HERE AND NOW UNTIL THEN

People are calling for churches to be Schools of Love.  I love this idea but usually what happens is we never leave the place where all that love is happening.  Awful things have happened because people have misused God and the Bible.  So we respond to that by making changes in our beliefs about God and adapting the Bible differently to meet our new understanding.

I don’t understand all the violence and destruction God did that is recorded in the Old Testament.  It’s difficult to reconcile that with the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament.  But I do know He is the same God in both.

God’s behavior looks harsh; unloving; ungod like.  He was destroying abominations that were things going against all He was about.  He was angry and destroyed them.  So we ask, “Where’s the love?”  We try to explain the behavior but actually make lot of assumptions and presumption on our part. 

How are those who are speaking out about Love for all treating Donald Trump and those who are following him?  How are they treating bigots and people of violence and those who hate those who hate people different than them?  I see that same righteous anger in them that I see in God’s behavior.  Where’s the Love?

Those who follow Jesus and walk with God are to show a different way than what is.  The only way to end bigotry, discrimination, hatred, and violence is a true heart transplant that only God can do.  Then a world without bigotry, discrimination, hatred, and violence must be demonstrated by those who have been truly converted to love.

Energy can’t be changed, only converted.  The energy of love and peace is the same as hate and violence; only conversion will change it.  People must be taken out of the slavery of the evil one and taken into the presence of God, where they were originally meant to be.  God did not make a world where bigotry, discrimination, hatred, and violence grew.  Human beings built that world by following the temptations of the enemy of God; temptations of he flesh; temptations of success, wealth, and power; temptations that human’s couldn’t overcome; temptations that Jesus proved could be overcome be overcome by listening to and obeying God.

This country has been making bad choices for a long time; we dress up sin so it is acceptable; we shed innocent blood throughout our land; we cast God out of our government and our learning institutions; we omit and change His words in our religious institutions.  Then we have the audacity to blame Him for the mistakes that those who misuse Him did supposedly in His name.

“God made man simple; man’s complex problems are of his own devising.”

Ecclesiastes 7:29

When human beings try to do things of God without being born again and having a heart transplant, without being in a relationship with Him, they will fail and misuse them.  The flesh cannot understand the things of the Spirit.

God has been trying to set up a People who would be a demonstration of a world without bigotry, discrimination, hatred, and violence that nations could see and be envious of.  He still keeps trying but it must be done His way.  In the end it will be that but our prayer is we can see that here and now until then.  That means doing away with the things that God has asked us not to do and living in the life that comes from doing what He has asked us to do.

God’s love shown to us and through us can and will overpower sin; all sin.  In love, no condemnation, we must take sin seriously and follow the example of Jesus.  “Jesus was left alone with the woman standing guilty before him.  Jesus said to her, ‘Woman where are your accusers?  Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one Lord’.  And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and from now on sin no more” (John 8:9-11).  Ours is not to condemn but it is ours to point others to Jesus who can release them in love and reveal the right way to be and to live.