a PRELUDE TO ZION COALITION
Preflight Checklist
PREFLIGHT / PRE-ALTAR CHECKLISTS.
Often, before Jesus and I go to the MAIN www.zioncoalition.org ALTAR, Jesus has me do a PRELUDE exercise:
The new Altars (“Jesus Altars”) that Jesus is building for me in my Jesus-Greg world are, frankly, complex—like the Bible, like a jet airplane, like life on Earth, like Zion will be. Therefore, Jesus is creating for me helpful “pre-altar” materials to prepare my mind and heart for worship—to prepare my mind to be fed. These PRELUDE elements keep the altars sharp, focused, and more understandable and effective.
Across many fields, people rely on preflight checklist equivalents because what they are about to do carries weight and complexity. Surgeons pause before incision, firefighters before entry, divers before descent, and pilots before takeoff. These moments demand clarity—and produce clarity. The checklist is not about doubt; it is about readiness. It protects against distraction, forgetfulness, and overconfidence.
It prepares the mind and heart—like stretching before a run, tuning an instrument before a performance, reviewing lines before stepping onto a stage, or kneeling in quiet before prayer. It brings the mind into alignment with reality before action begins. In the same way, these pre-altar checklists position me to truly see, receive, and respond to what Jesus is revealing.
EXAMPLE OF PRE-ALTAR CHECKLIST.
Directly below, is the PRE-ALTAR CHECKLIST (prelude) to ZionCoalition.org. This is the first altar where Jesus is formally instituting this practice of pre-prepping my mind. It starts out with a warning to visitors (including myself):
WARNING TO VISITORS (INCLUDING GREG MULLER):
The following stuff is built by Jesus (and me) for a very specific (personal) purpose.
In 2015 Jesus commanded me to “GREG, FEED YOUR HEAD”.
And then Jesus proceeded to give me specific things He wants me to “feed my head.” Jesus is creating 100 Jesus Altars (they are like apps) that He intends for me to build, visit and consume, regularly. ZionCoalition.org is one of these Altars/apps. It is currently under construction, and will be for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, Jesus has me routinely read through (and edit) everything you see below. And it does “feed my head” (and heart). It is an “app” (Altar) that is working for me. (otherwise I would stop working on it).
If you want to understand more how Jesus creates Altars (not just for me, but for everybody, whether they call them that or not)—read this brief explanation about the (Book of Job from the Bible) “Job App”: JOB APP at https://zioncoalition.org/job-feed-your-head/
ONE THING THAT MAKES ALTARS (filled with messages like the ones below, messages that Jesus has me revisit often) NECESSAY, IS THAT HUMANS (like me) CAN EASILY HAVE THE O.B.V.I.O.U.S. ESCAPE THEM.
They can forget (like I do), and start believing stupid stuff again… the very next week.
THE GENIUS OF ALTARS (like the genius of written language) IS THAT (with practice and diligence) THE O.B.V.I.O.U.S. C.A.N. B.E. M.A.D.E. U.N.E.S.C.A.P.A.B.L.E!
For example, one of the things I (and others) so easily forget is how (very) little control we have over our lives. And that (in not just many, but in most instances) Jesus just wants me to be attentive (TO LOOK). I so easily forget the wisdom of 1 Nephi 17:41 is the wisdom most called for (in not just many, but in most instances).
“…and the labor which they had to perform was to look” (1 Nephi 17:41)
To wit, in this ZionCoalition Altar you (and I) will see again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again Jesus plants reminders (for me) to take bold, stark, unflinching account!!!—— of the things that are OUT OF MY CONTROL (LEFT TO JESUS). I sense Jesus is doing this to help me—use my limited energy to—-focus on (and have courage for) the things I CAN change.
Finally, here is a Recent Example of Jesus Reminding Me Of This “Greg-I’m-Mostly-Just-Gonna-Have-You-Watch” Principle.… a principle that you (and I) are going to see Jesus emphasize again and again, throughout Zion Coalition:
Read this: https://zioncoalition.org/world-war-3/
BEFORE THE START OF ZION COALITION (ALTAR)… REMEMBER WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT….
Jesus brought us into a world where we can—if we choose—learn to see everything and everyone (Matthew 25:38–40) in a more Christlike (Jesusy) way.
Zion Coalition is (1) part of a larger collection of (99 other) Christ-centered “altars” (channels that channel my mind and heart) that Jesus is building—and that I’m helping build. These spaces are designed to help me see Him (Jesus) with deeper love and gratitude.
we aim (look) to get…
Read about (and sing along about): THE MORE JESUS FEELING
THE AIM OF Jesus WORSHIP: SPIRIT ‘POSSESSION’ (in the best Alma 34:34 sense)
“Jesus intends not just that we follow Him, but that we yield ourselves so fully that His Spirit dwells in us completely—shaping our thoughts, desires, and actions—until our life becomes an expression of His. This is not loss of agency, but its highest use: a willing union where we become one with Him.”
“…and the labor which they had to perform was to look” (1 Nephi 17:41)
(look) what’s coming…. Look, Zion!
(look)ing sets it in motion….
We look to Christ more (m) than (t) before (b),
which leads us to (think) of Christ-m.t.b.,
which leads us to (talk) of Christ-m.t.b.,
which leads us to (rejoice) in Christ-m.t.b.,
which leads us to (preach) of Christ-m.t.b.,
which leads us to (prophesy) of Christ-m.t.b.,
which leads us to (write) according to our prophecies-m.t.b.,
(that our children may know to what source they may look…)
which leads us to THAT MORE JESUS FEELING,
which is Spirit Possession (Alma 34:34),
which is Zion.
(2 Nephi 25:26)
for those who have (glass) eyes to see
“For now we see through a glass, darkly” – – 1 Corinthians 13:12
FEED YOUR HEAD – JESUS TV. Jesus gave us smartphones (obviously) so that we can get busy practicing (look)ing at Him more (m) than (t) before (b). The act of looking is how we humans worship. And, Jesus will soon give us even more advanced (look)ing technology. WE HAVE A CHOICE NOW: We can look at Jesus and live. Or look at something else… and die.
Like Jesus said in the Bible (JGV), “Get busy looking: ‘Get busy living, or get busy dying.'”
Jesus (eye)glasses are optical devices (ALTARs) consisting of lenses held in a Jesus frame, worn in front of the eyes to correct vision defects like nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism. They work by adjusting the focal point of light onto the retina.
We lookers. Human beings instinctually look at/ pay attention to (=worship). And that which we consistently look at will eventually have power to POSSESS us (get inside us, Alma 34:34). For good, or for bad.
Dayenu means “it would have been enough.” It’s a Hebrew expression of gratitude — a declaration that each act of God’s mercy, no matter how small, is worthy of thanks.
look for a place to put this haunting….. https://youtu.be/JHlxTiR1zsk?si=6cHhm2YuTaVjPtSQ.… …………………………………………………………I’m 76 and have been playing guitar since I was 12 and it’s my addiction. My wife likes one of my songs and when she asks me to play “that song”, it makes me very happy……………………………..My Dad sent me this video, and while I’m in a different world, the same applies to writing books, and even more broadly, all human creations. We are destined for dust, as is our work, but while we’re here, we get the chance to create something meaningful, even if it’s only seen by those closest to us. The great joy of life is the act of creating………………………………….I didn’t release my first album until early 2021 and I’m 67. It took me 13 long months to produce the 10 tracks and I also mixed and mastered the whole thing. To this day I can listen to the album and sincerely wouldn’t change a thing on it. It is my masterpiece. Will anyone other than my family, friends and my modest fan base ever hear it? No. But you know what? I produced a damned good album. I achieved something most people never will, and I’m happy with that……………………………………………………….This video is an allegory for life. We create and wait. It might be sculpture, water colors, wood turning, but we pour our best effort into our creations and they sit there on the shelf gathering dust and sometimes someone will complement an object by saying, “That’s as good as you could buy!” They have no idea how insulting that is. Part of our souls go into our creations and that little piece of us will last until someone in the future gets tired of it and replaces it with something off of Amazon. Elvis, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, are the lucky ones who cut the right track at the right time and became immortal. Most of us enguage ourselves in hopeful futility that is so soul satisfying that it doesn’t have to be put in the Louve. It’s enough that it’s our best work and if it gathers dust, it still exists and still has that potential. Hope really does spring eternal.………………………………………………………..I’m 68 & began writing songs at age 12. Wrote for piano and guitar. At first I wanted to be discovered and have a career in music. Instead, I got pregnant and married at 17. That didn’t stop my music, and for many years I still hoped I could get a band together and get my songs “out there”. Never happened and I had a fulfilling life with 3 kids helping my husband run a photography business. About a dozen years ago, I started researching my favorite artists’ lives just killing time… and soon I realized what a blessing it has been to have never been “discovered”. These artists sacrifice everything for us – they’re at the mercy of their label or whoever holds the purse strings. In the meantime, a few people have heard some of the songs I’ve written and I even got to perform them with a band – a group of mates. I’ve had people come up and ask about the songs and can hardly believe I wrote them. No offense taken, it’s nice others like them but I no longer need the approval of others to be happy. I’m happy just being me, knowing God loves me just as I am…………………………………………….After years of being one of those people, I released my first solo album, called Las Vegas Rain. It’s the result of 50 years of singing, writing, performing…I wrote all the songs, played most of the instruments. It took me and my best friend, the engineer, 3 years to make. My only real goal was to have something left after I’m gone to say, “I was here, and I did this! We’re really proud of it, but I doubt that 50 people have heard it………………………………………………….Rick this may be the most honest music industry video you have made. Very few people who “work” in the music industry have any of their songs heard by anyone………………………………………………This made me cry Rick. Such a beautiful song collecting digital dust. I’m not a fan of country music, but this is really good and beautifully sung. I am not worried anymore if my music goes nowhere. It is a world dominated by young pop artists who appeal to the masses. If I can just move one person, that is enough for me………………………………….
this really hit me… all the hours and years I have dedicated to my craft(s), all the crappy jobs, all the sacrifices, all the unending belief… indeed it is pretty profound…………………………………..The most heartwarming thing about this video is the love you feel that Rick has for all these artists with their unheard songs. He is in not even remotely condescending, he doesn’t blame them, not even those who didn‘t even try to publish their songs, he is just full of love for all of them. For the passion and energy and money and everything they put into these songs. I had tears in my eyes after watching this. Rick is a great, great guy, and just so full of love for music and musicians……………………………………………………………….My band and practice years were the most precious times in my young life, thirteen to eighteen years old, four different bands, all kinds of practice spaces and many wonderful people. ’66-’71. No material success at all except the joy we brought to the people we played for and ourselves. Now I’m old and I still thrill at the music and joy of practice and performance……………………………………..I guess as it turns out for you Rick your humanity is your greatest gift. How you make people feel is exactly what you would like your music to do. But you’re still doing it by being who you are. And you must find great satisfaction in that. I love listening to you and what you have to say. It definitely helps me live this life I am living. Thank you Rick for being present in my life……………………………….Pretty much the exact story of where 30 years of where my “life in music” led to. The songs were great – with good lyrics, great musicians, good or excellent mixing/mastering – and then lost in space, because… because. Very well said, Rick. This choked me up, more than a little – thinking about all the living music that still hangs in a Limbo of Dreams unmet, staring back at me from the bottom of a deep, deep well – mine and so many others. Something woke the dreamer and the fabric of the dream blew away, like a castle made of Dandelion down… There is so much beauty just sleeping in the shadows, clinging by the thinnest thread of memory, and waiting to fade away………………………………………………………………….If anyone ever wonders why so many musicians and ex-musicians hate pop music, this video should give you some insight. I remember those days of scraping together a few hundred bucks so we could get a day in a “real studio” to record our carefully crafted masterpieces, rehearsing 20 hours a week after my pizza delivery job, then dragging our butts and gear all over the country to perform it for any 3 people who’d listen. And nobody cares, because apparently they’d rather have a half-naked plastic celebrity squawking auto-tuned words written by committee over recycled drum machine sequences. /rant……………………………..I took me most of my life as a professional musician to realize that the most important thing about making a record – vinyl, tape, CD, whatever format – was making myself happy. If you base your success on how many albums you sold – or, in my case as one of 10 million unknown artists around the world – how many people have actually listened to your work, you will be miserable. My first commercial release on a major label in 1978 was a complete flop. I ended up back in the bars where I’ve since been for 50 years. I’ve since made 3 more albums and given most of them away. I made my last CD for ME – I didn’t give two titanium turds what anybody thought of it or cared who actually listened to it. I made it for the sheer joy of creating art which is as important to me as breathing………………………………………….You know, Rick, what you said about “all those hours” that went into developing work that went nowhere really resonated with me. I’m a screenwriter (MacGregor is a pseudonym) who spent his life writing scripts on spec. Everything I wrote won an award of some sort (except for my first feature script which was optioned but never made) and my last script had two academy award winning directors (each of whom had also won academy awards for screenwriting) wanting to direct. Couldn’t get the money. I worked my whole life in the camera department just so I could work at the heart of the set -near actors snd directors – so I could be close to where the stories are being told believing it would make me an even better writer even though the highly technical world of motion picture cameras was alien to my sensibilities. Nevertheless, I knuckled down and learned what I need to know and adapted to be good at something I had no native talent for starting out. Working 16 hour days on set and then, when the projects were done, I’d go away for a couple of months into isolation to work on my own spec scripts for 16 hour days until the money ran out and then back to set to make more money .Thirty years of it, Rick. My poor wife. Now I’ve set those dreams aside and I’m putting my creative energy into music, purely for pleasure, while my my projects, too, collect ‘digital dust’. I think artists who persevere in the face of overwhelming odds, trying to make their way in captured art forms, is nothing short of heroic in nature and I applaud them all.
What you wrote—and the comments you gathered—are actually circling around something very old, very deep, and very Gospel-shaped.
Let me reflect it back to you plainly, without fluff:
🌾 The Pattern You’re Seeing
All these people are saying the same thing in different ways:
- “I gave my life to something beautiful.”
- “Almost nobody saw it.”
- “And somehow… it still mattered.”
That tension—hidden effort vs. visible impact—is exactly where your spirit is being stirred.
✝️ What This Has To Do With Jesus
This isn’t random. It lines up almost perfectly with how Jesus describes life in the Kingdom of God:
1. Seeds, Not Spotlights
Jesus constantly talks about seeds—
things planted, buried, unseen.
Seeds disappear into the ground… and only later (or never visibly) bear fruit.
Most of those songs?
They are seeds, not failures.
2. Faithfulness Over Recognition
The world says:
“If it didn’t reach millions, it didn’t matter.”
Jesus says:
“Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Not famous.
Not successful.
Faithful.
That’s a completely different scoreboard.
3. Hidden Lives Are Not Wasted Lives
Think about it:
- Jesus spent ~30 years in obscurity
- Most of His work wasn’t recorded
- Many people He touched were never “famous stories”
By the world’s standards, that looks like “digital dust.”
But in reality, it was eternal.
🔥 The “Sober, Healing Message” You’re Feeling
Here it is, stripped down:
Your work does not need to be seen by the world to be seen by God.
And even deeper:
The act of creating, loving, and offering something real… is already success.
That’s why those comments feel healing—not depressing.
They’re people slowly letting go of:
- needing applause
- needing validation
- needing to “make it”
…and discovering something freer.
🎵 Why This Hits You Personally
You wrote:
“something that leads me to continue to do His will, with a heart full of joy… and songs”
That’s the key.
This isn’t telling you:
👉 “Stop caring about your work.”
It’s telling you:
👉 “Detach your joy from the outcome.”
Create anyway.
Sing anyway.
Obey anyway.
Because:
- One person hearing it matters
- Maybe no one hearing it still matters
- God hearing it always matters
🌿 A Simple Way to Hold This
If you want to carry this forward, hold it like this:
“I am not called to be known.
I am called to be faithful.”
And:
“Nothing offered in love is ever wasted.”
If you want, I can help you turn this into a short written reflection, devotional, or even lyrics—it already has that kind of shape to it.