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Sermon 9-03-2010 Lead Me Where ??? Rev. Chuck Murphy Good Morning … Before we get into our Message this morning let me take moment to ask everyone to please really give generously this morning … I hate to ask about $$$’s and especially on a Holiday Weekend, but the Church is short and really could use some extra “In Flow” right now … As you may or may not know, all the Staff that makes this place run and keeps it running is completely unpaid – it is all for free, including Sunnie and I … So please today, and if not today, very soon, please dig deep and help your Church out … Now today we are going to wrap up our Lessons on Setting A Trap For God … It has been really interesting to see how things have been “packaged” over the centuries and what the “goals” of these doctrines really are … We have seen over and over again that Our Lord was saying “when you Pray, say something like this” or “when you Pray, here is an example of what to do and say” … He was not giving us some precise set of words that were to be chanted or recited endlessly in the hopes of receiving pardon for what ever wrong we assumed we had done that day or to receive some favor from the Throne because we said them 50 times … We have learned that “His” Will is for us to follow our Bliss … Even though it has been stifled for decades, God really LOVES us, God actually wants us to be Happy, not punished … God wants us follow our dreams, to talk with Him as a child does a parent … Even more importantly God wants us to play with Him, to get excited with Him and dream with Him … For SO long we have been so terrified and afraid – yes for reasons we now begin to understand – but now that we do, it must be liberating to us … That is why learning to “set the trap” is so very important … Most every concept, every description, every portrayal of God up to now has been contaminated with things like agendas of hatred, control, racism, elitism – the list goes on and on Look at how there are whole movements in some areas of the Christian Church, dedicated to “Burning Down The Shack”, to exposing the lies about Oneness in “Avatar”, setting those Aliens straight, telling you all the areas were you have failed, you have sinned and fallen short of God … Come on, we have all heard these battle cries … And they are all around us, in plain sight for us to see … And yet, as we have taken this Journey through the Aramaic, through the Reality of what He said and taught, guess what ??? That is exactly what we have discovered ??? Who would give your child a snake when she asked for a fish, right ??? We have seen that God’s Will for us is to follow our dreams, our desires … Not suffer and compromise because “that is what God would want you to do” … How did we ever buy into that kind of thinking … When you go back and study with the Blinders off, you suddenly discover that Yeshua was telling His followers, “stop letting these Pharisee’s control you, stop following these ridiculous teachings that come from the minds of men … He actually said those exact words in Chapter 15, Verses 7 – 9 … Over and over we have found that He looks Into the Heart – that is what He says is determines everything … It is also where He clearly says NO Religious practice, belief or tradition cuts the mustard … It is what comes from within a mans heart that matters … And that is really where we begin today … I must admit I never really stopped to think about why God would even consider “leading me into temptation” … And yet I repeated those words thousands of times … Over and over, without ever stopping and realizing what I was saying … Once again I ask you to put on your logic hats, open your mind and hearts … Which of you would give your child a snake when what they asked for was a Happy Meal ??? No one, right ??? SO that then begs the question, why would God even consider “leading us into Temptation” … Really, God is going to lead us astray unless we ask Him not too ??? Oh He will “let” us make that choice and not really interfere with us, but would He actually lead us the wrong way simply because we are a bad people and that is what God does ??? Huh ??? Listen to yourself, or to me … God is actually leading me INTO Temptation ??? Impossible – this is a complete misinterpretation and a bad thought that has just never been fixed … God is Light, God is all Good and all Just … God can NOT lead us into temptation – Period the end … Light cannot be dark, dark can never overcome Light, it is simply the absence of Light … So if this is all True, why are we still rattling it off as some sort of Truth ???
And on top of it all, how would we as parents fell if ours were saying us “don’t lead us into temptation”, and probably even more to the point “Hey if I find myself in trouble I am asking now for you to pull me out of the fire ,,, Remember we have just spent the last month or so learning just how Loving a parent God really is, right ??? So how then does a Loving Parent lead one into darkness, into temptation … Well the simple answer is, they don’t … And because our Lord was saying to Pray after Him, to Pray in like manner or with the same attitude and heart that He was using, NOT to repeat His exact words – and certainly not to rattle them off in some mindless litany of words, we then are to simply be acknowledging to God that we are asking His Help in making right choices, and if we should in fact make a bad one, to please help us see the error of our decision … If you still feel uneasy about this whole line of thinking, read James Chapter 1, 13 through 14 … “Let no man say when he is tempted ‘I am tempted by God’: for God cannot be tempted by evil and neither can He tempt any man” … Seems pretty clear to me, what about you ??? When you look at the actual Aramaic word, ta-alan, it is a word that can be both a preposition and a verb and again you have to look at how it is being used to be sure to render it properly … It can mean “on top of”, “alongside of”, “above” and “on, in and over” … However the Lord actually used it twice and can be sure He meant the same each time … It is used in the Lord’s Prayer and also in Mt. 26:41 when he says “Pray that you may not ‘enter’ into temptation” … The other word He uses in the line is “Nisyona” which means “test, trail or temptations” yes, but it also can mean “Materialism” or “Worldliness” … So if we render it correctly it reads something like “do not let us be distracted by a materialistic way of life” … He is saying that we must maintain balance between the Spiritual things of the world and the material … And one last word – Beesha – which is the word that has been rendered “Evil” over the centuries … But as I am sure you have figured out by now, as a noun in Aramaic it has many shades to it … “to err, to displease, to harm, to be or do evil, to seem bad, to mistake, to afflict, to be unripe, to be immature and to be unfortunate” … Pretty broad meaning eh ??? Our Lord was also not referring to some “evil being” who makes us do bad things … Once again we are seeing that He was simply trying to tell us that while yes, there is “evil” in the world, and there are those who do “evil” it the person themselves who do it, who cause it and who choose it, we should take the mind set of asking our Father, our Parent to help us not make bad 7decisions and choices, and if we should, to point them out to us … And that brings us back to the realization that there is NO Evil or Angry God creating the chaos we see around us, there is no Evil Being whose sole purpose to ruin our lives – no, this mess we find ourselves in as a race is of our own doing … Oh yeah, we go miles out of our way to blame it on the devil, on evil and even on God, but He is trying to tell us – much as we would our own errant child, “Look, you’re doing this to yourself” … It is “YOUR” choices that are at the root of this … I have said it before and I will say it again – it never ceases to amaze me how after all the twists and turns, after all the study, after all the logic and Love is applied, we always always end up at the same spot … We cannot step aside and away from our own responsibility for the way things were, are and are going to be … We try to factor in God, or that we are not all part of the same Divine family, but when it is all said and done, it doesn’t work … We can hate all we want, we can pontificate all we want, we can quote Scripture lines, from a myriad of Holy Books but the one basic Truth remains – nothing changes does it ??? This whole relationship with God has had over what, 8000 years according to Christians and Muslims, more according say Buddhists and Hindu’s and yet not a thing has really changed … The way we fight, the way we communicate has changed but Religion has not, as a matter of fact most of them have fought to keep the status quo … And to keep us at each others throats … Anyway, back to what I was saying – isn’t it interesting that we end up back at the Oneness Depot ??? We are right back on the same spot that says “we Are One and WE are responsible for the way things are” … It is like God is giving us all one more chance to do this right, to get it straight that rather than try to convert everyone, to bring a true Spirit of Love and Peace to this planet before we go through the 2012 Change … This is why I think it is so very important for each of you to see that this whole way of thinking, the actual Oneness and Spiritual – Not Religious movements are not some “New Age” dribble or repackaging of the 60’s Love Movement … Quite the contrary, they are the very stuff of what Yeshua was teaching, of what God wants us to know … And that we as a Planet and as a Race have some accounting to do to our Father in heaven for the way things have been handled up to this point … That is why I want you to realize that when you understand the idea and true meaning behind “The Lord’s Prayer” you will see that just like Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers we have had the answer all along … Only God can separate us from error – Only God has the Power and the Love necessary to make these changes … God will do this without punishment, without blame and without favoring one over another … It is the Spirit of Almighty God that speaks to each and every one of His offspring and that unites us all, Black – Brown – White or Yellow, Male – Female, Child or Adult, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Native American, Agnostic and Atheist … NO one is better than another, no one is worse off than another – there are no favorites … And guess what ??? Here are again, at the Oneness Depot … SO let’s take today to solidify those realities into our Spirits, to realize the connection between every living thing – every inanimate object … Let’s take our Lord’s lead and open our hearts to God Truth and Reality … Let’s set a trap for God, that will grab the Truth of His Spirit as it passes and hold it for us … It is time for our final Attunement … As we begin our final Attunement it is time for us to let go of the prejudice, the hatred, the ego, the racism, the belief that one is really better than another that has plagued us for centuries … We must begin every day with forgiveness for all who wish and for all who need it … In this final Attunement, let us not enter (or become ensnared by or saturated with) Materialism … As we make our gains part us Father from any error that hurt or harm another – Show us any error causing discomfort to ourselves also … Yes we are to be successful and make progress but it is not for us to hoard, it is to circulate, to share … The balance that God has placed in Nature is our guide to balance in all we do – just as the entire Universe hangs in perfect balance so should our lives, our interaction with one another be perfectly balanced … As we Pray these words in the Prayer, we are awakening and calling upon our inner Spiritual Energies so that they may continually Guide us … Material things come and go, they do not guide or control us … We are open to Gods Infinite Wisdom and Counsel … We resolve to do better at making choices that will bring greater Peace Happiness and Balance to ourselves, our brothers and sisters and our Planet … This is our Final Attunement … And so it is …
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