Spiritual Ponderings

Jesus invites every person to join His class action lawsuit against Satan. If we are willing to believe the truth that God declares about the cause of our sinful condition, we can sign up to participate in the lawsuit to vacate the sentence for our punishment on grounds that the charges relied on to convict us are based on a fraudulent premise. We have been manipulated under duress and misinformed, and thus the charges must be vacated while the accuser himself is to receive the punishments he demanded against us. This is according to the requirements of the legal system he put in place to punish us. If an unrighteous witness rise up against any man to testify against him of wrong-doing, then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before Yahweh, before the priests and the judges who shall be in those days; and the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness is a false witness , and has testified falsely against his brother ; t...

 Healing judgment. These are not usually words we put together. Judgment is normally associated with law, fear and processes when things are imposed on us with little or no input by us. Healing on the other hand is much more personal, hopeful and positive. We like the idea of being healed, but we fear the idea of being judged. Yet I am now coming to see that the judgment of God is always for the purpose of potential healing if at all possible, never for the purpose of imposing punishments or for balancing imaginary scales of justice. So how might judgment involve healing? And if this is true, can we come to the place where we might even be eager to be judged instead of being afraid of it? The seeds related to this new idea that were planted in my mind many years ago and that have grown in my understanding involve several passages that long puzzled me. For years they didn't seem to fit anywhere into the theology I learned growing up. Now I realize this is because mainstream theol...

 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...