August 15th.

You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The sinful nature is being loyal to your self not because you choose to be but because you are driven to be, according to the instincts that live inside you to, as a matter of being able to protect your self as all animals are driven to do the same thing. Loyalty and faithfulness to anything or anyone that is respected, valued or loved by the humans is betraying the family of sons that the Father seeks to find and retain for Himself. Being afraid of anyone or caring about anyone or anything is just listening to the voice of the animal which wants you to follow it instead of the Father's voice, which wants you to be afraid of betraying Him by listening to the enemy's voice.

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Here the Son tells his hidden brothers (hidden from the humans as to their true identity) , "My way is the way you must go, my truth is the only truth that exists for you, and my life is the only life that is recognized by the Father as a valid one." Each instance of these is 180 degrees the other direction from that which the humans are willing and able to embrace as per the way they want to and do go (their own), the truth they will embrace (their own) and the life they will live (their own), no matter if they claim anything otherwise about any of these things. The conspiracy among them is solid and profound, as they follow right in line with the original conspirators, the first humans and the animal, who told God, "We want to go our way (if we want to eat what you've said would hurt us, we're gonna eat it), we want to have our own truth (if we want to believe that the fruit you said would harm us will actually do us good, we're gonna believe that), and we want to live our own lives (not the life you desire us to live)."

You are not to be called `Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth `father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called `teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

There is only one way for the sons to live, and that is according to how the Father commands them to live, which is taught to them by the teacher who lives inside them. There is a process of teaching that happens just after the sons is claimed by the Father as His own, which begins the process of transforming him form one of the cursed animals to a son who can hear the voice of the Father and be able to understand what the teacher is telling him, as per the commands of the Father as to how he must become—pure and honest in his heart, transparent and open, able to comprehend the Father's will and want/crave/love to do it instead of the thing which beforehand he was cursed with, what all the humans are cursed with, though they are unaware. They think they are just living their life, while in reality they must beckon to the voice of instinct that rules them. They don't make decisions, but what they do, feel, gravitate to, value and love is dictated to them by the animal nature (natural instincts) that indwell them. The rare opposite is when the life of the only living God (not the false, made up gods) indwells a man.

People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant.

Indignance is a harsh word to describe the reaction of the Son to what his disciples were doing. Children were then, and still retain the position now of being lower life forms than the smarter and more powerful adults, who are the ones who rule the earth. Children aren't savvy or strong enough to rule anything because they are vulnerable and have to rely on others to protect them from the hostile world of predatory animals that surrounds them. And here were the Son's disciples, acting like true, blind animals, driven by the conspiratorial instinct to push the children back and out of the way because they weren't considered important like the adult humans.

He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.

The Son's reaction to what the disciples were doing is his declaration that the way that the humans are inclined to go is the opposite of the way the Father commands them to go. The Father puts the spirit into His sons which makes them antagonists to the humans, and vice-versa. The dreamy days of the liars who say that one can go to their gods and live their lives in and around the humans at large is over. It is not a nice life, or enjoyable in the sense we learned it before, gauged by whatever we learned to be nice and enjoyable, what we learned to aspire to. The humans want to rejoice and be glad about their lives, that they're just the way they want them to be, just the way they've made them by the choices they've made and the opportunities they've had to be able to make those choices.

Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!

So much plain and simple truth about the reality of God, yet it gets turned inside out by the humans into something it doesn't mean, for their good. They can't bear to even look at the reality of the plain truth of what the Son said, so they change its meaning to say something acceptable to their animal selves. How hard it is to enter the kingdom because it cannot be seen. The requirements for entrance are opposite to what lives inside the humans to be able to even begin to accept. It isn't something that can be wished about for one's self, to get and retain a membership in the kingdom because it can't be seen or initiated, and definitely not controlled which is the way the humans do with everything that is tangible enough to be manipulated as such because it's a part of this natural reality of things that can be bought and possessed, owned and controlled for their benefit.

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

God doesn't serve the humans, nor they Him, because they can't. They cannot even become aware of Him, nevertheless be able to choose one way or another about whether they will accept His reality. That choice *must be* extended to them, if and when it is the Father's desire to do so, and for His sake, not theirs. The humans think they can treat the salvation they read about in a book like they treat houses and cars and anything else they feel they have a right to possess and own. The stark, paralyzing beauty of the reality of God is that the humans can only, within the power they possess as animals, embrace a lie about whatever gods they have chosen to embrace. That is most basically the serpent god, which rules and controls them, so they are choosing themselves as the gods they choose to serve. Those are the most appealing gods because they live to serve them, and their desire to find an agreement within themselves about what must be (they're all going to heaven because they all agree, and any god who is fair wouldn't deny them what is good for them, because they are inherently so good and righteous, just the way they are).

There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."
Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips.
Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.

The sons learn that they aren't good and righteous, not in the phony way of the religious liars who by their mouth babble claim to be sinners, but can't ever believe that because the thing actually living in them to define who they are according to God makes them think of themselves not as they should (they and their lives are worthless and insignificant), but more highly than they ought. That's why God considers the humans inherently evil, the thing that Paul actually understood and wrote about which they are misinterpreting and misquoting for their own good—because their reality is that they cannot love anyone or anything but themselves and the way, truth and life they want to retain for themselves. The conspiracy that they all enter into is to find an agreement with each other that they reinforce in themselves, not that they're evil but that they're good. When everyone reinforces that reality in each other then the truth becomes a lie which can be embraced because it sounds better to them than the truth, that they are all worthless, insignificant and evil according to God.

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

The reason this is important for the sons to understand is because that need to keep finding the agreement becomes their stumbling block on the path that leads to the Father, if they've been called to come away from the humans' reality—what they are completely—to His reality, the reality of a Father and His family of sons, the only thing that is worthwhile. The path that leads to the Father isn't the one the humans are on. It is secret and hidden, and doesn't become revealed at the summons of any of the humans so they can know it. It is revealed at the desire and behest of the Father in a particular way to a specific human, not random or general (the lie).

If it is revealed to a particular human then comes the learning about his true nature, which is against everything he knew and believed about himself in the past. His fundamental reality all the way into his core, which goes beyond his ability to cognize into the place where his definition actually lies as the Father sees it, must begin to be changed. The only way to start to do it is to learn one of the most fundamental things, which before gave him license (because of the agreement he got from the humans) to believe whatever sounded best to him about his condition—he is not inherently good or right or able to do anything that's pleasing to the Father because he is cursed, under the condition that all the humans are under which keeps them away from God, as per its purpose He created it to serve. This is the most basic thing they must know in order to even begin to become humble, to know their place in the family, to start to have their heart become purified so they can be honest before the Father instead of running and hiding all the time.

The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business.

Those who are rich in the things that the humans love and run after cannot help but trust in them. There is no mentally divorcing one's self from the fact that he has all this stuff, and then pretends he doesn't have it, which is what he must in order to not trust in it. Not having the stuff is the reality of one who isn't able to trust it (because he actually doesn't have it to be able to trust in), so that is the only way someone can not trust in the stuff i.e., the theoretical mumbo jumbo doesn't work with God because he knows what it happening in the man's heart. The rich man spends his time and effort thinking about how to protect his riches. Wealth is relative to what is important for the person, and each one's wealth will be a little different. To one it is money and things, to another it is respect and admiration, to another it is his family of flesh and blood he has pumped out (little versions of himself), and to another it is just having and keeping enough food to eat.

Very few of the humans who have ever lived have been able to consider their wealth as being their love for the Father and the family of sons who wear His name and knowing, then doing, what pleases Him instead of what pleases their selves. It's hard to have an honest heart that is pure from the animal hypocrisy. That's why it takes such a long time to learn the lessons and then be able to accept them into oneself as his reality instead of what's already there, what is easy and appealing. Very few have ever known it, because that has to be put in them before they can know it. That is the condition of the sons' heart, to know what the Father's will is and to have the burden of doing that will—what is pleasing to Him—put into their heart where their hopes, dreams and motivations live. Value is relative, and if everything eventually falls away except God and His family, then it makes sense for the sons who are chosen that the things which are eventually worthless start to fall away, even in this existence—their participation in this temporary creation. That becomes the declaration of their choice for the Father and against what they might want.

I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

That is the model of the Son, for the sons—nothing the humans attach value to actually has any value, because they learn a new value system. Whatever could be valuable to them in this life becomes like garbage when put next to knowing the Father and His love, and living for His family. We know what those things are, because they are what's important to us, being humans—money, things, food, family, career, respect, honor, identity, peace and security for our selves (especially ultimately because we're going to heaven, gonna be in the kingdom, or in paradise), etc.

"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first."

Whatever the humans consider valuable gets in the way of what the son eventually learns is the only valuable thing, and the only thing worth running after in this natural existence we call a life. This isn't life anyway, because in this creation everything comes to an end, so is eventually defined by what the humans all become; that is death. The "life that is truly life" is what drove the first century sons of God who were being transformed from one identity to the other.

In this way they (those who are rich in this present world) will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life (the implication being that this existence isn't actually life, so it's not worth hanging on to).

Although this seems to be tolerating the rich, as though they could remain that way and still be as he was. Jesus said something different about those who are rich, that it is impossible for them to enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." The disciples were amazed at his words.

Such strict limitations on who becomes a son of God is because of the value system of the animals versus the sons. The miraculous transformation of the son's heart makes it impossible for him to attach value to the things the humans attach value to, because of what's being put into his heart. That one will not even be able to accept this until it's happening to him, so in a way it's sort of a moot point because the process takes care of itself in that regard. As the transformation begins to take root, his values start to actually change because he is given some of the food Jesus lived for, and he begins to want that more and more, which is mutually exclusive of anything the humans think is valuable.

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

It's not just a thing like, "Oh yes, that's a good thing—we should desire to have that." The deal is that it becomes everything, and what used to be valuable to us just becomes nothing—not by our own effort to make it so, it just happens as part of the process of the transformation that must happen. Whatever is valuable to the animals gets more valuable as they go along. When the animals become mature, the value system that gets cemented into them is much different than what existed in them when they were little children.

Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.

What do little children consider valuable? To be close to their parents, to not become separated from them, to feel and know their love for them.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

This is the new identity and value system of one who was being transformed from animal to son. To be found in the Son is to lose whatever identity Paul formerly had, which was significant in the world's eyes, and take on the new identity of the Son, the good Son who only loved his Father and nothing else mattered. The identity of one who knows Christ Jesus was Paul's new identity. Everything else doesn't matter anymore, because he's already tasted how good that thing is. By the time he wrote this, much of this other stuff had already fallen away because he knew more and more what he wanted—only to be defined as one who is a good son, and who is pleasing to the Father.

All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

He could have maintained all the other things the humans love and run after for himself, and rationalized that he was doing it for God's sake, had he remained an animal. But Paul was taken over by the secret power of God's love, and living his life for the sake of God, Jesus, and the family that God desires to gather up out of the pool of humanity.

Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

The man was trying to serve God with what he was told was how to be right with God. He obeyed the law and wanted to love God with all his strength, and his neighbor as much as he loved himself. What he loved though, in the truest places of his heart, was his wealth. It was so tangible and that value system, of the humans like Solomon, was continually reinforced all around him every day, wherever he went. His wealth loved him back too, because it gave him what the humans want as animals—safety, security, love, protection, identity, the ability to survive, status, honor, respect, etc. Jesus knew this, and loved him. He saw that he may have been trying to be right with God, but the wealth he had made it impossible for him to trust God, because in the truest reality he had everything he needed.

What he didn't understand about the law was that wealth tended to bring to its recipients an alienation from their brothers, not a love for them. If a Hebrew made himself a slave to his brother, he was to be set free every seventh year for that very purpose—so that power could not be accumulated and then used to accumulate more for one at the expense of another. That is how money works—when you have it you can use it to accumulate more for yourself, which can expand in a sort of mushrooming effect. It can be used for bribing and corrupting the judges in the nations too. The deceitfulness of riches is in their ability to corrupt and lead a son's heart away from his true love and master, which should be the Father. The deceitfulness of wealth is that you can hope in it—that it will give you something worthwhile back to you if you serve it. The One who was most blessed by God was poor in worldly wealth, respect, status, identity, and honor. Paul regarded worldly riches as garbage because he knew about something better.

The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.

What are the worries of this life? Simply put, what am I gonna eat and what am I gonna wear (what am I gonna use to protect myself from the elements)? Jesus made a specific point to talk about these worries of the natural life:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

We aren't just going to be able to say "okay, that's all I care about now." That's not being honest in our heart with God. We need to feel and realize how much we do care about the things the humans love and run after, because they have been cemented into our identity as the animal instincts that lead us—what we love. The only way we can be transformed is if we don't hide from those things, so they can be pulled out into the open and killed, like the inhabitants of the cities of the land that the Israelites were to completely destroy. If we allow them to hide in us, to keep serving us as slaves, they will pull us away from serving God, and our hearts will be led astray from our Father.