The Father.9

"When at last you lift up the Son of Man (on the cross), you will know who I am, realizing that I did nothing according to my own plan or authority, but delivered to you the words which my Father instructed me to proclaim."

--Jesus

Many of us contemplate the purpose and meaning of our life on earth. Just the other day a co-worker, a lady in her 40's, told me she is still trying to figure that out about her own life. It is the primary quality that separates humans from all other sentient or "soulish" creatures: we want to know the why of our existence.

And as we lose our grip on this world, through weariness and decay, the method and time of our departure comes more into focus.

Proudly displaying her block M...for Mavis!

My sister Mazie's health has been declining rapidly over the past few months, so death has come more into focus for us lately. In addition to wrestling with "quality of life" questions posed by her caregivers, I've pondered the meaning and purpose of her life. Before her decline, she was a very intelligent and capable Downs Syndrome person. My favorite story about her was an exchange she had with our mom years ago. After watching a TV commercial featuring the "Mentally Retarded" (this was pre-politically correct programming) she turned to mom and asked, "Am I retarded?" My mom returned, "Do you think you are?" "No", was the simple answer from an unencumbered spirit. "Neither do I", replied Sacrificial Love (the woman who refused to put her "retarded" baby in an institution, a common practice of the day).

Sacrificial Love is probably the best way to describe the truth of Mazie's life on earth, the meaning and purpose of why God put her here. At her graduation ceremony many years ago the school displayed a slide show of the two graduate's accomplishments. The first featured a young man's hand crafts. But the focus of Mazie's "accomplishments" were pictures of an arm around a friend, cleaning up after lunch, helping with projects, serving without fanfare. As I watched, I sobbed deeply at the wonder of a life devoted to caring for others so effortlessly.

At a recent visit with Mazie at her care facility, my teenage granddaughter shared with the nursing staff her impressions of Mazie. "Whenever she came to our house she would always look for things to help with like doing the dishes or folding clothes or making beds. She just loved to serve us."

I never recall her grumbling or complaining (except when we limited her intake of Diet Pepsi...) about any task. Just her presence and zeal for serving others could be quite convicting, believe me!

She, of course, learned sacrificial love from my mom who learned it from her Savior, Jesus, when she opened up her heart to Him after the devastating loss of her husband, our dad, when he was only 31 years old.

Jesus, as perfectly obedient son of the Creator God, contemplated the time and method of his parting this planet. Crucifixion, undoubtedly the most grisly and public form of capital punishment devised by mankind, was a well established industry after centuries of practice.


But as was his practice, he never focused on himself but rather on the meaning and purpose of his life: to deliver the words his Father God had instructed him. This Word, this Logos brought order to the chaos of the world. Centuries later Jesus Christ still impacts the world, because simply by believing in the Name of Jesus order comes into the chaos of every individual who trusts in him! He is the Truth of God revealing the Perfect, Sacrificial, Love of the Father for the world!

I have benefited greatly from that Truth: order from the chaos of losing my dad, the sacrificial love of a mom who refused to cave into fear, and the convicting spirit of my servant sister! The Truth of our existence, like Jesus, Mazie, mom and all who follow Him is what we reveal about our Creator to a world desperately in need of saving...or clean dishes and made up beds!

The Father.8

"I have said this from the beginning: there is much in your lives that I could condemn,

but I have come with another message,

given to me by the One who is the truth.

This is the message that I speak to the world."

-Jesus

"If our Lord God in this life—in das Sheisshaus *—has given us such noble gifts, what will happen in that eternal life, where everything will be perfect and delightful?" 

—Martin Luther

For those, like me, not entirely familiar with the specifics of the Reformation, Eric Metaxas, in his book Martin Luther, recounts that the moment that changed the world is not without amusing irony.  While sitting on a toilet meditating on Romans 1:17 "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith," Luther suddenly realized that he'd been angry at God for demanding a righteousness he desperately wanted but fell woefully short of in his self-abasing efforts to achieve.  More so, he realized he was part of an organized deception to convince people they could purchase that righteousness through a system that had usurped Jesus alone as mediator between God and man.

The moment was not lost on Luther nor the place where the revelation occurred. That place, to be precise, was a "Sheisshaus" - German vernacular for "shithouse, lavatory, sewer." If God would meet Luther while attending to the unsavory business of defecating, was it not a simple and profound reminder that God Himself had entered this "Sheisshaus" to redeem and resurrect its inhabitants? Compared to the glories of heaven, this life is a "Sheisshaus" filled with sin, misery, death and "shit". "For God to come into this foulest world is for Him already to come most of the way into Hell. This world is the antechamber to hell and eternal death, and unless we allow the God of life to come here, we do not allow Him to redeem us.  He cannot redeem and resurrect what is not foul and dead, but we are both." 

All mankind's monuments hailing human attempts to be "good without God, to impress God and be like Him without His help" are "far worse than excrement could ever be, for they pretend to be good and beautiful and true and holy, but in reality" hide the devil's sinister and diabolical counterfeit to the glory of God.

Metaxas expands: "The specific point here is that the infinite and omniscient and omnipotent creator God of heaven did not descend to earth on a golden cloud. He came to us through screaming pain, through the bloody agony of a maiden’s vagina, in a cattle stall filthy with and stinking of dung. This is how humans enter the world, and if God would enter the world as a human being, he must enter it that way. It was the only way to reach us where we are and as we are, and because of his love for us he did not shrink from this approach, vile and difficult as it must be. Luther saw in this the very essence of Christian theology. God reached down not halfway to meet us in our vileness but all the way down, to the foul dregs of our broken humanity. And this holy and loving God dared to touch our lifeless and rotting essence and in doing so underscored that this is the truth about us. In fact, we are not sick and in need of healing. We are dead and in need of resurrecting. We are not dusty and in need of a good dusting; we are fatally befouled with death and fatally toxic filth and require total redemption. If we do not recognize that we need eternal life from the hand of God, we remain in our sins and are eternally dead. So because God respects us, he can reach us only if we are honest about our condition." Ibid, page 123 (emphasis added)

This is the message Jesus still speaks to the world! Meditate on that today, toilet or no toilet!

The Father.7

"And yet, I can do nothing on my own; I judge only as God guides me;

My ways are perfect, because I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father who has sent me.

As the Father has the power to give life, so the Son has the gift of life, and has been given the authority to execute judgment, because he is the Messiah, the Son of Man."

--Jesus

There Is None Like Him

If you think Jesus Christ is just your ordinary, run of the mill Messiah, think again as Apostle Paul paints this powerful portrait of another dimension:

"God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things

were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Letter to the Colossian Church

Jesus never disclosed any of what Paul claims of Him. At least not as recorded by his closest companions. Where then did Paul get the information and what qualifies him to make this astounding claim about Jesus Christ's involvement in the creation of all things?

Jesus was indeed unequivocal in his claim that he existed before ancient Abraham and that he and the Father/Creator are One. The apostle John, Jesus' closest earthly companion, opened his gospel by echoing the book of Genesis' mystical window into Creation:

In The Beginning...

But John turns his focus from physical creation to the Idea behind creation: The Word Made Flesh, Incarnate God. He reports that the things Jesus taught and did, even in His temporary visit to this planet, would fill more than the world could hold! Surely Jesus disclosed secret things to his closest companions that he knew one day would be proclaimed from the housetops. Things that these unsophisticated youngsters would have to ponder for many years in order to grip the magnitude of His claims!

The Battle for Creation Theory Supremacy

A friend related how his pastor started a teaching series on his five year long study of the "flat earth" theory. The underlying inference, of course, is that "science" has set out to dupe people into mistrusting the Bible record. And as usually happens in these situations, essentially guaranteed discord in the body. One family left the fellowship.

Young Earth/Old Earth/Creation/Evolution?


A recent headline reported that a Minnesota congressman said the earth is only 9,000 years old (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/house-science-member-says-earth-is-9000-years-old/). This illustrates that the debate and accusations between evolutionists and creationists going back decades is alive and well today. Hugh Ross, Christian apologist, astrophysicist, author and scientist, attempts to put the animosity in perspective: "To sum up, many young-earth creationist leaders consider anyone who disagrees with their particular doctrine as a dangerous enemy that must be strenuously opposed until their credibility is destroyed. On the other end of the creation/evolution spectrum, British biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion asserts that faith is fundamentally evil. He describes belief in God as a mental virus. The back cover of his book claims that “faith is not just irrational but potentially deadly.” More Than A Theory, Ross, Hugh.

What Would Jesus Explain (WWJE)

Since Jesus is the Ultimate Life Giver and the Perfect Revelation of God to man what has he given mankind that can help solve this conflict? More importantly, is it even possible to find harmony between scripture and science, faith and facts?

First of all He created us to know. Self-consciousness, reason and will sets us apart from all the created order. We are at history's apex of man's ability to know through revelation and discovery. But knowledge alone doesn't always lead to understanding.

Hugh Ross believes that modern science is more interested in the what and how rather than the why of how the universe came to be. In that he echoes George MacDonald's view that science can never explain God because it never focuses on the why or the truth of a thing. Botanist, for example, can tell you the parts of a flower and all its attributes but they can never explain what in the nature of a flower explains some aspect of God's character, meaning or purpose.

Ross explains why the Bible offers the best model to paint the creation picture:

"Constructing a good model to explain the origin and history of the universe and life also requires a well-built structure that can withstand attacks. Over fifty years ago British cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle, though much opposed to the Christian faith, conceded that the Bible offered a worthy cosmological foundation. He wrote, “There is a good deal of cosmology in the Bible. . . . It is a remarkable conception.”1  

While the Bible is not a scientific textbook, it contains a great quantity of information about the origin, structure, and history of the universe and life—more than any other religious text (see table 5.2, p. 61). These descriptions also uniquely predict scientific discoveries thousands of years ahead of time. Furthermore, the Bible frequently exhorts readers to discover the Creator’s handiwork in nature, referring to it as a second and complementary revelation from him. This surpassingly abundant commentary on the natural realm makes the Bible the best possible choice on which to erect a theistic model—one that is scientifically testable." More Than A Theory, Ross, Hugh, pg 71 (emphasis added)

Earth: A Unique Observation Deck

Psalm 19:1–3 describes one of God’s key purposes for creating the heavens: to make his existence and attributes visible to every human being. Once again, the Bible foretold what science discovered.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

According to Ross and his team of scientists, the Creator placed mankind at the just right place and time period to observe, know and understand His awesome Creation! He explains why:

"Throughout the history of the universe, the speed of light has exceeded the speed of cosmic expansion. Thus the proportion of history visible to Earth-bound spectators has increased over time. Eventually the entire history of the cosmos became visible. But it won’t be for long. As the cosmos ages, dark energy causes the universe’s expansion to speed up. It has already accelerated so much that objects formed immediately after the creation event are moving away from human observers at nearly the velocity of light. Someday dark energy will cause the expansion to accelerate beyond light’s velocity. Then distant objects will no longer be visible from Earth’s vantage point. As the universe expands at progressively faster rates under the influence of dark energy, researchers will see increasingly less of cosmic history. Humanity lives at the only moment in cosmic history when the first stars, galaxies, and even cosmic background radiation can be observed. According to the Bible and RTB’s creation model, the Creator perfectly timed humanity’s arrival in cosmic history to facilitate discovery of his existence and attributes through observation and consideration of the heavens (see Ps. 19:1–4; 50:6; 97:6; Rom. 1:18–20)." Ibid.

Perfect place.

Ross explains the uniqueness of mankind's observation point:

"At any other location in the Milky

Way Galaxy, a spectator’s view would be blocked by gas, dust, nebulae, nearby stars, star clusters, and/or galactic arms. In almost every other medium-large spiral galaxy (the size required for life), nearby galaxies and/or galaxy clusters would obscure the view of a distant universe. In every other location, knowledge of the deep history and structure of the universe remains hidden. Only from Earth can humanity see the magnificence of all cosmic creation." Ibid.

Anthropic Inequality

Here's an interesting idea that really puts in perspective God's love affair with Life:

"Brandon Carter, the British mathematician who first used the term “anthropic principle” in the scientific literature, observed a stunning temporal imbalance: the universe took billions of years to prepare for a species with the potential to survive no longer than a few million years. Carter called this imbalance between the minimum possible time required for the emergence of human life and the maximum time span for humanity’s survival, the “anthropic principle inequality.”
Physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler later showed that this inequality is far more extreme than originally thought. They calculated that human civilization with the benefits of some technology and organized social structure can last no longer than 41,000 years. Furthermore, Barrow and Tipler demonstrated that the inequality exists for any conceivable intelligent physical species under any realistically possible life-support conditions. These conclusions were developed, in part, because it takes at least 9 billion years to form a stable planetary system with the right chemical and physical conditions for life. It takes at least another 4.5 billion years for a planet in that system to accumulate adequate biomass and biodiversity to support an advanced civilization’s activities. The convergence of “just-right” conditions for an advanced species to thrive and civilize in as brief a time as 13.73 billion years reflects extraordinary, even miraculous, efficiency." Ibid.

And you thought culture's preoccupation with "gender inequality" was news...

Just like the Minnesota Congressman, there are many in the Christian community who will chaff (actually get extraordinarily angry) at the idea that the earth and the universe are billions of years old believing it to be an attack on the Bible. This then becomes another litmus test for true discipleship.

A culture that surely has embedded within it Judeo/Christian influences, has certainly seen those influences challenged. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Jesus asked whether he'd find faith on earth when He returned. More importantly, what kind of faith will he find? One, most assuredly, tested and refined.

Court battles attempting to force the states and federal governments to give equal treatment to teaching the creationist view of origins in public schools have been defeated time and again. Ross notes: "In the four most important creation-evolution court battles of the past fifty years, the creation side lost every time. Why? Because its defendants could not prove that young-earth creationism had scientific legitimacy. The Supreme Court justices made their decisions crystal clear. If young-earth creation science were valid as science, its right to be included in the public school curriculum would be assured no matter what its connection to one form of religion or another.

In all four court judgments, scientific merit set the primary standard. The courts acknowledged that this merit does not mean scientific perfection. If it did, no scientific model or interpretation could be taught. However, creation proponents must demonstrate at least some level of scientific value. Without it, access to the public education science curriculum cannot be justified." Ibid.

The problem, of course, is that not all Christ followers believe in the young earth creationist position. Trying to find consensus on any number of issues, from origins to baptism to atonement to sanctification, can be difficult in the Christian community. That often makes it difficult to make a compelling case for faith in God to a world trying desperately to explain the universe without Him and cares little for His redemptive work in drawing all mankind to Himself.

Hugh Ross makes the case that scientific methodology; i.e., the ability to observe, reason, theorize, test and understand the way things are, has its roots in the Biblical record of God's work in creating the universe and is a gift from God for knowing Him. That the world has successfully excluded the Creator from His creation using the very tools He's given may in fact be part of God's strategy for refining faith!

For which is a more compelling case to an unbelieving world? That the observable universe with consistent application of the laws of physics is a less reliable source of revelation than our ability to interpret and agree on ancient Hebrew and Greek texts? Is our faith really measured in whether we believe that God created the universe in six 24 hour time periods or took eons of time to produce the just right conditions for his crowning achievement: a being independent of Him with the ability to think, reason, and most importantly, love.

Western civilization, built on the foundation of faith in the moral and spiritual bedrock of Scripture's record of God's intervention in all of the created order, is experiencing great turmoil. Science, one of God's great tools for knowing and understanding Him, is being used as a political billy club for all kinds of evil from infanticide to incapacitating economies through fear of global climate catastrophe.

But as the data from the the skies proclaiming the work of his hands, daily pouring forth speech; night after night displaying knowledge, and where this speech and language is being heard and understood, the very science once hijacked to justify evil behavior is being turned on its head. For now we can see inside the womb to follow the development of new life. We can understand the sub-microscopic universe of quantum physics and their constancy of application throughout the observed universe. We can understand the fine-tuning of the universe to prepare a special planet that can literally see the Glory of God from "the beginning..."

Apostle Peter urged Christ followers to always have a "reason for why you believe." A good defense is a great offense. By embracing the harmony of scripture and science we have a special place as Christ followers to get a grip on the Greatness of the One through Whom everything came into existence!

The Father.6

"The Father loves the Son, and has revealed to him his universal plan; and you will witness even greater miracles than those which you have already seen. 

Even as the Father raises the dead, and gives new life, so the son will give new life to whomever he will." 

--Jesus

Stealing Hope

"What a brute I am, Wilfrid! he said. 'Why shouldn't I be as good as Jesus Christ? It seems always as if a man might. But just look at me! Because I was miserable myself, I went and made my poor little sister twice as miserable as I was before. She'll never get over what I said this morning.'

'It was foolish of you, Charley.'

'It was brutal. I am the most selfish creature in the world -- always taken up with myself. I do believe there is a devil after all. I am a devil. And the universal self is the devil. If there were such a thing as a self always giving itself away -- that self would be God.'

'Something very like the God of Christianity, I think.'

'If it were so, there would be a chance for us. We might then one day give the finishing blow to the devil in us.' 
(excerpt from 'Wilfrid Cumbermede' by George MacDonald)

'Convince a man that there is no God -- or, for I doubt if that be altogether possible -- make it, I will say, impossible for him to hope in God -- and it cannot be that annihilation 
should seem an evil.' (Ibid.)

Is there a greater miracle possible than that a man should turn to God and hope in Him?

The growing clamor for "Socialism" in the USA today illustrates powerfully the attempt by man to make it impossible to hope in God.  For it fills people who

bear the burden of a hard world with a false hope that lifts them from despair. But that hope is only temporary when they realize that their life hasn't made an appreciable improvement and those whose lives had served as an incentive to rise above the mundane have been pulled down so that everyone is "equal" while those who sold the fake future live in luxury and continually increase their demands for compliance.  The last stage of despair is worse than the first!

A recent story from China reports that the government has been demanding

Cross pulled down from
Chinese Church

that citizens remove any religious symbols like crosses, scriptures or paintings and replace them with images of Mao or the current Chinese president. (www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-25/crosses-burned-in-china-religion-crackdown/10301956). If the internet has done nothing else it demonstrates daily man's attempt to "make it impossible to hope in God!"

The promises of "universal health care" or "free college" or "equal pay" or a "living wage" are a terrible price to pay to have Hope in God stolen from the soul of mankind!

Yet the devil in us will continue to steal and kill and destroy while a flicker of hope remains. Consider that the State of New York passed, and Virginia seriously considered, legal infanticide illustrating that those who have no hope in God see annihilation as a desirable outcome for dealing with despair.

Great is the One in us! The One who miraculously continues to give life and hope to all who trust in His sacrificial, Godself-giving love for mankind ...universally! 

Stand your ground for Hope, followers of Jesus!

O Lord by Lauren Daigle

The Father.4

"I and my Father are one.

Everything that the Father has is mine.

I have come from the Father to this world;

I will leave this world again, and return to my Father."

--Jesus

ONENESS

Every human being has been given a special birthright, the highest calling that anyone can achieve: sharing "Oneness" with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit! But what does Oneness with our Creator mean for you and me? How can the invitation to Eternal Life impact our life on earth here and now?

Consider these life experiences rooted in the Character and Will of God, things that we long for and occasionally stumble across or with great effort find along the pathway of life, although imperfectly and inconsistently, yet ever drawing us closer to the Heart of the Creator:

Perfecting Love

"No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. There is no fear in love but Perfect Love casts out fear." 1 John 4:12, 18

"There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing towards the consummation when such shall be the universe, imperishable, divine.Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed.

And our God is a consuming fire."

MacDonald, Consuming Fire

Ponder the progression of love's development in each individual:

• We begin our journey conceived in love. 
• At birth we look up into the eyes of love. 
• As self consciousness develops so our struggle to love the "fearfulness and wonder" of our making.
• As our "neighborhood" expands from sharing with siblings to finding friendships in the wider community so love grows to bless and be blessed. 
• The progression reaches its greatest height, depth, length and breadth (as well as most contrary to nature) when, in conscious obedience to the love of the Father & Son, with grace by the Spirit, we pray for, love, forgive and bless our enemies.

True Worth

Think about this common issue and source of great consternation for physicians: "Why would someone buy prescription medication for his dog, and then so carefully administer it, when he would not do the same for himself? ...you have the answer, derived from one of the foundational texts of mankind [Genesis 1-3]. Why should anyone take care of anything as naked, ugly, ashamed, frightened worthless, cowardly, resentful, defensive and accusatory as a descendant of Adam?"

Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules For Life

God (in an imperfect understanding of the idea) perfectly likes Himself, does not carry the "appalling burden of self-loathing, resentment or hatred of Being under which most humans genuinely stagger." We carry in our Being the image of God, and with it the idea of Divine Goodness and Worth. To have the value of our God-born worth restored is heaven indeed!

The classic Christmas carol, O Holy Night, originally penned in 1843, describes the wonder of worth restored:

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,

It is the night of our dear Savior's birth.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

Till He appear'd and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Purified Potential

Where and when did this "appalling burden of self-loathing, resentment or hatred of Being under which most humans genuinely stagger" originate?

Eating the forbidden fruit awakened in Adam and Eve consciousness, first of all their nakedness, i.e, vulnerability, inadequacy, weakness, of being unprotected and unarmed in a hostile world. Secondly, they became aware of Good and Evil, the development of morality. "Self-consciousness wrought an awareness of humanity's defenselessness, finitude and mortality. We can feel pain, and self-disgust, and shame, and horror, and we know it. We know what makes us suffer. We know how dread and pain can be inflicted on us--and with that means we know exactly how to inflict it on others. Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering...the best definition of evil we can formulate."

"The original Man and Woman, existing in unbroken unity with their Creator, did not appear conscious (and certainly not self-conscious). Their eyes were not open. But, in their perfection, they were also less, not more, than their post-Fall counterparts. Their goodness was something bestowed, rather than deserved or earned. They exercised no choice. God knows, that’s easier. But maybe it’s not better than, for example, goodness genuinely earned."

(Jordan Peterson, Ibid.)

The snake of chaos introduced into the order of the garden

may have been the Eternal way of saying that choice matters. Could it be that God knew that the nature of man would never reach its potential without challenge and danger? Would He prefer "permanent human infantilism and absolute uselessness" resulting from protecting them from every danger and challenge required to produce competence and strength? Obviously not.

"It is a joy profound as peace to know that God is determined...to have his children clean, clear, pure as very snow; is determined that not only they with his help make up for whatever wrong they have done, but at length be incapable, by eternal choice of good, under any temptation, of doing the thing that is not divine, the thing God would not do."

George MacDonald, The Last Farthing

Righteous Wrappings

In a cosmos that is defined by chaos and order, the development of mankind from sleeping consciousness to God-like potential for Creative Good is learned by aiming for the greatest possible good for both ourselves and our "neighbors". Each step worked out in understanding and doing the Will of God just as Jesus did accepting limitations on our Being, suffering temptation and hardship, betrayal by friend and family, standing against tyranny and overcoming death in sacrificial service to others is the "overcoming" Jesus promises to reward us with Hope fulfilled!

"To the one who conquers, overcomes, prevails, gets the victory," says the Watcher, Judge, Redeemer, Rewarder, "I will

• give to eat of the tree of life, 
• ensure he shall not be hurt of the second death, 
• give to eat of the hidden manna, 
• give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it 
• give power over the nations, 
• give him the morning star, 
• clothe in white raiment, 
• not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels 
• make a pillar in the temple of my God,
• write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, I will write upon him my new name, 
• grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. 

Revelation 2-3

Encouragement to Thrive

Would God rather have sons or slaves? Is it better or worse to have both partners in a relationship strong? With a "spark of the Divine" in us are we not "low-resolution" versions of God able to bring order out of chaos by speaking Truth into action? Rather than being "tortured by our limitation and constraints of Being" we are capable of using the time, talent and treasures entrusted to us to meet Physical needs such as water, heat, electricity, housing, clothing, transportation and health-care; Emotional and Mental needs such as nurturing and education; Spiritual needs such as proclaiming the Truth of the gospel and teaching to lead godly lives in obedience to the Words of Jesus!

Fearless Fellowship

A man named Tom Wilson recently died after a two year battle with stomach cancer. But he'd spent a lifetime battling the Lord of Life with a false confidence in his own idea of goodness, strength and self-reliance. As his once

capable body wasted away, the dawning of his need for a savior broke through! The realization that things he'd done to betray his faithful wife, that he'd fallen miserably short in even his own conscience, that he had nothing to offer a God who required perfection was at once overwhelming. He wept. And then the love of God in Christ Jesus brought Peace that Passes Understanding as he prayed, "Jesus, all that I know about me I give to all that I know about you!"

The transformation from a man who's spiritual nakedness was exposed and wanted to hide from God to firebrand for God was evident when his closest childhood friend, Dan (a faithful follower of Jesus), stopped by to make sure Tom was spiritually prepared to die. He was greeted by Tom with this warning: "Dan have you been saved? I just want to make sure we are both going to be in the same place friend!" It was Dan's turn to be overwhelmed...with joy!

"He hath shewed thee, O man,

what is good;

and what doth the LORD require of thee,

but to do justly,

and to love mercy,

and to walk humbly with thy God?"

Micah 6:8

Oneness with God. Don't leave home without it! It will change your life. When your life is changed then there is hope for the world!