Another beautiful piece, Sarah, thank you. Like you, coming to Christ changed my life, and showed me what true joy can be ours as a gift from God. You have been in my prayers since your return to the internet, and will remain so. God bless.
Great article. I'd only add that Manson's description of leaning in to what causes you struggle intentionally as means to your own eudaimonia is still a selfish pursuit. Christian sacrifice is ultimately for others - loving other people and seeking to prefer them over yourself. Starts with it's better to give than receive. That fully completes the circle in finding deep, abiding happiness with purpose. It's following Jesus's example of purpose in sacrifice, laying down his life for those he loves. Luke 9:24
I think we lean into it, because God is allowing it to happen for a reason. The eudaimonia is a result, you could call it a byproduct, of accepting God's will. And, yes, ideally we use these struggles as opportunities to follow Jesus' commands: love God and love others.
Reading about the influence of Greek philosophy on Christianity reminded me of a question I've pondered: were Greek ideals that surface within Christian values due to regional spread of ideas or simultaneous invention? The geographical proximity favors an element of the former.
I believe that some of the major Christian deviations from Judaism reflect the Greek influence, and that some of this syncretism predates the Apostolic period.
Many Jews (unsurprisingly) hated the Greeks and their culture, thus the Maccabees and Hasmonean Dynasty. But many adopted parts of it, and the New Testament is written in Greek (and the Old Testament was translated at the time into Greek: the Septuagint).
Hi Sarah, I’m not sure if you take requests, but if you do, I’d love for you to write an article on the following so the rest of us can better understand it. Thanks.
Contemporary physics describes the universe through a sophisticated understanding of fundamental constants, initial conditions, and physical laws. The Big Bang cosmological model posits that the universe emerged from an initial singularity approximately 13.8 billion years ago, expanding and cooling to form the structures we observe today.
What has become increasingly evident to physicists is the extraordinary precision required for this process to yield a habitable cosmos. Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, has identified six fundamental dimensionless constants that must fall within extremely narrow ranges for life to exist:
• N (the ratio of electromagnetic to gravitational force) ≈ 10³⁶
• ε (nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium) ≈ 0.007
• Ω (density parameter) ≈ 1
• Λ (cosmological constant) ≈ extraordinarily small positive value
• Q (amplitude of primordial density fluctuations) ≈ 10⁻⁵
• D (number of spatial dimensions) = 3
Physicist Paul Davies has noted: 'There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is in several respects fine-tuned for life.' If the strong nuclear force were only 2% stronger or weaker, the formation of elements essential to life would be impossible. The cosmological constant appears fine-tuned to approximately 1 part in 10¹²⁰—a precision so extraordinary that Steven Weinberg called it 'the worst prediction in physics' when comparing theoretical expectations to observed values.
Atheists got pretty carried away with using any and all suffering to claim that God must be evil or not exist. If the evolutionary pursuit of pleasures and selfish gains ("the selfish gene") are not the key to human thriving, then their worldview starts to fall apart. Evolution no longer produces an ideal world.
Excellent points. The debate over using the word “happiness“ makes it fairly certain that our founding fathers meant eaudaimonia. We have lost this and even the concept of it. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the idea that it would be far better to help a neighbor, build a house, clean out a garage, mow a lawn, take care of children, or other assorted physical tasks, than to go to the gym and lift weights, ride a bike or run a treadmill (for example, no recriminations intended. I have really thought on this many times.) with no purpose at all other than to make oneself look better and yes feel better. It is in my mind a self pursuit. It seems to me reaching out and engaging with neighbors and friends or soon to be friends is a much better pursuit. And if, in that reaching out, I work hard I get the same benefit as working out in a gym all the more a blessing. It seems our hedonia has caused our lives to circle into ourselves and me mine and ours. Our founding documents make it clear that this was not the pursuit of the men and women who forged them. I realize no women are on the declaration of independence, but it would be very shortsighted to think a husband did not ask his wife about his choice of words. It was the Christian pursuit of “freedom in Christ” that drove men to fight against a system and “create a more perfect union” and the fruit of that was and is eaudaimonia.
Sorry that you are caught in what actually is a spiritual cycle of seven years. Spiritual cycles are a direct result of an element relating to time.
This is a component of a paradigm relating to the element of time. This paradigm has five compnents. Each one vectors to a spiritual and physical element that the human race has been subjected to through the elements which span over and across our family historical footprint on the earth through our bloodlines and DNA.
These components that make up the paradigm began in each one of the seven days of creation. Each has been both an area in which the human race has been attacked as well as an area in which the big God of the universe along with His Son( Yahusha) and the Holy Spirit ( Ruach Ha Kodesh) has and does provide not just sanctification but also restoration from these almost hidden attacks.
The first thing God sanctified across and over the first seven days of creation was time. He did this on the seventh day. This seventh day than becomes a first mention in the Bible but also not just a first mention but also a marker to the first mention of a cluster of sevens. There are hundreds of clusters of sevens across the bible.
Each cluster serves as a fractal. All of these fractals of sevens when assembled together from across the bible distill out principles virtues, strongholds, curses, and blessings as well as biblical characters who exemplified each one of the different sevens.
These sevens originate from the Seven Spirits of God which are the universal building blocks for all creation. They are also mentioned in Pauls teachings in Romans 12:4-8. They can also be seen when the human seed and the egg are enjoiuned at inception with a brief flash of light that fuses and imparts these spirits and the seven gifts in to the humans spirit and life.
If an ancestor had sinnned, transgressed or had defaulted to iniquity( STI) this imprint of light can and will be effected. This STI is then carried in both the seed and egg and limits the available light that gets recorded in to the first new cell.
Because you have a reoccurring seven year attack cycle this points to the human element of time that was defiled over your ancestral history within their bloodlines and DNA.
AS mentioned there are four other elements in which the advesary attacks and all God has and provides sanctification as well as restoration from both a spiritual and physical level.
To begin to drill down in to the element of our human time God is outside of our earthly experience. However the advesary of our soul is keenly aware that when a human defiles time each defilement is recorded both in the land and its governing principality. The principalities are all interlinked together and function together as an exchange of information to continue and maintain the legal framework of an attack.
In 1 Samuel 25 David years after being anointed king living in caves and on the run encounters a rich and prosperous territorial overseer. His name is Nabal. This translates to a son of Belial. Belial is a deity who is tasked to monitor and record time which the advesary will then use to relaese other lower ranking spirits to attack those guilty of defiling time as well against their family and Kingdom assignments.
Please read this passage closely as David was out of God's will by failing to inquire with God in what to do after learning that He and his presence in the territory which also brought a bumper crop harvest to Nabal. David chose to use His own kingly authority over God's and defiled time, his men, himself as well as the land which the principality in the 2nd heaven recorded.
Belial waited before exacting revenge against God's anointed. This came on a rooftop much later and its attack characteristics align to the family of lower ranking spirits which also will carry across future generations. The primary family of Spirits that attacked are designed to kill the flow of revelation with the gifts of a prophetic design in serving God.
Across all of 2 Samuel David as he approaches the end of his reign begins to receive revelation about Belial. Before the end of his life he carries out a total exhile of it in his family, life, court and life.
Belial was later re named by the Greek Culture Chronos.
Within this framework of scriptural knowledge as to the concepts of sevens, five areas of sanctification and restoration these links should help you to begin to visualize these concepts and begin to explore their sanctification and restoration opportunities.
The Links are:
#1. Biblical Sevens- a sample to help begin to visualize the complex weave of the sevens across scripture.
#3. A blue print of the building elements of the Glorious Church. To see that part that this writing is drilling down in to, see under Sound Deeds and the conceptual topic about the seven gifts with its address.
#4. The principles taken from all of the clusters of sevens distilled out using principles, virtues, strongholds, curses, blessings and biblical characters who exemplified each gift.
#5. Seven gifts principles. This can serve two purposes. One to use as a self assessement tool and the other an introduction to the entire space using the fractals of sevens across the Bible.
#6. The conceptual teaching about the gift of exhorter. Am including this one as I believe this is one of your dominate gifts. NOTE: We aall get all seven gifts through the seven spirits of God at inception however we often will live out and function in one to three of these gifts in our our social, family and professional life.
I pray you may be enlightened to see and experience these levels of scriptural truths so as to help guide you deeper in to your destiny birthright, sanctification and restoration in Christ.
Sincerely & with blessings to you, your family and life work in Christ.
Garry Umphress
Full teaching of the seven gifts*are on the web site. If led to study and go through them please let us know as we will be honored to prayer with and for you.
Another beautiful piece, Sarah, thank you. Like you, coming to Christ changed my life, and showed me what true joy can be ours as a gift from God. You have been in my prayers since your return to the internet, and will remain so. God bless.
Thank you, Sy.
"2. The tumor was removed, and I appear to be cancer-free at the moment."
Good to know.
Looking back, chasing stuff now seems to be a big unhappy waste of time. Living with less (and not caring about it) brings contentment.
Agreed. I'm mostly bored with stuff at this point.
Great article. I'd only add that Manson's description of leaning in to what causes you struggle intentionally as means to your own eudaimonia is still a selfish pursuit. Christian sacrifice is ultimately for others - loving other people and seeking to prefer them over yourself. Starts with it's better to give than receive. That fully completes the circle in finding deep, abiding happiness with purpose. It's following Jesus's example of purpose in sacrifice, laying down his life for those he loves. Luke 9:24
I think we lean into it, because God is allowing it to happen for a reason. The eudaimonia is a result, you could call it a byproduct, of accepting God's will. And, yes, ideally we use these struggles as opportunities to follow Jesus' commands: love God and love others.
https://www.dcbc.org/sermons/sermon/2026-05-03/psalm-88-with-christ-in-the-darkness?defaultaudio
A message from the Psalms that I pray comforts you.
I am truly sorry you must once again endure cancer treatment. May the Lord bless you and keep you. Prayers your way.
Thank you, but there's no treatment this time. Just recovering from surgery and monitoring.
Reading about the influence of Greek philosophy on Christianity reminded me of a question I've pondered: were Greek ideals that surface within Christian values due to regional spread of ideas or simultaneous invention? The geographical proximity favors an element of the former.
I believe that some of the major Christian deviations from Judaism reflect the Greek influence, and that some of this syncretism predates the Apostolic period.
Many Jews (unsurprisingly) hated the Greeks and their culture, thus the Maccabees and Hasmonean Dynasty. But many adopted parts of it, and the New Testament is written in Greek (and the Old Testament was translated at the time into Greek: the Septuagint).
Gratitude is the secret to happiness
https://anailinhisplace.substack.com/p/an-attitude-of-gratitude?
Hi Sarah, I’m not sure if you take requests, but if you do, I’d love for you to write an article on the following so the rest of us can better understand it. Thanks.
Contemporary physics describes the universe through a sophisticated understanding of fundamental constants, initial conditions, and physical laws. The Big Bang cosmological model posits that the universe emerged from an initial singularity approximately 13.8 billion years ago, expanding and cooling to form the structures we observe today.
What has become increasingly evident to physicists is the extraordinary precision required for this process to yield a habitable cosmos. Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, has identified six fundamental dimensionless constants that must fall within extremely narrow ranges for life to exist:
• N (the ratio of electromagnetic to gravitational force) ≈ 10³⁶
• ε (nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium) ≈ 0.007
• Ω (density parameter) ≈ 1
• Λ (cosmological constant) ≈ extraordinarily small positive value
• Q (amplitude of primordial density fluctuations) ≈ 10⁻⁵
• D (number of spatial dimensions) = 3
Physicist Paul Davies has noted: 'There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is in several respects fine-tuned for life.' If the strong nuclear force were only 2% stronger or weaker, the formation of elements essential to life would be impossible. The cosmological constant appears fine-tuned to approximately 1 part in 10¹²⁰—a precision so extraordinary that Steven Weinberg called it 'the worst prediction in physics' when comparing theoretical expectations to observed values.
I wrote an article about fine-tuning recently you may find interesting:
https://schroodle.com/p/the-fine-tuning-of-the-universe-for
Thanks, Sarah. Well said. Have you listened to any of the podcast interviews of Ben Sasse? His testimony echoes and illustrates this approach to life.
I saw a bit of a recent interview, yes.
Atheists got pretty carried away with using any and all suffering to claim that God must be evil or not exist. If the evolutionary pursuit of pleasures and selfish gains ("the selfish gene") are not the key to human thriving, then their worldview starts to fall apart. Evolution no longer produces an ideal world.
Excellent points. The debate over using the word “happiness“ makes it fairly certain that our founding fathers meant eaudaimonia. We have lost this and even the concept of it. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the idea that it would be far better to help a neighbor, build a house, clean out a garage, mow a lawn, take care of children, or other assorted physical tasks, than to go to the gym and lift weights, ride a bike or run a treadmill (for example, no recriminations intended. I have really thought on this many times.) with no purpose at all other than to make oneself look better and yes feel better. It is in my mind a self pursuit. It seems to me reaching out and engaging with neighbors and friends or soon to be friends is a much better pursuit. And if, in that reaching out, I work hard I get the same benefit as working out in a gym all the more a blessing. It seems our hedonia has caused our lives to circle into ourselves and me mine and ours. Our founding documents make it clear that this was not the pursuit of the men and women who forged them. I realize no women are on the declaration of independence, but it would be very shortsighted to think a husband did not ask his wife about his choice of words. It was the Christian pursuit of “freedom in Christ” that drove men to fight against a system and “create a more perfect union” and the fruit of that was and is eaudaimonia.
Sorry that you are caught in what actually is a spiritual cycle of seven years. Spiritual cycles are a direct result of an element relating to time.
This is a component of a paradigm relating to the element of time. This paradigm has five compnents. Each one vectors to a spiritual and physical element that the human race has been subjected to through the elements which span over and across our family historical footprint on the earth through our bloodlines and DNA.
These components that make up the paradigm began in each one of the seven days of creation. Each has been both an area in which the human race has been attacked as well as an area in which the big God of the universe along with His Son( Yahusha) and the Holy Spirit ( Ruach Ha Kodesh) has and does provide not just sanctification but also restoration from these almost hidden attacks.
The first thing God sanctified across and over the first seven days of creation was time. He did this on the seventh day. This seventh day than becomes a first mention in the Bible but also not just a first mention but also a marker to the first mention of a cluster of sevens. There are hundreds of clusters of sevens across the bible.
Each cluster serves as a fractal. All of these fractals of sevens when assembled together from across the bible distill out principles virtues, strongholds, curses, and blessings as well as biblical characters who exemplified each one of the different sevens.
These sevens originate from the Seven Spirits of God which are the universal building blocks for all creation. They are also mentioned in Pauls teachings in Romans 12:4-8. They can also be seen when the human seed and the egg are enjoiuned at inception with a brief flash of light that fuses and imparts these spirits and the seven gifts in to the humans spirit and life.
If an ancestor had sinnned, transgressed or had defaulted to iniquity( STI) this imprint of light can and will be effected. This STI is then carried in both the seed and egg and limits the available light that gets recorded in to the first new cell.
Because you have a reoccurring seven year attack cycle this points to the human element of time that was defiled over your ancestral history within their bloodlines and DNA.
AS mentioned there are four other elements in which the advesary attacks and all God has and provides sanctification as well as restoration from both a spiritual and physical level.
To begin to drill down in to the element of our human time God is outside of our earthly experience. However the advesary of our soul is keenly aware that when a human defiles time each defilement is recorded both in the land and its governing principality. The principalities are all interlinked together and function together as an exchange of information to continue and maintain the legal framework of an attack.
In 1 Samuel 25 David years after being anointed king living in caves and on the run encounters a rich and prosperous territorial overseer. His name is Nabal. This translates to a son of Belial. Belial is a deity who is tasked to monitor and record time which the advesary will then use to relaese other lower ranking spirits to attack those guilty of defiling time as well against their family and Kingdom assignments.
Please read this passage closely as David was out of God's will by failing to inquire with God in what to do after learning that He and his presence in the territory which also brought a bumper crop harvest to Nabal. David chose to use His own kingly authority over God's and defiled time, his men, himself as well as the land which the principality in the 2nd heaven recorded.
Belial waited before exacting revenge against God's anointed. This came on a rooftop much later and its attack characteristics align to the family of lower ranking spirits which also will carry across future generations. The primary family of Spirits that attacked are designed to kill the flow of revelation with the gifts of a prophetic design in serving God.
Across all of 2 Samuel David as he approaches the end of his reign begins to receive revelation about Belial. Before the end of his life he carries out a total exhile of it in his family, life, court and life.
Belial was later re named by the Greek Culture Chronos.
Within this framework of scriptural knowledge as to the concepts of sevens, five areas of sanctification and restoration these links should help you to begin to visualize these concepts and begin to explore their sanctification and restoration opportunities.
The Links are:
#1. Biblical Sevens- a sample to help begin to visualize the complex weave of the sevens across scripture.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rVfHA8FG0Yh_YBAJtPepkxjjOo-YYP-f/view?usp=sharing
#2. A link to the Seven Spirits of God.
https://awakegloriousbride.com/2022/11/17/the-seven-spirits-of-god/
#3. A blue print of the building elements of the Glorious Church. To see that part that this writing is drilling down in to, see under Sound Deeds and the conceptual topic about the seven gifts with its address.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/165T3RSiABS4jhxgquXQ7t5J2UWluTbxW/view?usp=sharing
#4. The principles taken from all of the clusters of sevens distilled out using principles, virtues, strongholds, curses, blessings and biblical characters who exemplified each gift.
#5. Seven gifts principles. This can serve two purposes. One to use as a self assessement tool and the other an introduction to the entire space using the fractals of sevens across the Bible.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JAzeKLFhTKlGg4n_Oi3V8D_URwZLpuEw/view?usp=sharing
#5. A summary of the seven gifts characteristics.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxIeBS1oqmwBaUg4Z2ZnV1JyazJLeGNFMkhQQVdwMzhMVTVz/view?ths=true&resourcekey=0-aTRB8CfNdy95kLwBRB_4lw
#6. The conceptual teaching about the gift of exhorter. Am including this one as I believe this is one of your dominate gifts. NOTE: We aall get all seven gifts through the seven spirits of God at inception however we often will live out and function in one to three of these gifts in our our social, family and professional life.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tfOGf3PwtivKakdf1GRJpzhStcZSI10E/view?usp=sharing
I pray you may be enlightened to see and experience these levels of scriptural truths so as to help guide you deeper in to your destiny birthright, sanctification and restoration in Christ.
Sincerely & with blessings to you, your family and life work in Christ.
Garry Umphress
Full teaching of the seven gifts*are on the web site. If led to study and go through them please let us know as we will be honored to prayer with and for you.
*
https://awakegloriousbride.com/2024/07/29/spiritual-gifts/