Friday, March 27, 2020

Why Do We Hide?


Why Do We Hide?

Why do we hide from God?  Why do we regard everything in physical terms?  God has used many individuals in the Bible to bring to the attention of the people their erroneous ways of thinking and perceiving things in physical terms.  

We are the image and likeness of God.  Yes, there are physical aspects but the greatest aspect is our spiritual nature.  That should be the focus of our lives and attention – not the physical.  God discourages us from focusing on the physical.

God wants us to love Him for who He really is, not some physical form.  We fail to honor God and deceive when we focus on the physical and end up distracted by it.  We must seek after Him, who He is, and have a relationship with Him.  

We need to unburden ourselves of the physical world and seek after the spiritual relationship we should have with God.  The purest form of that relationship was in the Garden before the fall.  Why do we not seek to recapture that relationship, as it was in the Garden, by focusing on the spiritual nature rather than the physical nature Satan would have us follow?

We fail to see the truth because we have been blinded by Satan’s desire to corrupt and destroy creation as God made it and us to be.  We are to be brave and true to God’s intent and desire for us by standing in contrast to the desires of Satan and the world that follows him.

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Why do we reject the very Image of God?

Of all of God's creations there is one that we as a culture depress. We reject it, we seek to destroy it, we belittle it, and we degrade it. We seek to hide it, we mock and shame those who display it publicly. It is demonized, rejected, and mocked, it is treated as an object of lust rather than beauty worthy of our deepest admiration. We reject its divinity, hide its glory, and work tirelessly to shame its image and those who dare to show this Godly creation in any public way.

This grandest of all creation is common, normal, and natural. Satan has so successfully infiltrated religion, church, and humanity to destroy the very nature of its nature as if it never existed to begin with. Satan degrades its beauty to raw lust.

This creation is living, breathing, loving, and divine to its very nature and existence. It is so sacred and beautiful that Satan has spent much effort to destroy and warp the divinity of this Godly creation. Gen 1: 26-27. It is to be admired, respected, loved, and it reflects the divinity of God. Our bodies represent the Divine image of God manifested in human form and represents our humanity gloriously displayed. It was not created to be covered or shielded from view. It is the only creation of God we seek to cover and hide.

We must not be ashamed or fear our bodies or the bodies of others. If we reject our own bodies by hiding them we reject the very image and essence of God and the Divinity we contain of God in us. We must reject Satan telling us that we are dirty, evil, abhorrent, and repugnant. We have allowed Satan to distort, destroy, and undermind our bodies as Gods greatest creation.

We need to embrace the beauty of our creation and show the true nature of being, true nature of who we are and who God is by accepting the very image of God within our hearts, minds, culture, and beliefs. We need to be tolerant, unashamed, liberal, earth friendly, etc. God does not want His light, His sunsets, His tabernacles, or anything else of His to be hidden from view. Many will argue about the place of clothing in the world and culture. While it may be a matter of practicality it should not be a matter of hiding who and what we are in God. The grandest of his creations and we should celebrate this as His children.

Friday, March 13, 2020

Acknowledging God Before Others


Acknowledging God Before Others

Live according to our calling, as a child of God, different from the world.  Do everything we do for the glory of God regardless of context (church, work, home, or elsewhere).  We are not to put our Faith in a box.

Do we deny God explicitly or are we denying God by the way we live?

Do we deny God by what we selectively stand for, versus what we choose to remain silent about?  Truth, reason, and justice are not excused from acknowledgement.  Simply because they are not popular in culture or the church.  Passivity is not a justification.  If we do not fight for truth, it will become irrelevant, and one day we will wake up without any basis for the freedoms or voice we once had for God’s glory and the good of other people.

God has given each of us unique gifts, voices, platforms, and influence to be effective agents of light in a world ruled by darkness.  Our enemy is the darkness and sin of this world that Satan is using to destroy God’s creation.  Man has been deceived by Satan’s demons leading the charge of the culture of death.  Where are we as Christians who should be acknowledging God and Christ in our lives and who led by the Holy Spirit must work to restore the creation of God in preparation of the return of Christ, His Son, to its rightful glory and nature?

Too often we are hiding from God’s presence, just as Adam and Eve did.  We may hear that “still small voice”, but we turn off our minds and just go with the flow, unresistingly following the dictates of our human nature, which has been under Satan’s influence since the Garden.  We believe Satan and the men who follow his direction, corruption, deceit, and destruction.  We fail to be as God made us, intended us to be, wants us to be, following the purpose God mandated for us in His creation and world.

We are told not to love the things of this world because if we do, the love of God is not in us.  James said, “don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?  Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God?” (James 4:4).  Most Christians spend more time on the computer, watching TV, or spending time on their own hobbies than they do in the Word of God (the Bible) or in prayer.  Of and by themselves, these things are not wrong, but when we spend most of our time doing these things, we are showing God that these are the real priorities in our lives.  How our time is spent shows us where our hearts are.  What absorbs our will, our time, our resources most of all?  Is it careers, material possessions, money, health, even our families?

We should desire to build up our knowledge of God.  We seem to have lost that desire these days.  Apart from the Bible, which we should be reading daily, we need to supplement our knowledge by reading other good books, too.  We need to fill our minds constantly with the things of God; God should always be on our mind, and everything we do should be done with reference to Him.  We need to return to the Garden, walk and talk with God, and be as He intended us and purposed us to be.

The Greek word for “worship” in Romans 12:1 can also mean “service”.  Our daily lives should be considered as worship.  Everyday we should offer ourselves wholly as living sacrifices, being and living as He intended, holy and pleasing to Him.  We, the church, should be impacting the world and Satan’s agenda, but too often it’s the other way around.

We should be living as God created us, how He created us, fulfilling the commission He gave us, and whatever else He may place in our hearts to nurture His creation and each other.  In this way we acknowledge and honor His Son, Christ, who died to redeem us, and give glory to God.