Category Archives: Our walk

Where do we go from here?

Life sure does mess things up, doesn’t it!

It seems that, at least for me, in the last year it has been a whirlwind of activity for me,my family, and my friends, it is always something. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Good Question!

I have over the past two years(time of retirement) have set in a more structured routine of my life, because I feel that I have found my calling of writing,studying(bible), and interacting in social media in christian beliefs. It is when things go awry with other things that break my routine of it that it ruins my personal life. It is all about me, right? LOL But is it?

My life is one that is searching,digging, and finding my way with Christ,and God to ‘see’ the Light! It has been a tumultuous one on so many points, but I am a survivor. I am a late bloomer in the fact that I feel that I didn’t find my passion in life until I was around 50 yrs old. And I am doing it now.

The question is one that is about “who is first”? Biblical speaking the one that ‘is first’ shall become last! So there’s that. But what should we do? God tells us to “Be Christ”, in everything that we do and say. Christ’s life, is different, for one it is not us, nor is it made of ‘man stuff’, but one from the Holy Spirit!

But what is the “Holy Spirit”? It is “Life”! It is not death, which is what ‘man’ has had to deal with since the ‘garden’. What I believe that has been missing in our christian walk with God, is this understanding that ‘Christianity’ is about “Life”. When we believe, and ‘see’ Christ, we are seeing “Life”, in our life. Society as a whole,(society is all of us, not just everyone but us to included) have perceived as everything we know,do,say, and proclaim as ‘Life’ to us. But is it? What does it ‘get’ us? It is an instant gratification of fun and keeping us busy to not be able to really see “Truth” and “Life”!

Christ in our lives is different. It is first, not us, but Christ that is filling us with His love,desires,needs for us to continue in His life to fulfill the ‘eternal purpose’ of His, an ‘My People’ objective to have fellowship and unity in His Image of the World!

Advertisement

Leave a comment

Filed under Our walk

New Focus

Aimlessly walking I was.

As a good bible reader, I was all over the place in my searching, researching,learning, and just nit-picking my way thru the bible.

But I have found my niche, finally.

I have been asking my self, should I try to focus on 3 or more of different themes that I was currently interested in or should I really focus on one thing. And if I did, what would it be?

Through my various journeys of traveling thru different avenues of the bible, I believe that I have found the one that actually could be said to be the foundation of all the other themes that I had been studying. So the New Focus for me will be in the Old Testament Era (yes, this not what I expected either) the “2nd Temple Era”!!

I have thru my studies come across a what I believe is a very foundational aspect of the scriptures, that what I had thought was being used as a foundation of theology, wasn’t it seems to those that I have either talked to,listened thru sermons, or blogs of various authors(to my surprise)! I will weave this foundational premise or paradigm into the studies of the “2nd Temple Era” study. I hope we can do this maybe in a Chronological order but if things dictate that we skip ahead or even go back to relook at something to have it fit in to the whole story, we will.

Just for those who don’t know when the 2nd temple era was, it was ‘586 bc to 70 ad. Let me know if you have questions or comments on anything we talk about. Discussion is good, and most importantly it is learning and forming our minds to God.

Let us begin our Journey!!

Leave a comment

Filed under Our walk

How are christians supposed to act?

One on One. Are we supposed to be rigid,unwelcoming, unable to listen to anothers story, listening to one’s own beliefs? And you wonder why all the ‘religions’ will never ever be ‘one’, with this kind of hostility with each other. This just might be why evangelicalism has failed.

I have come across two instances of this in the last six months that tells me that ‘people of faith’ are unwilling to get out of their ‘box’ to listen or know other views or beliefs of others. This is not what the scriptures to do, to gentiles let alone any of our brothers and sisters.

Why is this? Hopefully somebody can tell me why?

If listening to somebody’s belief’s might taint your beliefs to make you waver in your own stance then it was not solid to begin with. God will put upon your heart the truth of scripture for you to distinguish between truth and lies. It is only when we test these ‘things’ that we will know if they are the truth.

Just maybe, this is the reason we have so many thousands of ‘religions’, that we have failed to see if we anything in common, not what we have in disagreement’s! If we can’t talk to each other, how can we talk to outsiders? Everyone has a story.

Listen. Listen. I guarantee you will learn and appreciate the other side of the conversation. Being closed minded, does not get you or anyone else a gold star in their cap in glory.

Leave a comment

Filed under New Perspective, Our walk

My mind is Racing

I am always reading and listening to things around me,analyzing and taking in things that I hear people say or do. My mind is racing.

But I love it. It probably keeps me out of trouble! LOL

I have said it before but I believe that I could do what I like doing 24/7 if I was capable of doing it. I love learning I guess. To bad it didn’t start in those early years of school! LOL

I love christian books,Theology books and all other books connected to the first two. I have always loved the pictures that you see in the magazines of these huge 2 or 3 story library’s of just books, or the pictures of someones library that all the walls are full of books. I also love pictures of some writer or theologian’s desk with all the books he is reading or using for references on a subject. I strive to have one of those desks with books, sticky’s,pens,notepads, and coffee cups on it! It’s only a dream, tho. I am getting there, so says my wife! It’s a mess! she says, I say no, it’s organized!

I am beginning to have more than one project at a time in the works it seems now. It can be worrisome or it can be found exhilarating all day long. My problem is I don’t have enough time! Can maybe we have 36/7 so I will have enough time? It is my drive when I get up to the end of day when I fall asleep, and sometimes I can’t go to sleep because I am trying to work something out in my mind that stops me from sleeping!

I have been doing this for over 15 yrs now,off and on, just not consistent as I have been the last two years. And it came to me one day that, that while I was doing something else around the house, I was thinking of an subject that I wanted to research more on to write about. I decided that it was then I really had found my ‘passion’ of life. I have more books to read in a year than one needs to have but at least I will be chugging along to finish reading them.

I recommend that you find your ‘Passion’ in life and just go for it. Life is so much easier when you do. More importantly I recommend that you find one that is useful to God, and your fellow man. This always, at least it should, make you feel good helping God’s neighbor. Let me know what you are doing for your ‘Passion’, we then can share our stories of good and bad days.

Is your mind racing?

Leave a comment

Filed under Our walk

Thinking about another blog….

I love reading. I love writing. But I also see the need to go deeper into the word of God.

So, Because I will sorta be sidelined to just sitting or very much physical exertion(I am having surgery on my foot next week and I will be healing from this and getting rehab after that) I have decided to prepare for another blog on my site to explore for everyone.

It will be a little more structured in what it talks about, and be the only thing that I blog about it in this blog. I will announce the new title or theme in the coming days. So, Stay tuned.

I will keep this one on ‘all things’ Christianity based writing. Let me know if you have any thing specific to write about on this one for me. For now, keep on believing!!

Leave a comment

Filed under Our walk

Buellor,Buellor?

Everyone in the U.S. should know who this is in reference too. But for those who don’t, it is from a movie where a high school student is always skipping class from this one teacher to do things that he would rather do, than go to his class.

Just thought I would throw this out to all who follow the blog if you have any questions or topics you would like me to write about or would like any information on biblical topics, or discussions on anything related to these things. Finding out what everyone is coming from in their experiences to the bible or to following God in his eternal purpose is always interesting to me to hear how people know the Lord.

Just comment on one of the blogs and I will answer back or we can just get a conversation going to find where we stand. I would really like to hear from people from all around the world to what they believe and why. So let me know, Let’s chat!!

Your friend in Christ, Doug

Leave a comment

Filed under Our walk

God filled people

I am serious.

about almost everything.

But mostly about God,Jesus,Holy Spirit and God’s word.

What I have noticed with alot of people who are said christians, is their lack of understanding that there are other people around them or around the world that are very deep and digging christians for the truth. The dismissing of anyone that only quote or read other references of authors or what I especially respect the ones that are in academia, that it is their ‘LIFE’ to continue to search the word for the answers.

I am one of those people that can search and study a principle, a question, a baffling statement, a theme, or anything else thrown at me all day long. I will also follow a blogger with multiple blogs with a theory or statement, and just read all the ‘for’ and ‘against’ rebuttals to the said problem and just see the angles that everyone comes from and check out their views. All day long, if I don’t catch myself.

What I am saying is that there are alot of God believing people out there that know things, with the knowledge of God and the bible. Just ‘Listen’, or read what the say and learn. The truth will show itself, or the opposite will be heard or read and you will know it.

Just as the Jewish community was doing in their daily lives is reading the torah. But remember it is not just reading it but ‘know’ what it means thru God’s mind and wisdom.

Leave a comment

Filed under Our walk

Walking, Talking Christ

Life is hard.

It is hard fighting it.

We seem to be fighting life from the negative side or from the bad side of the equation. We believe that if we fight for a bad cause to make it better, life will get better. But fighting from this angle it can wear us down after time. In fact, our crusade could take us our whole life to conquer it. If even then it would be conquered then. This is just coming from a personal conviction, what about everyone else?

This way of fighting the negative could be considered a social fight to rid the world of the all the ‘so-called’ evil in the world. The effort that ‘our’ mission seems to be to rid the ‘evil’ is misguided in that God has vowed that this is ‘His’ job to fill. Man’s ability to make the ‘social ills’ of society, could be a disaster to all involved by the turmoil of what someone deems to be ‘evil’. We may be seeing this now in our world now.

But more importantly, who is to say ‘What is Evil or bad in one’s society’?

The other side of the coin, could be, no, It ‘is’ the way to attack the world. It is the standing up as a follower of Christ and the ‘identity’ that it upholds as the body of Christ. As was in the old testament the identity of God’s people was their identity of their law, and their own God. God’s change to the new covenant was to write the ‘law’ on the hearts of his people.

Our concept of what our ‘identity’ as a Christ follower has got to coincide with what the foreshadow of the old covenant. We must stand as representative of Christ in our world, such as a High Priest would do in Israel.

I saw an illustration of a small group of people singing carols in a circle, holding candle’s, with one being lit. The key to this illustration is the way that it is the right way to do it. You see, When one has the lit candle in a crowd, showing light in a dark place, all others are wanting to be ‘in’ the light. So there instinct is to ‘go’ to the one that has the light and be ‘like’ or just ‘be’ light.

You started with one candle lit(Christ’s light), with darkness all around him. You then are approached by someone from the darkness asking for to be in the ‘light’ with the touching of candles, to produce a brighter light. Those two lights are approached with another candle wanting to be lit as a light for himself, and for others. It is then seen by someone farther away in the darkness, that sees a light for direction, and goes there to have their candle(life) represented as a light in the world.

It is this model of God’s people coming together as one that will become God’s Kingdom.

Leave a comment

Filed under Kingdom of God, New Perspective, Our walk

Light

As I sit at my desk, I am pondering the significance of the candle that I have lit shining its light around me.

I am dumbfounded that the candle does not need to move to shine it’s light, it just sits there in its candle holder.

It is only one light.

My use of a candle is redundant when I have a electrical light above my head.

Why then do I use a candle? for warmth, for ambience, for smell, for it’s just a thing?

My concept of me being not the light, but the candle, which produces the light, with the power of the fire.

What if I used two candles? or three? or four? or five? or hundred, or a thousand?

Would it make a difference in any of my ‘why’ I use the candle scenario’s?

It probably would in all those way’s.

But, what if all those candles, being candles, were in fact were not candles standing there all together, but were really God’s people, just being God’s people, standing there being a candle.

Candles are just candles, if they do not have the power of ‘fire’,it is just the vessel to be the carrior of the fire.

It is the wick, inside the candle that is buried inside the candle that sustains the candle throughout it’s burning.

It is the burning that is seen from close up to far away from another room, to across the valley to the mountain top.

The power is within. It shines within.

The candle, thus represents light, when lit with the fire.

In the end, the candle does not move, but yet it still accomplishes it’s intention, to give ‘light’.

Do God’s people need to rethink there purpose?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under New Perspective, Our walk

A Foundation

Do most christians have a foundation of knowledge or insight to the scriptures?

Is it necessary?

Do we have others do it for us?

Do we actually study not read the bible, we have been accustomed to just read the bible, which is almost a sin all by itself. We have been told to read the bible in one year, or two year plan’s like it is a race?

We have been taught to read the stories of the bible as children, to learn the lesson of the time. It is like a manual of life that can be used when we come across the same storyline for us to  use in our time of need.

This is what we have been taught, this is what we have done thru tradition or ritual, but is it the purpose of the scriptures?

I believe that it is so much more and so much more relevant to us if we see the bible as a story, a story of God and his kingdom.

For this to happen tho, we have to change the way we look at the bible, it is a story of God,his kingdom, and where they live.

It starts in Genesis 1. Enjoy the story!

Leave a comment

Filed under Our walk