AS A MAN THINKS…

The Bible delivers a deep truth when it says, “For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he”. With that being said, how critical is it that the foundation of all one thinks not be based in human reason or understanding? Something not easy to comprehend or understand, yet vital to the health our soul and whole being is understanding that truth is not subjective; its foundation firm.

In this crazy world of the self-indulgent, the psychobabble concept propagated of “your truth” being all that matters, regardless of what is real, is a lie of those who seek to enslave you to their way of thinking for their purposes. But “your truth”, as though there are 7 billion truths, does not exist; for all truth emanates from Kingdom of Light and God Himself. There is no shifting or bending within it for there is no other truth other than that which is filtered through God, and God alone. 

Jesus said this, “If then the light that is within you is darkness, then how great is your darkness?” Think about that for a moment. If “your truth” is not His truth, how dark is your perception of truth and your ability to discern what is real?

That being so, when you find yourself in a dilemma of thought, I encourage you to come to your conclusions wisely… for you will become what you choose as your decisions carry with them the fruit they will bear; for the seeds you sew will reap a harvest; those sewn to righteousness, righteousness, those sewn to evil, destruction.

Let me encourage you with a pillar of truth… GOD ALWAYS HAS YOUR ANSWER. Whether you choose to THINK that or not, all truth begins and ends with this statement from Proverbs… “The fear of the Lord (Yahweh) is the beginning of wisdom, knowledge of the Holy One (Him) is understanding.”

© 2014 Steven Bliss

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GOD IS!

Where no one else sees… Where no one else hears… Where no one else comprehends and the world just disappears…

God knows, God sees, God always hears... 

GOD IS!

© 2014 Steven Bliss

(Video beautifully created by TSO Photography, Oslo, Norway. http://vimeo.com/terjes)

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DEEP DARKNESS

            The prophet Isaiah was used by God to speak a word about the end that is often ignored or glazed over. God shows him the condition of not only the earth, but its inhabitance as well before the great and terrible “day of Yahweh”. Isaiah said this, “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and His glory will be seen upon you.” Isaiah 60:2

The darkness he speaks of in the first part of the sentence is the permeation of the kingdom of darkness as never seen before to the point that it virtually overtakes and consumes the entire globe. It becomes the ruling force. The deep darkness is the insidious infiltration and overtaking of the hearts and minds of man to the point that he gives himself over to the will of Lucifer. Believing he’s being spiritually, socially and morally right, he becomes blinded to his own deception. Like the frog in the kettle he is slowly being boiled alive. Though it may take years of desensitization, once achieved it will rule the mind of man completely making way for the assimilation of evil and total abandonment of all reason and truth. At that time, God will have no place in the mass of humanity. Madness will overtake sensibility; insanity will become the norm. Shock and horror will achieve no conviction within the heart and mankind, as a whole, will be doomed and condemned. It will become the sacrifice upon the alters of hell for the destruction of all things created in the image of God.

The voices of demons and dark angles will be so overpowering and dominant that they will block all sources of light and truth. They will speak in the language of perception using deceptive persuasion to tear to shreds the fabric of righteousness. They know the power of repetitive phrasing and as a result know how to cause the mind, the super computer God has placed between our ears, to question God, His existence and His story of redemption until one doubts the truth altogether and believes the lie. They are programming masters creating viruses that shut down the hard drives in our heads until the virus itself takes over every cell, deleting all internal sensors and warnings that protect us from the lie and which lead us towards God, ultimately enslaving the masses to Lucifer itself.

They are hunters and trappers, evil taskmasters and overlords. Though you can’t see them now, they are everywhere and the day fast approaches when, all that has been hidden from our eyes will be seen by all. By then it will be too late; the trumpets will have sounded. There is not a horror movie ever been created that could capture the terror of the dark princes and their unholy beasts.

Scare you? It should! As a matter of fact, it should terrify you. Why? Because it’s not just out there in the world somewhere feeding on the obscure third-world country, it’s weaving its way through the hearts and minds of those who claim allegiance to God. That's right, I said it! The infestation is within the "house" itself. It dwells among those who have an appearance of righteousness. How can you tell? Arrogance and hubris, NO HUMILITY; a contaminated self-righteousness that claims superiority as it drunkenly wavers in compromise. But the most defining sign of all? NO POWER!

What is my point and why promote such a frightening concept? Because what's happening is taking place right before our eyes every single day and sadly we either ignore it or relegate it off to those who are just psychological sick freaks or anomalies. But take for instance the story I read this morning about the two 12 year old girls that were seduced by the voice of a demon named Slenderman in some dark game commanding them to do the insane and unconscionable: kill one of their best girlfriends. I have put the link here so that you can read for yourself. (http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/waukesha-police-2-12-year-old-girls-plotted-for-months-to-kill-friend-b99282655z1-261534171.html)

This is no anomaly. These are not psychologically disturbed girls! That’s exactly what darkness wants you to believe. These girls have been demonically overtaken and deceived into surrendering to the beast and his bidding. What you will find interesting in the dialogue of the article is that these two girls consciously wrestled with good and evil, right and wrong; whether to take her life or let their friend live. These types of things are happening minute by minute around the globe. And worse!

I appeal to you as you've read what I have written. I beg you in the Name of the Lord to turn to Him, repent and ask Him to open your eyes the way He opened the eyes of Elisha’s servant to see the the spiritual world that’s actually going on all around you. In the Matrix, Neo was offered the choice of two pills. The blue pill would remove all remembrance of what was taking place at that moment and forever, returning him to the blind and deceived life he always known. The red pill would permanently open his eyes to the the truth of the Matrix, which was in fact reality. Once taken he would never be the same. He could never go back to not knowing. Today, if you hear God's voice and don’t harden your heart, He will make you aware of what presses down upon the whole earth and the darkness that is permeating and penetrating the hearts and minds of men, women and children everywhere.

You can only change you… start there.

© 2014 Steven Bliss

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VISION CHECK

Perception can be deception. What you see isn’t always what you get. We can be completely deceived into believing something is real that actually never was. We convince ourselves it exists to the point we can feel it, smell it, and even taste it. We become so adamant that it’s real that we willingly fight to hold on to it... but like the mirage in the desert, we find it's false as the sand slips through our fingers. Unfortunately, as though it actually exists, we give it power until it finally overtakes us! The delusion is so strong that our capacity to discern becomes as clouded as cataracts covering the lenses of our eyes.

But if you know your view is skewed and you visit the Eye Doctor for an adjustment to your eyes, before you know it, a little twist of the dial here, a little turn of the knob there and, voila... suddenly everything comes sharply into view and you realize that what you believed was true was actually a lie. When the lenses of your soul is corrected and all the fuzzy details become crystal clear, truth takes over and the illusion that paralyzed your mind begins to vanish into thin air.

Had your vision checked lately?

© 2014 Steven Bliss

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I WISH...

I watched this video and it made me think... I wish I could be a kid again. You know... do it all right, turn out better, learn the lessons and not repeat the mistakes again and again. Be steady in life and finish school. Understand that the idea of "rebel" was never my friend. Listened to my mother and father and not need twenty-six years to realize they were right. Man, I wish I could be a kid again. Chose better paths, acquire wisdom and actually receive wise and act on counsel instead of hear and not apply it; not do what I knew was wrong or hang out with those I knew weren't right. To never do drugs, experiment with sex; resist the temptations that harmed both me, and those I loved. Man, I wish I could be a kid again. To love only one woman as my father did and never know and fail with so many. Made a much better life with something left to show for it and ultimately leave an inheritance that my children will never forget.

But the truth is, if I had done it all differently I wouldn't be me; who I am, know what I know or be able give what I can because of all I have experienced and learned. I wouldn't know the meaning of "healed" had I not been "broken", or the mercy of God had I not come face to face with the depths and depravity of my own sins. I wouldn't understand the power of His love or His patience towards me, or His peace that guards me and passes my finite ability to understand; none of which I deserve, nor have I earned. I couldn't say, because of Him and by His grace "I live and move and have my being". I would never know, never be, never have seen what I have were it not for the path I chose for myself. In a perfect world I would get the chance to change my past, prevent the curse I brought on myself; but I'm thankful today for all that I know and all that I am which He Himself has forged by His own hands, and transformed by His love. And I, just like the woman who washed His feet with her tears, am free to love because He forgives all my sins... past, present, and future.

Though I would never want any of you to go through all that I have, I sincerely wish that you all come to know the same truth.

© 2014 Steven Bliss

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THE DOOR

I took this picture not long ago and call it, ‘The Door’!

Notice the crooked angles, gaping holes, the broken and splintered planks and the shadows that are cast along the deep worn lines of weather and time. And then look at the large red handles that are there to open these awkward and very heavy doors up.

For me, this picture is the perfect metaphor of our lives. Like the marks on this door, our lives reflect the many details that tell the story of who we are. And like every story, we have our own personal mysteries and scars, our broken places with gouging splinters and gaping holes and those shadows that are cast across it. They hang on the surface for all to see, just like this door, but the most important part of this picture to me isn't what is seen, but what is not. Just as it is in real life God, who is always there, sees everything... not only what’s on the surface, but what lies behind the doors. He knows how every crooked angle came into existence, how each gaping hole was formed, how every broken place with all its splinters exploded on the scene... He knows every shadow and time-worn line... yes, He sees it all! He knows each hurt and every wound that has occurred in our lives that created the scabs that formed, which I call, the doorway of our soul. And it’s His hands alone that placed those handles there so those extremely heavy doors can eventually be opened.

So think about this with me for just a moment as you look at the picture of that door and consider this… “How precious it is when someone we know allows us deep inside their life, past all the scars and brokenness and into their wounded heart?” Then ask yourself this, how often have you taken that rare privilege for granted and, while you were in that sacred place, selfishly thought only of yourself and your wants and needs, and not of them? And instead of bringing healing and the gift of love, you added more damage and scars to door itself?

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13 that, “Love cares more about others that it does about itself!” That being the case, look hard at those doors… you see, it’s not just someone else’s doors you're looking at, but your own. With that in mind, don’t you think it’s time that you "do unto others as you yourself would have it done unto you"? Love heals a multitude of wounds as it covers a myriad of offenses. Let me leave you with this thought... love as much and as hard as you yourself want to be loved.

Life in pictures brings meaning to life!

© 2014 Steven Bliss

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JUST DON'T DO IT!

In 1988 the athletic shoe company NIKE launched the slogan “Just Do It”! It was their way of reinventing the term, ‘go for it’. Since then it’s become an integral part of modern culture and used in a myriad of ways, many of which that have nothing to do with its original campaign. With that in mind, I’d like to address something extremely personal on my end but I believe extremely applicable to all who will read, and perhaps listen to what I say and take to heart the words of a man that has lived and experienced more in his 60 years of life than most will ever do. I want to reach out to men and women around the world and create a wave of thought that will both challenge you and go against the grain of popular thought; especially today’s liberal mindset that takes us far away from principle and virtue. I will speak from my own life and not that of others to deliver what I want to convey in hopes of driving the point deep into the hearts of all who will read this. My ultimate hope is that truth will prevail and true freedom will be achieved as a result of acting upon what I’m about to say.

I’m going to make a ridiculously bold statement here… “Sex has absolutely no meaning apart from love!" It has no more value than the momentary relief one gets from scratching the itch from a mosquito bite. You might argue that sex and love are synonymous, but I completely disagree. In all my years of living and striving, failed relationships and the devastating after-effects of wild sexual encounters, I can safely say with great clarity that love and sex are not one in the same, nor are they a prelude to each other. They actually have a wide chasm between them that is only closed through the intimacy that total commitment and abandonment of self as well as all else to the devotion two people give and receive from each other when they declare to each other what I call the "Agreement of Oneness”. Anything else is nothing more than what the Bible calls fornication. Fornication is simply put, consensual sex for the sake of pleasure outside of the realm of the declaration of oneness. It is an insult to the image of God in us as it completely denies His own personal Oneness. There is no commitment or purity outside of God's intended oneness. It is a hard concept to grasp given the fallen world in which we live and the societal ideologies we are continually and ruthlessly bombarded with every single day. From television to movies, books to magazine ads, you name it, the idea that anything goes is deceptively and with great purpose shoved down our throats until we actually accept and believe it is the norm. But it is not! As I said in a recent conversation I had, just because something appears to be real doesn’t mean it is. Civilizations rise and fall and historically sex has always played a major role in their demise. Not conjecture, fact!

That may have been a mouthful and a paragraph that causes some more grief than joy, but it is one that should be highly considered given the gravity of what I’m hopefully going to convey here. Let's raise the bar… take it to an otherworldly level shall we say. Let's peel back the layers of the onion and say what most are afraid to ever say, or agree with for that matter: sex outside of the confines of its original intention is without a doubt a key factor in the Great Deception! It massages the flesh, the id, the ego of me that goes against the design of humility and selflessness and the grid of real love. It curses the original design of God and the original intention for which it was created. What do I mean original intention? I imagine most will read this and think me a prude with no concept of the pleasure sex brings. On the contrary, I spent the better part of a lifetime totally deceived by its powerful and delectable bounty dining at its table and eating of its delicacies over and over again. I was, shall we say, a glutton of its persuasive delights. But the truth is I was fully, and I mean completely and utterly deceived by its illusive and destructive lie.

I am neither prude nor under the stagnant religious idea that sex is for one purpose only; procreation. But let me be clear, the concept of procreation in and of itself is magnificently and mysteriously overwhelming for those who choose to engage it at its deepest levels.

Procreation is not just the propagating of oneself or a race, nor is it about the preservation of a bloodline, it has far more significance than what is obvious. Procreating is co-creating. The ultimate gift of God given to man to share in with the two halves of Himself, which God put in man and woman, coming together in unity and oneness, as He is One, and doing what only God Himself is the author of, creating life itself. It is the reproduction of His own image. It is His joy and great pleasure for us to be like Him! It is the celebration of our uniqueness in His likeness and our God-given familial right to become one and reproduce Him; one man, one woman... the masculine and feminine natures of God as one. What glory, what power! What splendor! What privilege! I’m going to tell you a truth you may not want to hear as the lies that have been told for so long make it almost impossible to engage with our tainted flesh driven minds; there is incredible pleasure in our participation in the Original Blueprint. There is profound satisfaction achieved in the deep joy that comes from oneness. It is not just the bringing of life into existence but the sharing of intense joy and incredible pleasure the process of bringing that life into existence holds. In it we are able to experience God’s own joy achieved in unity. God intended sex to be the perfect communication between the two halves; the ultimate picture of His own personal desire for intimacy with us! It is the ultimate knowing (in Hebrew it’s the word yada) of not just one another, but Him. The supreme giving and receiving mechanism that can be achieved no other way by those created in His image. (If you want something to think about in light of the fallacies of homosexuality, look no further) Though procreation is a part of all facets of creation, it is not a pleasure-based reality in the rest of creation as it has one purpose alone: increase. If it were just for the purpose of “gettin' ‘er done” then it would be over as fast as it began. Knowing is not necessary for that. Anything apart from the original design is to lower ourselves to our most base-nature and imagining ourselves to be something we are not… animals or worse. How great is such deception? incomprehensible!  It is nothing more than the systematic devaluation of the image of God in us and the demoralization of the creation itself. In other words, it is like spitting in the face of God as one arrogantly take their un-rightful place upon the throne of their life, which is nothing more than rebellion, and entering into agreement with God’s greatest enemy and destroyer of all souls, Lucifer himself, arrogantly fall on our own sword. And to think, all that over the illusion of the momentary pleasure derived outside of the intended realm of good where nothing is restricted and true pleasure is undefiled.

How could we be so blind? Why would we believe something so twisted? You may say it's always been this way, you’re making more out of it than it is, then let me ask you a question, what is the oldest profession on this planet? The answer is there is only one; prostitution! And what is prostitution? It is the original instrument of darkness to persuade the fallen mind into believing its need for momentary gratification as it ultimately objectifies and mares the image of God. It equates man with his supposed 'animal instincts' and gives him a deceptive level of gratification that carries with it neither  responsibility or commitment. Is it any wonder so many children are born out of wedlock? Darkness always twists and perverts what God creates and sees as 'good', and in this insane microwave mentality of a world we live in, our darkest minds are exposed for all to see. Sadly, we celebrate the dark rather than call it dark and see it for what it truly is, grotesque. When we live in deception and function beneath the realities of who God has created us to be, and we no longer reflect the image of the One who created us and we become the terrifying creations of our own imaginations. And the nightmare continues for all those who are deceived and refuse to believe the truth. No wonder the saying sex sells has such power!

There is no judgment here; no condemnation. I have no fingers to point. If I pointed one at you there would be three pointing back at me. I have done all that can be done… sadly, even as a believer in the God who made me I have done the unconscionable and inconceivable. I have been the fool, agreeing with God's enemy, shaming His Name. But here is where hope and forgiveness come in... I personally believe there comes a time in our lives when we wake up and realize we have been brutally deceived and say enough is enough, and then, out of our own failures and experiences, we pay it forward by pulling the curtain back on the master of all deception, Lucifer himself, shining the Light of Truth on the path that points the way to freedom and the joy it brings. To snatch from the fire, as it were, those who are perishing! Honestly, I wish someone had told me these things forty five years ago when I began my own personal plunge into the darkest deception man has ever known. But out of my own deception I can be bold and make the truth known in hopes that someone, somewhere, even if it’s just you, will hear it and make the decision to obey. If it's true that “blessed is the man/woman whose trust is the Lord"... then you won't be disappointed.

In the meantime... just don't do it!

© 2014 Steven Bliss

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