Spiritual Ponderings

Last night my wife and I attended a spiritual small group in someone's home. We have never been there before and this group pretty much had known each other for a number of years at the least. It grew out of an experiment by the leader a couple years ago who desired to try to replicate something along the order of what is described in 1 Corinthians about New Testament church life. There were about a dozen people there and they were quite relaxed, at least with each other. None of these people were familiar with our church or beliefs. That meant that we felt mostly like an observer there, though we too have a longing to see the true body of Christ connecting more intentionally no matter where they come from. My thoughts and feelings on relating to people outside my denomination on a spiritual level has changed considerably over the past years, but I still only feel comfortable connecting better with people who have at least considerable understanding and sympathy with what I...

On that day his people will say, "This is our God; we have waited for him, and now he will save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him. Let us rejoice and be glad because he will save us." The LORD'S power will be on this mountain. Moab will be trampled beneath him like straw that is trampled in a pile of manure. The Moabites will stretch out their hands in the manure like swimmers who stretch out their hands to swim. The LORD will humble those arrogant people despite the movements of their hands. He will bring down Moab's high fortified walls, level them, and throw them into the dust on the ground. (Isaiah 25:9-12 GW) I am sometimes surprised and challenged whenever I pick up a different version of the Bible and begin reading. I have found that although every version of the Bible has problems in translation, both from the biases of the translators as well as misunderstandings at times of even the writers themselves in their perceptions of what God is l...

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image , according to Our likeness ; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him ; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26-27) As I was listening to the current Sabbath School lesson presented by a teacher who has been challenging me to think differently about God as of late, I heard something that riveted my attention and got me to thinking outside the box – again. As he reviewed a number of texts including the one above, my mind began to grasp a key concept in the bigger picture that I had never thought about before but that suddenly helps to make sense out of a lot of peripheral issues. Some of the thoughts presented here are taken directly from that presentation that can be found here , while others are what I have fel...

Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. (Psalms 41:9) I do not speak of all of you. I know the ones I have chosen; but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, 'he who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.' (John 13:18) Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." But they said, "What is that to us? See to that yourself!" And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself . (Matthew 27:3-5) The past few years I have engaged in a new direction of focus from my previous spiritual direction. For many years I lived under the heaviness of fear, guilt and condemnation. My perceptions of God filled me with intimidation that ever prevented me from entering into ...

"As for Me, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. "Then the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD , when I am honored through Pharaoh, through his chariots and his horsemen." (Exodus 14:17-18) When Israel saw the great power which the LORD had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in His servant Moses. (Exodus 14:31) But there is another problem immediately following this. Actually a lot of problems. Evidently when the Israelites looked on the bodies of the many soldiers washed up on the beach the next morning, they decided to relieve the corpses of their weapons and appropriate the them for their own use. But was that what God had in mind for them to do? Was that the message that they were supposed to take away from the stupendous event that had just taken place...

I want to more closely examine one of the stories of the Old Testament that often raises questions about what God is like in the way He treats both His chosen people and their enemies. This is in one of the most famed events that has ever occurred in history, the deliverance of the Israelites at the crossing of the Red Sea and the extermination by drowning of the entire military force of Egypt bent on recapturing a whole nation of slaves in defiance of God's intervention for them. I believe the only way to accurately expose the truth in any story, particularly those found in the Old Testament, is to use the lens of the life and teachings of Jesus as the filter through which to interpret what was really going on. Reports and records by humans of that time are biased by their own perceptions and beliefs about what God was like and cannot be fully trusted to give us a clear view of God's character. That is abundantly evident in the contrast we see in the example and teachi...