Ziklag 4.4

It's All Too Much STF

SOS Discipline - Daily Proverb and Red Letter Reader

Integrity is more durable than guile. cf Pr. 28:18

Therefore, do not say “What if?” cf Mt. 6:31

Knowledge of the path to success is not the same as walking. cf Sun Tzu 4.4

This week’s BHOP just dropped:

From Today’s Stack

My Personal Translation of James 1:1

Jacob,

a bonded man of God,

and brother, according to the flesh, of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ,

To you of the blood, scattered and wandering,

Hail Brothers! Well met. Consider:

When you are ambushed by various trials, things such as temptations, the Master is tempering you.

Patience takes time. This is great comfort. So, be certain. You lack nothing.

But if you feel that you lack something, ask God for wisdom. He is the source of all generosity and encouragement. Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be open.

Believe that you are heard, and do not question it, for the heart is like a wave in the storming sea, animated and all in disarray. Do you think one can play the fool and also receive wisdom from on high? Test the spirits! It is certain: the hypocrite is unstable in all his ways.

Thus, you who have little, let your voice be heard. But you who have much, watch your mouth closely! Guard the door of your lips. Every flower of the field soon passes away. It does not take long for the sun to scorch. Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting. So the great man fades like a shadow, even in the midst of his pursuits.

Blessed are you then, as you endure every ordeal, for your trust is signet of your approval, the crown of life, which Jesus Christ promises to us in every need.

Watch, then, lest when things go wrong you become embittered toward God. For Jesus Christ does no evil, nor does he tempt you to evil. But a man becomes evil by pursuing his own heart and hungers. These seeds, taken root, unleash the blight, and the blight, once full grown, is the death of the soul.

Don’t be a fool. Brothers! If it is good, then God made it. Because God made it, it is a gift from your Father. With him there is no variation or shadow due to change. He is the author of light, and for his own joy he begot us by the Word of Truth, declaring us the firstfruits of the coming age.

Thus, it is good to hear, risk to speak, and jeopardy to rage, for the rage of man brings forth destructive fruit.

from Talk Them Into It

The first rule of listening is: ask good questions.

Diplomacy and discipleship are paired endeavors. We are ambassadors, forerunners, prophets all. To blithely wander about, squandering our lives as generally selfish and fractured spirits is not good for the soul, nor should such practitioners be surprised when the world refuses to take them seriously.

Our words and our deeds still matter. Grace alone is not a matter of yesterday but of today. There are sacrifices to be made and they are all but exclusively of praise.

To dance with the devil is to play his game. To step on the court with a liar is battle uphill. Adopt a different policy. Rise above the war.

You do not have to be changed by the words of other people. You may listen to a fool carefully and in the end remain wise. In fact, this is the value of learning how to Talk Them Into It.

Asking good question means learning to praise another person. Far better than boasting, when another shows interested in what you have to say, your dignity of spirit is inevitably raised. It makes you enjoyable to talk to, and this sets the stage for a battleground you want to be on: the struggle for the mind and heart of that person whom you love, but who doesn’t believe in the Kingdom of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

from Smart

Discipline is Practice

Smart Noting leverages your animal body to enhance your spiritual mind. It doesn’t need to be understood for it to work for you. It is like a good set of gears, built on simple fundamentals that outlast points of failure.

You’ve read this far because you want to be Smart. You are after a method. You like things that work the same way every time. You would walk a tried and true path.

By true I then mean straight, level, and capable of holding up under tension. Being true means that your heart and your mind to be reliable, up to the tasks at hand, and capable of awakening to beauty.

When in comes to getting Smart, under God, you are the power that turns the crankshaft. You are the fuel of your own curiosities. Taking regular note of your notes on what you notice exposes the nearness of truth in your life by exposing your thoughts to you. A thought, thought once, may or may not make a difference. But noted, written down, it always makes a difference. The act of writing has made a difference already.

Rather than just sit there like a lump on a log, you made a decision. By having pen and paper handy, you exercised your mind, chose to make discernment, and sparked the glimmering tip of a natural principle that always works.

A hammer is a hammer is a hammer so far as all the screws are concerned.

Once a principle is adopted as understanding, the applications are infinite. It is not a matter of remembering to look up the right quote, but of believing that those things which matter most are the ones your body intuitively is thinking about.

Tactics fail when they mutiny in the face of principles. Keeping a record of your assumptions and their outcomes is the “scientific method.” Every flaw in your own writing you discover is the affirmation of a more obvious truth that will inevitably help you carry on.

Harnessing your own information is giving yourself the credit you deserve. Stop being a gadget and act like a son of man. Write down your words and discover your flaws.

There, in the in between, is where Smart comes to life. Again, and again. And again.

from Athanasius Audacity and the Weight of Lunacy

Chapter 1

“Whim! Terra-positioning sensors show aetherborn wreckage ahead!”

The Princess Meridith Zeldine Audacity was never harsh on the ears, even when she was scolding you for ignoring the TPS.

“And I’m not scolding you!” she shouted, bracing herself in the copilot’s seat.

Whim smiled ear to ear. But no time for that now. This was the dogfight of his life.

“Blasted debris all over the airspace,” he said. “Warlock, run evasion maneuvering and keep those forshields topped!”

“Sir,” Capdoc said from the coms station over Whim’s shoulder. The holoman sounded as human as they come, his algorithms and hardware top of the line, down to the meticulous mimic of adrenaline in his voice. He wasn’t cheap, but he knew how to follow orders. “Gryphon Squadron requests an alternate course,” he finished.

“Granted!” Whim said, flinging the pilot harnesses over his shoulders, the central buckle locking into position with fluid and confident click. “But we’re going in.”

“Gamifications foretell proximity of annihilation exists in most modules.”

Warlock did not know how to follow orders, and never sounded like anything other than an arrogant computer. But there wasn’t time for Whim to debate his argumentative airship. Not while his best friend was down in that warzone.

“Just watch your thrusters!”

Whim focused his eyes, syncing with Warlock’s nav systems, always disorienting, but the only way to take direct shell control of all but locked evasion maneuvering.

“And remind me to tell Athanasius that this is the last time I rush in to save him.”

“My brother?” the princess smirked as she strapped tight in the seat beside him, prepping to sync with the gunnery targeting systems. A far away look came over her eyes, but that didn’t keep attention from glancing his way. “If it weren’t for me, you’d still be ignoring the TPS.”

Whim flashed an exaggerated grin.

“No question I married you for a reason,” he said, just as,“Locked evasion maneuvering mandated!” announced in full volume from every onboard speaker.

At the same instant, a rolling, three-revolution, polar-torqued descent-and-spin dodged three colliding masses of battle debris that Whim had apparently not seen. An older model, Warlock’s hardwired locked evasion maneuvering non-linear self-preservation override would never goes out of style.

Given the right emergency, he could pilot himself better than anyone.

Probably.

Now flying point for the formerly prestigious Gryphon Squadron, of the forty-two fighters that launched from Athanasius’ Crown carrier just before he ordered his imperial flagship into the heart of the battle raging at the city center, only three remained, now bound up with Warlock in an effort to gather and protect survivors. Behind them now flew a small battalion of civilian frigates and private cruisers. If the King’s assassination were not enough, the Aeternal Empire was collapsing before their eyes into an all-out, open, multi-polar war.

Finding Athanasius was now priority number one so far is Whim was concerned. The the crown prince’s carrier was formidable as any battleship. But on this day of mutiny and innocent blood, things only got worse in one way. He knew better than to fly into the teeth of an unknown armada. After the bulk of the fleet was already destroyed without warning or coms? What was he thinking?

“Lunacy,” Aurelius muttered.

“No question I married you for a reason,” the princess smirked.

Capdoc snorted with precise affect.

Aurelius fixed his mind on what lay before them, “When we’re done with the theater, can we pretend like we’re the real live adults about to engage the raging chaos of a global empire in the last gasps of its death throws? Wherever Athanasius went down, the place will be littered. Destabilizations, reavers, arbitrage pirates, God knows what else that we won’t be able to see in the twilight before - check that - right after sundown.”

“There is a forty-five percent chance of rain,” Warlock said. But no one had a chance to groan because at the almost the same moment be broke through all the same speakers to shout, “Locked evasion maneuvering mandated!”