Spiritual Ponderings

One of the functions of being a god is how we go about deciding what is true. When we insist that our experience and reason is the highest authority for determining what is truth, we make reason our god and effectively shut out objective truth that God offers us and that has real power to alter our experience and could reinterpret how we process what we believe are facts. For instance, if I learn things about my brain or my body that seems to convincingly explain why I have some malfunction, my tendency is to latch onto those explanations or 'facts' and become very resistant to questioning their validity. This can leave me trapped in a prison of my own making or of the enemy's design, and it also blocks the Spirit of God from bringing much needed hope and freedom to my soul. By clinging to a scientific explanation that seems to resonate with what I experience as the only valid way to describe my condition, say of depression or despair, I can effectively shut out God a...

Let me share a parable with you that just came to me this morning. Remember, it is a parable, which means it is limited in scope but contains important analogies that may apply to spiritual realities to help us connect our head with our heart a little better. I have a few vehicles sitting around my place right now. This is not the parable part but is actually real. I have several that are dead, undriveable, pretty much unfixable. And if it were not for very low prices on scrap metal at leas some of them would be gone by now. Others are being used for storage space which is cheaper than buying storage sheds. But that is beside the point. We have other vehicles also sitting around taking up space for other reasons. Some belong to someone else, one is waiting to be licensed, but that gets complicated. And several more are in various stages of useableness. That means that if possible we drive them but it seems they spend a lot of time being fixed, so much so that recently we purc...

But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God . (John 3:21) This verse is the l ast part of Jesus' definition of Judgment, a very valuable insight to diffuse false fears about judgment. Yet this last phrase has offered me many hours of pondering over just what it means by he who does the truth . Associated with this is also the phrase he who does the truth . What do these mean in the light of the true gospel? Today I took a much closer look at another passage that brings a great deal of light into this for me. The more I look at it the more amazed I am at the incredible implications emerging from these phrases. The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn't dwell in temples made with hands, neither is he served by men's hands , as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things. He made from one blood ever...

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they and some others came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. They entered in, and didn't find the Lord Jesus' body. It happened, while they were greatly perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling clothing. Becoming terrified, they bowed their faces down to the earth. They said to them, " Why do you seek the living among the dead? He isn't here, but is risen. Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again?" They remembered his words, returned from the tomb, and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest. (Luke 24:1-9) Throughout His ministry Jesus repeatedly chided people for their unbelief in Him. But just what did He have in mind when He talked about belief ...