Monthly Archives: January 2012

January 30, 2012 · 3:24 pm

We have no one to blame but ourselves……

I don’t know where to start.

I would say the proverbial statement but that is just to perfect. Start at the beginning!

But the beginning is also the problem. Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve. God and Satan.

This may tread on somethings that I have already blogged about in the blog of “Standing at the trees” but I will put another spin on it. Let’s re-create the scene in the Garden of Eden and then go from there.

Our first step here is to realize this is really not the beginning of our time as we know it, but as for God many things have gone on that maybe we are really unaware of. Before creation of the world and man existed, there was a war. Yes, a war. There was a war in the heavens, with God on one side and Lucifer and  his angels on the other.

This was the ultimate power struggle to the ninth degree, as they say. Although God had created the angels, there was one who believed that he was mightier than his creator. Lucifer and his companions fought God and His angels to the end, when God banished lucifer to earth to roam its space and time. Lucifer(satan) was now roaming the world to again take up his kingdom of (good and evil).

Now we come to the Garden of Eden and its many wonders and its inhabitants. Adam and Eve were the caretakers,the proprietaries,housekeepers,paradise keepers, it couldn’t get any better than this! After all God designed this world for man. Why shouldn’t he enjoy it.

But that proverbial pink elephant was in the room but adam and eve did not even see him!

Satan

This scenario is one that backs up the bases of “free will”. We cannot have freewill unless we have options. Adam and Eve had free will. They might not have known it at the time, but they did.

Did you notice something tho, God knew they had free will!!!!!

He had given them a choice, “The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” and “The Tree of Life”

Let me make a subtle point here and then to the main point of the blog. Did you ever wonder why He called “The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” and not just “The Tree of Death”? But there was a reason for this that we fail to see in God’s wise words.

God’s world, or the earth for this time, if Adam and Eve choose this tree will be filled with the  knowledge of good, and knowledge of evil. But just remember, God does not want people with the knowledge of good, let alone evil people. 

He wants his people,His children to have Life, and be Life. Jesus Christ.

God’s design for Adam was for an ultimate purpose(I will use adam for this example in the sense of a singular person, but in the end, a Corporate person),Adam to God was fellowship. Period.

God’s dwelling,house,tabernacle,temple,garden,man was God’s way of showing and telling us that our fellowship was to close, intimate,indwelling,God in us,us in God. If we was to compare the gods of the OT we would see the big difference in this area of the gods. God of Adam wanted to be with him, no other gods wanted to be with their subjects, they wanted to be far away from them.

God wants us, to commune with Him in the most unique and awesome way, He wants to be in Us!!

This unique point in the fact that God wanted to fellowship with Adam,and Adam alone tells me that He ultimately wants me to commune with Him, one on one. Not through and individual between us, telling us what God wants me to do or say throughout the week, Sunday after Sunday. God wants Me,Adam to have fellowship with Him!

I pray that you have fellowship with Him,everyday.

 

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January 27, 2012 · 12:16 pm

Nicodemus-the man of the hour

I have always wondered what it would take for someone to change their mind on any given subject.

Nicodemus, was one such person that changed his mind. Nicodemus was  a devout Jew and a member of the Sanhedrin, the governing body of Judaism, he was called a “ruler of the jews ” and a teacher of the Jews. He was apart of the establishment.

He knew the laws of judaism inside and out, he taught the ones that were young and old to be apart of the Sanhedrin. This was his life and blood.

But yet his curiosity got the better of him enough to meet with Jesus at night to listen to what he had to say. His acknowledgement of His works and His life that He was a teacher from God, was the crack that Jesus needed to go further in Nicodemus’s life.

Jesus then tells him that “Truly,Truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. John 3:3

Jesus changes the conversation of Jesus walking on this earth doing His father’s work to what Nicodemus must realize he must do to be of Christ. The incident of Nicodemus and Jesus talking was a foreshadowing of things to come. Christ’s dieing on the cross had not happen yet, but he was soon to find out.

I don’t know about Nicodemus but if Jesus had said this to me, I would of sat back and pondered His comment for awhile. I think something that is even deeper to contemplate in this statement is not why do we have to be born again, it is what is wrong with this life? Maybe this is our hangup today? We are satisfied with this body filled with the turmoils and sorrows that we have day after day. As christians we should be able to work things out with God thru the valleys and mountain tops. Right?

God’s intention of Life is not this by any stretch of the imagination. Life is Christ in us, and Us in Christ, A new being, not Christ in “old wine skin” Not a flesh being but a Christ being. totally different.

I believe in this way, but like I have said to alot of people ” I really don’t know what this looks like, other than it is of God” I believe that it is in all reality the “kingdom of God”.

Nicodemus was privileged to be the one that Christ told of His kingdom detail’s, all of the “born again believers and over-comers” will be of the Kingdom of God!

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January 26, 2012 · 12:45 pm

The person behind the mask

We have all watched the movie where the character is hidden behind a mask or disguise of some sort. We watch the whole movie and the character plays his character so well that we fail to see who the actor is until someone tells us or we see the credits at the end of the movie.

I perceive that we are in so much the same movie situation, but in satan’s movie. We are being mislead that the main character is the good guy and his intentions are the best for him and everyone around him. But we really don’t know him,do we?

This character is after all,a actor, he is portraying someone to show the audience in a different light. A good actor portrays a subject to the best of his ability, but with the actor’s spirit of the character in his point of view. His understanding of the character is the key to the whole movie, deceit,lies,and to please everyone that he meets.

Let me let you in on a secret, The movie is called ” The Lie”, his character is “the world”, his real name is “satan”.

Let this sink in for awhile.

God banished satan after his deceit to adam and eve from the heavens to the earth, as the serpent. The serpent was his mask to adam and eve. The world is satan’s mask today. We have to see beyond the mask, and see the real actor behind the mask, and see what his motivation in his character is.

God’s word tells us multiple times that He is not in this world and His ways are not of this world. Matt 6:33,Luke 7:28,Luke 17:21,John 18:36, to name a few.

Let me concentrate on John 18:36. Jesus said “My kingdom is not of this world. It it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”  This verse tells us three things, now let us explore them.

The first thing is Jesus tells us that His Kingdom is not of this world, this life that we we live in, and for also Jesus! Sometimes we need to read the whole story to understand it. You see the story didn’t start in the manger, it started in God’s world,eternity past. God was in his domain. His desire to share his domain was to send his son to earth in the way of his son, was to include His life in his creation.

The second point is that Jesus says to Pilate, “If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews.” Jesus refusal to bring in the natural solution, show us that He could change the outcome, and also that he is in control of everything, but is not concerned what is of this world, in the way of the natural way, but of His life in His creation.

The last emphasis is the main point to us, to reiterate that God’s world is not of this realm, but of His realm,His Kingdom.  Our understanding of our connection to this kingdom has been blurred with our living in the world. We were created with His likeness from the time of Adam, thru now,and forever. His likeness is His Spirit in us, we are to live in Him,His Spirit,our flesh is full of sin,full of lies,deceit and long road of nothing.

How to live in God’s kingdom, seems daunting to say the least, but I believe the first step is  to shed the world that we live in now,one step at a time. Just as an hourglass has sand in it and the sand falls out when we turn it over, it is the fact that more air comes in and then displaces the sand, thus making the hourglass full of air.

Searching God, displaces the world.

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January 25, 2012 · 2:11 pm

Where did we go wrong?

How did we get here in this situation? What did we do wrong,what did we do right?

God wants to know us, and for us to know Him. Nothing more, nothing less.

How did we misinterpret God? How did we miss seeing God in the Word(Christ)? Were we looking for just a manual in the bible’s everyday living routine? To just make do with the situation that Adam put us in? Is there really something else for us than this life of ups and downs,pain and anguish,love and hate.

Why do we expect such wonderful things and lives in this life when we have lost our soul? Matthew 16:26 What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world,yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man five in exchange for his soul? NIV 

It is from my view and opinion that where we have gone wrong is that “We are not seeking Him”!

We are seeking but it seems that we are doing exactly what God says that we are forfeiting our soul for we are gaining the world! But Why?

 Have we really gained the world, or has the world gained us?

I think the latter.

 I am totally amazed at the people I see and hear that are putting all their time for fun,work,school,church,religion,politics,government,all of the ways of the world that is taking us away from seeking the Lord.

Just maybe we have got our interpretation of the seven day thing all wrong. What if instead of giving the Lord sundays and trying to live for the next six days on our own, that we seek the Lord for six days and rest in Him on the seventh!

We have tried to make this too easy for us just by saying “I believe” and then going on to monday. We believe but what do we believe in or of? Who is God,who is his Son,why did God sacrifice his only Son?,what is His mission with the Jews, the gentile in the old testament?,what and who are the disciples,what is paul’s role in the new testament?,what is the book of Revelations all about? I could go on for at least a month, but you know what I am saying.

We have missed the part in the scriptures where time after time God’s concern for the smallest and most intimate detail about his people is shown to us but we don’t see this tiny but huge detail about God. God’s sole mission is to have communion with us, not just on sundays but now through forever. This is not an thing but an experience, a indwelling of Christ in us and Us in Him.

May we re-look what the bible is, and says to us through God’s eyes and let us feel his closeness in our lives!

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January 23, 2012 · 12:08 pm

and your name shall be changed to …..

God’s design for us is amazing! He never does anything for us just for  nothing.

God’s weaving of his life to us can be hidden if we don’t look at Him through His eyes.

Have we really understood the life of Jacob and the incarnation of His people? All through the beginning of the battle to build and lift up his people to be called by His name was his building of the kingdom. It was a slow and trying time  for God as He was changing His people, or just creating a new People.

God makes alot of subtle insinuations  or changes that we just seem to not understand or see in his work, but it is to our faith that we look into these things more closely now.  In Genesis 35:1-15 we see that God is in the process of changing or creating His people.

God wants us to stand out,be different,be His,be changed,be of a new kingdom,a new King. God calls Jacob and his family to get up and change location. Now to the naked eye this seems so easy or black and white. Just get up and go to another land and we will be all the better. But wait,there is more, God tells Jacob that he also has to give up all their idols and ways.

We along side of Jacob and his family just might of thought of this as the “easy button” way out. But yet we wonder  why things are not different than what God intended for us. We might have moved(come to God) but we have not thrown out our idols and our ways.

I shake my head most days of the things that I hear the world and christians alike still playing and working with their idols day after day, week after week, and they fail to see why they are outside looking in at God.

My first inclination of our failure to see that we are afraid, and that we lack the faith that God has given us thru Jesus Christ.  Our going to bethel, is going to christ and dwell there(live) for this is Life. This is what God has been trying to tell us all along and we failed to see it.

Why do we continue live a life of worry,scared,lifeless life of our own ways, when we take the life of Christ(bethel) we have life, and we have forever.

The sign that we have moved to this new town(Christ) is that we are called by a new name. Jacob, by his changing towns(arise and go to bethel) or go to Christ,shed the world and dwell with him will change his name, to Israel.

I myself like my new name, I am now  called a child of God!!

 

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January 19, 2012 · 12:33 pm

Fellowship : is it with us or God?

Our concept of the understanding of belief is correct. It is the part of what next.

Where we have gone wrong is trying  gain the attributes of Jesus by trying to do them is wrong. We have the understanding of that our lives should follow Jesus as He walked this earth during the New Testament.

What we have to understand is that God came down to live with us in a natural way to tell,and show us in a understanding way that we are to “live” in Him. Just as Jesus Christ “lives” in the Triune fellowship of God. Jesus multiple times in the NT explains to his disciples that He does this in fellowship with the Father. 1John 1:3 -We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship  is with the Father and with his Son,Jesus Christ, We write this to make our joy complete.

I have pondered on this concept of fellowship that in various verses in the bible that it pertains to and I believe that we have been confused by it.    We have used the verses in Hebrews 10:24-25 as our foundation of coming together as a body of Christ, when we have failed to see that we only have fellowship in Him. Let’s look at 1 John 1:3,7. (3) We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard,so that you also may have fellowship with us. and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son,Jesus Christ.  (7) But if we walk in the light,as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus,his son,purifies us from all sin.

I think that we believe that to be in the light of God that we just come together and fellowship together, when in fact it is the opposite of this.   If we are in the light of God we will be spontaneously having fellowship together.

Our fellowship is not dependent on meeting together with others as it is meeting with Christ which produces fellowship with HIM. We have confused this with the thought “like minds think alike”, as you can attest to in any church this is not even reality.    This is why we have so many differences of opinions and denominations in the world.

If it is our belief that God is who He says He is and we have fellowship with Him everyday, I believe that His church and His bride will soon be coming.

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January 17, 2012 · 10:31 am

You know that thinga ma jig goes into the section with that matted hole?

You know when you have someone talking to you over the phone trying to tell you on how to put something together without any hands on view you are in trouble, because by the time you are thru talking with them you are more confused than ever.

I am somewhat in that position of that person on the phone, not of the one needing the help, but of the one that is giving the answers to the problem!

You see, The one that is on that other end of the phone giving the customer assistance is the one that is in the position of giving help or assistance to a problem or need. We all ask for assistance from time to time, and we always go to someone that has expertise in that area or should.

But what we fail to realize is the person that is giving this expertise help is coming from a different angle than we are? You see they are coming from an angle that has the plan in front of them,the design, the intention of the product, the picture, the step by step creativity of the owner of this product.

This person is in tune with this understanding of what it is all about. We are not.

We are coming from the angle, I want it to work and I want it to work now!

Oh My, know wonder we don’t understand anybody on the phone with service support!

This is where I have made the correlation between this example of a call for help and my attempt to explain to someone what God’s design for us is all about.

It is not about me maybe thinking that I know God’s intention for me, it is that it is my attempt to understand the intention of God’s desire to make me. also known as mankind.

We have missed the first step of God’s design of us and just started from step two of the instructions,some have started on step three!

The first step in God’s plan, was in the Garden of Eden, He created,designed,fully stocked,automated, left nothing to chance for us to live. Yet we failed to see what God was doing or did for us.

He was setting up the original Home of God for us, and Him. Where else would be the best place to have fellowship with his people?  He wanted to be with us, and us with him. God walked around adam and eve all through the day in a most glorifying way but they failed to see it,nor do we right now!

God’s original design was for both of us to commune together in fellowship in Him.

Until we understand this we will be stuck in that different translation instruction book,stuck on step three!

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January 3, 2012 · 12:34 pm

Do you really believe what you believe is real?

This quote is from Dr. Del Tackett formally of Focus on the Family’s “The Truth Project” in his opening statements of the series.

This has always pondered me on the statement even being said out loud, even doubted. But the more I have questioned myself and others on what and why we believe what we believe has become one of my 1st questions to ask someone.

It seems that what we believe is just not questioned! We believe in what we believe because our parents believed this way or this is what my church has taught.

Wow! This is  really scary to me and should be to you,too!  In 1 John 4:1 John tells us to test all spirits of this world, all spirits are not of God. We should not give free reign with someone that speaks the word just because of where they are or the title that they have. This was emphasized many times to the various churches in the new testament that there are many false teachers and followers out in the world. Let me stop here and just mention that in this section that this also includes religion in general. Christ preached all thru the NT of the “religions of the world” that they were not of Him.

Let me stop here and let you take a look at a clip of an experience  that Francis Chan had when he had visitors came to him at his house. Check this link out- http://youtu.be/5Is8QnxviOI

If you don’t know who Francis Chan is,check him out, he is an awesome believer!

Francis Chan’s life was changed thru these instances when these men came to his house and they professed their beliefs but yet did not know where they came from. He questioned them on how they validated their beliefs yet he did not know himself on how he validated his own beliefs! Wow, what a statement.

I understand on where he was coming from in his stand on his belief, but yet could not validate it. I have read the bible over a few times and my perception on what I believed I just assumed was in there some place.

Not til I started to go look for what I believed in, that I could not find anything that supported it!

Ok, now what?

My perspective on God and the Bible had been totally shattered in where I stood. I had to go back into the word/God.(I want to point out right here that we need to understand that the word is God,and God is the word, they are not separate identities) If we read the bible with the understanding that God is in the word,of the word,and is His nature we will totally see the bible in a new light, pun intended.

God is to be looked at in a new light, a new covenant kind of way than we see with our normal eyes. The whole bible is God. Every word,every verse, every chapter,every book,every testament is God. We need to have our eyes wide open so we can see the BIG picture of God.

The bottom line is that we need to back and read the bible. See God in himself(the bible).

Let me give you some help in this start. Ask God for help in seeing Him in his words and his story. Pray that He will show you with His eyes and His spirit of the Bible. Do this every time you read the bible. This will prevent yourself from seeing what you want to see.

May God give the eyes to see Him in the reading of His Word!! Amen and Amen.

 

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