Spiritual Ponderings

 No longer a beggar. I want to no longer beg and plead with God as if He is reluctant or even recalcitrant to listen to my desires for healing or salvation, either for myself or for others. What does my begging infer about God's heart, when I display the disposition that God has to be persuaded to bless, to heal, to love, to forgive, to feel compassion? The message it sends is that God is a great deal like me – hard-hearted, loath to let go of offenses, demanding satisfaction for debts and administration of execution for unpunished sins before He will relent to release a measured bit of kindness or mercy. What a horrific view of God our prayers often unconsciously project without our even realizing it. Yet its true, and its tragic, and I don't want to continue to imagine that God is like the monster my feelings made Him out to be as a teenager based on how others made Him appear in my imagination. To continue to allow those dark, dungeon-like perceptions of God to still aff...

But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation ; namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses, and having committed to us the word of reconciliation . We are therefore ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:18-21) What is reconciliation? It is the exact same thing as true meaning of atonement actually. It is restoring two individuals to be in harmony and love at the heart level, resolving any differences that might separate them by exposing and eliminating every lie making them distrustful or afraid of each other. In our case with God, there has never been any lie that God believes about us to make Him love us any le...

Why didn't God just dispense with Lucifer when he first started to sin so as to avoid all the pain and suffering caused by Lucifer since then? This is an extremely important question, yet it requires some appreciation of a much larger context in order to discover answers that make sense. One of the most important questions that must be addressed for the larger perspective is this: What is the nature of love itself? Here are additional questions that tie into grappling with this serious issue: Is love consistent no matter what happens? Or will agape love ever be willing to resort to using force if it comes under threat? Is agape love unconditional, or is it only for those who deserve it or can somehow earn it? Is it even possible for love to be earned? Here's some more relevant questions. If I do something good, like cooperating with God by blessing others with what He has given to me, do I somehow earn favor with Him? Is it possible to ingratiate myself ...

Jesus said to him, " Because you have seen me, you have believed . Blessed are those who have not seen , and have believed ." (John 20:29) I have processed this story in the past and arrived at similar conclusions, yet I want to revisit this again to explore it a bit deeper. In brief, I feel that the reputation of Thomas 'the doubter' has gotten not only a lot of very undeserved bad press, but that we are still missing some really good news in this story. Maybe this is partly due to our penchant for projecting our own faults onto others instead of accepting responsibility for our own indulgence in the very things we accuse others of doing wrong. But this is a rather precarious path to follow. Therefore you are without excuse , O man, whoever you are who judge . For in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself . For you who judge practice the same things . (Romans 2:1) Did Thomas indulge in doubt about the veracity of the wi...