Spiritual Ponderings

I am trying to grasp a deep truth that has evaded me all my life. Something in today's devotional from Chambers helped me catch a fleeting glimpse of it, but I want to understand it much better. It has to do with the offensiveness of sin to God and the truth about His forgiveness. Unfortunately the legal model so often infused with false beliefs about God's wrath and punishment clouded the picture for me so that the pieces never would fit together properly. Some of the pieces may have been valid but in the wrong context with other beliefs that were skewed against God so that I have never been able to see how it all makes sense. But I want to make sense out of it all and I now have a much clearer view of the puzzle than I have had in the past. I need to somehow be empowered to see this whole sin problem from heaven's perspective and get at least a little sense of God's feelings about all of this that aligns squarely with the truths about His character that I have bee...

The greatest lie ever foisted on the universe was not the lie that death is not the result of sin or that sinners won't really die, as big as that lie was. No, the earlier lie was something far more subtle than that and actually is at the very base of every other deception that has followed in its wake. This is a lie that has even become embedded right into our culture as an assumption that is relied upon to prevent people from getting hurt or taken advantage of. It is so common that most people would seldom even consider it a lie at all but weave their lives around it as if it were as reliable as the Law of God spoken from Mount Sinai. And what is this diabolical thought that is so tenacious and difficult to expose? It is the idea, the belief, the deeply held suspicion that if something sounds too good to be true, then very likely it is not. Can you see the lie in there yet? And even more, can you see the implications that permeate our subconsciousness and infect the very way...

After reading the blog post by Sparx last night about her husband, the Frog, being able to fix nearly anything, and then the Spud fixing something his father could not figure out, this morning I began to reflect on what was really going on behind that story. What induced the sudden flush of emotions and why do these experiences induce such good feelings in us and all who experience them? What is involved at its roots is a sense of honor. And honor is inextricably tied in with value. It also provides a level of relief from the ever-present sense of shame or devalue in our hearts. But what was described in this story is the normally accepted way by which we generally expect to feel honor and value – through the achievement of 'value-adding' activities; we feel it is something we have to earn. People in the Bible sometimes asked a question that reflects this deep desire in all of our hearts by expressing it this way: “What must I do to be saved?” It would not be inaccurate to...

I am looking into the concept of witness and testimony in regards to eternal salvation and our relationship with God. The text was bouncing around inside my head about how the overcomers in Revelation accomplished their overcoming, and I decided to pursue this thread and see where it might lead me. The outcome so far has been very enlightening and stimulating. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony , and they did not love their life even when faced with death." (Revelation 12:10-11) Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, "These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and where have they come from?" I said to him, "My lord, you kn...

I feel like I have been placed in an accelerated class on salvation. Over the past few weeks and months I have had much more free time and I have been listening to a series of talks on the larger view of salvation. It has been extremely stimulating for me as it puts together nearly everything I have been learning about God over the past twenty years together in a way that links them all coherently. It is bringing into much sharper view the larger picture that I knew was taking shape but have struggled to see where all the pieces fit properly. When I woke up this morning and dialogued with God as I usually do at that time, some of the old clichés suddenly began to make clear sense, ones that I have struggled with for years to figure out how they were supposed to apply to life. The one that came to mind this morning was the concept of putting on the robe of Christ's righteousness . When used in the typical legal model of salvation it more or less seems to make sense. But the more ...