Charlie Lewis Blog

Do the experiences of your life ever seem unreal? There are such contrasts. We have just returned from an amazing cruise where we began in Rome, Italy, visited a couple ports in Italy, then on to France and Monaco and other cities and ended our journey in Barcelona after stopping in a couple beautiful locations in Spain. A wonderful trip, but as always my favorite place on this planet is home. Thomasville, Georgia. Thomasville really is a wonderful place.

A couple of days after arriving home we travelled to Jacksonville, Florida for the services for Fran’s Mother’s youngest Brother, Ted who was sixty-three years of age. Much too young. Cancer had ravaged his body and he suffered greatly. It is a horrible and tragic thing to observe the attack of Cancer. Ted lived with Fran and I right out of high school for a short time. He was a happy and fun guy. Artistically he was very talented. I was always amazed at his drawings. He had no formal training and did not desire to pursue his gifting as a career. I am convinced he would have done well. He loved music and lived a full life. Thank God for Ted and his love and relationship in our lives.

Less than a week later, we travelled to Tallahassee to dedicate a great grandson of a very special Lady who attends our local gathering of Friends we call Seekers Fellowship. What an honor to participate in the beginning of a life in time and to point that life to a living relationship with the true and the living God and the important stuff of eternity. Our life in eternity with time is so short. At its longest it is a nanosecond in our total eternity. What we do in time has eternal impact on our experience in our eternity.

Observing the beginning and the ending of our lives in time floods my spirit and my mind with thoughts about the importance of our having knowledge and a correct awareness of our individual eternity and our eternalness. There is nothing more important to humanity than our understanding our eternity and the impact of our eternity on our forever experience. We begin with answering the fundamental and foundational questions for our lives in time. Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? How am I to live? What happens when my spirit leaves my body? We cannot build a successful life for now and for forever without addressing these questions and using that information to guide our in time adventures. The answers to the questions by each of us are the rudder that direct our lives to a successful outcome. Have you addressed these questions? Time will steal our eternity if we do not know and understand the relationship between time and eternity.

As you know, I often like to pass along the prophetic words of my friend Johnny Enlow. A few days ago, I shared with you a powerful word regarding God’s move of Economic Justice happening right now in August 2018. Johnny has recently released another compelling word about God’s Roar of Justice. More good news of how darkness is being thwarted, and His light is overtaking every shadow! Click here to download a copy of this word.

Blessings in all you do. Your going out, your coming in, your sitting down and your standing up. You are blessed.

Greetings from Barcelona, Spain.  Our spirits are full. We have just completed a cruise with Convoy of Hope.  Convoy is involved aggressively in feeding the hungry and in disaster relief all over the world and in the United States. We are just becoming familiar with the organization and with their work.  They feed over one hundred forty-thousand children everyday. Through local volunteers and many networks of churches, food and services are delivered directly to the needy daily. Their systems appear to have mastered the ability to go directly to the needy without government or political corruption interference.  It is difficult to understand why there is such hunger in our world.  There is adequate food available for our world. The challenge is distribution and corruption.  Thank God for an organization who addresses this need effectively and efficiently.

Our trip included ports in Italy, France and Spain. These countries are beautiful and amazing.  Their history is fascinating and their architecture is magnificent. The United States is so young compared to these countries. We visited an overwhelmingly beautiful monastery in the mountains north of Barcelona that was breathtaking. Montserrat was founded by a monk in 1020 and has become a must see if you have the opportunity.

Travel is such a wonderful opportunity to learn and to grow. We are never too young or too old to learn and to grow. We talk and we think often about how our culture has changed and we remark about how our challenge from our Creator God is to impact culture.  How effective have we been at impacting our culture, and how do we become better? Many in my Grandparents’ generation never travelled more than twenty-five miles from their place of birth.  I recall hearing accounts of how during the Great Depression in the United States (1929, not so long ago) men out of frustration would leave/abandon their families because the could not provide for them. Many would go to another place only twenty or so miles away and start another family and live often undetected for their entire lives. In our world today, that seems impossible. With social security numbers and the present communications that we have, thousands of miles would not make a difference.  The automobile (Henry Ford) has made travel so easy and convenient. It is nothing to travel hundreds of miles in a day and to return the same day. Airplanes changed our access to the world profoundly. In less than twenty-four hours we can travel almost all of the way around the earth. What a phenomenon to be in a metal cylinder forty thousand feet above the surface of the earth traveling at six hundred miles per hour. Not a picture you want to think too long about.  Our culture is changing at warp speed. We need Scotty to beam us down so we do not forget who we are, where we came from, why we are here, how we are to live and what happens when our spirit leaves our body, things that are important for our eternity. The fundamental and foundation of everything that we are and who we really are eternally. The beginning point and where we end in time for our eternity. How do we impact our culture? By changing the way that we think which will prioritize and direct what we believe and how we live. Scriptures are clear. Humanity is searching, longing for those in relationship with the true and the living God to be clearly visible. Why? So they can see an example and know the answers to the questions (those we presented above) about their lives and who they are.  Humanity cannot escape the presence of our Creator God and His plan for us. Psalms 139 – where can I go? Everywhere I go You, Your Spirit is there to guide and to direct me.  Life is so much easier when we know that He is there and He has a plan. It is a tough task trying to be the source yourself.

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As many know, I have been stirred by the Holy Spirit God about justice in our culture for several years. I am in the process of writing a paper on justice now and how we allow our God to work through us to change our societies understanding and appreciation for His Kingdom Justice. Johnny Enlow has also been stirred by the Spirit of God about Justice in our culture. Attached you will find his latest Word from our God about Justice – click here to download it. This is one of a significant series of Words Johnny has delivered. All are worth reading and following. This one is a now Word for humanity.  You will enjoy and be stirred. Like the Lanny Wolfe song of long ago, we hope you are not just stirred, but changed.

MAY OUR GOD BE GLORIFIED AND BLESSED BY ALL THAT WE ARE AND ALL THAT WE DO.

This is the third part in a series I’ve been working on for several weeks. If you haven’t read parts one and two, be sure to go back and read them as well.

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How have we defined and described success for humanity? Our success is based on our knowledge – knowing the facts about our existence, our wisdom- knowing how to apply the knowledge we have learned about our existence to our lives personally, and then knowing how to impart to all that we have learned about our existence to humanity for their understanding. To accomplish this we must –

• Know who we are

1. 1. To ourselves, and
   2. To our Creator God

• Know why we are here – What our purpose for being here on this planet is
• Know how we are to live on this planet, being aware of right and wrong, and knowing how to make correct choices of conduct and behavior for the correct/right living of our lives
• Understand eternity, our eternity and our eternalness. Eternity without time, eternity with time and our individual and personal eternalness.

Most of our ability to correctly know and to correctly understand what our success is individually and collectively, relies upon our ability to communicate and to fellowship with our Creator God clearly and succinctly in a brief and a clearly expressed manner. Why do we have difficulty communicating and fellowshipping with our God? There are many misunderstanding about who our God is to us personally and collectively that hinder our ability to effectively and efficiently communicate and to fellowship with our Creator God. Personally, I am convinced that religion is one of our greatest obstacles.  We are eternal, our Creator God is eternal, and He has clearly communicated to each of us that we cannot communicate or fellowship with Him through temporary or temporal means and methods. Religion is temporary. Will there be religion in heaven? I do not believe there will be religion in Heaven. Communication and fellowship with our God is always and completely through eternal means and methods, our eternity and our eternalness. Yet, we have been taught to communicate and to fellowship with our Creator God through religion and religious means and methods. To say that does not and will not work would be an understatement. I believe the great frustration that is experienced by humanity in their efforts to hear from and to fellowship with the true and the living God is primarily because we approach the process religiously and not relationally. The conversation that Jesus, (God with us – Emmanuel) had with the Samaritan woman at the well at Sychar, near Jacob’s well was very telling about how we are to communicate and to fellowship effectively and efficiently with our God, the eternal God. Expressing the difficulty for humanity brought on by religious customs and traditions – (where to worship, how to worship), Jesus – God Himself then said, none of those things matters. “God is sheer being itself – Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of (from) their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”

Hearing from our God is not supposed to be a frustrating practice. Fellowship and communication with our Creator is designed and meant to be as natural as speaking to your best Friend. Because of religious concepts we often believe to hear we must have a Damascus Road experience as Saul did, where we are knocked to the ground and blinded by a bright light. That method is recorded only one time in all of scripture. (Acts 9) Our fellowship and communication with our Creator may be more subtle than Saul’s experience, but our experience is no less powerful.  Scriptures describe a living relationship with a living God. To be alive describes a continual and constant experience. We do not breathe occasionally or intermittently. We breathe continually. Our God does not communicate with us occasionally or intermittently, He is constantly speaking to our spirit and to our minds, and providing input and directions for our lives. Scriptures are full of information and directions on how this process works.

Proverbs 3: 5,6 – Trust in the Lord with all of your heart (spirit, the eternal you); do not depend on your own understanding (your mind, your developed intellect, your emotions), Seek His will in all that you do (first), and He will show you which path to take.(direction, clarity, purpose) NLT

We begin with our spirit, the eternal us, the forever us.  The next part of our instructions is key. This is important, this is pivotal. We do not allow our intellect, our education, and our religious teachings to override our spirit. We are standing at the nexus where the temporary and the eternal meet. We are to always choose the eternal. At first this is difficult, because the voice of our spirit has to be developed to be the voice we hear (no matter how soft) and the voice that we follow.

Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you]. Romans 12; 2 AMPC

Here we are told not to allow this world, our environment to determine and to become the way that we think. We are encouraged to program our minds to think like our God thinks, eternally.

We are told to renew our minds so that we have new ideals (a standard of perfection; a principle to be aimed at) and a new attitude (a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something)     that reflects what our God says about us in His Word, and we will know what is good and acceptable in His sight for us. Wow!  This is the way to have clear direction and correct understanding.

Our mind is the battleground where the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness go to do battle for control of our lives through our thoughts. We often make it hard to recognize and respond to the voice of our Father. We question and debate the validity of the communication and its origin. In reality, He is always clear. It is our incorrect thinking and our lack of correct programming of our mind that creates the doubt and unresponsiveness. Scriptures declare with certainty that we hear and we recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd, we hear and we know our Father’s voice and the voice of a stranger we will not follow. Instantaneously we hear and we know that the message that we receive is from our Creator. That is not debatable. Yet we have allowed our minds to be influenced by our situations, our circumstances our relationships, what others will think about our actions, and we hesitate and we ponder the validity of the communication, often pausing to consider the Word until the opportunity to respond positively has passed. We miss the opportunity to enhance our hearing and our quickly doing ability. The more we exercise the process of hearing and quickly responding, the stronger the relationship becomes and the more powerful the pivotal impact and life changing outcomes in our lives and in the lives of those in our world.

The clutter of our lives can hinder our ability to receive and to respond. I sometimes believe that we need a declutter plan. How much of what we do is really progress?  How much of what we do is simply habit? Do our habits prevent us from choosing progress? From beginning to the last recorded Words, the scriptures present a dominant message about priorities.  Our priorities are very important in our relationship with our Creator. Our success is never about standing still or moving backwards. Our success is always a progressive moving forward.