November 23rd.

Those who have believing masters are not to show less respect for them because they are brothers. Instead, they are to serve them even better, because those who benefit from their service are believers, and dear to them.

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

For the humans money has always been important, because it easily satisfies a valid and ongoing need within them to survive, and when they feel like they're surviving then the more they can pad that cushion of feeling like they're surviving and going to be able to keep surviving, the better for them. And they agree amongst themselves, in a sort of unsaid rule amongst animals that recognize the need to survive, that that behavior is acceptable so they expect it and excuse it, because the need/craving/instinct to survive doesn't go away. It is like a strong force and power that is always on its guard for threats to avoid and opportunities to exploit for their own gain, because they are the ones who are looking out for their own survival. This necessity creates a way of life that needs to be promoted in the humans that they want to encourage so they can keep doing it. Wherever you look, that way of life is there, showing examples of how to be and what to do, promoted and maintained by whomever has the power to do it and keep it, welcoming those who agree with the way of life they promote and discouraging those who don't.

Paul's concern is to abandon the human value systems and convince Timothy to do the same, to convince him to run after and secure not money or comfort, houses, land or family; but only one thing, the "life that is truly life." What Paul began running after during the second half of his life is a surreal kind of non-existence where pariahs go to become outcasts from the "normal" people, those who obey the culture and adhere to what whomever is in power has dictated is the way to live. The things that Paul was saying weren't verifiable or provable by human logic, because it wasn't the intention of the Father that they be generally acceptable, accepted, nor even understood. That agrees with His desire to remain hidden from the humans, to keep the mystery of His reality as secret as he kept the identity of His only Son such a secret for His purpose, which is so ironic in so many ways. In every facet of its turning there is another irony to be seen and discovered by the one who has eyes to see and ears to hear, as contrasted to the humans and their presumptions about what God is like and how He works—what He's after and how He's going about doing it. The reality of the Father follows a kind of flippy-floppy relationship with the natural reality.

Many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

The last will be first, and the first will be last.

What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.

The animal can only conceive of life being what it can see with its natural eyes, hear with its natural ears, and understand with its natural mind. Money just happens to be a big part of that life. Paul talks about the other life, which he claims is truly, actually life as compared to the temporary existence that everyone considers life. Because it always has its final end in death, that's what it is, where it can find its most stable definition—not life, but death. Existing through the timeline of one's life should just be called a temporary state of existing, not life, since the ultimate end to every so-called life is actually death, not a continued existence that never ends (what life seems to have to be). Death is the ultimate and permanent reality of everything that is assumed to have life. It is the way of everything that can be seen and known about.

In this way they 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 life that comes from the Father isn't seen, understood or even noticed by those whose perceptions are limited to what can be seen and understood by an average human. Paul knows about another world, another place, another country that the animal cannot conceptualize because it is beyond its grasp. The main thing Paul is trying to convey to Timothy about money is that it is an easy thing to count on and trust instead of the gift that the Father gives to His sons, which is the proof of actual life, but money can only temporarily satisfy our temporary cravings to feel safe. Money is tangible, and we can realize its ability to make us feel safe when we possess it, and unsafe when we don't. Animals naturally love money, because it's the most salient thing with which to build a security wall around them. It can buy them the things they need, but the bigger reason is because it can provide them with that feeling of safety and security.

The only way for those like Paul and Timothy to feel safe is to trust the Father who has called them, not to some generic religion that sprung up amongst the humans like all the others, but to a secret calling that wasn't publicly disclosed amongst the humans, which is the reason religions spring up. The sons are called to not validate this existence as living, as the humans do, because they have that proof of another life, which only they are privy to. What happened in the centuries following the first is just another example of the humans humanizing something for their own good, making it available to the humans at large so that it could be controlled.

For animals it's fine to adhere to a false religion to make them feel safe just as much as they adhere to money, but Paul isn't addressing animals, or men who haven't been called by God to the hope of His Christ. To men like Timothy, who Paul knew had been called, money poses a serious threat. It's easy to rely on it to provide us with a feeling of security, and even though it's false, nevertheless it's tangible and real to our senses. What money does is compete with God who, for the one called to sonship, wants to be that safety, that feeling and knowledge of security. If the son relies on money, the easy, tangible thing to do that, how can the unseen Father be that safety for the son which He wants to be? What is faith if not believing that the hidden Father actually has busted into our little existence and revealed His reality to us, and that is true in a real way, if it indeed has happened? A response to that belief isn't just remaining as all the other animals remain, but learning to conform to another reality that is foreign to our natural selves. It means abandoning this life and our pursuit of what the humans pursue, which is necessary in order to find the Father who is calling us, but remaining hidden also, so we can't ever just think well we have it all in the bag so we can just go back and live like we used to, following whatever lust, desire, impulse, urge or inclination came up in us to follow. Not just with mouth babble, while we show what we love in our truest fabric, by what we spend our life trying to pursue.

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

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? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

So do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

When we're born unto God, as Paul knew Timothy had been, we are born a second time, from above with an unseen DNA that isn't cheap or easy to get, and impossible to hold onto unless that covenant is being honored which binds the son to the Father. It's all about the covenant that is either being honored or being broken, which leads to significant and tangible—although unseen and unnoticed by everyone except the one in that particular covenant—consequences for the good or for the bad. When we are going through this process, God is becoming our Father, and we learn that He actually, not conceptually, is actively seeking to be our safety, our Good Father. That's something we have to progressively learn as we mature in the spirit. It is impossible to believe if we only possess the animal nature, and it's very difficult to believe when we're first born because that's all we have available to us. As we progress, as we become more mature in the new life, the new way of God instead of the animal, the impossibilities of man diminish as the possibilities of God increase.

For 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 holy spirit and with deep conviction.

We understand that we cannot convince anyone to believe anything we say unless they are called to believe it as we were, in the same way that Paul knew the believers were, whom he knew were under the new covenant. It is not our purpose or intention to convince anyone. If we were to rely on our own abilities to sway or convince we would deceive ourselves. First of all we have no abilities, or credentials, to speak of. Second, there is no strategy, or actual program, except to write down whatever comes to us. We are merely working on the project of creating something out of nothing, every day building another piece of the wall. There is no purpose except to convey what we know to be the truth, as it is being given to us.

Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.

There is no expectation of response or validation immediate or otherwise, although that's what the animal would love to have. We know what has happened to us, sometimes more clearly than others. All that we know to do is produce a record of those happenings, these spiritual events that started in us as the work of the Lord, and which continue to grow stronger and more real as we go along. Along with its growth, comes also a more clear understanding of it as it applies to us in the same manner as it applied to our brothers in the first century. We just have this project in front of us, to build up another piece of the wall, every day sitting down and building, writing, understanding the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, the direction of our lives past and now, what we were and what we hope to become. It's not our option to ever guess at what it may eventually be. However, responding to the voice that is speaking to us is changing us, and the recording of the thoughts and understandings during this process is that wall.

So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart.

After we are first born unto God instead of man there is a very strong need for validation from the humans, since the ego component of its nature is one of the strongest needs the animal knows, as it lives and finds its identity and definition in the world of what it can see with its natural eyes, hear with its natural ears, and understand with its natural mind. It comes up and becomes a spectacle in the son so that it can be noticed as a definite force of specific power to accomplish something in the humans that the Father wants to be removed from His own sons.

As we grow up out of the animal and into the son, things start to change for us, including what we need and crave according to those instincts. We slowly become more aware of the actual spiritual world that we have been born into, and more able to believe that what is being done in us is real. We are given proof, or hope (the gift that God gives to us), that it is continuing to grow, and with that we also are becoming less needy of that validation from the world. It's a slow, steady process. Our belief that it's real and true, even and especially when we don't want to believe, makes that life the is truly life grow stronger and more steadily.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

It does not make any sense to our natural senses, which is the intended effect so that we can actually (not theoretically) learn to trust something/someone other than what we are able to control ourselves. We are not able to "prove" its authenticity to anyone, rather we are only able to have more and more faith (the gift that we give to God) and belief in the existence of this spiritual world where God exists, and our birth into it—only because it was the Father's intention that we do, not according to anything we did. Not only that, but we understand so much of the truth about what is written by others that this happened to e.g., the writings of our brothers about being citizens of another country, another world, another existence beyond what the animal can comprehend. We know that we are being moved, translated from one world to this other one, not merely in concept but in a real way, albeit unknown and unnoticeable to the world and the animals in the world.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

As the first century recipients of the new covenant could recognize the supernatural events that happened all around them, we also realize that the presence of the spirit in us gives us hope to continue—that is a gift from God to us, that allows us to do the work of believing that this thing is true (our gift back to God). Even though it has caused hardships for us, and even though no one else believes us (according to the Father's intention for it to be that way), we continue to experience the growth of this seed that was planted in us, which keeps us moving toward the hidden Father, going in a direction no one wants to go (because it doesn't exist as an actual destination).