It’s Monday. Again.

Sometimes it seems like Monday all week.

That’s what it’s like to worship God. Not that worshipping God is bad, not at all! But Yeshua said that anyone who wants to follow Him has to leave behind everything, pick up his execution stake and get ready for a life of trial and tribulation. It’s not easy being righteous; especially in this world.

On Mondays, though, what do we do? We get up, brush the ivories, have coffee and do the crosswords. That’s my start, every day, only on the weekend it means when I’m done I can do other things, or nothing. On Mondays it means I have to get ready for work. For the next 5 days. Oy!

I like my job, really, and the people and company are good to work with and for.

It’s just work , in itself, I don’t want to do. But I have to. It’s not time to retire yet.

I feel similar with worship, and trying to do what is right in God’s eyes all the time. Shabbat is a time of rest, from work, not from God. The truth is we never rest from being Godly, or trying to be. And there are no spiritual weekends when we can stop being who He wants us to be and just be ourselves. You see, that’s the problem: “ourselves” are not righteous, “ourselves” are not Godly, and “ourselves” are sinners from the gitgo.

That’s why it is so hard to worship God, correctly. There are no weekends, there are no “Hump Days”, there are no vacation or personal days. It’s a lifetime of Mondays.

That thought….a lifetime of Mondays….stinks. What keeps me going is the other thought- an Eternity of joy and peaceful rest. Nothing but weekends forever.

Now, isn’t that worth suffering through a few Mondays?

Donna and I are members of the Brevard County Archers Club. We use recurved bows and shoot once a week or so.

I am an expert with rifle and pistol and just learning with bow, but the methods are pretty much the same.

When your aiming point is not exactly dead-center, and you want to hit dead center, you adjust where you aim so that your arrow or bullet ends up where you want it to be. This is called “Kentucky Windage”.

I think we can use this idea when trying to run the good race and keep our eyes on the prize (statements in the B’rit Chadasha/New Covenant for those not that familiar with it) in that we often try to be exactly what God wants us to be, but we miss the bullseye. We forgive someone that did us wrong, then scream at the jerk driving in front of us who won’t make the left turn until there isn’t a car in sight.

We aim for righteousness, but we barely hit somewhere on the target. For me, it’s usually in the 2 or 3 ring- not very close to the bullseye. Once in a blue moon I will hit the mark, I will do what God wants me to do, and I will give Him honor and glory when someone else sees me do what is right in His eyes.

Actually, maybe that’s really once in every two or three blue moons. But, I digress.

What we all need to do is adjust our aiming point so that what we do hits closer and closer to the bullseye. What I mean is, change how we do things when we realize what we are doing isn’t working as we want it to work. When we know that we aren’t doing as God wants, refocus our aim. It’s never that His Ruach (Spirit) is off, it’s that we aren’t listening. So, change your aiming point. If you want to curse less, and it isn’t working, stop trying to curse less and use different curse words, one’s that aren’t offensive. Give up the “F” word and use “Phooey”- it sounds like an F but it isn’t. Use comical words that will lighten your spirit and make others stop what they were saying and ask, “Huh? What did you say?” That way, you help them and yourself.

If you want to forgive and you can’t, change your aiming point. Pray for the person. I have found that when I pray for them, I can’t stay angry. Especially if they don’t know God. How can I do or think anything worse on a person than what will happen to them at Judgement Day when they don’t know God or have Yeshua in their corner? If you stop trying to forgive them, which isn’t working, but you pray for them (use Kentucky Windage) you will find, and I think very quickly, that you’re more compassionate. The Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) will take the lead and, although I won’t guarantee it, I believe you will find sooner than you expect that it is easier to forgive.

If we use Kentucky Windage as we focus on developing our spiritual maturity we will come closer and closer to hitting the bullseye of doing what God wants from us, which is (ultimately) what God wants for us.

 

Here it is: we are commanded to forgive.

The nice part of forgiveness, as hard as it is for most of us, is that it is the only way to make the pain go away.

In a Start Trek episode (the original) Scotty once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”  With forgiveness, the sin that is done against us is the first time that someone hurts us. After that, as we recall it and the pain comes back, that is not the sin of the person who did it to us- that is our sin of unforgiveness.

Sin against me once, shame on you. Let me continue to relive the sin and rehearse the anger and pain of it, over and over- shame on me!

You want to get rid of the pain? You want to be free of the shame, frustration and anger of being sinned against? Then do as the Lord requires: release it to Him. Forgive the person, pray for the person (that helps, actually, a lot to be able to forgive) and earn a blessing for doing what God requires.

It’s true, that old saw- To err is human; to forgive, Divine.  God says we should forgive, and when we do, it makes the hurt go away.

 

Ever wonder, when someone says to you, “Have a good one!” that it would be great if we really could control that. I mean, what if we could have a good one whenever we wanted to?

Well, we can. Not that we can control what happens to us, or that we can stop bad things from happening to anyone else, but we can control how we view the world and our place in it.

That nice, Jewish boy from Tarsus, Shaul (Saul, aka Paul) said that we should  run the good race and keep our eyes on the prize. For Believers, that prize isn’t here on Earth- it’s Eternity in Gods presence.

Yacov (James) tells us that life is but a mist, and Moshe (Moses) said pretty much the same thing. When we compare a human lifetime to Eternity, it is nothing.

Think about the bad times in your life. They were horrible, and often we don’t ever get over them. However, we can get through them. Not on our own power, but with God. With God, all things are possible.

Time is weird: when we look forward to something it takes forever to arrive, when we are in the midst of something it seems to take a really long time to finish, and when we look back at things they were over and done with in a flash.

Did you know that the word “Ruach” is mostly translated as spirit, yet the literal translation is breath. When you are losing control and you feel that string of expletives at the back of your throat straining to get out into the open, take 2 Ruachs and curse about it in the morning. Trust me, when you call on the Ruach to calm you, and remember that this life is but a wink of the eye,you will be in control of how you feel.

So….the next time you are frustrated at work or with someone on the road, or it seems that the entire day is designed to make your life terrible, remember the Ruach (Spirit) that indwells is more powerful than what you are going through (He that is within us is more powerful than that which is in the World) and all of this won’t mean anything in Eternity.

Have a good one!