**Moving Toward God*

        To obey God.we must disobey ourselves. These two efforts are to be carried out at the same time, for we must give ourselves up to surrender ourselves to God. Depending upon how much humility you have, you can accomplish this instantly or not even your whole lifetime will be enough for you. You get to make your liberation instant, prolonged, or delayed for ever. This is the challenge. Imagine that heaven is right there before your eyes, would you still hesitate and not move toward God? The truth that heaven is there, except that you are not able to see it yet. People say seeing is believing. For those who have faith, believing is all they need and God lets them know that they got it right.

*****Reviewing Reality Once More

        All the posts I've done on this blog have been to glorify God, the God of Christ, by letting you know that he is the true God and how good he is! What we need to know is simple if we believe. There's good and there's evil. We all have a soul that lasts forever. But man has sinned from the beginning and needs salvation, and Christ has come and shown that we can have eternal life if we believe in him to have all our sins taken away by him. It turns out that we make things hard for the Lord and ourselves, for our pride stands in the way. Jesus has already told us that we need to be humble to be exalted. If we let him be our Lord, we become free. But we still prefer to be in charge of ourselves and the struggle against submission to God continues on. It's been like that generation after generation and will most likely continue on to the day of our final judgment. Man has fallen once and is falling again, forever this time, if it doesn't wise up. Again, for whose who believe, especially like a child, they already have their eternity taken care of and are just waiting for the finest day of their whole existence. The disparity between the believers and nonbelievers is as great as that between heaven and earth. I'd cast aside my pride and listen to God for both his and my own sake. The clocks keeps ticking, so we have little time to waste.

***Garabandal Prophecies

         Once more it's good to hear these messages. Of course, to believe or not is all up to you. To believe in Christ or not is up to you too. For me, since I already believe fully in Christ, I don't have a thing to worry about anymore. No matter what happens, my eternity is absolutely secure in him.

***Dying in Order to Live

        In today's Gospel reading from John 12, Jesus said to his disciples, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit." To be fruitful, we must die in Christ first. Otherwise, we remain our old selves, still disconnected from the Lord. To be truly born again, we need to believe in the Lord and die in him first. So die in Christ before we die and we'll have life abundantly.

***Doing All for God Only

        Today is Feast of St. Lawrence. In reading I from 2 Corinthians 9, Paul writes, "Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work." This is great encouragement for me, for the Lord at times seems to want me to do things going against my grain. But obey I must. To make it easy, I need to realize that I am to do whatever for the Lord and not for anyone else or myself. I am merely his instrument. He'll always be with me if I stay with him.

**Preparing for the Inevitable

         The Lord also made me see that I was on my way going to him and now was the time to prepare myself for the best possible meeting with him. All of us should be doing this on earth now. What's inevitable should always be of foremost importance to us.

*****Feeling Free with God

       It's 2:53 AM now. I feel the Lord is really drawing me close to him and I can't sleep. I know that he's right with me, feeling the intimacy only possible with God. There is absolutely no barrier between him and me. He made me see that when we feel absolutely free to know him, we are free. It's good to know.

**Urgent Call to Prayer

         This is calling those who are not strong in the Lord yet. Only submission and prayer to God can secure our eternal future. Otherwise, we may be easily deceived. The time to realize this is now, more urgent than ever.

y

***The Definitive Prayer

        Today as I was praying the Our Father, I saw that if you truly meant every line you said, you would be acknowledging your total dependence upon the Lord and abandoning yourself completely to him. This is as it should be, as we also leave judgment entirely to him. We submit ourselves to God the Father and answer to him alone. This is the prayer that defines our relationship to God. 

***Most Fulfilling Expeience

         Communion experience. The intimacy and union is so fulfilling that I was ready to rest in the Lord forever.

***The Bread of Life Truth

        In today's Gospel reading from John 6, Jesus proclaimed, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." In Jesus' days, he multiplied loaves of bread and fish to feed the multitudes. Today he has made this living bread available to all at Mass. I wish that Protestant will study John 6 head-on to see that Jesus really meant that to have eternal life, we are to eat his flesh and drink his blood. If Jesus had meant it symbolically, then receiving the Holy Eucharist would be no better than eating manna which fulfilled only physical hunger. (If you search this blog by typing in the word Eucharistic, you can pull up quite a number of posts on Eucharistic miracles.) 

***Avoid Becoming an Antichrist

       In today's reading II from Ephesians 4, Paul writes: "Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ." Of course, Christ had already taught us to pray "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Therefore, if we do not forgive others, we become antichrists. St. John in his first epistle writes: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' but hates his brother, he is a liar." Anyone who wishes someone to go to hell is therefore an antichrist. To love means you love everyone without exception. 

***Do It For Your Soul's Sake

        We all have a soul. We can take care of our own souls, but can only help others to take care of theirs. Taking care of your own soul is all God asks of us, for if we all do that, there'll be heaven on earth. Of course, to get the best care for your soul, you would put your soul under God's care. So for the sake your soul, abandon yourself to God totally. 

*****Source of All Beauty

        Here's the Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos playing a Rachmaninoff song. He is a master at making the melody sound achingly beautiful. Anytime I see or hear something beautiful, I think of the source of all beauty, our Lord, who holiness is the most beautiful of all beauties.

**Hoping to Become Perfect

        God can transform us into a new creature when we are on earth. What I look forward to is that once we are in heaven, God will completely renew us, wiping out even all our inappropriate involuntary reactions that have been ingrained in our nature while we're on earth so that we'll become perfect like the Lord.

**Preparing for Meeting God

        Think of it, we are always in our last days on earth. So what should we do with the time we still have on earth? Do we want to show up before the Lord God empty-handed? I think not. This is what we want to hear him say when we see him: Well done, my good and faithful servant. Come, share your master's joy (Matthew 25:21). If you long to see the Lord, you are probably ready. 

**To Be Free of Nonessentials

       This early morning I dreamed that I walk by a room in a large building, entered it and found a box on a bookshelf that contained something I knew would be useful to me. I learned that the room would be emptied and everything in it discarded. Since I had to do something, I thought I would come back a little later to get that box. When I returned, that box was not there anymore, and I felt distressed. Then I realized that all along I never had that box and I got along fine. I saw that we all accumulated things that may be useful, but not essential. So we needed to learn to detach ourselves from all nonessentials. That was the lesson I learned. It comes down to that only God is essential, the only one to whom we need to attach ourselves.

***How to Love God More

         If you love the Lord, do you best to glorify him, and still feel that you fall short, your can always surrender yourself to him more perfectly to strengthen your union with him. That would be most pleasing to him and beneficial to you too.