I am……….Ernie. I am……..a male. I am……….this and I am…………that!

I AM is a statement of the NOWNESS of God, Consciousness, Spirit. God’s will is present living! God is not time-bound. I am more than I see, more than I confess. We all need to come into agreement with our true self.

The prophet Joel is still not being followed. I doubt he knew what he was saying as I think most who wrote words found in our sacred Christian (but not inerrant) text we not fully understood by those who wrote them. Joel said, “Let the WEAK say I AM….strong”. Why? Isn’t that just a denial of the reality- the physical facts?

Yes!

But it is also an affirmation of the spiritual truth that is much greater and more importnat. We need to line up and come into agreement (Amos 3:3) with the Spirit man and woman that we are. In truth I AM….strong! I am not weak. And to pray to God to help me get over my sickness and be strong is just to verify my sick state and not affirm my strength reality. And it also affirms that I am conscious of who I AM!

I AM Spirit, eternal spirit, truth, love, and a co-creator with the One who created me which is just a recap and affirmation of Genesis 1:26. I AM created in the image of God. And so are we ALL!

Let’s act and live like it!

Let me get right to the point. God’s WILL IS!

Think with me for a little while now. God isn’t somewhere, but everywhere. God is not limited by time and space, thus God simply IS. I don’t know how that works except I do know that if we believe a lot of the things that we believe we have to come to some obvious conclusions. Once upon a time we simply WERE as God IS.

The primary goal of humanhood here on earth is to remember who we ARE and to come back home to our true BEING- I AM. Note all these action-filled verbs.

God said He was, and His name was I AM. God’s WILL then is simply the recognition of that which IS. Think with me now. Our goal is NOT to speak of that which WILL BE. We’re not to pray, beg, or plead for something, but rather to affirm that it now IS, and that we now ARE.

It’s about NOW! Life IS. The Kingdom IS. We ARE, but we’re not acting like it, we’re not acting like we ARE, who God created us to BE! Thus we’re told that while we have EYES we simply do not SEE what IS. While we have EARS, we are not HEARING NOW.

God’s will in not what the church has proclaimed. God’s will is not about Sabbath keeping, rules, rituals, laws, formulas, creeds, confession statements, and the like. God is not in to sin management as the church loves to embrace. We are spirit beings housed in a human shell for a short season and then we return from whence we came.

But while we’re here, let’s do all we can to accomplish God’s will by recognizing what IS!

Can you imagine carrying an elephant for 645 days!

Paul tells us in Romans 12 that if one wants to birth an idea or go for some sort of radical transformation (any transformation), then one has to RENEW thier MIND! The renewal of one’s mind seems a bit non-religious now doesn’t it? The Greek word for mind (nous) can and is variously translated as thought, reason, or intention.

Giving birth means to change our stinking thinking!

And then we’re to take on the MIND of Christ. Sounds so easy but just what does that mean? Start o answer that question and you’ll discover a new denomination. Everyone has a different idea and that’s fine as long as we’re tolerant of what others come up with because surely e want them tolerant of our concepts. Don’t we? I say- DON’T WE?

I can do nothing of myself (said Jesus and so say I).

That said, with the aid of the Spirit, with God, with the mind of Christ, I can do ALL things and NOTHING, “no thing” is impossible. One piece of that puzzle is to recognize that the methods of mental and spiritual knowledge are entirely different. Mental birthing comes about from without, by comparing one thing to another thing, an analyzing it.

Spiritual birthing comes about from looking and hearing WITHIN!

I must be conscious of my TRUE BEING, who I AM and not who others have said that I am, or even who I have thought I am. As someone has written,

“Oh be strong then, and brave, pure patient, and true.
The work that is yours let no other hand do.
For the strength for all need is faithfully given.
From the fountain within you- the Kingdom of heaven.”

What are you giving birth to or are you even pregnant?

A new survey of who is “churched” for whatever that means was just released. The Phoenix, Ariz.-based Ellison Research said the most common definitions “often don’t tell a complete story about how Americans attend religious worship services.”

In a survey of more than 1,000 adults, 29% of Americans do not attend religious services at all; 10% attend only on religious holidays; 9% attend occasionally; 19% attend between one and three times a month; and 33% attend once a week or more. So, we have 1/3rd of Americans attending church on a weekly schedule

The study also analyzed family history of attendance and parental religious involvement. The study estimates that 43 million adults typically categorized as “unchurched” will visit a church or place of worship at some point during the year, and suggested that this should be the focus of outreach for congregations.

What most recent surveys have in common is the fact that church is no longer providing the spiritual needs of a large group of people. People are leaving the church to find a spiritual journey for God. The institutional church is more focused on providing programs, rock-star praise & worship, and offering the amenities of your local mall or country club (10% dues as well) than leading people into a spiritual experience.

People need a spiritual community to work out the dynamics that such a journey entails as well as just the psychological feedback. And, they are finding it. Churches should be leading people into a deeper reality of God and the Spirit rather than trying to vie for competition with the entertainment world or becoming an expert in sin management courses.

God is not a church, nor a denomination, and the church is not God, but it should be the vehicle that helps one find the reality of God. Recent national surveys indicate that’s not happening.

From my web site Beyond Theism (143 different posts there) it’s obvious that I am not a theist, at least not any longer. Theism may be just one of the mile markers en route to who we really are. Briefly, theism in my definition is a God out there who intervenes in life down here from time to time. Deism believes God put it together but then He went on an eternal sabbatical and isn’t involved in our lives now.

God is everywhere which means He can’t be somewhere (only).

Without getting too definitive about the concept of prayer, generally it’s believed that through prayer we can get God involved in some enterprise or trauma we’re experiencing and He’ll intervene and help us. In essence we abdicate any responsibility for the problem or the solution. And we thought it was only “others” who did all the blame-shifting.

Another word for free will is INTERVENTION!

We have the right to CHOOSE (Joshua 24:15) so what’s it going to be? We are who we are because we’ve done what we’ve done. If we don’t like who we are then we can INTERVENE, take responsibility, and exercise our free will (whil here on earth while we can). When I change my consciousness, I change how I see my world which means I in fact begin to alter my world. No change in consciousness, no change in circumstances.

Einstein said it. “You can’t solve the current problem with the same thinking that created the problem in the first place.” Can I get a big DUH on that?

Am I saying to not call upon God? Surely not. Can we do anything of our own self? Once again, absolutely not since even Jesus could not by His own admission (John, chapters 5 and 8). But what are you doing with this free will that’s a part of your nature? Are you taking responsibility for your life or only embracing free will when it “feels good”? How much luggage are you putting on God that you should be carrying?

So. Whatcha gonna intervene in now? What needs your attention and fixing?

The term derives from a series of incidents from 1986 onward in which United States Postal Service (USPS) workers shot and killed managers, fellow workers, and members of the police or general public. Between 1986 and 1997, more than 40 people were killed in at least 20 incidents of workplace rage.

But, what’s going prodigal?

It’s my own term so I can give it any definition. Going prodigal is realizing that you are somewhat of a Christian who loves God, but also realizing that you have been subjected to this earthly biological experience called humanhood. Romans 8:20 reminds us that “We were made subject to vanity, but not willingly, but by reason of Him who subjected it.”

Have we ever!

Everyone of us can affirm and testify (multiple times) that we’ve left our Sonship estate and gone prodigal: wasted our resources, spent much of of Dad’s wealth, and found ourselves in the pig pen of life crying out to God to deliver us from where we put ourselves. Save us from our prodigal mentality.

Since I don’t believe in a heaven with streets of gold and four-plexes to make a Saudi King lust, let me say that I see those “mansions” that Jesus spoke of in John 14 (if He did say those words exactly) as being “states of consciousness“. We get to pick one based on how we’ve handled this biological experience here on earth.

That can be somewhat depressing. But as Joshua said (24:15) “We have a choice”.

Don’t you wish it were easier to remember who were were before being sent here so we could fuse back into that state? But, alas, the playing field is the same for all. Let’s suit up and get back in the game for Dad! Whatcha say? Wanna play?

In Exodus 3:14 Moses is wanting to know what this Being that he’s talking to is called? What name shall he tell people told him to tell them. Moses knows that they’re not going to buy in on his name alone. What he wasn’t expecting was the answer. And guess what. We’ve still not understood or got it!

The Creator of heaven and earth and all things (that we Christians call God) said that He (no gender intended except they gender-ized in those days of course to the masculine) was to be called I AM. I am? Well, some say there was a comma after the next word THAT so Gods answer was I AM THAT, I AM.

I am is everything!

I am is you, I am is me, I am is Ahmadinejad, I am is Barack Hussein Obama, and I am is ALL THINGS!. Religion and especially denominationally-imprisoned people hate such thoughts. God must conform to “their idea“. After all God created us in His image and now we’re returning the favor by creating Him in our denominational image.

Bummer!

Everything depends upon your concept of yourself. As Neville Goddard wrote, “That which you do not claim as true of yourself cannot be realized by you.” And of course that doesn’t mean you can name it and claim it because, like Jesus, we can of our own selves do nothing (John 8:28). But with God ALL things are possible.

What are you NOT YET that YOU AM (you ARE) that you want to become?

Then get after it!

“Our minds, like our stomachs, are whetted by the change of food“. Quintillian

Let me put it about as directly as I can. The words that you speak to yourself, the conversations that you alone have with yourself, are tomorrow’s FACTS! You can’t think about something for very long without adopting those thoughts as your attitude, the story that you tell yourself that you are living- that you ARE!

I am who I am by the thoughts and conversations that I engage each and every day. What are you thinking now as you read this? Some say YES. Some say NO! But most people who read this will intellectually give it some thought and then forget about it and go on with thinking about whatever is bothering you, what person interests you that shouldn’t. And so on.

And then what we as a family, a community, a city, a state, and a nation collectively think is who we become. Who American is becoming as you look at our politicians, who REPRESENT US, isn’t good. And for me it’s getting worse.

To change our life, to change the things we call FACTS in our world, we must change our state of consciousness. Being “religious” no longer works. There’s too many religions cramped into smaller and smaller spaces. The scandals that have rocked the Catholic church and evangelical leaders in America over the last decade are driving people away.

The good news is that they are still seeking for the spiritual life, spiritual experiences, and a return to who they know they are but can’t articulate. But while they can’t put words (verbal) to what they feel and think, they are having an inner conversation that’s saying, it’s time to change. And therein Obama (consciously or not) has tapped into a nerve and inaudible conversation that the American psyche is having.

Too bad the church isn’t doing the same.

But then, churches don’t like change now do they!

Elisha has needs and the widow’s house that he’s in has only three drops of oil in her flask.

So, Elisha says to her, “Borrow as many empty jars (some translations say 3- I’ll let you decide which one is the inerrant translation) as you can from your friends and neighbors. Then go into your house with your sons and shut the door behind you. Pour olive oil from your flask into the jars, setting the jars aside as they are filled.”

By being obedient to the word, her next car and house payment can be made. Yours too!

In actuality the Bible says that Elisha says, “Now sell the olive oil and pay your debts, and there will be enough money left over to support you and your sons.” Let me translate the spirit of this, at least as I see it.

1-You are the widow! Me too.
2-We are barren (as she) and have no way to be impregnated with wealth.
3-But if we go WITHIN (he told her to close the door) where I AM, supply will be found.

In other words, if she’ll obey her consciousness, that still small voice, the I AM that she is, that we all ARE, not looking at the “facts”, not allowing our “senses” to dictate what is truth, all supply will be available for every need. That’s what I believe!

The OIL is our JOY and our JOY is our strength as the prophet Zechariah reminds us.

Have you lost your joy, your direction, your purpose, your supply? GO WITHIN! NOW!