Avalon Chronicles #117: 7 Reasons You May Not Hear From the Lord

This is outline from a message Mar. 12, 2023 delivered by Pastor Ryan Binkley at Create Church Richardson, Texas. Commentary is by Allen Clark

1. Disobedient: One of the major ways in which we are disobedient is to sin and not confess our sins. Reflection: "I confess my sins of thought, word and deed, known and unknown in the Name of Jesus and I ask forgiveness." This is the major way to put disobedience behind us. We all pretty well know about the Ten Commandments we should obey, but one must also evaluate that we do those things that, "...are pleasing in His sight." This takes a bit more reflection. 

2. Distractions: This relates to how one spends their time. Do you pray? Do you read your Bible? Do you waste time?

3. Disbelief: This is a major impediment to one's Godly life. This relates to not believing at all there is a Supreme Being that was the Creator of all. This is unbelief that here is a supernatural presence that is available to be connected to us in all aspects of our life. Our Lord is One, who may be called on to assist us in all issues, if we call on him.

4. Disingenuous: I had to go to my Webster's for this definition. I use the original Noah Webster 1828 dictionary, which is the classic. When one is disingenuous, it is reflected in an attitude or behavior that is, "Unfair; not open, frank and candid; meanly artful; illiberal(not free or generous, not noble, cold in charity, uncharitable in judging."

5. Demonic Attacks: When one has unconfessed sin, lack of forgiveness, or an addiction,etc. that allows one to not have the protection of our Lord, then pathways of evil allow the aspects of spiritual warfare to predominate in our lives and demonic spirits have the legal authority to infest us until cast out.

6. Desert Seasons; These are times of dryness, when we are demonstrably not walking a life of faith. These are times we are disconsolate, angry, irritable and not praying.

7. Don't Read One's Bible: Our Lord wants our hearts and minds. The best way for that to happen is to read and study the most important book ever written, the Bible. 

With a personal family legacy of Hispanic heritage I like to end by saying "Vaya Con Dios!"

Avalon Chronicles #116: The Basics on God and Us Mortals

      

     The 1990s television series "Touched by an Angel'" was a recent discovery we made. I had recollected viewing the series intermittently back then, but, have been recently reintroduced to these programs, which star Roma Downey and Della Reese, who are sent to earth as angels to minister to earthlings, who are involved in all sorts of troubled conditions separated from God and his world of peace and contentment and satisfaction. I have found the thirteen seasons, which consists of numerous episodes, to be of immense entertainment, but, more importantly as almost each episode is a story of healing from past hurts and pains with a path to redemption. 

     The episodes each stand by themselves with a story. The following key points are stressed:

                GOD LOVES YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL JUST THE WAY YOU ARE.

                GOD WANTS THE BEST FOR YOU.

                GOD'S JUDGMENTS ARE THE ONLY FAIR ONES, NOT THOSE BY EACH OTHER.

                OUR LIVES ARE DETERMINED BY OUR CHOICES AND EXPRESSION OF FREE WILL.

                WE CANNOT CHANGE EACH OTHER. WE CAN ONLY ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICES.

                 PRAYER WORKS. HE ANSWERS.

                 A TURNING TO GOD, NOT DRUGS OR ALCOHOL OR SELF-PITY, WHEN TROUBLED OR CHALLENGED, IS THE WISEST DIRECTION.

                 Allen B. Clark

                 www.combatfaith.com      www.combatfaith.blogspot.com 

Avalon Chronicles #115: The Gift of Joy and Rest

      Today on the first day of this New Year in the ninth decade of my life (and that sounds so old) Linda and I discussed "The Joy of the Lord." She and I are both reading the words, thoughts and teachings of Derek Prince in separate works. She wrote this, imparted to her from today's meditation and study. 

     "Joy is the energy source from and given by the Holy Spirit. As Jesus said, 'The wind blows where it pleases and no one can see where it comes from or where it is going.' So it is with the 'energy' the 'joy' given by Jesus by way of the Holy Spirit. Joy lifts up, gives strength and creativity and brings healing. Joy is the energy source of the Lord. His joy is imparted to the spirit of man."

    The flesh can know pleasure. The soul can know happiness. The spirit can know the "Joy of the Lord"

                                                                        Derek Prince

     In his book Through the Psalms by Derek Prince he writes about David, who faced
"...tremendous pressures, surrounded by enemies on every side, his very life threatened." In Psalm 4:6-7 it is written by David, but God: "You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound."

     David amidst all his travails and circumstances knew "...the blessedness of untroubled , restful sleep." With all his stressors he was renewed with a joy and peace that came "...not on circumstances, or on material provisions, or on the fragile promises of men, but, on the eternal, unchanging promises of God's Word." Prince wrote David was able to sleep peacefully and "...he could awake without anxiety, without fear, without the torment of sleeplessness."

     One of the major scriptures I recollect and attempt to live by to impart my needed joy and bring on restful sleep is I John 3:22: "And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we obey his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight." This relates to confession of sins, obedience and discipline in our daily lives. God listens to my prayers and addresses my needs, but not necessarily my wants. This is the spiritual formula to achieve joy and sleep peacefully.

     

     

Avalon Chronicles #114: 2023 Looking Back and Forward

      For my Christmas greeting this past year I began to say, "May your Advent season be blessed." Christmas has become so secularized and defined as a rushed time to send cards, buy and wrap gifts and attend end of year social gatherings. We have focused so much on Santa Claus and do not even recognize or know anything about the true origin of Santa. William J. Bennett wrote The True Saint Nicholas Why He Matters to Christmas. The secular Santa Claus is based on a true historical figure, Saint Nicholas, a Christian bishop from Myra, Turkey. Interestingly enough is the story of the original Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Lower Manhattan. It was destroyed on September 11, 2001, when the South Tower fell. The church is in the process of being rebuilt today. It is up from the ashes of that horrendous day in our nation's history. Christmas has evolved so far from its true meaning 

     Much of earth's history is that of ashes. In Genesis 3:19 the Bible expresses the phrase "dust to dust." In the 1662 version of the Book of Common Prayer for the English Burial Service the Priest shall say, "...we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;" This past Advent (Christmas Day) I reflected on my blessings for the year in my safe and secure and warm home. I thought about the trouble and turmoil experienced by the people in Ukraine and having been a wounded soldier myself, I was immeasurably cognizant of the suffering of the combatants on both sides of the war zone. I realized how many have been and will be committed in burial services to the dust and ashes of the earth.

     I opened my 1828 original Noah Webster Dictionary and read the definition of Advent, "A coming; appropriately the coming of our Savior,...It is intended as a season of devotion, with the coming of Christ in the flesh, and his second coming to judge the world." Jesus was sent in the flesh by his Father God to be an example of how lives should and could be lived as expressed so elegantly and wonderfully in the New Testament. The Old Testament is a history of pain and sorrow and suffering and misery of mankind. It saddened me to think of our world today and how little has changed even after 2000 years since the Advent. Christianity came upon the world and millions have followed Christ's teaching, but, today the evil one, Satan, has his hooks on so much of the world and so many people. I question why we have not made better progress in putting an end to the horrors of our history. The enemy has been relentless. Our faith has not always been so relentless!

    It is for me only to play my own small part as a member of the earth's cast, but I am secure in my conviction that the end of the play will be a great crescendo of the orchestra to announce the conclusion, "Jesus the Christ will prevail" and as Webster said and we learn there will be a second coming for the Judgment. I will seek to be proven not guilty of denying the eternal truth that the person of Jesus, who was birthed 2000 years ago, was a true and believable event for a person that we, who now know, must proclaim until our own remains become ashes. 

#113: Avalon Chronicles Return of the Gods

     This recently-published book was authored by Jonathan Cahn, a best-selling author of several other very compelling books on faith, spirituality and history. He is an astute and gifted author, who is an incredible observer of all things tying together his Hebrew faith background and conversion to Christianity. 

     His study of history identifies the gods prevalent, dominating and controlling the ancient world prior to the appearance on the stage of history of Jesus, the Christ, who introduced Christianity to a world overcome with evil and controlled by the Possessor, the Enchantress, and the Destroyer. He names the popular identities of these historical characters, who were not considered "real," but they were and he takes the reader through how they have been introduced again into our modern world, especially in America, that has now been overwhelmed spiritually and culturally by them. Upon a read of this book and Cahn's analysis one will say, "Ah, hah," it does all tie together. It is a spiritual definition to explain the absolute devastation secularly of morals and integrity in our world today.

     "It will address the most radical and controversial issues of our time, the front lines of cultural upheaval, the catalytic forces that are now transforming society, civilization, history, and life as they have been known." In ancient times these "gods" were worshipped and revered. Temples were built in their honor. In the Old Testament book of Exodus, verse 3(KJV LASB), the first Commandment of the Ten Commandments, it is written, "Have no other Gods before me." Other "gods" have infiltrated, permeated and saturated the world today. In the Jewish world they were known as demonic spirits. Judge for oneself. "Is it possible for entire people, nations, or civilizations to become possessed?" By demonic spirits.

     "The gods could only return if there had been a falling away from the Christian faith and a biblical worldview." You think this may have happened and we are in the middle of their attack? For demons to attack individuals there must be what are termed "doors" that are open; unconfessed sin, unforgiveness, addictions to name a few. This new attack is on a strategic level. "This time period, the late twentieth and early twenty-first century represented the most widespread and massive falling away from the Christian faith and morality in the entire two-thousand-year history of the Christian faith."

     The Possessor is Baal. The Enchantress was Ishtar. The Destroyer was Molech. Ishtar became the single most destructive force of all three. She was the one, who brought forth all the aspects of the sexual revolution. Enough said. What do we do about all this? We begin with a sincere belief that our great nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created by God, but, (America) "...had become the world's chief proponent of materialism, the worship of prosperity, and money," and the entire collection of immoralities. A book that will explain much truth. 

by Allen Clark  

 historical blog Soldiers' Blood and Bloodied Money

https://combatfaithus.blogspot.com        

# 112: "Special Videos"

 #111: "I wish You Could Be My Neighbor"

April 23, 2022 by Allen Clark       allenbclark@aol.com

Author: Soldiers Blood and Bloodied Money

      Twenty years ago or so it was my privilege to be the Public Affairs Officer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Dallas. One day a nurse at our Long Term Nursing facility on campus said there was a World War II veteran in their facility that was about to undergo an amputation on one leg at about the ankle. The nurse knew I had been a double leg amputee since the Vietnam War and she asked, if I would come to visit him. Of course I went that day!

     The veteran was a farmer just south of Dallas and had been a combat medic in his war, in which, if one had religious objections to carrying a weapon, would become a conscientious objector, when drafted, and then be assigned as a combat medic.  This fellow veteran became a combat medic and discussed with me his experiences in Okinawa in 1945. The two most poignant stories he shared are related below.

     He recalled holding in his arms a dying soldier and just stroking his hair to comfort him before he expired. The other story was being on a battle field and he tried to reach two American soldiers out in front of him, who were wounded and calling out , "Medic," the wartime cry for help upon being hit, known to all of us, who have come under fire. They were separated to his left and right front. Each time he would move toward either one, a Japanese sniper would stop him by placing a round in the dirt just in front of him. He never was able to reach either one and does not know what happened to the two. But, here approximately fifty five years later, he still felt extraordinary guilt in not being able to help them! That was a true man of faith and commitment to his responsibility all those years later.

     On one of my visits to him before he was discharged, he said, to me one of the warmest words I have ever heard, "I wish you could be my neighbor." When I asked why, he said, "Then I could talk to you every day!" Here we were in perhaps 2000. His war was 1945 and mine was 1967, but between two old soldiers, there was no distance.  

B.H. Liddell: "There are only two classes who, as categories, show courage in war-the front-line soldier and the conscientious objector."

P.S. I was a candidate for a Texas political office in 1982 and my opponent had been a conscientious objector in the Vietnam War. In the Vietnam War, individuals such as that were able to fulfill a two year tour of duty by performing "community service." Liddell's quote is not applicable to them!