September 2nd.

The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.
Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him.

Let him bury his face in the dust—there may yet be hope.
Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace.

We should be filled with disgrace because of our foul, sour attitude that we are privileged and owed something, that everyone should feel the same way about us as we do about our selves. Because of our condition our face should be buried in the dust, waiting for the hope that only the Father can give to a true son to come to us. We should be silent and not speaking, humble and waiting for the word that comes to those who seek the Father. We shouldn't be always talking, always filling our air with worthless words just for the sake of hearing ourselves talk, filling up our egotistical need to feel better by having something important to say. But we don't have anything important to say at all, because we're not important like we always like to think about our selves because of the nature that rules us to keep us that way, in a place where we are far from the Father because we allow that nature latitude to live and roam around in us. That is because we just can't get how evil it is and how it works against us. We're still living in the time when it worked for us to be our best friend because of its ability to get us what we wanted & needed to survive in this hostile world.

Now it's no good, and it does us no good so we have to chuck it. Although we have no power to just chuck it, we have to find the best way to starve it off so it rules us less and less. There isn't anything to just come in and take its place, or else the life and work of the son would be easy. It's hard because we have to go and do what we naturally hate to do, and can't just wait until it's easy, saying to our selves that soon we'll be changed and different, then we'll happily be able to choose the right and reject the wrong. However, that is precisely what the animal says when it's talking; it doesn't want to suffer, and doesn't want to be snuffed out or abandoned by us. That thinking will only lead to a dishonest heart that wants to and thinks it can continue to hide in the lies it wants to embrace instead of taking the unpleasantness of choosing to reject the wrong head on and face the tremendous yet hidden fears that live in us—what we keep safe behind the huge, thick walls we learned to create inside our selves in the secret places where no one can see.

That is what the first humans did right off the bat—run, hide, deflect and accuse—so we know it's the way of the animal and not the son. The son must face his fear head on so that by shining the light on them they will begin to evaporate. That won't happen though by saying that some other time we'll do it, when we're more able, but that time won't come because we're just being a coward who allows himself all the time he needs and isn't able to put the clamper down on what rules him because that's the true form of suffering unique to the sons of God, work which must be done or else they will just remain tied to and ruled by that animal which is disgusted by the thought of suffering since his MO all his natural life was learning ways to avoid suffering, which was to it pain and the shadow of death, which it is programmed to avoid at every cost in its host, as per all the animals.

Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD.

Do not love the world or anything in the world.

The Father's love is exclusive; it cannot live in one who lives for the world, who loves the things the humans love and live for, who surrounds himself with the humans and the things of the humans, so that the way of the animal is constantly reinforced in him, which hampers the process of transformation away from that animal condition and identity to the son the Father intends Him to be, which is the reason for the presence of the life. In human terms, the way to the Father is dark and lonely, silent and unimpressive, not filled with the things we normally surround our selves with to divert our attention away from our plight. It is the way of meekness and mourning, not of celebration and running after what the humans love and celebrate. The one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, who seeks to have a pure heart, who seeks peace with the Father, will not be validated by the humans, but will be insulted and persecuted because of what's inside of them, making them desire all that the son must deny.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

The humans, by nature, think they are inherently good, and they think other humans, whom they have put their own mark of "good" on are also good, and cannot hurt them because they appear to not be a threat to what they've decided to conform to. The sons will have to realize something different about the humans though, especially themselves being altogether human—they are not inherently good, but inherently bad, more inclined to walk away from the Father than embrace Him. What they are willing to embrace is their version of Him and what their version expects from him, for no other reason than because they're animals filled with the need to have and do things the way they like to have them, and have them done (their way, which is always the right way). The only thing that animal nature has to offer the sons is a continual reinforcement as good and desirable, of what the sons should be considering bad, and desiring to be pulled out of—the world and everything in the world, as per the words of John, even and especially the humans who are the most active and reinforcing part of the world. God's adversary does not live in the rocks, trees, or television sets—it lives and moves and has its breath in the humans (us), who are apt to do the most damage to the sons when they commingle with them (reinforce the human way in us).

Everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.

There is a good reason for the continual call that runs throughout all of the preserved words to "Come out from them and be separated," to be able to become consecrated and made holy and clean. That's how the Father wants His son to be—unstained by those around him who are contaminated with a disease they can't and won't ever recognize they even have. The only way for that to happen is by the son voluntarily abstaining from surrounding himself with those who can't reinforce the good in him, but only the bad, not because they're trying to but just because the humans are inherently bad; they carry the disease that keeps them away from the Father, even unknowingly. They cannot reinforce what's good, that which must come from the Father by way of waiting, hoping, seeking Him who is purposely hidden so that He can find out who is willing to look for Him. That is the one He loves and rewards with the satisfaction of His presence inside that one who seeks Him and waits for His gifts, when He is giving them.

The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

It's difficult to see that the humans have a disease that can hurt the sons if we think they're somehow good, which extends out from the position we wish to hide in and hold onto that we're good, in and of ourselves, as we are. It's the animal nature still living in us that makes us do that. Just as the spirit can only recognize itself in another son it is inhabiting, and the sons of God can reinforce the good in each other; so too the animal does the same thing with itself in the humans. So the animal nature that is still living in the son will in the beginning tend to look at the humans with the same eyes he did before, and how they behold each other—as pretty much good and okay, the same as he considers himself on the level that goes underneath the thinking process.

The truth from the Father which isn't in the humans can only be understood if the living word tells the son, as part of the teaching, the revealing, the transformation away from what he was before. It will happen at a certain point in the journey of the son toward his Father when he's ready to hear and accept it, for his good, as part of what the Father desires for him. If the old way is continually being reinforced in him, it will hamper the transformation, which for the son should increasingly be moving toward being his only active interest, toward that of becoming a creature who is learning to be more and more purely devoted to what the Father wants for him, what he loves and runs after above everything else.

You have heard that it was said, "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth." But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

The words of the firstborn Son—what he took them from Jeremiah's Lamentation as what the word taught him about the cursed condition—are to show God's sons what is opposite to the way of the flesh, the impulse of the animal, what defines the humans as such. In not participating in what the humans participate in, in not protecting the animal's right to rule the son and not allowing it to be reinforced in him, the son is able to help the Lord slowly kill the animal nature in himself, to aid in the transformation from animal to son. Otherwise, if he exercises it within himself, it will continue to survive in him, and continue to define him as an animal, which is contrary to the Father's desire (will) for him. That is the definition of *not doing* God's will.

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

This is a hard thing to understand because the way of the animal is so much a part of our very nature, who we are, and the humans as part of how that nature works are the last ones to not consider themselves good, to admit that there is something inherently evil about them, merely because they're animals.

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

Jesus wasn't speaking to the Pharisees at this point, but ordinary people who thought they were good. Yet he calls them evil since they are defined as such just because of the nature they were born into—inherently evil creatures who would naturally rather walk away from God than toward Him. The animal is filled with rebellion toward God, just because of that nature—not because it's better or worse than any other of the humans. It has been God's adversary from the beginning, and the humans were bound up with it as part of the curses of Genesis 3.

If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

The way of the son is going opposite to the way the humans go, and to the way that's naturally inside him to want to go. That's why it's such a struggle, and why we're so easily deceived, because it's our selves we're fighting and we're used to babying ourselves, not being hard on ourselves. Our Father seeks sons who love Him more than their own life, in a sincere way all the way down to the most secret places of our heart. However, because we are purely animals when we are called, that cannot happen unless the miraculous transformation takes place within the son's body, which can make him able to believe enough to even be able to do that in the smallest way.

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, `Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.

The mountain is the metaphorical condition that keeps us separated from the Father, that which standing in the path that leads to Him so we cannot keep walking on it but have to stop because there's a mountain in our way and our path is not straight and level. Our Father seeks a heart that knows its place before Him, but that cannot happen until much suffering takes place.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil.

We may respond with joy to the miracles that are taking place within us, but that doesn't mean our heart has been transformed. They are not there to tell us we've arrived, but that we have to keep walking because there's a long way to go; because if they weren't there we'd most likely just quit because we're pitifully given over to that tendency, which is the animal's way of protecting itself from harm, pain, suffering—all the things it's good at avoiding. The miracles keep coming because just as soon as we're affected by something else, the joy we had a few minutes prior is gone and we are affected by yet another of the human things, so we have to be drawn back to the path where we need to be that moves us closer to Him who is hidden, away from what's exposed, known and readily available. The assembly of the firstborn sons will be filled with those who continued to walk down the path where the humans hate to walk—they don't even know where it is.

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.

The one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it.

The sons' time to celebrate isn't now. Now is the time for a broken and contrite heart—one who puts its face in the dust and doesn't just go about business as usual. He knows he is in captivity because of the rebellion and uncleanness of his heart before God. But he also knows that God seeks those whose hearts wait on Him, who He can lift up out of the dust, the earth, and into the spiritual places where He lives. Only by His hand can we enter the place where our Father lives and be brought near to Him, to know and understand His love for His long-awaited family. It is time to die to what we love.