September 22nd.

O house of Israel, I will judge you, each one according to his ways, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!

Ourselves is what we must repent from, because the wild animal nature that drives us makes us naturally prone toward hating God. One major characteristic that marks the animal is fear. Fear is why people do everything, because everyone's a slave to the animal nature. Afraid on the most fundamental levels which evade detection that we'll never be loved, afraid that we'll not have enough to eat, that we'll be exposed to the elements or that we'll be stripped of our pride and dignity and thought of as just some nobody with no identity or self-worth, just a plain jane nobody with nothing special that would make anyone want to love us.

Yet that is what we become to the humans when we follow the Lord, which is in effect becoming dead to them. We then become alive to another purpose and family, one which the humans don't know about (no matter how much they say they do). The secret family of God is just that, and it doesn't just become unsecret and unhidden just because a group of humans wants it to. That which we hate most we must become, but not by our own power (we would never become that by our own choice). That is what the Son became for us who were called into the Father's secret family, so why wouldn't we want to choose to become that or any other thing he asked, for him and the Father to show the genuineness of our choice, which comes at that cost—to lose what we love, what we live for and made our life.

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'

Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple."

What it loathes is the last thing that the animal ever wants to become, so it doesn't mind being a hypocrite about it—its purpose is to protect its self at any cost and that's just another survival technique, one it can even fool itself with to avoid dying. We must, and we will if the spirit of the Father lives in us, because that is what the spirit's purpose is.

My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest. She roars at me; therefore I hate her.

Changing us from proud, self-willed, stiff-necked animals who roar at God in the forest because they are scared to death of dying all the time; to broken, gentle, docile lambs who have no ability to protect themselves, but who must rely on the good shepherd and those whom their Father sends to protect them.

Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD, and abhor those who rise up against you?
I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.

We are beginning to come to the realization of just how far away we are from being useful to the Lord; from producing fruit for God's pleasure; from being one bit able to be enjoyed by Him. We see that animal is still in us, living in the dark places and ready to jump out at any time and we just want to protect it all the time so it doesn't have to die. We pretend it's not there, because when the situation is adjusts even a little, that's when it always comes out. Certain things trigger it, mostly things that the animal wants to avoid. So when it feels threatened in any way, it comes out to protect itself, to roar at whatever is trying to get at it.

These are why we have trials, those  unpleasant circumstances that become those triggers. The animal's operational mode is to avoid trials at all cost, to build up whatever it can around its self so that it can be protected against them or whatever else comes along. If the way of the spirit is to rely on our Father to protect us, to give us what we need, then it seems logical that we will experience more and more of these trials that undo our firm grip on what we hate to let go of. The teacher will show us that he is willing and able to provide for us, protect us, and give us whatever the Father wants to give us because He knows what we need. We don't know what we need, any more than the first humans knew that they needed that fruit to give them the ability to "know good and evil," as though it were something good for them. The Father knew it wasn't, but they didn't trust Him. Instead they trusted the liar, who is still here living right inside us, telling us that this or that thing will be good for us, it will give us what we instinctually crave, what we think we need to help us with our dilemma of survival like any wild animal.

Being given what we need from the Father's hand happens supernaturally, because the Father is secret and hidden from the humans (supernatural), who can only observe the natural. Each time we see that yes, he in fact does give us what we need, and even though we try to have and hang onto whatever was given to us, we cannot, because that's not how the Father works with His sons. That's how the humans work—only able to trust and believe what they can see, observe, hold and control. Of course it spills out into the natural, but not much because it must remain slight, subtle and ambiguous in order to remain uncontrollable, unable to be nailed down and kept, which is not the way of trust and belief. It will always never be obvious to the natural, because then we wouldn't need faith, or to remain faithful.

All of it is to build our faith in this Lord who is invisible, yet who we know lives in our hearts. That is what faith is about—that even though it seems like he is not there, we know he is because he is always there, however slight, subtle and ambiguous his presence is so that we don't do with this gift what we want to do with everything—get it, buy it and own it so it becomes our property and we can hang onto it, so we don't have to do the work of believing because it is work. Even if everyone else tells us, by their words and their lives, that he is not there, we still believe in him who is invisible more than what is visible—not because some other human(s) told us but because he is there, calling us to go in, further away from what we love because it makes us feel safe, and toward Him who can actually make us feel safe like we never were able to imagine. This is what God loves in His children, that they disregard the obvious, visible things and instead go the way of the One who says he is there even if nobody else can see.

We know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the spirit and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the spirit.

The animal will always want to control everything it can, so as to preserve and make things better for its self. That is what it will very efficiently continue to do in us while we are mere humans living to and for ourselves in a world of hostile, threatening (however civilized they may seem) human animals trying to do the same. We begin to start to see the mechanisms of the animal at work in us, which is the first step to moving away from its dominance over us, because although it's good for an animal, it's bad for the sons of God because its job is to keep its host away from the Father. The trials we suffer are for the purpose of breaking down the animal in us little by little and replacing it with the life of the knowledge of our Father, who we begin to see will take care of us. The trials show us how we naturally react to real situations, so they betray us for who we are at our core. They serve to show us what is in our heart, and not just theoretically but actually because we see that we can't even help what we do. It automatically comes out of us because it's living in us. The trials are tools that the teacher uses to break down the animal in us, long and short.

"Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man `unclean.' For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man `unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him `unclean.' "

The heart is where the animal lives, so that is where it is attacked, from within, not without. It's not an exciting attack like we like to think, but more of an extended period of wasting away, like the babylonian capture of Jerusalem which took many months of waiting outside the wall, while the food in the city slowly wasted away inside.

It was because of the LORD's anger that all this happened to Jerusalem and Judah, and in the end he thrust them from his presence. Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

So in the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. They camped outside the city and built siege works all around it. The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled. They left the city at night through the gate between the two walls near the king's garden, though the Babylonians were surrounding the city. They fled toward the Arabah, but the Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered, and he was captured.

Slowly we begin to believe that we can't rely on the animal instincts to protect and provide for us (by our own hand), or to give us anything good once we have tasted what is good. Only our good Father can do that. In fact we realize that we can't protect ourselves from what we need protection from, which is us, and that we can't give us what we need, which is to be rid of our human animal selves.

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one.