A Giggling, Neighborly Armful of Jesus’ SHARED Love!

I am sure you can imagine, because of humanity’s inclusion in the life of God the Father, Son and Spirit, that after 8 days of being away from my family I was eagerly “BURNING” with Jesus love to see my immediate family members again! The anticipation only grew and grew as we spoke on the phone daily to express how much we missed, loved and liked each other, and couldn’t wait to see each other again!

I get a special thrill when my youngest daughter, Autumn, calls me “out of the blue” to ask me when I am coming home and has to know the exact time, place and manner so that she can hold me accountable! On this trip, she got a special chuckle out my response that I would be flying home but that it might take a long, long, time because my arms would get plenty tired, and I would need to make many stops! Oh the genuine and spontaneous laughter of the Holy Spirit expressing itself in a young girl at her father’s corny joke! Can there be anything more innocent, refreshing and beautiful?! Hardly! Ha-Ha! 🙂 I KNOW there is a God who laughs!!

Because of plane delays, more stops than usual, or just plain slowness on my part, I don’t always make it home exactly when I say I am going to be there. Autumn will ring my phone often to express her anticipation and sadness, and we are so included in each other in Jesus that I KNOW before looking at the phone that it is her calling me! Talk about being “hooked up”! Even though I am not late on purpose, I have to admit loving her anticipation AND disappointment as both of those emotions scream and shout much love into my soul!! Ha-Ha! Oh, Yes! To be missed and wanted (don’t misunderstand, my wife and other child express the same things, but I am trying to get to a special point in this story about Autumn:-) )

On this particular day, I was right on time. On the last phone call before I got on the return flight home, I had told Autumn that I should be home around 7:30pm. As I pulled the van into my neighborhood I saw that I was going to be right on time as promised, and looking back, boy am I glad I was! Just as I expected, and hoped, Autumn was in the yard and the smiles on her face and mine were beaming as bright as the sun! It was what I DIDN’T expect that really thrilled and overwhelmed me! Three of Autumn’s neighborhood friends were smiling, clapping, jumping and dancing with her at my return home!

No kidding! Autumn’s friends were as happy as she was! They were jumping up and down so excitedly in the driveway that I had to honk the horn for their safety! They were literally swooping on and around the van as I was still driving! They could not contain their excitement! I am not joking when I say that each one of them were looking at me as if I was their personal daddy coming home from a long trip away, and each shouting as gloriously!! There were quite a few people out in the neighborhood and they could all see and HEAR, if not feel, this overwhelming love and welcome!

I couldn’t wait to open the door and especially hug my daughter, but it wasn’t to be! Her three girlfriends had beat Autumn to the door, and as I opened it, I got bumrushed with a giggling, neighborly armful of Jesus love in the warm hugs of those young ladies! They were ALL saying things like “Daddy!!” “We Love You!”, “We Missed You!!”. (Okay. My eyes are watering again – give me  sec. to recoup)! Alright I’m back! 🙂 Three of the girls had so crowded out the other, and I was so caught up in the inclusive love of Jesus, that I shouted aloud in the Spirit, “Okay, we have to get everyone in the circle this hug to be complete!” (wonder where I get talk like that?! Hmmmm?!) Looking back, I realize that Autumn was not sad at all at being on the far side of the circle, but was thrilled to see her friends sharing in it! I remember this same thing occuring with my dad and others but that will be for another blog post!

Believe me when I say, it had to be Autumn’s shared love, COMING FROM JESUS, that was the result of all of this…..because….I hardly know the other three girls at all!!! I mean REALLY KNOW them! They are around often enough for me to know their names, but I honestly do not relate with them even an hour in any given week, and usually I am saying things like, “Time to go home”, “Autumn can’t come out until she finishes her chores!”, “Make sure you all pick up all of those sticks out of the yard when you’re done playing with them!”, or “Ya’ll be quiet down there while I record this commercial, and if you don’t quiet down you’re going to have to go outside!” It really is the sad truth!

But that is what makes this real life story all the more shocking! With that kind of small interaction, and sometimes negative relationship, what can account for those girls expressing the EXACT same love and sentiment toward me, as Autumn showed? There is only one, fundamental and satisfactory explanation to me. The Father, Son and Spirit love and like me, and each of those children and everyone else! And through the special relationship the Father has with Autumn, in Jesus, she shared in his feelings for me in such a mysterious and inclusive way, that it rubbed off on all of her friends, and ended up as a shower of love on me!!

I am sure that while I was gone, Autumn talked to her friends MUCH about how she missed me, and how long it had been since I had been gone, and her fear that I might not come back home (she’s a little RELATIONAL worrier!) She is so in union and open with her friends that I believe they began to feel what she felt until they felt the exact same way after 8 days of my absence. Interestingly, yes, each of these young ladies (except my daughter) lacks a father in the home, so it would have been even easier for them to pick up on and yearn with my daughters exact yearnings for the person they so dearly miss in their own life!

This story has evoked such a permanent and lasting good memory that I long for it to happen again! And right when I began to sit under a cloud of negative thinking, saying, “I’ll bet this kind of awesome thing will probably never happen to me again”, I remember the last words I heard before I entered the house that day after receiving those hugs. It was uttered by one of the girls who was not my daughter, and she said emphatically and seriously:

“Don’t you ever leave us for that long again!!!”

I think she has convinced me that I can look forward to much more of this if I am ever gone that long again! 🙂  Thank you for the hope and reality of an eternity of love with you and everyone Jesus!!

Communion On A SouthWest Airlines Napkin!

“Get There. Get it Done. Get Back.” Those were the words printed on my napkin as I flew on SouthWest Airlines recently, and those were the words for a recent Communion service at New Creation Community Church!

Isn’t that a GREAT shorthand way of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ?

St. Irenaeus, an early church Father, used a fancy but accurate theological word to describe the Gospel – “Divinization”. By this he meant that the plan of the Father, Son and Spirit was that we become ever more divine. He didn’t meant that we would become God as God is God. He meant that what the Son had become in Jesus Christ, as a human being, was his design for our humanity, too!

St. Athanasius clarified this concept of divinization further by writing, “He deified men by Himself becoming man” (Orat 1.38; Kelly 378). “He deified that which He put on” (Orat 1.42; Robertson 331). “Being God, He [the Son] has taken to Him the flesh, and being in the flesh deifies the flesh” (Orat 3.38; Robertson 414). Athanasius usually includes a qualifier or a conditional tense, but the above three quotes simply state it as fact that all humanity has been deified by the incarnation. Human nature has been altered by the fact that the Son of God was once in union with it. The underlying assumption is that there has been some communication of properties, and this assumption is in accordance with Platonic thought.^25″

The Apostle Paul put it this way in the book of Ephesians (The Message version):

“3 How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. 4 Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. 5 Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) 6 He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son. 7 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people – free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free!”

The SouthWest airline napkin is summarizing this particular scripture passage very well by stating in its own way, “Get there. Get it Done. Get Back.” Paul is letting us know that the Father planned to have us with Him, in and through Jesus Christ, before we could ever sin AND despite our sin. Can’t you see and hear the heart of the Father in these scriptures?:

1.) “Get there!” Humanity is created and cannot become uncreated, therefore, we will need to sacrifice ourselves in a new way and become a part of creation in order to have them relate with us as we really are.

2.) “Get it Done!” Adopt them into our relationship at just the right time, and while you are at it, Son, undo their corrupt way of thinking and living (sin) so that they will not only be adopted but be adopted as we originally intended! I want you to embrace them so tightly that it will be impossible for them to escape our grasp, even if they hurt themselves trying to reject and oppose it!

3.) “Get Back!” I want them with me and I want this done as quickly as possible, Son! 33-45 years will be enough time for you to cut through all the “red tape” of their messy thinking, kill their death, raise them all up to our whole life in you, and ascend with them to the very center of this relationship, forever adopted!

We celebrate communion with this in mind, EVERY WEEK, as Jesus remembers this actual event in His God/Man Life and shares His remembering with us! He reminds us that he is forever human, and we are forever and divinely human in his humanity!

The symbols of bread and wine (or grape juice) that we use are more than mere symbols because Jesus is somehow, mysteriously, present in all things, including the sacraments!!! Ephesians 1:23! As we take these signs of his presence into our bodies, we are reminded of how much Jesus is present and lives, NOW, in all of humanity’s minds and bodies! We remember that Jesus is in his Father, we are in Him, and he is in us and that he is here communing with all of us right now!! John 14:20!

Now do you see why many of us are so enthusiastic to gather around this ceremony as often as we can?! 1 Corinthians 11:23-26! Good Gravy – Communion service is not about religion at all! We are simply participating with Jesus in remembering the truth of our inclusion and adoption into the Life of God, in Him, solely by God’s Grace, and we WANT to celebrate and remember it 24/7!!!

Interestingly enough, the back of the SouthWest napkin said the following: “DING! The only thing better than finding a low fare is a low fare finding you.” That truly rung my Gospel bell and I proclaimed to my congregation during the communion service that “The only thing better than finding grace, is grace finding you, and the only thing better than finding Jesus is knowing that Jesus found you 2000 years ago, and we have all been included in the Life of the Triune God since!”

(Don’t bring up a bunch of silly talk about “cheap grace” either! Grace is actually cheaper than cheap! It’s totally FREE!!! 🙂 )

Well, for those who are willing to see it, there is the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ printed on a SouthWest napkin, in which Jesus is somehow, mysteriously, PRESENT!! 🙂 Ephesians 4:10!

The Miracle of Ordinary Things!

I just returned from a GREAT conference on the Gospel of Jesus Christ! My friend Jonathan has summarized the conference well on a recent blogpost which can be found here! I agree with him wholeheartedly on the term “exciting celebration of the Gospel”, and am proud, yet again, to be a member of the Worldwide Church of God, where focusing on the basics is a GREAT STRENGTH of our denomination – NOW – due to our encouraging and transformational journey with Jesus!

I participated in most things that the conference had to offer and am still a little bleary-eyed from those late night/early morning Gospel Talk sessions 🙂 . However, having a little time to think through my experience at the WCG Gospel conference, and in contrast to another “gospel” conference that many others (including the media and many blogs) have been bringing to my attention lately, I can’t help but be struck by a contrast in presentation.

The “gospel” conference that the media and and many blog posts have been addressing a lot is the somewhat controversial “revival” services happening in Lakeland, Florida under conference speaker Todd Bentley. If you are wanting my basic take on the “revival”, here it is:

1.) Todd (and all of those listening to and following him), is included in the Life the Father shares with the Son, in the Spirit, and in Whom we are all included in Jesus Christ.

2.) To be qualified as a Gospel event I personally think that a Gospel proclamation should actually proclaim the Good News of Humanity’s Inclusion and Adoption into the Relationship of the Father, Son and Spirit in Jesus, in some clear, focused and intentional way to the audience. They should be bombarded with this Proclamation at every turn!!

3.) I sure pray that if people are actually being kicked, punched, and abused in ways that seem strange to me, that the Lord Jesus is indeed healing them, because they need his healing mercy more than ever after such abuse!! 🙂  I also believe that Jesus heals out of his mercy, compassion and love for us and NOT because of what we do or do not do. Jesus heals as he and the Father decide to, NOT simply because we believe in him or not! What human being shares in perfect faith or belief besides Jesus anyway??? NO ONE! Mark 9:24, Gal 2:20 KJV!

That being said, what I appreciated about the WCG conference in contrast to the Lakeland Revival is that it properly emphasized that we don’t have to go around believing that the Father has to be doing dramatic and “miraculous” happenings like healings or resurrections of the dead before we can have assurance in Him and know that we are all already included in His Relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit!

In contrast, much of the enthusiasm around the Todd Bentley happenings is centering around the false idea that you can ONLY know FOR SURE that things are TRULY of God because of supernatural and miraculous experiences people are having. Of course, that in turn has a way of making people think that God must not be with them because such miraculous things aren’t happening to them or to their churches. That kind of thinking then leads people to thinking that they don’t have the faith that God “requires” and they begin a herculean effort to muster up more faith through various spiritual disciplines OR, at worst, decide to give up on God entirely because they know they can never have the perfect faith that pleases Him! Yikes! (For more clear thinking on biblical faith in the Light of Who Jesus Christ is, see this post – QUICKLY!!!!!)

Quite frankly, and ironically, too much emphasis on the “miraculous” causes us to miss the miraculous!! Ha-Ha!! 🙂 I suggest that in going to see God in the miraculous, much of the crowd in Lakeland is completely overlooking the miracle of their Inclusion in the Life of the Triune God in Jesus that has been given to them and all of humanity, by grace, before they were born! That is something no one short of Jesus could have ever pulled off – and everyone falls short of Jesus Christ! Rom 3:23!

I am sure that many families are attending the revival, but I bet most parents there are overlooking the miraculous fact they are sharing in the Life of the Triune God in their fatherhood and motherhood. They are wanting to see huge miracles in the healing of a body and forgetting the greater miracle of their children who once were not bodies at all!  Children with bodies who are now relating with mom and dad in the miracle of day-to-day and “ordinary” life! From nothing to something!!! Can ANYONE outside the Triune God create and sustain this “ordinary” LIFE???? No! John 1:3-5, Colossians 1:15-17.

Many Lakeland revival attendees say they can see God in the miracle of a deaf person suddenly being able to hear (and Triune God is the ONLY ONE WHO does heal!), but they miss the miracle of the deaf person being able to walk up to the stage on their own two “ordinary” feet (when was the last time you designed a pair of human feet that were TRULY ALIVE and not prosthetic or drawn on paper??!!!). They may witness a “miracle” punch to the face that appears to heal cancer but miss the miracle of Jesus serving up “ordinary” fruit punch for his thirsty children in and through each other in our everyday, ordinary lives, homes, fairs and amusement parks!! When was the last time you designed and created food and drink with no prior physical or spiritual material to work with???!!!! Ha-Ha! What a laugh, hunh?! 🙂

 

I am sure you see the point by now! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A TRULY ORDINARY THING!! EVERYTHING IS MIRACULOUS AND EXTRAORDINARY!! Can you create something out of nothing as the Triune God has done?! If not, then you can REALLY only stand with me in the awe that comes along with the utter helplessness of being able to even attempt such a thing, and in the awe that comes with embracing that the Father, Son and Spirit CAN do such a thing!! Wow!!!!!

If human life has become ordinary, it is ONLY because our perspective is distorted and we have lost sight of Who Jesus is and Who we are in Him! And, of course, we have lost our perspective! But thank God that in Jesus Christ humanity has had a proper perspective of God and self restored, and the Holy Spirit is working mraculously in our “ordinary” lives to help us see with Jesus’ exact sight!

I thank God for any truly good and merciful thing he is doing through his people at Lakeland, but I am especially thankful for the Good work he is doing through the people of the Worldwide Church of God in helping me and others to see Jesus everywhere, and in everything, as the Light of the World! John 8:12! There is a deeper and more assuring Truth to be known in the healing that Jesus Christ performed on all of humanity that, in my opinion, beats a kick in the face with a biker boot for healing, anyday!! 🙂

You can check out Todd Bentley here. You can check out a more full picture of the Gospel truth here.

God Likes You and Loves You More Than He Loves Himself!

I am out of the study and studio for a few days, but I wanted to remind you of what this blog is all about, and one of the main purposes behind every post.

1.) God the Father, Son and Spirit likes you! I remind you that God is One Being in three Persons Who created everything, including you out of nothing. Because the Son of God created and Sustains you, and because the plan of God was that the Son would become fully Man, while remaining fully God, you can rest assured that you are liked and not just loved by God. God so loved you He sent His Son, but he so liked you that he was determined to have you as close to Him as His Son is.

Therefore, by becoming human and taking your human life into his, undoing your sin and renewing your life in His, AND then taking that renewed human life into the relationship He has with His Father in the Spirit, Jesus has forever gotten you as close and near to God as you ever will be! You’ll only continue to grow in REALIZING it!

Since the Father, Son and Spirit prepared all of this before you were born and then accomplished it before you were born, how could you truly (in the light of the facts above) not conclude that God REALLY DOES LIKE YOU??? I tell you again, unceasingly, He does like you!! 🙂

2.) The Father Son and Spirit not only love and like you, but God loves you more than He loves Himself! You are created and God is uncreated Yet it was always in God’s plan to stoop and relate to you as you are – as a created human being. He did this by coming as man in Jesus and forever remaining Man in Jesus! For God to forever sacrifice Himself in this way for your sake, in His Freedom, Grace and total Self-Giving, is for you to KNOW that God Loves You MORE than He Loves Himself!

Since He did not ask you to become what he is (an impossibility!), but had always decided to become what you are so that you could share in His exact relationship, even though you are a created being, how could you truly (in the light of the facts above) not conclude that God REALLY DOES LOVE YOU MORE THAN HE LOVES HIMSELF??? I tell you again, unceasingly, He does love you more than he loves himself!! 🙂!

Have fun reviewing previous posts on the Good News that I have written, (and better yet – sharing them with as many others as you possibly can!), and I’ll see you back here with a blast of FRESH and NEW posts on the same OLD GOOD NEWS, in God’s Grace, when I return!!!

How to Read and Understand the Bible!

Someone just asked me for help in this area, so I thought I would share my real life response with you, too!

1.) Remember that some things PRECEDE other things.

Basic math precedes Algebra. Algebra precedes Calculus. The Basic Math of scripture is the Person of Jesus Christ, therefore we should learn to always ask “Who Is Jesus Christ?” BEFORE we try to read too much into what the scriptures mean by what they say! Before the Canon of scripture (the bible as we know it today) was formally canonized, faithful successors to the Apostles agreed on the basics of interpreting the scriptures. Those basics are represented in the Christian creeds known as The Apostles Creed, The Nicene Creed and The Chalcedon Creed.

The last two creeds, in particular, were agreed upon in councils by the Church of its time to fight wrongheaded thoughts about Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit! There were heresies going around that said Jesus Christ was not God, or that he was ONLY God or ONLY a man! People weren’t holding to the Truth that Jesus is Fully God AND Fully Man as Jesus had revealed and the Apostles were witnesses to! Lies were also spreading around that the Holy Spirit was not a Person equal to the Father and the Son within the Relationship of the Triune God! (Here is an EASY TO READ historical resource, if you are interested in learning more about this subject.)

Think of these creeds as a pair of glasses. When we cannot see without glasses, we would not even begin to attempt going through life without them because of the hazard to our very life, health and peace! By analogy, we all have poor spiritual vision (we are all sinners) and yet we find ourselves trying to read and understand the bible (with this admitted blurry vision) without our glasses! This has produced a hazard of horrible doctrines and theology that are hurting most of us in the present day and snatching away life, health and peace!! (John 8:43 – we misinterpret God’s speech because we don’t hear things through the lens of Who Jesus is as THE Word!)!

The creeds are our pair of glasses for the scriptures, fashioned so that we don’t misinterpret everything we read. So many heresies and false doctrines arose in the past from misinterpreting the scriptures that the early Church was forced into developing these creeds so that we could avoid, and would avoid, heresies and false doctrines about God, creation, and ourselves, like the plague! It is HIGHLY IMPORTANT to remember that these creeds were developed and in place BEFORE the scriptures were put together as a complete package known as “The Holy Bible”! The Holy Spirit made sure that we had our glasses BEFORE most of us had availability to the books as a whole!!!

By centering on Jesus Christ, and His relationship with Creation and the Triune God, we can see, through the guidance of the creeds, that scripture is trying to speak to us about a relationship of distinct persons and things bound up in the Person and Being of Jesus Christ! Knowing Who Jesus is tells us that, in His Person and Being, all people and things are included in the Triune life of God by nature of his creating us, sustaining us and his becoming human, permanently, and ascending with us to His Father in the Spirit! We live, move and have our being in the very Person and Being of Jesus Christ!!! (Heb 3:1-13, John 1:1-5, Col 1:15-21)

We must not begin any attempt to understand life or words by defining things outside the Person of Jesus Christ! That is to be anathema (or accursed) for a believer! Attempting to interpret scripture without knowing Who the Person of Jesus Christ is in his relationship with the Father, Spirit and creation, is hazardous to our life, health and peace! 

2.)  Remember that everything in existence is included in the Triune Life of God, in Jesus Christ, because Jesus is Fully Man and Fully God, and the One in Whom all created things live, move and have their being (Acts 17:28)! Jesus is also the Only One Who mediates all things between God and Man (1 Tim 2:5), which is why he is called the God/Man or “God [is] with us” (Matt 1:23)! The life and maintenance of all created things is implicated in Jesus’ Life! 2 Cor 5:14-16!

3.) As you read any scripture, hold to the overarching thought promoted by the creeds, which is that God is One Being in Three Persons and Three Persons in One Being, in Relationship with all things in Jesus! This means that God is a Relationship of Three Distinct Persons Who are so Unified that God can only truly be called One! Mankind, being made in God’s image, is also distinct along with creation WITHIN the Union we have with God and each other in Jesus Christ.

All of scripture is taking this Reality of Life and Relationship in Jesus Christ into account as the main thing (Luke 24:25-27, Col 1:19, 2:9)! This means that, fundamentally, no scripture can EVER be speaking of someone not being in union and included with God in Jesus Christ, no matter how dire or negative it may sound to us!!!! Negative sounding scriptures can ONLY be pointing to the fact that in our personal distinction within creation, we each can either embrace the truth of our union with God and all things in Jesus, OR, we can embrace lies about our union with all things in Jesus. Embracing the Truth about our union is good! Embracing lies about our union is bad! (John 3:36)! 

4.) Now, here is the real zinger for all of us that read the bible: how come our tendency is to take the scriptures that look bad and allow them to question and cast doubt on the ones that look good? J Seriously?! To date, no one has ever demanded that I speak more about the goodness of God when I have overemphasized the bad things mentioned in scripture! However, people ALWAYS demand that I speak about the bad side of things when I overemphasize the good and positive things about God mentioned in scripture! That’s no joke, and believe me, it is NOT funny!! 😦 !

There is something wrong with that, isn’t there?! Now, some would probably argue we shouldn’t overemphasize any of it, but I disagree! We should overemphasize the good! After all, most believers would say that God is Good All the Time (meaning NOT bad at all!), and I agree and say it with them (God – as in the Father, Son and Spirit!!)

Actually, because we are sinners, we too easily allow the negative and bad scriptures to cast doubt on the Goodness of God! I would say that most questions I personally get, even from those receiving and believing hope about our inclusion, primarily come from this perspective. Hey, it is my tendency too! 🙂  But, if God is Good, and ONLY Good (and he is!) – shouldn’t we do the exact opposite and allow God’s goodness to cast doubt on the things which appear bad and negative in scripture?!  St. Athanasius did! Interestingly enough, he was known as Athanasius “Contra Mundum” or “Athanasius Against the World!” Ha-Ha!! Gotta love it! I’m trying to stand with him in the grace of God! 🙂

Athanasius understood, as we are beginning to, that because the starting point of all things is God, and God is GOOD (and nothing less than Good!), then bad is ONLY a twisting and perverting of that which is Good! And, of course, that is just what bad is! As the great Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis, said, “There is no such thing as badness, only spoiled goodness!”

A REAL Life Struggle with Jesus, Scripture, and God’s Good News!!!

 

Do you ever struggle with understanding, let alone believing, the Good News of how the Father, Son and Spirit have included everyone in their Life and Relationship? Well, welcome to the club! You aren’t the only one! But thank God Jesus is with us in the struggle as a human being, sharing his risen human life with us! 1 Timothy 2:5!

This blogpost is primarily a personal testimony of the struggle we all encounter trying to believe God’s Good News and our efforts to see it in scripture with all of the baggage of wretched theology we all have been handed on! It was just sent to me yesterday by a friend, and I couldn’t wait to ask if I could post it for your encouragement! The answer was an enthusiastic “Yes!”. Her story sure encouraged me TREMENDOUSLY! Here it is, verbatim, with the exception of a couple of names omitted for privacy’s sake!

It is a real life experience of Matthew 7:7-8, or as Eugene Peterson says it in The Message, “7 Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. 8 This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. 9 If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? 10 If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? 11 As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?”

Here is the exciting e-mail I received:

“Pastor Tim,

I just wanted to share with you the joy and utter amazement I am experiencing in my dance with our Great Triune God!

I have spent so much of my life reading the word of God with a completely screwed-up and negative bias. Much of the scriptures had fallen into a dulled empty drone of condemnation and frustration for me. In the past few months that has changed completely. This week is a good example.

I have been reading Mark. As I read chapter 4, I knew what I was getting out of the parable of the sower and the seeds (the need for us to be like the good ground and be a fertile place for the word of God to grow in) was somehow fundamentally wrong, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand how, nor could I see any other interpretation of the parable. Even Jesus’ explanation to the disciples seemed to reinforce the old concept. Still I was plagued by a gnawing feeling that “that just can’t be right!”.

I talked to Jesus about it all day. I must have read the chapter six or seven times. The more I read it and talked to Jesus about it the more frustrated I became. I thought about ***** and wondered how I could explain a verse like this to ***** because it seemed to just reinforce their position that people must “produce fruit” to be part of the kingdom. Still I “KNEW” in the depth of me this was wrong. I even wondered if I was just trying to force the scripture to fit this new idea that we are “all included” when it just did not. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing the point of the scripture with the old interpretation. I was frustrated with my own dull hardheadedness.

Last night I was in bed doing as I often do, just winding down by talking to God and thanking him for all the good things the day had brought, kinda like **** does with me before she goes to bed. Then a bolt of light hit me hard! BOOM!!!

The kingdom of God is like….. not JUST the good ground where the seeds grow well, but all the other types of poor soil too! The thoughts just started pouring into my mind like a torrent.

That parable is about what the Kingdom of God is like. It INCLUDED the different types of soil not just the good soil. The farmer is God. God is like a gardener with a garden that has rocky soil, weeds, pathways, and good soil. What does a good gardener do? If some of the soil is rocky and low in nutrients, and weedy he works that soil. I have a yard full of weeds and I am already planning how to weed it, fertilize, and re-seed it so that good grass can grow there. God is at least as smart as I am! All of the soils belong to God. And none of the soil can do anything to make itself better soil. That is the gardener’s job! I remembered other places in the Bible that talks about the low places being raised, the crooked places made straight, and the waste places being made green. WOW! This parable is all about being included in the garden of God!

I popped up in bed and started bending ***** sleepy ears about it all. I was so excited that I felt like a little girl who had just learned to ride a bike for the first time. It was awesome. All the dullness and doubt just vanished in a moment of realization. I finally went to sleep feeling like I was cuddled up next to my Father safe and loved.

This morning I couldn’t wait to get the bible out and read that scripture again. As I read a bit further I came to the part in verse 24 and 25, and verse that has never made the least bit of sense to me ever. How could God take something away that you did not have? Then the light came on again.

This part of the chapter is talking about how we understand the parables Jesus had just given (the sower and the light on the hill), we are told in verse 24 to be careful how we interpret these parables and how we use our interpetation. We can either misinterpret them through human reason and use them to beat others over the head,or we can interpret them in the light of Jesus and the Triune God and share the good news with everyone we meet.

In verse 25 it is still talking about what we understand from the parables. If we allow God to give us the correct understanding of the parables the He will continue to reveal more and more to us. If we try to interpret them through our stinking thinking we will be unable to receive deeper understanding. In fact God will have to take away what we have… that is to say, our incorrect understanding… in order for us to grow. That is exactly what God has done to me this week. He put it into me to feel that what I had always thought I knew was wrong, then He took that away and gave me the correct understanding.

God is sooooooooo! Good! Let everyone know it! I just want to jump up and down and tell everyone that God has us all in his hands and will clean up the mess that we are and complete his will for us to share in the amazing relationship he has made us to be a part of forever. No mater what kind of soil we are right now, we are part of the kingdom and the master gardener will tend to us and make sure we become soil in which the seeds of the word of God can and will grow.

This is an amazingly encouraging passage. It says that God is in control and will do what it takes to make sure everyone sees the truth.

Praise God! Yeeeee! Haw!

Gwin”

 

Isn’t that GREAT?! I thought you would think so! 🙂 ! Continued Peace, Love and Blessings to You in the Struggle!