"Thy will be done," with these four words, Jesus committed himself
into the hands of his Father's will, time after time after time.
Jesus had the ability to heal every soul in the city of all their
physical, emotional, and spiritual weaknesses. Why did he only heal
the ones he was directly confronted with?

Because he came to earth to give us a choice, to give an example of
how to turn our lives over to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and to
comfort us as we climb out of this dark place.

He calls us to be perfect!
He calls us his friends!
He calls us to follow him!

Here is a brief introduction of Jared Smith, as your welcoming e-mail
requested that I introduce myself sometime soon:

It hurts, hurts to talk about myself, because I do not have anything
to offer this world by pointing at me. Matthew 5:16. This thought was
driven home deeply today as I heard the latest news about human
embryo stem cell research, and the fact that our government is
considering whether to fund such research or not. I am weak, weak
with an unspeakable grief from this news. What are we doing to
ourselves? Why are we so far away from God?

Like a few of you, I've seen God twice. No description I've ever read
captures the magnitude of his glory, so I rarely attempt to do so
myself. Each time I describe it, the glory fades a little bit, I've
noticed, so I keep it to myself anymore. I've written about it in a
couple places, if you're interested. I don't know why God let me see
him, except that by doing so he radically changed my life into one of
hunger, hunger, hunger for righteousness.

I work as a computer programmer, and it's a really nice job that God
gave to me. I do not like this world, the way it corrupts everything,
but I know it glorifies God and I sometimes get to see how beautiful
it is too.

Used to escape from this world by hitchhiking cross-country. I was a
vagrant, a bum. Actually achieved full-on homeless status for a
terrible period a few years ago; couldn't get out of a vicious cycle
of jails, hospitals, streets, and bizarre delusions. Could talk for a
few hours straight on the things I saw and the lessons God brought to
me by that ordeal. It humbled me, though I'm still able to be
arrogant, it lacks the punch that it used to have.

Broken heart, contrite spirit. Hometown to me.

I'm deeply grateful to be alive; thank God for the smallest things. I
love to write. I know from others that I can be condescending and
that I have an ego. Those I give back to Jesus Christ as often as
possible, and he carefully conditions me over time.

Been in spiritual warfare, pretty intensely not by choice so much but
because of mistakes I made a few years ago which set me up to have to
deal with more of the spirit world than most people around me. I see
and feel in the spirit world and it hurts bad out there; have lots of
angel friends. My soul visited hell on several occasions, though my
body stayed here; seen enough misery and pain so that nothing on
earth scares me anymore. Odd place to find myself.

I go to the Temple Lot often to be cleansed. We are not worthy of the
real temple, but the ground where it will be someday built is already
quietly holy: I can pray in my bedroom a few blocks away from the
Temple Lot, and it takes a while before I can discern the answer--
when I go to the temple lot, I get the answer within minutes, seconds
even. Praise God!

I love people, love people so much. I love you; when I'm judgmental
or critical, which I am quite often, my heart cringes inside for the
pain I've brought into this world. Oh, Lord, I am so weak!

I'm hoping to meet Lynn Riden hour some day; I enjoy his posts, he
lives around here somewhere. I'm hoping to meet Jesus Elijah Moses
some day, too. Just barely missed him the other day! I'm grateful for
the blessings which accompany Sterling Allen's moderation style. I
used to be very open-minded, into New Age junk until I got thrown
into hell, where I saw the real end of that kind of stuff. Gave it up
right away! I am fundamentalist now, and appreciated Sterling's very
first post (not the later one, where he withdrew from clarity) to the
man with the gay agenda: the post where he said 'sorry, we don't
tolerate that agendar here.' I appreciated it because I've been
swirled into that subtly deceptive world on several occasions, and
know it to be something that we Christians need to stay far away from
because of the way it replaces tender intimate SPIRITUAL love for
Jesus Christ into a big clunky BODY-based love which is irrelevant to
our journey back into the Kingdom of God.

If it brings me closer to God, I support it. If it does not, it is a
distraction, and I have no time for it. I do not switch the order of
the two commandments: The first one is to love God, and the second
one is to love our neighbor; never put the second one first and
things go so much cleaner.

I'm a regular person. I have a website, some of you've seen it
recently, I noticed. Forgetabout it; it's a buncha blathering. Some
of it is interesting, it's mostly there because I love to write.
Praise Jesus; people know me for saying that out loud often. I love
God.

Here's a question for you: If you could choose your last word(s),
what would it be? I'm thinking of hollering out "Repent" when I know
I'm breathing my last, which I expect to be when I'm 120 years old.
Yes, I hurt every day because of how painful it is to live in this
world, but I love the challenge also, can feel it refining this poor
wretched soul, and I look forward to living strong and well clear up
to the year 2088, at which time I will have been on the Internet for
100 years, with eyes that are not dim nor natural force
abated...

Praise to the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.

-Jared