Spiritual Ponderings

People who respect the LORD also listen to his servant. That servant lives completely trusting in God without knowing what will happen. He really trusts in the LORD'S name and depends on his God. 'You've all lit a fire and helped the flame grow, then you were drawn to its light toward the very flame that you kindled! Because of me this has happened to you, and you'll spend your nights in distress!' (Isaiah 50:10-11 ERV, 2001)
This verse came to my heart as I was waking up this morning. The more that I meditate and listen to the Spirit about this the more clearly I see a number of things that I want to grasp much more deeply and securely.
I see myself and nearly everyone around me caught in a trap that God is longing to release us from, and into a radically different relationship with Himself. Yet particularly in Western culture, we have been deeply ingrained with the philosophy of Greece and Rome in which religion is primarily an external affair. We talk about the …

But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. (Matthew 5:39)
An evil person is like a very weak car battery. They are seriously lacking in love power and as a result they malfunction, growl, spark and lack ability to get along with others. They are filled with selfishness and obsessed with grasping and clawing those around them in desperate attempts to meet their needs. What they really need, whether they are aware of it or not (and most of the time they are not) is a jump from another battery that is fully charged.
If the jumpers used to connect two batteries have too much resistance, the power cannot flow sufficiently to make enough difference to get the weak one started. Likewise, when we resist an evil person's attacks on us by taking offense, becoming defensive, retaliating or any similar ungodly responses, we prevent them from having access to the very power they so desperately need.
Most of the time a…

Jesus offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins in order to reconcile us to God.
That sounds like a very normal statement of faith that one might expect to hear as the confession of any typical Christian. But what does that mean? It all depends completely on one's beliefs about God and sin. It has become rather clear to me that the problems with the typical explanation of this theme from the legal approach has made such views untenable for me, for they fail to accomplish true reconciliation. This is because God is presented in ways that destroy our ability to truly trust Him.
I have come to see that sin is at its core a problem of trust, not an external problem regarding behavior. Bad behaviors are only symptoms of a lack of trust. Of course dysfunctional behavior can deepen distrust and reinforce lies of sin in our hearts. But when the problem of sin is traced all the way back to its deepest roots inside of us, it will always be discovered that the essence of sin is…