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...

 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...

The divine Teacher bears with the erring through all their perversity. His love does not grow cold ; His efforts to win them do not cease . With outstretched arms He waits to welcome again and again the erring, the rebellious, and even the apostate. His heart is touched with the helplessness of the little child subject to rough usage . The cry of human suffering never reaches His ear in vain. Though all are precious in His sight, the rough, sullen, stubborn dispositions draw most heavily upon His sympathy and love ; for He traces from cause to effect . The one who is most easily tempted, and is most inclined to err, is the special object of His solicitude . Every parent and every teacher should cherish the attributes of Him who makes the cause of the afflicted, the suffering, and the tempted His own. He should be one who can have "compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity....

World Class Wrestler – Jacob Jacob started his wrestling career prenatally (Gen. 25:22). His birth caught him and his brother in the act as he refused to interrupt his fight with his brother long enough to even be born (Gen 25:26). Jacob and Esau continued to develop their wrestling skills likely through their growing up years pitting their strength against each other with Esau likely winning many of their skirmishes. Likely because of his underdog status with his brother (which his parents at first may have found somewhat amusing), Jacob would have become an easy target for alternative ways to try to win against his brother, something all too familiar for many of us. Throughout his life Jacob found himself wrestling much of the time, though not always in physical matches as much as during his early years. His rounds now spilled into emotional wrestling, struggling for social status, wrestling with nearly anyone around him in attempts to find a sense of wo...