My life's work for now

Satan got me to drop this talk last year,
God had me write it so it now does more good.
You must learn to have God do the same with your works, or more of us will perish in Gahenna.

I was once forgotten and alone but now I am more alive than I’ve ever been though I am wasting time by not doing God’s will, both God’s main moral law for brief times and his by not doing his great call in my life, since his mercy covers me. I was a schizophrenic, I’ve masturbated, I’ve had gifts from God and done but some to develop them compared to the utter grace and effort I’ve tasted for instants in prayer, when the situation was right. We’re all open to that, but will we choose it with our hearts, with our minds, with our souls, by the strength of our choice of God and neighbor?

As God has said, my life began with death, from love. That’s how we must all overcome our sins, by “loving” for “until we do that we can do nothing”, that’s St. John the apostle passed on by my grandfather Robert Mize who has seen his particular judgment, I hope mine will go as well as his must have. He didn’t let his right hand know what his left hand did when he helped the drug addicts in town, I never knew until he died. But at this point we need people to see how to help each other, and that’s how I was taught when I was at this church.

Back in high school I was already adrift,
I hardly knew my faith.
Then I saw her, running, and at once I knew it would be deathly hard thing to love her, but that it would be equally good, and this is that story and that lesson.
She was Emily Posey,
It wasn’t that she was beautiful to my eyes though I guess she could have been, but she was the one I wanted to give myself to.

It took a while, but after a summer passed and I called her a few times between semesters and kept leaving messages, she took some notice.
And I’ve never been god with relationships and I thought she just wanted to be left alone after a while. Then it started in earnest.
She told me why was I making her cry?
And I tried to get around her more and she never wanted it.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me,
And I’d sit down at the table at school and she’d get up right off and say she needed to vomit.
I believed it was something she saw in me and I never could find it, but I trusted her and kept looking. Around this time I had found enough in the bible to be fascinated by it and would read it and pray about it.

One night I read the most important phrase to my heart I’ve ever heard, but not the most important one there is. I’ve never been able to find it again though I’ve looked so hard. I don’t need to though.

“Let sin die inside of you”

I immediately started to pray about that, discovered that it’s possible to master sin inside yourself, your pride, your impatience, your lack of love, not being honest or also lying, it was a miracle.

And this continued to grow in both directions, and my experience is that it is the best way.

I found my mind to be schizophrenic under the strain of believing I was worthless, unable to help Emily but instead to hurt her. I did not know how to love her, she didn’t want me next to her nor away from her.
I couldn’t stand it, I’d have done anything to stop it but all I could do is remember I was the problem and pray.

The disease set in,
And I could not sleep. I know I didn’t sleep for months because one time I prayed so hard at 2-4 am that I actually fell asleep for a few hours and felt better, which never happened again for a long time.

This problem mimics being on drugs, and as my mind had my heart feel that no one in the room wanted me around, no matter how many times I entered a room, that they were uneasy around me or hated me. So I tended to very much avoid people so I wouldn’t make them uneasy.

But I couldn’t leave my family, which I instinctively referred to as you people, for I felt no connection to anyone nor to God, tried to do the only thing I knew to make things better, to try to change myself. But no matter how many times or how hard I tried I was still angry, unable to think of anything to speak mostly, and felt a constant ache of despair that no matter what I did I stayed the same. People who didn’t understand told me I was a jerk, thought I had tried to kill myself when they heard my car hydroplaned into a creek, and suddenly old friends I hadn’t seen in 5, 10 years from a baseball team pulled my car out of that place.

Someone I still trusted and believed in looked at me one day and furiously told me to go to hell and stormed out of the room I was told my face looked like I hated that person.
I came to believe that it was true I was headed there,
And I was so angry and so many evil ideas spontaneously entered my fractured mind without me willing it that I believed if I was evil enough for that to keep happening, I must be going to Hell. I saw nothing I could do about it but I thought I could at least keep giving blood and save a few lives. If it weren’t for that I believed I was going to snap and very, very much hurt someone’s very life, and I believed if I couldn’t do more good than that was evil I should just kill myself and accept that fate so I wouldn’t do more evil than good, and as I tried to imagine how much the fire would hurt I thought it wasn’t as bad as the abandonment from everyone and the possibility of being a god man that I would keep feeling. I was a utilitarian at the time, an erroneous line of thinking that says do whatever, good or bad, would cause more good than evil.

My family was falling apart as some else had grave problems of a moral sort.

Emily eventually died in a car wreck, my emotions were so num that I was unable to cry very much though I tried to.

All this time I let myself be very hurt in my heart so it would make her feel better somehow, I knew she was upset with me and that seemed to fit.

But, someone once said that it takes suffering to cause repentance.

And all this time I had been trying to stop masturbating, which I did, and then once my medication I started taking right before college stopped snuffing out my sex drive I stopped it again.

And Emily, I never touched her or anyone, ever, in fact I stopped sinning with myself while she was alive and I was trying to show her I loved her. She started turning down offers to her body. Right before God took her.

I’m possibly forever scared, depressed at times and unsociable anymore, but it was all worth it because I believe it got Emily to somehow turn to God right before she died.
And love bears all things. I’ve only once been mad at her for doing this, and only for a couple weeks after talking with a friend. I won’t ever make that mistake again.
I love her and I won’t be angry with her.

And among the voices I still hear, perhaps from the disease still or from ,. . .
I still hear her at last say what I wanted so much. She loves me and she says thank you.
And why can’t God work through either?


And now I want to teach you.

A pillar of those to whom struggle and triumph is the goal of their life:

“To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God”
- Christ Revelation 2:9

We are all meant to go from strength to strength,

And in response to this Christ has this to say to myself and to you who know pain, trying times and the battles with evil,

“I know your wrks, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false; I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this againsty you, that you have abandoned the love ou had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent”.

This, from the same mind that tells us in scripture that God will always give us a way to bear what we must.

And I warn you that if you do not have a stout and faithful heart that when you fall there will be others that you are bearing up. I know this and have done it. But we are called to repent and never to give up. To despair is to mimic Satan and to hope and work is to believe in Christ.

This, I firmly believe, is the secret behind why we are inspired and it dies down. That faith without works is dead. That when we do not find growth in the spirit and let that bear up in our works of prayer for others, care for the sick, money for the poor and all manner of doing good, then we find decay. Because we are not following God’s command to advance, which is to love with all our hearts, minds, soul and strength. And the nature of all four is to either be used and grow stronger or to be left to itself, like a muscle, and grow weak. Recall how easily the mind has us write every day almost, and how poorly we do things we haven’t done in years. And it is not done without God, and we never needs be without His mercy and forgiveness. Though he can demand, he can and would give much much more if we’d ask Him, even when all of us don’t deserve it. I’ve seen it in the times I say ‘God make me an excellent man’ and then I am able to work hard in prayer and feel the advance. Then I neglect this and am not able to advance no matter my efforts. Ask, and God will give you ability. Choose, and you will use them to love others. To prpaire the gifts for service, which will sustain them when they are not able to be used. You who know to be religious, study, pray, teach, and one day the eucharist will be confected where it might not have been, to pray and sacrifice your hearts for now for would, where you might have instead worked and kept a home. And the gift you could not proclaim to the masses will be well versed in your hearts for the teaching, comforting and praying services to God, and for every good work. And the laymen, study, learn a trade, that you may support your families, your church, perhaps that will be your special calling even, to give all of yourself to the physical and spiritual health of your church rather than some to that and the rest to an equally noble thing, the growth of new life and souls. For we are all of us united in God and made to be differing in being and in deed. Remember to give according to your means, to develop according to your gifts and the prompting of God. I believe that God gives nothing with a vain purpose, and each of the things you can do CAN each of them bring good to this world according to God’s purpose in our lives. As we so often hear, God gives us the grace. Again, we must listen. Again, we must choose God. What inspiration lead me to God and worked was that choice was made not by mere consent though that was the beginning, but by what we call effort. Or, works of faith. I assure you, in the term work of faith, the word work has the same meaning as in the term working on my homework.

And the little mouse said to the crowd of mice:

I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time, I just never did.
After hosting a few years of bible studies I thought I could give out more on the internet now that I've moved away from my college church. I'm not quite sure where to start but consistent with the title, anything's fair game:

Let's start with the bible. Itself. It's a marvelous book, full of intricacies of your life if your open to that sort of thing, I find I can open it up and have my guts spilt on the page or be comforted as never before.

The trick is to apply it to your life, but more so to let God do that and you look for it.

That's the key thing in our modern religious sector I think. I don't know that people's attitude is to go after the path and strike out a direction towards it, of course while in keeping with God's wants for your life and any of His words. I hear a lot of good things about letting God lead the way and having God do for you, but what about frankly getting up and at least holding on to God yourself as well? Aren't two sets of wills acting together better than one? Even if the one is all powerful he made us the way we are for a reason. One of the ways he made us is as beings that can exert towards a goal, such as honesty, or love, or a caring attitude.

I once saw something in myself, it was myself. Nakedly, myself. God peeled back the cover of his grace for my eyes to see something that was pretty well near destined to choose evil if not now latter, and it was myself. I'm convinced when I think of that that I can get nowhere without God, barring the fact that we have devils that tempt us and then below that the news media, or as some more appropriately call it the boob tube.

But there was God's grace, ALLOWING me to CHOOSE what was good, not doing it for me. As far as I can see, that's a big piece of the puzzle. We must choose good, and where letting God work comes in is letting Him do the follow through for us. Of course, as he won't go against our freedom, if we don't continue to choose to let him follow through for us, we'll suit ourselves. Once again.

Now, as you know, you don't just say I'd kinda like to be a saint and there you have it. That's not really a legitimate choice as I've found it, because it doesn't get results. You see, if God is the one doing the work, and legitimate choices are to choose what is good, and God wants what is good (though he'll shoot down our ideas that we can't or WON'T see as being less than ideal or even bad) and honors our legitimate choice (i.e. a good choice, to at times exclude those less than ideal choices that get in the way of better ones [getting 3 Ph.D's instead of just being a Doc that actually does some good]) . . . Let's repeat that: God honors our choices that are good with bringing on the result of the choice, there are no exceptions to God doing something He Wills to do. So he wills for us to choose and thus do, by Him, good. So any good choice, qualified by what I said above and other things, that meets the criteria for God's Will, WILL BE DONE. Here's the kicker: Wishy-Washy 'I guess that's good I wanna be like that but not do anything really to get there' ideas AREN'T Choices because
A) It never works
B) It's not a bad desire
and
C) It's got to be a desire in line with God's Will at some point to be a, say, Saint but see A): It never works to be Wishy-Washy! and God won't deny good choices that are in line with His Will.

What it amounts to is needing to get off your duff, sir.

But what does work, what does satisfy, and bring happiness, is a legitimate choice.
A few things I've experienced about what that is:
#1: Grunt work; nose to the grinding stone, and all that hubbabaloo
2) You need to know what your choosing. Imagine a man that had never seen a stop light, he just fell out of the sky into a car, which he knew how to drive by the way. If he doesn't know what it means, he'll just run right through it and not think twice. A choice is an act of the will now, and he had no will nor care in the matter since he didn't know to care. He couldn't make a choice since he was blind to the options!

So with morality it goes back to the idea of anyone that is thrust into a situation wherein they don't know what they're doing: You know, get hired right out of 4 years of intensive study in a college, or even poping out of someone's belly. If they goof, no decent person would blame them for making a bad choice since they didn't even know what they were doing!

Now, when they know what they are doing 2 things can obviously happen: Good and Bad.
I'll explain this one a bit, Bad: That is, being blameworthy since they didn't do what they knew they should have.
I've even some to say about this,
If they know what they are doing and actually do what they know, good things happen to them because they made the right choice. Now if someone does the right thing accidently, they don't really get the same treatment as someone that knew what to do. You see, good choices bring good treatment (generally) to you in part because you know what your options are and you did the good one.

Which brings me back to effort: Why can't you just know something is good and say ok, I'll do it, obviously that's the wrong way I won't do that, all the way through life? Be the perfect role model, the perfect dad, mom, wife, son, no problems? Well, it just ain't so for one, for another, we need to realize that spiritually I think because knowing the right thing and doing the right thing are two different things, because we can take the easy way out, sin! Not that it works, it just feels good. Well, as you know, that ain't good enough. So we'd best get over it, and start trudging. So we can be happy. Believe it or not. Well, I believe it, I still don't always follow my God, and I'm still here, so there's hope for you too.


Gosh, I feel like an old windbag at 24.
For my (if any) future kid's sake, I really shouldn't take JOY anymore in awaiting my 65th birthday. . . they'd never hear the end of me.