Living in the Right Direction

I’m a follower of Jesus and my beliefs and opinions are my own.

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@AmericaPapaBear @grok I asked both Claude and ChatGPT but added the phrase “under Massachusetts law”. They both said no. It’s the stupid law there that will likely get her off, which is horrifying.

[Mikhaila Peterson @MikhailaFuller]

I had the same experience - thinking I was saved when I wasn’t.

I grew up agnostic, not knowing any Christians, in downtown Toronto where the idea of a Christian was a joke.

When I switched over to believing in God I had a pretty intense experience that made me think I was saved. A lot of things in my life turned around, I had hope, it felt like a weight had been lifted… it was convincing. I told my to be husband at the time “I think I got saved”.

Then about a year and a half later I actually got saved. It was a completely different experience. Turns out when you get saved you don’t “think” you were saved. You know it.

I had no idea what “being saved” felt like so I didn’t know any better. Or maybe part of me did, but no part I was consciously aware of. I’m so fortunate I wasn’t stuck in the “thinking” I was saved period forever. Terrifying.

Throughout my life I went from not sure about God existing, to believing Jesus existed (thinking I was saved), to knowing Jesus died on the cross for my sins (now).

Looking back I think that the belief that I was saved, before I actually was, was Satan’s attempt to blind me. 2 Corinthians 11:14: …for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

I must have played a part in it, but I can’t tell you how exactly.

That difference between believing in Jesus and knowing he’s God was everything.

After I got saved, my discernment skyrocketed, my more worldly goals changed, I felt a peace I’d never felt before. The spiritual battles that I’d been involved in my entire life became evident, my view of reality shifted to an understanding of the spiritual realm, my fear of death disappeared, Bible verses spoke to me.

(Previously I had read the Bible but after I was saved it was as if I hadn’t read certain parts - especially the demonic parts I had almost no recollection of).

I don’t know how many people who believe they’re Christians are stuck in the “believing but not knowing” trap I was in. Fooled by the father of lies. Not seeing the trap they’re in, like I didn’t see. Doing the work of Satan thinking they’re working for God.

Matthew 7:21: Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@Highway_30 I am loving this. So, hilarious. It just shows how off the deep end we are as a society.

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@julie_kelly2 Can’t get past the first 2 posts with the F-word. Ruins it for me.

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@ChrisMacchio @realDonaldTrump @TeamTrump @FIFAWorldCup @FIFAcom You need to goon tour! Seriously! ❤️

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@reynolds_tom @TaraLaRosa Welcome To The Land Of The Free · Jason Stills · Jason Garnsey

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@Simi_2210_ The skin

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@ChrisKi02048388 @drantbradley This is the absolute truth.

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@thatsKAIZEN I think God has gotten ahold of you brother! I love your posts!

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@javilopen Better than watching on a gritty black and white TV in 1969!

[Tevin Macharia Mukabana @TevinMacharia]

Waiting on God is one of the most difficult places a believer will ever find themselves in.
It is that place where you have prayed… but nothing has changed.
You have believed… but nothing has shifted.
You have cried… but heaven seems silent.
It is the place where you don’t know when the door will open, you just know that God said it will.
And that uncertainty can stretch your faith.
Because as humans, we love clarity.
We want dates, signs, confirmations, and timelines.
But God often works outside our expectations—not to frustrate us, but to build something deeper within us.
Waiting is not punishment.
Waiting is a process.
It is in waiting that God deals with your heart.
It is in waiting that your character is refined.
It is in waiting that your dependence on Him becomes real—not just words, but a lifestyle.
Anyone can praise God when things are moving.
Anyone can testify when doors are opening.
But can you still trust Him when nothing is happening?
Can you still worship when you don’t understand?
Can you still stand when everything in you wants to give up?
Waiting will test your faith like nothing else.
There are days you will feel forgotten.
Days you will question if you heard God correctly.
Days you will watch others move ahead while you remain in the same place.
And in those moments, the enemy will whisper:
“Maybe it’s not for you.”
“Maybe God has forgotten you.”
“Maybe it will never happen.”
But listen carefully—God is never late.
If He made a promise, He is committed to fulfilling it.
Not according to your timing, but according to His perfect will.
Sometimes the delay is not denial.
Sometimes God is preparing the blessing… and at the same time preparing you for the blessing.
Because if God gives you something you are not ready for, it can destroy you instead of bless you.
So He works on your patience.
He works on your attitude.
He works on your faith.
Waiting is where strength is built.
The Bible says those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.
That means waiting is not wasting—it is renewing.
Even when it feels like nothing is happening, something is happening within you.
God is teaching you to trust Him beyond what you can see.
To believe Him beyond what you feel.
To stand even when there is no evidence.
So don’t give up in the waiting.
Keep praying.
Keep believing.
Keep showing up.
Keep trusting.
Because one day, that same door you have been staring at…
That same door you have been praying about…
That same door that refused to open…
Will open.
And when it does, you will understand why God made you wait.
Until then—stay faithful.
God has not forgotten you.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

Many believers think their daily Bible reading does little because they forget what they read by afternoon.

But the Word of God does not work only through memory.

It works through formation.

Line by line, day after day, the Scriptures begin to reshape the mind, expose the heart, and train the soul to think like God thinks.

Read the full article. 👇

https://t.co/Yfsh7OrB3c

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@iamrjknight My pastor's mantra is "Read a chapter a day for the rest of your life." Our church publishes a 365-day guide and journal each year. It uses the SOAP method. https://t.co/YAoaZQimfO

[Apple Lamps @lamps_apple]

"I’m asking you to hold the line. Not because the President is infallible... he’s not, nobody is... but because the logic is sound. You cannot build a fortress of peace on a foundation of unresolved threats. You have to clear the ground first. That’s what’s happening."

The question you have to ask... the honest question, not the Tucker question, not the Marjorie question, the real question... is this... Could Donald Trump have achieved a permanent, lasting America First posture... the real doctrine, the thing we all voted for... without first clearing the board of the existential threats that previous administrations allowed to metastasize for decades?

The answer is no. And everybody who is being honest with themselves knows it’s no

Let me take you through it, because the details matter. They always matter with this President. He doesn’t do anything by accident. People think he’s impulsive... the media loves that narrative, “Trump is impulsive, Trump is chaotic”... but look at the timeline. Look at how this actually played out.

Venezuela: The Western Hemisphere First

Trump didn’t wake up one morning and decide to grab Maduro. This was months in the making. Years, actually, if you go back to his first term, when the Justice Department indicted Maduro on narco-terrorism charges in March 2020. Nobody did anything about it then. The indictment just sat there. Biden recognized the opposition candidate Edmundo González as the legitimate president after the stolen 2024 election, and then did absolutely nothing about it. Nothing. Just a statement.

Trump came back and started squeezing. Designated Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on Day One. Designated the Cartel of the Suns... which Maduro basically ran... as an FTO in July. Started a maritime blockade of sanctioned oil tankers in December 2025. And the whole time, by the way, he was offering Maduro off-ramps. Multiple off-ramps. Rubio was negotiating. There were back channels through Qatar. The Rodríguez siblings... Delcy and Jorge... were apparently trying to work out a deal where Maduro would go into exile. But Maduro wouldn’t go. He thought he could wait it out. He was wrong.

January 2, 2026... the operation launched. Special forces went in under cover of night. Army Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover flew the lead Chinook into Maduro’s military fortress. Eighty-three people died, including thirty-two Cuban soldiers who were stationed there... and by the way, what were Cuban soldiers doing in Venezuela? Think about that. Cuban soldiers protecting a Venezuelan dictator. That tells you everything about the network that had to be broken.

Maduro is now in federal custody in New York. Delcy Rodríguez is the interim president, cooperating with our government. We’re marketing Venezuelan oil on global markets. The largest proven oil reserves on the planet... three hundred billion barrels, bigger than Saudi Arabia... are no longer being used to fund narco-terrorism and Cuban communism. They’re being used to benefit the American people and the Venezuelan people.

Now. Was that regime change? Technically? Yes. But here’s the critical difference... and this is what separates what Trump did from what Bush did in Iraq, what Obama did in Libya, what the whole rotten establishment has done for twenty-five years. Trump did not invade Venezuela. He did not send a hundred and fifty thousand troops. He did not dissolve the Venezuelan state. He did not fire every government employee and disband the security forces like Paul Bremer did in Iraq, which was the single stupidest decision in the history of American foreign policy, by the way. Single stupidest decision. Created ISIS. Created the entire insurgency. Because they took a million armed, trained men, humiliated them, and set them loose with nothing to do but fight.

Trump did the opposite. He took the head. Left the body. Made a deal with the body. That’s not nation-building. That’s not a forever war. That’s a surgical correction of a threat that had been allowed to fester for over two decades. Get in, remove the problem, arrange the pieces, get out. The Venezuelan state is still functioning. The military is still intact. The oil is flowing. And America is no longer dealing with a hostile narco-state in its own backyard.

We’re not building schools in Caracas. We’re not training a Venezuelan national police force. We’re not spending a trillion dollars over ten years trying to turn Venezuela into Vermont. We’re leaving. That is the doctrine. But you can’t leave a problem you haven’t solved.

Iran: The Nuclear Sword of Damocles

Iran is the harder case, and I’ll be straight with you... it’s the one that bothers people the most, and I understand why. Because Iran looks like exactly what we said we wouldn’t do. It looks like Iraq 2003. It looks like the neocons got what they always wanted. John Bolton is happy. Bill Kristol is happy. When John Bolton and Bill Kristol are happy about something you did, you should be nervous. I get it.

But Iran is not Iraq, and here is why.

Iraq in 2003 was a contained threat. Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence was either wrong or fabricated. The threat was manufactured to justify a war that certain people in Washington wanted for ideological reasons that had nothing to do with American security. The entire premise was a lie.

Iran in 2025-2026 was an uncontained, accelerating, existential threat. This is not debatable. After Biden let the JCPOA collapse without replacing it with anything... because Biden couldn’t negotiate his way out of a parking garage... Iran was enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels. The IAEA confirmed it. Four hundred kilograms of uranium enriched to sixty percent. They were, by every credible estimate, within weeks of breakout capability. The regime was simultaneously funding Hamas... which carried out October 7, the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust... funding Hezbollah, funding the Houthis who were attacking global shipping in the Red Sea, and funding proxy wars across the entire Middle East.

Trump tried diplomacy first. And this is the part that everyone who’s screaming “betrayal” conveniently forgets. He wrote a letter to Khamenei in March 2025 offering negotiations. He sent Steve Witkoff to Oman for multiple rounds of talks. Five rounds of talks. Five. Khamenei wouldn’t take the deal. They were offered sanctions relief, normalization, the whole package... in exchange for dismantling the nuclear program. They said no. They kept enriching.

So in June 2025, during the Twelve-Day War with Israel, Trump sent B-2 bombers... seven of them, flying eighteen hours straight from Missouri... and dropped bunker-buster bombs on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The three main enrichment sites. Obliterated. Set the program back years. And then he said... “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE.”

And what did Iran do? They tried to rebuild. They kicked out the IAEA inspectors. They refused to let anyone verify what happened to their uranium stockpiles. They kept developing missiles. The regime... Khamenei specifically... made the calculation that he could outlast Trump, rebuild the program, and eventually get the bomb anyway.

That calculation ended on February 28, 2026, when a precision strike killed Khamenei at his own residence during a meeting of senior officials. Gone. The defense minister, the IRGC commander, the secretary of the Security Council... all gone. Forty-eight senior leaders taken out, according to the President. And in the streets of Tehran... this is the part the media doesn’t want to show you... people were celebrating. Dancing. Cheering. Because the Iranian people have been hostages of this regime since 1979, and they know exactly what it is.

The cost of war is horrific and anyone who pretends there’s a way to do this without innocent people dying is lying to you. This President didn’t lie about it. He said, in his own address, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties... that often happens in war.” He’s telling you the truth. The question isn’t whether people will die. People were already dying... under the regime, in the protests the regime crushed by killing over seven thousand people in January alone. The question is whether the outcome justifies the cost. And the outcome... the permanent elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat, the destruction of the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, the liberation of eighty-eight million people from a medieval theocracy... is worth it. It has to be. Because the alternative was a nuclear-armed Iran, and a nuclear-armed Iran means the end of everything we’re trying to build.

Cuba: Gravity Does the Work

Cuba is the proof that the doctrine works even when you don’t fire a shot. Nobody invaded Cuba. Nobody bombed Havana. Trump simply cut the lifeline. When Maduro fell, the Venezuelan oil that kept Cuba alive disappeared. When Trump signed the executive order on January 29 threatening tariffs on any country that sells oil to Cuba, Mexico... which supplied forty-four percent of Cuba’s oil... suspended shipments. Russia called the situation “truly critical” but hasn’t sent a tanker. China made sympathetic noises but hasn’t delivered fuel.

And now Cuba is collapsing under its own weight. Eighty-nine percent of families in extreme poverty. Schools suspended. Hospitals losing power. Airlines canceling flights because there’s no jet fuel. The regime can’t even run garbage trucks. This is what sixty-seven years of communism looks like when nobody’s willing to subsidize it anymore.

Trump’s approach? “Make a deal before it’s too late.” He’s talking to people inside the Cuban system... including, reportedly, Raúl Castro’s grandson. Rubio, who understands Cuba better than anyone in government, is leading the effort. The terms haven’t been made public, but the logic is obvious... open the economy, release political prisoners, hold elections, or watch the lights go out for good. No Marines. No occupation. Just leverage, applied from a position of absolute economic dominance, and the patience to let gravity do what gravity does.

So here is where it all comes together. Here is the part where you have to step back and look at the board... the whole board, not just the square you’re standing on.

Before January 2025, the Western Hemisphere contained a hostile narco-state with the world’s largest oil reserves, a communist holdout that served as a forward base for Russian and Chinese influence ninety miles from Florida, and a Middle Eastern theocracy with an active nuclear weapons program that was funding terror organizations across three continents. Those were not theoretical threats. They were active, operational, escalating threats that any future president... of either party... would have had to deal with eventually.

The question was never whether to deal with them. The question was how. And the twenty-five-year answer from the foreign policy establishment... sanctions that didn’t work, diplomacy that got played, nation-building that wasted trillions, forever wars that killed thousands... had been tried and had failed catastrophically. Iraq proved it. Afghanistan proved it. Libya proved it.

What Trump has done in sixty days... Maduro captured, Khamenei killed, Cuba strangled into negotiation... is not a betrayal of the America First doctrine. It is the precondition for the doctrine. It’s the thing that has to happen once so that it never has to happen again.

Think of it this way. If you inherit a house with a flooded basement, a collapsing roof, and a gas leak, you don’t get to say “I’m a low-maintenance homeowner” and sit on the porch. You have to fix the emergencies first. Rip out the pipes. Replace the roof. Seal the gas line. It’s expensive. It’s messy. People are going to say “I thought you said this would be a quiet house.” And you say... “It will be. After I fix the things that are about to kill us.”

That’s what the second term has been. Emergency triage on a world that was handed to this President in a state of active decay. Not by accident, not by fate, but by the deliberate incompetence of everyone who came before.

The Trump Doctrine... the real, permanent version... is still coming. And it will look exactly like what you voted for. No permanent troop deployments in Caracas. No American military governor in Tehran. No nation-building, no democracy-exporting, no trillion-dollar reconstruction funds. Get in. Fix the emergency. Arrange cooperative locals to run things in a direction that doesn’t threaten America. Get out.

Venezuela is already on that track. The oil deal was signed within days of Maduro’s capture. Delcy Rodríguez is cooperating. American companies are investing. The troops are not staying.

Iran is going to be harder and take longer... there’s active combat right now, this weekend, as you’re reading this. Three Americans are dead. More will follow, the President himself said so. But the objective is not to occupy Iran. The objective is to break the regime’s capacity to threaten the United States and its allies, support whatever transition the Iranian people choose... and they’re already in the streets, they’ve been in the streets since December... and then leave. This is not Afghanistan. There will not be twenty years of patrols in Isfahan. There will not be a democratic transition monitored by USAID consultants who’ve never been outside the Green Zone. There will be a broken regime, a liberated population, and an American exit.

Cuba will fold without a single American boot on the ground. It’s already happening.

And when it’s done... when the threats that took decades to build have been eliminated in months... the doctrine takes hold. Not as a slogan on a hat. Not as a campaign promise that sounds good in a rally and dissolves on contact with reality. As an actual, operational, strategic posture that future presidents will inherit and maintain, because the conditions that required intervention will no longer exist.

No Iranian nuclear program to contain. No Venezuelan narco-pipeline to interdict. No Cuban forward base to monitor. No justification for the next generation of neocons to drag us into the next Iraq.

That’s the vision. That’s what the second term is building toward. And I know it’s painful right now. I know three families are grieving tonight. I know more will grieve before this is over. And I know it looks, from the outside, like everything we were promised has been broken.

But I’m asking you to hold the line. Not because the President is infallible... he’s not, nobody is... but because the logic is sound. You cannot build a fortress of peace on a foundation of unresolved threats. You have to clear the ground first. That’s what’s happening. It’s ugly and it’s costly and it was never going to look the way anyone wanted it to look.

But the house will be clean. And then we maintain it. And then... finally, for the first time in a generation... we stop sending our kids to die in countries that hate us.

That’s the Trump Doctrine. Not the opening act. The final destination. And we’re almost there.

[Strength For Today! #ShepherdsDiary @elanfaith]

Heartbreak has a way of silencing rooms and magnifying loneliness. It can make even a crowded place feel empty. When trust is broken, when love walks away, when prayers seem unanswered, the ache can feel unbearable. But even there, especially there, God is near.

Scripture reminds us, “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). Notice this: God does not distance Himself from your pain. He draws closer. When others leave, He remains. When words fail, He understands the language of tears.

Heartbreak may make you question your worth, but your value was never determined by who stayed or who left. Your worth was settled at the cross. “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That is not temporary love. That is covenant love. That is unwavering love.

Loneliness can whisper lies: You are forgotten. You are unseen. You are alone. But God declares truth: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Even when you feel abandoned, you are accompanied. Even when you feel rejected, you are chosen (1 Peter 2:9).

Sometimes God allows heartbreak not to destroy you, but to refine you. David knew deep betrayal and sorrow, yet he could still say, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Put your hope in God” (Psalm 42:11). Pain did not have the final word, hope did. And hope in God never disappoints (Romans 5:5).

There are seasons when God removes people because He is protecting your destiny. There are nights when He allows tears because He is watering the soil of your growth. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). Morning always comes. Healing always begins. Restoration is always possible in Christ.

Do not harden your heart because it was hurt. Do not close your spirit because it was bruised. Let God heal you completely. He does not patch hearts, He renews them. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3).

In your loneliness, seek His presence intentionally. Talk to Him. Worship through the pain. Pour out your heart like Hannah did (1 Samuel 1:15). God collects every tear (Psalm 56:8). None of your suffering is wasted in His hands.

You are not abandoned.
You are not forgotten.
You are not finished.

This heartbreak is not your identity, it is a chapter. And God is the Author and Finisher of your faith (Hebrews 12:2). The same God who carried you into this season will carry you through it.

Hold on. Heal slowly. Trust deeply.
The God who restores souls (Psalm 23:3) is writing a story greater than your sorrow.

#PstKimeamihia

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@ArthurMacwaters I posed the exact prompt in ChatGPT and got an entirely different, correct, and moral response.

[Erik Reed @ErikReed]

Some thoughts on AI, how Christians need to be thinking about this technology, and why I'm a part of @Dominion_chat

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@MichelleMaxwell @sweeenie Thank you for providing this info. I think it’s important to give credit to the individuals creating the content. I have followed him and you.

[Defender of the Republic 🇺🇸 @realdefender45]

Let’s talk about “Separation of Church and State”

[Living in the Right Direction @arts_friend]

@newstart_2024 He doesn’t say “Jesus”