Distilling the Solution of 2 Peter 1:5-7

Faith is what we start with.  That is the main ingredient.  Faith is the substance.  Faith is Christ Jesus/ God in Heaven/ Holy Spirit within us.

Then to that we add virtue.  Virtue is moral principles. What is right.  What we should and should not and ought to and ought to not do.

Then we add knowledge.  We can know what we ought to know.  We are learners  (disciples) of truth.

Then we add self-control.  With Holy Spirit’s power we are able to apply knowledge and with self-control, and be virtuous.

Then we add perseverance.  We stick with what is right.

Then, godliness:  the goodness and wholeness and eternalness and perfection and creativity and mind of God.

Then, kindness:  we add to the mix grace…God’s form of kindness….to be long-suffering (patient) in regard to others, to share truth with them, to be tolerant yet directing towards the truth.  To speak carefully, to not offend, to be gentle but strong.

And finally we add love.  Why is love added last?  Because it is the ingredient that unites the mix making each component inseparable, a solution.

The Word on words

So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. Hebrews

I like that word, boldly.  That is what I want to have as the adverb of my doings.  To do them boldly.  Bold is kind of like zealous except bold is with accent and highlight and zealous is with a passionate emotion.  I was thinking about how God is Word and how words are much more definitive than pictures.  Pictures are thousands of words but subject to interpretation.  Wonder if God was Picture and not Word.  Think about that.  We would have pictures and even though pictures “convey a thousand words”...how much more of anyone’s self-centered experiential interpretation would distort God’s Will?  I mean seriously, we have enough trouble with interpreting words.

Words are devine and human, just like Jesus.....Jesus is the Word.

God is soooooooo amazing!

Have a word-filled day.

Waiting on God

Waiting on God

What are we waiting for?

Are we waiting for joy?

Are we waiting for a still small voice?

Are we waiting for the return of the Lord Jesus?

Are we waiting in stillness or do we wait while we work?

 

What of others who do not know about waiting, how do we share with them the message to wait?

Do we merely show them by our patience?

Do we grab them and force them to stop?

Dear God, help me to understand waiting and to wait in You.

Amen

Spirituality

I was thinking about the term spirituality.  People use that word ( I used to myself) rather than boldly say, “I am a Christian”.  but you can be very spiritual and not obedient to the one and only God and certainly not know Jesus as God’s only begotten Son whom He raised from the dead.  I was listening to a sermon in which the pastor was sharing how difficult it is for many people who are Christians to actually say the word, Jesus.  They say things like, “God bless, in God we pray, under God, I believe in God...” but not often do we hear or say outside of church, “In Jesus name, Jesus blessed us,” or even “Jesus is the Son of God”.  Using the god term, we express a unity of tolerance to different beliefs who also use the god term, but just like there are many mothers, there is only one mother which gave birth to me or to you.

Interesting isn’t it.  I find myself having this difficulty, I think it was the mysticism attached to the supernatural devine aspect of Jesus.  God in heaven is conceptualized as unseen and only felt or experienced, but Jesus....well that is a whole other concept of a man/God.  That brings to mind some of the Greek and Roman gods who were never seen walking this earth, only imagined like a unicorn is an imagined creature:  a unicorn can be drawn or cartooned but it is not a real living breathing creature.  And the understanding that we, too, can have the power to heal and to forgive if we plug into God through Holy Spirit....well that is just mind boggling!

Jesus was a real living breathing man who walked this earth 2000 years ago and who lived an earthly life until around age 33.  His birth to a virgin was known only by attestation of his mother, Mary and her husband, Joseph whom they shared with others who believed them and who knew God the Father through their special relationship to Him via the prophets and the Word.

His death on the cross was significant not because an innocent man was put to death (that has happened many times) but because of what his death produced (an atoning death...payment in entirety of our debt of sin) and because of the renewal to life brought about by his resurrection and ascension; witnessed by hundreds.

So to say with our mouths that Jesus is Lord is not so easy,  it is actually easier to believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.  Our heart beliefs don’t necessarily have to be shared verbally.  We step towards that sharing in our behaviors towards others and towards ourselves.  That is why faith is an action word.  With only a mustard seed of faith, we have what we need to actively plant the Word and care for the seed until it grows into a huge tree and spreads its own seeds.

What of aliens....

Let me clarify...Of course God looks like us in that Jesus is God: fully man, fully devine.  That is the Trinity.  God the Father is spirit as is Holy Spirit. God is our Creator. He is a personal supremely intelligent Creator.  It is Holy Spirit that is within us when we accept Him and believe.  Holy Spirit is a God-form, but Jesus had to ascend first, remember Jesus told the disciples that he must first leave before Holy Spirit could come and work within us.  We must ask and receive Holy Spirit through baptism: not water baptism, that is the cleansing and repentance part; but through acknowledgement.  That is the acceptance part.

There are those who do not know or believe in the truth of God which includes His one and only Son, Jesus and those will not inherit the kingdom.  God tells us this quite plainly in His Word.  We are not God and God is not us.  God is not in everything, this is pantheism.  God is apart from us, He is Holy.  God is to be worshipped and glorified.  It is therefore the greatest possibility and it is most likely that we are special creatures to God and no others exist anywhere else in the universe. 

The enormousness of the universe has nothing to do with God being powerful and creative as God has no limit as to time or dimension, and therefore, I do not see it as narrow or self-serving to believe that we are the only planet with human beings created in the image of God, after all almost 108 billion people have lived on this earth. The Bible does not in any manner suggest that there is life outside of this planet and I for one am not going to add to the Bible by suggesting there is.  It would not change by either deterring or adding to my belief in God and specifically it would detract from many peoples belief in the saving grace of Jesus.  To suggest that other self-willed creatures in God’s image live elsewhere is to know that they sinned as well, for self-will requires choice and choice by definition requires at least two sides and that means disagreement and disobedience.  Therefore if sin is part of all self-will creatures created in the image of God then they too would need the atoning grace of Jesus.  Since Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, there would have to be another Jesus, not just the one, because there is only one Mary, mother of Jesus.  So you see what a tangled mess our beliefs can lead to if we are not very careful in being truth seekers.  The Mormons, an entire cult, began with the false truths of one man as did the Muslims.  The Mormons believe that a man dies and goes to his own planet kingdom and that each man becomes a god of his own planet and he can then have spirit children who can come to earth and repeat the cycle.  An earthlike planet is a far cry from Earth.