AMERICA: LAND OF THE DUPED AND EMOTIONALLY RAPED

Recently in a Facebook dialog over an article I posted about Newsweek’s hilariously stupid cover picture of President Obama with a rainbow colored halo over his head and the caption “The Gay President”, I have come to marvel at the sheer lack of willingness on peoples parts to investigate the facts on why the do or do not believe in something… such as why after four years of the most contrary and disruptive administration since Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson do they still believe Mr. Obama has anything to offer the citizens of America as he has single-handedly brought the country to its knees and done the exact opposite of all he so gloriously alleged. After a plethora of comments, some ludicrous, some brilliant, some finger pointing and insinuating, I finished it up with what I will call my op-ed on the whole matter. This is “my opinion”. It doesn’t mean I am right, I’m not claiming I am right… merely stating fact and observation on the current state of affairs in America, and the daunting task of re-righting the ship (if it is even possible anymore), and the calling to sanity those who have been so dubiously duped into slumber through hypnotic charismatica! Again… this is just “my opinion”. Take it for what it’s worth!

I think for me, and I'm only speaking for me, my view of the state of affairs in my country is that we are out of control and not getting better, but worse. We are like a close friend of mine who passed away some years back. She had pneumonia and didn't even know how sick she was until she died because she wouldn't go to the doctor because she only thought she had a slight case of bronchitis. Whose fault is it? IMO many people's. Is it all on Obama's shoulders? No, but I must qualify that no by saying "HE IS IN THE DRIVERS SEAT"! That places a greater onus and responsibility on his shoulders. My personal point of view is that he has NOT done a great job. I personally believe its his lack of experience, understanding and a radically different philosophy than what I believe it takes to really steer such and enormous nation. His charismatic and well intentioned beginning with a simple mantra of "yes we can" that seduced the masses has fallen painfully short in its implementation. Was it a impossible task to begin with... probably... has he done the best with what he had to work with... IMHO, NO!

It is painfully obvious to me that most don't really investigate beyond the surface and take things, for the most part, at face value. Let's be honest, research is tedious and for the most part, extremely boring. But, if you only take things at face value and listen to a hyper-biased media, then you will believe whatever it is they want you to believe... whether negative or positive. But I am not one who settles. I know that lies, exaggeration and twisting things are a part of politics, media, and sadly, religion. That's why I want to search out a matter for myself. There have been many times that I have taken what someone said as the gospel truth, only to be humiliated and extremely disappointed when the truth finally did come out.

This is not about religion for me. I know, many of you won't believe that statement because of my strong convictions, but this is about my own personal research and discovery as a citizen of this great, though terribly waning, country. I have many friends whom I love that are gay. I don't care what lifestyle they choose to live, I love them for who they are. Many of my closest friends are black. I had a black pen-pall at 9 years old. I played music and have written with a lot of amazing people, many whom are black. Most of them think I was born black and then turned white. Most of my white friends think I'm black and will publicly state such. LOL I am a hater of racism. God is a hater of racism. I have traveled down many paths in my 58 years and done many things that I wished I hadn't, but I will never be labeled as anti anything other than sin and darkness! I believe in the power of love and the greatest quality any human being can exhibit, humility.

For me, so much is missing in this country... it's lost its way. It has mistaken socialism for acceptance, liberalism for tolerance, dependance as love. We are on a collision corse with destruction. We don't take Santayana's famous remark "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" seriously. That's why the Bible is the greatest book in the world... because God knows we forget, and we need to be continually reminded. Israel always did well when it was humble and remembered God's intervention due to their forgetfulness. America... and us, it's citizens, have forgotten what has made us the greatest nation on the earth. We have forgotten the blood that was shed for our liberty and freedom. We disconnected from our European socialistic, dictatorial and despotic past and have created a place where anyone could have the freedom to be who God made them to be in the first place. We are being fed a concoction of pure lies and half truths as we are led seductively backwards... and sadly, we don't even see it. We have become the epitome of the "blind leading the blind". And for this very reason, we are destined to become the very things we were delivered from so long ago... indentured slaves and servants without a voice.

I am truly grateful for the amazing interactions here, but I am not one who lies down and just says run over me. I see a greater hope and future for this country. Is there anyone right now that can honestly deliver that... not anyone human. But there is a way that seems right to many because of the propaganda we are being fed. It's way ends in death. Death of a dream! Death of a nation! Death of Freedom! Do I believe BO is the anti-christ? I reserve judgment on that, but is he really a Christian in the truest sense of the word Biblically... I would have to say from all I have read and heard him say, and yes that includes his own writings and words, NO! Do I believe he is Hitler? No, though he is extremely antagonistic towards Israel and the Jewish people... like it or not, and he strangely resembles some of the despotic characteristics of the man who would deceive a nation! America is much different than Germany in the 1920's and 30's, but deception and propaganda are rampant in the Obama camp. Do I believe he is a muslim and or a muslim sympathizer? If he's not, he has serious visions of using radical Islam as a tool in his twisted view of the world... and again... this is all based on his actions and very own words. Do I believe he is a great president or can be a great president... NO. Is he gay? Really... do I even need to answer that question?

Bottom line is this... we have forgotten that in America it's "by the people, for the people". We still have a voice. For how much longer... that's anyone's guess, but by the way we're going now, it won't be long... even though they may tell you that's not true. In 2014 Obamacare will become law. It is the single most sinister and corrupt piece of legislation to ever be passed into law in this countries history. Once implemented it will be enforced by the IRS. Politicians, and select others, are exempt from it! Really? Why? You have to be drinkin' the kool-aid to not investigate the complete unconstitutionality of this bill. It will single handedly begin the process of removing your rights... OUR RIGHTS to choose. That alone should scare the livin' tar out of every single one of you.

I'm not here to sling mud... but to call to attention those who will hear and shout to those who are asleep at the wheel... WAKE UP! Like me or not... judge me as you will... but I will not be quiet as long as God gives me breath!

Shalom!

(please feel free to comment world…  that’s what the little box below is all about. Your opinion matters)

© 2012 Steven Bliss
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THE EMPIRE OF ME

The EMpire of ME is nothing more than EMpty and MEaningless because no matter which way you spell it, there's only room for ME in it. When I seek to save my life, I loose the very meaning of life itself by which everyone else suffers from my own 

ME-centeredness! 

~Bliss

© 2012 Steven Bliss
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FOR GOD AND GOD ALONE!

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him.” But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”

Have you wondered as to why certain things have happened to you over the course of your life? The question is always posed, “why do bad things happen to good people?” Is your answer, “It must be because of something I have done” or “I must be cursed”? Have you ever thought that it has nothing to do with you, but for the purpose of glorifying God and revealing His works?

This blind man had no idea Who it was he was talking to. He had no idea that it was his “day of visitation”; yet he had been suffering with his affliction since birth. His whole life was lived under the burden and disgrace of his blindness and the assumption by all who saw that it was because of "someone or some sin” that he was blind. But unbeknownst to him, and everyone else, he had been waiting his whole life for the moment that was about to come for which he himself had been born; a visitation from God Himself that would deliver him, heal his blindness and take away his disgrace with a single touch!

What is interesting is that after he was healed, though he was the same man that he was before his deliverance, he was almost completely unrecognizable to all who knew him after his personal encounter with God Himself! He was a man raised in a home where Torah and the adherence to God was taught and lived out. He knew the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… yet in an instant, all that he had known was swallowed up by his encounter with the Living God! And the very first person he saw was Jesus. He was instantly delivered from what had enslaved him his whole life. When God visits us for the purpose of deliverance, we will never be the same, and the change will be evident for all to see, because we met Him face to face! 

Maybe you have been in the same place forever waiting for a miracle? I’m sure many are and don’t even realize that they were born for one single moment where God Himself will invade their space and unchain them from what has overwhelmed them and imprisoned them their entire lives. Every day he went to that spring hoping for a miracle from God. He went there with expectation and faith. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for not recognizing the day of their visitation because their spiritual blindness and arrogance prevented them from seeing Who it was that stood before them. Yet in the simplicity and faith of a child, this poor man who was blind, could suddenly see.

The moral: Don’t EVER give up… and don’t believe the lies. Be like the blind man who, though he was afflicted his entire life, NEVER gave up, but instead found out that all he had endured was for the purposes of God! And so is your life... Do you believe?

© 2012 Steven Bliss
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CHECKPOINT 1: STOPPING THE NOISE!

A group of verses have been running through my head all day. I call them the "SO WHAT" verses or “THE RE-EVALUATORS"! They force us to (at least they should) examine our hearts as well as our actions to determine where we are at in several ways...

The first one are Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13, "If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing."

So then what really matters besides love? In Paul's mind, and obviously in the mind of God... NOTHING! Not high and lofty, otherworldly spiritual dynamics like the ability to speak the language of angels, which honestly seems unbelievable, right? And not even the possessing of and the use of such important spiritual gifts such as prophesy; or the fact that God may allow us to know the deep mysteries and knowledge most have no idea exists. And not even attaining to and walking in a level of faith that few experience, yet does exist, which is capable of moving in the uber-supernatural! And sadly, not even the hyper compassionate, benevolent and sacrificial expressions, which seem so close to the heart of God, matter. According to Paul, there is NO GAIN without LOVE BEING THE MOTIVATING FACTOR OF ALL OUR ACTIONS! Without love, as Paul says... WE ARE NOTHING! So my spirituality and "God talk" is nothing more than noise without love! In other words, the Law of Love is the essence of the heart of God!

So then what kind of love are we talking about here? Thought it seems impossible, this is true love: Love is always patient, and always kind. It knows no jealousy nor does it incite one to jealousy. It never brags or is arrogant. It never acts unbecomingly, or selfishly seeks its own way. It is never provoked and never holds someone hostage over a wrong they have done against it. It never rejoices in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth! It bears ALL things, believes ALL things, hopes ALL things, and endures ALL things! Real love never fails!

I could so beat myself up just from the mere fact alone that I fall so far short of loving like this... and, according to the first part; I have been an arrogant fool more often than not in my life. I remember all the times I thought myself so "spiritual" when in truth, I was actually NOTHING BUT NOISE!

Thank God for His love, mercy and grace which are new moment by moment! And I thank God most of all that He opened my eyes to see His son, Y'shua!

© 2012 Steven Bliss

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MENDING THE BROKEN

Sometimes we do the incomprehensible. We cross lines and break boundaries that do so much damage that a simple "I'm sorry" or "forgive me" just won't fix. I know… I’ve done it.

Since humility is not our natural modus operandi, more often than not we are prone to defending ourselves and deflecting what we ourselves need to take ownership of, all the while missing the most important thing of all, that the person we have hurt is hurting way beyond what we could ever have imagined, leaving them to drown in their anguish and pain by being self-focused and defensive.

We need to learn to be silent… to listen. It is one of the most important and powerful postures we could ever take as it allows the one whose heart we have broken to state their deepest pain. It allows us to not only hear, but also feel exactly what it is we have done, and how it has left them where they are, and why a chasm now exists. It is imperative for the one who offends to allow the depth of what they have caused to resonate deep and loud within their hearts. To experience the magnitude of the damage they have caused, as though it had been done to them. I call it “suffering identification” and is exactly what Jesus did when He laid down His deity so that He could be “tempted in all thing as we are tempted”. When we hurt someone, the only way we can bring a healing to those wounds is by getting down into them so that we understand our need to repent and repair. That takes humility. That is full engagement.

Repentance is a gift. It comes through our willingness to humble ourselves and come face to face with, and experience the depth of our own depravity and desperate need. With God, it heals our separation and delivers us from our deserved punishment by releasing His forgiveness, mercy and grace. Between two people, it opens the opportunity to restore what has been broken through making right choices and commitments that reflect love, honor and respect. It manifests itself in deep remorsefulness with an intense desire to make things right, to make amends and to never cross those lines again. It also allows God into the process with us; which is His greatest joy. True repentance reveals we understand that it is never about us, but that others are more important than we are ourselves.

Though we all sin, for the one who is willing to renounce and turn from their ways and make amends, who consciously and willingly wants to change… there should ALWAYS BE, and without reservation, forgiveness, grace and mercy. That is love. After all, real love is patient and kind; it doesn't hold onto a wrong suffered against it. It bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.. REAL LOVE never fails! God told Israel, “If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land.” If that is Heaven’s response to a nation that had become apostate and lost in idolatry and abominations, how much more should it be ours? There is no greater picture of real love.

© 2012 Steven Bliss
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NOT AN OPTION!

Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Y'shua said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." Of the woman who washed His feet with her tears He said, "she loves much, because her sins, which were many, were forgiven, but he who is forgiven little, loves little." Then again He said, “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.”


What is forgiveness? He is not talking about merely saying the words and ending it there, but going beyond the words into the heart and demonstrating those words with action, which is love. Forgiveness IS loves greatest act. God demonstrated His love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, He sacrificed His Son so that we could be forgiven and fully restored to Him. He acted so that, in our response, His love could deliver and restore! He never contemplates how bad we have been, He immediately responds to our contrition with acceptance and love. EVERY SINGLE TIME! 70X7! God doesn't say it's ok to sit around and mull it over when the person who has sinned against you repents. When we forgive, we are forbidden to hold it against them. If we do, our sins will be held against us. To do so is unforgiveness and judgment… not love. Y'shua commands us to “be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect” (meaning perfect in love) who forgives and demonstrate that forgiveness towards us with open and willing acceptance and love. Forgiveness is not an option… it’s a command! If God says that He NEVER turns away a broken and contrite heart, why should we act any differently? Even the Angels rejoice when just one of us repents... it's a BIG deal. 



We all sin and sometimes, tragically way worse than others... but whatever it is, sin is sin. It is never worth the loss of a relationship not to forgive. The lack of forgiveness in this world creates an absence of love and establishes a path for conflict and conflict is one of darknesses greatest assets. Isaiah says that in the end, "The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.” There will be no conflict; there will be no unforgiveness; only peace! The Judge of all will Himself dwell among us. So if you have sinned against someone, humble yourself as soon as possible, go to him or her and acknowledge it, and then ask for forgiveness. If you're holding someone in chains today because of what they have done to you, even though they have asked you to forgive them... release them from the prison you have kept both them, and yourself in. We are not the judge, God is. Remember, the one who has been forgiven much loves much. So let love have its way. Forgiveness releases love and love heals, it restores and covers a multitude of sins!

© 2012 Steven Bliss
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I AM NOT...

The spiritual battle that rages day in and day out is not a war over terra firma. The battle being waged is over the intellectual property that lies between our ears. The battlefield upon which light and dark clash and the decision to surrender is decided is that stretch of grey matter between our ears known as the brain. 

            I can only speak for me, and unfortunately I’ve had to learn most things in life the hard way. My choices, and the results of those decisions, have mostly been based in the way I perceive things in my mind. Lately I have come to an even deeper, more difficult revelation... the way I see myself in light of how God sees me has direct implications on the choices I make. I call it the “Who Am I?” principle.

            In my opinion, the most important thing we can ever come to know about ourselves is first of all who we are NOT! That takes courage and the willingness to abandon all those things that are not true… even if we have believed them and been convinced they were true our whole lives, they MUST be removed from our thinking. But how do we discover that truth? Where are those answers found? One place…

            THE BIBLE!

            If it was only about how much Scripture you could quote or memorize, and not to diminish the importance of that, it's value would mean nothing if the truth of who God says you are and understanding who you are not were not integrated into your heart and mind. I have had to go through the long and arduous task of discovering who I was not in order to fully accept who I am from God's perspective. From the Garden of Eden until now the strategies of darkness have never changed: replace what God says is true with a lie in order to mask the truth long enough so that the mind deceived into fully engaging and believing the lie.

            But before we can fully integrate all that God says about us, which is the only thing that matters, we must first divest ourselves of the deception we have entered into and lived out! So this is how I do it. I continually remind myself, with confidence and tenacity, of these simple truth. First, I disagree with my accuser and second I tell my soul who I am based upon God's view of me and the work that was done in order to secure it for all of us:

         I AM NOT my past. I AM NOT my failures or my mistakes. I AM NOT who I think I am. I AM NOT who others perceive me to be. I AM NOT my accomplishments, successes, or accumulated possessions. I AM NOT the sum of all my fears. I AM NOT a mistake or a freak. I AM NOT stupid or an idiot. I AM NOT unnecessary nor a waste of time. I AM NOT sick or evil. I AM NOT unworthy or unlovable. I AM NOT a disappointment. I AM NOT a burden or too much. I AM NOT dispensable or a piece of trash. I AM NOT a shame or shameful. I AM NOT anyone's slave. I AM NOT useless or worthless. I AM NOT ugly or gross. I AM NOT going to amount to nothing. I AM NOT meaningless. I AM NOT pathetic, or any other insulting, degrading, dark and demonic accusation fired at my mind… I AM NOT ANY OF THESE THINGS!

            This is who I am... I AM WHO GOD SAYS I AM and I AM EXACTLY WHO HE SEES ME AS... I AM REDEEMED by HIS SACRIFICE, HIS BLOOD and HIS PASSIONATE LOVE for ME; I AM MORE THAN A CONQUEROR, VICTORIOUS WARRIOR and HEIR OF THE MOST HIGH GOD AND NOTHING, NOT ANYTHING OR ONE CAN SEPARATE ME FROM HIS LOVE!

            Funny how just a little positive reinforcement of the truth and a "TAKE THAT" attitude can alter ones total state of consciousness!

© 2011 Steven Bliss
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