Heirs of God–His Vision for Us

     “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  So goes the wise proverb.  But it is not just any vision for our lives that ultimately rescues us.  It is the vision that our Creator has for us that will serve as the spiritual Rock and Foundation upon which to build our lives.

     His vision for us?  Nothing less than, as His offspring, to be His heirs and beacons of the Light that He is.  His purpose from all eternity is to fully pour Himself out into us His children–that we “might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph 3:19). 

     He sees us having His mind and thinking His thoughts.  We are mere vessels, clay vases and cups, fired through the trials of our stay on earth.  And He the Great Potter at the Wheel of Eternity, fires us, proves us, and eventually through much patience, fills us with Himself–until “Chist be all in all.” 

     But not that we should be a Dead Sea with no outflow.  No.  But so that He can pour Himself out of us.  And that water, His Spirit, will become springs of everlasting love, joy, and peace, poured out on the thirsty ground.  We are to let the “love from above flow down and through” us to others (See post “Love from Above–Down and Through”).

      That is God’s vision for us.  That is a special calling.  And now He waits for us to arouse ourselves out of slumber and arise from the dead–arise from the vanity of thoughts that do not share His vision for us. 

     We here in the USA are greatly blessed.  Our founding fathers carved out a place where we can be free to pursue these heavenly ideals.  We have come historically from a long line of Christians–from the first Pilgrims who landed in 1620 to “establish the kingdom of God on this earth” down through many rekindlings of His Spirit.  It is now our responsibility, as possibly the last generation to walk this earth before He comes back, to awake to His vision for us, knowing that we “are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood,” and that we should now “show forth the praises of him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light (I Peter 2:9).          Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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No Country for Old Men–Movie Review from a Christian Perspective

         A movie’s theme is the most important feature for me.  Now if you go for good acting, this movie has it.  Real life dialogue like you are there–it has it.  Stark reality with the characters caught in the clutches of naturalistic mayhem–it’s got it.  Cinematography depicting the barren, endless South Texas landscape and thus a symbol of the characters lives–impeccable.  You like suspense?  It literally moves your body around in your seat. 

     And I like all these aspects of the motion picture art.  But when the credits rolled, I found myself smothered by a cloud of hopelessness.  This picture could have been called No Hope for Any Man.

     For hopelessness is the theme and heart of this picture.  It shows how an average Joe played by Josh Brolin, a welder, gets sucked into the greedy world of drugs and money.  While hunting out in the wasteland for deer, He stumbles onto a drug deal gone bad.  Dead men, dead dogs, and dead pickup trucks lie strewn about on the desert floor, all riddled with bullets.  One truck is loaded with bricks of cocaine.  And then he finds another man with the suitcase full of bundles of hundreds–$2,000,000 to be exact.

     So he takes it and runs.  The drug syndicate bosses dispatch an absolute madman assassin after him, and you are left clutching the armrests of your chair as you begin to swim in the wake of the bloodletting that entails.

     Old Sheriff Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, is overwhelmed by the dozens of murders in his jurisdiction.  He has spent his life keeping the peace.  Over coffee, he and another old lawman lament this new day of violence that has overtaken them.  They call it “the evil tide” that’s washing over America.  And their faces say it all.  “It’s hopeless.  The evil is flooding over our society like a scourge.  Where is God in all this?”

     In his despair, Tommy Lee Jones says at one point, “I thought that when I got old, God would come into my life, but He hasn’t.”  Those of an older time in America remember a more innocent day.  Now it has become no country for these old men. 

     And so it went.  The crazy bounty hunter murders at will unabated, symbolizing how evil in this country grows and no one or nothing can stop it.  He walks away scott-free, no one around, at the end of the picture. 

     But I’ve got news for the Coen brothers who wrote and directed this film.  There is hope.  All signs point to our King Jesus Christ returning to this earth in our lifetime.  And he will come back and terminate the evildoers and he will staunch the evil tide of this world system.  He will establish a government of true righteousness, justice, and judgement. 

     He will dry the tears from every eye; He will exalt His followers who have crucified their selfish hearts and walked with Him in a newness of life; He will hold and comfort all who mourn.  He will heal the afflicted; He’ll give “beauty for ashes,” for the evil will lie in ashes, and His sons and daughters shall shine as they sing His words:  “In the world you shall have tribulation.  But be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”  And by believing that He dwells and abides in us, we overcome the world, also (John 16:33; I John 5:4)                                                Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Sons of God, Daughters of God–His Princes and Princesses

     We who have been born from above have become the “children of God” or the sons and daughters of God.  For we “have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15).  And we know that our Father is the “King of glory.”  And we know that the sons and daughters of a king are princes and princesses. 

     We, then, as His children, are the princes and princesses of the Kingdom of God.  This is how God looks at us!  And so now we should look at each other with the love and respect given to an heir to the throne of the King.  In fact, this is our major responsibility as children of the King–to “let the love of God be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” that dwells within us.

     Look–the most practical way that God has of loving humankind on an everyday basis is through us, His princes and princesses.  If we are truly His children, then we will put away all of the selfish pettiness and start loving each other.  And if we have a tough day where the love is stopped up and can’t get flowing, we’ll call on Him and ask Him to melt our hearts and get that love from above flowing again.

     His princes and princesses will lead out by example.  They will exemplify their Father’s personality traits.  They will be faithful ambassadors of Him, showing the world the Love that God is.  They will stride forth matter-of-factly, shining forth as “lights in the midst of the selfish darkness. 

     And those that sit in darkness will look up from the mundane mire and see this light shining into their dark world of no-love.  They will see and hear and feel this light of love-from-above, and they at first will not comprehend it.  But as we keep shining, eventually they will awaken out of the night-slumber and will seek the light of love themselves.

     This is our calling.  He has chosen us for this.  It is His vision for our life here on this earth.  For really, we are his hands and feet; we are his arms and his legs; we are His body here on earth, and He is our head.  And we are beginning to know His mind, His will, and His wishes.  And we are in His mind, for He sees us as His princes and princesses!                                                           Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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“God Is Love”–Agape Love from Above, Down and Through

     “Love from above–down and through” has turned into my motto or credo.  Some may wonder where I got it from. 

     Human beings have one major need: to be loved, especially someone who can give them sincere, pure “love from above.”  The love I’m talking about is agape love, or God’s love.  And so we humans are looking, looking incessantly for someone that can love us with the love from above.

     You take a group of people sitting around over there; they are a microcosm of the entire human race and its condition of “not being loved.”  And so we wait and wait–sometimes impatiently–for someone to love us.  Some wait their whole life for someone to really love them.  And I’m not talking about just romantic love here.  I’m talking about the loneliness and the longing solitude and the sadness it can entail.  I’m referring to the utter frustration of a friendless existence.

         But that is not how it works.  Someone in the circle must break out; they must break the cycle of self-centered-ness.  Someone must step out and stand up and not expect someone else to love them first!  Someone must start reaching out and loving others!   Someone must be that channel of love and appreciation that comes flowing down from above and comes on through them out to others.  Someone must believe and step out on the water and break the currently accepted law that “everyone should wait for someone to love them first before they give love to others.” 

     The old adage is true: “Give and it shall be given.”  In order to really be loved, we must love them first.  Give love to others, and love will be given to you.

     Why is that so universally difficult for humans to do?  Because the “love” we are talking about–the kind of love everyone is craving, is a spiritual thing that is not in a person’s natural state of existence.  Humans cannot love the way they want to be loved because their old nature is selfish.  And herein lies the frustration.  Mankind is subjected to this by their Creator in hopes that they will return to God for an operation (Romans 8:20).

     God is hoping that we will check ourselves into His spiritual hospital and get a heart transplant.  Humans in their original earthly state have an old selfish heart and mind.  It must be taken out and a new heart and a new spirit from must take its place. 

     The Great Physician has a stark operating table for this spiritual procedure.  And just like our hesitance to go “under the knife” in a physical surgery, so we are hesitant to submit to this spiritual procedure.  The operating table is the cross of Christ.  It is there that we die with Him, are buried with Him, and through belief in His resurrection, we receive a new heart and new spirit that keeps His laws. 

     This is how to get that “love from above” flowing on “down and through” us to others.  Every thing that blocks His love from flowing through us–every negative aspect like hatred, bitterness, revenge, fear, selfishness, greed, ungratefulness, desiring other people’s things–all these things must die out and be replaced with His Spirit.  In fact, in God’s eyes they already have died out.  “Knowing this that our old man is crucified with Christ” (Romans 6:6).  And God is raising up His sons and daughters, His princes and princesses, to be the channels of the “Love from above” for these last days–to be the channels of Himself, His very essence.   

Kenneth Wayne Hancock                                                                      

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The Road Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

     Yes, we as God’s children, as His spiritual offspring, as His mortal heirs of all that He has, is, or ever shall be–yes, we are walking down a long road to get to his Celestial City.

     And it is a tough, lonely road at times, fraught with danger and temptation.  Our great poet/prophet/King David knew of the perils of this walk we are on.  “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” (Psalm 23:4).  Here he places the very road we must travel directly through a valley, which is a low place where death’s shadow casts its silhouette on our every step.

     David wrote from experience, for King Saul hounded him and sought to kill him and persecuted him at every turn.  He knew that we humans were as “blades of grass,” fragile vapors strutting upon the earth, one heartbeat away from returning to dust, one fickle captain’s word from being so much cannon fodder.  For David was a “bloody man,” who saw the fruit of war lie in crimson pools in those valleys of death.  And he saw there “the dead burying the dead.”  

     And so it is with us.  We are beset by injustices and inequities in this life, and at times  we throw our hands up, and then…we should do what King David did.  In our darker hours of need, we should say to God, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”  You are with us, and You “will never leave us nor forsake us.”                                  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Dreaming of Flying (Without the Airplane)

    

     Yesterday family, friends, and I are sitting just inside the dry sand on the beach of Waimea Bay.  Quicksilver camera crews are hooked up and ready to film.  It’s 6:00 a.m., an hour before sunrise.

     It’s the Eddie Big Wave Surfing Competition, and we feel the mist of the white froth kiss our cheeks, and as we talk, we begin to see the waves and their turbulence rushing towards us.  The waves are pounding the beach not 50 feet in front of us.

     My daughter Hannah and I are ironically, not speaking about water, ocean, waves, or anything remotely wet.  Somehow we get off into dreams-about-flying–where you are in the air, moving about without benefit of a flying-machine. 

     “You’ve had that dream?” she asks.

     “Yes, several times.  I have a recurring one where I’m lifting off silently and I’m gliding easy-like over a college campus.”

     “You, too, Dad?  I’ve had a dream sort of like that several times, but I never talk about it.  You know, people would think I’m a nut or something.”

     “You would be surprised at all the people with similar dreams.  I’ve talked to many people who have had a dream where they are lighter than air and fly around.  It’s pretty common.  What was your dream like?”  She’s becoming animated and her smile outshines the breaking light that now kisses the tops of the waves.

     “I don’t know exactly how to talk about it.  In the dream I raise up and have the sensation of staying just above my regular body.  It is an incredibly beautiful feeling–no worries, no cares.  I guess you’d call it levitating.”  She laughs a little girl joy-laugh, free for now to confide in me something very precious to her.

     “You’re not a kook,” I tell her.  And now I’m smiling with a transcendent child-grin, as having shared in a most delicious complicity.  “Hey, I turn around mid-air just by waving my hands like flippers.”

     She laughs.  “What do you think it means?” she asks.

     “I think that it’s a preview of what is to come.  God created us so that we would have these dreams.  They are not nightmares or evil, so they can’t be from the dark side.  And so I believe that He arranges for us to catch a whiff of how it would be to be immortal.  The apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15 about how our earthly bodies will be changed to spiritual bodies that cannot die.  It sounds wild, but it’s there in black and white.  So I think that it is a preview of a coming attraction.”

     “Well, I know that it is real and true.”

     “I wrote a poem about it.  A heavenly being, a heavenly messenger, an angel, if you will, is speaking to us mortals about these dreams.  I used it as the Prologue to my first book.  Check it out when you get home.”

     Anyway, the conversation shifted to waves, or rather to the lack of proper big waves to hold the competition.  And so we all drifted back to our cars and went to get some breakfast. 

     Hannah will have looked up the poem by now, but I’m going to include it for you below, so you can have a chance to read it.  Pleasant dreams…

   The Message

And the heavenly messenger said,                 

Oh, there are eternal things

   that you have inklings about.

Little things that come in the night,

   while your head is on your pillow,

   while your eyes shimmer

   and dreams fly through your eyes, and you soar,

   and your spirit for a moment is freed

   from the earthy chains of flesh.

And you glimpse how it could be,

   that wonderful, immortal feeling of lightness,

   being that celestial that you are called to be.

You feel it at times, in your dreams and daydreams

   of how it would be to not be human,

   to not be restrained to the earth,

   to seep up as a warm vapor into the light air,

   lifting off and wheeling this way and that,

   and breathing a life that is the essence and fount of all life,

   breathing into eternal lungs that which breeds immortal thought.

Oh, you have had glimpses.

You have heard whispers from those

   who guard you in the night,

   from those who breathe into your ear

   the precious seeds of immortality.

But then you awake to the bands of a fleshly prison

   and soon hunger for things to stuff your face

   and things to place your instrument of

   eternal seed-bearing into.

You awake from your fine dream that we’ve given you

   and then return to grovel in the lie

   that you are only animal.             Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{You can read my two books at my website         yahwehisthesavior.com          or you can read about them at Amazon.com.  Just type my full name in quotes}

 

 

    

Throwing the Baby Out with the Bath Water

     Upon coming to the stark realization that we have been duped and deceived–especially in the deeper matters of the heart–we tend to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water.  How could I have been such a fool? we ask ourselves, and then we turn our back on the offending entity.

     Burned by a woman, a man can become bitter and cynical towards women in general, looking at the entire gender as if they all were like the one that hurt him.  Of course, it can work both ways.

     The same scenario can happen in a religious sense.  It happened to me.  I was raised by a mother who took me to church and taught me Bible verses.  Mom and Dad took us to church.  But the things spoken by the preacher–those things of hope, love, and joy in God–these things were not happening in my home life.  Dad and Mom could not get along.  The fussing and fighting led to a divorce.

     The brunt of all this came crashing down on me at 11 years of age.  “Uh, son.  Your mother is leaving today with your sister.  We are going to leave it up to you.  Which one of us do you want to live with?

     “What?”  I stood there in shock.  Just yesterday, my name was in the newspaper on top of the standings, the Little League Baseball’s leading hitter–the batting champ!  Known and loved by all.  And now my Mom is moving out and I’ve got to choose which one to be loyal to basically.  I mean, this is 1958, for crying out loud.  It’s supposed to be like a Leave it to Beaver type family.

     So I looked at Mom, standing there clutching my 8 year old sister, and I looked at Dad, standing there resolute, firm-jawed, justified in his ossified stand, and not wanting Dad to be alone, I chose to stay with Dad.

     And that was the last time I went to a church house for several years.  Ten years later at 21, right after I got back from Vietnam, I started in earnest my quest for the truth–about God, about world affairs, about everything–but I did not go back to the denominational churches.  I turned first to the major Eastern religions.  But I did not find in them what I knew was true even then, in that the old self had to die.  The old nature that we are born with was selfish and it needed to go.  But nowhere in the Eastern religions is this problem directly addressed.

     I began to drift into nihilism’s abyss of nothingness, and had the sickening thought that the truth was this: that there was no absolute truth. 

     And it was then when I was 24, that I was invited to a Christian meeting in a home.  And the man teaching from the Bible quoted Romans 6:6.  “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ…”  And I stopped him right there and asked, “Is it talking about getting rid of the old self–about the old ego dying?”

     And he said, yes, that it has already died on the cross with Christ along with all its sins and sinning nature.  And if you believe in Christ’s resurrection in you, you can be raised to walk in a newness of life.

     And I went, Wow!  This is life changing.  This is what I’ve been searching for.  And that very day started a 14 year missionary period in my life. 

     I see now that for those ten years I had turned my back on Christianity and the Bible, blaming God for my misery.  I had thrown out the baby (Christ) with the bathwater (my pain).   But God is merciful and loving and forgiving, and He led me back to Him.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{If you want to read more on the “cross experience” and other things, check out my website where I have my two books posted in their entirety.   That website is   YahwehIstheSavior.com    My books can be ordered at amazon.com}

From “Highway to Hell” to “Immortality Road”

           

      Hello, and welcome to my blog.  My name is Kenneth Wayne Hancock.  My friends call me Wayne or “Wayneman.”  I am living proof that God still works miracles because 40 years ago I was a self-destructive druggie rocking on down the highway to hell, long before AC-DC coined the phrase.  And my wife and child were choking to death in my dust and smoke.  But that selfish young man no longer lives.  That guy with that old sinful heart was crucified and put to death on the cross with Christ, and now a new man walks the earth in that earthly body. 

 

     Yes, He put my feet on a right path that’s heading to that Immortal City.  So that’s why I’m calling my blog “Immortality Road” because as children of the King, His chief promise to us is immortality.  The desire to “live on” is in our human genes.  Philosophers, prophets, and kings have “desired to look into” these “exceeding great and precious promises” that lead us on down this road to immortality.

 

     For those of us who are called to walk with Christ, we seek a path not trodden by many.  He has given us an “earnest,” a downpayment of His Spirit, and He commands us to walk in His Spirit.  And now we find ourselves on a pilgrimage, following the Great Invisible Shepherd by faith.