When life is not fair: then I must leave the “fair/unfair” plane of existence. I must heighten my meager “fairness” concept to find God’s Spirit of life. I must accept my day’s wage of a penny, and realize that all get the same, “grace.” Kristen Butler said this “Sometimes you just need to talk to a four year old and an 84 year old to understand life again. powerofpositivity “If life is unfair with everyone, doesn’t that make life fair?” — Magaola Friends, accepting the unfairness of life — does that help us? I think rather that it breeds pessimism. No, our Father instead has asked us to climb into His wisdom and insight — to share with Him the deep meaning of the universe He created, and also later redeemed. The point of unfairness lies in our tainted, finite, partially blinded perspective — not in some seeming oversight of God. God…
Category: <span>God’s Psychology</span>
Let’s move from grace to graciousness. 1Peter 1:13 teaches, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Lets look closer: Wherefore . “Because of ‘the glorious free grace opened for Gentiles and Jews in Christ.’” Girding up. “…vivid metaphor for habit of the Orientals, who quickly gathered up their loose robes with a girdle when in a hurry or starting on a journey.” The loins, “Old word for the part of the body where the girdle was worn. A metaphor. “The believer is to have his mind (mental powers) collected and always ready for Christ’s coming. “Gather in the strength of your spirit.” A.T Robertson Mind, “Old word for the faculty of understanding, of seeing through a thing.” A.T. Robertson Be sober. “spiritual self-restraint, lest one be…
Let’s move from grace to graciousness. 1Peter 1:13 teaches, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Lets look closer: Wherefore . “Because of ‘the glorious free grace opened for Gentiles and Jews in Christ.’” Girding up. “…vivid metaphor for habit of the Orientals, who quickly gathered up their loose robes with a girdle when in a hurry or starting on a journey.” The loins, “Old word for the part of the body where the girdle was worn. A metaphor. “The believer is to have his mind (mental powers) collected and always ready for Christ’s coming. “Gather in the strength of your spirit.” A.T Robertson Mind, “Old word for the faculty of understanding, of seeing through a thing.” A.T. Robertson Be sober. “spiritual self-restraint, lest one be…
2 Thessalonians 2:3 teaches: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first…” “On May 17, 1863, Paris saw the opening of the Salon des Refusés, an exhibition of artworks that were rejected by the jury of the prestigious Paris Salon. It was the very first time the term avant garde, or avant-garde, was used in relations to the arts, and it marked the beginning of a cultural revolution. Renowned painters like Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet and Camille Pissaro, cast aside by the critics and the public for not being conservative to their taste, organized their own shows throughout the French capital, featuring now legendary paintings. Attracting thousands of visitors, these artists announced a certain kind of rebellion that would come to influence an entire century and a half of art movements and like-minded artists, despite the ongoing ridicule they received from…
“ Here and there, in clefts and basins, and on the hillsides, grade on grade, you observe a patch of corn, a clump of olives, a single palm.” “Even in the wilderness nature is not so stern as man.” Taken from Hepworth Dixon (“The Holy Land”) Metanoea, Metanoea Metanoea! (Repent, Repent, Repent!) The kingdom of heaven is at hand! John the Baptist/Herald proclaimed in the wilderness — Repent! “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” Camel’s hair, and a leather girdle about his loins he wore. Locusts and wild honey was his meat. “Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.” Matthew 3:5-6 Repent?— “a virtuous alteration of the mind and purpose as begets a like virtuous change in the life and practice.” Sorrow is not, as is popularly conceived, the primary notion of…
In order to know we are safe, our knowledge must be of a deeper kind: “The general word in the New Testament for knowledge is (gnosis) (knowledge stored on the left side of the brain, the perception and awareness area) To be vital, knowledge must go beyond (gnosis), and become (epignosis), which is experiential knowledge applied to the human soul — it gives a preciseness and experiential understanding of truth. The exchange is accomplished as knowledge transfers through the new heart ( in the human spirit) of a saved believer. Ezekiel 36:26 When God’s knowledge (His Word), is.transferred by the Holy Spirit to the human spirit, then it makes the written Word a Living Word — renews us continually and protects us invisibly. Let’s further describe epignosis; Epignosis enables a believer to live according to spiritual ethics. The believer has more than definitions. He has power in truth. There is purity in his thinking process,…
“…we must also accept the reality of our incompleteness.” Gerald G. May M.D. From his book “Addiction and Grace.” He starts in, “We can and should do our very best to move in that direction, (to achieve the state of perfection.) struggling with every resource we have. but…”we need to recognize that the incompleteness in us, our personal insufficiency, does not make us unacceptable in God’s eyes.” “Far from it, our incompleteness is the empty side of our longing for God and for love. It is what draws us toward love and one another.” “if we do not fill our minds with guilt and self-recriminations, we will recognize our incompleteness as a kind of spaciousness into which we can welcome the flow of grace.” “We can think of our inadequacies as terrible defects, if we want, and hate ourselves. But we can also think of them affirmatively, as doorways…
Ephesians 2:7 “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Kindness? Luke 7:37-50 explains this “kindness.” “And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And…
“For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” 2 Corinthians_8:9 ” For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 Again and again, the Bible tells me and you about an exchange. Christ’s death for my life, Christ’s death for your life. “One died for all — we’re all dead.” 2 Corinthians 5:14 “Planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.” Romans 6:5 We also, while applying these truths to our hearts, must perform our own exchange by faith. We exchange our past — our history for God’s history, and allow His obedience to become our own. We “bring every thought…
In every person there lies hidden, a cry for love. Why hidden? Love’s lacking has built a fortress of defense — a defense which protects the cry. It can be destroyed. It is not eternal, but a human cry — a cry which burros deeper at every resistance, at every abuse — at every un-loving. We don’t deserve love, nevertheless we cry for it; we have squandered it, still, we seek it more. We have accepted lesser forms of love: physical touch, social acceptance, a paycheck. True love beckons from somewhere beyond, somewhere below, the vague within. It’s unexplainable, imponderable, mystical, baffling. The goal of God re-invigorates our souls crying. His aim re-awakens the stifled need. He seeks to un-bury the raw beckoning because He can’t fill an already filled box. But how accomplish this? God withdraws the manifestation of His presence. And the Psalmist bellows out: “Do not hide your face…