praise God

The deadline is today.

Ha!

Me again… it’s now 5:25AM!! and I’ve been dancing here in the office (I’m all alone in here – the others are down and around the passage)

I have to share… at around 8pm I discovered that none of the balances were correct. Oops! I then went into a hundred panic modes, and then eventually (as is my habit) I asked God to please help, as it would be a bad reflection on Him if I was the one to blame for the co being thrown out.

A little later, it occurred to me to start again (yes, like go back 5 weeks!!!) so I zapped up a program and set it to run. Whilst waiting I looked around the portable harddrive i have kept everything about this project on), and I found a file marked XX.original – now XX is the file I’ve been working with for 5 weeks, and also the file I have just started a run to get.

I copied it across to the server and ran a report on it (4 million transactions) and then set out to check the balance – almost 100%!!! Yay!!! Ok, so how to bridge the 5 week gap? Well, that’s easy, they are copies of the same file, ie that will have the same key. All I have to do is extract the 5 weeks worth of results from the buggy file, and use the key to populate the new file.

I took the idea to the boss, and he says it’s great, and simple! He likes it… from total dog box to being able to actaully give them what they need despite reports taking an hour to run!!!! Whoopee!

He is the One,
He is Jesus
and what does He call me to do now?
to be quiet now, and rest

He is our King,
He is our love,
He is our God who has come
to bring us back to Him…

the words of the song playing now…

Majesty!
Majesty!

well..

welcome to africa

Well it’s been an interesting day.

I’m at Ryalls in Blantyre once again.

I was told yesterday at work that I would be taking up some computer hardware as excess baggage

When I got to the check-in counter this morning the man said he wouldn’t book anything in until I paid the excess baggage. I paid that and when I got back to him, the suitcase was nowhere to be seen but the computer hardware still standing there on its trolley. I showed him the paperwork and he called someone and they wheeled the trolley off.

I was only given a boarding pass for SAA in Cape Town, and told that I would get my Malawi boarding pass when I checked in in Jhb. At Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport I waited for the luggage. Nothing, so I then went to Baggage Enquiries where they asked to look at the tags – they said CPT BLZ means Cape Town to Blantyre and that the luggage would be there.

When I checked in (with no luggage) nothing was said, but when I tried to get on the plane they pulled me aside, and said I was to wait for a phone call. The call came through and the lady said she had been called by SAA to say that one of the pieces of baggage had been left in Cape Town, but that it was ok I could pick it up when I returned tomorrow.

Tomorrow? Who would ever spend the entire day flying to Malawi to return to Cape Town the following day? Turns out they read 17th July as 17th June: Air Malawi promised to contact SAA and tell them I’d be gone a month, and could they send the baggage through tomorrow, and Air Malawi would guarantee it would be sent on the flight tomorrow afternoon.

They then let me get onto the plane.

At Blantyre’s airport, Chileka, I stand and watch everyone getting their bags, wondering which piece of my luggage would come out – was I going to have clothes for tomorrow, or would I have a big shiny box to give the computer man here in Blantyre?. Three loads of luggage later and nothing is left.

Standing alone in a baggage claim area has a certain air about it, a kind of forlornness that makes officials come up and ask you if anything is wrong. I explained to a man who asked to see the tags. He read them, filled in a form, tore off a piece, and gave it to me. The driver from the company then appeared – he wondered if I’d got lost.

So.. I’m in Blantyre.

I know one of the two pieces I had is in Cape Town, or en route to Jhb. The other one, whichever it is, is sleeping peacefully in an unknown room… someplace.

Now I just bought a $10 cellphone top up,  only to find that my sim card has been deactivated. So no phone calls, no clothes, and no server.

At least I can eat tonight.

I cannot help but smile… what is God up to now?

welcome to Africa!

Dennis

Well it’s been an interesting day.

When I got to the check-in counter this morning the man said he wouldn’t book anything in until I paid the excess baggage. I paid that and when I got back to him, the suitcase was nowhere to be seen but the server was still standing there on its trolley. I showed him the paperwork and he called someone and they wheeled the trolley off. I was only given a boarding pass for SAA in Cape Town, and told that I would get my Malawi boarding pass when I checked in in Jhb.

At OR Tambo I waited for the luggage, then went to Baggage Enquiries where they asked to look at the tags – they said CPT BLZ means Cape Town to Blantyre and that the luggage would be there. When I checked in (with no luggage) nothing was said, but when I tried to get on the plane they pulled me aside, and said I was to wait for a phone call. The call came through and the lady said she had been called by SAA to say that one of the pieces of baggage had been left in Cape Town, but that it was ok I could pick it up when I returned tomorrow. Turns out they read 17th July as 17th June: Air Malawi promised to contact SAA and tell them I’d be gone a month, and could they send the baggage through tomorrow, and Air Malawi would guarantee it would be sent on the flight tomorrow afternoon.

They then let me get onto the plane.

At Chileka, I stand and watch everyone getting their bags, wondering which piece of my luggage would come out – was I going to have clothes for tomorrow, or would I have a big shiny box to give Paul. Three loads of luggage later and nothing is left. I explained to a man who asked to see the tags. He read them, filled in a form, tore off a piece, and gave it to me. The driver from NBS then appeared – he wondered if I’d got lost.

So.. I’m in Blantyre. I know one of the two pieces I had is in Cape Town, or en route to Jhb. The other one, whichever it is, is sleeping peacefully in an unknown room… someplace.

Now I just bought a $10 Zain top up, and find that my sim card has been disabled. So no phone calls, no clothes, and no server. At least I can eat tonight.

The network is too slow to log in on Squirrel (gmail took long enough to load!), and so you are all blessed with GMail..

I cannot help but smile… welcome to Africa

For what it’s worth I’m in Room 309, same room I started in last time. It’s like greeting an old friend.

Dennis

blood diamonds, blood money

Matthew 27.3-6
3 Judas, full of remorse, returned the 30 pieces of silver to the
chief priests and elders.. and went and hanged himself.

6 the priests said “It is not lawful to put [the money] into the
temple account, since it is blood money.”

Blood money. Blood diamonds. Weighed on a scale, or examined in the light, a blood diamond is no different than any other diamond. It’s the purpose from which or for which the diamond is used that gets it the name. Blood diamonds are used for barter to buy weapons. Blood money is cash earned by not caring on whose head you have to stand to earn it.

Recently I was given a large sum of money, which I initially looked forward to as a welcome bonus. The day before it arrived I received an sms from a friend “you are about to receive unjust money, reject it”. Well, let me tell you that belief is one thing when it is just a theory you read every morning or discuss every Thursday and quite another when you have two wads of notes each an inch thick in your grubby paws.

Giving it back was a decision. Telling the person who gave it why I wanted to return it was a little harder, but made easier by a decision I had made long ago. You see, I had decided that I would take God at his word. I have run away, cheated, manipulated,  and squandered enough in my life.  It was time to take to heart the promise in the Bible that He is able to look after me if I choose to do what pleases Him. I don’t get that right that often, but my choice is to move toward honouring His wishes, and making the likes and dislikes I see sprinkled liberally throughout the Bible my frame of reference in my decisions.

I gave back the money.

Money in itself is not wrong.  It consisted of notes bound together with rubber bands, pieces of paper stained by their passage through human lives. God’s words were that the money carried a curse, a curse that would apply to my life if I chose to use it.  A deliberate choice to obey in the belief that He is able to meet all my needs.

God is all about justice. The term sowing and reaping speaks of a weighing scale, with equal weights on either side. What you put in you get out. Justice works two ways: it’s great for the law abiding and it’s terrifying for the criminal.

We don’t talk much about curses these days.  It’s a word reserved for bad language. The chief priests and elders knew about them, readers of horror stories know about them, but it’s not politically correct to bring them to light in a modern conversation as if not speaking about them
makes them no longer apply.

One says that something is cursed when it doesn’t matter how good the intent is but the result always comes out bad. Land, objects, events can be cursed. Money can be cursed.  We all know the results in some way or other. We work really hard at something, yet for all that effort it’s as if there is a hole in the bottom of the bucket. Only half of what is poured in ever gets to be poured out. The rest just seems to evaporate.

Blood money. The priests to whom Judas wanted to return the silver knew that the silver itself wasn’t the problem it was the purpose to which the silver had been used that rendered it cursed, and cursed money cannot lawfully be placed in an offering basket. The curse lives on – its being placed in a theoretically holy setting doesn’t remove the stain.

It’s not as if God needs your money. After all, He made everything. It’s just that He chose that the temple is to be funded entirely by people’s giving, in the belief that the person giving is blessed when money is given with a generous heart. We are in effect furthering the kingdom by growing in faith that He is able to provide for tomorrow. Giving generously is the equivalent of a baptism – you make a public statement that money doesn’t own you. Once again we see the same old money being delivered, the difference being the attitude with which it is given.

Sure, earning millions would enable you to give thousands. The problem comes when the thousands are cursed by the intent that made them. Did
you really think of all the good it would do to the people or is your fervency based on what it can do for you? Any Sunday School child can tell you this deal is all about denying self.

It is not lawful to fund your place of worship with money dishonestly gained.

In God’s economy, justice demands that any source of income must be free of coercion, free of manipulation, free of any of the trappings of  “I’m doing it for their benefit; so what if I get rich along the way”.

Curses carry more weight than blessings. You can see that for yourself in Deuteronomy 28. Actually this is incorrect. Curses carry equal weight, only the effects are more visible as a result of the chain of events that becomes self feeding, fueled by the spirit of greed.

God promises to bless the work of your hands when the intent of your heart is to do what pleases him. It would be foolish to see your advanced earning power through greed as blessing from God. Rather consider it as enough rope to hang yourself by, just like Judas did.

Do you honestly see the repetition of the sales pitch as being evidence of a humble and contrite heart? How come it is the disgraced who is allowed to coerce the shepherds to walk off the path at the expense of the blindly following flock? How ironic that the reply given to my query as to why we didn’t see this fervency in getting the good news out there was “Yes! We should bring the whole church here to see how it’s done.”

It’s supposed to be that we trust Him. It’s supposed to be that the leaders lead the flock into the arms of God. Easy to say, I know. It’s all based on a decision. Have you made that decision?

Remember David’s words when offered the threshing floor for free.

“No, I will pay the full price,  for I will not take what is yours for the LORD, nor offer burnt offerings with that which cost me nothing.” [1 Chronicles 21.24]

What was that sales pitch again, the one about doing nothing? All you have to do is find people more motivated by greed to serve you and you get to sit back and give your ten percent?

Oh please!

sold out

I attended yet another multi-level-marketing presentation tonight. A guy I know from church called this morning and asked if I would go with him and a pastor to a meeting? Sure, why not? After all, a pastor is involved, it can’t be too bad.

This time the product is a life insurance policy the victim, err. . sorry, the next level businessman has to buy into, for which the insurance company will pay the usual bonuses on bonuses, dreams upon dreams. Built like a true network marketing scheme, the rewards are emphasized ad infinitum.

I run ahead of myself. On the way there I was informed that the woman about to speak at the meeting is in first year of the Bible School run at the church, as if this knowledge would settle any concerns I might have. The next snippet came in the form of a query “did I know X and Y? They arrive at church in a large SUV? Did I? Did I?”.  Well, to be honest the names didn’t ring a bell, and cars.. well wrapping seldom tells much about the contents.

The speaker, neatly dressed, upmarket accent, asked the audience what the primary motivator in life is, and then proceeded to tell us the answer: money! She kept adding “There is joy here”, as if I needed salvation, sure, but the real whammy is here!

I hope Bible School can tell her the realities of the source of joy.

Whether it works or not, as in any MLM scheme, depends solely on how soon you get into the frenzy. This one has been running for nearly eleven years. Don’t hold your breath, you’re not likely to be making that round the world trip too soon.

It wasn’t the presentation itself that concerns me, it’s the fact that a large percentage of the eldership were the pushers there. The primary fast-talker is a senior pastor who appears to have been the initiator. The concept is brilliant. You want to grow your level rapidly, simply join a church and recruit a pastor. Preferably find someone who needs cash and needs it now. Better still, someone who already gave up on wanting to live righteously would be the perfect drawcard because, after all, they are already in there.

A while ago I wrote a blog piece on the difference between God’s economy and that of the world. The world requires you earn money and then use the money to fund a lifestyle. In God’s economy, He supplies the lifestyle, and who needs the money?

That most oft misquoted Scripture, “the love of money is the root of all evil” seems to have passed this flock of shepherds entirely. That they are to lead the sheep through shadows of death and not into them fails to stop their headlong pursuit into the promises of evil. That their gold at the end of the rainbow is to be fueled by the ready audience of the church membership is gross misuse of power! Fact is, large amounts of money own the person, not the other way around, and large can be defined as any amount just a bit bigger than your current income.

Not to mention what will happen to this dream when the recession fully bites. How easy it is to sell a life policy to someone in the belief they really need it, without having to explain that insurance policies are maintained by investments. Investments that will not do well in a recession. Perhaps one should applaud the life insurance company who foresaw that their product was not going to maintain it’s projected profitability, so instead they bought into the quick-rich MLM arena to get the uncaring to sell to uninformed.

That the uncaring in this story are the very people chosen to deliver good news is sad indeed!

The saddest part of all of this is that God’s plan was to show the world that it is entirely possible to lean solely on Him for provision, to have faith for today and leave tomorrow to Him. The examples of Moses leading people for years through a desert, and their shoes not wearing out, or the five thousand strong audience that had too far to go being fed, fail to reach these people who claim to be shepherds, but who can only see the hearse they’ll buy with their unholy proceeds.

Am I being too harsh in calling the proceeds of this cleverly thought out scheme unholy? If it makes sense, the chances are it isn’t from God. A good litmus test is whether earning all that funny money will bring you closer to relying on God or not. If not, please hand in your Christianity on the way out.

Malachi put it this way [Amplified Bible Malachi 3:14-17]

¹⁴You have said, It is useless to serve God, and what profit is it if we keep His ordinances and walk gloomily and as if in mourning apparel before the Lord of hosts?

¹⁵And now we consider the proud and arrogant to be happy and favored; evildoers are exalted and prosper; yes, and when they test God, they escape [unpunished].

¹⁶Then those who feared the Lord talked often one to another; and the Lord listened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him of those who reverenced and worshipfully feared the Lord and who thought on His name.

¹⁷And they shall be Mine, says the Lord of hosts, in that day when I publicly recognize and openly declare them to be My jewels (My special possession, My peculiar treasure). And I will spare them, as a man spares his own son who serves him.

¹⁸Then shall you return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God and him who does not serve Him.

The interesting thing about this passage is that it starts just three verses after the over-quoted verses of blessing pushed down and flowing over. No doubt the Christian is able to settle down their agitated conscience by thinking of how much more they’d be able to give, to sow, to press down, and to overflow.

Discern if you will,
the difference
between
those prepared to place their bets on God
and
those who believe there is no God?

^{Malachi 3 : 3}He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and He will purify the priests, the sons of Levi, and refine them like gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord offerings in righteousness.

“SOLD OUT FOR GOD!” is last year’s phrase.

The slogan today is just “Sold Out”.

ungrateful

The family are irritated.

I’ve received the following comments on the blog – I’ve chosen to show them this way to protect the privacy of all concerned:

Dear Dennis

I just want to inform you that everything you wrote is not the truth. My parents did EVERYTHING they could have done for Calvin! My mom was furious when she saw Calvin drunk! He went and bought himself alcohol. NO ONE gave him ANY alcohol to drink. And i really don’t know how he can say that he’s sick of steak, because i wouldn’t expect those kind of words from someone who lived on the streets all his life! That’s just ungratefulness!!!

But in any way. Everyone did what they could and all I can say is: May God be with him and forgive him for all his lies.

and

??? … and I think you believe everything “Calvin” says…??? We did our best for him!!! Mom looks 10 years older than she was!!! Nobody will ever know what we went throught this last year, all mom’s tears… sadness, she is still heart broken.

“Calvin” had a lovely room, with a double bed, a TV in his room, the best meal every night!!! We didn’t even wanted him to work, and mom and dad still paid him a “salary” for working in our garden and around the house… what more does he want??? This is a choice he made… he is the one that wanted to go back to Cape Town

and my Facebook wall has been graced with this:

“Hi Dennis…  Just wanted to let you know we dont appreciate what you wrote on “trambellings”…  It’s a slap in OUR FACES!!!  You are quite ill informed.  Please, in the future, get your facts straight before you write something that’s NOT TRUE!  Thanx M”

They obviously feel that I wrote the “So Grateful” article with the intent of slandering them. On the contrary,  I think they did an amazing job. Who else do you know who would take a homeless man into their home? Your mom is a wonder! She should never feel less of herself – what she did in the hope of restoring this man is entirely worthy of the greatest applause.

I do not believe what Calvin says. In his eyes everything that has ever happened to him was someone else’s fault.

This is indeed a choice he has made. That there are no doubt homeless people who are there because circumstance led them there, I have no doubt, but Calvin’s case is not one of these.

Calvin believes the world owes him something. Everything he has been given is not good enough, he has to have his rights – the right to scream out like a child when he is drunk, “Ek is nie n kinder nie” (I’m not a child)!.

Calvin fairly and squarely deserves the place he has found himself. Ungrateful seems such a small word to use for a man who has taken everything and thrown it back into the face of those who care. For any person expecting to not have to fit in with the constraints of society, a life of hardship is a given. That he was rescued from such a place and found himself in the heaven described above, and yet chooses to have a tantrum and walk out in the manner he did has only one word – stupidity!

Yes, Calvin is ungrateful. Yes, your mom did a really good thing. Yes, we have all learnt a lot in this episode. I don’t regret it having happened, I wonder only that a man can go so far down, and still not see his fault.

so grateful

before the word recession became popular, I hit a place in life where, by entirely my own doing, my choices left me in a very bad spot.

Last year I was instrumental in getting a homeless man back to his family. I wrote about the experience, of a man I called Calvin.

This last week Calvin’s family had to make a terrible choice, which led to him being put back on a train bound for Cape Town. His crime? That he didn’t give up drinking and associating with the lowness of the people of the street.

They have done him amazingly well, he’s been nursed thru two major operations, he’s fatter and, in his words, he’s so sick of steak.

Yet in all their well meaning intent, to give a known alcoholic three beers before dinner every night just because “every one else enjoys a shot or two, and what can you do?”, has surely got to rate as the dumbest, short sightedness ever.

Yesterday I got a call from Calvin, “Can he come stay with me until he gets himself on his feet? He has three certificates in security that some benevolent but misguided soul bought for him, he cheerfully informed me. No I didn’t do the courses, but, bloody hell, I’ve done security before so I can get by.”

I have a built in stupidity, that I want to leap into heroic scenarios to pull people away from those very necessary times in life when they get to have to face the consequence of their choices.

I had a day of inner turmoil. His choices had led to him being turned out of his family’s home, so taking him into mine was not likely to change that. I was advised not to because removing him if or when he refused to look for or hold down a job could prove to be problematic.

Another friend offered the wisdom that saying what should be done took no courage, but facing what had to be done would take great courage.

Reality is that Calvin has no will to turn away, even if it means up, from the down and out world of the street. He is there by choice. He seeks only to manipulate the next person to get what it takes. That the best thing I could do for him was to turn away took courage indeed. Everything in me cried out Christian obligation, compassion, how would you feel if it was you?

Yet they’re right, all the advisors of the day. No amount of Father Christmas is going to give a man his dignity back if he refuses to pick it up himself.

Calvin is somewhere out there, in the unrelenting world of Cape Town in winter. Yes, it would appear to be noble to reach in and pull him out once more.

There are many in need in these times. Many good people who have every intent in the world to lift themselves up, but right now they just need a little help. For me I need to focus my efforts on those who are willing to try.

This exercise has been a revelation to me. It has made me so aware of where I could have ended up had I too refused the help and restrictions imposed on me by those who reached down and pulled me out of the mire I had put myself into.

I sent this sms to my sister today:

I kno u did what you did for me cos I’m family & u didn’t get choice, but I want to tell u how very grateful I am. U give me insight into wot God does for those who are not worthy even of rescue, yet get so much more than rescue, like I got from my sister.

Colossians 4.5
Live wisely among those who are not believers.

mail to a young man

Church is not supposed to be about people that don’t do this or don’t do that, people who make you feel as if you live on a different planet. Church is supposed to be a place where people can share where they have been and give advice that can help a person learn to avoid things that trip everybody up.

I have been where you have been. There is little on the internet I have not seen – perhaps I can warn you about the dangers of being there. Being there doesn’t make us make us any worse than other people. What you and I face daily, with the things people show us, and the magazines we see at every shop, are things that every man today faces.

Some things are not easy to deal with. Some things look nice from the outside, but once you’re in them, they suck you in deeper and deeper. All men are curious. You’d have to be blind not to see all the things the world wants to throw at you. People we know make us feel as if we are not normal if we don’t do what they do, and some things happen that we believe we have control over – that we could stop at any time we choose – but it doesn’t work that way.

What you’re facing now is a temptation, one of hundreds you will face in life. The difference about this temptation is that it will change your view on everything in life – you will train yourself to look at people as being things you can get something from, and things you can use, and everything you don’t like about yourself gets stronger. It makes you angry. As you go along what was a thrill last week becomes normal this week, and you get dragged further in. It doesn’t take long to own you, and it is very hard to get out of.

The Bible speaks of unclean spirits, and how they try to control your life. One of these spirits, the strongest, is the spirit of lust. If you carry on playing with the temptation, you train yourself to see only the things you have focused on, and you will find yourself attracted to other people who live their lives like this. The most horrible thoughts go through your head, and the language you use becomes worse and worse.

Spirits never come alone – once one spirit has a hold on you, you will find other spirits have a hold on you. Soon you can’t think of anything without anger (spirit of rage), and everything irritates you (impatience). The people you need most you push away. You can remember good times with people you love but you can’t get there anymore. In the Christian world they call these “footholds”, places where the spirits know you are weaker.

It depends on which spirit you listen to. Spirits suggest things: we all, everyone, listen to spirits. There are bad spirits and there is the Holy Spirit.

Listening to the spirits of the world will make you become like Galatians 5:19-21; you start off with quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, and hostility; but soon you find the rest come along too:

19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, 21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other things that drag you down like these.

Everything you find yourself doing makes you feel worse, but it’s as if it owns you; you believe you have to do these things. Whenever you say “No!” to temptation, it will just get twice as tempting, and you will give in sometime. Everyone would. The trick is finding something that can break that power.

The Bible teaches that the name “Jesus” has power. It has. When you are faced with something you are really pulled to, it helps to say the name Jesus. Sometimes over and over. Very often when we get there the last thing we want to say is “Jesus”, and so there’s another thing it helps to know: learn to control your thoughts. Paul teaches in the New Testament something that has helped me amazingly. He says that we should capture every thought and think about it before we just do it. Is it going to make me a better person or is it going to feed that angry thing that wants to own me?

Where you are at is a hard place to avoid. Everything screams it at you, but you will find that grabbing the thoughts is way easier than stopping the actions.

Thoughts themselves are not the problem – the problem comes in when you do what the thoughts tell you to do. Learning to stop each thought and think about what it will do to you, or lead you to, takes time, but is really worth it. If it is hard to say the name Jesus when we are already there at that place, it is wise to avoid getting to that place, and this is where stopping and checking out the thoughts really helps.

Learning is a process that can take you a long time. If you find it is harder than you can manage, you will find that God has the power to do what you cannot do. It isn’t easy asking God – not that God makes it hard, but the spirits don’t want you to.

What really helps me is asking the Holy Spirit each morning, before I hit the problems, to help me recognize the problem areas, and give me the strength to deal with them, then every night I tell Him what I know I did wrong, knowing that telling Him keeps me clean, and He teaches me to get it a little more right next time.

The Holy Spirit will make you become like Galatians 5:22

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control.

These are the things that will give you true friends, the people who love you for who you are, and not for what they can get out of you. I hope you choose wisely, and I know you will. It takes a while to beat it.

Just remember that “for men things can be appear impossible; but with God all things are possible!”

Dennis

Royal Jelly | Yahoo Researcho

A long while back I wrote a series of articles on what was subsequently termed as my ‘paranoia’, namely the perils of social networks, especially in the light of the myriad applications that entice one to divulge ever-increasing volumes of personal data. The nuts and bolts of what makes you you.

royal rights or royal loss?

At that time I speculated on a science fiction scenario wherein the human equivalent of Dolly, the cloned sheep, could be programmed as it were you, with all the data about you, but without that extra dimension of thought process and pattern. This replica, exact in every way, would appear to be you from a distance, but without your soul would be instantly recognisable as fake.

These days I’m not so sure.  You are fully replaceable.

Today, in a google hack on research.yahoo.com, I came up with this gem, lucratively entitled “Royal Jelly”.

I quote:

Royal Jelly [snip]  provides a more efficient and flexible way of making online recommendations and connections by studying the patterns of users on social network sites.

and another

Social content sites such as Flickr and Yahoo! Travel offer users a unique opportunity to organize and share information within communities that have common interests. Another example is del.icio.us – a site that enables its users to tag their favorite URLs, create a network of friends, and subscribe to their friends’ feeds to learn about their most recently tagged URLs. The richness of information with these sites presents an enormous opportunity, as well as challenges, for the design of semantically enriched recommender systems. “Royal Jelly leverages these networks to find topics of interests to users,” says Amer-Yahia. “It also tries to provide explanations to each item it recommends to improve the effectiveness of the recommendation,” adds Yu.

Instead of ‘recommendation’,

• read ‘advertising revenue‘ for now,
• read ‘strategic military advantage‘ for the illustrious future.

So what?

Another quote:

What appears on the list is determined by analyzing the user’s profile and past behavior, such as their bookmarks, tags, and friends. Using this data, Royal Jelly can predict what might interest the user. For example, if a user has heavily bookmarked sites related to camping, Royal Jelly will make recommendations on camping sites not currently bookmarked by the user.

and their grand finale:

The idea of making recommendations on not only the content, but also the connections such as people and topics is powerful. “Users are no longer limited to getting recommendations on items such as bookmarked URLs, “says Amer-Yahia. “Instead, they can now explore people and topics as well.”

Now if your privacy concerns are not getting a tad twitchy, consider the implications of this. Not only can the system recommend what to buy or who to see on an individual basis, but it can also predict what you would buy, and who you would visit.

There is now no place to hide.

begging blessing, encouraging curses

I received a letter from a friend in a far off land, renting a room in the house of a believer couple.

I feel out of sorts for whatever reason. It could be the house. There seems to be some form of oppression when I’m there. I battle to get up in the morning and last night I kept on waking up. They have some interesting books in the room where I’m in, like Rosemary’s Baby. Quite a mixture of books. It just suddenly dawned on me that it could be something in the house. You know sometimes it’s rather subtle although it feels creepy there. I’m not afraid.

Fact is Jesus died, and you believe. This seals a contract between you and God. By that contract you are formidable, yet only if you take it up.

Statement 1: State (verbally – as if in a court of law) that the contract exists, in which you are penalised and sentenced to death by the rebellion and sin you have willingly and purposefully committed. This is a statement they would not expect you to lead with, since they are in the business of denial. Having laid that evidence before the court, you state that you are aware that there is no leniency – the law is the law, blood has to be shed.

Statement 2: That blood was shed because you asked for Barabbas and demanded Jesus be crucified. Second statement not expected because you take responsibility for that death and do not attempt to apportion blame to their side (most unlike a human to freely admit they are responsible).

Statement 3: In calling for Jesus death, and Him actually dying without attempting to remove Himself from the obligation, He met the requirements of being able to apply that sacrifice to any life He chooses. His choice is that if any believe in Him, they get to have that application to their lives. Nothing to do except believe.

Statement 4: State verbally “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He died to pay the penalty of death, and freely by His choice applies that blood to my life and that in rising from the dead His victory grants you, in the application of that blood, power and authority over any force of evil either in the heavenlies or in the very real realm of that country today.

That said, you need to be aware that any rebellious thought, or sinful thought needs to be acknowledged, verbalised and repented for. Ask Rapha (Holy Spirit) to point them out as the occur – He is watching the game play, but can only move into your life when permission given, as He is obligated to observe the rules of free will. Free will says that you are the master of your destiny and can make any choice you choose. Unfortunately the choices one makes are the result of thoughts, and thoughts can be suggested from all manner of places.

Free will denies interference by any force that acknowledges that contract. Both sides know – but the question is whether you do. God’s forces are commanded to obey it. The adversary’s forces use it to their advantage. The human has to explicitly grant access to “work areas” within – once this right is given, the Spirit will enter the playground and make suggestions to you. You retain the choice to ignore or reject those suggestions. Unfortunately most who give the access fail to realise they still need to make the choice to listen, and beyond listening, to obey.

This obedience has got to be uncomfortable – after all you comfortably got to the place you are at, and therefore any changes that need to be made will necessarily take you out of that place you feel comfortable in. Make one decision upfront to simply obey – it makes it much easier down the line.

So. To sleep you are going to have to ask El-Elyon the Most High God, to grant you 8 hours worth of sleep in however many hours you get. Mindflip accepts that since He invented time He is capable of that. You need to eat. DID YOU GET THAT? YOU NEED TO EAT. You can only achieve one goal at a time. Either you lose weight OR you earn money by being cheerful and resilient. You cannot do both. I wake up at night because I have not eaten. And what you eat has to be in a sufficient quantity to move things along – if you don’t, toxins get to stay inside for longer than is good, and your whole mindset will change.

Learn from me – at least you know that I am an expert on that subject.

The fact is that you are covered by the blood, and protected by His wings. Stating Scripture is good. You ARE protected. Fact.

If so, then it is only your allowing yourself to become ill-nourished that gets you to the point where depressive suggestions will make you believe that you are not protected. This believe WILL result in demoralisation, and dismay. Dismay is the calling card of the adversary’s forces.

An invitation to your party.

Your purpose in human terms is to earn cash and as a side effect to see things. Your purpose in spiritual terms is to show powers and principalities that God’s wisdom is superior in all things. To do what is not wise in human wisdom is an automatic negation of the possibility of doing it in God’s wisdom. Human wisdom says eat well, be healthy, rest often.  God’s wisdom will handle your life, your travel, the people you meet, the circumstance you find yourself in ever.

Mindflip says the hassles you experienced on your arrival there were part of the plan. Get over it. God can do more than you could ever imagine to ask for, so regularly ask for bigger things than you can imagine. Exercise that muscle, acknowledging that since He is the author and perfector of your faith, that muscle came from Him in the first place, and so any exercising of it needs to be realised as been the result of yet another request to Him. Requests, especially impossible ones, needs to become like breathing. Request, breathe the answer in and wait, Request, Breathe and wait. The biggest challenge to mankind is to wait for God to move. Wait.

The nasties want you to panic into doing things quicker and quicker can only be doing it your way. See where that got Saul.

If all of Christendom only but realised that if all of them continually walked around this world constantly looking for ever bigger impossibilities and giving that impossibility to God for God to use them, we would have made this earth heaven eons ago. That is our calling: care for the impossible to care for, and ask God to intervene in that impossibility as all things are possible with God, thus reducing what was impossible to possible, leaving you to go and find a bigger impossible. I find it amazing that the people God most wants us to care for are the very ones who have no recourse to any other help. The widow, the fatherless, the stranger in a foreign land.

There should never be any of those that are in need because it is the believer mission in life to please the Father, and so go out of his/her way to supply the Father’s love to them.

Easily said, it takes constant application (and who cares if you don’t get it right – so long as you keep applying it). We started off guilty, that’s why we needed His blood. Nothing has changed. You remain guilty, you just don’t qualify for the sentence. So now you’ve failed to meet some standard or the other and you feel guilty. SO WHAT? You’ve always been guilty – move on.

Think of greater impossibilities, and allow the blood to be blood, applied to the doors of your life.

Blood on doors means the angel of death passes over.. (as in Passover that was celebrated recently).  If God’s big and nasties can’t get in, there’s no chance anything else will succeed.

ever vigilant – conspiracy theory

In the Vodaworld magazine thoughtfully supplied free of charge by the Vodacom Group, innocently packed with all their ads and advertorials, there is an article entitled “Adding Value To Your Life” in which the CEO of Vodacom, Pieter Uys, answers questions from a lowly minion in his own organisation, someone not likely to ask the real questions.

Amongst the witticisms of a born salesman is this nugget:

Very soon there will be no need for an email address, a cellphone number and a home number,  it will just be me – Pieter Uys – and the information will reach me in whatever shape or form is best suited to my needs at that moment, be it voice or data, video or pictures, and it will be so simple I won’t even know about it.           [Vodaworld Summer 08 page 20]

Is there something he knows that we don’t or is he just hedging his bets on George Orwell?

Why have an email address if they have your number?