Author Danyelle Wolfe Read

Holiness and the Prophetic In The New Covenant

The concept of holiness is actually a cluster of meanings. Its primary concept is “the other”, or “otherness”. This is meant to lead us to understand the Creator’s glory and nature cannot be humanly manufactured or earned. The fundamental understanding of holiness is that His ways are not our ways! Yet in knowing Him, we also know that He IS love, He brings peace, He is surrounded by glory, and so forth. In the idea of holiness, therefore, we also have all of who He is that we can appropriate as His children. Receive it and be holy yourself! If you do, you’ll find yourself walking in His ways. If you seek His face and His ways, you will hear from Him. This function of communicating with us is accomplished by His Holy Spirit.

As we are “filled” with the Holy Spirit, which is to say allowing Him to take the reins of our lives to the degree that we experience His infilling, we will be able to hear from Him. This last function of His Holy Spirit will grow in us. There is no replacement for time in many areas of our growth including this one. Hearing from God may come very early in our walk, but it takes time to understand His ways and know when and where and how to apply them.

Seasoned spirit-filled Christians usually make this process look seamlessly easy. We are at rest in Him so we tend not to stress. Those less seasoned may bring more drama to the process. That’s ok, because it’s still new to them. We who have walked in the Spirit for many years will walk with greater and greater ease, but with no less awe and thankfulness.

It never gets old to see the Holy Spirit work miraculously, even when it is one’s daily and hourly experience. So don’t be deceived by the seeming ease of a saint of God. Don’t confuse the natural for the supernatural. The supernatural is still operating right out in the open for you to see in their lives when you have eyes to see it. And the eyes to see it are developed and brought into focus by functioning in it oneself. This is what is meant by the scripture “the spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets.” Yet reading the stories about the prophets, Elisha for example, will reveal how it takes time to grow and develop. Elisha became the head of the school of the prophets of his day, and when it was time for Elijah to depart, his more advanced disciples knew of it. But they still hadn’t gotten the whole story the way Elisha had. Thus Elisha instructed them to be still and watch (get behind me).

Insight and revelation are sometimes learned during dire circumstances when all that is natural fails us. This is one of the reasons why you will hear preachers who do not know better preach that we “need” adversity. However, it’s also possible to focus on God’s will even when times are good, to learn all that is needed this way. And in fact, the seasoned lover of God and believer in Christ will normally always do so, no longer being deceived by natural circumstances but rather flowing with the Holy Spirit. (The Holy Spirit doesn’t lead us into the valley, we walk there all by our little old selves.)

Walking by the Spirit, God repeatedly promises He will make all natural things work together for our good and that we will prosper and be in health. Yet there is a balance because to flow with the Holy Spirit requires putting God’s Will ahead of our own. So our focus must remain on His will despite all the wonderful “things” (love, joy, peace in ourselves and in our relationships, provision, health and healing) being added to us. This beautiful interchange is best described by the relationship of marriage, with each partner putting the other first (The song of solomon is one expression of this). Except in this case your “partner” is God. I’d say that’s a little bit unequal, wouldn’t you? And yet He calls us His beloved and His bride, making us righteous, giving us all the benefits of being His which Jesus has. (the book of Ephesians talks a lot about this.)

So don’t be deceived just because a believer’s life looks great and because they have all their needs met abundantly and seem to do this effortlessly, don’t conclude that it is because they have a great education or are smart, or some other natural thing. In fact, those who rely on such natural things will experience only a form of success but not the success of God, they will experience a success that brings many troubles and worries.

The good success of God brings the kiss of favor: joy and blessing, family and community and peace, protection, all in supernatural ways with revelation and understanding but it all may look very simple. Unless you ask, you may never realize what’s been moving that person, causing them to make the decisions they have made. Yet as those who are living in it know, this supernatural state of blessing has come because they have diligently applied themselves to learning His ways, have consistently put God’s will first and His kingdom, have been using their faith and letting the grace of God do the work, are listening to Him and to Him only, moving with Him and with Him only, have not grabbed at the many earthly blessings and favor being poured on them daily nor on the temptation to copy the zeal or callings of others, but have instead continued to take hold of God’s will, God’s leading and God’s righteousness in Christ as primary.

This is how we can continue to walk in love, even in the midst of God’s constant outpouring of spiritual and material blessing. It’s is the new covenant way of living in His holiness and in the prophetic. No drama. Just truth!! It keeps a person humble. So that, depending on their calling, you may never notice them. And if you do, you may never understand what is making them tick unless you ask.

Glimpses of Jesus bar-David Part Two

This post is part of the l’Chaim! series on topics related to the Jewishness of the Messiah Jesus and how this can further our understanding and the living under the power of Holy Spirit in this generation.

As a Jew, Jesus was capable of acting in the role of rabbi. He knew every law and tradition, and could have certainly risen to the rank of chief priest, had this been His mission. However, the mission of Jesus went far beyond that of being a Jew, for Jesus bar-David was also Yeshua bar-Yahweh, or more appropriately, Yeshua bar-Elohim, the Son of God as well as the Son of Man. I believe this is why the Savior’s own Judaism in His earthly life has easily been overlooked, because He Himself explodes out of it. No culture can contain Him!

And yet, the Creator chose a people on earth to represent Him. Their mission was to be a light to the nations. So when He came to die for us, He came as a Jew, fulfilling all that His Father had intended in setting a people apart. As many Jews today will readily agree, Jews have never existed to hoard the goodness or the revelation of God, but to share it. In Jesus, our loving God has provided a new covenant, one which when received and lived frees anyone and everyone from the curses originating in the Fall in Genesis 3. This is the Blessing! The Blessing as promised to Abraham and to his seed through Isaac, the children who come through Faith.

There are many examples of how Jesus points to this mission to the entire world in His earthly ministry: His encounters with the non-Jews as written in the gospels are probably only a few of many more times when He offered them the same blessings He gave to His fellow Israelites. A centurion (one of the Roman oppressors, no less), a Samaritan, and a woman with enough faith to plead with Him on His own terms, “even the dogs get to eat the crumbs beneath the table,” she said. There are probably many others, those who in those days were known as God-fearers, people who believed in the God of the Jews, who read and revered their scriptures.

Returning to the prophetic decree declared over Simon Peter, if we look at this with a different lens, understanding that Jesus is not only bar-David but also bar-Elohim, the son of the Creator, we understand the astounding truth Jesus is proclaiming.

“‘And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’” MT 16:16-17

Here is a truth whoever believes on the Name of Jesus can stand on! It is not only for Jews but for everyone who accepts the grace offered in Jesus as the One Who represented us all on the cross! He makes us the Church, Jew and Gentile, male and female, barbarian, uneducated, ignorant, educated and civilized, all, all, all, all, all of us who believe, we have the promise that the gates of hell will give way, and are even flimsy, compared to the might that is within us.

My friend, I understand if churches have let you down. But churches are not the Kingdom of God, they are human organizations and they have flaws. You are the Church when you believe on Jesus in a way that produces evidence and substance. You have that power to tread on serpents and see the gates of hell cave as you advance upon them.

Still, if one can put a thousand to flight, two can vanquish 10,000! Our Lord’s purpose was to build you up as part of a body. Get to a fellowship where you can experience this Church blessing if at all possible. That is to say, find a Spirit-Filled, Bible-believing church which stands in the supernatural, the anointing and the blessing you can count on.

I find myself groping for a way to get across the full import of this promise which Jesus verbally proclaimed (and I SAY to you) to Simon Peter. How many know that when Jesus says something it’s scripture? This 40-second clip from a powerful sermon by Evangelist Rev. Daniel Kolenda conveys the immensity of the truth of what Peter received and which we inherit! I encourage you to study this topic out for yourselves. Tell me if it doesn’t make you hungry to learn from our Lord how to put this into practice in your own sphere of influence.

Receive everything that is yours, dear friend and family, as you pursue the One who is always pursuing you.

Glimpses of Jesus bar-David Part One

My Jewish father used to bring us kids to Brooklyn to visit his mother. Grandma Wolfe-Cole stood at 4’11. Having escaped Hitler’s armies by emigrating to NYC, she kept a kosher household. As soon as we crossed the threshold of her modest Flatbush apartment, she would place her hands on we children’s heads and mutter in Hebrew and Yiddish, a mixture of Hebrew and German often spoke by immigrant Jews in New York. My father stopped to allow this, just as anyone else in the house fell silent, honoring, observing and agreeing. “What did she say, Daddy?” I asked and in response to my query, he would translate the beautiful prayers my grandmother had declared, ordaining blessings and peace. The effect on me was a profound sense of Adonai’s Presence.

Interestingly, speaking blessings over the children is very much alive in today’s Jewish households. A Jew may or may not choose to extend their faith in other ways, but blessing the children is one tradition seen everywhere, from orthodox to non-practicing.

Another cultural attribute is to encourage PDAs. Jews hug, men hug men and they also hug women, everybody hugs everybody. They express their feelings. Jewish men are not afraid to cry. There is good evidence that this makes people stronger and healthier, as long as it is kept positive.

Another thing which is often practiced among Jews, including my Dad, is to catch someone being good. When there may be a need to correct, it is done in a way that is not shaming.

Jesus often displays these hallmarks of Jewish culture. He was kind yet no wimp, He could express affection. He understood the ramifications of His authority, not for oppression but for service. He was a teacher par excellence, a counselor to all. His Jewishness clothed Him like a coat of many colors and sometimes we can catch a glimpse of it in the nuances of the written gospels. Here’s one example from Matthew, also a Jew:

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, He questioned His disciples: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon bar-Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by My Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Matthew 16:13-17

As many will know, “bar” is Aramaic for son. “Blessed are you, Simon bar-Jonah,” there is such warmth and brotherly, even fatherly, affection conveyed in this phrase. Imagine a tutor or an elder calling you by your full name and calling you blessed at the same time. This is Jesus gushing, it goes way beyond approval, it’s love and pride mixed together, it’s joy because here, Jesus is “catching” Simon Peter being good. He’s ecstatic to see the fruition of what He knew was in Peter. The Savior then prophesies over him, bestowing upon him almost inconceivable honor and one of the most powerful calls anyone has ever received.

I’m not saying that Jesus was only a warm and fuzzy Jewish guy. He did a lot of rebuking and correcting, name calling and even whipped a few people at least a couple of times. He hated sickness and spiritual blindness, but lowest on His list were those who took advantage of others through religious belief. Highest were those who showed the qualities of recognizing God’s righteousness and love, faith in Him, and living out their radical faith. Actually, this is one of a few times I know of that Jesus ever gushed. The others were when He praised the woman who had given her last two mites in the offering, when the woman touched Him and was healed, and when the centurion (a non-Jew mind you) told Him not to take the time to come to his house but rather that if He simply said the word, his servant would be healed. Much as here with Peter, Jesus “marveled” at this man’s faith. (Mt 8:13). The recorded memoirs of the apostles tell us that He took greatest delight in people believing God was God. It wasn’t just that Peter’s answer was correct but that his heart was open to hearing from God, as radical as what he heard might be, which made Jesus so so happy.

Jesus was not a humanist. Every action of His short time on earth was pinned upon the axis of delivering and teaching supernatural faith which pulls us out of our self-absorption. Unlike Maslow, He didn’t put self actualization at the epitome of human achievement. He honored laying one’s life down for the revealed will of God.

That’s a very very different emphasis. He said only by Me can you find access to heaven, to God, to eternal life. And while the by product would often be many earthly joys, those should not be the focus.

What if the Son of God had put His own “happiness” first. Would anything have stopped Him from achieving earthly fame and fortune? If He had decided to use His immense talents, gifts and power to become a general and take over the known world, He could have. His riches and His harem could have far exceeded those of Solomon. Jesus told us clearly, My kingdom is not of this world. The King of love and peace also knew what it would cost to achieve it. And every generation of believers since Him have the overarching purpose of enforcing the kingdom of God. How pitiful to reduce the purpose of life to nothing more than self actualization or achievement for it’s own sake.

We are here to serve God according to how we are called. In Christ our lives are hid. This is why it’s so important to connect with God through the Holy Spirit after one is saved, to seek Him about one’s individual purpose and to hear from Him about every action, every decision. And it’s why Jesus honored this level of faith above all others.

Angel News Headlines: Rome crumbles, Hitler loses, Woke Culture fizzles, Christ’s Followers Set the World on Fire with Love as Economies Rebound. Liberty and Justice Comes to All Nations.

The news of John the Baptist’s death hit Jesus hard, yet He ministered to the crowd of those seeking healing, rather than insist on being alone to pray. Jesus kept ministering under the jurisdiction of an insane government. This, dear friends, is how I’ve come to understand my response to be in the face of the insane corruption of the owners of various social media websites.

As I prayed for help and guidance, the Father has brought various scriptures to my remembrance. Jesus paying taxes and Paul’s insistence that we honor and pray for governmental leaders. Paul’s preaching in the Parthenon, which is exactly like posting on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, his teachings on eating meat sacrificed to pagan gods. The gist is we don’t shrink back in the face of evil, instead we move forward in love and take back the territory. We overcome evil with good. Light shines in the darkness and darkness vanishes. Sometimes it’s not without a fight, but we always win. God’s response to Judas was to commission a Paul. We have the promise that the gates of hell won’t stand before us. Cancel culture, voter fraud, stealing rights and undermining the Constitution and the rule of law, these are all satanic gates, attempts at setting up corruption to an inappropriate place of power. History is very clear, Rome crumbled as Constantinople rose to power, installing Christianity as its official religion. In more recent times, Israel won the 6-day war supernaturally, in the very same way Israel won many other wars in the OT supernaturally. Hitler’s march through Europe seemed to evince him as invincible. And yet, the allies did not give up, despite tragic and terrible losses, and he was defeated. God Is Greater. With all of this, there is a cautionary note to count the cost. Sometimes it’s high, sometimes it’s life itself. One day, there will be an ultimate clash between the kingdoms of light and darkness when Christ will return; things will get very dark before then. Could this be the prequel? It’s certainly a foreshadowing. But we are never to stop hoping, believing, holding fast to what is good and true. Believers have brought the world back from the brink a number of times. For the sake of all my friends, especially the young ones with young families, I very much hope that’s what will happen in our times, in America and throughout the world. However, that really isn’t our priority. It’s more a fruit that comes from living the vine life.

Here’s how I’m handling Facebook and all the other minions right now. I’m using FB on a minimal basis under a new, minimalist account, in order to be able to communicate with current events of groups I am involved with in person. I’m staying off Twitter because I value my time. I don’t watch mainstream news, I sometimes watch Newsmax, but the Epoch Times and their sister organization NTD as well as OAN are by far the most factual and least editorializing of the conservative news outlets. RightSideBroadcasting has created its own infrastructure, and is another good outlet which we’ll need if YouTube totally flakes. Instagram and Pinterest are not worth my time either but again, take them over with the good news if they are yours. (I’m posting on the venues which I list below, including some personal things.) YouTube remains very helpful though I try to go directly to the site when it too hosts the video. In that vein, God.TV has some very worthwhile programming. I’ve closed Amazon Prime permanently but continue to host my books on Amazon. In other words, it’s impossible not to be tainted by the surrounding culture. So move in on it, make it the vehicle for proclaiming the gospel, ANNEX and TAKE OVER.

Here is the promised list of alt venues, where I have an account and where you are welcome to join me. They are sometimes good sources of actual, factual news and information, as well as direct posts by some great patriots.

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/danyellewolferead If we’re friends, hit Add Friend or simply hit Follow. This is also a good place through which to contact me. The contact page may be accessed through the link above.

Telegram – name: Holistic One username HolisticOne

Gab and Rumble – AuthorDanyelle

Parler – @DayWolfe

If you have any trouble finding me on these, reach out to me via Goodreads and I’ll help. Also, I would appreciate your mentioning your own finds in the comments below.

In the end, the only question that matters is, Do I love the men and women who are destroying truth, justice, the rule of law and our freedoms right now? What does it matter what I feel when God does? God loves them, and by His Spirit, I can too. Does God condone what you’ve done? No, but Jesus has paid the price for it, just as for my sins, and none of us is any blacker or dirtier than another before we come to Christ. Sanctimonious? Not really, when you consider the Bible says all our attempts at righteousness are filthy rags. If I am loving you through anything other than gratitude for my redemption in Christ, it’s just dirt in God’s eyes.

Civil justice would be served if many of them spent the rest of their lives in prison. Without condoning them, God loves them. And therefore, so do I.

Listen Pray Stand

If you are experiencing anxiety right now (and any person with common sense would), it is not weakness. If anything, it attests to mental strength. But there is a better way to handle that ability. I’ve helped a lot of people overcome depression, but anxiety is a different sort of evil. It starts with a meme or an idea that takes over the soul. While it starts in the mind, it can and will pollute every other aspect of your being, emotions, body, even spirit.

The only real and lasting antidote for anxiety is to change your thoughts. I should know, I have had to fight this fight all my life. I’m here to tell you that I have won that war, though there are sometimes skirmishes. I never took meds for it, but if you have, it may be necessary, no worries. The main thing however is this: whatever the thing is that you are focusing on that is causing the anxiety, find the thing that is true regarding that same issue, and focus on it instead.

But Danyelle, you say, I keep hearing more and more facts about election fraud, the Biden/Harris actions, not to mention concealed historical crimes against the US and other countries, insane and horrific slaughter of innocent people in China, Iran, Syria, religious persecution on my job. Meanwhile, many respected preachers are saying this is the end! I can’t be anything but a mess!!!

Listen, sibling, I applaud you for doing your research in the areas of public policy and politics. I’ll try to write another blog soon listing the many alt media sites that I have found, as it is important to be informed!

The real issue is not that our country is in chaos, that you, dear friend, may be being targeted, or even that this could mark the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The real underlying issue is how to handle all the new information because how you handle it means the difference between staying the course with God or panicking, and it may even be as important to you as life and death. This has always been the case, even in peace times, but the acuity of our situation here in the US puts more pressure on every aware person and therefore increases the possibility of heading into a tailspin. No need for that!

First: Don’t hide from it. Denying the truth is worse than being upended by it. Think of how the early believers’ lives were totally changed. And yet many, most people who had been healed by Jesus turned their back on Him. No, I think I’ll go back to my safe little life, they said. Actually, it turned out not to be so safe. Go ahead and download, subscribe, sign up with apps with reputable voices on them. These may be where the censored, yet upright, people have opened new accounts.

Second: Take a break from it. Many of these new apps automatically queue notifications to your phone. You can simply mute your phone but you will still see the notifications. More effective is to turn off the notifications for these individual apps through your settings function. I log in to these apps when I am ready to take in more information. I pray about and schedule when I will do this. This is information that brings pain, grief and outrage, or it should. You must be bolstered and ready when you are reading it (see my next suggestion).

Third: Ready yourself! Start with worship, the Word, and the knowledge that God is greater than all the machinations of evil minds. You didn’t sign up for Jesus thinking this life was all there is. Keep eternity in mind. Listening to encouraging sermons from before the virus took over is also a very good idea. Find scriptures that become a living word to your spirit, and listen to the Holy Spirit. Use worship music to remember His goodness and protection over you. Psalm 91 is also great for this, as is John 14, Phil 3-4, there are many others. All of this will arm you, shield you, guard your heart and mind. As you pray, speak forth that truth and justice be done. What we say has a powerful impact, even if said in the privacy of your study. Listen and get God’s guidance. Then follow the leading of the Spirit for your own life. If you don’t do that well yet, you have many principles to follow from God’s Word. The Holy Spirit never contradicts the Word. Respect also that others may have a different call.

Fourth: There is something all of us can do regardless of your calling. You can take a stand for truth and justice by boycotting all lying media. I recently discovered that my tires were made in China! I needed two new tires so instead of buying that brand, I switched. Stop buying Chinese-made goods. Get off of Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple to the degree that you can. Amazon Prime, cancel it! You don’t have to storm Washington, or even have arguments with your co-workers, but you can do this. Before you tell me what I’m advocating is extreme, realize this: Every time you log on, tune in or give attention to those TV and Cable channels or websites, you give revenues to people, people with lots and lots of money, enough to stop the legal system from doing its job of reviewing TONS of hard evidence that they are criminals and traitors participating in human trafficking and child sex rings. Enough to alter the results of a US Presidential election! If using a social media site is critical to your ministry or business, you have many other options. I hope to blog soon about my own migration from those disgraceful media outlets to ones that are doing a much better job and with integrity. Some I will clue you into. Others I will remain anonymous on, not because I am afraid, but because I am being led to. If you read my books or know me for any length of time, you will learn how to follow this leading for yourself. Also, if you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, and want to, please feel free to contact me through my Goodreads account where I may be easily found. It would be my honor to assist you. God’s love and faithfulness never quit. I cannot imagine going through these evil times without Him. The good news is, you don’t have to!

Listen, Pray, and Stand. Inform yourself, turn your outrage into determination, your fear into courage, your anxiety to proactive calm. As you move away from anxious reactivity to responding, you will find yourself able to listen more, observe more, and possibly say something that will help someone else to become informed. Above all, you will stay in the center of God’s will with assurance, knowledge and guidance for He has you firmly in the palm of His hand.

PS Here’s a link to a book I’m enjoying right now. I am not getting any revenues from posting this! It’s a good example of what to put into your soul at this time.

https://www.davidjeremiah.org/resources/revealing-the-mysteries-of-heaven

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35273355-revealing-the-mysteries-of-heaven

The AHAV Bible

I’m excited about this Bible coming out, a rendering of the New Testament based on Aramaic, which is what Jesus and His contemporary Israelis spoke, which also Paul must have spoken, though He and many of them would have also been raised to speak and read the scriptures in Hebrew, as Jews are today. And doubtless, many spoke and understood other current languages of the day, for the empire was a vast conglomerate of disparate people groups.

As someone who speaks a few languages and have been trained in ancient Latin and even a little Hebrew, (I even dabbled in Hawaiian when I was living there – very very interesting language), I am so very aware that different nuances of meaning attend different languages. Studying languages has long been part of my love affair with words.

It will be really interesting to see what layers of meaning an Aramaic translation unfolds. An interlinear edition would probably be the next step, with a key, such as the Strong’s lexicon, which brings depth to one’s study and to which many online translations and interlinear versions are tied.*

About

*Though it has been useful, this is not a blank check endorsement of Strong’s lexicon.

Christmas Kittens and Writing Fiction

Like most believers who write, whether fiction, non-fiction, blogs, books, articles, I write because I have a spiritual mandate, an inner urge so forceful, I dare not deny it. I write because the Holy Spirit inspires me to think big. But thinking big is secondary to the mandate.

My books are developing a following today, in this world, even without much marketing on my part. However, I also enjoy my career, my “day job” in the medical field, and unless I am led to stop and write full time, I’ll do both.

It’s true that I am a creative and that writing gives me an outlet for that continually bubbling newness rising up from where soul and spirit entwines with God’s. It’s a magnificent challenge to write well, one I’ll spend a lifetime working toward and never achieving to my full satisfaction, I’m almost sure. But it’s a challenge worth the investment of joyous, painstaking hours adding up to a good chunk of my life.

Yet, there’s more! Writing is more than a way to express and develop creatively.

The truth is, that as much as I do believe my books are meant for today’s generation, my overwhelming sense with my first two novels is that they will serve future generations, as well. Spontaneously, it comes to me at times that my books will be read by people through the rise and fall of nations, by souls who are groping for a true understanding of the gospel in the end times. I see them stumbling upon my books, finding the living God and hope amidst a deep descending darkness, and then circulating them to their friends.

Already my books have sparked new faith in a number of people. And those are just the ones I know about. It’s hard to find the real gospel in these times, in any time, truly. I know that I have, but because I have, I know how difficult the challenge can be. I write in a way that will allow people to find it.

Another aspect of writing for me is to respond to the need for enjoyable, quality entertainment, especially among God-fearing people. How often have you come to the end of a long week, wanting only to sit and watch a good movie, listen to a podcast or read a good book, only to find the pickings are bare? All too often you’ve opened a book or a movie that promises action and/or romance of real intellectual and inspirational substance, only to find it leads your mind and heart into places you’d rather not go, places not even worth going. Suddenly you’re living in someone else’s anxious nightmare and all you wanted was a a little recreation! If you aren’t careful, many stories will take you from feeling fine to being depressed and hopeless. Quite the opposite of what quality entertainment should accomplish.

Good entertainment should inspire us to dream, not crush us. It might contain sad truths about this world, but in the end, quality entertainment enlightens and in so doing, it uplifts.

We need as many great movies and novels as we can get. Schindler’s List and The Passion, God’s Not Dead, Fireproof and The War Room, Gone With The Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Killing Fields, Snow Falling on Cedars, all are blockbuster hits because they enlighten as well as uplift. Stephen Baldwin has been making some very interesting, offbeat films which carry extremely powerful messages for people of faith. There’s always room for a well-done, quality movie, book or podcast that lets us relax without turning away from God, but rather turns us toward Him. If not turning us directly to God, a good story might also turn us to a greater appreciation of our purpose and our worth. Stories like It’s A Wonderful Life show us the dark and light side of life but in the end help us realize that each of us has value when we light the place we live in. We could also argue that NCIS and Rocky do that for us, too.

My writing is for the hungry ones, the thirsty ones, to let them know that there is a banquet they can enjoy in real life, and where to find it.

A simpler way of putting is to compare writing with rescuing kittens. I have two tiny kittens in my home right now. I am fostering them for the humane society, getting them ready for their forever homes. They are coming along nicely and they are going to make great pets. (photo below) From me they have learned how to enjoy being in someone’s lap, how to be careful with their claws, how to use a litter box, how a human can play with them, how to come when called (to the degree that cats ever do that!). Both of them were quite wild when I got them and they have made phenomenal progress. They are being imprinted with my love and prayers, with the peace, joy and TLC I give them. All this they will take with them for the rest of their lives, as a gift I am giving to those who will own them, long after these little furballs have forgotten my scent or my voice.

In the same way, our spirits can be imprinted with the personality and character of Charles Dickens or an Agatha Christie by reading their books, though we will never know them this side of heaven, and even if they were alive today, we would probably not have the opportunity to become more than superficially acquainted with them. My books, and every book worth reading, really, are like rescued kittens, sharing what I hope is the better part of me in common with the Creator of us all, for the delight and well-being and solace of the family here on planet Earth.

Unity

It’s been heartening to see the great coming together of believers of most persuasions at this time. From Jew to evangelical Christian, Catholic and Anglican, to Muslim, from young and old, every shade of beige and brown, every nation, there has been a united call upon God for truth and justice. Faith in the God of Abraham most certainly defines a way of life, one the Constitution of the US led the way in creating. Like the golden hinges of the doors to the ancient temple, faith hinges on the belief that the Creator of us all wants a life of justice and freedom for all. We would define it as the pursuit of happiness, meaningful work which supports time to enjoy family and community. When God’s people call upon Him, with their back against the wall, as recourse upon recourse of human courts fail to do their duty in protecting and securing these privileges which we call rights, at such a time God cannot help but answer, and He will not delay.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” That is from the US Constitution. (bolding is mine)

As we pray, let us also pray for the many many parts of the world where basic human rights are still a luxury, enjoyed only by the tyrants who rule them with a cruel hand. Let us pray for the tyrants themselves, and those who have been deluded by them even within the USA. For miracles are more frequent than we know. Remember the Red Sea… Remember King Darius… Remember Messiah’s first coming… Remember the Berlin wall….

A New (and very old) Form of Dialogue

By Danyelle Wolfe Read

Writing is part of my love language. So sometimes, my devotional includes writing a unique form of dialogue, a dialogue with God. He usually kicks it off with something profound, after which I respond, like an ant responding to an elephant. But He loves me, so He answers. God always answers.

Marriage (for singles)

by Danyelle Wolfe Read

There tends to be a romance in my stories. Sometimes it’s central, sometimes it’s part of other aspects which are driving the story. I portray love in such a way as to bring back the joy of it. As one who has practiced therapy for couples and families, I create realistic love relationships. The romances in my books are anything but fluffy. They are possible. The characters are not idealized, they are flawed. I emphasize their chemistry over their physicality (there is a difference).

To find the person who really cares for us is a blessing, going back to the first man and woman in Eden.