What is our reconciliation with God?

By samuel | Published: August 10, 2008

Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with God. There you have it. The begin­ning of a won­der­ful study through the Bible… tak­ing as the jump-off ledge 2 Corinthi­ans 5–17-19

There­fore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has rec­on­ciled us to Him­self through Jesus Christ, and has given us the min­istry of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, that is, that God was in Christ rec­on­cil­ing the world to Him­self, not imput­ing their tres­passes to them, and has com­mit­ted to us the word of reconciliation.

God pro­voked this by call­ing us his sons and daugh­ters, by Jesus call­ing us his friends and lit­tle brother and sisters.

  • In what way out should I relate to Father?
  • How does He act as a Father?
  • In what way does do my other titles as priest, ser­vant, etc come into play?

Where do I see glimpses, shad­ows and pic­tures of His per­son­al­ity, and how he deals with us, as described by the man Jesus Christ?

  • with Adam and Eve
  • with pre-Abraham
  • with Abra­ham
  • with Moses
  • with David
  • with Israel
  • you get the picture

A look at Jesus Christ is the next post. Stay tuned.

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Elijah’s Mission

By samuel | Published: May 31, 2008

Just had a won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion with our brother Kur­tis about the story of Eli­jah in 1 Kings 17 through 19. Fol­low­ing is a slightly cleaned-up ver­sion of his thoughts. My com­ments are right-aligned.

I woke up at 5AM for who knows what rea­son, but i didnt go back to sleep. I just thought of Eli­jah and his “mis­sion” and what the Lord thought of it.

 

Here’s Eli­jah, his heart is for set­ting Israel on the right track. That’s his prayer.

Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this peo­ple may know that You are the LORD God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again. (1 Kings 18:37)

“…and If I included that in my prayer, I thought for sure God was say­ing, ‘Yes, I agree’”

Boom, no rain in Israel for 3 1/2 years, that is big. God is whisk­ing him here and there all over the place pro­tect­ing him, he eats food from ravens, awsome stuff.

Eli­jah think­ings, “God is doing some­thing big!”

Then, he gets the “call”:
“Go, con­front Ahab!“
“woohoo, here we go!!!”

And man, that show­down on the moun­tain, insane, just incredible.

Eli­jah freak­ing out­runs a char­iot in a rain­storm off the power of God, his heart is at its peak of praise and won­der and finds, to his utter dis­may, that the kings heart has not turned.

“i have failed, i have failed!”

But what is God’s plan?  I think Eli­jah did exactly what was required of him.

He eats one meal and goes to Mt. Horeb (I think Sinai) and waits there. The word of the Lord says, “Eli­jah, what are you doing here?’ “Well, every­body is dead. I’ve failed. I’m am all that is left”

The word of the Lord tells him to go out­side and stand on the moun­tain in the pres­ence of the lord
and Eli­jah is in a cave, and the next thing he knows wind is rip­ping the moun­tain to pieces, and then an awful earth­quake (prob­a­bly ter­ri­fy­ing being in a cave dur­ing that), and then a fire sweeps over the moun­tain, all mighty things going before the Lord. Eli­jah hasn’t left the cave until he hears a small voice, and then he goes out before the Lord, and the Lord asks Him the same ques­tion, and Eli­jah gives the same answer.

I couldn’t sleep think­ing about it!

God prac­ti­cally turns Elijah’s world upside down with the drought and the sac­ri­fice and the super human speed and the typhoon and the meal that lasted 40 days and 40 nights and the God who’s pres­ence rips a moun­tain to pieces with fierce wind, shakes it in a mighty earth­quake, and burns it in fire, yet speaks in a small voice.

I some­times don’t expect that. Only when God whispered–came down to us–did Eli­jah emerge from the cave.

In the midst of fail­ure and flight, God gives Him a new mis­sion: Go, anoint kings. They will kill the prophets of Baal, and if they escape then the other king will kill them, and if that king, then the prophet in your place, and look, not all have bowed to Baal. I have reserved 7,000, you are not alone.

So God here is really doing what he seems to often do: Going the extra mile to show, to every­one and to us, that he is right and just in his action.

The story maybe is about who He is.

I agree. He is longsuffering

I’ve never met God like i met Him today in that chap­ter. “He knows we are but flesh.”

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Proverbs 31

By samuel | Published: May 1, 2008

Proverbs 31 Mindmap

Spent a bit more time on this one. Give me some feed­back (do the fonts look ok??). Two parts: One on who to give strong drinks to, and a sec­ond on a hard-to-find wife.

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Proverbs 30

By samuel | Published: May 1, 2008

Mindmap of Proverbs 30

A not-so-pretty, not so orga­nized out­lin­ish Proverbs 30…

And a maid­ser­vant when she sup­plants her mis­tress. -> I also think of Hagar and Sarah here. Think of how the earth has quaked because of that!

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Plans

By samuel | Published: April 19, 2008

I came across the fol­low­ing in today’s proverb:

There are many plans in a man’s heart,
Nev­er­the­less the LORD’s coun­sel — that will stand.1

I can only say AMEN! to that, as it brings much com­fort to my soul.  Almost any­thing is fas­ci­nat­ing to me, and thus I can quickly get wrapped up into plan­ning a project–but usu­ally only a few of these actu­ally stick.

  1. Proverbs 19:21 [↩]
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Cultivate Faithfulness

By samuel | Published: April 11, 2008

More on this farm­ing bit. Imag­ine a cow: regurgitation.

Lew and I read some Psalms together on Tues­day (I worked Swing Shift that day: 3 PM to 11 PM, nice for quiet time from 7ish to 2:30!).

Came across: “Trust in the LORD and do good; Dwell in the land and cul­ti­vate faith­ful­ness.” Psalm 37:3

Cul­ti­vate… Like farmers.

Cul­ti­vate… I love the word; it brings into our vocab and thus actions that of fos­ter­ing, prepar­ing, tend­ing, and maybe just a bit of coax­ing. Remem­ber that children’s book, “The Biggest Pump­kin Ever”? Two mice (unbe­knownst to each other) feed this one pump­kin sugar water each night… turn­ing it into the largest ever.

Each farmer has at least a cou­ple good tricks up their sleeves. I keep exclaim­ing, “How did he fig­ure out that?!” while read­ing Holzer’s dif­fer­ent methods.

Faith­ful­ness: The Scrip­tures men­tion this most in rela­tion to the Lord, so it only makes sense that when I see this in MYSELF it has come through the Holy Spirit1.

We see Father Love and come to the res­cue in accor­dance to His Faith­ful­ness, and also exact Jus­tice and con­dem­na­tion based on His Faithfulness.

He is Faith­ful to Who He Is, and What He Says He Is Going To Do. We are Faith­ful to Jesus. (one def­i­n­i­tion states: True and con­stant in affec­tion or alle­giance to a per­son to whom one is bound by a vow.) Praise God that “if we are faith­less, He remains faith­ful, for He can­not deny Him­self…“2 because “He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us…“3 “as a pledge of our inher­i­tance, with a view to the redemp­tion of God’s own pos­ses­sion, to the praise of His glory.“4

Cul­ti­vate Faith­ful­ness… in whom?

Myself, to Oth­ers and In Others.

Sow with a view to right­eous­ness,
Reap in accor­dance with kind­ness;
Break up your fal­low ground,
For it is time to seek the LORD
Until He comes to rain right­eous­ness on you.5

Also read John 15:1–17. “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, the kind of fruit that endures…”

  1. Gala­tians 5:22 [↩]
  2. 2 Tim­o­thy 2:13 [↩]
  3. 1 John 3:24 [↩]
  4. Eph­esians 1:14 [↩]
  5. Hosea 10:12 [↩]
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Abundant Food

By samuel | Published: April 11, 2008

“Abun­dant food is in the fal­low ground of the poor,
But it is swept away by injus­tice. ” ~Proverbs 13:23

Cur­rently I’m read­ing books about Agri­cul­ture. One is “Sepp Holzer: The Rebel Farmer”, another is “Edi­ble For­est Gar­dens: Eco­log­i­cal Vision and The­ory for Tem­per­ate Cli­mate Per­ma­cul­ture.” As you can prob­a­bly tell from the titles, the first is com­pletely down-to-earth, while the lat­ter has alot of “vision” and 50-cent words; but still is fun­da­men­tally chang­ing how I look at grow­ing food. That said: I have very lit­tle knowl­edge about grow­ing food in gen­eral, so this isn’t surprising!

I’m see­ing the com­plete truth in the above men­tioned proverb. This earth is teem­ing with life! Watch videos such as Green­ing the Desert & Farm­ing With Nature — Per­ma­cul­ture with Sepp Holzer and one can lit­er­ally see the poten­tial. As I read Holzer’s book the injus­tice high­lighted are civil ser­vants who won’t Lis­ten and Observe nature, but rather impose reg­u­la­tions as they were writ­ten. Add all the rest of mankind’s rebel­lion against God to the mix and you see what we have today.

I see plenty of “let’s cre­ate the per­fect world/humans through gar­dens” but seri­ously, I’m ok with putting up with (ignor­ing) that to learn a bit about neato agri­cul­ture. This earth is com­ing to an end, and when it my time to GO (Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus) I’ll be more than glad to drop my plow and go to that coun­try that I’ve been wait­ing for.

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Interest or Identification?

By samuel | Published: March 21, 2008

Today as my work day wound day I kept on look­ing at my watch. I wanted to leave by 5… but things kept on pop­ping up, which (gosh) delayed me to 5:15 (oh the horror!)

In the mid­dle of all this I started to feel that fran­tic feel­ing, you know, the kind that comes from self-entitlement. Self-entitlement has absolutely no place in the life of a Chris­t­ian! The life I live is not mine!

As this feel­ing arises I sit down, wait­ing for the com­puter to fin­ish backing-up… :: oh, I might as well stop being rushed and read Cham­bers while I wait::

Here’s what he has to say (which put the nail in the cof­fin on THAT feel­ing of entitlement):

“I have been cru­ci­fied with Christ.” Gala­tians 2:20

The imper­a­tive need spir­i­tu­ally is to sign the death war­rant of the dis­po­si­tion of sin, to turn all emo­tional impres­sions and intel­lec­tual beliefs into a moral ver­dict against the dis­po­si­tion of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself. Paul says — “I have been cru­ci­fied with Christ”; he does not say — “I have deter­mined to imi­tate Jesus Christ,” or, “I will endeav­our to fol­low Him” — but — “I have been iden­ti­fied with Him in His death.” When I come to such a moral deci­sion and act upon it, then all that Christ wrought for me on the Cross is wrought in me. The free com­mit­tal of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart to me the holi­ness of Jesus Christ.

“… nev­er­the­less I live.…” The indi­vid­u­al­ity remains, but the main­spring, the rul­ing dis­po­si­tion, is rad­i­cally altered. The same human body remains, but the old satanic right to myself is destroyed.

“And the life which I now live in the flesh … ‚” not the life which I long to live and pray to live, but the life I now live in my mor­tal flesh, the life which men can see, “I live by the faith of the Son of God.” This faith is not Paul’s faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith that the Son of God has imparted to him — “the faith of the Son of God.” It is no longer faith in faith, but faith which has over­leapt all con­scious bounds, the iden­ti­cal faith of the Son of God.

Quite fit­ting for Good Fri­day :) Emily also pointed out that the Gyros Sand­wich that we ate today is also quite fitting.

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Mind renovation

By samuel | Published: March 13, 2008

This is a prettty amaz­ing thing: “Don’t be con­formed to this world, but be trans­formed by the renew­ing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)

I like it when God speaks. One idea and my mind changes. It is renewed. He ACTUALLY ren­o­vates it. As one comes into a room and starts arrang­ing, clean­ing, dust­ing, fix­ing bro­ken dry­wall, replac­ing burnt-out lights, and throw­ing junk out, so God reaches into my mind and tweaks it. Some­times alot.

Today God spoke. With one idea he cor­rected my entire line of think­ing on a sub­ject.  Pre­vi­ously I could turn it over and over, con­sid­er­ing the options: now shut.

Let’s see if I can be even more vague next time :)

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Psalm doodles

By samuel | Published: March 2, 2008

Last cou­ple of days I’ve been draw­ing VERY quick doo­dles (we’re talk­ing stick fig­ures here) of the Psalms I read. I must be a visual per­son, because I can remem­ber them now… maybe sim­ply tak­ing the time to visu­al­ize while read­ing? does the trick :)

This morn­ing I found a delight­ful site which has a guy’s own doo­dles — http://www.quagmus.com.

Here is one of his:
1 Corinthians 9.25-27 (shoes)

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