Relating to….

Have you ever noticed that most of the Bible is about relationships? In the beginning, it is between God and Adam. Then it shifts to Adam and God and the animals, then it becomes a relationship between Adam and Eve. Then there is a broken relationship when Adam and Eve decide that they don’t want to do what God told them. They eat from the one tree which He had told them not to eat from. Out of ALL the fruit trees and other foods which they had, they chose the very one which they were commanded NOT to eat from.

Did they do it because they were mad at God or were tired of His rules? There was only the one rule…not to eat of the tree in the midst of the Garden! It couldn’t have been the rules because there was only one! So, what happened? Satan, Lucifer the deceiver came into the Garden and he wanted to disrupt the relationship which God had with His Son, Adam. So, his lies and deception caused the first couple to sin, to go against God’s rule.

Creation then was like a vase dropped on the floor, shattered into many pieces. The relationship broken and damaged forever…or so he thought.

God knew that this was coming and wasn’t caught off guard. Satan thought that he was doing something to God, his Creator, that would hurt Him. It did, but God used it to work out His purposes and His redemption of mankind anyway. He works in ways that we can’t understand or even comprehend, but God loves all of us and He is in control of all. He doesn’t dictate to us how we live or work but He will work in your life to bring about good things for you and for those around you.

Why is a relationship so important? Because, that is what God has always wanted with mankind! A relationship with Jesus is what is necessary for you to be His child, believing in Him and He Who sent Him. God knows your heart and what is in it, if there is hatred and worldly things in your heart and life and the evidence of it is known by all then your life doesn’t belong to Jesus. He is the Author and finisher of life and our Creator. He is with you whether you believe or not, but He takes pleasure in your life and rejoices when you invite Him in.

He will forgive you because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross, but if you aren’t convicted of them enough to repent and turn from them and ask for His forgiveness in order to live with Him daily, then your life is yours and not His. It is necessary for us to come to Him knowing that we need Him and His forgiveness. If you are too proud in your own religiosity and your piety, thinking that you have an “agreement” with God about your life, then you are lost and are bound for punishment because you would not subject your heart to Him.

Learning about God from God

lamb-of-god-passover It is something that many of us try to do in our lives at one point or another, but many of us have no idea how to do it? We consider reading the Bible through but just as any “new year’s resolution” we soon push it aside like any other exercise. Then we only pick it up on church days and read with our pastor, and sometimes we don’t even bring it to church with us at all.

How can you cultivate a relationship with the Creator if you don’t get to know Him? Our only outlet, our only way of getting to know Him IS to read His Word! His ways are there for us in black and white on a page or today on an electronic reader of some kind, but He and His Words are available! He is near us and if we are Christians, then He is dwelling inside our hearts and so near that we might as well be living inside His skin! Ewww gross! Don’t laugh, I know that is what many of you thought.

The point of this is that He wants a relationship with us, just as He did with Adam and Eve only they chose to be independent and go their own way. Our world has been damaged terribly by this independence because instead of living inside His Love and His Life, we make up our own version of Him and His attributes. We remake God and His Son in our image…how WE want them to be! Then, when we feel like they aren’t doing it right, we try to take over and we usually mess things up pretty good at that point!

God’s Word and Wisdom is in the Bible and if we will treat it as our Creator Who is actually speaking through the prophets and writers then accepting Him for Who He is will be so much better and easier! Please consider it and think about reading the book, “The Shack“. I am going to see the movie and maybe do a Bible study on it soon. God loves you!

God’s Promises

This is the day that the Lord has made for you and for me. What will you do with it? Do you wake up with an attitude of “Oh no, not another day!” or do you thank God for waking you up so you can have another day?

This is the life that we are given, daily, and we should be walking with Jesus but are you walking with Him or maybe someone else?

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

– Galatians 5:16

God promises many things in the Bible but most of us either don’t understand that we are entitled to those promises or we haven’t read the Bible enough to know what those promises are! God loves each and every person on the Earth, which is why He sent His Son, Jesus, to be the sacrifice which could pay the debt which everyone owes. Why didn’t I put that in past tense? Because we are all still committing sins regardless of our status as Christians or not, the only difference is that those who have given their heart to Jesus know they are forgiven.

They will be convicted of that sin, no matter what they do and they will ask forgiveness for it. Anyone who is not a Christian will not because until the Holy Spirit convicts you enough that you seek Him out, or you won’t do it at all. Truly, God does love you more deeply that you know or even realize but unless you have felt the touch of the Holy Spirit and become convicted of your sinful nature, you will not seek Him.

God intended for mankind to have an intimate relationship with Him and, before they ate from the forbidden tree, that is what He had. What happened? Adam and Eve did not obey God. It wasn’t the fruit or the tree that caused the sin of disobedience, it was the disobedience which caused the rift between man and God. The curse which was placed on mankind and all of creation was because of his disobedience and we still haven’t learned from it yet…because it is still going on!

People go against the rules, the Ten Commandments, all of the time. Murder, rape, stealing, incest, disregarding parents and grandparents, all of this and more happens every day. The only cure for our world’s problems is obeying God, the True God of the Bible! Not the one in the Quran or any other “book”, but the One Who created everything and everyone. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the One that we need to be listening to and following!

Seek Him out in His Word because His Spirit prompted and inspired the writers to write down His Words. The Bible is not made up by man because the prophecies that it contains would not have come true if that were so! The birth of Jesus was foretold down to Him being born of a virgin and in what town He would be born in. This was written at least six hundred years or more prior to His birth!

The same goes for the Psalm which David wrote almost one thousand years prior to His death by crucifixion. A type of punishment which wasn’t even being used at the time that David wrote Psalm 22, but it describes it perfectly even to the soldiers gambling for His garments. Give the Word of God a chance to change your life for the better and you will never be the same again!

A dangerous cancerous growth

Unfortunately, humanity is born with this condition and has been for many thousands of years. This cancerous growth is our sin nature. We are prone to it and will fulfill it even at the young age of two. Tell any child of toddler age that they can’t have something, but they know they can reach it. One day, they will do exactly that and if you ask them if they did, they will lie to you. Even with the crumbs from the cookies in their lap, they will lie about eating them.

They haven’t been taught to lie nor are they cunning little thieves but our nature is bent toward sinful behavior whether we have seen it or heard it or not. This growth, this nature is something that we can’t cure by any means of our own. We have not the idea of formulating a cure and we don’t have the ability to do so with our own resources.

Kidney cancer cells, SEM This sin nature is like a cancer for which there is no cure and no treatment. Radiation will not affect it, chemicals of any kind will only make it worse but they will not kill it. It is, pure and simple, a death sentence to every human born since the time of Adam and Eve. Yet, God did provide a way for us to clear it from our system, from our hearts altogether. Through the work of the Holy Spirit and the grace given to us as a gift by God and the atonement bought with the blood of Christ. It is a very expensive treatment and a cure, but it is freely given to us by God…if we will, by faith, believe in the work of Jesus!

God had this idea or plan in place even before the Earth was formed or Adam was created. Because, He knew that it would be needed and necessary for all of mankind. It was not something which was an afterthought, nor was it something that caught God by surprise! It was necessary, which was all of the reason that God needed to put His plan in motion. You might wonder, why would God choose to allow part of Himself, part of the Trinity, to take on the form of a human and live among them, teach those who would listen and hear the words and working of God and His grace and then die a death on a cross in order to redeem mankind?

The answer is very simple but it is also hard for us to understand, which is why so many people have trouble with this word and the actions and results which come from it. The answer is: LOVE.

God loves His creation, not just the planets and stars and galaxies, but He loves each of us because He knows each of us. How is this possible? Because God is outside of our time. He can look at any point in time that He chooses, from the beginning to the end and HE can see each of us at any point in our life. He knows what you said yesterday and what you will do tomorrow. You are known in a way that you can’t understand or comprehend, but it is because of this knowing that He loves us. It is also for this reason that He did send Jesus to atone for all of mankind’s sins, even though much of mankind will not accept it nor believe it.

As the Scripture says: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. That whosoever would believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

God didn’t do this because He had to, but because He wanted to. He wanted to have the same relationship that He enjoyed with humanity in the Garden. If this was the only way to do this, then that is exactly what He would do. He knew that Israel, as a nation, would reject Jesus. Which is why Paul was blinded on the road to persecute more of the young church. God wanted him to be the apostle to the Gentiles (those outside of Israel), which is exactly what he did. God uses the weak things or people to prove His power and glory and to bring to redemption those who might not hear of His grace and mercy through any other means.

If you have felt the call of the Holy Spirit, the feeling which tells you that something inside needs to change, then seek Him out at a church which teaches from His Word. Read His Word and pray that He will show you what you should do. Give your heart to Him by asking Him to come into your life and save you from this “cancer”, so that you can be made new and whole, into a new creation. One which will be used in His Kingdom to bring others to Him as well. Each of us has a purpose that nobody else can accomplish. This is why those of us who are called to Him are called in the first place, because we can have an effect on someone’s life that is very important to God. That person may be the next Paul or Peter or John, but if we aren’t available then they may never come to know Jesus at all.

But God….

In the Old Testament, there are two words which contrast the way that God shows His love and patience for us, and they are “but God”. The third word is mostly seen in the New Testament and it is “therefore”. What do these words have to do with salvation or a sanctified life in Christ and in relationship with God?

They show us what His love for us means enough that He is about to do something which will make a difference in many lives, not just in one person’s life. The statements which come after these words most often signify a change for the entire human race regarding God’s love and patience toward us all.

When you see “therefore” in the New Testament, it means simply that whatever follows is done, period. Some examples of these words and what follows are listed here:

Genesis 8:1
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.

Genesis 31:42
If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night he rebuked you.

Genesis 50:20
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

1 Samuel 23:14
David stayed in the desert strongholds and in the hills of the Desert of Ziph. Day after day Saul searched for him, but God did not give David into his hands.

The reason that I didn’t include “therefore” statements from the New Testament is because there are so many of them. Nearly every chapter in Matthew and Luke’s gospel has one. All of the letters which Paul wrote have them, so it would be prohibitively long.

All of these examples show that God cares for us, not just the Israelites but the whole of humanity! Why? Because, He wouldn’t have sent Jesus to die in our place, to suffer the scorn and the abandonment upon the cross if He did not love us!

Why do you think that Jesus said to His disciples, “Suffer the little children to come unto me”, because children don’t need a “why” or a reason to believe…they just do! This is the kind of faith that we seem to lose as adults. We get so caught up in life and in our living until we can’t or won’t believe unless we can touch it or feel it in our hands. This is why there will be so many “Christians” in hell one day! Many of them think that they know Jesus and that they believe in Him, when they really believe in the idea of Him and His love for them. The “idea” won’t save their souls!

We have to shed our veil, the curtain which we have been seeing Him through and look at Him as our Creator and our Savior and see Him as a real and living person, not as a “quaint idea” that is spoken of in the Bible and at church. Many times during my life when I thought that I was a “Christian”, I prayed and I read a few verses of scripture. But, I never did get into the Temple. I never crossed the threshold of the outer court, let alone come into the Holy Places where God is. God enjoyed a relationship with Adam and Eve for a while, yet we don’t know how long it was. They were immortal at that point, so it could’ve been a long time. This is the sort of relationship that He wants with His church, His people today.

Do we come near to Him? Do we visit with Him every day or do we just visit for an hour or so on Sunday morning, then go home and don’t think about Him again until next week? How would you feel if that were your relationship with your spouse? Kinda cold isn’t it?

God loves you and me and everyone else on this world that He created for us, but we seem to forget that He is there. We don’t want to acknowledge Him unless we need Him for something, usually urgently…like RIGHT NOW!!

God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit don’t work like that! The Spirit comes to you when you become a Christian. He doesn’t come as a drip at a time, but as the whole package. Jesus saves you and you are to become more like Him as you mature in your walk, daily, as a Christian, studying the Word of God and learning from Him. God watches over you and me and everyone else and makes sure that all things work to our good and His glory IF we belong to Him.

The church needs to understand that since we are the “body of Christ” until His return, we need to mature into people who are as priests in His Kingdom. We shouldn’t be acting like little children who don’t know better or who don’t know how to act like true Christians who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Confusion in Christianity

So much is happening in the world today and some of it is due to confusion about Christianity, what is contained in the Bible and how to live as one. Do I mean that Christians are confused? Some of them are, but mostly it is the world that is confused about what Christianity is. Why is that? What is there to be confused about?

Jesus is our Savior and Creator, He was born as a man but with the nature and Spirit of God present in Him. He died because of His humanity and the body that He lived here with, and He also allowed Himself to die in order to pay for the sins of mankind. Could He have refused this cup, yes He could but He didn’t want to defeat God’s purpose.

Many films and books today question Who He is and the authenticity of the Bible as well as whether it is the Word of God or not. People seem to get all worked up about Christianity’s claim that it is and Who it is about, even if they don’t believe it themselves. If you don’t believe it, then let all of us “Christian nutcases” believe what we believe. Very few of us seem to be trying to convert anyone or bring anyone to any knowledge of Jesus, so why does it bother so many people?

I think it bothers them because they doubt their own beliefs or rather non-belief. What if the Bible is true? What if the sermons which have been preached and the truths in them are true? What if hell really does exist? What if…Christianity is right? If you wait until you die to find out, it will be too late to change your mind then.

God loves each of us, regardless of our love for Him. Please, tell others about Jesus if you know Him. The workers are few in the world and we can’t reach everyone, but people are wanting to know Jesus. I do try with this site, but I can’t get to every person because the Internet doesn’t reach everywhere. I will be praying for you all. Thank you.

Image problem

The idea that we can be Christians, have Jesus in our life and yet not experience the REAL relationship that we desire is never taught in church. Is it possible that we can do all of the things, be a “pillar of the church” and not be fully and totally committed to our life in Christ? Actually, it is totally possible and many Christians are doing exactly that without even knowing it. There are many who “go through the motions” for years in their self-righteous delusion and they may never find Jesus in this life!

We tend to trust God because the preacher said that we should and because it is in the Bible. But, is that enough? We also create God in our image and place our personality traits in the relationship and look at Him as if He is a reflection of us rather than the other way around!

We are supposed to be reflecting Him and His Son’s image to those who see us, not making God into an image of us. Then when something doesn’t go exactly according to the plan that we have in mind for our life, we blame Him when it is actually our “version” of Him that is the culprit and the REAL problem.

We actually have a problem with our image, not that the image of God isn’t perfect because the real image of God is actually us. The problem is that we, each one of us, tries to make God conform to our image of Him. We try to make Him look like and act like us.

God doesn’t work that way, but He will allow us to make a mess of things while we do this so that He can come in and show us exactly what He can do for us. The image that we have created of Him cannot heal us or bring us to a point of surrender with Him because our image of God is NOT God!

Can this “image” thing be fixed? Yes, but it usually gets fixed when we finally come to a point where we acknowledge that we can’t do it ourselves and things begin to fall apart around us. Then we get angry at the “god” who allowed this and hopefully we will come to the point that we see that we were the cause of our problem and also the cause of the answers not being delivered to us by God like we thought they should be. Why did all of our prayers and tithes and all of the service which we performed in His service not count for what we thought it should?

Because, we were doing all of those things for OUR version…OUR image of God, not the real God but a fake copy of Him which closely resembles us! Our idol, our image, our reflection of us into and onto God. We were trying to do pottery in reverse, and it doesn’t work that way!

Consider that we are like Adam was before God gave him the breath of Life. To a perfectly holy God and our Creator, we are like a clay man or woman. Dirty and not useful for much more than planting things in, but if we realize that God is nothing like us because He is our Creator then we can come into a real relationship with Him. We should get to know Him as a friend and our Teacher, because it is necessary that we learn from Him the way to truly live in Him and allow Him to live in us and through us every day.

Our image is nothing compared to His and we shouldn’t try to imagine Him in our image because we are bringing Him down to our level at that point, in truth we should be striving to be more like Him!

So much, yet so little…

godsblessing Making a paycheck in today’s economy is not a small thing, its a necessary thing that people need. So, what do you do with it? Most of us pay bills with it first, then if there is any left we give a tiny portion of that to God when we go to church. That is not how God structured His economy though and each of us pays for that in the long run. An illustration that we could truly understand would go something like this:

A man or woman brings home a paycheck that they have cashed on the way home. Lets say they got $400 this week. Not a great paycheck but not too bad. On the way home, they filled the gas tank which took about ten percent of the check, $40. They also got a drink while they were at the quick stop, another $2. Now they have $358. The next morning is Saturday so they go shopping for groceries and spend about $100, now they are down to $258, so they deposit the rest in the bank, which won’t be available until next week. If they keep some out for themselves, maybe $25, now they are down to $233 which actually went into the bank. On Sunday morning, they give the church five dollars and they think they are doing pretty good because they gave that much.

Sound about right? Not to God!

God doesn’t need your money, but the church does and He has based your blessing upon the amount that you give and out of which portion that it comes. All of the blessings in the Bible came from the first-fruits of harvest or wealth, not the dregs after everything else is taken care of! Abraham gave ten percent of the first fruits and every other person who was blessed by God did the same thing. It doesn’t matter if you made one hundred dollars or ten thousand this week, before you pay anyone…you should set aside at least ten percent of it for God’s house. I am just as guilty of doing this as everyone else, so I am not standing on a pedestal preaching. I have suffered loss from doing so as well, but the point is that if you give it cheerfully to the Lord, then it will be blessed and given back into your hands.

God loves us and wants to bless us in many ways, whether it is through our health or our paycheck or our family doesn’t really matter, the point is the attitude which we exhibit when we give. If it is given grudgingly, then it wasn’t given in the right spirit and we will not see much, if any, blessing from it! God knows your heart and your thoughts, so you can’t hide from Him nor can you cheat Him because HE can see into your heart and the result of this can be good or bad but it depends upon you and your attitude.

Consumption

This word is what our entire economy is based upon these days. We do not produce anything which is exported to other countries, except for printing money. So, what is our country good for? Even the value of our money is suspect and dropping in the eyes of the world, so why do we live this way?

Mostly because of the culture that we live in today, but it started about fifty years ago and it has only gotten worse. When fast food became popular in the fifties, actually that was the start of “instant gratification”, so my estimate is off by about ten or more years. My point is this…when we got to the point of getting something fast or for free, things really started going downhill from there.

Our world was not designed by God to be based on consumption in this manner. We are supposed to produce our food, eat it and work to produce more. In today’s society, this has been replaced with our governments providing for us without even the need to work at all! The Bible says that “if you don’t work, you shouldn’t eat”, but we ignore that and go right along with all of the consumer driven economies and businesses that are available. The chart below shows that the number of structures (buildings) in each area have crossed over, so that now we have more retail structures than production facilities.

My ideas don’t really go along with our economy because we have more electronic consumer abilities today than we have ever had before. I use them as well, so I am not trying to get rid of it entirely. But, when I was growing up, my grandparents grew their own vegetables and we had a herd of cattle which we could choose to have at least one butchered each year for our own use. So our trips to the grocery store usually had to do with getting things which we did not grow or produce like coffee, flour, corn meal, cooking oil, and bacon (although we did have a few hogs which we could use at times too).

Our country and the people in it would be more healthy in every way if we went back to at least a partial agrarian economy where there were more local farmers who produced wholesome, organic foods. The problem is that we don’t have anyone to teach us how to do this anymore! Big farms and the regulations from the FDA have pushed small farms like this out of business.

We were meant to live this way, but we have allowed so much regulation and rules to interfere with our daily lives until the freedoms which our grandfathers and great grandfathers fought for don’t really exist like they once did. It is nobody’s fault but our own, so we can’t blame anyone but ourselves.

God’s Word says that we should live on and work the land that we have and eat the produce of it. Are we doing this? No, we are not and have not been for quite a while. We need to learn God’s way of living and working so that we can be more productive for Him and for us. His advice for this is in His Word, all we need to do and should do is to read it and learn from it.