THOUGHT: Time: Past, Present, Future & Freedom

Ever want to take a risk?
What stops you? Quite often we are stopped by the fear of looking like a loser. We are afraid that we will be made fun of. We are afraid of what someone else might think if we fail. We imagine all sorts of negative possibilities.

We imagine. Such a powerful ability, the imagination! That power alone makes us like God. But without wisdom, imagination is a cruel taskmaster.

Why?

Do you think humans were designed to live in the present or the past or the future?

The present, right?

Well, where do you spend most of the time in your mind, in your imagination, in the present, or in the future?

Well, I think we spend very little time in the present. Many people spend a big chunk in the past, but the rest of the time most spend trying to figure out the future.

When we spend time with God we spend it in the present. He dwells in our present, although much can be remembered and learned by looking back, only go for a visit and not an extended stay. And for sure God does not dwell in the future when we visualize or imagine. Our imagination of the future, which is almost always dictated by fear of some kind, rarely, if ever, pictures Jesus alongside us.

Why is that?

It is our desperate attempt to get some control over something we can't. It is impossible for us to take power over the future because it is not even real, nor will it ever be real. We try and play God, imagining the evil that we fear becoming reality, and then we try and make plans and contingencies to avoid what we fear.

So why do we have so much fear in our lives?

Because we don't believe. We don't know that Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Father love us. The person who lives by their fears will not find freedom in God's love. That does not mean rational fears regarding legitimate dangers, but imagined fears, and especially the projection of those into the future. To the degree that those fears have a place in our hearts, we neither believe that God is good nor know deep in our hearts that God loves us. We sing about it; we talk about it, but we don't know it.

Today, ask the Holy Spirit to teach you what it means to really believe that God loves you.

--with thanks to Wm Paul Young and "The Shack"

g-ram

Full Disclosure: Soulhouse January 11th

Last Week: txt 2 Is The Bible Reliable?
What a great night! Worship, prayer and engagement. We engaged with our God and it was awesome to see. We spent some time learning about why the bible really is reliable for us and our lives. For some more deeper thoughts, facts and figures about this kind of stuff check out the podcast from QU Apologetics The Bible.
We also put the teachings of our faith into practice by praying for, commissioning and sending out Kris Doner and JD Sherman as both leave for South Africa this week. It was awesome to see more than 100 people on the platform praying and agreeing in prayer for our friends. God may you richly bless those who participated in that beautiful event.
This Week: txt 3 How To Study The Bible
Next Week: Elevation--Outflow

g-ram

THOUGHT: Expectations

Do you realize how many times we believe that someone should do something or respond in a certain way? I certainly realize it when they don't do what I believe they should. It can be something as simple as a courtesy wave from the car that I just let in. If I don't get "the wave" then there is a sense of violation; my expectations were not met, and I don't like it frankly.
When we allow expectations to grow up in something like a friendship, well then we have problems. Those expectations, spoken or unspoken, have allowed law to enter into what used to be a dynamic interplay. I now expect you to perform in a way that meets my expectations and I have allowed rules and requirements (death) to take precedence over living relationship. It is no longer about you and me, but about what friends are supposed to do, or the responsibility of a good friend.
Responsibilities and expectations are the basis of guilt, shame and judgment, and they provide the essential framework that promotes performance as the basis for identity and value. You all know well what it is like to not live up to someone's expectations.
God has no 'expectations' of us. The idea behind expectations requires that someone does not know the future or outcome and is trying to control behaviour to get the desired result. Humans try to control behaviour largely through expectations. God knows you and everything about you. Why would He have an expectation other than what He already knows? That would be foolish. And beyond that, because He has no expectations, YOU NEVER DISAPPOINT GOD.

--with thanks to Wm Paul Young and "The Shack"

g-ram

THOUGHT: Rights? Who Says?

We have made laws. We have a charter. We teach and are taught that we have rights but who decided if we do and who can enforce those rights to make sure I get mine without taking someone else's away?
Don't kids have the right to be protected? No. A child is protected because they are loved, not because she has a right to be protected.
But don't we have any rights at all?
No. Not in reality. Bust as long as you think you do, you will surely get ticked off when someone cuts you off, even if it is God.
Jesus didn't hold on to any rights; he willingly became a servant and lives out of his relationship to the Father. He gave up everything, so that by his dependent life he opened a door that would allow you to live free enough to give up your rights.
So, that's a hard pill to swallow. But that is freedom as well.

g-ram

THOUGHT: Good & Evil?

If evil is such a big problem, then why do we have stuff like poisonous plants and other stuff like that? Have you ever wondered something like that? I know I have. What's the point of bad stuff?
The question reveals something ugly. The question about poison presumes that poison is bad. Bad is not just what I don't like. There can be much that I just don't understand or fully see the value of. We know that many incredible discoveries are made from things that have been cast aside or seen as not valuable or even bad. Humans have a great capacity for declaring something good or evil, without truly knowing.
This is going to go all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
When something happens to you, how do you determine whether it is good or evil? Well, how do you make that distinction?
Is your answer something like something good is when I like it, when it makes me feel good or gives me a sense of security? The opposite then is evil if causes me pain or costs me something I want.
Pretty subjective then. You know, based on me. So then, it is certainly possible for different people to answer that question differently.
How confident are you in your ability to discern what indeed is good for you, or what is evil?
We tend to sound "justifiably" angry when somebody is threatening my 'good,' what I deserve. But do we have any logical ground for deciding what is actually good or evil, except how something or someone affects me.
It all seems quite self-serving and self-centered. How is your track record? Have you found that some things you initially thought were good turned out to be horribly destructive? How about some things that you thought were evil that have turned you and changed you into a vastly better person?
So it is you who determines good and evil. You become the judge. To make matters more confusing your opinions will change on what is good and evil. Worse that that, there are billions of people in this world all doing the same things: determining good and evil based on themselves. So when your good and evil clashes with your neighbour's, fights and arguments ensue and even wars break out.
If there is no reality of good and evil that is definite, concrete, unchanging, absolute, then you have lost any basis for judging. It is just language, and one might as well exchange the word good for the word evil.
We spend most of our time and energy trying to acquire what we have determined to be good, whether it is financial security or health or retirement or whatever. We spend a huge amount of energy and worry fearing what I've determined to be evil.
It allows you to play God in your independence.

with thanks & respect to
"The Shack" and Wm. Paul Young
ppg 133-136

Are you enough on your own?
I'm not.
Think about it, I know I have been.

g-ram

ANNOUNCEMENT: Epiphany is today!

This is a significant Christian Holy Day (holiday), or at least it used to be. Do you think that it still be celebrated?

from wikipedia

Epiphany (Greek for "to manifest" or "to show"), is a Christian feast day which celebrates the revelation of God in human form in the person of Jesus Christ. Epiphany falls on January 6 or, if celebrated on a Sunday, on the first Sunday after New Year's Day.^[1] Western Christians commemorate the visitation of the Biblical Magi to the child Jesus on this day, i.e., his manifestation to the Gentiles.
It is also called Theophany, especially by Eastern Christians.

Theophany, from the Greek, theophaneia (meaning "appearance/showing of God"),^[1] refers to the appearance of a deity to a human, or to a divine disclosure. ^[2]

This term has been used to refer to appearances of the gods in the ancient Greek and Near Eastern religions. The term has acquired a specific usage for Christians with respect to the Bible. In this sense, theophany refers to the visible appearances of God in the Old Testament.

It is on your calendars, or many of them, but maybe you never knew what it meant.

g-ram

THOUGHT: Authority, Power And Other Distortions

So who's in charge?
That is a phrase that gets an awful lot of use in this society. We don't like messing with a middle-man. Take me to the top. Get me to the top of the chain of command; that is success, right?
Or is it horrid with a sidedish of being uncomfortably binding? I am not really a fan of chains at all.
How does God, the ultimate authority deal with the stuff? What He is like is very important to us and it is even more critical if it is different than the way we perceive God to be. So much of the way we see God is perception and not reality. We then base our thoughts on our perceptions and not on the truth. We try to make God look like something that we already know, that we are familiar with. But God is not familiar He is completely other, completely different. For one thing God exists in a trinity. Well how does the trinity work together? That would be a good place to look when trying to model community, don't you think?
There is no concept of final authority in God, only unity. There is a relationship without any overlay of power. Jesus does not need power over the Holy Spirit because they are both looking out for the best. Hierarchy is a human problem.
We are broken and mixed up. We are so broken and so mixed up that we can rarely even see the level of our problem. We have great difficulty even imagining a relationship, whether at work or at home, without someone being in charge. It is in every human institution: politics, business and even marriage is infected by this kind of thinking.
Such a waste.
This has got to be one of the key reasons that experiencing true relationships is so hard for us. We have to always sort out the power structure and assign roles to those around us knowingly or unknowingly; we do not see all people as equal. Once you have created a hierarchy well then, you need to implement rules to protect and administer it. After there are rules there must be enforcement of those rules and then you end up with some kind of chain of command or a system of order that destroys relationship rather than promoting it.
Is it possible to experience relationship apart from power? Can you experience the wonder, the awesome-osity of relationships when hierarchy is such a dominant way of thinking? We do it even when we do not consciously know that we are doing it. It is just the way that we think.
Where does it come from, you may ask? well check this out: Everytime we choose independence over realtionship we make it stronger and then we become a danger to each other. We no longer seek the good of the other but first and foremost the good for me. Others become objects to be manipulated or managed for our own happiness. Authority, as we usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want. And how many times have you seen this happen? It happens everywhere: families, churches, school, government, clubs, sports teams...anywhere you put people together.
In our world the value of the individual is constantly weighed agaisnt the survival of the system, whether political, economic, social, or religious--any system actually. First one person, and then a few, and finally even many are easily sacrificed for the good and ongoing existence of that system. In one form or another this lies behind every struggle for power, every prejudice, every war, and every abuse of relationship. The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.
As the crowning glory of Creation, you were made in the image of God, unencumbered by structure and free to simply 'be' in relationship with God and with one another. If we truly learn to regard each other's concerns as significant as our own, there would be no need for hierachy.
But we have it. Now together let us try and take steps to grow in a manner so that we will diminish the impact of the reign of selfishness and inequality in our relationships.
No. I did not say it would be easy.

ideas and thoughts that have been thought
with thanks and respect to the book "The Shack" by Wm. Paul Young.

g-ram