Cornelius answered, “Three days ago around this time, I was at minchah prayers in my house, when suddenly a man in shining clothes stood in front of me and said, ‘God has heard your prayer and remembered your acts of charity. Acts 10:30-31
Yeshua said “away from me, I did not know you. You who practice lawlessness!” The point or question is have you heard from God in a way like Cornelius? Where God has actually spoken to you and revealed himself to you? Do you know him, do you hear him and then obey his Voice?
If you continue reading Acts 10 you will see that Peter went to Cornelius’ home and talked with them, and the family received the Holy Spirit, then Peter baptized them in water. But the first part was a man and his family seeking the truth, praying for the truth to be revealed. He was not among the chosen children of Israel, he was a gentile and Peter made it known to him that the Jews do not associate with gentiles. Peter said “I now understand that God does not play favorites, but that whoever fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him, no matter what people he belongs to.”
Note the message, to fear God and do what is right. Our focus needs to be on God, trying to find him and his righteousness, then obey him. Yeweh keeps showing me how the people have their idea of who they think god should be, which is their doctrine. This doctrine comes from many sources, mostly how you were brought up. I see it clearly from being a gringo (USA) and living in Mexico. Seeing how we as gringos live and how the Mexican people live. Neither of which is all wrong and neither of which is all right. But mostly neither is right with God.
God has his own idea of righteousness and how to live your life. He is not a dictator, although it seems like it. Because he does expect you to live your life in a certain way, a “way” of righteousness. In other words what is right not only for you, but everyone. And he is the only one who can tell you what is true righteousness in his eyes. The righteousness which works for the good of everyone.
But here is how we live instead. An example I keep relearning, and am again now. It is a story of two homes we have owned or still own. The one we still own, we are having two big problems with it. The first one is someone is trying to take it from us using the courts. Our lawyers assure us it will not happen, but it is the second go around and a pain in the but with the possibility of losing it. The second problem is the guy in front of us towards the ocean is building up which will block our view. It is not legal to do this and he needs permits, but when we try to stop him, the HOA ignores it and the city does nothing to stop it. The third problem is the HOA itself, they are like the communist, they have no legal rights to do half the things they are doing, and then they keep increasing the fees, right now by 50% and will be another 15% next year. The point is the home is giving us headaches. But here is the problem, I told my wife to sell it many year ago because of these type problems, and others because the turnover is high in it. It is made of cement blocks and gets cold in the winter. And the problem with renters in general, as it is tough to get good renters these days, everyone thinks you owe them something because they do not own a home and think you need to give them yours for free.
There are other issues with this property, and we had similar problems with the other property, which that one we did sell. The one we still own my wife has in her name and she will not sell it, even after many times telling her to. The one we did sell we doubled our money on it, which then got reinvested and in the end it increased our net worth by a few $100,000 dollars plus increased our income by more than double. So it was a very good decision financially.
But here is the big point the Lord is making to me about it, which is we make our decisions and ignore the wisdom or light of God. Then when the calamities (or problems) come because of the bad decision we made, we expect God to take care of it for us. Yesterday my wife was mad at me because she expects me to deal with her issues with this home. It is her home, her decision to keep it. She is the one who keeps all the rent from it, I see not one penny or peso. And I already tried to help her by telling her to get rid of the problems it has, she ignored those instructions and kept it, and now wants me to deal with the headaches?
This is how we treat God all the time, we make our decisions, they turn out bad because even though we think we made good decisions, they were not. And God sits there and ignores your pleas for help because he tried to tell you through his Spirit what you should do, but you ignored it and now you have dug yourself a hole you cannot get out of, or won’t get out of. For example, right now we would have a really hard time trying to sell this home. Not only is the market really slow to non-existent. But who would buy it with construction going up to block the view, and with an ongoing lawsuit where they might lose it?
One last point, if my wife would have sold it when I told her to. She would be making more in income than she is off the rent and without headaches. We could be making over $40,000 dollars on that money in Mexican government bonds guaranteed investment, where now she is making $21,600 less expenses like HOA’s, property taxes and maintenance. The Mexican government bonds are mostly tax free and very liquid. It is hard to impossible to sell this home right now. We could have also bought gold or silver and done really well with it, better than the bonds.
Do you get the point? We ignore the voice of God and his wisdom, we then suffer because of it, and blame him or ask him to help us out of it. And he sits back and thinks to himself, I tried to help but you ignored me and my wisdom, and now you want me to fix your problems when I cannot do anything for you? Any more than you can do for yourself?
Because here is the thing, if there was something I could do for my wife that she was not capable of doing for herself. I would help her. But the thing is she is better equipped to deal with it because she speaks Spanish and although I do fairly well, not good enough to deal with government and legal issues like this. She also has contacts both in the HOA and government, I do not . So the reason she wants me to help is only because she does not want to deal with the headaches of what she created because of ignoring my wisdom of knowing why to sell. We have other homes and properties we own, which we keep and will keep. The cash flow on them is very good, along with the appreciation in value. I am not opposed to rentals, but just which are good rentals and which are not. What areas and or HOA’s will give problems and which won’t. The main property we have earning very good returns of over $45,600 dollars a year and we have less than $400,000 invested in it. And a very good long term renter in it who is looking to renew even longer as I write this. Plus it is NOT in a gated community with a HOA and them increasing their fees a lot each year, and the problems they bring. And neighbors building to block our view, nor anyone fighting the title on it. Yes there is some maintenance, but we are getting more than the Mexican bonds will give and appreciation without the headaches. This property is worth over $100,000 more than what we paid to build it.
Now there is also something to understand about seeking truth on how things work, and understanding the world economy. God has shown me many things of how much of a lie this world we live in tells us. For example the two biggest scams today are first of all our governments and their taxes. They tell us they are doing things for our good, taxing us more and more every year, and at the same time giving us free stuff to make the people think it is a good thing, while they take more and more of the freedoms away, making the people more lazy and worthless. In the eyes of God this is extremely evil on both ends, the ends of the lazy wicked receivers, as well as the men who run this scheme.
The second biggest scam is health care. They make the US people have health care, paying a lot of money every month into a system that is making them sick and keeping them sick, which then increases the premium even more. You are literally paying to make yourself sicker.
Some others that are crazy to me as well is religion, you literally spend a few hours on the weekend sitting in a church giving them money, thinking they are helping you to get to heaven and be OK with God, when they are doing the opposite, they are the thieves and robbers entering through the windows and not by the gate where the good shepherd enters and calls his sheep by name, and they follow him out into the green pastures. See John 10.
Our food is also a huge scam, we eat the trash they give us, thinking it is nourishing us to keep us alive and healthy, and it is not. It is making us fat and unhealthy, killing many people or keeping them just alive enough to keep taking their money. Which then feeds into the health care system.
The money system of the fiat money or paper money, dollars and pesos and whatever paper money you use. We think it is money and are taught to save it and earn interest on it. And sometimes we should sit it in government bonds or a bank. But not very often is it worth it. Because that money is losing value to inflation. For example, when the US took itself off the gold standard, gold ran from $35 an ounce to over $835 in 9 years. Then the US had to raise interest rates to around 20% to keep people investing in their debt. So then money moved from metals to US debt and gold went down to around $300. As interest rates came down the big money started to move it towards gold again around 2001 when gold was $259 an ounce, and now it is over $4,000 an ounce, destroying returns in government bonds. The point is to move your money as they move their money. Do not do as they say, do as they are doing!
Another similar story is I invested in some debt in Mexico for two reasons, first the interest rates are well above the inflation rate here, and I knew the interest rates would move lower and they have. I also felt confident the dollar would lose value to the peso which it has. I started moving money from dollars to pesos when it was 22.50 to 1, and now it is 17.50 to one. So I made and am making over 10% yet on my money and I have made over 20% on the move of the exchange rate. Before I was in dollars because of the opposite, dollars were a better investment. We also own metals which have done even better, although a lot more volatile.
Back to the point, which is understanding. And where is the best understanding? It comes from the Lord and his wisdom or light. Are you listening to him, and doing it his way? Or do you listen to the men preachers tell you how God is? Do you listen to the politicians tell you how it is? Do you listen to the doctors and government agencies in the health area tell you how it is? Who do you listen to?
As for me, I listen to the Lord and let him tell me the best way to live. And the more I see of this world, the less I want to live in this world. I am no longer of it, but in it. I fear God, not dying. I fear God and not man and what he can do to me. I see what is in this world and corruption all around us and what it is doing to us. And I know how to do things in a way to avoid it, and or profit from it. Because for example the real money people move their money around, pushing certain assets higher, and others down. The peso to dollar is a perfect example. I could see because of charts and trending where the big money was moving, and so I moved it along with them. Same with metals, although they have been hit a lot lately and could a little more. I won’t sell them, they will go higher, why? Because the big money is chasing it, most governments were selling US dollars and buying gold and silver. Of course it is going higher again soon.
Last point, one made many times over. You listen to God and things go much better. Still headaches as people make headaches for you. But different headaches or suffering. Ones that are really not your deal. Like the home my wife has to deal with because she did not sell. Yes she makes issues to me, saying I am the man of the house and need to take care of it. But I can answer back with the truth shared above. I can hold my ground and tell her it is not my deal, you should have sold it when I told you to, and you have all the contacts to deal with plus the language issues. What can she do to me about it? Nothing other than complain or divorce me. Many of us fear divorce (what men can do to me) so we give in. I am not one of those men, I fear God and what he can do to me. I and my Lord are one, so I do the same thing he does. It is very clear to me to leave this alone and let her deal with it, she made the mistake of keeping it, so it is her deal to get figured out, or deal with it. Also the Lord has something to teach her in this and if I get in the way, then I also have a fault in the eyes of the Lord. Which is another story for another day, how we try to play amateur gods in people’s lives by helping them when we should not be involved. It is between God and them. And other times when God tells us to do something in a certain way and we ignore him and do nothing, because we know if we do help them in that certain way, the other person will NOT like it. The ways of God are never the ways of men, so they do not like it when you do it his way.