Downshifiting

There isn't really a "shortcut," but I can tell you how you can certainly accelerate the learning process: every moment you invest in spending time with Me, be it through prayer, or reading or memorizing or giving out My Word, every minute you invest in learning more about wielding the weapons of the Spirit World, those are steps that take you further and closer to the goal of being ready for what's to come.

It's a choice you have to make nearly constantly: "What am I going to invest my time in?" Something that's merely connected to this temporal realm and isn't going to last or contribute in some way to the advancement of My eternal Kingdom, or the apparently less fun option of spending time and dealing with what for you at this point in time is still invisible?

Vision is a luxury you've gotten used to and wouldn't want to do without; you're kind of spoiled by the ease with which information hits your brain through the simple process of seeing things, so, having to glean information from invisible sources is so much more tedious for you. That's why you would like Me to give you the gift of visions, so that it all would become easier, and you could finally rely on that good old process of handling information that's coming in through what you see, even if it's with your spiritual eyes...

It's a sacrifice you're having to make, to slow down a bit. The pictures and the information that comes with them move along so much faster in the movies or on computer screens, or even in the real world, than what you can derive from the slow flux of input you get from reading or hearing from Me, or closing your eyes in prayer... It seems to be downshifting to a lower gear, when your natural inclinations tell you to upshift... step on the gas... do more in order to get there faster.

But that's where faith comes in. Faith to do the opposite of what your flesh tells you to do, namely nothing. Nothing in the flesh, that is, in order to behold the apparent (to the flesh) nothingness of My invisible Realm, that seems anything but conducive to great accomplishments in the physical, which is what the flesh really yearns for. But in the end, it's precisely that "nothingness" that will really get you places, whereas all the efforts of the flesh without availing itself of the power of the Spirit will turn out to have been decoys, detours, distractions, and a waste of time, good merely as another lesson in the long line of ways how not to do it.

So, if you want to get there faster and quicker, I'm afraid you're going to have to go slower, and do the exact opposite of what your flesh tells and urges you to do. The first and fastest and best thing to do if you're really going to get somewhere in the Spirit is to stop all the feverish activity in the flesh and find out by waiting for Me and My input where it is that I really want you to go, and if necessary, let Me take you there; find out what I really want you to do, and if necessary, allow Me to do it through you and for you. "Stand back and see Me fight," instead of rushing off into the battle half-baked yourself.

"We don't have time for all that" is what they often say. "We don't have time for what brother so-and-so has to say. After all, he doesn't show forth the signs that would make him worthy of devoting our time and attention to him: those great, and big and flashy signs that catch our attention, of big and showy accomplishments..."

Just as it's mice's appetite that lures them into the trap and to their doom, so it is the appetites of the flesh that often lead you into the traps of the distraction, the wrong way, the opposite direction of where I want you to go.

You have to realize what it actually means to be a follower, a disciple of Mine, to be taking up your cross daily and deny yourself and lose your life in order to truly gain and find it. It means going in the opposite direction of where the world is going and the flesh would lead you. Instead of letting them drag you along with their current, you go the opposite way. It's humanly impossible, to do so, I know, and it couldn't and shouldn't be expected of anyone in the natural. But that's basically what faith is.

It disregards all the philosophies of man and their counsel on how to make headway, it discards all that the world advertizes as wisdom and their secrets to "success" and chooses to go the opposite way, one that apparently leads nowhere, down to the most undesirable place of the defeat and death of that wich the System is trying to build up: the ego, the self, one's own position and advantage...

"How can I look good in the eyes of those that I'm trying to please?" "How can I become someone to be remembered?" When in reality, those who are truly remembered have always been those who forgot about themselves and melded with their cause: the people they would give their lives for, seeking above all their good and welfare, and not their own.

Faith defies the wisdom of the flesh. It has the courage to say "No" to it. "No, thank you! That's very kind of you to offer me that advice on how to get ahead and really make myself stick out above the rest of the crowd, or on how to enhance my image, but I think I'll have to pass. Because there's this urge in me, this voice that says, 'there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is destruction...' I'm afraid I can't follow your path..." And then turns around and goes the opposite way. Just like that song, "turn around, walk away and start again." Start again, doing it the right way this time, starting to go the proper direction, starting to avail yourself of the heavenly sources and powers to sustain you, instead of your own natural resources, which are going to come to an end as all the worldly riches the Devil has to offer in his realm: time and money and fame... all these things will fade away into nothingness. They'll disappear. And only what was done truly for love will still stand when all those bigmouths will finally have been shut up.

So, you want to make headway for Me and make progress in My school of thought, in the School of heavenly wisdom? Stop being dragged about by the old school of the System and the flesh, and whatever they tell you to do in order to make progress. Stop all that and come to Me! Turn around and start walking a new way, in a new direction. Don't be afraid of going the opposite direction of the one everybody else is heading. You may look terribly alone, going that way, and at first you may wonder, "Am I going to be the only one?" But somebody's got to make the first move and have the courage to lead folks in the path that is truly Mine, and they'll follow suit, eventually...

Folks are still very much prone to follow the leadings of those who are geared to the flesh and motivated by the flesh and carnal urges. That's where you've got to make a difference and have the courage and guts to withstand the general trend, and simply go the opposite way.

It may look like a humbler, less promising way, a darker, less shiny, less glorious way, and folks may be shaking their heads at you and wonder, "Why's he taking that shabby road?" But in the end you and they will see which of the two paths really will have led to what I'd call true success. True success is the road that will lead you to Me, and you have seen which is the path I have taken. It wasn't a glorious road, and one that not many initially would have had the courage to follow. It was a road that took My followers far away from their homes and all they were familiar with, and that was something they only hesitantly set out to do, and only because one man, Paul - a former enemy - led the way. He had the courage to do it in spite of all they would say, and eventually, they followed his sample...

He had the courage to go the opposite way! Away from all that was familiar and trusted... Away and off into the horizon... into the new, the unknown... with Me.

How Real Is Your Love?

(Jesus:) There will always come a point where your own tolerance level will be stretched by someone even stranger than you, or stranger than the last "strangest" person you've had to cope with. It's the "embracing the leper" process in the life of St. Francis, and of many true followers of Mine. Shutting anyone out who doesn't look according to one's own standard simply doesn't live up to what I said about loving the least of My brethren the way you would love Me or claim to love Me.

Remember the scene with the prostitute in the movie about Dorothy Day? Dorothy was able to see My light and beauty in her and was thus able to love her the way she would love Me. It's something I want you to learn, to practice and stretch you spiritual muscles on.
You just expect everybody to be perfectly up to par with your personal standard and can hardly understand how they can dare fail to live up to it. That certainly wasn't My attitude, when I was around...

When it comes down to it, that essential task of loving others is truly a great challenge for you.
Maybe you haven't fully come to the conclusion yet of how much more blessed it is to love everyone, instead of seeking to be loved by them. Seeking to be loved by everyone will only leave you disappointed by everyone's incapability to live up to your unrealistic expectations, and will make a spoiled brat out of you, and finally a bitter and hardened old man. The only thing that can break that spell is to break out of that mold of your unrealistic expectations and do what you can instead, to make life a little easier, a little more livable for them.
The Enemy would like to stop you, he tries to irritate and aggravate you. He tries to nullify the veracity, the realness of what you're trying to do by showing that you're not able to live up to what you're preaching.
That's why Gandhi went way down to the total rock bottom of poverty, not shunning to do the lowliest tasks himself, because he knew that anything else than that would have been hypocrisy, and anything else would have always allowed the Devil to point his crooked finger at him and call him a hypocrite: "So what are you really in it for?"
You've got to stay on the rock bottom of the ground that what you're doing it for - whatever it is you're doing - is love, and without love it's nothing. Without love, you might as well quit doing it, whatever it is.
It'll go haywire, because the Devil will always tell you you're nothing but a hypocrite. He likes to expose people for the sinners they are, especially when they're sincerely trying to do any good, just in order to discourage them. While it isn't My goal that you actually do let him discourage you from doing the good you want to do, I also do allow it in order to make sure you're really doing things for the right incentive, that the right power is behind it; not just any desire to put yourself in some grand limelight or be able to tell the world, "See? We show you the way you're supposed to do it," but just humbly do whatever you're doing for love, and let that love be clearly seen in your interaction with those around you and closest to you, even if sometimes they may seem to be harder to love than anyone far away you don't have to deal with.
"How real is your love?" is the question. Can you even love one who has fallen to such depths that with all your tolerance and understanding you cannot understand and tolerate them? How far does your understanding and tolerance go? How much are you willing to deal with cases that go beyond the limit of what you deem acceptable? Where are your limits? Where is the point at which you'll say, "thus far and no further"? "Thus far my love and tolerance and understanding for people will go, but no further."
There always comes a point of a little bit more love and understanding than you've previously had, and in your case, it's a whole lot more you need, although you may seem to be doing fine in comparison to others. But how fine are you doing in comparison to the way you and I know you should be doing?
You see that everything else is only a distraction? Everything else can sometimes only busily keep you going through the motions of busily avoiding the very essence of life, and what life is all about: "love thy neighbor" - that person or those persons closest to you, the ones you're living with, and having to deal with face to face, that you cannot avoid or evade - "as thyself." You'll always discover a point where the love you have for yourself excedes the love you have for others, eventually, especially when you're confronted with a person you can't help but think that surely you must be better than they. Sure, you're bad, but thank God, you're not that bad, right?
But if you can truly treat someone like that with an attitude and an approach that shows them that you don't consider yourself any better than they, then you have reached the point of genuine humility. That's the point where they can see that yes, your love and what you preach and say and claim to believe is real.
Until then, you're just one of a whole bunch of talkers who wish they knew what they're talking about. When you can accept and truly embrace the lowest of the low and let them know you're one of them or they're one of yours, that you consider that there is no difference between you, but they're equally loved by Me as you are, then you've become real, man!
I've always been the Hero and the Champion of the one lost and forgotten and neglected sheep. If I knew the 99 were safely in the fold, My sympathies, My concerns and My love would go out to that one lost sheep, strangled out there somewhere in the brambles, the brushes, the shrubs of the confusion of this world, and often I have wondered why those in the fold were always too busy pleasing themselves to ever come out and assist Me.
It's part of being the real thing. Your love for the one lost sheep, the lowest of the low, the least of these My brethren, determines just how real you really are!
There is a whole lot you can still learn from Gandhi: there is a goodness that goes beyond any confessional differences. There is a goodness that expects of you to be kinder to those who are not your own, who are different than you, than to your own kind. That's what many of the Jews couldn't understand about Me: how could I be so kind to the non-Jews, the Gentiles, the heathen, the "wicked?" Surely, I had to be a sinner, too, like them.
What I was showing them was that in the eyes of God, it wasn't going to matter anymore whether you were a Jew or a Gentile, but whether you were a child of God by being a child of good. Those who chose to do good over evil, and those who chose to recognize, accept, receive and believe in the Good when they saw Him or heard about Him, those were to be God's children from henceforth.
And likewise there will come a time when I will make it clear to the world that it doesn't make any big difference whether you're calling yourself a Christian, but how you live is what matters, and how much you have given and done in order to make sure that those others, who apparently did not know Me, or perhaps did not want to know Me because of of some despicable and loveless sample of one of those supposed believers and followers of Mine, would be given the chance to see a true picure and illustration and token of My love by the way you lived.
God would not be God, nor would He be righteous, if He only allowed nominal Christians into His Kingdom, who - although they were supposed to have known the truth - lived a worse sample of what I stood for than some or even many of those who claimed not to believe in Me, because they didn't want to be any part of the hypocrites.
Can you blame anyone for not wanting to be a Christian today with the sample that Christians at large give to the world? Just as it is said "he is not a Jew that is outwardly a Jew" (Rom.2:28) - in the flesh, so I will also say, he is not a Christian that is outwardly a Christian, in name and in title only. But how much are you really Mine? How much can you really claim to be Mine? How much can you really say that you are My bride, that you have loved Me intimately, have heard My voice speak to your heart, and how much have you obeyed that voice? How much have you gone forth, accepting and bearing My seed and bringing forth fruit unto Me? How many children have you borne unto Me? Can you truly call yourself Mrs. Christ? Are you truly My wife? Have you truly employed your life in service to Me, or were you just one of the countless slaves of Mammon, who every once in a while offered a little token, a small sacrifice to Me, as one would throw a bone to a dog under the table?
That's why I have said, "I will have mercy, not sacrifices." I'm sick and tired of little sacrifices that mean nothing, I want love. I want you to love Me and the people, period, that is the only acceptable sacrifice.