Posts Tagged ‘spiritual health’

Sermon on Forgiveness and improving spiritual life – his holiness Pope Shenouda II

Saturday, March 16th, 2013

I'm seeking to improve my spiritual life, because I realize I'm so spiritually. I know Coptic Oriental Orthodox church stores multitude of spiritual rubby treasures thus I looked online to see if I can find sermons of recently passed away to Christ Coptic Church patriarch pope Shenouda II. I was blessed to find a Sermon of his on Forgiveness. In it this Holy man, gives instructions for layman on how to forgive and gives a list of 17 Spiritual advices on what to do and not do whenever in situation. I re-share it here with hope this will serve as blessing to other Christians like me who strive to improve their spiritual health

A Sermon on Forgiveness – his holiness pope Shenouda II

Let this holy man pray for  us spiritually poor Christians on earth …

How my day passed

Monday, June 25th, 2007

My day started at 10:00 when a man called and asked is his Windows preinstalled and I pointed him to call to Nomen because his computer was in Nomen. Later I met Nomen and we have a walk in the central park. Then we went to see Jivko the Beggar. Hel told us a story how a skinhead started throwing stones at him for no reason … A sort of protestant Christian came and started telling me very messed things about Christ his new life etc. etc. I told him that I would send him to a hospital If I had the power :]. After that I met Lily and we walked for sometime together on my way to my uncle. I tried to read/explain him The New Testament “The Gospel of Mark”. But every time I started telling him how Christ has paid the price for us with his Holy Blood, and how He exchanged his rightfulness for our unrightfulness he started to get sleepy (strange). After that we had a great dinner together, I decided to stay for the dinner just because I wanted to suggest them to pray before eating, we prayed together with “The Lord’s Prayer”. After that I decided to walk to Mino’s coffee and I drinked a beer there with Ceco and Dido. After that I went home and spend some time reading posts on the “http://whygodwonthealamputees.com”. This forums are addictive but seems that are disturbing for my spiritual health, so I should to visit this place. I read some Christians on the Topic some of them were interesting it’s seems St. Anthony healed amputees so someday It’s vital to read about the Living of this Saint. The day passed comparingly untroublful for which I may only give a thanks to God :]. Few times during the day I hhave lost the point of where my life is going to and I doubt about my faith and Christ as a Saviour and the meaning of life, but it’s unescapable it’s the devil work to put lies into my head in the end :].END—–

A few words on Pseudo Christian Spirituality. A false “Spiritual” Movies and Books which we as Christians should Fully Avoid

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Heresies and How to Avoid them

We live in the age of the boom of sects, false prophets and false “messiahs”. Today it’s common that the bookstores are filled in with all kind of occult literature and magic teaching literature, agnostic books, horoscopes and all kind of empty modern day philosophy books which teaches evil, the so called “Get rich for a day”, “The secrets of success”, “How to take advantage over the others”, “How to be succesful”, “NLP for your success”, “How to enter into business”, “How to become rich quickly” etc. are e very short list of all the non-sense literature one can meet on the books market.

Along with the books we are being offered all kind of movies and philosophies “teaching us” about the life meanings, trying to explain the meaning of life and the universe and the meaning of each self as a human being.

From Christian perspective, most of this movies and books which plead to contain “a deeper life meaning” are empty of any real pure spiritual contents but are simply a mixture of various religious beliefs belonging to different group of worldy faiths and mostly targets to make the authors of the story or screen play rich.

This movies are not being inspired by God – The All Holy Trinity and they reject Christ as a founding stone on which to stand over, it’s clear that they contain an anti-christian content and every truly devoted Christian should try to abstain from watching them.

To name just a few of asuch a movies which are ecumenical (preach for unification of world religions) and from Orthodox Christian perspective are anti-christian in essence:

  • What the Bleep Do we Know – Down The Rabbit Hole
  • The Great Secret of Water
  • The Secret
  • The Fountain

We as Christians should try not watch this movie or praise them as something which confirms our faith, as they don’t confirm our faith in Christ but they try to spread up a “sick spirituality” and insane ideas.
This is just a small list of movies I have encountered which has influenced my spiritual health in a really negative way, therefore I hope if you’re a Christian you will take my warning and CHOOSE NOT TO WATCH THESE MOVIES!.
The reason for choosing not to watch this movies would be purely to prevent yourself from experiencing a spiritual (soul) damages by exposing yourself to the heretical teachings and ideas of the aforementioned ones.

Also try to get astray from all the genres of boks which I have mentioned above which try to teach you how to become sucessful in life, I have personally read a book I’m not sure about the exact name but it was similar to:

  • “The subsconscious could do everything / (Psyche can achieve everything) / The power of Mind etc.”

The book teaches the false idea that with our subconscrious mind we built our own current realities and promotes “positive thinking” as a way to attract wealth, personal success and happiness to yourself.

You can see yourself that this is insane not only from a Christian perspective but even for any rational person.

The idea of this false teachings is to convince you that man is undeveloped god and that we are masters of our own reality.

Therefore it is in direct contrast with even basic Christian beliefs, we Christians do belief that our reality and existence is completely in God’s hands and nothing could happen without God to allow it to happen.
Therefore from a Christian perspective if you, “during the whole day think about how you will get rich and how you will have millions in a bank account” as many of the up-mentioned devilish movies and books teaches, nothing will happen if God does not allow it.

We’re clearly said and taught from the Holy Bible and the Livings of the saints that all our life and daily goods we attain through our life are given by mercy, the saints has taught us that our lives and all we’re and possess are from God for God and through God! To whom be glory now and forever and ever! Amen.

Watch out for this heretical false doctrines which might separate you from Christ and our mother the Orthodox Church. The appearance of all this kind heretical literature and movies is in accordance to the prophecies by our Lord Jesus Christ who said that in the last days there will be many wolves in sheeps clothes, who will deceive and be deceived.

Let we as an Orthodox Christians be careful about what kind of books we read and keep our selves away from these and the similar kind of poisonous teachings.

Let we be fully delivered by God’s grace from being exposed to this kind of faith tempting books by the Holy Prayers of The Theotokos and all the Saints. Amen