Reflections

God is a Mystery

by leekierdorf

God is a mystery. He has revealed himself to us humans. But we should not try to move past this revelation into our own ideas.

As created in the image and likeness of God, we can relate to him. But can we understand him? It is like asking if you can understand the ocean. Yes, you know something of the ocean, and you can experience the ocean. But can you understand the ocean?

We should, and this is not easy, to keep a balance between reverence and love. He is our Father but he is also the greatest Being who created all and has no beginning or end and lives outside of time.

But we have so much revealed to us through Jesus to contemplate that we will not run out of reasons to love our Father in heaven.

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Contentment

by leekierdorf

Paul writes these words to Timothy. This is a letter to person not to a church.

“But godliness with contentment is good. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And if we have food and clothing, let us be content.”

We could add shelter. But it is the basics that is meant. Are we content? I’m not. I want more than that.

But God provides needs not wants. Do you have food this day? Are you clothed? Do you have shelter? Are you content? Am I content? To have God, is to have all. To have only yourself is to have nothing. Not even real life according to Jesus.

He offers eternal life with God. He said, “I go to my Father.” Is He your Father? Is He your care giver?

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Enoch Who?

by leekierdorf

Who is Enoch?

No one will make a movie about the life of Enoch like Noah or Moses.

The whole story of his life is this: Enoch walked with God.

But Enoch had no one to model his life after. Enoch spent his life walking with God and then disappeared. Did they see his footprints just end when they looked for him? He was God’s first friend.

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In Jesus Name

by leekierdorf

As a child I was taught to end a prayer “in Jesus’s name, amen.” I thought these were magic words that pleased God and would get you what you were asking…

I now think that when Jesus said: “Ask anything in my name, and you will receive it” as having a different meaning.

I think it means, if you ask something that Jesus would ask, you will receive it. To ask “in his name” cannot be just “magic words”. Is what we ask God in the nature of Jesus to ask?

If it is, we can be assured that we will receive from God. Let us align ourselves with the divine nature, asking for that which is good.

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Before the Beginning

by leekierdorf

Jesus reveals his heart as he prays with the disciples present. He says to the Father, “You have loved them, as you have loved me.” We know that the Father loves the Son very much.

He says, a bit later, to his Father, “You loved me before the foundation of the world.”

Although the first verse in Genesis says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” Jesus reveals that before that, He was the Father who loved His Son.

He is first a loving Father before He is a creator. He is not The Prime Mover or The First Cause as the ancient Greeks said. He is the Father who loved his Son and now loves us with that same love.

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Thought on Trinity

by leekierdorf

Who is God?

You have heard God is trinity. Who says so? Not God.

God said, “I AM THAT I AM” and “The LORD, your God, is one LORD.”

Well, you say, there is The Father. And there is The Son. And don’t forget the Holy Spirit.

But we count wrong. 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. Jesus said I and the Father are one. Add the Holy Spirit and you still have one LORD.

Think about yourself. How many are you? Your consciousness of yourself is one. Your sense of good and evil informs you of wrong action. Your conscience is another you, it seems. You can disagree with yourself about what you should do.

I don’t think God thinks of himself as trinity. He is relationships. Love relationships. We, as individuals, find him hard to understand. We start out detached from God. He is not like us but we are like him.

As an individual, we are lost. But Christ came to find us and reunite us with God. We are made in the image of God, made for relationships.

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Will or Won’t

by leekierdorf

Some say they don’t know the will of God. They refer to who they should marry or what college they should attend.

But these are really things important to us. God has higher things than these in mind for us.

Let’s take an example: Should you A. Hate your enemies? B. Ignore your enemies? or C: Love your enemies? See. You knew the answer.

Let’s take another. Should you A. Ignore your neighbor? B. Talk kindly to your neighbor? or C. Love your neighbor like you love yourself? Once again, you knew the answer.

What helped me was to choose a clear word spoken by Jesus and put it into practice. Maybe a line from “the Lord’s Prayer”. See what happens in your life.

Nature gone wild

by leekierdorf

Why did God curse Adam with hard work? He didn’t. The earth went wild without Adam in charge. I think God really only described the new situation.

Animals began to be wild, too. Some became dangerous to people.

God had blessed Adam and Eve and given them dominion over all the earth. Their choice had ruined the situation. But God could not curse those he had blessed.

Really, the worst part is that they had brought sorrow and fear into their lives.

But the future holds a new earth for those who love God. There will be plenty of room because there are no oceans.

See Revelation 21:1

Figuring or Faith

by leekierdorf

I had some financial issues. I would spend time figuring. Figuring out how to deal with them. But figuring is not faith.

Figuring is what our brain does with a problem. I had a sense that God wanted me to live as though I had no financial problems. This day by day trusting seemed more like faith.

Our brains take what is known and uses that to solve a problem. But does it take God into its working? God is the unknown factor. What will he do? It is often surprising what God does. He does say to us, “Fear not.”

Trinity

by leekierdorf

We have invented the word “trinity”. In doing that. we created our own problem. Now we have to explain how God is a “Trinity”.”

God is under no constraint to explain Himself to human beings. Moses asks God who he should say is demanding that the Pharoh release his people. God answers: ” I AM THAT I AM” This is not an explanation. It is a statement. Jesus says: “I and the Father are one.” This, too, is not an explanation. It is a statement of truth.

I have read the explanations of several learned Christian men. After much reading, I am no further along in understanding. I am not confused by their elaborate writing. Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit is like the wind…” That’s not an explanation. Jesus later tells where the Holy Spirit will be. “He is with you and he shall be in you.”

Again, God is under no obligation to explain Himself to us. We have assigned ourselves this task. It is not required. When did Jesus say, ‘I hope all you boys understand what I have been implying. You must have an explanation ready when someone accuses you of having “Three Gods” in your religion, and they will.’ No. He says nothing like this.

We are individuals, sadly disconnected from God. God is a relationship. We are made to be in relationship to God. Else, why would he let us know that we are made in the “image and likeness” of Himself?.

This means we are made for relationships. A relationship with God and relationships with other people.

Now in the Old Testament, we find these are relationships of love:

Love the LORD…

Love your neighbor…

But God is relationships of love. “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” The fruit of the Spirit is love first. These and other statements show this.

Where is the command to explain God?

I believe in the Father.
I believe in the Son.
I believe in the Spirit.
The LORD, your God is one God.

Deuteronomy 6:4 says
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD”

Mark 12:29 quotes Jesus
And Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is, “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord.”

The human mind is wonderful. But when it comes to discovering God, it is not the first place to go. It says: the natural mind does not reveal God in an intellectual manner. If you don’t believe this, read the Greek philosophers. They went as far as “The Prime Mover” and even if the regarded the existence of God, they could not say much about what the Creator was like except that he was creative.

First comes revelation from God. Jesus said, “Flesh and blood has not revealed (who I am) to you, but my Father which is in heaven.” Then we may reach a point where we say, “This makes sense.”

We create our own problem. We hear there is Father and Son. We conclude, “Oho! There are two!” When informed of the Holy Spirit, we say, “Ha! Now there are three.” But our kind of counting does not work towards God.

We have not been told that there are three. We have been informed that “The LORD, your God, is One God”

John who told us things that Jesus did, now has had time to think. He makes this statement: “God is Love.” He does not explain it. He simply states this. We cannot really “understand” this. We don’t understand God or Love. This has been revealed to John by the Spirit.

We can believe it. We can say it is true. This is the Divine Being and divine love. But we can’t explain it. A person can have a moment from God that makes this fact clear to them. But they still won’t be able to explain it in a logical way. They can say, “I know this is true.” or “God has shown me this is true.”

Why not? There is nothing to compare it to in our understanding. We usually explain things with “This is like that.” But what if it is beyond comparison?

But God has made us so that we can recognize love.

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