KNOW THAT GOD IS GOD

“The wind blows where it wishes,

And you hear its sound, but do not know

Where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

John 3:8

There is this wonderfully free flowing, natural energy the fills this world.  Every living thing was created with that energy and has that energy within and surrounding it.  It causes and maintains growth and left free is creative and productive.  There is a natural flow to that energy and life follows that flow freely.

When the free flow of energy is obstructed, contained, and controlled it will produce unintended consequences.  Often these consequences are destructive.  Human beings are forever trying to manipulate and control things they have no business controlling.

Faith is being still and knowing that God is God.  It is knowing and understanding that the universe was created by the word of God, not made out of things that are visible.  God maintains all that He created within this natural flow of life and man’s responsibility is to accommodate to that natural flow. 

Human beings are to care for and attend to, not control what God has created.  We are to be assured that things spoken by God are there, even if they are yet unseen.  We are to know that we know and order our lives in that sacred knowledge that comes from the word of God, spoken either in nature or in the Scriptures.  It is not head knowledge.  It is heart wisdom.  It is seeing things as they are, not necessarily as they are said or thought to be.

We can’t see the wind but we know it’s there.  We can’t see God but we know He’s there.  If we receive Him and believe in His name, He makes us His children and we then have the assurance of things hoped for, promised by our Father, as our eternal inheritance, secured for us by His Son, Jesus.

LIVING INTO OUR INHERITANCE

All the plants and animals that God created were made “according to its kind”.  But God took a different tack with man.  “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”.  And He did.  Then He breathed His Spirit into man and he became a living creature.

When man created his sons they were made in his image, in his likeness.  The image of God was tainted and diluted.  God’s perfect nature was corrupted with man’s human nature and caused a different world of people to inhabit the world then God had originally intended.  This corruption was sparked by man’s rebellion and continues throughout the earth to this day; an earth now filled with chaos and violence.

The tension between God’s nature and human nature becomes a spiritual war within every human being.  We are continually given a choice between who to follow and obey; Spirit of flesh.  God appeals through the Spirit.  God’s adversary, Satan appeals through the flesh.  In these days of waiting for Jesus to return it appears that the imposed self serving ruler of this world Satan is winning.  But I know the end of the story.  He is already judged and condemned and soon he will be sentenced and his rule will end.  But what are God’s People, His children suppose to be doing now; how are we to be living until that Day of Days comes? Since we were originally created in God’s image and likeness it makes sense to me that we should be reflecting God with our lives and our actions.

 God is Spirit so we should reflect the attributes and fruits of the Spirit in all we do to all we come in contact with and interact with in our day to day lives.  That means living lives of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

God is love so we should be reflecting the attributes of love in all we do and to all we come in contact with and interact with in our day to day lives.  That means being patient and kind, not being envious or boastful, not being arrogant or rude.  It means not insisting on our own way, not being irritable or resentful, not rejoicing at wrong doing but rejoicing with the truth.  We are to never stop loving because love never ends.  This means we must bear and endure all things, believe the best about all things, and find hope in all things.

This is a tall order and Jesus amps it up by teaching and showing that this love isn’t only for those who love us but it is also for those who hate us, persecute us, for strangers and for our enemies.  This can’t be done in our flesh and human nature.  It is too tall an order to do this on our own.  Only the Spirit of God living in us can do this. 

We must also demonstrate this love, patience, and endurance towards ourselves because we are not yet perfect.  We need to remember that now we see through a mirror dimly and God’s image that is to be in us is still in the works and will be until that day of days when we see Him face to face and we, each one of us will be fully known as we have been fully known, complete in God’s image and likeness, just as we were created to be.

So for now our work is to make good choices; choices that result in decreasing our temporary fleshly human nature and increasing our eternal Spirit filled nature within us.  The battle has already been fought by Jesus.  Now we are to live into that victory that is our inheritance from our Father.

LISTENING SILENTLY TO GOD

I want to learn to listen silently to God

Listen with a deep internal silence

No personal agenda

No personal filters

No interpreters

No quest for personal gain

No approval from man

No praise or esteem

No respect or acknowledgement

Simply listening silently to God

Listening and obeying.

“Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.

To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifices of fools,

For they do not know that they are doing evil.

Be not rash with your mouth,

Nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God,

For God is n heaven and you are on earth.

Therefore let your words be few.

Ecclesiastes 5:1-3

“Your thoughts are not my thoughts,

Neither are your ways my ways.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are my ways higher than your ways

And my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8,9

ONLY GOD'S WAY WILL STAND TIME AND TIDE

God continually declares that He has a purpose for His creation and that only His purpose and plan will stand throughout eternity.

“I have spoken and I will bring it to pass;

I have purposed, and I will do it.”

Isaiah 46:8-13

God built His Kingdom from the beginning of time.  God is building His house and says that those who think they are building it labor in vain.  Jesus said that He was building His Church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  God is clear and direct in His speaking and yet we human beings continue to build our own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water and cannot stand. 

It is not a human endeavor to “reimage” the Church and make it more relevant to the world’s culture.  Anything done in that way is idolatry; anything built in that way is a “golden calf”.

God has had an eternal plan, a purpose, and that plan will succeed and WILL stand time and tide.  He is bringing forth His Kingdom in His way, as planned.  We are to joyfully submit to that plan and leave it in context.  In God’s time and in God’s way that plan will be revealed.  God is still at work and we are to serve Him in that work, not go out on our own and build our own kingdoms, and make names for ourselves.

THY KINGDOM COME

THY WILL BE DONE

On earth as it is

In heaven

THE ETERNAL WORD IS SUFFICIENT

“He to whom the eternal Word speaks is set free from many opinions.

From that One Word are all things and all things speak.”

Thomas a Kempis

“You shall not add to the word that God commanded

Nor shall you take from it.

Every word of God proves True

Do not add to His words.

God has spoken

And God will bring it to pass

God has purposed

And God will do it.

God’s Word does not return to Him void

It accomplishes what He purposed

It shall succeed in what it was sent for.”

Thus says the Lord God.

We live today in a world of many words, many interpretations, and many opinions.  They can become distracters and dismantlers of the Word of God and the Truth that lies within.  Human beings cannot comprehend God to interpret what He says even though we try.  God speaks clearly and directly to His People.  He tells us what we need to know and then wants us to listen and obey His counsel.  He has given us His Spirit to know the Truth of what He speaks and to give us the understanding and the power to do as He says.

Rather than attempt to speak for God to one another we are to exhibit our wisdom and understanding by living His commandments, statutes, and rules as a witness to how great God is.  What we can speak to with confidence is what we see with our own eyes and what we experience of God in our own lives.  We are to be witnesses to what Jesus did and continues to do in our lives and in the lives of others.  We are to be witnesses to show that His teachings and His life were True and continue to be True today.  These are Truths not just opinions or interpretations.

Stories are a good vehicle for this.  Personal experience as a person encounters God and interacts with Him helps us build relationships with one another.  We see God’s working within us sometimes the same and sometime different from how He is working within others.  It brings life into our interactions with one another and that results in truly knowing one another and loving one another.

Sermons have been used for generations in our churches as the central part of the service.  That is not a bad thing but one must ask oneself, “How has that been working for us?”  Do we know God better?   Do we know one another better?  Do we love God better?  Do we love one another better?

Sermons fill the ears and head

Stories fill the heart

Sermon’s mix God’s Word with man’s words

And can dilute the influence of the Eternal Word.

If this has been working for us, fine.  If this has not been working for us maybe we need to think about doing things in a different way.

GOD'S OVERALL PLAN IS DWELLING WITH HIS PEOPLE

It is not about building the Kingdom

It is already built

It is not about building personal empires

It is not about building a church.

As in the garden in the Beginning

As in the New Jerusalem…

“Behold the dwelling place of God

Is with man…

They will be My people

And I will be their God.”

God has put eternity into man’s heart

Man cannot find out what God has done

From the beginning to the end.

God has done it

And it will last forever

Nothing can be added

Nothing can be taken away.

That which is, already has been

That which is to be, already has been.

“In My Father’s House

Are many rooms…

I go to prepare a place for you

So you can be with Me forever.

Return to God

The fountain of living water

Stop building your own cisterns

Broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Return to God

And live into your inheritance.

YOUR LAW IS MY DELIGHT

“Open my eyes that I may behold

Wondrous things out of your law.”

Psalm 119:18

The law of God is all around me.  It is in every sunrise and sunset, every change of season, every tree, plant, and flower that grows, everything that has life has life because of the law of God.  “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork”, and that handiwork is the fruit of His law.

According to the Psalmist the law of the Lord is perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, and TRUE.  The law of the Lord is manifested and fulfilled in Jesus so he is perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, and TRUE.  Everything in nature manifests the law of God.  It is what makes life grow within everything.  Human beings were created and designed to manifest God’s law, the fruit of which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

What stands as an obstacle to that manifestation is the flesh with its desires and passions; our conceit; our provoking one another, and envying one another.  Our flesh is temporary, a container for the Spirit that abides within us.  “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of God blows on it; surely the people are grass” (Isaiah 40:4-8).

When God created man He formed him from dust.  But He breathed within him, into his nostrils the breath of life.  That which is within is what gives us life.  That Spirit within us is the law of God we are to strengthen, operate from, and manifest, not the outward covering and container of the flesh.

Satan and sin appeal to the corruptible covering and container, tempting it with desires and passions.  God and righteousness appeal to the incorruptible  Spirit and Word of God, the true law of God within us, that will stand forever.

“Oh how I love Your law!  It is my meditation all the day.”

“It is my Delight.”