McBride

6-20-20

What does it mean to dare to live?  Dare means to have the courage to do something and/or to defy or challenge (someone) to do something.  I’m ready to dare to live (truly live) by walking with greater faith depending on God–not by sight.  Sometimes like Peter we need to step out our comfort zone and obey the words of God keeping our eyes upon Him.  Peter walked on water–Matthew 14:22-31 King James Version (KJV).  

²⁹ And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.

When you learn to dare to trust God, you will learn to truly live and do the impossible too.

I dare you to practice walking with God by faith; you will learn how to live.  You will make choices that will lead you into encounters with the living God: His Holy Spirit.

Dare to Live By Walking By Faith Trusting God

Paul says we will answer to God for the way we labor (our work) down here on earth in 2 Corinthians 5:6-10 the following below:

6Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7(For we walk by faith, not by sight🙂 8We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 9Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. 10For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

Again we must believe God’s words.  We should think carefully and begin to live our life for God–cognizant that we will answer to Yeshua (Jesus) one day for the way we labor here on earth.

Are you where you are in life because of the free will choices you made for your life or are you on one of the tracks society is pushing you on?

You and I unfortunately became trapped to societal norms we were born and raise in.

For example, I started preschool at the age of three in Belize Central America where I was born.  Then my parents moved us to America. I started kindergarten here at five years of age (attended kinder twice). Then like many of you, I graduated from high school at the young age of eighteen.

Next, off to college I went traveling the path I was led to follow: to attain a job and find success.  I majored and graduated with a biology degree determined to attend medical school, but somehow I knew deep down that would not be a good fit for me. It’s not about prevention and finding the root of the problem in many cases–more about placating symptoms and making the problem worse in the long run for many.

 

My Testimony Facing a Goliath My Last Year Of College: Atheistic Evolutionary Professor

My first year in my biology class I watched an arrogant evolutionist professor laugh and say God isn’t real in front of three hundred incoming freshman and/or sophomore the first quarter of my fall term.  He went on to promote evolution stating we humans came from monkeys.  He laughed at the idea of an existence of God and us Christians believing in a God in that lecture hall.  I vehemently disagreed with him and did not entertain his foolish ideologies for one fraction of a second!

What makes more sense to you?

We came from monkeys or we came from God our Creator?

We are made in God’s image–not the monkey’s image.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:27 KJV)

We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. (Psalm 139:14 KJV)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

God the Creator created us and the monkeys. We didn’t originate from monkeys. So I had no interest in a class on evolution.

Now at the end of my junior year of college (end of third year), I realized I had to take this professor my senior year! [I avoided him my entire time in the biology department.] I knew there was no way I would sit through a class with that evolutionary God hating professor for an entire quarter. So the summer before my senior year I paid about $1000 to take to a genetics class (to avoid his evolutionary class) at UCLA.  Who would knowingly dare to take this evolution class with this atheist professor knowing he failed half of his students?

Many students didn’t know or had no choice.  By the time they realized their plight, it simply was too late for them to get out and graduate on time their senior year.  Well God sent an older Asian lab partner I did research with to warn me my junior year.  I listened.

God works in mysterious ways despite the fact that the evolutionary professor was the chair that year of the biology department not the molecular biologist professor that I expected (from the previous year that I knew and worked for in her laboratory–unbeknownst to me.)  It wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought to get the signature for credit from UCLA.  That’s when I began to vehemently pray!

I remember praying earnestly that God would allow me to get the signature I needed. In addition other students told me that he wouldn’t give me credit for the genetics class at UCLA because others did not get credit and was forced to take his class. I remember praying and thanking God for the signature in advance.  I, also, recall visualizing receiving the signature many times and utilized this strategy walking into the professors office with confidence knowing I would indeed receive his signature.  My faith in God allowed me to step up to my Goliath with assurance that I would get that signature despite no other student had managed to do so.  You see all of our science classes had to have a genuine laboratory to receive credit and the one at UCLA said lab attached to the course when I signed up and paid, but the students did not have a real laboratory experience in their course.  They had about 300-500 students (too many I guess to hold an actual lab).

I really needed this atheistic professor’s signature to get credit for the genetics class from UCLA to avoid his class on evolution. [Things did not look good, but I determined to walk by faith and not by sight.]  I actually had to take his class for at least two weeks before I could get his signature and drop his class on evolution.  Fortunately for me I was doing great, paying attention and understanding completely what he taught scoring well on his first quiz. He knew I was paying attention and kept up with his lectures.  I was one of maybe fourteen students in the class.  I was the only brown skin woman with curly hair in that class.  I definitely stood out.  Also, I could never forget he failed half his previous classes and half of those students or more failed his first quiz in that class. I did well because I knew what I was up against–preparation is key.  Nevertheless, I didn’t want to stay in his evolution class.

Once I got a copy of my transcripts with evidence of my genetics class with a lab from UCLA, I marched right into the department chair’s office one afternoon.  When I walked into his office, he told me he never gave any one credit for the genetics class at UCLA.  He said it does not have a real lab.   He questioned me about the class and I assured him I took a lab with the course.  He said maybe they changed the genetics class and added a real lab.  I said yes I had a lab with my class. He took my paper and signed it asking no further questions–praise God!

I said thank you heading out his office.  He stopped me by asking me if I was graduating that year.  I said yes happy I got the signature I needed.  He looked a bit surprised and seemed impressed smiling.  I thanked him once again and left.  I knew God intervened. There was no way I should have walked out with that signature, and He must have known it too. A  miracle happened!

God made me aware of this miracle He supernaturally worked out.  I felt like David must have felt up against Goliath: victorious!

I dare you to practice walking with God by faith; you will learn how to truly live. You will encounter the living God: His Holy Spirit.

 

Transitioning From School (Work Force Training) to Working at a Job (Work Force)

From Learning Track to the Working Track: the Enslavement Track

So after nineteen years of schooling from preschool to earning a bachelors degree in biology, I continued my education earning a masters in special education to work with children with mild, moderate and severe disabilities–requires a lot of problem solving daily.  I taught special needs children of all ages from high school age twenty two down to three years of age–once the adults turn twenty two years they exit the program.

Many of us spend our lives instead of living, entrapped to debt–working to pay off rent or debt our entire lives. After many of you graduate from college, some go on to get a masters and/or even a doctorate degree.  Despite the doctorate and/or medical degree, many will still go on to live quiet lives of desperation.  I know many doctors over the years that no longer work in their chosen profession and many people that work without joy.  They get up and work each day in what many call the “rat race.” They buy a car.  They purchase a house getting a mortgage that many carry to their grave–sometimes the bank takes back their home. Thus the name mortgage.  You carry that loan to the morgue.

Is that truly living?  When we believe God’s words to us, he offers us life more abundant.

What helped me survive all these years to reflect back and share with you is that I love helping and teaching special needs children.  I’m, also, a great actress and can convince myself that I love what I do so I actually enjoy my work most days.

 

The Train

Nevertheless, I’m still going down a track set out for me.  I am riding on that train that I stepped on at the age of three when I started preschool.  I’m riding right along more or less comfortable–no longer painful to do.  Suddenly I am starting to realize that the Holy Spirit wants me to get off my comfortable ride through life.

Will I dare to live or continue to ride the train staying put in what feels so safe? I have a good pension coming.  I have a great career helping children that I love.  I get to problem solve, design experimental lessons, create art and watch children grow, smile and thrive. I even get to act.  My work allows me a great deal of flexibility.

Staying on this train (working teaching special needs children for the school district) still limits me from using all my skills and talents God instilled within me.  Thus this teaching job leaves me feeling particularly lacking during this pandemic with the need to dare to live more abundantly trusting in God for my provisions and utilizing my God given gifts to thrive.

Can I really leave my job and step off this train that I’ve traveled upon my whole life?  Where will go? What will I do?  Will I succeed?  What if (all these unknowns that I am not use to facing) I fail?

Can I trust that God is leading me away from my present life and will help me? Will I dare to live? Will you dare to live? Will you continue to stay on the train? Where is the train heading?  Where will I get dropped off? The train leads to the old folks home, the hospital, the morgue, the cemetery and to hell.  Do you still want to stay on that train if this is really where the train is leading you down to? Pardon my reflection, this is just my thoughts though grim.

Also, I hear God telling me to pursue other things.  This requires walking by faith away from my present life: stepping off the train.

Reflecting back forty plus years, I realize now that I  jumped on this train crying at the age of three when my mother dropped me off the very first day at my preschool class.  The preschool teacher told my mother to leave me.  She will stop crying.  Now as adults we can all get off the train.  Our parents no longer force us to go to school.  We no longer cry.  We formed habits that cause us now to just get up and go.  We no longer have to think; we just stay on the train track going down the set path.

My mind does not allow me to walk away: exit the train.  I’m actually afraid to get off.  All I know is this life on the train on a set track.

Should we  plan day by day and hour by hour to make our escape safely from the train or is just best to jump off.  It’s like getting into a cold pool.  Should you get in gradually or just jump in?

Ultimately freedom will only come when we learn to trust God and jump in.  Then we will learn to dare to live more abundant lives. I dare you to walk with God by faith obeying His voice in how to lead your life.  You will discover how to truly live when you both  encounter and obey (believe in) the living God: His Holy Spirit.

 

Outside of obedience to God, their exist no genuine life or freedom. 

The societal norms works to entrap us from a very young age.  Not learning how to think for ourselves, we do not stop and reconsider our plight.  We just except our circumstances thinking we cannot free ourselves (not even wanting to do so).  As children we were bound, but adults now have minds that bind them.  Yes, we become enslaved to societal standards, ideas and habits that do not serve us starting from a very young age.

We like a baby elephant tied to a rope, we cannot get away when young.   However, the adult elephant still tied to the rope fails to escape though it could easily break free from the very same rope.  The adult elephant bound in its thinking stays bound to the rope for life like us humans.

 

Satan Traps Us and Ignorance Keeps Us Bound

Satan teaches us that we came from monkeys so we do not seek God’s help–remaining bound. Satan traps us like a spider spins a huge web in our world to capture it’s prey: the children of God.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Sin (disobedience to God) destroys us, and we are left at Satan’s mercy without hope and ignorant.  Many turn to alcohol and drugs and some turn to spending and buying to fulfill the void and emptiness.  While others use other means to attempt to ease the pain they suffer. Sin leads to suffering, destruction and death.

The Apostle Paul writes the following concerning sin:

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? (Romans 7:24)

For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.” (Acts 8:23)

Disobedience to God’s words to us (sin) leads us down a wide path that the vast majority travel upon (the followers).  Suddenly they realize something isn’t right.  Satan’s ways push the masses towards and finally off a cliff into the gates of hell: death.  This leads humanity to self destruction.

We must learn to trust God and to step away from our enslavement.  We must believe God,  think and discover the truth that God shares with us in His words to us. We must understand and flee sin; sin results in the following: suffering, anxiety, depression, pain, emptiness, separation from God and hopelessness.  

We should learn to stop, look up and pray to our heavenly Father. When we stop to think, ask God to forgive us of all our sins against Him and help us to overcome all sins in our life, He will happily answer and help us escape.

We ought to pray and talk to God on our knees looking up to heaven to hear from Him–waiting patiently for His response.  He will answer in His perfect timing and set us free.  God will make a way of escape off that train bound for hell.  We must strive to walk by faith and not by sight. We must each dare to live more abundant lives by obeying the still small voice within coming from the Holy Spirit of God.

 

Dare to Live and Tap into Your Talents

Once God gives you His Holy Spirit and sets you free from sin, your next step is to ask Him to help to free you from the God of money: your work place known as the rat race.  You must labor to serve God because one day you will have to answer to how you labored here on earth.  Did you walk by the leading of His Holy Spirit or did you stay on that train leading to the gates of hell?

1. Ask God to help you use all your inborn talents to provide for your self and family.
2. Ask God to teach you to fight and to make you strong so you can walk by faith and not by sight using your God given talents to provide for you.

Let’s find ways each day to dare to live by talking with God daily and trusting that He gave us skills to use to provide for the needs of ourselves and family.

Live Freely According to God’s Will For Your Life

My father often reminded me of this story of an elephant while growing up like I mentioned earlier.  The elephant bound at a young age by a rope tied to a tree tugged and tugged failing to break free.  The elephant grows up and never tries to break free from the same rope chained to his/her body.  Now an adult, the elephant could easily break free.  The elephant, however, does not even try to free itself.  Although the adult elephant could easily break free. The adult elephant thinks that he/she is bound by the rope because it could not break free as a baby elephant. So he/she remains bound to that rope and tree the remainder of it’s life.  The adult elephant was conditioned to believe that he/she could not free himself or herself from their enslavement.

You and I like that elephant believe we cannot free ourselves: stuck on the train.  We must begin to think differently about our situation in this life and begin to dare to live more abundantly each day.

In concluding, we ought to pray and talk to God on our knees looking up to heaven to hear from Him–wait patiently for His response.  He will answer in His perfect timing and set us free from the chains of sin that binds us.  God will make a way of escape off that train bound for hell.  We must strive to walk by faith and not by sight. We must each dare to live more abundantly and obey God.  We know God when we know His words and obey them.  The Bible contains the words of God.  His Holy Spirit teaches us the words of God and the Holy Spirit guides God’s people back into the kingdom of God.

Questions to Ponder

How can you do things differently going forward trusting God?  

Why must you do things differently trusting in God?

Start with a  picture of the end goal in mind and write the goal(s) down and think through the necessary steps to get there–write the key steps down that will get you to your end goal(s).  

Why dare to live?

How do you go about daring to live each day?

Stop and brainstorm answering these questions in a journal or on a piece of paper before going on–stop now and do these exercises.

List your reasons below in the comment section on why you thing you must dare to live.  Share and encourage others with your thoughts reflections in the comment section.  Let’s share our ideas with one another and strive to make it into Yahweh’s kingdom together.

God bless you and God loves you!

 

 

My Pre-Brainstorm List:

1.  Start a business
2. Write a downloadable material to share with the world
3. List your skills/talents and use every one
4. Attend conferences to grow
5. Read a new book
6. Talk and seek God’s guidance
7. Step away from a life of mediocrity and quiet desperation and allow your gifts to provide resources to bless you and your family: Dare to Live!

 

1. If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life.

Leo Tolstoy

 

2. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy

 

3. Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

Leo Tolstoy

 

4. Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.

Leo Tolstoy

 

5. A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

Leo Tolstoy

 

6. If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people.

Leo Tolstoy

 

7. Grow spiritually and help others to do so. It is the meaning of life.

Leo Tolstoy

 

8. Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.

Leo Tolstoy

 

9. When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.

Leo Tolstoy

10. People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.

Leo Tolstoy

 

11. Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.

Leo Tolstoy

 

12. Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government’s ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery.

Leo Tolstoy

 

13. Once we’re thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it’s only here that the new and the good begins.

Leo Tolstoy

 

14. If people tell you that
    you should live your life preparing for the future, do not believe them.
    Real Life is found only in the present.

Leo Tolstoy

 

15. Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

Leo Tolstoy

 

16. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.

Leo Tolstoy

 

17. Very often, all the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth.

Leo Tolstoy

 

18. The kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy and dull things become cheerful.

Leo Tolstoy

 

19. Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.

Leo Tolstoy

 

20. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

Leo Tolstoy

 

21. Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.

Leo Tolstoy

 

22. Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude.

Leo Tolstoy

 

23. Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

Leo Tolstoy

 

24. Just imagine that the purpose of life is happiness only-then life becomes a cruel and senseless thing. You have to embrace what the wisdom of humanity, your intellect and your heart tell you: that the meaning of life is to serve the force that sent you into the world. Then life becomes a joy.

Leo Tolstoy

 

25. Act as if you are, and you will become such.

Leo Tolstoy

 

26. Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.

Leo Tolstoy

 

27. Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty.  But poverty comes not from God’s laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man’s injustice to his fellow man.

Leo Tolstoy

 

28. It seems that it is impossible to live without discovering the purpose of your life. And the first thing which a person should do is to understand the meaning of life. But the majority of people who consider themselves to be educated are proud that they have reached such great height that they cease to care about the meaning of existence.

Leo Tolstoy

 

29. The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying – lying to others and to yourself.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

30. Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

31. When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

32. The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

33. I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

34. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

35. Life is what matters, life alone – the continuous, eternal process of discovering life – and not the discovery itself.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

36. If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

37. Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

 

38. People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

39. If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man … just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

40. Yes, that’s right… love should come before logic … Only then will man come to understand the meaning of life.

Fyodor Dostoevsky