The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ And Then There Was Light

Posted on October 27, 2019 by Chip Murray

And Then There Was Light

(13) But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. (14) This is why it is said:                                                                      “Wake up, sleeper,
    rise from the dead,
    and Christ will shine on you.”                                                                                          (15) Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, ~ Ephesians 5:13-15

There is no better example of man’s present state of moral “dead to the light” darkness than the question I received from a young “Progressive” Liberal man from REAL Warwick this morning, asking me why inclusion, equality, and climate-change are not principles? Like the young Eagle Scout from last week unable to see behind the BSA inclusion of gays and now young girls. Our young men aren’t stupid, they are dead to the light of objective truth and reality. They’ve become actors much like Greta Thunberg, acting in a play, who refuse to come out of character. Why? Because they’ve tragically been led to believe the characters they are playing are better people than who they really are…

Our Founders understood a free press to be as important to the life and liberty of the American People, as sunlight is to a healthy garden. None of them put it as well as Jefferson himself…

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

But because we have come to suffer the former, most of us are in the dark about this fundamental truth of their one precious work, and ALL that separates and shields us from tyranny…

“Consequently, while the hallowed doctrine of stare decisis—the rule that judges are bound to respect precedent—certainly applies to the lower courts, Supreme Court justices owe fidelity to the Constitution alone, and if their predecessors have construed it erroneously, today’s justices must say so and overturn their decisions.” ~ Myron Magnet, Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution

Which brings us to my absolute favorite wordsmith/artist, Maureen Mullarkey, who shines a brilliant light on the ever-scheming patron of “Enlightened Globalization”, Jeffrey Sachs in cahoots with “(Pope?) Francis, a globalist to the bone, (as) its high priest”, and their “propaganda piece” (via Schmalz) contribution to St. Peter’s Square; Migrants and Refugees—a comprehensive, undifferentiated, impersonal category— are a maudlin abstraction useful in promoting globalist dreams. ~ Shrine to Migrants in St. Peter’s Square

As our God of Ephesians through Maureen shines His light on the two artists in the square…

Rodin commemorated the moral courage of men whose fortitude grew out of lives practiced in the habit of virtue. He worked in admiration of what Hemingway called “grace under pressure,” an aspect of character—an attribute of the soul—unbeholden to wealth or privilege.

Schmalz’ work, by contrast, derives from a downward cultural shift: the displacement of heroism by victimhood. Status as an underdog, a casualty of the past and the accidents of living, is what earns placement on a pedestal in St. Peter’s Square. Grievance (e.g. those Cherokees), mistaken for an endowment, passes as grounds for esteem.

Even Gideon’s 300, those special men who were the most watchful, careful, and situationally aware…would have been lost as babes in the wilderness without His light. Last Thursday evening at Men’s Bible Study, I watched as a father began to realize our children are being ordered into disorder in the very places we send them to learn, by the very people we entrust to educate them…which brings us directly to our charge in Ephesians 5:15…or more specifically 5:11, Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.    ~ Luke 19:43-44

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ Situational Awareness

Posted on October 20, 2019 by Chip Murray

What’s Missing?

But the LORD said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water, and I will test them for you there. Then it will be, that of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ the same shall go with you; and of whomever I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ the same shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water. And the LORD said to Gideon, “Everyone who laps from the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set apart by himself; likewise everyone who gets down on his knees to drink.” And the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was three hundred men; but all the rest of the people got down on their knees to drink water. Then the LORD said to Gideon, “By the three hundred men who lapped I will save you, and deliver the Midianites into your hand. Let all the other people go, every man to his place.” So the people took provisions and their trumpets in their hands. And he sent away all the rest of Israel, every man to his tent, and retained those three hundred men. Now the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.        ~ Judges 7:4-8

It’s impossible for me to overstate the timely importance of today’s message. I probably would not have come across the story of Gideon’s 300 had I not heard Craig “Sawman” Sawyer of Veterans4ChildRescue utter the words “situational awareness” in a very powerful talk I attended last Saturday. And for the second week in a row now it was my Oath Keeper brother and good Friend in Christ John who gleaned from my experience, this week’s Prayer & Fast Wednesday focus on Gideon and Judges 7. God wanted men who were alert, who had their eyes wide open to reality, you might say. God wanted the men with Gideon to be the very best, the watchful, the careful, and the aware who kept their eyes open. And it was these 300 men who were outfitted with trumpets, and provisions. These provisions were probably the pitchers or pots that they later broke later on in the story. …Jesus Christ is forming another Gideon’s army. ~ Richard T. Ritenbaugh, Gideon’s 300

The other amazing thing I learned from Craig is how he and his team, who have been hunting child predators since his own daughter was kidnapped, beaten, and raped in 2017, realized early on the evil they were up against in a battle-space of powers and principalities, and began devoting as much time to their prayer and worship as they did to their regular tactical training…just as we did this summer. Our own realization formed the very impetus for our Prayer & Fast Wednesdays…

…which brings us to the real nugget of wisdom in Judges 7, God wants us situationally aware in both the physical and spiritual dimensions. I love the FB postings my friends put up of their greatest treasure…their beautiful grandchildren. We welcomed young Ryan James Galvin into the world this week. It would break my heart if any of them were to suffer what Craig Sawyer and his family suffered and endured. But the truth is that our world is growing darker, and we have a news media that intentionally suppresses the truth about child trafficking. I was disgusted to hear about the political resistance, abuse, and threats Craig, his team, and their families are exposed to for doing the work they do. Think about that in the context of Lebron James bowing to Chinese tyranny and oppression this past week. Welcome to the devil’s playground…where it is ALL about the money.

What struck me most profoundly in the story of Gideon is how powerfully it overlays the times we are presently living in. The same Medianites that savaged and plundered the people of Israel, roughly 1,200 years before Christ, are savaging and plundering the entire world today. They are a much bigger army, a more ruthless army, a better concealed army, and a very well financed one to boot…much of it drained from us in the form of fees and taxes. The modern day Medianite is better known to us as the Globalist…the Hydra with many heads.

Modern man, gripped by the vice of effeminacy, is Gideon “cowering in the winepress” before God gives him His purpose…a transition we so desperately need in this hour. Once that fear is tried—meaning, once that fear of men, and all those other things is tried, and we overcome it—out of it, as we see in the life of Gideon, comes mighty deeds of faith. As Paul says here, “out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.”

My REAL Warwick friend Joyce said it perfectly the other day, “We are fighting for the soul of America.” Yes, just as my friend Dike is fighting for the soul of his Nigeria, as Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins are fighting for the soul of their UK, as the people of Hong Kong are courageously fighting for the soul of their Hong Kong. We are so situationally unaware, we don’t realize that the same beast Kaepernick and Lebron James bow down to is the very same beast controlling thought and expression on our college campuses, flooding our streets with Fentanyl, pushing Climate-Change and Gun-Control, storming our libraries with Drag Queen Story Hours, and emasculating our boys. Clearly, the last thing the Globalist wants is for a young boy to grow “reverent to God” and “morally straight” through his cowboy stage into the fully initiated and finished warrior stage.

There is a very interesting military acronym born out of the need for situational awareness. OODA (Observe, Orient, Direct, Act). Something very interesting occurred in California last week that removed the critical Observe and Orient capability of more than a million residents. They turned off their power (Observe), and decided to no longer support HAM operators (Orient). How many of us are aware of anything other than what MSM has reported to us? How many of us are aware of how all these dots connect to the madness of those attempting to overthrow our duly elected President, and what happens when they fail? I have another new acronym for you. CCF (Concentric Circle of Friends). If all infrastructure and services were to go down in your area for two weeks, what’s your plan? Put another way…when the supply chain to your area is severed, what will be the plan of the hordes of addicts, sexual deviants, and immoral people inclined to violence? Perhaps developing your CCF before stuff goes down would be a very wise thing to do?

Finally, I have two situational awareness stories with happy endings to share, one present and one past. Recently, someone I love dearly gave me the book “Jesus Calling” by Sarah Young. I noticed something very, very subtle early on in the reading of her daily messages. I realized an almost invisible thread connecting the days. It was the encouragement of passivity…nothing for me to do, no action required…God has this. My situational awareness led me to Tim Challies’ Review.

My past story occurred when I was a six-year-old living somewhere on Long Island. In an inexplicable rush to the cowboy stage, I boarded a school bus I wasn’t supposed to board, which dropped me off in the middle of an area more urban than suburban. It might as well have been nowhere to me. LOST (no cell phone). All I remember is that an FBI agent named Frank “Bucky” Illig found me and brought me home to my frantic parents. The memory wore off…haven’t thought about it since…until Craig Sawyer mentioned situational awareness in connection to LOST children. I found the man who very well have saved my life this week!  Meet Frank “Bucky” Illig

Until we have been disciplined properly by means of spiritual confusion we shall always want to bank on God’s miracles and refuse to do the moral thing ourselves…When we have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have to learn to obey God in every detail, then the shroudings will be lifted, the shadows will disappear, the strangeness will go, and we shall begin to understand the friendship and fatherhood and the faithfulness of God with regard to our lives. ~ Oswald Chambers, Toward Fuller Communion

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ Rebels With a Cause

Posted on October 13, 2019 by Chip Murray

Rebel Without a Cause

For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. ~ 2 Timothy 3:2-5

At first glance of the passage, after John suggested the “Rebellious Spirit” in 2 Timothy 3:2-5 as the P&F Weds focus, I missed the rebelliousness of it. Maybe if Timothy had used resist rather than avoid, I thought…but he (John) clarified, and it made perfect sense. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how perfect for the times we are living in…compared to, oh…I don’t know…say 1955 when Hollywood writers Nicholas Ray and Irving Schulman created the character Jim Stark played by the iconic James Dean as the Rebel Without a Cause. We had a term for the young violators of 2 Timothy 3:2-5 back then…

Juvenile Delinquency ~ the habitual committing of criminal acts or offenses by a young person, especially one below the age at which ordinary criminal prosecution is possible.

There is such a spiritual abundance of grist for the mill in this week’s prayer focus, I hardly know where to begin. Just this past Thursday evening I sat with twenty of my church brothers in our men’s bible study of the John Eldredge book “Fathered by God” where we each shared memories of our “boyhood stage” experiences with one another…the good, the bad, and the ugly. We are one month in, and we still have five more stages to go. And boyhood, as we all agreed, is the foundation for all that follows us in this amazing journey of life as God’s children.

Last week, In the Presence of the Lord, we talked about waking up to the Who & Why.

Looking back on 1955 now, I’d say having an apron-clad Mr. Magoo (Jim Backus) as the father who never stands up for you was a pretty good cause. On the other hand, in hindsight, I realize now where the men behind the curtain (Nicholas Ray & Irving Schulman) were leading us. The next decade brought us The Graduate. And by the seventies the nucleus of real American power as astutely observed by the French historian Tocqueville in the previous century had become…

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I’ve got that feeling once again
I can’t explain you would not understand
This is not (who) I am
I have become comfortably numb…

Pain can be, and often is, a very good thing…a Godsend, because it notifies the body of an intruder that means it harm…something that requires our attention so that the threat can be eliminated, and the body restored to good health. By breaking down the berm that protected the nucleus…the American Family, they essentially destroyed our immune system. Which brings us to the very point of today’s message….

It’s really quite nothing to rebel against the assault on virtue when virtue is in vogue. Wouldn’t it be something if the two writers had inserted “without” between the rebel and his cause…unwittingly? But as most of my readers know by now, we ain’t in Kansas anymore. I could bore you with the details, but essentially everything Timothy warned us of and counseled us to avoid, the modern world encourages our children to embrace. And its only getting worse. Last night as I was traveling home from a freedom festival in Pennsylvania, I listened to a most disturbing John Jacob Smith podcast about new police training on domestic terrorism. I listened in disbelief and amazement as Smith read the threat profile from SLATT (State & Local Anti-Terrorism Training)…describing me to a T: Patriot, pro-God, pro-Nationalism, pro-Constitution, pro-2nd Amendment, anti-Globalist, anti-Communist, anti-UN, anti-illegal immigrant…you get the picture. And then I wake up this morning to an email from one of our active-duty law-enforcement members with an even more disturbing article about radical changes to our justice system already passed and set to take effect on January 1st. These new changes, which include dignifying criminality by changing the word defendant to principal, will effectively remove the handcuffs from criminals and place them on the men and women who we will continue to expect to keep us and our families safe. Really? Read and Weep.

Who are the delinquents now my friends? The Christian stands firmly and squarely in the line of a fire few of us ever saw coming. God is so much more than my Shepherd, as His Word lights the darkness before us. Our only real danger lies in laying low in the face of what is being sent against us. Our Thursday night “Leap of Faith” will carry us to the “Warrior” stage in the nick of His good time for His rebels with a cause. The greatest cause this world has ever known.

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ In the Presence of the Lord

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Chip Murray

The Who & Why

“There is nothing the devil fears so much, or so much tries to hinder, as prayer.” ~ St. Philip Neri (via Brother Carlos)

Imagine his torment when we add the fasting. Imagine his torment in how we worship when we are fully in His presence. Or, as Oswald Chambers puts it, “If at the altar your heart imagines that loving arms are still around you, and that together, lovers as lovers, and friends as friends, can enter through this mighty gate of supreme sanctification, it is a fond dream, doomed to disillusionment.”

Our Prayer & Fast focus this week was on our “Worship” and giving thanks to Him who delivers us from the evil of our time. We looked back on the people in Nehemiah 8:6-18 and found our own worship and thankfulness dreadfully limp and pale in comparison. For most in the general population, there is no worship at all, and for others it is a dutiful hour per week. Those who seek the Chambers standard have become remnant. And we wonder why…

We had a tenant with us over this past Spring and Summer from Georgia. Rick was a Christian who would spend an hour or two every morning in the Word, which I learned meant reading his bible. Those “children of Israel” fortunate to have Nehemiah as their Godly governor, weren’t just in the Word; After standing in the square for eight long hours with heads bowed to the ground as Ezra the scribe read the first five books of the Word so that they understood, they were directed by the Word of God through Moses to be in the Word, away from the comfort of their homes in prayer booths for seven days…“to make great rejoicing”. I think its safe to say that very few of even the most faithful of us have ever come close to that level of worshiping our Father in heaven.

Being truly in the presence of the Lord requires something else from us. For so many of us, the idea of prayer and worship is about ourselves, what we get from the experience; peace of mind, good health, success, a new love, attainment of things. As Chambers writes, Abandonment of ourselves is the kernel of consecration, not presenting our gifts, but presenting ourselves without reserve…I have to learn that the aim in life is God’s, not mine. God is using me from His great personal standpoint, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him.

Who else can we really trust in a world that grows crazier by the minute? And if we were to be perfectly honest with ourselves, we would admit that every last bit of the craziness is the result of our having become too full of ourselves…leaving very little room for Him, if any at all. I tell you that it is beyond amazing how our lives begin to blossom and grow when we reverse the trend. We don’t have to stand for eight hours or live in a booth for eight days to be in the presence of the Lord. In the instant of my thought, I am there. The only trick is to increase the instants I am there for Him. In my car…in my office…in my room…in my day.

You may recall my exchange with Becca, the editor of Dirt Magazine back in the August 4th SMTU. Becca, I’m very pleased to say, published my poem “True Dirt” along with a very fair summary of our exchange, in the September/October issue. God used me to point out to Becca that He was missing from the pages of a magazine dedicated to the very fruits, labors, and laborers of His own garden! And now again, in this week, just days before Yom Kippur, He is using me again…

The Who & Why (Prayer for Yom Kippur & tribute to Leonard Cohen)

Perched up on this garden wall, with skies above the hills below…                                      Who sees the common ebb and flow, the who that come, and where they go?                  Who brought the rain and summer train to steam across the western plain…                    for eastern gain who looks above to thank the dove                                                                  for songs that bring the morning love?                                                                                            Who feels our children’s yearning cry, starved for the answer to the question why?      Who minds the reap, and fields the sow before each winter’s coming snow?                  Who by Fire and Who by Rain to live and die, and live again, and never know…         The Who and Why? ~ CM 10/5

Listen to the late great Leonard Cohen’s song, Who by Fire here.

I had only just emailed my song “Wonder Why” to Becca the day before. What is the Word, if not about us throughout all time, through Judges and Kings, waking up and falling back asleep over and over again? These things and so much more come to us when we are able to find ourselves In the Presence of the Lord.

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ Words to Love By

Posted on September 29, 2019 by Chip Murray

God’s Love

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality. ~ Romans 12:9-13

To say these are extraordinary times seems almost cliché to me now, and wholly insufficient in describing the true depth and breadth of what our lives have become. Now some might say, that our lives (life) is what we make of them (it). And on some level…a particular level, they would be absolutely correct. The truth is, there are two worlds in which we blessed creatures with free will may choose to live; God-centric, and world-centric. Those who would ascribe to the life is what you make it adage dwell in the latter. Even though they may acknowledge God and pray for him to be on Their side, those well-anchored in the former realm pray to be on His side. I have sandwiched today’s SMTU between the Romans passage and 1 John to help make this point clear.

Why is it important for my self to make this point clear to your self? Simply because God-centrically, my love for you is genuine. And, this being so, I would suffer tremendous hardship, and bear enormous pain to open your heart and mind to His promise in 1 John 17, and save you from where the world that passes away would otherwise leave you.

As has been the case for all the Summer SMTU’s and now this first of the Fall, they present themselves to those who seek Him…in the fertile soil of fellowship, tilled and nurtured in the fervency of prayer and fasting. God was as crystal clear this week as He has been all Summer long in leading us…from the lowest place of humility to the highest peak of His genuine love. Having planted Love on our hearts as our prayerful focus for the week, He provided the perfect settings for the seed to take root. On Tuesday morning I attended a presentation given by our Oath Keeper Chaplain Rev. Bill Banuchi, Regional Director of the New York Faith & Freedom Coalition on America’s Godly Heritage. And on Thursday evening I attended my Men’s Bible Study of the John Eldredge book, Fathered by God. I’m pleased to report a full house was on hand in both settings!

Here’s the amazing take-away. First, notice the difference in God’s word as expressed in Romans and 1 John. In Romans, He is telling us who to love and how to love. In 1 John, He is telling us what not to love and why. On Tuesday, Rev. Banuchi took us back to the very beginning…to Columbus, the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. He took us back to the time we were thirteen colonies, when the #1 requirement for holding public office was belief in and a relationship with the One God of the Holy Bible, the six miracles of our Revolution, and the founding and protection of our public education system through the Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647. As Andrew Jackson stated, “The Bible is the rock upon which our nation stands.” On Thursday I spent the evening with a roomful of men hungry for the Father’s love, in a world where the “rock” Andrew Jackson so eloquently described as been all but crushed and stolen from beneath their feet. God’s love for us from then until now has not wavered or withered in the slightest bit, but what has changed in us must be our entire focus, and worthy of every ounce of energy we have. More urgent than the economy, foreign policy, or (if you can imagine) climate-change; Our love, how we love, who and what we love must change from the how, who, and what of now to the how, who, and what of then. And by that, I mean from world-centric back to God-centric. In God We Trust was way more than a catch-phrase. It was a conviction of the heart that guided, shielded, sustained, and you better believe STRENGTHENED us beyond any and all measures this world has ever known.

In sharing our personal experience of the Eldredge “stages” on Thursday evening, one of the men told me he had no awareness, experience, or dealings with the threat(s) I described to him from my vantage point of the warrior stage. He acknowledged cutting short his cowboy stage by marrying relatively young as well. The fascinating thing to realize is that the men of yesterday’s God-centric world developed and matured much differently…more fully, I believe it safe to say. The question remains…do we possess the level of genuine love it will take to engage those who seek to deprive us of Our Godly Heritage, and destroy all that we love and cherish? It becomes easier once we understand how the Old Deluder turned genuine love into the impotent cliché of today; nice, safe, feel-good nothingness, fearing the very thought of offending above all else. Words to surely die by.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abides for ever. ~ 1 John 2:15-17

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ The Red Lines of Real Men

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Chip Murray

The Bad King

Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. ~ Rev. 1:7

Our Prayer & Fast focus this past Wednesday was on the Red Line of all Red Lines as presented in the very last book in the Holy Bible; Revelations 1:7 and 7:13-17. Looking back on the trail of SMTU breadcrumbs we have followed to bring us here, I hasten to add, since we began our foray into the realm of principalities and powers, during this most dangerous time of chaos and upheaval, through the treacherous fog of human nature, we are presented with the illuminated runway only the willing fool could miss: Humility & Humiliation>Boldness & Fortitude>The Whole Armor of God>Discernment>The Inversion of Right & Wrong>The Red Lines of Real Men. He’s preparing us for the greatest and most final Red Line of them all, drawn by the greatest Real Man, Fathered by God Himself…

It’s far easier to see and appreciate real men after the long train of disappointments and failures from the tragically long line of what John Eldredge describes as uninitiated and unfinished men. I have to say, a bright crimson flag unfurled for me when Canada’s most uninitiated and unfinished man (pictured above) proudly admitted that he and his wife were raising their two sons to be Feminists a couple of years ago. Today, the albatross of corruption he has hung ‘round his own neck has all but extinguished his hopes for re-election…after the damage done to his country by his feckless administration. Of course, we Americans were treated to our own version of leadership by the uninitiated and unfinished man and the famous red line that wasn’t during his second term in office.

Uninitiated and unfinished men are mostly unprincipled men. They lack the credibility that comes from character and moral fortitude that would give the red line its desired effect in the first place. Though he might be great fun at a party, who would respect a red line drawn by the man pictured at the top of the page? Modern man, taken as a whole (our current President excluded), detests conflict. He much prefers to be “liked”. There are exceptions to this in the corporate executive world where aggression replaces agreeable, and the bottom line replaces morality and principle as the primary consideration and driving force. Voilà! The unfinished men have given us a technically superior and efficient world, full of morally bankrupt men…to the tragic point of becoming so very hard to watch the news anymore.

There is something else we need to consider when discussing the red lines of real men. But first, let’s review the five stages of healthy manhood, as presented by John Eldredge in Fathered by God. They are Boyhood>Cowboy>Warrior>Lover>King. The lacking or missing development in any of these first four stages result in the uninitiated and unfinished man, and will determine more often than not, good king or bad king. Because here is the harsh reality in the world of men; Red lines have a totally different purpose for kings than for the corporate executive. For kings, generally speaking, they are for the good of the people. For the corporate executive, they are for the bottom line. Of course, as most of us should know, the bad kings are all about power and control at all costs…the heaviest costs, paid dearly by those they rule.

Often times, the bad kings team up with the corporate executives (ALL unfinished men*) to profit from the illusions they create. These same dark alliances work diligently to turn virtue into crime, and perversion into virtue. Breathe deep the gathering gloom…a stone’s throw from the pristine sanctity of your country club fairways and greens; the unintended consequences. In a world fashioned by uninitiated and unfinished men, we reap what we have sown. Bad kings kill life on both ends of the spectrum, and enslave the middle…time after time.

The holy and only purpose of God’s ultimate red line is to bring His children home. It is only our unrepentant sin that separates us from the Father who created us and loves each and every one of us beyond human measure. LOVE is the driving force behind the Revelations Red Line. But God desires more for us than to simply be with Him. He wants us to be like Him, which is why He made us in His own image…which also begs the question, “If God has His red line, what is mine?” I am very pleased to introduce you to Chief Counsel Robert David Steele of the International Tribunal for Natural Justice who explains in this 15-minute clip just what the uninitiated and unfinished bad kings and corporate executives have done and are doing with and to our children. I need to pause here and give thanks and pray for the Red Line of the Real Men, many no longer with us (Anthony Bourdain, Chris Cornell, and Chester Bennington to name a few), who risked and gave all to bring this evil to light.

This brings us to God’s retirement plan for us as men. To be blessed to live the life God has made us to live fully and completely as men from boyhood to king, requires us now to be Merlin to Arthur, and Gandalf to the next Aragorn…as Sage. As Oswald Chambers puts it in Struggle for Self, we must be right ourselves before we can help others to be right.

* Stating that ALL corporate executives are unfinished men seems excessively harsh. The fact is that most of the multi-national corporate heads in our modern world pass through a lifetime of filters designed to eliminate the initiated, finished, and principled men fathered by God, in favor of the more Progressive-minded.

Remember, then, what you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know the hour when I will come upon you. ~ Rev. 3:3

 

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ The Inversion of Right & Wrong

Posted on September 15, 2019 by Chip Murray


Everyone has to begin with this struggle for self, and striving to enter in at the narrow gate is a picture of the struggle. Anything that does not enter in at the narrow gate, for example selfishness, self-interest, self-indulgence, ends in destruction. The struggle to enter in, no matter with what it may be in connection, braces us morally. ~ Oswald Chambers, Struggle for Self

WARNING: Minor “Political” Content, viewer discretion is advised.

Not long after Barack Obama was elected to his first term, I watched a video of his “Green Czar” Van Jones speaking to an auditorium full of High School seniors. It is one of the most disturbing videos I have ever seen. In it, Jones is praising the young men and women as Masters of the Universe, far superior to their own parents, and destined to right their parents’ wrongs. It was the perfect cue for what has become the Selfie Generation of Social Justice Warriors (A very sharp contrast to my Oswald Chambers read this past Monday morning, while contemplating the focus for Prayer & Fast Wednesday, on Struggle for Self and the “Narrow Gate”). And we parents? CLUELESSLY setting the torch to our own Western Civilization with each tuition payment to NYU, Columbia, MIT, Harvard, and Brown University. We have literally been feeding our children to legions of Professor Joneses inflating our beloveds away from their own salvation. The exact opposite of Jesus’ Luke 13:23-35 teaching.

But this is the soil that produced the current flock of public-school district superintendents who have all but surrendered to the Social Justice Mob. After encouraging my readers to express their dissatisfaction regarding new trans-bathroom policy in our district, I penned my own letter asking our superintendent if he were familiar with the following quote:

A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right and evil doesn’t become good just because its accepted by a majority. ~ Booker T. Washington

But the question remains, why do we accept what we know to be wrong? A beautiful and extremely intelligent woman in my church recently revealed part of the answer by admitting “My body reacts to political news in adverse ways.” We need to rise above my body to see what they have succeeded in doing to our body. We baby boomers grew up in healthy communities because political news discussion was as essential to life as running water and fresh air. Now, we literally avoid the topic as if it were the plague. Why? Politics always brings argument, naturally. But a good and moral people on both sides of the argument in healthy communities settle arguments in naturally healthy ways. What has happened, in my opinion, is that our entire society has been systemically gamed, rigged…the deck stacked to favor and advantage one side of the argument over the other…to the point that one side of the argument has become a classic no-show. Which naturally means the other side wins…not on merit, not on value, not on whether it is right or wrong, but on the basis of fear and intimidation. Before we get to the question of who rigged the system and stacked the deck, we need to realize that the other side of the argument has been in power an awfully long time and this is just a partial list of their achievements;

  • Total domination of the public education system
  • The elimination of prayer in school and near destruction of the church
  • Total corruption of corporate media and journalism
  • A generation of narcissists with no civic awareness or national pride *
  • Our country divided racially, economically, and ethnically on the brink of civil war
  • The weaponization of the IRS, DOJ, CIA, and NSA against the American People
  • Over 60 million babies murdered by their own mothers
  • A child, sex, organ and drug trafficking epidemic
  • Rampant election fraud and political corruption

Now, let’s get to the who. No one has done more to unrig the system than President Trump in just two years and eight-and one-half months. And no newspaper has done more to expose the who than The Epoch Times. “(Communism) uses the pursuit of goodness as its banner to pull people away from God.” (ET9/13) “Marxism deceives people into replacing traditional moral standards with its ersatz standards that invert right and wrong.” (ET9/9) And the Communist NWO bug has even infected the holy Church of Rome! Welcome to the Great Inversion!

Denis Prager famously stated that the greatest threat to America was the number of Americans who don’t know what it means to be Americans. I believe the “inversion of right and wrong” is the greater threat. The inversion of right and wrong is what created the “number of Americans” who have lost all appreciation for and understanding of the truths of our founding, and the source of our cherished rights and freedoms as Americans. But it is our separation from God that gave the devil his opening to execute the inversion of right and wrong and give it the deadly foothold in our society. Stranglehold may be a better word. Ersatz ~ Not real, fake, inferior substitute.

Our break from God cost us our gift of spiritual discernment, as we covered in last week’s SMTU. Right relationship with God resets our right/wrong compass to help us discern our only True North path to the Narrow Gate in Luke 13, from the all that glitters-smooth sailing-easy street to Ersatz Hell. I found it particularly interesting in our “Narrow Gate” Prayer & Fast focus this week, that Chambers chooses the word struggle where Luke used strive. The true grist for the mill does not come from our trying (striving), but in what it costs us (struggle) to get there. I heard that loud and clear from the men in my bible study group this week, in describing what they encountered in our venture into the territory that threatens Satan’s grip the most. But this is the ONLY place where we will meet Hope’s second daughter Courage, and find the strength to raise the sails St. Augustine spoke to us about the week before last.

 “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”

“God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail.”

*1 in 5 Americans are unable to name a single branch of their own government.

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ Discernment

Posted on September 8, 2019 by Chip Murray

…Not Any More!

The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. ~ 1 Corinthians 2:14

In a world of liars and thieves, “Discernment” is a most precious gift from God. ~ Shutupnsing 9/6/19

What a week it’s been. As I wrote last Sunday, I spent the previous Friday with recording engineer/producer/friend Adrian in his Brooklyn studio recording three songs. I was back this past Monday to record lead guitar parts, harmonicas and background vocals. During our lunch break we continued the discussion we had started on Friday…essentially explaining our VASTLY differing world thoughts, views, and perspectives to one another. Our conversation seeded today’s SMTU theme of “Discernment” as I realized the two most critical factors contributing to how my friend sees the world, and himself as a Progressive Liberal; 1) He is an Atheist. 2) He lives in New York City. Either one of these two factors alone would make discernment of truth very difficult. The two combined make it impossible. This made me think of our Founding Fathers and their prescient genius in divining the absolute necessity of our Electoral College so very far ahead of their time! The importance of providing the level voting field for the urban and rural teams can never be overstated. Beware the modern voice that decries it! (Epoch_Times_20190906_A13_0) “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”—H.L. Mencken

It also made me think of the old Springsteen line from his very first album, “It’s so hard to be a saint in the city.” How many millions of Adrian’s are there in NYC, Baltimore, LA, and Chicago, etc., who are literally “not able” to discern any problem whatsoever with Drag Queen Story Hours for toddlers? It makes perfect sense that the “unspiritual man” who “does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God” rejects the spiritual man’s beliefs that sodomy is one of the gravest sins of all, and DQSH is the sexual grooming of our children of, by, and for Pedophiles “for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them…” Next, I suppose they’ll attempt to normalize cannibalism.

To my spiritual mind, the Progressive Liberal is the bartender on the Titanic AFTER she has struck the iceberg…calling for happy hour…sending his suits to the cleaners…after placing his room-service breakfast order for the next morning…and setting his barber’s appointment for the following afternoon. AND, the 1 Corinthians 2:14 passage above suggests that ours’ is the bigger folly for expecting them to behave any differently. This goes well beyond the sexual realm. He is unable to see the western churches burning, the mosques rising, the streets of London bathed in blood and emergency rooms full from the acid and knife attacks, or the streets of LA and San Francisco filling up with rats and plagues from the human feces of the homeless…from inside the impervious bubble otherwise known as Progressive Liberal Land.

NOTE: The devil has designs on the Heartland.

I just learned on Friday that the Warwick Valley School District has plans to sacrifice education on the altar of Social Justice Insanity by declaring all bathrooms open to people based on how they “identify” rather than their true biological gender. There are two schools of thought with regards to what has become of our public schools. 1) Get your kids out NOW! (Home-school or Christian Academy). Personally, I would love to see churches get back into the role of educating children K-12. 2) Allow our children, shielded with the Armor of God, to witness and shine God’s light in the darkness of our modern public education system. (Would love your thoughts on this. Please weigh in below in comment section.)

The “I Am” that sent Moses is about to be officially replaced with “I am not” by Dr. David Leach, Superintendent of the Warwick Valley School District. I encourage you, whether you live in the district or not, to write Dr. Leach* and respectfully ask him who he thinks he is, and how a learned and esteemed doctor of education can turn his back on the very universal truths of every science known to man, the truths that made him who he is and gave him what he has, and now deny them to those he is responsible for, all to appease the ruthless globalist pagan cult known as Progressivism. The gift of discernment tells us who Dr. Leach is really bowing to here…

Which is exactly how we know who we truly are…

When I say…”I am a Christian”                                                                                        I’m not shouting “I am saved”                                                                                            I’m whispering “I was lost”                                                                                                That is why I chose this way. 

When I say…”I am a Christian”                                                                                            I don’t speak of this with pride.                                                                                          I’m confessing that I stumble                                                                                          And need someone to be my guide.

When I say…”I am a Christian”                                                                                        I’m not trying to be strong.                                                                                                I‘m professing that I’m weak                                                                                            And pray for strength to carry on. 

When I say…”I am a Christian”                                                                                        I’m not bragging of success.                                                                                              I’m admitting I have failed                                                                                                And cannot ever pay the debt. 

When I say…”I am a Christian”                                                                                        I’m not claiming to be perfect,                                                                                            My flaws are all too visible,                                                                                                But God believes I’m worth it. 

When I say…”I am a Christian”                                                                                            I still feel the sting of pain                                                                                                        I have my share of heartaches                                                                                      Which is why I speak His name. 

When I say…”I am a Christian”                                                                                            I do not wish to judge.                                                                                                                I have no authority.                                                                                                                    I only know I’m loved.

By Carol Wimmer, 1988

Then He also said to the multitudes, “Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming’; and so it is. And when you see the south wind blow, you say, ‘There will be hot weather’; and there is. Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?”                          ~ Luke 12:54-56

* Dr. David Leach, Superintendent                                                                                              Warwick Valley School District                                                                                                        PO Box 595                                                                                                                                  Warwick, NY 10990-0595

 

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ The Whole Armor of God

Posted on September 1, 2019 by Chip Murray

That you may be able to stand…

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. ~ Ephesians 6:10-12

I took an old friend to task the other day for not showing up to support the decorated army combat veteran who was publicly lynched on August 21st by a CAIR mob in Toms River NJ, even though the veteran was my old friend’s relative. My old friend lived twenty minutes away from the scene of the hanging. I drove two hours to support a perfect stranger, and two hours to get back home. Another old friend who had posted about his need to start attending community events because of the very same Islamification happening in his community was a no-show too…even though he was less than an hour away as well. They weren’t the only ones who didn’t show. Nobody but a handful of Oath Keepers and two disabled vets showed up for Dan Leonard. WHY?

What is now happening in our communities has more fully metastasized in Europe. It is too late for Europe. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers. Churches are being vandalized, torched, and replaced with mosques. Honest investigative journalists like Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins are thrown into jail and/or having their families threatened and their lives turned upside down for reporting the truth about what is happening. We are in the process of losing and/or surrendering our freedom and our Western Culture. Over here #MAGA Trump supporters are being violently attacked in public places, while Conservative celebrities like Sarah Huckabee and Tucker Carlson are confronted in restaurants and have mobs show up at their homes, terrorizing their families while so many of us remain silent. WHY?

The overwhelming majority of people I grew up with, though they may dare to express their opinion on their Facebook page about what is happening, are silent, indifferent, and disengaged in the very places it matters most. I had one of them assure me the other day, that he would kill anyone who harmed his family. WHAT? Everything I’ve just described is “harm” in the making. Imagine how Germany, Europe, and the world might have been spared the horror of 50-60 million people killed, had the average German stood up to the evil BEFORE the evil took power? WHY DON’T WE TODAY?

I’ll tell you WHY…We’re afraid. Many of my silent friends live storybook lives. They’re afraid…we’re all afraid of losing…losing everything from friends, jobs, and possessions to the greatest risk of all as Saint Thomas Aquinas pointed out in last week’s SMTU; To do good in the face of evil is to face the danger of one’s own death. The schoolyard bullies of our youth have come back to taunt us as bigger monsters. The Corporate Media, together with Hollywood, the Tech Giants and faux “Social Justice” groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and CAIR have all combined to form the most wicked bully to ever roam the planet seeking to destroy everything it cannot control, and everyone it cannot tame.

Dear friend, Life’s most detailed and revealing polaroid is developing incrementally by the day. Most all of what we’ve been led to believe about the world in which we live has been a great lie told by a confederacy of Godless liars and thieves who’ve stolen the future of countless souls and plundered the birthright of an entire nation. By the grace of God, a great purge has begun, shining a cleansing light on the darkest evils imaginable, creating a most precarious balance between the forces of good and evil. To be silent now, as Bonhoeffer himself warned us, is to side with the evil.

Our (Oath Keepers) foray into the realm of Principalities and Powers has brought us through the complementary lessons of humility and boldness leading up to this week’s donning of the Whole Armor of God. All that remains to us is the question of our commitment to truth, or as Oswald Chambers puts it, “Our Devotion as Disciples”. If we can stand before God apart from Jesus Christ, we have proved that Calvary is not needed. As soon as Jesus Christ comes in, He produces havoc because the whole world system is arrayed against His redemption. It was the world system of His day, and particularly the religious system, that killed the Son of God. A world system, I hasten to add, that is crumbling before our very eyes in these very moments.

I spent all day Friday in a Brooklyn recording studio with Adrian, the same engineer who produced Wide Awake in 2010. He moved here from Switzerland in 1994 “to be a rock star”. His band did open for Santana once, and he auditioned to replace STP’s Scott Weiland last year. He doesn’t see any of the world I’ve just described to you. He does not know Angels from Devils. Tomorrow we will put the finishing touches on my parts in three new songs, Angels from Devils being one. He’s a refreshingly rare rational Progressive Liberal. The rational part probably comes from being 50…

I’m going to leave here in the morning. Don’t think I can make one more day. Who can tell rainbows from hell, or angels from devils anyway?

I will close with a few amazing quotes from another great theologian, “To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world; war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendour. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure but does not complain, for it is the friction which polishes him. It is the pressure which refines and makes him noble.” And “God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail.” And, “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”  ~ St. Augustine of Hippo

I love Hope…she gave me my second song, When the World Turns Around;

When it all goes down, won’t find me sittin’ around wonderin’ what am I gonna do. When Truth is back in town honest men ‘l come around and make a better world for me and you.

Now, all we need is the Courage to act. God will provide the rest!

NOTE: CAIR is the real bully playing victim in CT too. If you wish to help please reach out to my friend Jane at act4ourcountry@cox.net Or, message me and I can provide details.

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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The Sunday Morning Tune-up ~ Boldness & Fortitude

Posted on August 25, 2019 by Chip Murray

Boldness & Fortitude WITHOUT a 2nd Amendment!

This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him. ~ Ephesians 3:11,12

The most fascinating thing to me in this life is the number of us who, willingly or otherwise, miss the most transformative moments of our lifetimes, and in most cases the very point of our existence. Some would call it purpose. Which begs the question. Is sense of purpose something we are born with, or something we develop and grow into?  I think of Frodo, and the world Tolkien masterfully overlaid on our own, and it is purpose above all things that screams out to me. Who among us would choose the dark dangers of Mordor over the creature comforts of the Shire…without the call of purpose?

What an amazing life we are living at such a monumentally pivotal moment in the entire history of the world. I suppose, speaking for myself, I can recall an early sense of some sort of destiny that evolved into a higher purpose that felt more like something out side of myself pulling me to it. Like a tractor beam I would often be drawn away and distracted from, but always come back to.

During my baptism ceremony a few years ago, I confessed that I had surrendered to the Lord, only after turning over every other stone. Even though I was an Oath Keeper before I was saved, I am Christian before Oath Keeper, otherwise what is the worth of my Oath? There are two contrasting proverbs; There is honor among thieves, and there is no honor among thieves. The first speaks to an understanding within the ranks, while the second refers to the reality that men will say either or to suit the current situation of men. This is exactly why our Founders warned us that our system of government was designed for a moral people. My Oath is not to the current situation of men, but to the only King I will ever bow to. And the only men and women in this world I trust with my life and the lives of my family, are those who have sworn the same.

Realizing so much affecting our world is the timeless tug of war between good and evil that is playing out in the same domain of powers and principalities described by the apostles, several of us on the Oath Keepers Board created our Sunday night Fellowship Call and Prayer & Fast Wednesdays as a way of turning to Him for  help in developing the necessary muscles for such a fight. It was in this place we were given the theme of “Humility” Wednesday before last, and “Boldness” this past Wednesday. In the Wednesday before we were presented with Humility’s exact opposite quality as demonstrated by CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. This past Wednesday, Old Bridge NJ Democrat Councilman Mark Razzoli provided the most wonderful act of boldness I have ever witnessed. I say boldness because he is speaking these truths in a country where our kids are waving Communist flags while the kids in China are waving our flag on the streets of Hong Kong!

I linked Fortitude to Boldness reading the Ephesians quote above. Our purpose realized in Christ grants us the boldness and confidence through our faith which provides the fortitude so essential to the fight. And, quite honestly, if you don’t think the fight is coming, you’re simply not thinking. And this article from the Epoch Times explains how and why.

Political correctness originated with Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party, when he established in 1967 that those who support socialist policies are ‘politically correct,’ and those who oppose them can be publicly shamed, arrested, or killed. ~ The Corrupt Romance Between Big Business and SocialismEpoch_Times_20190821_A13_0

And this on Fortitude, In his philosophical masterpiece, the “Summa Theologica,” St. Thomas Aquinas defines fortitude as a firmness of mind that is required to do good and endure evil. He goes on to say that “fortitude strengthens a man’s mind against the greatest danger, which is that of death. … [The] dangers of death which occur in battle come to man directly on account of some good, because, to wit, he is defending the common good by a just fight.” ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Fortitude, and the Green BeretsEpoch_Times_20190820_A16_0

Make no mistake #TheStorm is coming. Our theme/focus for this Wednesday Prayer & Fast is The Full Armor of God.

We welcome you to join us… www.oathkeepers.org

 

Chip Murray: Wide Awake
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