immediately went to bed.

I wanted you to speak to the person you met yesterday… if only you had listened when I told you to say something.

I wanted you to assist the people at the roadside today… if only you did not turn your head the other way as you passed them.

I wanted you to spend time with your daughter last week… if only you were not that busy.

I want you to share the Gospel with your secretary… if only you would make an effort to do that.

I wanted to give you a new invention… if only you believed you are capable of designing it.

If only, my child! Where are you going?! I know where you are but I miss you so much!

A most disturbing fact is that although millions of Christians desire to contact Jesus and long for His close presence, many are not able to do so because they do not know how. Many know how to pray but they do not know how to listen and hear God’s voice. Due to this, they become missing for the Lord. Jesus knows all the people that accepted Him as Saviour but millions are missing in action while living for the world only.

While I was a minister I invited a well-known preacher to minister in our congregation. He spent five days with us in our home and yet, three years later when I met him somewhere else, he did not remember me.

I realised that it would be difficult to remember everyone you get to know, especially if you meet new people every week. I should have kept the relationship alive if I had wanted him to remember me.

In Mathew 7 Jesus said that one day many will say to Him that they have prophesied, cast out demons and done wonders in His name and He will declare to them, “I never knew you”!

Even though people know about Jesus and the miracles He performed and still do, many often do not make the effort to know the Person behind the miracles personally. At the end of life, people will run to Him, claiming to be His friend. Then Jesus would remember them, but He still would not know them.

Do you know Jesus?

Do you have a relationship with Him?

Jesus knows each one of us completely, but a relationship history has to be set up between Jesus and us. When we get to heaven, Jesus would either say, “I know you well”, or “you seem familiar but I honestly do not know you”, on grounds of the relationship that was built between us and Him.

Missing a loved one is an agonizing and heartbreaking experience. However, it is the most agonizing experience of all when someone you love is within reach but chooses not to contact you.

This is exactly what Jesus experiences when He says that He misses us. God accepts us with open arms when we commit our lives to Him, only to find us separated from Him after a while.

The problem is not salvation but the choices we make. We are mostly tangled up in our cobwebs of “survival” in a modern lifestyle dedicated to our physically oriented style of living, which renders us incapable to experience God. He longs to have a relationship with us, but we choose to be preoccupied by problems, fear, entertainment, sport, internet and many more seemingly important things. The way we choose to live, often leads us to be absent and separated from God.

It would be unacceptable for most of us to be married to someone we do not know. Jesus is the bridegroom waiting for us, His bride, and He too, wants to know His bride and at the same time wants His bride to know Him before the wedding day.

We know His Name but we do not know Him.

Jesus is in us, but we refuse to spend time with Him because we want to do what we desire and should we decide to spend some time with Him, we simply do not know how.

We should be able to hear the voice of Jesus leading us in life, and yet, many Christians admit that they fail to hear His voice or fail to experience His presence in their lives.

Every human being has a spirit but more than 2000 years after Christ, only a few of us are spiritually mature.

Jesus is calling out into the world

I miss you so much. Don’t you miss Me too?

WAKE UP – TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!

Words are the instruments we use to express our love and appreciation or whatever we desire to say.

Words are meant to come alive. However, some words take the shape of thorns or knives. Some fall to the ground and remain motionless. Some have wings and fly into the air but soon disappear from ear. Some are captured, framed, and put on display. Some are written down to gather dust in libraries. Those words are not alive any more but only shadows of old ideas.

One exception is the Bible. The words of the Bible remain alive and creative. It is the only Book in the world that contains a message within a message.

God is supernatural. He generated sound in the form of words when He created the universe by saying aloud “let there be”. That is why God is very serious about words and why He hates idle, false or meaningless words.

The use of words generates our own failure or success not by positive confession but through faith in our loving God.

In Numbers 6:22-27 the Lord spoke to Moses saying: 23 “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, ‘This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them:

:24 “The LORD bless you and keep you;
:25 The LORD make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you;
:26 The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” ‘
:27 “So they shall put My name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them.”

The Name of God is on us and we are called Christians. We may use these words to bless our family or friends. Jesus even told us to bless our enemies.

These blessings can only come alive if we say them to other people. Imagine how this world could be if these blessings are pronounced using fresh words every day.

In Revelation 8:1 we read: “When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour”. The question comes to mind: what had happened to all the women then?

This is only a joke, but the statement that women talk a lot is an understatement. I am married to a reporter. No, she is actually a lecturer, but you know what I mean. However, I love her to bits.

When we are in separate rooms, the conversation is less lively, more like a quiet exchange of muffled opinions. The moment she steps into the room where I am, the whole area lights up and changes into a concert of sound.

The point is, she shares everything that is on her mind and I know Jesus loves it.

With the indwelling Spirit, Jesus is close to us and therefore, we should create a habit of continually talking to Him. That is in essence what a relationship with Jesus implies.

On a busy day, when we desire to enjoy some quiet time on our own, we simply switch our cellular phones off. Many treat Jesus the same way. When we have spoken to Him in the morning, we switch off until the next time we need Him again.

Some do things they know Jesus would not approve of and therefore they put Jesus out of their minds in an effort to make Him absent in their lives. They conveniently switch the conversations off and on as they please and forget that Jesus is always present anyway.

Jesus told me that I should believe with my eyes open. I do not need to see Him physically and I do not need to close my eyes or imagine Him in my mind. He desires a living relationship with us. Why else would God choose to live in us?

A relationship with Jesus is not to connect with Him when we choose to; we have to keep the connection alive. If we are walking down the street, we should share with Jesus whatever we normally would have shared in the presence of a friend. We can do this in our mind with the language of thought, or by speaking to Jesus out loud.

If a woman, while walking down the street, notices a handsome young man, she should share her feelings with Jesus. If a man sees a beautiful woman crossing the road, he should do the same. If he is married, he should still tell Jesus how beautiful that woman is and thank Him for the wife God gave him! He should not be a hypocrite – Jesus knows what he is thinking anyway.

The difference between talking with people and talking with Jesus is that people hide the pictures or ideas in their minds from others. The language of thought is a handy tool to speak to yourself in, without anybody else knowing what you are saying. Jesus, however, knows every secret feeling and thought that we have, why not share everything with Him anyway?

Conversations with Jesus should be spontaneous and part of our existence like breathing.

It was late in the afternoon when Sam and Liza carried the last box into their new home. Apart from a table that got scratched, the move went fine.

For this family the day had started 14 hours earlier. It was still dark outside when Sam got out of bed. Sam Jones is a middle aged manager of a hardware store. On this day Sam, his wife Liza and their two sons had to move their belongings to another house.

Before Sam had started packing the last few items, he remembered his early morning appointment with Jesus. In the empty study he went down on his knees and fired away.

On the other side Jesus was anxiously waiting for the regular meeting with Sam. This morning Sam did not knock on the door but abruptly stormed into His presence and started to talk.

“Jesus, thank You for listening, wow, I need You so much today. Please, help us to get this moving episode behind us without any problems. I still need some money to cover all the bills for this month, Jesus, would You please help us. Lord, I am so sorry for the way I treated Liza last night, please forgive me, but she just refuses to understand that I cannot afford to see a doctor now, and by the way, You are healing me, right?”

At that moment Liza called Sam to move a heavy box in the kitchen. He quickly said amen, opened his eyes and stormed into the new day.

With tears in His eyes, Jesus followed Sam. He longed to stop Sam and take him into His arms. He loves this man and his family so much.

Sam’s meeting with Him every morning usually goes this way, but this morning Sam was even hastier. Jesus felt the urge to speak to Sam like He does every morning but Sam never bothers to listen. He wanted to tell Sam that he should check how they load the furniture because carelessness would damage some. He also wanted to share with Sam that the hardware store on the other side of town needs a manager and they would offer him a far better salary. He also needed Sam to ask Liza’s forgiveness for the cruel words he spoke to her last night. Liza is concerned about him because she loves him so much. There were so many things Jesus wanted to tell Sam, but… he simply never stops to listen.

When we pray we have to speak, but we need to listen too, because Jesus also wants to take part in the conversation.

When Jesus walked on this earth, He constantly listened to His Father in heaven. I believe Jesus listened a whole lot more than He spoke. We do it the other way round by making Jesus the Listener, while we deny Him the opportunity to speak to us.

The biggest mistake people make, is that after they have prayed, they walk off into the day as if Jesus stays behind. For many the word “amen” means goodbye. Jesus promised that He would never leave us. The right kind of relationship would be one where I speak to Him throughout the day and where I also stop to be still and listen to what He has to say to me in particular.

Looking at a city during the night we can clearly distinguish between the bright and dim lights. Obviously, the more power is supplied to the light, the brighter it will shine.

Looking at Christians from afar might leave the same impression with God.

In Proverbs 20:27 we read, “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all the inner depths of his heart”. Apply this within the metaphor of the mansion mentioned in Postcard 10. Our spirit is the lamp of the Lord but without the Holy Spirit, our mansion would suffer a major power failure leaving it pitch-black inside.

The brightness of our lights depends on us.

In Luke 11:33vv Jesus said a lamp is supposed to be put on a lamp stand in the open to give light, but then He continued that the lamp of the body is the eye. Note: not two eyes, only one. When the eye is good, the person would have light.

It could be confusing when the parable of the eye is not completely understood.

An evil eye was a phrase which the ancient Jews used, to denote an envious, covetous person, someone who is jealous over his neighbour’s prosperity, loving his own money, and doing nothing for the sake of God.

A good eye means the opposite, an eye that seeks virtuous in life for God and man. In addition, a good eye seeks the wisdom of God. In the New Testament the word for eye was also used in an idiomatic expression regarding understanding. Jesus brought us the Gospel, the understanding of Jesus and the Father. The eyes of an unbeliever is often described as being closed, unable to see the truth.

Not to see means not to understand and not to believe. Not to look for wisdom would mean not to seek understanding.

When we understand the Gospel, believe in Jesus Christ and know the Holy Spirit is in us, we would not only have the light but also be a light for others to see and take.

To keep our light or our understanding as bright as possible, we need spiritual input. This input comes through seeing and listening. Reading is not enough. Jesus said that we should consider carefully how we listen (Luke 16: 18). We should pay attention to what we hear.

In Mathew 13 Jesus explained why He uses parables to explain the mysteries of heaven. Then He continued that the person who has would receive more, but the one who does not have, will lose what he has.

Some believe this refers to physical things like money or possessions. In this instance, it refers to the mysteries of heaven, the wealth of the spirit. To get more spiritual wisdom, a person has to look and listen and if he fails to do that, he would lose even what he thought he had.

The more we look and listen, the brighter the light would shine.

Some people’s lights are thousands of megawatts strong, while others look like a small flickering candle.

The way to turn the light brighter is in the eye and ear of the person himself.

In Luke 5:22 we read what happened when people brought a paralytic to Jesus but there were so many people, they had to climb onto the roof to lower him down in front of Him.

Among those present were Pharisees and teachers of the law. They thought, “Now this is going to get interesting.”

When Jesus saw the paralytic He said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

The Pharisees and scribes whispered to each other, “Who can forgive sins but God alone.” Each one thought in his heart, “This is blasphemy.”

Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking when He asked them, “Why are you reasoning in your hearts?”

God understands the language of thought. We think in pictures and every picture we have in our mind is open before His eyes. Even words we speak in our mind are heard immediately by Him.

Our thoughts are in fact speaking much louder that our words because it comes straight from our hearts. When people say, “Praise God,” their hearts are shouting it out.

However, God hates lies. When we say, “I love You Lord.” We should really mean it because He knows exactly how much we love Him, not by listening to the words of our voices but to the words of our hearts.

This very subject is raised when Jesus said that we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The Greek language underlines each meaning beautifully. Let me explain.

Heart in Greek means the inner self, which includes the thoughts, attitudes, opinion, and affection. The heart can be summed up as the foundation of our thoughts.

When we confess our love for God, He sees our heart, which is reflected in our thoughts. God notices how serious we are, how we desire to be close to Him, how ashamed we feel of our sins, just by looking at our thoughts.

Soul in Greek also describes the inner self but is associated with desire, sorrow, and pain, the essence of life in terms of thinking, willing and feeling. Again, it is reflected in our thoughts.

Mind is what it says – the brain with the understanding, reasoning, thinking and decision making capabilities. Whatever we decide with our brains is also calculated, considered and reflected in our thoughts.

Strength is connected to the ability and potential of the physical body to express our love for God. It could be by speaking, dancing, or raising our hands in the air with adoration, after thinking of what we want to do.

Our thoughts expose what we plan, feel and believe.

When we need to share our thoughts with God, we can either speak out loud or say it in our thoughts.

By clearing our minds and then focus on God, we can also listen to His voice in the language of thought. We might feel His guidance in doing or not doing something. It might also be quiet, intimate conversation with a loving Father, just listening to His tender voice.

We should be careful when we say something to God. It is an insult to say something to Him, which does not correspond with the feelings in our hearts!