A Reason For Living:

     Do you have a reason to live that goes deeper than the nine to five daily grind?  Or is the job, kids, money, or leisure time  really all that motivates you?  Is there a yearning that is indescribable that pulls and tugs at the internal strings of your heart?  Making sense of that is key to our understanding and of the why's of our life.  If we can see that there can be no good if there is no evil then we can have an outlook in our life that there must be a just balance and that this balance must have a just judge who implements this justice.  If when we read and see all of the injustice that is around us and there is no one to administer a right and true judgement then we can admit to ourselves that truly there is a free for all mentality and that it truly is a "dog eat dog world." That is what the majority of us are molded in day to day....look out for yourself, number one...look the other way...be first to win at what? sports, education, money, first in your class what ever that maybe.  We in this country are molded and taught to excell above all and that that is the goal we should reach.
     But these things are all necessary if we are to survive in the world as it is presented to us throughout our life.  We are taught by parents, teachers, role models and so forth that this is the way it is done.  So we do it.  But what if it then after all is said and done it is only temporary and what is seen is only the very limited version of what there really is?  These are the problems the disciples of Jesus had too.  Divorce and marriage, riches, kingdoms, taxes and death.  (The last two being the only sure thing!?) Apparently.
      So if you are left scratching your head over these same issues and where to place your best efforts at getting by, how are we to live.
     I suggest taking a chance, a leap, and test the words of Jesus and see if they ring true for you.  So many others did, and history is written about these men and women.  Faith Paul said is the" substance of what is not seen." paraphrasing him, "and things hoped for". Abraham did not see his city made without hands nor did he see his blessing come to fruition thousands of years later.  God's covenants are sure his promises without fail. I am a recipient of this promise.
     I am moved by the world's events, torn at what I see and read about when terror and death is all around.  Dictators and rulers taking unfair advantage of it's citizens and throwing the innocents as if they are trash into prisons.
    What of Peter's imprisonment? For his preaching a gospel of good news?  The angels released him!  What of Daniel, thrown to the lions, for his refusal to worship the King as God?  The lions mouths were shut.  Joseph was humiliated and humbled, but exalted later by Pharoah (ultimately God) and made ruler of all Egypt and saved his kin. God's balance is a balance of justice.  Why you say does a God allow for evil?  and why do innocents perish?  It is because we must see the beginning and the root of our problems. "God does not wish that any perish" it is the Devil that is doing the evil and has had sway over humanity since the beginning. Cannot you see it?
     There is evil and we have to admit there is a God to counter it, it takes faith, and having the blinders removed as did Paul when he was healed from his blindness and changed from his murderous intents against a new and fledgeling faith, Christianity.  Three quarters of the New Testament was written by a man who swore out warrants and arrest documents to have followers of Jesus thrown into jail.  It was God's intention to change a man's heart and use him for the changing of history....and a message was then preached to the Gentile world.  Prophetic and covenental promise from God to Abraham and to the whole world if we hear it.
       So, the word's of Jesus, so counter culture, so against the grain.  Love your enemies?  Bless those that what, persecute you?  Apologise to your adversary before he throws you in jail?  Feed the poor, visit those in jail.  Get rid of riches?  Expect that if you follow his words you will be persecuted in some way, he said it.  We are counter culture and will be a target of the Devil but, we have this in us, "The Same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is in us."  Now we are overcomers.......so we must take the longview in the events of this world that are disheartening,  God is just and will meet out his justice his way and in his time....so are we arrogant because of the truth?,  in no way....we simply believe God........
     

Absurditites Along The "Way"

     Every so often life throws out what I like to call "absurdities" that make me ponder....the question....really? is that true? Is that really what our God is like?  I of course am refering to stories and experiences of some that in the course of life experienced that fail to find the right words to express some trancendental experience they have had.  Mystical, colorful, un-realistic decrtiptions of "something" that happened to them but... not necessarily ....G     o      d     !  If it were so we surely would be labeled lunatics.!  Why is this so?  I don't find these stories of craziness in the scriptures I have read for the last say thirty years!( Yes there are allegories.) Paul was so grounded and so was Peter.  Men of unquestionable faith and believability.  If anyone started to worship them as Angels (and some tried) they were mortified and stopped them immediately.  The glory always goes to God.  First and foremost.  They simply were carrying our Christ's words of teaching and showing to those who would believe just what faith was composed of.  This included miracles and healings that led others to believe they were somehow Angelic or God's themselves.
    Now back to the absurdities of some in the "Way".  In an effort I suppose to understand how God conveys to us his truths and( imparts to us; his truths), as flesh and blood we can become "spiritually minded and become no earthly good".  What I mean, is if we cannot accurately convey to those who are in a state of unbelief, the nature of the God we serve, how are they to know?  Certainly it is not so mystical as to cause a furrowed brow upon one's face in describing some truth God has imparted as to cause total disbelief on the one who may be hearing for the first time what the Christian God is like!
     Well  I have seen and heard somethings attributed to our God that are just ridiculous and need not to be mentioned for sheer either ignorance or total misunderstanding of the way our God really is.  Or could it be that those who attribute these silly things are just at a mighty distance to a God who longs to be near?  The words...."I never knew you" spoken by Christ...are not only scary for those who claimed to cast out demons and did things in Jesus name but are words of banishment from his very presence.  So I guess I would want to represent our God in a generous light that speaks of what he did for not only me personally but for all of mankind once and for all.  His sincerity, love, grace, teaching, longsuffering as a servant unto death... these are weighty and carry a dignity that I want the world to know.  So when I hear and see the Gospel spoken in the name of Jesus and it does not do what it is intended to do I begin to feel a little sick inside knowing the terrible price of the cross Jesus paid and knowing the marvelous Glory on the other side...resurrection!  God is not purple mists and a token granter of wishes we pray to  in hopes of some materialistic fulfillment here and now.
     If anything, Jesus was grounded in the totality of the human condition, weakness, hunger, suffering, longing and yet overcame all in triumph and experienced joy, friendships, feasts and festivals, and marriages of brides and grooms.  And he welcomes all who would believe to enter into his rest, and be invited to the banquet held in his honor at the end of time.

The Gods of Empty Promises:

     Every day all around you there are Gods.  Think not?  Think that they have all but been banished to the ages of history, long forgotten statues posing in whimsical ways that defy our modern understanding?  Our Gods present themselves in a different ways but are still empty promises, promising fulfilment but delivering none.  Six thousand years of mankinds history dug up, God's of fertility not only of crops but of human's as well. God's of benevolence and some of calamity all now relegated to museums and the pages of National Geographic and Archeological dig magazines.  Mystical God's,Zeus, Appollo, Aphrodite and God's of war.  What of these?  We look back on them with curiosity.  Why?  Because now we have technology and understanding that has increased a thousand fold since the 1900's.  We make what we want, live where we want, and pull our food off of well stocked shelves no longer risking threat to our lives by hunting and gathering.
     So when our inner lives begin to decay where do we again turn?  To those God's of today....
 Money/ otherwise known as mammon in the bible. Prosperity doctrines, Wall street, quick riches? Life of ease? Lottery tickets? Technology/space... is there life anywhere but here?.. & hope we will get there before we destroy this one? Crystals, magnets, meditation, witchcraft, atrology do we place our hope in these? And what about people? Do we place our hope in man? The hope of Democracy. The hope of stability among waring nations. NATO? The E.U.? Or a Socialized government. All these things are substitutes for the real thing. Though I like and enjoy our Democracy will it last? I don't know. The other things mentioned pale next to the revelation of Christ and what he did for us.  Life beyond this one, peace within, striving stilled and the possibility of loving one another without pettiness, and jealousies getting in the way. Looking out for one another as Paul exhorted in his many letters to the Corinthians, Thessalonians and so forth.
      He is called our Rock, our salvation, he asks us to try him and take on his yoke for it is light and easy.  Easier than this world's.  Have you been homeless?  Looked for money in the mail? Hoped that the water, electricity or gas would not be shut off?  Depended upon relatives that could not offer help? Have you gotten to the point of frustration and felt that there had to be something so much diferent that you cannot see and you know is there but do not know how to reach it?  It is the Spirit of God poured out for our transgression, simply said (our missing the mark or missing the one true God.)  It is the
God hole. The very spirit of God infused with our body soul that will raise us up as it did Christ on that third day.  Easter is around the corner and it is so much more than candy and bunnies and easter eggs hunts. It is the day of Resurrection! A day of Celebration and a day of hope for Christians.  It is the culmination of four thousand years of God's covenant fulfilled down through the generations never missing a beat. Jewish scribes that meticulouly wrote and rewrote letter by letter preserving their history and God's dealing with nations and then found in the form of the Dead Sea Scrolls.   Read over the Old Testament, it is richly filled with people, unlikely people who believed God.  Read Hebrews chap. 11 or the faith chapter as it is known.  It will amaze you. It's not just a story or a "Good Book."
 

                        So let's banish those ancient and modern God's who are of no help.
                                           

   

   


   

The Invisible Cloak of Our Sin: Invisible no Longer

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.


     28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approveof those who practice them.

     These words are strong. Strong enough to cause me a Christian to be wary of the God I serve. 

   But what of those who just don't care?  Or are they  obivilous to the invisible cloak they are wearing every day?  NO matter what we think we are we, each of us was born to a world of Sin and we are wearing that each day.  This sin was inherited and we are the fruits of a decision thousands of years before us.  Sometime take a good look at a time line of history and see how many thousands of years have gone before you were even here!  It will astound you. Up until the 1800's we were still horse and  buggy! Things have quickened and very fast.  Four thousand years of man's history even before Christ was on the scene.  Two thousand years have passed since and we still are the same people.  

    There is only one way out...and one solution to our dilema. And that is the Son of God.  Jesus.  So take a look at what the Apostle Paul was dealing with in his letter to the Romans.  Or take a look at any headline in the news, Tv or just about any form of media today and see the same thing over and over again.  Greed, jealousy, wars, killings, and sorrow upon sorrow.  This is the fruit.  

    There is a counter kingdom available now, here on earth where Christ offered us a way to live free from the trappings of our sinfulness and we can choose it if we want.  Though it is far from a perfected way of life , still it is what Jesus had in mind when he went to his death on the cross...an obliteration of spiritual powers and darkness that formerly had it's hold on us,in either addictions, smoking, lying ,  laziness the list is long, (etc, etc. etc). We are free indeed in Jesus's triumph 

on the cross.  

     Through the impartation of the Spirit  now we have victory over our sin. God no longer sees us as sinful but accepts the sacrifice Jesus performed on our behalf.  We are "white as snow."  The scarlet letter ( remember Hester Prynne? ) is no longer seen. 

                             

                                         We Have been forgiven 28 No more predator!