HOW SMALL IS YOUR god?

"The person who does not know the living God is condemned, by the gods of their own making".
These  small gods are petty and not that much better,if at all, than the rest of humanity.These small gods  that men and women have made for themselves ,throughout the ages,are jealous ,petty and lacking love and mercy, only a little greater than they themselves.They are  only a little stronger, only a little wiser, but never anything any better. Immortal they are thought to be and always afraid of their mortal children, they are conveniently protected by a too fortunate gift of immortality. These gods are always fighting amongst themselves and never it seems, ever lead by  good  and loving examples. Are the people ever transformed by these gods? Are the people who worship and honor these man-made gods ever transformed into loving,compassionate and forgiving people? I have found that people who honor the gods of their own making are just like their gods. And those who honor and follow the Infinite and true God sooner or later WILL be transform in that likeness as well. So who do you want to emulate? Do you have a small and petty god, a god that is not loving, nor do they care about what is going on in your life, nor help you try to change it?

Let me tell you about the True Living God. This God of abundant love and amazing grace has willed to give us everything we truly need ,as a free gift. Jesus left the realm of heaven and came to the place of death to show us who the Living God truly is, who gave His life so that we might live. That is not what any puny man -made god,has ever been able to do.

I think many times we as Christians bring with us to the Body, that is Christ, a small vision or expectation of who or what the True God really is. Many of us bring the man-made vision of god with us. Here is were our problems begin and end. I think many of us read into the Bible this very small god, the god of hate and fear that we thought we left behind. I think a major hindrance we bring to our Bible study is that we have in many places a too literal reading of scriptures and in other places our reading should be more literal. We fail to understand that although Scriptures are God Breathed they are written by mere mortals with their own beliefs,  filters and blockages. The Scriptures reveal the true and infinite God in the person of Jesus Christ and in all references to Him ,I take for the most part as literal, the rest I take as a means for the Holy Spirit to guide me daily in the way I should go. The Bible is a revelation of the 'experiences of God' that people have had, and the walk they had trying to figure out what it all meant to them. These people were not perfect in any way ,shape or form, but they experienced the Infinite God in personal and unique ways to them and the Bible is the stories of those encounters, with all the good , the bad and the ugly of their own personal natures put in there for good measure. We must also remember that the culture 2000 to5000 years ago is very different than our own as well! Our Infinite God does not condone all the behaviors we read about, and just because it is in the Bible does not make it the way God would have us personally to go now in this age, that is why we need our own personal encounter with the Infinite God and the personal guidance with that Holy Spirit on a moment by moment basis.

I read earlier this month that the author Anne Rice said she had left Christianity because of well ,Christians,  many leave for the same reason , but I ask  all of  you who have left Churches for that same reason : "Are you really more perfect than the rest of us Christians? Are you able to live the life of Christ better than the rest of us? Can you hear from God better than the rest of us? Are you always able to respond in all circumstances with total love, peace and forgiveness? Are you the only one that can read Scriptures as they were intended? If so , then you have made it to perfection, but please forgive the rest of us who are still in the process of becoming all that Christ would have us to be. I am glad you have made it, but please have patience with the rest of us because we are slow learners."

The Body of Christ the Church which is ALL  Churches and Denominations that  put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ are not perfect only the Head which is Christ IS. The perfection we seek, we will never fully comprehend nor master until Christ returns , until then the Church will have to learn to put their trust in the Living God  and follow after the Spirit of Christ. The Church is a family and like all families we are a disfunctional lot most of the time, but once in a while we get it right, but hey, that is why we are family we need each other to help  when we are not able to get off the ground and stand up by ourselves,  you see, we have to embrace one another before we can get up on our own 2 feet, and that is why we need each other and it is not wise to go it all alone.
The Infinite God I love has told us that we will know His true followers by 2 things............LOVE, for God and one another and  by our FRUIT. So if you go to a church that does not have these signs, then either stay and love and guide them back to God  , or go to a Church that does have fruit and love but either way let the Spirit of God lead you  in the way you are to go, it won't always be the same guidance for everyone, some are told to stay and love and others told to move on.
So how small is your god? My God led by example in the life of Jesus Christ and I have chosen to follow him, as imperfect as I am.
Go in love and shalom
blessings

In all my studies about myths and legends I have found to my amazement and dismay how similar they all are to each other, and this brought to me much confusion for a long time. Many use this fact as a reason NOT to believe the story of Jesus Christ to be true because many cultures have similar stories of a dying god. But what if the reason for the similarities is because our Creator was preparing our minds and hearts to a true realization of these myths? The Old Testament and the religion of the Jews was to prepare the Jews for the fulfillment of their religion , rituals and traditions that pictured the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What I find fascinating is that our Creator has left all cultures clues to the Truth, and although there is many differences among these cultures, many of these 'myths' are too similar to disregard. I believe they all tell the same story but throughout the centuries and because of the differences in these cultures many of the truths got confused and distorted.

Our seasons and the cycle they make tell the same lessons to all of us, the phases of the Moon and her changes tells the same lessons but in a different way. I believe we need to take the similarities of these myths and legends and see what is the common grain of truth they speak to us of and utilize and incorporate this knowledge in our lives. It does not make one more right than the other, but some 'myths' are closer to the truth than others and by our reliance on Spirit, we need to trust Spirit's guidance into what it is Spirit is saying to us. It may be that some of these Myths prepared us for the real thing. There are just too many instances in the New World of the people being prepared for the coming of the White man and the religion they would bring, and the destruction they would bring to their own lives and cultures as well, you just can't disregard this, and say this is false.

So here is a fascinating essay on this topic and read it with an open heart, and may you be blessed by it as I was.

Bright blessings,

Jesus: True Myth and True History

* This essay is adapted from G. Boyd & P. Eddy, Lord or Legend? (Baker, 2007).

Though the Jesus story gives us every reason to believe it is substantially rooted in history, it has a curious, and fascinating, relationship with myth and legend.

The story of God coming to earth, being born of a virgin, manifesting a heroic, counter-cultural love toward outcasts, dying for the people who crucified him and then rising from the dead has a familiar “echo” to it. If we haven’t completely deafened our ears to it, hearing this story has an affect on us that is a bit like recalling a long forgotten dream. On some level, there’s a part of us that seems to intuitively “remember” something when we come in contact with the loving savior portrayed in the Gospels. Though it may be suppressed under layers of cynicism and apathy produced by the harshness or sheer monotony of life, and though we may not be able to express it in words, something within us senses that this story puts us in touch with a dream about the way things are supposed to be. It reconnects us with something we’ve lost along the way, something we’ve perhaps given up on, something we’ve forgotten.

Throughout history, and in every culture, people have, in a wide variety of ways, recalled this dream, even without having had any contact with the Jesus story. They’ve expressed this dream through myths and legends. We in modern western culture sometimes respond to unbelievable stories by saying, “Oh, that is just a myth.” “Myth” and “legend” are for most people equivalent to “untrue.” (Hence the visceral fear some modern Christians have about conceding anything in the Bible may be myth). But, as the great mythologist Joseph Campbell has noted, there is a much more profound sense in which myths and legends can be very true. At their best, myths and legends express our innermost sense of reality, our deepest longings, the obstacles we face in pursuing these longings, and our hope that somehow, someday, these longings will be satisfied. (1) In other words, myths and legends express a dream.

Campbell’s observation goes a long way in explaining the curious relationship the Jesus story has with myth and legend. While the Jesus story is unquestionably grounded in history (See P. Eddy & G. Boyd, The Jesus Legend) it nevertheless bears a certain resemblance to certain myths and legends. The resemblance is due to the fact that this story incarnates in actual history the sense of reality, the longing, the obstacles and the hopes that all great myths and legends express. In Jesus, God shows his love for the world by becoming a human, serving sinners, dying on a cross, rising from the dead, defeating the devil, rescuing humanity and giving them eternal life in fellowship with himself. This is the heart of the Jesus story, and it expresses and addresses a dream that is buried in the depths of the human heart.

While some have tried to use mythic and legendary parallels to argue against the historicity of the Jesus story, these vague mythic and legendary parallels are actually what we should expect if indeed the Jesus story is “true”—in the fullest sense of the term. After all, one aspect of the Jesus story, extending back into the Old Testament, is the teaching that humans are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28). We’re thus “wired” for God, if you will. Not only this, but the New Testament itself declares that Jesus is the light “of all people” (John 1:4, 9) who is always working in the hearts of all people to lead them back to himself (Acts 17:26-28, cf. Rom 1:19-20). (2) We should thus expect to find “echoes” of the Jesus story expressed in the myths and legends of all people.

C. S. Lewis expresses this insight when he writes:

Theology, while saying that a special illumination has been vouchsafed to Christians and (earlier) to Jews, also says that there is some divine illumination vouchsafed to all men… We should, therefore, expect to find in the imagination of the great Pagan teachers and myth makers some glimpse of that theme which we believe to be the very plot of the whole cosmic story—the theme of incarnation, death, and rebirth. (3)

The difference between these myths and legends, on the one hand, and the Jesus story, on the other, is not a “difference between falsehood and truth.” They are both true, but in different senses. As Lewis continues, the difference between them is,

…the difference between a real event on the one hand and dim dreams or premonitions of that same event on the other. It is like watching something come gradually into focus; first it hangs in the clouds of myth and ritual, vast and vague, then it condenses, grows hard and in a sense small, as a historical event in first century Palestine. (4)

This is why Lewis contended that Jesus was “Myth became Fact.” In Jesus, “the essential meaning of all things came down from the ‘heaven’ of myth to the ‘earth’ of history.”(5) The dream expressed in myth and legend, including the premonition of a dying and rising God, is perfectly expressed and becomes historically true in the story of Jesus of Nazareth.

The famous author of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, J.R. Tolkien, makes the same point when he says,

The Gospels contain a fairy-story…which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe [viz. a climatic eruption of joy].

Yet, the story of Jesus in the New Testament isn’t only a fairy-story, according to Tolkien, but a fairy-story incarnated in real time and space. In the person of Jesus, an all-embracing fairy-story

…has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. The story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality.’ There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. . .

And from this Tolkien concludes:

[The Christian] story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused. (6)

What Lewis and Tolkien are saying is that the Jesus story fulfills the intuitions and longings expressed in many myths and legends. The God revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the reality to which certain aspects of various myths and legends point. Jesus is the reality all authors of myths and legends, together with the rest of us, dream of.

If we are honest with ourselves, and if we grasp the depth of the “good news” this story embodies, something quite like the Jesus story is what we hope to be true. Yet, most amazingly, this story gives us reason to believe it is historically true.

We have reason, therefore, to conclude that this story is, at the same time, both true myth and true history.

Endnotes

(1) J. Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and Religion (New York: van der Marck, 1986) 55.

(2) for example D. Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts, rev. ed. (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1984 [1981]); idem, Peace Child, 3rd ed. (Glendale, CA: Regal, 1976 [1974]).

(3) C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?,” in his The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1980 [1949]) 128.

(4) Ibid., 128-29.

THE POWER OF GOD IN OUR LIFE,IS IN OUR IDENTITY

blue butterfly by P.A.T.C
Many believers are a bit confused as to who they really are in the eyes of God. They base their identity either on what they do for a living or what sin they happen to be trying to over come, like I am a doctor, I am a teacher, I am a wife, or I am a husband. Or they identify with the sin that so easy besets us like , I am a sinner, I am an alcoholic , I am a homosexual, I am an adulterer , I am a thief, I am a prostitute and so forth, you get the picture. So we need to come to terms with who we really are , as a believer what is our identity ? Is who we are , dependent on our behavior or by what we do, or by who we are in Gods eyes?

The whole world has ALREADY BEEN RECONCILED to God through the cross, but does that mean that the whole world is saved right now? If salvation is just a person being reconciled to God then the answer would be YES, but that is not what the Bible/God says salvation is ,does it? No salvation is when a person hears the gospel of Jesus Christ, receives Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior , and believes he died for his sin and has forgiven him of all of his sins, AT THAT MOMENT THAT PERSON'S DEAD SPIRIT HAS BEEN BORN AGAIN! S/He has been reconciled to God the barrier which was sin between God and humanity has been taken away by Jesus Christ who is the bridge between God and humankind.Reconciliation has been accomplished for the whole world through Christ but that alone is not salvation, it is just one half of the equation.The reason God has removed the sin barrier is so that WHOSOEVER will come to Christ by faith can become alive in HIM. The ONLY SIN that will keep a person from eternity with God is UNBELIEF ! John 3:18 states: " Whoever believes in Him is not condemned but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." To be condemned already means you are ALREADY DEAD! Not because of your sins but because of your UNBELIEF! The Gospel is the announcement of and ACCOMPLISHED FACT!!! GOD'S WORK OF RECONCILIATION HAS ALREADY TAKEN PLACE! It is something God took the initiative to do , nothing we can do or ever do will make it happen.

So if you are a believer and have faith in the accomplished work done on the cross by Jesus Christ you are saved in your spirit. Your spirit which was dead because you were a child of Adam has now been born brand new and you are now a child of God in Christ. Take for instance the caterpillar, it is an earthbound crawling critter, it weaves a cocoon and it becomes totally immersed within it. A wonderful transformation takes place and when it comes out of that cocoon it is now a new creature that is no longer earth bound and flies in the sky. It now views life from a whole new perspective, and in the same way , you as a new creation in Christ must see yourself as God now sees you. It would never occur to you as a butterfly to introduce yourself as a converted caterpillar, no you are a new creature you are a butterfly that is who you are now. So stop seeing your self as a converted sinner, of what ever sin that once held you in it's grips. Although you might not always act as a good butterfly should, you are still a butterfly you will never ever be a caterpillar again, although you can choose to act like one. Even though you still may commit sins, it does not make you a sinner only if you identify yourself by your behavior ,by what you do, but if you identify yourself as God sees you , then you have a whole lot more chances to overcome these sins in your life by the power of your new identity in Christ. The highest motivation to living like the saint you are is found in Eph.5:8: "For you were ONCE DARKNESS, but NOW YOU ARE LIGHT in the Lord. LIVE as children OF THE LIGHT." .....you were once a caterpillar but now a butterfly so live as a butterfly and fly like one! Why should you live as a child of the light? BECAUSE YOU ARE A CHILD OF THE LIGHT! The power you need in your life is in how you see yourself, if you see yourself as a sinner then sinner you be, if you see yourself as a child of God in Christ then that is how you will live your life. The power is in who or what you identify yourself with. If you identify as an alcoholic then that is what you are, but if you identify yourself as a new born child of the living God then that is how you will live your life.

The world says we need a better or more positive self image of ourselves and they say that is what will bring you success, and it is true to some extent. We need to stop defining who we are by our failures, the TRUTH is what Gods says about you and I as believers in Christ, that is the only TRUTH there is. According to God there are only 2 identities mentioned in the Scriptures, IN ADAM and IN CHRIST. All of humanity are naturally born IN ADAM and the consequences of that identity is by nature DEATH! we are already dead as far as God is concerned! So what does it take for any person to go to JUDGEMENT AND CONDEMNATION? NOTHING! We are already condemned when we are born, we have no hope.That is the inheritance given to us by our earthly first parents who passed on the sin nature/diseased gene to all their off spring we are all born dying until we finally die. So when you believe in Jesus you changed who you now identify with, you no longer are in ADAM but now in CHRIST, AND WHO AND WHAT HE IS NOW YOU ARE in your spirits. So your identity is not based on your behavior, but your identity in Christ. So you don't need a good or positive self image you need a Proper Self image and one that comes from God's word. The believers true identity in Christ is the Central issue to experiencing the real Christian life! The truth of the matter is that now as a believer in Christ that God sees us as totally acceptable and righteous in His sight right NOW! Not because of what we do, but because of what Christ has done for us. We don't need many lives to become perfect, there are not enough lives to ever be perfect in Gods eyes, just one will make us perfect and that is Christ's Resurrected life in us.

What many failed to understand about Christianity is that Christianity is NOT A SELF IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM! It is not A REFORMATION PROJECT, it is A RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD! IT IS A NEW LIFE , we exchanged our old worn out life for Jesus Christ's life and His life now becomes our own. We give Christ all that we were , sinners , guilty and dead, and Christ gives us all that HE IS , a resurrected life, of forgiveness, righteousness and acceptance! We have been made perfect, in our own eyes, no ,never! According to our right behavior? Never! We have been made perfect in God's eyes by Christ! and that is an awesome and wonderful gift. So are we now perfectly mature, NOPE That will not happen until the resurrection when we receive our new glorified bodies to go along with our already resurrected perfect spirits that we already now possess. When we are saved our spirits have been born again, they are brand new but our souls and bodies have not been. We have to constantly renew our minds/souls to Gods perspective from this point on and it is a lifelong process. As long as your spirits live in your body you will wrestle with the desires of the flesh and you have to with time learn to make the right choices to avoid unnecessary temptations. But over time the Lord will renew your mind with His truth, that will bring your emotions and desires in line with who we really are, a new creation in Christ, Your daily decisions then are to apply Galatians 5:16" But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh."

The goal of a Christian's life is NOT TO QUIT SINNING! no matter who tells you this, it is not what the goal of a Christian is.Christ did not come to improve the flesh, he came to execute it and to give us a new life! Trying to clean up your life is merely returning back to the law which is an exercise of futility! God's love working within our hearts deals with us on a level that neither the law or self discipline can ever reach.

Faith , there is no power in faith itself! The real value of faith is found only in it's object and God is it. You can't have great faith, but you do have a great God! You only need to have enough faith to take God at His word! The size of one's faith is not important, what is important is the will of God. You and I are not responsible for producing the Christian life. We are not even able to produce the Christian life , ONLY CHRIST CAN DO THAT! Our responsiblity is to maintain a dependent, receiving attitude, the same attitude that was available in Jesus' life when he walked the earth. It is Christ that will produce the life and the fruit in our lives. The truth of the matter is that God has ALREADY DONE IT ALL! in Christ!There is NOTHING left to do. God does not need our abilities, He is the only able one! He needs for you and I to be AVAILABLE to what God wants to do IN US. The power for us is to know that the word of God is our authority and the only standard for truth. The renewing our our minds is looking at ourselves and our circumstances from God's perspective, by doing so , it brings light into all our circumstances. The true power in our Christian life is not how much we study, or what we do, it is who we are now from God's point of view, let us begin to see ourselves in the light of Gods word which is that we are now IN Christ and as He is so are we , GOD will always see Christ life in us forevermore, and therein is the power we need to live our lives today.

Gods blessings on you!

FORCE FEEDING THE BIBLE

Florida school district bans Bibles on Religious Freedom Day
— posted by jeff kunerth on July, 1 2010 2:43 PM

Maitland-based Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit Thursday to overturn a ban on Bible distribution on public school campuses in Collier County. According to the Liberty Counsel, the Collier County School Board allowed World Changers to distribute free Bibles to students during off-school hours on Religious Freedom Day, but now the school officials claim that Bibles do not provide any educational benefit to the students and the distribution should stop.

The Collier County School District policy specifically allows the distribution of literature by nonprofit organizations, but only with the approval of the superintendent and the Community Request Committee, whose members are appointed by the superintendent. Approval was denied to World Changers, despite the fact that its distribution included a disclaimer of any school endorsement or sponsorship and that receiving a Bible was purely voluntary.

“How sad that on the eve of Independence Day, when we celebrate the religious and political freedom our forefathers won for us at the cost of much blood and great sacrifice, we are compelled to sue to protect the right simply to make free Bibles available to students in public schools,” said Mathew D. Staver, Liberty Counsel founder.

Click here to read the lawsuit: :http://www.liberty.edu/media/9980/attachments/complaint_
world_changers_070110.pdf
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MY TAKE ON THIS:
You know I have no problems about giving Bibles to people, but I do have problems giving them to children on school property. If you want to give away bibles, ok, do so, but keep the lines of Church and State separate and don't go behind parents backs in doing so. We cry out in outrage, that parents are being by passed with allowing children to have sex education or abortions without parents input and  knowing about it, but it is ok to give out bibles to kids on school grounds knowing how this is not the way to go about spreading the Gospel.
To spread the Gospel, one must first live it! One must be willing to be led of God to whomever God wants to reveal himself to. It is God who draws each of us to him, we can not go forcing the issue upon people and children who have not asked for it . People know where churches are, they know where Christians live and they have Internet and can Google what ever they wish. Let people make their own choices. Stop forcing people to hear the Gospel , if they are not ready , more harm than good is done. If a person is in 'seeker' mode, God and the Holy Spirit is more than able to get that person to the right servant of God who God has already prepared in advance for such a meeting.
These kinds of things done by church who apparently do not trust God to do the job right, cause more harm than good.
If you must hand out bibles, place them in public areas and let people decide for themselves if they want one. To shove a bible into the face of a young child can be scary especially if the people doing the shoving are forceful and if a child chooses not to take one, many  of these supposed Christians will scream out 'your going to hell' if they don't take one. Really folks, use the common sense God has given you, and the common courtesy to allow each of us to make our own decisions when it comes to religion.
Reading about this issue from both sides I can see why the unbelievers are so against the Christian community. They see the Christian religion being shoved down peoples throats and it really does not look good. Many Christians are calling this religious persecution, how so? If you were not breaking the law then you wouldn't be persecuted. These folks knew that what they were doing was wrong and to do so anyway and then get stopped in their tracks is not persecution, go to any third world country to see what real persecution looks like! These people get killed just for converting to Christianity! Here we in America just force people to become converts, no that is not persecution. Many in the Christian communities are believing that their rights are being taken from them, no , it is just that Christians never really had the rights to do many of the things they are use to doing and many folks are tired of how things have been and are now setting it right. Get use to it.
Please live the Gospel and be open to God's leading. And let the Holy Spirit lead people to you.
for what it is worth.
blessings.