*Waiting for the Lord

         We wait for the Lord's Second Coming, but we also need to wait for the Lord to show us what to do every moment. This takes patience, for we tend to rush ahead thinking that this is a good thing to do for the sake of the Lord and end up failing. God has his timing for us and we must follow it for best results. To do God's will is to follow him in all things.

***Most Fundamental Relationship

         Speaking of relationships, our relationship with God is our most fundamental and important one. Let this relationship take care of all other relationships. Not the other way around. This is putting God first and making him truly your Lord. And your reward will be great!

***God Utterly Needed

         Communion experience. I feel I absolutely need the Lord. He not only sustains my life on earth, but also heals my soul to prepare me for entering heaven! There is nothing more important than these two things and I appreciate and am most grateful for that!

***What Not to Possess

        In today's Gospel reading from Mark 10, Jesus said to a rich man who had observed all the commandments, "You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." Clearly, the Lord wants us to detach ourselves from our possessions. It's interesting that when we want to possess things, we are actually letting them possess us. Later, Jesus said to the disciples, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come." So, we should even detach ourselves from our families. When we are free of worldly possessions, we become free to let God possess us and we end up possessing the Lord as well.

*Extreme Foolishness

        From today's second reading from Hebrews 4, we heard "No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account." So it would be extremely foolish for us to do whatever we wish to do and ignore the will of God. In fact, we should never live apart from his will, for we are naked before him and will be judged by him. Wise up before it's too late.

***First Humility

        Man fell because of pride, so humility is the key to returning to God. Our first humility is to realize that we are sinners and need to repent of our sins. Before Mass started this morning, the Lord made me see that this realization is one of his great graces, for it can start our journey back to God. When Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon, millions of us heard him say "That's one small step for a man, one giant step for mankind." Repentance might seem to be a small step, but it's a mighty step as far as the soul is concerned. Let's embrace humility and appreciate and treasure this great grace. 

**Leaving All to God

        We see some of the things happening around the world and do not know what's going to come next. We don't even know how much time we have left to live on earth. Does it matter? No, it shouldn't because the Lord God knows everything and is in charge, and that should be good enough for us. We just follow him and leave all else to him, and we'll enter eternal life in the end. 

***To Experience God's Wonders

        I believe I posted about this before, but it's worth sharing one more time. If you are in tune with the Lord, you experience wonders. "To be in tune with" is "to be totally open to." One example to illustrate what I mean. You may be familiar with the phenomenon of being slain in the Holy Spirit. That is, when you are blessed by a spirit-filled priest, you fall to the ground and experience great peace. It's as if the Holy Spirit had kissed you. I had experienced this quite a number of times. You just have to be totally receptive and open. I still remember the time a holy priest came to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento, Ca, close to where I lived. He blessed all present with a piece of wood from the cross on which Jesus was crucified, and we all collapsed to the floor. Since you must leave space for others, you got up within a minute or so. Otherwise, you probably could remain in that peaceful state for a long time. Anyway, there's one time I went up to be blessed by a priest and didn't fall like the others. That's when I had a littler bit of extraneous thoughts on my mind and wasn't 100% in tune with the Lord. The lesson I learned was that God knows everything about us and we must be totally in peace with him to experience his wonders.

**What Makes Me Happy*

        Nothing can make me happier than making God happy, even though I don't always succeed.

***Abortion IS Evil!***

        Life begins at conception, this should be obvious. Anything that grows has life. Even the animals instinctively defend their newborn. Yet many human beings choose to exterminate the unborn. Evil has indeed taken possession of them.

****God's Way to Peace****

        It is significant to me that all the messages coming from heaven to us, whether from God the Father, Jesus, Mary, St. Michael the Archangel, or others, have asked us to continue to hold onto our faith, pray hard, convert ourselves, and do good works. Not once did a message tell us to go out and harm any evildoer. This is in total conformity with how Jesus lived his life on earth. It is clear that God wants us to rely upon him to fight the battle and not do what we feel like doing as human beings. This makes sense, for if we take matters into our own hands, we'll never have peace for long. The world's problem is like our own, which is best solved thru submission to God. Also, his way makes sense and is clearly best if you wish to save as many souls as possible.

***Presenting the True Reality

        Death is not the end, but the beginning. For the Christian, it's the beginning of the sweetest part of their journey and they eagerly look forward to it! Nothing can be happier than being taken care of by your most loving Father and creator for all eternity. This is true fulfillment! God has prepared the way to save us. We believe in the Son, follow him, and we pass the test. Now we are ready to enter heaven. It's all so clear and real. It's just terrible not to see this and be lost forever! But if you hear me, you still have time. May we all know Christ and see the true reality!

**Believing in Jesus' Promises

        Jesus has made many promises to us. His prophecies and many of his teachings are essentially promises. If we believe that he is God, then we must believe in all his promises. And the big promise I firmly believe in is that we will have eternal life if we believe in him. And the evidence for that is overwhelming.  

**Evildoers Are like Goats

        In Matthew 25, Jesus told his disciples, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left." Sheep and goats describe the good people and the bad people, respectively, well. I know a little about them, for I have used both in controlling weeds around my house. Goats are clever, wild, and destructive. They jump over fences, climb trees, and kill plants indiscriminately. They killed the only tree that displayed beautiful yellow leaves in the fall on my property. It was a sizable tree; they just chewed a ring around the trunk and that was it. I felt bad about that. The evildoers are like that. They don't care about others, and do and destroy whatever benefits them.

*****Best Gift for Us on Earth

         In today's Gospel reading from Luke 11, Jesus said to his disciples, "What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" Obviously, the Holy Spirit is the best gift our Father can give us on earth. Therefore, ask for that from him so that you may become one with the Holy Trinity! 

***Most Fundamental Act

        In my last post, I talked about doing all things for God. What comes before that is even more fundamental. It is that we surrender ourselves completely to God. This forms the basis for doing everything else. If we can do that, we solve our biggest problem with God, will bring peace to the world and eliminate any chastisement coming our way.               

***To Be Great in God's Kingdom***

        Doing one simple little thing for the Lord God means infinitely more to him than doing a million big things for ourselves. So if we can do the million things all for God, imagine how great we will be in his kingdom!***

***Way To Be Perfect

        Obeying God is most important. But since we are human and cannot attain this perfectly, our intention to be totally obedient becomes more important than how perfect we turn out to be.