Spiritual Ponderings

Christians talk a lot about wanting to experience the presence of God in their lives. We crave to experience the joy of feeling God very close to us, to have our hearts stirred with emotion, peace and even exhilaration at times whenever we encounter what we believe to be a manifestation of the presence of God. It is something that we long to feel more often and we sometimes even make mistakes in this area by trying to fabricate those feelings by depending on inspiring music or stirring sermons or other religious methods to awaken our emotions and make us feel more spiritual as a substitute for engaging honestly with the true God. I look back with nostalgia at times to days in the past when I encountered what I believe to be glimpses of God's presence in my life. Some of those times were during music sessions with a praise team when we suddenly felt the reality deep inside of what we were singing about. Other times have been when I was suddenly overwhelmed with some scene of be...

Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning... That very familiar song from my early youth has suddenly encountered a roadblock whenever it has come to my mind in the last few days. Not that I suddenly think it has been discovered to have some hidden heresy in it or that I no longer believe that I need oil in my lamp. But in my Spirit-guided research into the parable of the ten virgins over the past few weeks my attention has suddenly been riveted to the reality of just where the oil is needed even more than in a lamp. I have come to realize that the lamp in this parable specifically refers to the Bible, which certainly needs the symbolic oil in it to bring the true light out of it properly. I am still working on detailing from the Word itself about what all the oil represents, but what I am certain of at this point is that the lamp is not my own life as this familiar chorus suggests. The Bible seems clear that the lamp is the Word of God itself, so the extra containers for carryi...