Welcome I am so glad you all could make it this morning it means so much to me
to have you here.
As some of you know, I have been putting off this day for longer than I should have
out of fear. Back in July of 2004 my life changed forever and I experienced a new
beginning for nothing has been the same from that moment on. In that time I have
not been just dragging my feet. I have been working on this place, I have been
studying religion and God and I became an ordained minister.
Yet god was working on this place long before that day, only I didn’t know it
myself.
So what is this place?
What is the Lifeline Spirit Center?
This is it, a historic building in a small rural town. We are just beginning, but it has
been in the works for at least seven years. As you look around this room you will see
history, we could have removed the historic aspects of this room and made it look
like a classic church but then it wouldn’t be what it is and it needs its history.
Here on my right is the remnants of the many bars that have called the building
home for several generations, the blue sign is for the bus stop that once called this
place home, on the stairs going to the basement you can see the bowling sign and to
my left are booths and tables from the Smiths café, on the third floor was once
meeting rooms for people the second floor has been both offices and housing.
I have been hearing stories from so many people about this building from the
moment it became ours. Men who were boys in the late fifties helped remove the
burned third floor bricks, girls took the train but stopped here first for a bite to eat,
people who waited for loved ones to come home from war on a bus and people who
spent time in the bars even ones who were married upstairs. There was even a movie
filmed here called stars and bars.
This brings us to the photographs on the wall, representing just a tiny fraction of
the people memories we have gotten put up so far. New babies, new parents new
grandparents, old photos of those long passed and newer photos of those whose
passing still stings. These are all part of this place of us being where we are right
now all having helped in one way or another.
I first walked into this building October, 1999 during the city wide yard sale, I
walked in that door and at once I saw not only the reality that was a yard sale in a
closed down barroom but overlaying that was this room as it is today, right now. I
didn’t know what I was going to do with the place, I sure never thought I would be
opening a church of any kind. I knew it would be called Lifeline even when I thought
it would be a place to eat. I knew I had to have it and I knew I had to build what I saw
in that vision or daydream or what ever you want to call the flash of the future I saw
but we now call it
The Lifeline Spirit Center
This is where all these lifelines are woven into the tapestry that is life. This place
is like a dream catcher to me for I am living so many dreams and I didn’t know it was
possible to be this happy and peaceful.
I had no idea what all would happen in my life after that fall day when I first
entered this room and found Phyllis Spearman selling off not only bar things but the
building as well all I knew that day was I really wanted to buy this place. When I
went home and told Jamie I had found a building at the yard sale he must have
thought I had lost my mind, but he hid it well.
I was not totally blind to the flaws of the place, there was a terrible leak in the
basement flooding one entire half and putting it under a foot of water, the roof was
almost gone, most of the ceilings had fallen down, rats and roaches were rampant
and that is not to speak of all the plumbing and electrical work. It might have needed
everything done to it but I could clearly still remember the vision.
I could see the peace and joy of the place in that vision, now don’t get me wrong I
didn’t see a church, far from it for on that day I didn’t even believe in god. I didn’t
know what the place would end up being with a bar, booths, movie seats,
pews………… I just knew it was meant to be ours.
Jamie tells me he has also loved the place from the start because it fills a
childhood dream, from back when his young mother would bring him and his
brothers uptown to watch the traffic go by he would dream of owning one of the
buildings in town.
Just as we could see the future we could also see the past in the history here.
We almost didn’t get the building because we were trying to borrow enough
money to not just buy it but to restore it as well, but we were turned down for that
loan, Phyllis was running out of time and another party wanted to buy it and even
pay more money so they could knock it down and have more parking in town.
Phyllis chose to sell to us, for just what she owed. So we called David Green and
made the deal, and in January 2000 with no money to fix the place up it was ours
lock, stock and tenants.
We still have a long way to go and I am not sure if places like these are ever
finished but that is part of the charm.
Many things have changed in our lives in these years of owning and working on
the place. We made a haunted house in the basement and while looking for
“monsters” to scare people we found some homeless teens so we housed them. We
have also given over the haunted house to the high school band, and enjoyed getting
to know all the kids and their parents who put in such hard work as well.
Our house burned down just when we had the building up for sale and we had to
live here while we rebuilt our house, we never wanted to sell but we had gotten away
from here and sort of forgot what we were wanting to do here, moving in gave us
back that dream as well as letting us know we also wanted to live upstairs.
Along with new life there has also been some letting go, my grandmother passed
away just after meeting my 1st granddaughter Alexis her first great great-
grandchild, and my father passed away just before our second granddaughter Lily
made her way into this world. The day Lily was born I was sad my Dad was not there
as he was when Alexis and each of my sons were born but he let me know he was
there soon enough and that his lifeline continues.
Life is about living and dreaming, and we are living our dreams.
So now we go forward, even as I don’t really know how to do so or what will
happen next. I know dreams come true but I also know God has bigger dreams for
us than we can dream for ourselves. I know all of these Spirits are here to help us
with God’s plan for our lives because this is just where they want to be.
Some people, maybe even some in this room, will think or say I am crazy and
because I have been crazy most of my life it won’t bother me to hear it now that I am
not.
In the years, months, day’s even hours before that spiritual awakening on that
summer day you could not have made me believe by word or deed that I would be
standing before you as I am today. I would have at best laughed at you for even
having the thought and at worst been really angry that you would dare to associate
me with anything having to do with God.
Good thing it didn’t matter to God.
I have been guided to be right where I am today and even as I have been dragging
my feet and taking my time I knew from the moment God’s Spirits touched my life
that one day I would stand before people and talk. I didn’t want to be here I have
spent my entire life afraid of talking to people and being noticed by people really of
people in general. If given a choice I was always at the back of the room blending
into the walls. Yet here I stand talking to people and about God. God was the last
thing I ever wanted to talk about, what had God ever done for me? I had shunned
God for most of my years. I came from a life of sexual abuse and I had often tried to
get help from the God I grew up hearing about in church. The abuse lasted ten years
starting at age 3, well almost three; I can tell you as a kid I didn’t think much of this
God fellow.
God was there, I have never really been alone in my sorrows or my pain, I felt
alone many times and I had anger at the world and at God, but God had no anger at
me. God understands our weaknesses and hurts at our pains and guides us to follow
a path that will bring us to our true selves. We are all born with gifts and talents that
will lead us to prosper in all aspects of our life if we are willing to do the work
required of us to get there. So here I am on my path and this is where it has been
urging me to go for a while.
I am lead to speak now after a lifetime of keeping secrets. I tell others about
being an abused child and of the lingering effects and mental illnesses that result.
I can also speak of hope because I am no longer hopeless and I can speak of
overcoming fears I am no longer allowing fear to take time out of my life.
I fight depression and glory in the joy to be found all around me. Today I am
speaking of God and this is my first day to stand here and tell anyone what I have
been guided to say. Many of you were personally invited here today because I
wanted you here at the beginning but all of you chose to come today and I feel
blessed by your presence.
When the planet we live on was formed billions of years ago I don’t know if God
had humans in mind yet, but I know it God was doing the work forming the Earth we
now call home. God created the earliest humans a few million years ago they had
many of the same wonderful gifts we all still enjoy today.
Those early humans were given a combination of attributes that no other animal
had been given, we had a great skeletal system that allowed us to stand primarily
upright even at a run, and this left our arms free. We have very dexterous use of our
hands due to opposable thumbs. We have a brain that even in the first humans was
capable of so much because of the ability to dream and imagine, for without that
they couldn’t have invented things and the world as we know it would never have
been possible.
Even the earliest humans used art, music, and stories to educate their young and
advance the knowledge and resourcefulness of their family.
Yet the most amazing thing we as humans have been given by God from the very
beginning is that we have always been Spiritual beings and when our lives here in
these bodies are over we continue to be our Spiritual selves. From the beginning all
humans who live a good life, causing no harm to others, making a difference in
others lives, giving and loving, learning and teaching just being good people have
been afforded an ever lasting life in Spirit form. Those that have not been good
people, who foster hate and fear and pain in other humans who walk this Earth
causing harm and living an evil life are not given the gift of ever lasting life their
time is ended here and the effects of their lives may be felt for a long time or
forgotten right away but sooner or later they are wiped even from the memories of
the departed and are no more.
Now if I get to thinking about all the millions of years of good people who have
departed this life I can get so thrilled. Just think about it now, the philosophers of
Rome and Greece, the musicians, doctors, scientist, athletes, engineers, builders of
all the ages are all still here as Spirits. The knowledge base that humans have
evolved upon has been the Spirits of our ancestors. We are one family the family
human. God gave us all the same thing, Potential.
With this potential we have grown from those early humans to a species who have
explored into the depths of the seas and the outer edges of space as we know it so
far. We have changed and adapted to everything the world has thrown at us and we
have thrived.
Yes we still have hate and anger, prejudice and intolerance, evil and war and have
yet to achieve peace on this planet God created for us, but our planet is getting
smaller now. We get to know people from around the globe from the comfort of our
own homes. We see them on TV, we read their stories, we buy from them on eBay,
we talk with them online, we send videos and photos and our lives are changed. The
world is changing even if we don’t always see it peace will come. Some things take a
long time to work out but the Earth has time and humans have to just keep working
towards that goal.
We don’t have to even be alive when it happens to be part of it for we will one day
be among the crowds of those innumerable humans who came before us. This is
Gods goal and we have the potential. We also have a mighty thing called Free Will
and we have the total freedom to choose how we will live our lives in the only
chance we get to be in human form, forever after we will be Spirits and our time here
is all we get to show our character and our effort to make this world a better place in
some way.
I can wait to be a Spirit for I will have eternity to do that work I have only a few
short years to do what I can here for even if I live to be 100 it is a short span in the
scope o time. So even as I tried to wiggle out of this deal and think of all the reasons
I could never stand before you and do what I am now doing, here I am, and I
love it. How delightful is life? Here I am doing what I thought I could never do and I
love it because all I get to talk on a subject that gives me such joy.
We all have free will and freedoms to choose how we are going to live our lives.
We all choose what we are willing to do to follow our dreams. We all have the
opportunity to achieve greatness. Just look at the world today, who would have
ever believed there would be entire networks on TV dedicated to cooking food?
Today you can be a TV star for doing your best work no matter what that work is
these people are set apart by their skills, talents but only because of their willingness
to do the work, make the effort and sacrifices necessary to make it all happen. I
know people who have great talents, but the path that their talents lead them they
have not chosen to follow, now some are bitter and say they can not catch a break or
everyone is against them, but in truth they are not willing to put in the work it takes
to rise above the others in their fields. God will put the doors before us but we have
to be willing to get up off the couch and go open them and walk through.
I heard a story a couple of years ago that sticks with me and pops up when I feel
like things are not going my way.
A big storm was coming it was being talked about on the news and by the
neighbors and people were taking precautions. One woman who was always in
church, right up on the front row and thought often of God was not afraid of the
coming storm she was very calm. The rushing waters were soon to over flow the
banks of the river but she refused very politely to be removed from her home telling
everyone “god will take care of me” and she stood in her yard as neighbors left for
higher ground. Soon the waters reached the streets and rescue workers came by in
large trucks gathering people but still she stood her ground as she sweetly told them
to go on with out her that “God would take care of me.” She smiled and waved.
The water rose more quickly and rescue workers came in a boat calling up to the
woman on her porch to come with them as the damn was sure to break soon “God
will take care of me” she said without a glimmer of fear.
When the damn broke and the water rose above the second story of her house she
was sitting upon the roof the rescuers came by in a helicopter and even as the
waters rose more forcing her to stand she waved them off “God will take care of me”
she beamed.
She drowned of course and then came her time to face God and she asked the
question of God “Where were you? I lived my entire life doing good things, I went to
church every time the doors opened, I gave to charities, I helped the old and the
poor I have never even said a bad word, why did you let me drown like that?” With
all the spirits sighing God could be heard to say “I sent you knowledge of the storm,
neighbors, a truck, a boat and even a helicopter what more did you want of me?”
Has God been sending you knowledge, neighbors, or even helicopters? Are you
going in the wrong direction? Are the choices you are making good ones? What are
you willing to do to be happy?
Life is what you make of it and this is the only shot you get at being in a body on
this Earth. If you are going the wrong way, get off the couch and open the door and
walk out and get on the helicopter God sends you. Yes you can coast by doing no
harm and you will be rewarded with life ever lasting (if you are truly a good person
inside) but you will not be living up to the potential God has for your life if unless
you are willing to get up and walk the path available to you.
Where does your talent lead you? Can you sing or write or build the best
motorcycle? Are you a whiz at math, a magician with hair or maybe you are a good
listener; what ever your talent are you using it? Follow your dreams, wish upon a
star, say your desires out loud and they will come true, but remember to follow you
must first be willing to stand up and act. Live your life as an action verb, do
something and you will have things happen.
Ours is a volatile planet that is ever evolving and humans have always been
keeping up for we are adaptable. God doesn’t cause events of weather, or shifts in
the land or eruptions of our planets molten center these are just aspects of our part
of the universe, the distance from the sun, the rotation of the Earth, the changing of
the ozone all affecting forces. God formed the Earth but doesn’t get involved in
changing the Earth, nature and humans enact changes, for the good and the bad but
they are not works of God. God doesn’t get angry at humans and flood them out or
have molten lava rain upon them. When natural things happen it is just an aspect of
life on Earth not a punishment or a divine intervention.
But God and the Spirits can and often do get involved with other aspects of life, if
we only ask for guidance and follow the advice given. Once more it is all up to each
individual if they will keep waiting or get up and start down the path.
What do you wish for your life to be? Who do you want to be when you stand
before God? Will you have to ask God why you were alone or why didn’t help arrive
only to have the warnings, neighbors, truck, boat, and helicopter pointed out when
it is too late? Or worse will you have to face God with all the hatred and anger that
you have carried around uselessly that has weighed you down and prevented you
from moving forward? Will it be you who will fade in the memories of people
because you were not allowed everlasting life due to the prejudice you used as a
weapon upon fellow humans? God never gives up on us until the end, but it is only
God who will bestow eternity upon you for it is only you and God who know who
you are inside. Only God knows your entire Spirit. Our Spirit is what makes us who
we truly are; it is our sense of humor and our personal histories, our intellect and
our hearts it is our memories and our feelings it is all that makes us except our
bodies. We might hide our true Spirits from every living human in the universe yet
we will never hide it from God. Are you ready to face God? What are you willing to
do to get ready? What are you willing to do to enact change in your life? What will
you choose to do tomorrow?
God wants us to enjoy life, to marvel at the natural wonders of this world as well
as the marvels created by humans, for it is amazing how far humans have come.
Even if you do nothing you are making a choice, and even if you choose to do
nothing the Earth will keep turning and life will keep going on as it has for millions of
years, that is the way nature works. Devastations will happen, people will die, people
will be born, people will be hurt in horrible ways, and life will go on and our own
lives will be formulated by the choices we make.
I have no idea just what the final moments of death will be, or the first moments
of awareness in the next stage of life. I do not know what process will take place as I
go from one to the next, maybe like when you are on the operating table and the
masked person says “Okay count backwards from 100…” and before you can get to
97 in your mind, you are aware of being in a new place and you know time has
passed but have no idea how long. So maybe the first thing is a recovery type area,
where you can slowly come to the knowledge you have died on Earth and are now
already passed the judgment area (or whatever the process) and have been given
eternal life in this new Spirit form.
There are people who will awaken in that recovery area who are very surprised to
be there and will even try for a while to make themselves believe they must hang in
some kind of limbo not yet dead for they were very sure when their bodies died they
would not be as they now find themselves. Others will be surprised by the people
that also end up in the next world and really surprised by those who they never see
after their deaths.
Of course for some life will indeed end at the moment of their bodies death, they
will be no more and the only things left of them will be the rotting corpse, the
memories others have of them, some records of their lives in files, somewhere a
collection of photos and a life wasted in one way or another due to the choices they
made in the only life they ever get and they made all the choices of their own
freewill.
I know I will wake in whatever is next.
So I am enacting change and following my quest living my dreams in this place
filled with so much history, in a town I chose to be my children’s home town, by
standing up here and talking, I got up became an action verb, jumped on the
helicopter and I am enjoying the ride.
I don’t know where your path will lead you if you choose to follow but I know for
sure all the good people who have come this way before us are now Spirits that are
around us all the time to help in every way possible and they will put opportunities
in your reach as long as you are willing to keep reaching. All these lifelines don’t end
because lifelines are forever all woven with dreams, watched over by God from
those first humans in Africa all the way here to Tallapoosa, GA and into this building
we call old yet it has stood only 114 years, a very short span in true history.
Maybe one day I will get really good at this for now I want to once more thank
each of you for choosing to come today and I do hope to see you back here again. I
hope you will tell others we are open and bring them back with you. But most of all
my desire is for those of you who have been far from the path to your true self is
that you will choose to get up and ride the helicopter.
to have you here.
As some of you know, I have been putting off this day for longer than I should have
out of fear. Back in July of 2004 my life changed forever and I experienced a new
beginning for nothing has been the same from that moment on. In that time I have
not been just dragging my feet. I have been working on this place, I have been
studying religion and God and I became an ordained minister.
Yet god was working on this place long before that day, only I didn’t know it
myself.
So what is this place?
What is the Lifeline Spirit Center?
This is it, a historic building in a small rural town. We are just beginning, but it has
been in the works for at least seven years. As you look around this room you will see
history, we could have removed the historic aspects of this room and made it look
like a classic church but then it wouldn’t be what it is and it needs its history.
Here on my right is the remnants of the many bars that have called the building
home for several generations, the blue sign is for the bus stop that once called this
place home, on the stairs going to the basement you can see the bowling sign and to
my left are booths and tables from the Smiths café, on the third floor was once
meeting rooms for people the second floor has been both offices and housing.
I have been hearing stories from so many people about this building from the
moment it became ours. Men who were boys in the late fifties helped remove the
burned third floor bricks, girls took the train but stopped here first for a bite to eat,
people who waited for loved ones to come home from war on a bus and people who
spent time in the bars even ones who were married upstairs. There was even a movie
filmed here called stars and bars.
This brings us to the photographs on the wall, representing just a tiny fraction of
the people memories we have gotten put up so far. New babies, new parents new
grandparents, old photos of those long passed and newer photos of those whose
passing still stings. These are all part of this place of us being where we are right
now all having helped in one way or another.
I first walked into this building October, 1999 during the city wide yard sale, I
walked in that door and at once I saw not only the reality that was a yard sale in a
closed down barroom but overlaying that was this room as it is today, right now. I
didn’t know what I was going to do with the place, I sure never thought I would be
opening a church of any kind. I knew it would be called Lifeline even when I thought
it would be a place to eat. I knew I had to have it and I knew I had to build what I saw
in that vision or daydream or what ever you want to call the flash of the future I saw
but we now call it
The Lifeline Spirit Center
This is where all these lifelines are woven into the tapestry that is life. This place
is like a dream catcher to me for I am living so many dreams and I didn’t know it was
possible to be this happy and peaceful.
I had no idea what all would happen in my life after that fall day when I first
entered this room and found Phyllis Spearman selling off not only bar things but the
building as well all I knew that day was I really wanted to buy this place. When I
went home and told Jamie I had found a building at the yard sale he must have
thought I had lost my mind, but he hid it well.
I was not totally blind to the flaws of the place, there was a terrible leak in the
basement flooding one entire half and putting it under a foot of water, the roof was
almost gone, most of the ceilings had fallen down, rats and roaches were rampant
and that is not to speak of all the plumbing and electrical work. It might have needed
everything done to it but I could clearly still remember the vision.
I could see the peace and joy of the place in that vision, now don’t get me wrong I
didn’t see a church, far from it for on that day I didn’t even believe in god. I didn’t
know what the place would end up being with a bar, booths, movie seats,
pews………… I just knew it was meant to be ours.
Jamie tells me he has also loved the place from the start because it fills a
childhood dream, from back when his young mother would bring him and his
brothers uptown to watch the traffic go by he would dream of owning one of the
buildings in town.
Just as we could see the future we could also see the past in the history here.
We almost didn’t get the building because we were trying to borrow enough
money to not just buy it but to restore it as well, but we were turned down for that
loan, Phyllis was running out of time and another party wanted to buy it and even
pay more money so they could knock it down and have more parking in town.
Phyllis chose to sell to us, for just what she owed. So we called David Green and
made the deal, and in January 2000 with no money to fix the place up it was ours
lock, stock and tenants.
We still have a long way to go and I am not sure if places like these are ever
finished but that is part of the charm.
Many things have changed in our lives in these years of owning and working on
the place. We made a haunted house in the basement and while looking for
“monsters” to scare people we found some homeless teens so we housed them. We
have also given over the haunted house to the high school band, and enjoyed getting
to know all the kids and their parents who put in such hard work as well.
Our house burned down just when we had the building up for sale and we had to
live here while we rebuilt our house, we never wanted to sell but we had gotten away
from here and sort of forgot what we were wanting to do here, moving in gave us
back that dream as well as letting us know we also wanted to live upstairs.
Along with new life there has also been some letting go, my grandmother passed
away just after meeting my 1st granddaughter Alexis her first great great-
grandchild, and my father passed away just before our second granddaughter Lily
made her way into this world. The day Lily was born I was sad my Dad was not there
as he was when Alexis and each of my sons were born but he let me know he was
there soon enough and that his lifeline continues.
Life is about living and dreaming, and we are living our dreams.
So now we go forward, even as I don’t really know how to do so or what will
happen next. I know dreams come true but I also know God has bigger dreams for
us than we can dream for ourselves. I know all of these Spirits are here to help us
with God’s plan for our lives because this is just where they want to be.
Some people, maybe even some in this room, will think or say I am crazy and
because I have been crazy most of my life it won’t bother me to hear it now that I am
not.
In the years, months, day’s even hours before that spiritual awakening on that
summer day you could not have made me believe by word or deed that I would be
standing before you as I am today. I would have at best laughed at you for even
having the thought and at worst been really angry that you would dare to associate
me with anything having to do with God.
Good thing it didn’t matter to God.
I have been guided to be right where I am today and even as I have been dragging
my feet and taking my time I knew from the moment God’s Spirits touched my life
that one day I would stand before people and talk. I didn’t want to be here I have
spent my entire life afraid of talking to people and being noticed by people really of
people in general. If given a choice I was always at the back of the room blending
into the walls. Yet here I stand talking to people and about God. God was the last
thing I ever wanted to talk about, what had God ever done for me? I had shunned
God for most of my years. I came from a life of sexual abuse and I had often tried to
get help from the God I grew up hearing about in church. The abuse lasted ten years
starting at age 3, well almost three; I can tell you as a kid I didn’t think much of this
God fellow.
God was there, I have never really been alone in my sorrows or my pain, I felt
alone many times and I had anger at the world and at God, but God had no anger at
me. God understands our weaknesses and hurts at our pains and guides us to follow
a path that will bring us to our true selves. We are all born with gifts and talents that
will lead us to prosper in all aspects of our life if we are willing to do the work
required of us to get there. So here I am on my path and this is where it has been
urging me to go for a while.
I am lead to speak now after a lifetime of keeping secrets. I tell others about
being an abused child and of the lingering effects and mental illnesses that result.
I can also speak of hope because I am no longer hopeless and I can speak of
overcoming fears I am no longer allowing fear to take time out of my life.
I fight depression and glory in the joy to be found all around me. Today I am
speaking of God and this is my first day to stand here and tell anyone what I have
been guided to say. Many of you were personally invited here today because I
wanted you here at the beginning but all of you chose to come today and I feel
blessed by your presence.
When the planet we live on was formed billions of years ago I don’t know if God
had humans in mind yet, but I know it God was doing the work forming the Earth we
now call home. God created the earliest humans a few million years ago they had
many of the same wonderful gifts we all still enjoy today.
Those early humans were given a combination of attributes that no other animal
had been given, we had a great skeletal system that allowed us to stand primarily
upright even at a run, and this left our arms free. We have very dexterous use of our
hands due to opposable thumbs. We have a brain that even in the first humans was
capable of so much because of the ability to dream and imagine, for without that
they couldn’t have invented things and the world as we know it would never have
been possible.
Even the earliest humans used art, music, and stories to educate their young and
advance the knowledge and resourcefulness of their family.
Yet the most amazing thing we as humans have been given by God from the very
beginning is that we have always been Spiritual beings and when our lives here in
these bodies are over we continue to be our Spiritual selves. From the beginning all
humans who live a good life, causing no harm to others, making a difference in
others lives, giving and loving, learning and teaching just being good people have
been afforded an ever lasting life in Spirit form. Those that have not been good
people, who foster hate and fear and pain in other humans who walk this Earth
causing harm and living an evil life are not given the gift of ever lasting life their
time is ended here and the effects of their lives may be felt for a long time or
forgotten right away but sooner or later they are wiped even from the memories of
the departed and are no more.
Now if I get to thinking about all the millions of years of good people who have
departed this life I can get so thrilled. Just think about it now, the philosophers of
Rome and Greece, the musicians, doctors, scientist, athletes, engineers, builders of
all the ages are all still here as Spirits. The knowledge base that humans have
evolved upon has been the Spirits of our ancestors. We are one family the family
human. God gave us all the same thing, Potential.
With this potential we have grown from those early humans to a species who have
explored into the depths of the seas and the outer edges of space as we know it so
far. We have changed and adapted to everything the world has thrown at us and we
have thrived.
Yes we still have hate and anger, prejudice and intolerance, evil and war and have
yet to achieve peace on this planet God created for us, but our planet is getting
smaller now. We get to know people from around the globe from the comfort of our
own homes. We see them on TV, we read their stories, we buy from them on eBay,
we talk with them online, we send videos and photos and our lives are changed. The
world is changing even if we don’t always see it peace will come. Some things take a
long time to work out but the Earth has time and humans have to just keep working
towards that goal.
We don’t have to even be alive when it happens to be part of it for we will one day
be among the crowds of those innumerable humans who came before us. This is
Gods goal and we have the potential. We also have a mighty thing called Free Will
and we have the total freedom to choose how we will live our lives in the only
chance we get to be in human form, forever after we will be Spirits and our time here
is all we get to show our character and our effort to make this world a better place in
some way.
I can wait to be a Spirit for I will have eternity to do that work I have only a few
short years to do what I can here for even if I live to be 100 it is a short span in the
scope o time. So even as I tried to wiggle out of this deal and think of all the reasons
I could never stand before you and do what I am now doing, here I am, and I
love it. How delightful is life? Here I am doing what I thought I could never do and I
love it because all I get to talk on a subject that gives me such joy.
We all have free will and freedoms to choose how we are going to live our lives.
We all choose what we are willing to do to follow our dreams. We all have the
opportunity to achieve greatness. Just look at the world today, who would have
ever believed there would be entire networks on TV dedicated to cooking food?
Today you can be a TV star for doing your best work no matter what that work is
these people are set apart by their skills, talents but only because of their willingness
to do the work, make the effort and sacrifices necessary to make it all happen. I
know people who have great talents, but the path that their talents lead them they
have not chosen to follow, now some are bitter and say they can not catch a break or
everyone is against them, but in truth they are not willing to put in the work it takes
to rise above the others in their fields. God will put the doors before us but we have
to be willing to get up off the couch and go open them and walk through.
I heard a story a couple of years ago that sticks with me and pops up when I feel
like things are not going my way.
A big storm was coming it was being talked about on the news and by the
neighbors and people were taking precautions. One woman who was always in
church, right up on the front row and thought often of God was not afraid of the
coming storm she was very calm. The rushing waters were soon to over flow the
banks of the river but she refused very politely to be removed from her home telling
everyone “god will take care of me” and she stood in her yard as neighbors left for
higher ground. Soon the waters reached the streets and rescue workers came by in
large trucks gathering people but still she stood her ground as she sweetly told them
to go on with out her that “God would take care of me.” She smiled and waved.
The water rose more quickly and rescue workers came in a boat calling up to the
woman on her porch to come with them as the damn was sure to break soon “God
will take care of me” she said without a glimmer of fear.
When the damn broke and the water rose above the second story of her house she
was sitting upon the roof the rescuers came by in a helicopter and even as the
waters rose more forcing her to stand she waved them off “God will take care of me”
she beamed.
She drowned of course and then came her time to face God and she asked the
question of God “Where were you? I lived my entire life doing good things, I went to
church every time the doors opened, I gave to charities, I helped the old and the
poor I have never even said a bad word, why did you let me drown like that?” With
all the spirits sighing God could be heard to say “I sent you knowledge of the storm,
neighbors, a truck, a boat and even a helicopter what more did you want of me?”
Has God been sending you knowledge, neighbors, or even helicopters? Are you
going in the wrong direction? Are the choices you are making good ones? What are
you willing to do to be happy?
Life is what you make of it and this is the only shot you get at being in a body on
this Earth. If you are going the wrong way, get off the couch and open the door and
walk out and get on the helicopter God sends you. Yes you can coast by doing no
harm and you will be rewarded with life ever lasting (if you are truly a good person
inside) but you will not be living up to the potential God has for your life if unless
you are willing to get up and walk the path available to you.
Where does your talent lead you? Can you sing or write or build the best
motorcycle? Are you a whiz at math, a magician with hair or maybe you are a good
listener; what ever your talent are you using it? Follow your dreams, wish upon a
star, say your desires out loud and they will come true, but remember to follow you
must first be willing to stand up and act. Live your life as an action verb, do
something and you will have things happen.
Ours is a volatile planet that is ever evolving and humans have always been
keeping up for we are adaptable. God doesn’t cause events of weather, or shifts in
the land or eruptions of our planets molten center these are just aspects of our part
of the universe, the distance from the sun, the rotation of the Earth, the changing of
the ozone all affecting forces. God formed the Earth but doesn’t get involved in
changing the Earth, nature and humans enact changes, for the good and the bad but
they are not works of God. God doesn’t get angry at humans and flood them out or
have molten lava rain upon them. When natural things happen it is just an aspect of
life on Earth not a punishment or a divine intervention.
But God and the Spirits can and often do get involved with other aspects of life, if
we only ask for guidance and follow the advice given. Once more it is all up to each
individual if they will keep waiting or get up and start down the path.
What do you wish for your life to be? Who do you want to be when you stand
before God? Will you have to ask God why you were alone or why didn’t help arrive
only to have the warnings, neighbors, truck, boat, and helicopter pointed out when
it is too late? Or worse will you have to face God with all the hatred and anger that
you have carried around uselessly that has weighed you down and prevented you
from moving forward? Will it be you who will fade in the memories of people
because you were not allowed everlasting life due to the prejudice you used as a
weapon upon fellow humans? God never gives up on us until the end, but it is only
God who will bestow eternity upon you for it is only you and God who know who
you are inside. Only God knows your entire Spirit. Our Spirit is what makes us who
we truly are; it is our sense of humor and our personal histories, our intellect and
our hearts it is our memories and our feelings it is all that makes us except our
bodies. We might hide our true Spirits from every living human in the universe yet
we will never hide it from God. Are you ready to face God? What are you willing to
do to get ready? What are you willing to do to enact change in your life? What will
you choose to do tomorrow?
God wants us to enjoy life, to marvel at the natural wonders of this world as well
as the marvels created by humans, for it is amazing how far humans have come.
Even if you do nothing you are making a choice, and even if you choose to do
nothing the Earth will keep turning and life will keep going on as it has for millions of
years, that is the way nature works. Devastations will happen, people will die, people
will be born, people will be hurt in horrible ways, and life will go on and our own
lives will be formulated by the choices we make.
I have no idea just what the final moments of death will be, or the first moments
of awareness in the next stage of life. I do not know what process will take place as I
go from one to the next, maybe like when you are on the operating table and the
masked person says “Okay count backwards from 100…” and before you can get to
97 in your mind, you are aware of being in a new place and you know time has
passed but have no idea how long. So maybe the first thing is a recovery type area,
where you can slowly come to the knowledge you have died on Earth and are now
already passed the judgment area (or whatever the process) and have been given
eternal life in this new Spirit form.
There are people who will awaken in that recovery area who are very surprised to
be there and will even try for a while to make themselves believe they must hang in
some kind of limbo not yet dead for they were very sure when their bodies died they
would not be as they now find themselves. Others will be surprised by the people
that also end up in the next world and really surprised by those who they never see
after their deaths.
Of course for some life will indeed end at the moment of their bodies death, they
will be no more and the only things left of them will be the rotting corpse, the
memories others have of them, some records of their lives in files, somewhere a
collection of photos and a life wasted in one way or another due to the choices they
made in the only life they ever get and they made all the choices of their own
freewill.
I know I will wake in whatever is next.
So I am enacting change and following my quest living my dreams in this place
filled with so much history, in a town I chose to be my children’s home town, by
standing up here and talking, I got up became an action verb, jumped on the
helicopter and I am enjoying the ride.
I don’t know where your path will lead you if you choose to follow but I know for
sure all the good people who have come this way before us are now Spirits that are
around us all the time to help in every way possible and they will put opportunities
in your reach as long as you are willing to keep reaching. All these lifelines don’t end
because lifelines are forever all woven with dreams, watched over by God from
those first humans in Africa all the way here to Tallapoosa, GA and into this building
we call old yet it has stood only 114 years, a very short span in true history.
Maybe one day I will get really good at this for now I want to once more thank
each of you for choosing to come today and I do hope to see you back here again. I
hope you will tell others we are open and bring them back with you. But most of all
my desire is for those of you who have been far from the path to your true self is
that you will choose to get up and ride the helicopter.
| Sunday Nov. 19th 2006 First sermon What is Lifeline Spirit Center? |
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