To Those Who Fear Death

There are many kinds of fears we can feel at the thought of death. Sure, there are many ways to die, and everyone eventually will die; but there are different reasons that people fear death.

There are some people who fear death because they fear what comes after. There are some who fear death because they don’t want to leave the earth yet. There are those who fear death because they are afraid for others who may never hear of God’s love if they aren’t there to tell them. If you don’t fear death for yourself, or for others, you are secure in your salvation, your eternity is certain, but you believe God saved just you. God didn’t save you to sit. God saved you to share. Some Christian are doing nothing for the kingdom, they don’t fear death because neither life nor death will matter to them…

Let me tell you something: if you don’t fear death, some Christians wish God would just give it to you. If you aren’t actively serving Christ with your life, you may be saved, but you are not a Christian.

Christian means “Christ-like”, or “little Christ”. To be a Christian is to be like Christ. If you claim to be a Christian, but are not afraid for people who will spend eternity in Hell if someone doesn’t tell them the gospel, you are not like Christ. Saved is what you are, Christian is what you do. Christianity is an occupation, not just a designation. 

Be like Christ. Fear death for others, but not for yourself. Be secure in who you are, but fear death for a lost world.

As always, thanks for reading.

–the anonymous novelist

Humanity in a Nutshell

I love. The reason for my existance, the initiative for which I was matrixed was to love. As a homo-sapien, I have a nature that is obligated by its own self to love.

God made humans to love. That is their single purpose for existing, there is no other. The first commandment is to love the Lord our God. That means that we are capable of loving aside from God, even capable of loving in a way God desires to be loved, apart from God living inside of us. True, we only have this ability to love because God first loved us, and by that love taught us and exemplified for us the only true and perfect love; but, humans are capable of loving aside from God loving through them. 

In the Garden of Eden, God created Man for the purpose of tending the garden and its inhabitants, and for having fellowship with Him. 

We were made to love God, not others. We are incapable of loving others. The love given to humans is a love that can only be expressed towards God. God is love and that love was imputed to men for the purpose of it being reciprocated back to God. The love that humans have is not a love that can be expressed toward anyone or anything but God.  

Love is a strange thing: the more love you give, the more you have. Unlike anything else that exists, when love is given, it multiplies rather than diminishes. God is love, if we don’t have a love for others, it is because we have not allowed the love of God into us. If Christ doesn’t live inside of us, we do not have the option or ability to love others. Our only innate love is for God alone. The ability to love others comes from Him and His love, not ours. God is love, love is of God, but He always comes first.

Simply because God is love does not mean humans cannot love, it means that we can only love others through Him. The love of a human is not for others, that’s why “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is the second commandment, not the first. Loving others is dependant upon our love for God. If we do not voluntarily love God, we cannot love others.

Love is not something we have, love is something we do; and our love should be directed to God. All of the love that we have belongs to Him, the love we show to others is only a manifestation of a Christ infestation being lived through us, and is not our love but His. The outward effects of an inward living Christ are things we often take credit for. But, I think that part of the reason “with God all things are possible” means so much to some people, is because they truly grasp that without Him, nothing is. Love, like the kind of love that the world sees, is not us; it is God in us. This is why Christ said that the world will know us by our love for others, (or one for another). Because not only does the world not understand that kind of love, they are incapable of loving in that way. Without God, that kind of love is impossible and therefore unimaginable. But, with God all things are possible.

When we realize that our love is reserved for God alone, we start living like He is all that matters. When God is all that matters, love for others, goodwill toward men, righteousness, kindness, and every other good thing follows.

As always, thanks for reading. 

–the anonymous novelist

Whatever You Do, Don’t Be You

Why? Because, I’m not gonna lie, you stink. But, you’re not the only one. The human race is the scum of the earth: literally. Everything was perfect, then we sinned, single-handedly casting the entire world into death living. No other thing created has the will to disobey God. Animals do not sin, they have no consciousness, no soul. They are not accountable for their actions, therefore they are free of the law and it’s penalties.

Man, of all God’s creation, hates Him most. We live to hate God, to exemplify this in our actions. To a God who considers hate to be murder, what do you think He considers idleness and apathy? 

Is anything less than us totally, with every waking breath serving Christ to the whole of our ability, anything less than a hate of God. 

If hate is murder, lust is adultery, and a lie is worthy of Hell, what do we call utter disobedience if not the hatred of God?

Why then, of everything God has created, did He choose the most vile, most hateful, most reprobate of all His creation to save? 

So, I ask you please to not be you. You are human, you hate God in and of yourself. Don’t be you, be anything but you. The logical question then is: how? How do you stop being yourself? Well, the only way to stop being you is to start being someone else.

I hear people say, “Be true to you”, “Love yourself”, I say be anyone but you, and hate yourself: for only when you hate yourself can you love others.

Live unselfishly, stop doing what you want, how you want, when you want, and start doing things for others. Give your life away, lose it to find it.

As always, thanks for reading.

—the anonymous novelist

Being Single

I was watching YouTube the other day –meaning the day before yesterday–, and I don’t often just watch random videos, but I had been doing accounting records for the family all morning and I needed to do something that didn’t require any mental effort. So, I went to Blimey Cow’s channel and just started watching video after video. I went through about a half a dozen and would have kept going had this one concept not caught my attention.

Even though I had not intended on thinking about anything when I tuned in the Blimey Cow station, –actually, I was hoping to blank out my mind completely– I stumbled upon a really good point made by Jordan Taylor.

The video was called “Five Great Reasons to Be Single”; as a single guy myself, I can relate. If you’d like to see the video, you can click here. But, the point was that there are so many reasons to stay single rather than get involved in a relationship. By, “so many”, I of course mean, “five”. Jordan says it better than I can, but I’m going to pick up where he left off and talk a little bit about reasons to stay single.

As most of you already know my rather conservative, crazy radical views on dating, courtship, marriage and blah blah blah, I won’t hammer you with that again.

Staring off, a good reason to stay single is identity. This is a big one, so pay attention. Identity is something that we are born with and develop all throughout our lives. At only two junctures in life should our identity be melded or defined by another’s. The first of these times is when life meets Christ. 

When God comes to live inside of your heart and you surrender yourself, you find your identity in Him. That’s the first change, then there is a second change in your identity called marriage. When a man and a woman are joined in matrimony, they become one. No longer do they have individual identities, they have joined together to form a single identity.

Those two instances are the only times in human life that your identity is changed or defined by someone else’s. In relationships of the dating kind, it is common for the two people to become dependent on each other. The identity of both falls upon the other and their relationship now holds parts of their identities. Then, when the relationship ends, the two walk away from those parts of their identity, leaving those parts in a memory and/or losing them altogether.

We cannot find our identity in another. Inless you are joined to someone until death, you are your own person. So, live like you, not like someone else.

Here’s a quick fire list of reasons to stay single:

1. It’s better for your emotions
2. It’s better for your stress level
3. It’s better for your spiritual life
4. It’s better for your wallet
5. It’s better for your future

One of the things I really liked that Jordan said was that: statistically you are going to spend the majority of your life with a significant other anyway, so enjoy this time of being all alone with no cares.

When looking for a reason to stay single, you might want to try the spiritual aisle. Singleness creates a greater margin of alone time, that is time that can be applied to learning scripture, building your relationship with God, and preparing for a more productive future. Being single is a blessing, not a curse. If God didn’t intend for us to be single for the first 16+ years of our lives, wewould’ve been born married.

I’m glad I’m single, because I know that I couldn’t handle a relationship right now. I’m not prepared to be the spiritual leader in a relationship and I am not remotely ready to get married. With that in mind, I have every reason in the world to keep on being single. The Bible says to have a singleness of mind, how can we have that without practical experience of what it’s like to be single?

I think that principal might apply even further. Being single, we yearn and long for companionship, for love, for a relationship with someone. Perhaps those are the attributes God desires us to have in a singleness of mind. Not only are we to be focused on one thing, (God’s righteousness), but we are to be yearning and longing for it with fervor.

Well, like an elf on Christmas Eve, that about wraps it up. Be sure to check out Blimey Cow and subscribe to them on YouTube, clicking here will take you to their channel.

As always, thanks for reading. You know the drill, like, comment, follow and share this blog, and look me up on social.

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—the anonymous novelist