DEFINING STUBBORNESS

DEFINING STUBBORNNESS

Someone who keeps blaming himself for something is someone who is avoiding correcting himself the right way. To blame is to resist, it is to be stubborn.
Laziness is always a form of stubbornness because it does things only when it feels like doing them, and only such things as it wants to carry out and the way it wants to carry out as well.
To talk a lot is to be either stubborn or to me made stubborn, because whoever talks a lot always refuses to hear either patiently or properly to some issue. To talk a lot is to refuse to hear, among many other things.
Fear is always a form of a stubborn own-mindedness. It is blind, having eyes to see, refuses to see when and what it should see; sees only such things as it urges itself to see the way it wishes to see them. Fear even trembles from such things as are not that dangerous at all because it refuses from the inside to face things through a living God. It refuses to see so it might fear. It is a vice, a maniac’s way to look at things to please self. Fear is stubbornness and not fragility, as many suppose – even in a lady who fears a mouse is stubborn. Fear should be dealt with through a genuine vision of a living God, through contrasting it to the realities both of God and of the fearful things put in the Light of God, and never through an image of whatever God is thought to be, nor of whatever troubles are taken to look like. Fear should not be resisted, but rather exposed in the face of a Living, saving God – Him who saves from such sins as fear as well, Mat.1:21.
Religion is stubbornness against the idea of a living God. Religion wants and creates a need to want to do see things its own way, linking it to God so self may feel self-assured and empowered on the account of the name God has – even if His name is used fully in vain. To have God, one must repent from religion and forsake it forever. To do so is to stop being stubborn as well.
To hide sin is to be stubborn, since it is resisting the conviction God has granted, worked out or made possible. Such who hide sins will sooner or later stumble over self, because it has never been fully exposed to die through full exposure in the light. Many people even reveal and manifest certain sins or certain aspects of them so as to be able to hide others better. Besides, it holds on to whatever can never give life, to whatever takes life away and to whatever masks and covers up realities and true, filthy deeds. To live according to truth is the opposite of stubbornness – even if it is truth about self and sin in the Light of God which exposes all as it is.
To worry is to be stubborn. It is a self created vice, it is a habit of seeing things in a selfish way so as to be unconcerned about other greater issues which can easily solve problems. To refuse to let go on worry, is halfway gone into the resolution of whatever is demoniacally possessing one’s best features to reason out things in the face of truth. Worry even feels sick to think to let go on itself unless it is given a greater selfishness to hold on to or to appreciate. It tells self that to feel secure is to sin. It refuses to feel secure, because it urges itself to worry, to fall into that vice, to accept unfulfillment so it can worry on and on.
Foolishness and foolish talk is always a stubbornness of some kind. Foolish people hide themselves behind a cloak of self arranged humility. It refuses to be truthful at all times; it pleases self and illusion, it takes for granted that one is humble when such is not; it is always seeking the opinion of others about self to feel comforted in those lies it keeps telling to self – even when such lies wear the cloak of truth. A foolish person is one who refuses to let go on imaginations, either real ones or composed ones.
Day dreaming is another form of stubbornness – always. Even if we dream about heaven, it means we refuse to let go on the lack of reality of whatever we may find ourselves dreaming about. Besides, it is always a refusal to let things work out the real way. Day dreaming is a form of impatience, it is stubbornness. Only impatient people dream about such things as they do not have (yet). Besides, it is refusing to get to the roots of whatever matters to God – the exposure of whatever may hinder God to bless.
Guilt is stubbornness because it chooses to feel guilty above feeling exposed to the forgiveness which takes sin away from man’s inside (so man cannot reach unto it again). Confession purifies the man it forgives, 1John 1:9. Whatever hinders man to come to God, will hinder God to come to man because a guilty man is a man turned to sin and a guilty man is trying hard to believe he cannot live God’s way to force himself to hold on to his own old mind and ways. He even thinks he does not deserve to live for God because he loves sin or sins. Guilt holds on to sin. And, to look away from guilt is to hide the sin of guilt away and it becomes an attempt to forget the sins it feels guilty about. If Jesus forgives indeed, none should look at sin to feel guilty, nor avoid looking at sin committed, but rather to be exposed to forgiveness. Guilty people pretend carrying on loving sin and serving it somehow. Guilt is a last attempt to be accepted as sinful so as to refuse to change from the inside for real because that change will annihilate sin and the possibility to sin delightfully again. Guilt is a certain kind of refusal to enter into the Light, because Light (if genuine and not imaginary) annihilates all sin from its roots, taking away the possibility or the availability of man to sin again unless stubborn about it in some degree. None should trust self because it feels guilty about something. To feel guilty is to try to escape the death of the cross, that wonderful death to sin, when self is no more, Rom.6.10. And this kind of death is real and guilt feels sorry for self when it should not be.
Fanaticism is stubbornness refusing to be fully exposed and working hard to have self protected and established in the temple of God.
To mistake things is a consequence of stubbornness against the simplicity found in perfect ways God is fully able to work out from within man. Because God does things in the inside of man, because He does so and much more, a mistake is a mere consequence of the refusal to walk with God the way He chooses it to be done, a certain refusal to stay close to Him to know what to do and what to say at a given time through Him alone. “Walk thou before Me and be perfect”, Gen.17:1, is not the same as “Be perfect and walk thou before Me”. It is not by chance that most mistakes are wrought by such as are self confident and self assured, and it is neither by chance that most people who claim they cannot be perfect are the very ones who entertain the idea of being always above others and preach as if they are higher up in the rank of whatever they think and believe to be life. The presence of mistakes is the opposite of a Way found, the opposite of a way established to walk with and through God alone. “Enoch walked with God…”
To refuse to live by God’s grace and by a God given nature sustained through His blessing alone is to go and do things in church as people would do elsewhere were they not called Christians. They jump up and down in discos – they try do the same in church through hymns. It means, alone, that self is reforming itself so it may refuse to die a shameful death at the cross against all sin and that through Christ. Did you ever see an electrical wire jumping up and down the wall so the light may burn in a bulb? Does power need man to become frenetic to illuminate any better? Noise in church is as sinful as frigidity from a pulpit can ever be: they seldom reveal the reality of God and they seldom put God forth as He happens to be.
Self-defense is stubbornness. It feels the need to be self-sufficient, and then gives in to that sort of temptation. Self-defense shrinks from holiness and thinks highly about self, refuses to use its time to seek “the secret place of the Most High”, Ps.91:1,2. Self-defence is pretending, believing to be right from the roots on, avoiding mercy to be seen and shown especially when it should be seen – at that proper time. Let people walk with God and others will harm God alone by attacking the One who, alone, takes revenge as seriously and as righteously as it should be taken and applied even if it is done so in due time. Patience and genuine revenge are partners, just as much as self-defence and impatience are mates depending on each other to make things worse and even more confusing.
Confusion is stubbornness refusing to stop near God, refusing to rest where and when it should, refusing to be quiet enough to make it possible unto God, as someone said, to undo the knot one has made on oneself.
Obstinacy is the opposite of persistency, just as much as impatience is mistaking doing for undoing and undoing for doing. Impatience is an effective weapon to destroy – especially near a Living God. To persist the right way is often to move back and forget about an issue God will remember by His own means, either in and through man or through some other way. A lack of persistency is quite often the proof of stubbornness within and not of the absence of any of it. Is a mule stubborn when it refuses to walk on, or is it not?
Ignorance is stubbornness and usually hides itself behind the cloak of not knowing. To be ignorant is the direct consequence of not being willing to walk with or through God. “Whoever lacks wisdom, let him ask God”, Jam.1:5. An ignorant person is someone who either refuses to ask wisdom for the right reasons, or plainly refuses to know so he can carry on as he best whishes. To walk with God, is to be enabled and to be charged to do things here on earth as they happen to be done in heaven. It is doubtful that anyone who does not walk through God here and now, will ever do so after death, since the very heart man has within him is the only thing that goes with him where he goes.
Anyone who insists on teaching above being taught, does so to avoid learning the practice of all Christ taught and showed us about. An acceptable teacher is one who lives and teaches by living himself whatever he teaches. Teaching through words alone is stubbornness hiding itself; it is a refusal to walk with and through God. One should try to teach whatever one lives and not live as one teaches.
Idolatry is stubbornness, just as religion is: it refuses to see a living God by using the name of God, or whatever else idols may represent, against Life and a real Lord of all. Even if idols could move around on their own, I would never dare to worship any of them or even have the smallest thought to do so. Why would anyone worship or believe in something – anything at all – that does not even walk on its own? What other reason does any person have to worship a useless object but being given over to self and to stubbornness? Idolaters have some private reasons to be as they are. Idols allow sin, they are too useless to punish.
Fantasy is a nest for stubbornness, for it refuses to be real and keeps itself from the way to be effectively true and truthful. Fantasy pretends pleasing an idea about self, feeds it, nurtures it, cares and defends for it – always.
Lack of satisfaction near God, or close to be near God, is another form of stubbornness. It urges God to please self, it even threatens to give up on God because it thinks and believes it lacks – it plainly refuses to accept the very means God is using effectively to dethrone self from its pulpit or whatever else is used to put self in the front seat. Self uses any weapon to stay alive – it even learns to preach better than Peter and John put together.
Sacrifice is stubbornness. It refuses to let go and bribes God into accepting self as it is.
Impatience is stubbornness demanding and feeling sorry for self and being self-righteous all the time. Impatience is a blinding fellow, a grudge held before or against anything whatsoever. Impatience hates anyone who is not like it for obvious reasons, since patience is an annoyance to its survival and to its highly thinking because impatience feeds itself through the approval of self and through the approval of whoever supports it. Impatience seeks approval from all sides. Impatience is fantasy and pretending – it pleases self to survive at any cost.
Lacking on real Life is lacking on living in the Light which shows all to anyone whatsoever – it is a refusal to be oneself in a manner which never pretends when it is pleasant. Whoever has not Life in abundance, is stubborn and cries over the lack he refuses to have.
Every vice is fed by stubbornness, whether it is smoking, drugs or big talk. The tongue destroys more than all drugs put together and it is the one thing which many fail to recognize as an enemy of mankind.
The love of money is a stubborn believing and depending upon a useless thing: it never catches up with the only reality which really matters. Besides, it causes others to depend from it so it may feel powerful and reliable. That’s why self depends from it too.
Doubt is stubbornness for it refuses to take away from the sight of God whatever hinders Life to be where it should cause to believe properly, for where there is Life, there will be faith – “whoever believes, has Eternal Life” within him already. Doubt is there in such who turn their faces to the opposite of life – of real life. Anyone pointing and aiming to sin, doubts reality easily. Anyone who doubts his sinful life-style because he has seen truth as it is, must regard that kind of doubt as real faith in the beginning stages. Doubt easily feels sorry for self and will easily regard faith based on reality as a stubborn issue pertaining to fanatics. Nevertheless, a man who doubts easily is a fanatic himself and the only thing that makes him fall into faith, sometimes, is the fact that he is unstable and double-minded, and may fall either to one side or to the other sooner or later. One needs more strength to doubt than to believe if one’s heart is made to be of the same kind of truth once put before living truth. Let your heart be truthful and it will recognize and match up with Truth and you will never doubt it. The problem is never with truth - the real problem is the desagreeing heart. “Can two walk together unless they are agreed?” Amos 3:3.
To think positive is to refuse to live properly, because any person near God is positive already by himself if such accepts truth as such and is able to live accordingly. None being right needs to think positive more and above what he is already. In such terms, to think positive is to decrease and to decline on holiness. Grasp reality if you live near God without a shadow of a doubt – if and when you really do live and walk through Him alone.
Insecurity is a stubborn infirmity which, like fear, refuses to let go on self. It gives birth to many other forms of stubbornness, like pride, vanity and many other make-ups.
Vanity is stubbornness, because it refuses to accept the fact that safety is to be found near a living God alone. Vanity feels safe doing its own thing its own way and stubbornly refuses to have it any other way. Safety-seeking in beauty is a mere excuse vanity has, for it knows it is able to feed itself by claiming to be insecure. Vanity is the egg to pride and to lies – even if we may reason which comes first, the egg or the chicken.
Sentimentality is stubbornness because it feeds self. Love is not sentimentality at all – ever. Love is a real Person in our inside and not real feelings about anything whatsoever. Self lives on by feeling to go on and not by going first. Love forsakes feeling after it has made full use of all of it, so it can carry on with a real Life which never ends. Love does not hold on to feeling, to keep it and to enjoy the sum of it, since Life is never ending as feeling is – whatever happens.
Any sexual persuasion which causes mankind to fight and fuss about it is stubbornness in a high degree of rottenness. Sex does not function that well outside the purpose it has been created for.
Let’s not forget that there are far more forms and kinds of obstinacy and autocracy. Were you thinking that the only people who committed idolatry in Christian circles were Roman Catholics? Think again, for the Word states that “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idol-worship”, 1Sam.15:23. God sees a stubborn person as He would look at a wizard or a witchdoctor. Amen.

José Mateus
zemateus@msn.com