September 5th.

Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.

So Jehu destroyed Baal worship in Israel. However, he did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit—the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan.

The LORD said to Jehu, "Because you have done well in accomplishing what is right in my eyes and have done to the house of Ahab all I had in mind to do, your descendants will sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation."

Yet Jehu was not careful to keep the law of the LORD, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam, which he had caused Israel to commit.

Why was Jehu so zealous in fulfilling the word spoken by Elijah about Ahab's family, and rooting out the evil of Balaam in the land; but reluctant to turn away from the golden calves? He recognized one evil thing as evil, but not another.

...so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.

He could see the calves, hold on to them and control them. He could say where they lived and how things would go with the god they represented, how they could and couldn't act by Jehu being able to control them and make them serve the purpose of his animal heart, rather than the other way around—Jehu conforming to another reality instead of conforming everything around him to his.

Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

Those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

It's not a call to a terrible life of depravity, but one instead filled with satisfaction, fulfillment, peace and real love. Denying our service to ourselves will seem like a terrible life of depravity, but serving it and the Father and Son cannot both exist in the same body. We shouldn't consider it such a terrible thing to be as Jesus and Paul were in this world—who had nothing—because they knew on a secret level unknown to the humans that they possessed everything in the spiritual world, unseen by the humans, esp. by those who claim to see.

If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

It wasn't as though they weren't being assured all the time that that was true; they had the guarantee living in them, which was being renewed every day. That is the guarantee that God gives to His sons, letting them know by the invisible power that lives inside them that they are sons. It's not validated by the humans because that is not how God works; He wants His sons to be hidden from the humans, and to have to rely on His secret power that nobody can verify, that which lives in their heart, which only God can verify. That's what He continues to do for His sons so they can know with ever increasing certainty who they are to Him. Even after we have been born of God, there exists a force in us that makes us want to continue to be and live like animals; we are pulled to naturally want to default to the side of the animal, to please ourselves. The system of this world is structured in such a way as to make a human continue to be a slave to that system. The way of the humans will be constantly reinforced when we interact with them and participate in their systems. What does the Father have to say about His own children continuing to do that?

Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.

Jesus and Paul could see, whereas those who arrogantly assumed they did see what in fact they didn't, could only see what things seemed to be because of how they appeared within the natural confines of what they could observe with their natural faculties. By these faculties they were able to conclude that the Jesus was a blasphemer, hand him over to those in charge and get the Son of God killed, for the sake of their own convenience (the same way the good church people kicked us out of their precious community for the sake of their own comfort). It's easy though to identify and vilify the bad guy, but what about those who don't appear to be either, the ones who are just going about their business as usual, living in peace with the others around them, seemingly good people who don't want any trouble and don't make trouble?

Was what Jesus and Paul knew, what set them apart from the humans and created a genuine animosity between them just some kind of fluke? Could it be that when the Father genuinely chooses His sons, He puts something inside them that naturally opposes what's naturally in the humans—something totally authentic and alive, yet hidden and secret, that drives who it is inhabiting away from those who are different than they are? What does the enduring story of the Israelites, God's specially chosen people who were commanded by Him to come away from the nations around them (humans at large who *weren't* God's chosen people), tell us about the mind and heart of God concerning a people whom He has specially and particularly chosen with regards to those around them who were different than God was making them?

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."

"Therefore come out from them and be separate," says the Lord.
"Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you."

"I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters," says the Lord Almighty.

That is the power of the animal nature's ability to do its job to continue to turn a son's heart away from his Father as it did with him before the Father was revealed to him, as it does with all the humans—keeping them away from God by turning the heart of man toward himself and the system of serving himself, the way of the curse that the humans are under. The humans don't need to know about the animal nature because it is a friend to them. The sons do need to know so they can come away from it. That is the nature of the animal which keeps the son in the prison of his self if he allows it by following its desires and being led by it. When he is in this prison, he is not free to worship or serve the Father, the Son or his family of true brothers because the animal has him locked up serving it, which is his self so he can't be serving the family's interest.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.

The Lord didn't just warn his disciples willy-nilly or generically, but because he knew what was in man's nature—that tendency to believe the snake's lies to automatically want to build up for himself in order to survive without even thinking. The snake says that the things the humans love and run after can satisfy us and make us better, more valuable people. They are profitable for building up our ego and our ability to satisfy our many natural cravings. We know from our own experience that that's true about the things we specifically used for our own benefit, to serve us. The spiritual reality, though, is that serving these things will turn our hearts away from our Father, which is the hard thing to accept because they are the things we learned to love, and that we used to love ourselves, what we as sons of God and not the world must come away from because none of them lead us closer to the Father, but only away from Him.

Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Why are the things that the humans love and run after so appealing? Because we learned all our lives, by the conditioning we receive day in and day out that they are valuable and we should love them, so we do. They're tangible and we know from our past life as mere humans that they indeed satisfy us on one level, but never that level we couldn't get to, which is the level where the revelation of the Father happens in the sons. It isn't just theoretical behavioral patterns we learned to follow; we perfected our ability to manipulate whatever it is in order for it to serve us that way, and what we didn't need we threw away, according to our particular condition. They might seem benign or they might seem obvious.

However, if they are things that turn us to the right or the left, then they can actually only hamper us in our journey, although it may take a long while for us to believe/accept that. Even more hard to accept will be the fact that the humans, no matter who they are or how safe and nice they seem, can only ever lead us astray because that's just how it works. The process of being transformed from one thing to another is a painful and lonely metamorphosis, necessary for the sons to go through.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Our Father loves us and will provide us with what we need to survive in the world—physically, mentally and emotionally—which in time and through certain circumstances we will learn is all we need to be concerned with regarding our momentary lives and the journey of being transformed to what we before had no hope of ever even knowing about. If we are that free from serving our worldly needs, then we can spend our entire lives seeking our hidden Father instead, which is the least we can do. Saying it is easier than doing it, but it must be said over and over because it's a hard thing to get, then to be able to accept.

Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

The simple argument here is, "What's the point in trying to hang on for dear life what we think we need surrounding us all the time, when even our very life in these bodies—what drives us to do these things that keep us from what's good because we're so afraid of losing what we think we need—is an inferior thing to being out of these bodies." Once we know what's being revealed to us, then anything that detracts from being able to go further in to where the hidden Father exists is just another stumbling block, what hampers us from getting what's been put into our heart specifically because we were chosen to become a son who must come near his Father. Finding the Father and His gift isn't automatic or instantaneous, and the farthest thing from easy. But it is the only thing by which the son becomes able to be satisfied, because it's been put into his heart.

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

It's a scary thing to think about giving up our right to have what we learned to love and count on as humans, how we learned to most perfectly love ourselves. But it is the only way we can truly serve God and not our selves. These things take our time, effort, and service. If we allow the animal still living in us to convince us that we deserve to have all these things, then we should ask our selves why we deserve to have more  than the firstborn Son had.

If we can get past the lies of the snake so prevalent around us, we might be able to appreciate the words of Jesus, that no servant is above his master. Therein lies the truth of it all—the lie is that the things we desire to hold on to will continue to do us good as sons, and we will continue to believe that lie until we're ready to let it go. Then we'll learn that they only served to hurt us in our real desire to walk along the path that leads to our Father without turning to the right or the left, but just going straight ahead. For Paul it wasn't just a giving up, but he knew that he received something far greater in return:

As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way:

in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger;

in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left;

through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich;

having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

In appearance their form was that of a man, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces.

Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.

Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went.