What a very cool day it was. It’s a national holiday here for the next two days. Its National Day of Bahrain, which is essentially their version of the Fourth of July. It celebrates when the Khalifa family came to the monarchy. Everything is decorated in red and white national colors. It looks a bit like Christmas decorations. It certainly is festive. There are a lot of car horns honking. Young kids hanging out the windows of cars waving their Bahraini flags, cheering and hollering. Its all quite exciting and festive. I just love living here. I was mentioning to someone earlier today, that it feels like Im on a well paid vacation. Im living in an exotic land, meeting interesting people from all over the world, Im making an impact in people’s lives, and I love what I do. Things are pretty darn special for me right now. Yes, I do have my down days when I miss my kids or bemoan the pain and struggle of my divorce. I air those emotions quite frequently on this blog as you can see. I’ve always been a heart on my sleeve type of person. What you see is what you get. So if my blogs seem to be contradictory, I understand the confusion. I aspire to be what God wants me to be, but I still struggle with the flesh and those emotions of being selfish. Hopefully my honest will help some of you out there. Its like when you see someone and say How are you? They are prepared for the pat answer and nothing else. If someone asks me that, I usually don’t even reply, I’ll just say hello. But if im having a bad day, I’ll say, Im doing pretty dang lousy. Its funny, they usually never know how to react to that. They don’t know if they should say, Im sorry, or what’s wrong, or can I help. They usually don’t care how Im really doing. So they just kind of ignore it. It’s kind of funny everytime that it happens.
I was having a great talk with God this morning. By the way…I was meditating one day in Texas about two years ago. Since my divorce I’ve learned to hear and recognize God’s voice. Its very clear and I know its him. Meanwhile, my friends I was encouraging, were complaining that it was hard for them to hear from God. So one day, God told me to look in the mirror. Just to stare at myself. It was weird, because before, I could never look in the mirror for more than 10 seconds at myself I guess because I didn’t like what I saw. So here I was staring at myself for about five minutes and God spoke very clearly to me. He said “Tell them to look in the mirror.” Then the impressions from God came flooding over me. If people are having a hard time hearing from God, the mirror is a tool that you can use to help you hear from God. (It’s not a magic, Mirror mirror on the wall thing, It’s just a tool). So God told me, If people are having a hard time hearing my voice tell them to use the mirror as a tool to listen to me. When you talk to God by looking in the mirror it does three things: 1. You have to be honest with yourself by looking yourself in the eye. If there is any sin in your life, God cannot speak to you, because sin blocks your relationship with God. So if you think you are hearing from God, and you are living your life in Sin…watch out because that probably isn’t God’s voice you are hearing. So by looking at yourself, you confess all your sins and clear your mind to get ready to hear from God. 2. It eliminates distraction and helps you to focus. 3. If the eyes are the window to the soul, and God lives inside of you, Aren’t you in a sense looking at God through your own eyes.
Well this really works. I suggest that all of you give it a try to see if it works for you. It’s a powerful tool. Though I’d recommend that you do it in the privacy of your own bathroom. If you use the company bathroom to do it, you might get some looks. For me, I’ve been doing it for so long, its like an hotline straight from God, as easy as flipping a light switch. If I am having a issue, quick, someone get me to a mirror, I have to talk to God. Try it…see if you come up with the same results.
So God spoke to me today as he does so often. He reiterated to me not to worry about my loneliness or emotional needs. Again he told me: Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you. That means to me, don’t worry, be faithful and God has my back. Its pretty simple really. The Romanian and I spent the day together, and just remarked how life is designed to be so simple. We make things more complicated with our own self-centered tendencies. Please keep praying for the people Im witnessing to over here. God is really using me. Im convinced that God is working with the Romanian, and she is really close to giving her heart over to God completely. She already trusts and prays to him, I don’t think she ever said the sinners prayer. She says that God has always been inside of her. Why? Because she had grandparents that prayed for her everyday. Never ever discount the power of prayer. It changes lives even the lives that aren’t necessarily ready to be changed. That’s why your continued prayers for my children, will be heard and answered by God.
The Romanian and I laugh a lot. We went to see Ghost Town, With Greg Kinnear in the cinema. Great great comedy. I heartily recommend it. And Afterward we went to an Iranian restaurant around the corner from my house. We ordered two appetizers, Humus is great here, I had lamb chops, she had chicken. They brought us so much food…and the bill….$15. For a nice restaurant.
It’s another day off tomorrow. I got invited to a guy by the name of Nabs, birthday party. Im honored that he invited me. Nabs as I mentioned last night is in training to be the first Arab to reach the North Pole. Apparently its quite physically strenuous. I have to bring drinks and a friend. It should be even more opportunity to meet people. Im getting connected socially and professionally here. It feels great.
After dinner The Romanian and I came back to watch my movies on my website (http://homepage.mac.com) if you want to see them too. She is so interested in my work and wants to see everything I’ve ever done. Its quite an ego boost. Yet even though we still get along great. We reiterated, we are still friends. I wonder if that is going to last. Im starting to meet some very interesting people, both online and around Bahrain. Well…I just have to Seek First…and everything else will be sorted out. By the way, I love it when you leave comments on my blog. Plus feel free to forward the link (http://rickbeeman.blogspot.com) to whomever you think might be interested in it.
2 comments:
your blog very beautiful and more info ,make me excited. Congratulation!!.I come again
The main obstacle to hear God is our lack of understanding, many believe that we need to be holy and blameless to hear from God. Its true that sin separated man from God, but Jesus came to restore this broken relationship of mankind with God.
God always talks to us irrespective of who we are or what we do, in other words our spirit is always in communication with God. Since we are not living according to our spirit we don't know it or understand it. How many times we come across situations where we knew we were wrong How many times we cried out to ourself “I knew it was wrong”, How did we knew it? Who told us it was wrong? Its God, speaking through our spirit.
I hear lot of people praying “Father talk to me, answer me”, its a wrong prayer, God is always talking to us, but we not hearing. For example, most TV stations broadcast 24/7 we wont receive them until we tune in, they don't start broadcasting when we tune in, but we receive them only when we tune in. We sometimes tune into wrong stations, we cant receive CNN when we are tuned in to FOX.
If we don't receive a station its not their fault, it might be our receiver or we were not tuned in. Like wise if we don't hear God, its not his fault, its our fault, we need to tune in to his voice. We need to pray..”Father tune my ears to your voice”. Jesus said “My Sheep will hear my voice” so all we need to do is some tuning.
Another obstacle of not hearing from God is that many don't know how God talks. He can talk in audible voice or through the word of God or through other men of God, but often he talks to us through that gentle voice in our spirit, our spirit then push them as thoughts into our mind, once we are familiar with his voice, we will hear it loud and clear, knowing him is the key to recognize his voice. Initially we must be very cautious, it can be our own thoughts or the thoughts devil brings in. If we are not sure we need to wait for confirmation, we need to know that all what Gods tells us will be in tune with the written word of God, so we always have refer to it, Its like having a prompter and a map as we drive, if we are are not sure of the prompt we can look at the map, or if we miss a turn in the map the prompter will prompt. Once we start listening to him his voice will become familiar to us, and as it becomes familiar its will be easy to communicate with him.
Next question is how to tune in to God? Reading the word of God and meditating on it, asking God to explain it is what I tried. You will see his words coming to life before you, the verses you read all you life will suddenly become colorful, verses will start popping out at you, yea you wont miss out Gods voice there.
So get ready, raise your spiritual antennas and start tuning in!
God Bless you
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