Devotional Mayhem

eejoseph,

It is a really good thing to reach out to those around us, whether in person or digitally, by expressing our love and our devotion to God. It is quite another thing to be telling people what to do today, and sometimes what to do and what to expect for a whole week, and sometimes for a whole year. We have just been through the latter, crossing the threshold (into 2026}where people are making resolutions and commitments for the next year.  A great many greetings that go out daily position themselves as grounded in a Bible verse or a maxim that arises from the Scriptures.  It becomes a completely chaotic landscape when the thoughts delivered in the greeting are not anchored to the Bible verse or verses or maxim.  Devotional mayhem is the result of dreadfully unhinged daily greetings, encouragement, and exhortation.  This popular pastime, building on the ashes of Mosaic Judaism, mixed with sentiments from the New Testament and popular folklore, pretends to tell people what to do and especially what not to do. Most devotionals go astray quickly and fatally.

Juvenile puddling does not make a river

Who or what you might think you are, jumping in between God and his blood-bought property, is most likely not a healthy entity.  We cannot deny that understanding God’s will for today is an intensely private matter.  Playing around in shallow puddles and doing swimming motions is profoundly irresponsible and misleading.  Understanding and performing God’s will is a secure operation. It is not vulnerable to large campaigns or guerilla operations.  Let us make two things abundantly clear.

  • People who are not understanding God’s will were not granted the mind to do so.
  • People who are not performing God’s will or work have not been given the task.

Scrambling out of our ditches

We can only penitently glance at the fact that the river of God is that which flows directly from God’s throne to the hearts of human beings by means of the Spirit. There is no need for an intermediary when we need to make decisions about spiritual things.  All the juvenile things we learned about God in Sunday school (as children) do not make a dent in the world of mature Christianity.  Tasty little puddings like (a) God only blesses perfect individuals (b) God keeps his distance if the believer goes to certain places and (c) God puts people in heaven or hell the moment they die.

GLADNESS GUARANTEED.  There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, The holy dwelling places of the Most High.

Psalms 46:4

SHEPHERDING SECURED. for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

Revelation of John 7:17

There are many devotional books written by persons with no background in Bible interpretation, many of whom may have had a dream or experience that caused them to reflect on God’s majesty and authority. 

Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, (Revelation of John 22:1)

So there is inspiration all around, but keeping our words in sync with the Bible will spare us a massive headache.  It is way better for us all, novice and learned, to be eager to show in a few minutes that we have grasped the meaning of a single word than to spend five minutes to an hour beating ’round the bush. 

Perhaps the most cruel and tortured version of the devotional is that prayer and fasting session, praise party or Bible Study where no one seems interested in lingering on the words of the Bible or the words of Yeshua.  Few seem to be aware that chewing on a single small morcel of Yeshua’s teaching. We’ve created scores of mantra-like sayings, beautiful recitations of grace. Not even a hundred prophets can deliver to us the flavours of GOD in an endless burst of nourishment. A lot of greetings and devotional material are appealing to the eye, and never hit the bulls eye. Let’s not keep wasting people’s time with unhinged sayings, proverbs or perverted popular Bible verses. Expressing love in helping ways should shape our devotional efforts.

Faith’s Hearing

eejoseph, , , ,

We have thought that Abraham was a man who was an unusual recipient of grace as far as we can detect in the aspects of his life we have on record

James’ “faith and works” is a nothing burger.

Abraham was not called to believe. He was called to leave his home. The stages of his life do not include his witness of a large family dwelling in the land of Canaan. Here are the stages of the man’s life.

  • The call and election
  • The journey to Canaan
  • The promise of greatness
  • The promise of fame
  • The promise of blessing
  • The promise of land
  • The promise of multitudinous progeny

Reality is not from obedience or hearing

If obedience and loyalty are the guaranties of real divine wealth this  is not demonstrated in the Bible, because Abraham did not set foot in the promised land and never saw the multitude of us family for which he believed God.

Hearing God’s voice= compliance

Reading that the blessing of all the earth’s families is a result of Abraham’s attention to YHWH’s voice comes as a surprise because the idea that Abraham earned these outcomes seems antithetical to grace. The fact however that this particular promise is guaranteed by an oath makes debt or performance irrelevant.  James, the Pharisee brother of the Lord Christ makes shipwreck of this abundant grace when he equates works (of any kind) with faith.

Oaths override regulations

Genuine happiness – blessedness – will appear at God’s prerogative, not as an earned reward

“What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, And whose sins have been covered. “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account. (Romans 4:1-8, NASB)

Far too many people are swimming in a puddle and they are convinced that the actions they carry out will impress people that they are swimming in the wide open and beautiful ocean of grace. Hearing God’s voice does not mean juvenile obedience. In the case of Abraham and the list mass of mankind, hearing God’s voice means abandoning the current life support: one’s country, one’s relatives and one’s ancestral ties.

Stop being ridiculous with born again 2.0

eejoseph

Many believers are obsessed with death and dying and often they’re off on the wrong foot.  When believers are born again or converted they do not merely acquire a new set of behaviors or find themselves free from unhealthy patterns of behavior. They are actually renewed, made new, from above. Believers are not contributors to conversion: Christ does that in a sovereign manner apart from the will or willpower of any human being. So why are so many people talking about dying to themselves every day as if they did not die with Christ and were transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, and removed from death row as it were to complete freedom and vindication? If you are one of those who think a person can be born again again this is for you.

Not accepting Christ as the truth

Paul talks about people who came to see or recognize God but they didn’t configure their minds to embrace him as absolutely unique. That response resulted in darkness enveloping their mind and God gave them up to think whatever they wanted to think and to behave in whatever way they wanted to behave. God is decidedly not a creature, is unlike human beings and angels.

Didn’t Christ say that everyone who has taken a bath only needs to wash his feet?

Jesus said to [Peter], “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.” (John 13:10)

Nobody needs to be born again again. Only the totally brainwashed people think like that. I will tell you how deadly that avenue is.

We know that God expects diligence from the followers of Jesus and circumspection to interact with other people. There was no command at the creation of human beings “You shall not sin”, so to argue that sinlessness was a goal is ridiculous beyond measure.  If the same conditions are extant in the new covenant unveiling we have no reason to see anything besides failure.

On the wrong road again

eejoseph, , ,

Baptism counts can be useful for some things, but on their own they are a very unreliable measure of genuine evangelistic or discipleship success.

Talk about baptisms in your church and the only time that you will hear a Thank God or a Hallelujah is when the numbers of baptisms are mentioned, no matter how small that number.  Do you realize that this is the cover story for an operation off the rails?

Most churches are not making disciples of jesus, but they are doing is actually having members to the church based on the acceptance of the churches doctrinal statement.  It is time for a true confession from the leaders of most of the churches that are claiming either to be the true church or to have the Spirit of God as their distinctive feature.

Imagine that a church can point to its large conventions or its weekly fellowship meals as signs of evangelistic or pastoral success, and you have a revolving snapshot of churches in failure mode.

Stalled on the rocks of culture and pop

eejoseph, ,

How can Africans in the diaspora find their way to the place of genuine emancipation? Yes, I am asking, because the move from Emancipation day in 1834 has been snail like. We can tell what happened in the four years up to 1838, and it is a long shot from full emancipation.  In the Caribbean leaders have taken up the mantle of the colonialist and continue to hold Africa’s children either in abject poverty or in perpetual hazards to life and limb and liberty. We can name a dozen heroes whose witness to the drive to freedom and independence seems to have ended with their lives. Let’s be sure the popularization of Black liberation dialogues has delayed the march. Reggae especially has made the world aware of the plight and fight of Africa’s children, but how many of us are aware of the dilution and perversion of Pan-African values in religion and spirituality and politics is another question.

Of course my question is completely rhetorical, because I am not conducting a poll, so I will never see how many of us are willing to say that the people in the African diaspora are emancipated. But I venture the opinion that emancipation has stalled on the rocks of a shallow view of Independence and you can look at any Island and see the trails from colonialism and plantation life continuing night and day.

Now Caribbean people have been impressed and inspired by several outstanding leaders, among them Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. I know and you know that we will have a hard time finding leaders in Africa or the Diaspora who have brought their people to the brink of a sustainable and satisfying social construct. Except for the iconic Burkina Faso leadership we have leaders who do a lot of talking, but liberating the people from hunger from disease from shallow education is still a dream.

Three critical questions

People are understandably attracted to power brokers, and power economies or popular leaders, but it is evident that entities like nigeria, a turkey, or the felonious dawn of Mar-A-Lago can do no good to the cause of unity on any level that is beneficial to human beings.  Answering the three questions that follow will help to shine light on the predicament of an emancipation that has clearly stalled. 

Do African people look like they’re free in 2026?  Who’s more prosperous, African leaders or African people? Is the African Union united like the fractured United Kingdom or like the United States of America or like the European Union? 

Oh beautiful for expansive skies
In deeper drains a noble dream dies

Son and father music studio

eejoseph,

Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.

Back in 2007 my son and I sat down, me with my acoustic guitar and he with an electronic keyboard plugged in to his computer. Before this we had  worked on songs for Church and sometimes at community and family events. 2007 marked a new pathway. We began writing songs,  the first named “Hello”. This song explored human fear of darkness when in fact darkness is the environment out of which human existence is said to have come.

What is ambitious about making music with your son? Well, when you keep at it for 19 years turning out 19 albums, many of them with more than 15 songs songs, do it yourself music studio may seem  like ambition on steroids, but it is passion and talent harnessed to touch the world.

Haiti came to America and Hell is going to Greenland no time soon

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Greenland, the storied and touched by power on every level, would become the laughingstock of the world were Greenlanders to find the overtures of the American president attractive.  The first reversal of the European colonial plan was in Haiti, and the nations of the world were slow to recognize Haiti’s achievement of independence in 1804.

  • France, 21 years after, then hijacked the nations future
  • The United Kingdom 22 years after
  • The United States, 59 years after, then embarked on a set of manipulative control ventures, culminating in the invasion of the island.

Hell rose up in the United States over the treatment of Africans and no one but deluded pastors and their corrupt sheriffs, law enforcement officers, elected representatives, and judges believe that the United States of America is a sacred and exemplary embodiment of divine government. The United States of America is not even a good example of faithfulness to its own constitution.

As for that desire to take over Greenland, we have the solid resolution of the Greenlandic people and the NATO alliance and the European Union saying “We’re not interested”. When neither apology nor actual takeover of Greenland takes place we will then see exactly how beastly the United States of America is and has always been.

Why should gangs not dominate the American streets, and why is the United States fooling around with oligarchy and dictatorship under the infamous nationalist banner?  So let’s watch them in the coming months – into 2027 – parade their corruption from pulpit, mosque and synagogue as the people’s way, and not be duped again.

Reading and not getting it

eejoseph, ,

Many of us are familiar with reading scripture and getting something from it, while others seem to be quite adept at making scripture say what they want it to say. These two ways of interacting with Scripture are known respectively as exegesis and eisegesis (ex-ee-GEE-sis and ace-ee-GEE-sis).  Almost every experienced Bible reader and practically all the New Testament scholars have concluded that there are no other ways to experience the Word of God, but there are other prepositions beside ek and eis (εκ, εις) that might define the reader’s experience with the Bible.

In and out; εις and εκ/εξ

Both exegesis and eisegesis have disappointed readers because finding meaning can be challenging due to general literacy, translation variations, and the traditions of every denomination or grouping. One of the other alternative ways to gather meaning from the Bible is to have another book

Simple eisegesis can be recognized when people read a passage from the New Testament or Old Testament and try to apply a 21st century environment to the reading. For example when one reads the word candle and pictures the modern candle that is made of tallow and wick instead of an oil container and a wick, one is reading into the scriptures something that is not there.  Another simple example is the reading of the Old Testament that public executions cleanses the land of sin (crime) and lobbying for capital punishment.

The speaking text

While the work of translating the ancient documents into our modern languages continues frantically, aiming for the point where all of the languages on the planet are hosting the word of God, people handicap themselves by creating preferences such as reading only the King James version or reading only modern languages translations, hence readers are not receiving the guidance from their leaders to properly engage with the Scriptures. Here are two examples of the text speaking with precision and inaccuracy.

“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall IN NO WISE pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. (Matthew 5:18)

The phrase IN NO WISE is an attempt to bring the reader to recognize the double negative – not not –  in the Greek manuscript, ου μη, ou me.

“For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:18)

All translations of the Bible have value and some are downright despicable for ignoring grammar. The most egregious example of reading the text and not getting it is when people place entire books as the filters for the glorious words of the Bible. Latter Day Saints, do it. Jehovah’s Witnesses do it.  Seventh-Day Adventists do it.  Is God’s word so obscure that, when translated into our modern languages, you need another book to tell you what God is trying to say to you? The practice makes a joke of the preeminence of Christ as incarnate and written word. Make no mistake the apostolic messaging is not opinion; it is foundational. Nothing compares. Count yourself departed from the faith if you take pride in another supposed source of God’s life giving word.

Words unique to Yeshua of Nazareth

Another critical example of reading the text and not getting it occurs when we fail to realize that the word of God itself has the capacity to transform us, and its effectiveness is not restricted to us reading things into it or us depending on it to speak to us. Consider the use by Jesus of the phrase “my word”or “my words”and how the saying might have led a reader to conclude that Jesus’ words were necessarily the words of the prophets. When Jesus means his own words the Greek indicates it by not using the popular enclitic pronoun mou, μου, meaning “of me” = my.

“For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38)

Here Jesus is talking about his own words to his generation, not the words spoken by others in his name. In Mark 8:38 tous emous logous, “my own words” is different from the following which contains tous logous mou.

“He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me. (John 14:24)

Let’s return to the concept that people are able to place entire non- Biblical books as filters on the scripture for an evaluation of how dangerous that approach can be. There is no room for believers to have books of their own production competing with what we have come to recognize as God-breathed or inspired. When it comes to God’s word people will find no leeway or mercy when they revere some other thing(s).

The third way to experience Scripture

Before I introduce approach #3, I invite you to ask your trusted AI app or knowledge base if there are effective alternatives to exegesis and eisegesis. In addition to the resolute negative answer to the question you will find that artificial intelligence reports propose that other approaches to scripture are merely fanciful or speculative.

We habitually put a lot of thought and effort into finding meaning from the Scriptures but the critical achievements of our interaction with the Biblical material are beyond meaning for the purpose of working the word. and may not even be dependent on our understanding of the text. To experience the Word of God one must step out of oneself and allow the Word to do its work.

Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. (James 3:1)

Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. (1 Timothy 1:5-7)

Reading the Bible for transmitting vs experience

By seeing we gain experience, as Israel did with the bronze serpent and as believers do by looking at the elevated Christ and by seeing the light in Jesus’s face. Experience is more important than knowledge. We must conduct our Bible reading with a goal of a face to face with the author and object of the Scriptures. The more we do the better for our witness. We come to scripture to see Jesus, not the prophet or disciple. How often that happens in the sense that Christ and the reader are transfixed is a matter of looking past the temporal to see the eternal. This is throughgesis: more beneficial than exegesis and the nemesis of eisegesis.