god...my mother’s obsession with teachings from Bob Jones University radio had a rather negative impact on my concept of God. She played the stuff CONSTANTLY, and all I ever heard was angry rantings of communist paranoia and arrogant intolerance. This ‘God’ spoken of by these people bore little resemblance to the God I’d become somewhat acquainted with through well-meaning believers who tried hard to walk in the ways taught by his son. Furthermore, the fruits of said teachings becoming more and more evident in my mother were not positive. Having always been significantly unbalanced herself, mentally and emotionally, saturating herself with such things seemed only to be making her even more unstable than she already was.
I was glad to get out of that environment when I went to college. I had some very positive experiences in college with Christianity, with a group on campus that was very active in local ministries to the poor. But I was also experiencing the first real ‘freedom’ I’d ever had in my life…freedom to feel things out for myself in the world. And like many a young, poorly prepared and rebellious teenager, I became woefully sidetracked by pleasure seeking.
To make the VERY long story of the following years much shorter and to the point, through much trial, error and pain, peppered along the way with occasional successes, I groped my own way through a myriad of religious belief systems, from witchcraft and eastern religions to the charismatic movement. For me, the Christian faith, fraught with error as it may have been, was the ‘way’ I kept returning to, for it simply seemed to hold more practical truth that seemed to work for me, than all the others I had delved into. Though I did not totally discount the others, as there had seemed to be some levels of truth in these too.
I was ‘baptized in the Spirit’ and spoke in 'tongues.' It was an experience I will NEVER forget. Friends who were present said that I walked around the home (we were attending a home Bible study) with arms raised, tears streaming, ear-to-ear smile and speaking something unbelievably fluently for a good 20 mins. As for me, all I remember was that for the first time in my life, I felt as though I had an electrical current of the supernatural DIVINE coursing through my entire being. I was experiencing the divine in a manner I had never thought possible. It was followed by WEEKS of afterglow...an overwhelming sense of peace, love, gentleness, tolerance, energy and a hunger for MORE. I dove into scripture study with a passion unequaled by any other I’d ever had. And for the first time in my life, talking to God seemed to come as naturally as talking to anyone else. He was no longer a 'thing,' he was a PERSON...a person I had met, face to face.
Everyone noticed the change, though I was not quick to explain what had brought it about. My mother with her staunch Southern Baptist beliefs was convinced when I shared it with her, that I had become demon possessed. She wanted me to meet with our pastor and discuss this thing, and I was quite willing to do so. Following our lengthy meeting, our pastor told my mother, that as expected, he had been unable to persuade me that my experience had not been genuine and/or divine. “BUT,” he said, “I’ll tell you one thing…the girl knows her Bible better than I do!”
That declaration from our trusted pastor, together with the undeniably POSITIVE changes in me, my life and my mannerisms, seemed enough to silence my mother’s protests regarding my diversion from her own belief system permanently.
Years followed of continued seeking and testing within the Christian faith. I eventually left the Baptist church where I’d been teaching young people in Sunday School – not because I didn’t love those folks, but simply because I felt there was a glass ceiling within that faith – like it would take you only so far, and then left you with nowhere else to go spiritually. My hunger for this God I had experienced that night at that Bible study was insatiable. I knew there was so much more to this entity than this denomination possessed knowledge of, I simply became BORED with hearing the same old stuff over and over and over.
Without getting into a lot of personal stuff, suffice it to say the years following were like those of many folk. I got a divorce. I got remarried. I got divorced again. I went through periods in my relationship with God where I’d come and go, depending upon my circumstances and current needs – all the while, learning more and more about this one called God, and about myself. I eventually ended up in a medium-sized ‘interdenominational’ church family that became to me, a family that I had in many ways, never really had. This family took me through some of the most difficult times of my life – the slow and painful death of a marriage that should’ve never been, the loss of a wayward daughter to the ‘ways of the world,’ the loss of my beloved dad to Alzheimer’s, the dad who had been the only anchor I’d ever had in my life.
I was deeply involved in this church life for many years. The church’s congregation grew at a phenomenal rate, and I grew as an individual. I taught Bible studies, kids in Sunday School, children’s worship services. I served in the prayer ministry and as an altar worker. I was involved in choir and dramas. And I was certain I would spend the rest of my life working, serving, and worshipping in this place with my beloved friends and my beloved Lord. But, as I would soon learn, the process of LIFE is all about CHANGE.
awakenings
Taking up where we left off yesterday...
In the beginning...
For those who do not already know, I'm also the sojourner. Lots of folks have inquired into my own spiritual background on many occasions, whether they know me as sojourner, or awakenings (who was once actually granny (yes, I could have a touch of multiple personality disorder). I've finally worked up enough nerve to tackle the task. Be forewarned, this is long and very likely to be quite uninteresting to anyone not genuinely interested. But for those who are...here it is!
When I was small, my family only went to church on special occasions, like religious holidays, weddings and funerals. My questions about ‘God’ (prompted by things overheard from adult conversations) were answered with the usual religion based explanations about heaven and hell, God and the devil – heaven was the place ‘good’ people went when they died and was where God lived – hell was the place ‘bad’ people went when they died and was where the devil lived. God was some ethereal man-like ‘thing’ that lived ‘up there’ somewhere and saw everything I did. He punished me when I was bad and loved me and MIGHT do good things for me when I was good, if I asked him to, via a thing called ‘prayer.’
My concept of God was slightly expanded when we visited my aunt and uncle. They were very active in their church, so whenever we visited, we attended with them. I would spend a week with them every summer, during which I would attend the summer vacation Bible school that they were involved in. Here I learned about another person often associated with this ‘thing’ referred to as God – Jesus, God’s son. All I really carried away with me from these exposures to this Jesus was that he had long hair and a beard and liked kids and was very kind.
As I got older and began to form my own personalized concept of God from information gleaned thus far. He must be some sort of magical ‘thing.’ I would ‘test’ him with ‘prayers’ (this is what it was called whenever one addresses God in verbal fashion) such as “If you really exist, “ do this or that. When he didn’t respond to my challenge and I asked my mother why, she haphazardly explained that God simply did not ‘work’ that way…he only responded to requests for really ‘important’ things.
So later, I gave this ‘God’ a really ‘important’ request. My dad had gone to Korea for a year of service in the Korean war, and I wanted him to be at home with us. This seemed to qualify as a very ‘important’ request in my mind. He didn’t answer this one either. My mother’s response to this was about as vague as most of her other answers to my deep questions. So my concept of God continued to be equally as vague…
…until age 12, when I began to attend Sunday School with my best friend. Not only did the teacher really talk to us in ways I could understand, but my friend and I always had the opportunity to discuss the subject matter between ourselves on the long ride home. But then, my friend ‘graduated’ to another class and I was left in this one ALONE with other children I didn’t know. I was painfully shy and feeling very disoriented. I did, however, still listen to our teacher’s words with great interest – there was just something about her that seemed so much more ‘genuine’ than most other grownups I’d known. And our class did really interesting things like go to the grocery store and buy food for poor families and deliver it. We’d go to the homes of other poor families and clean their house for them, or take them out to dinner, or take their kids to the park to play. This teacher didn’t just talk at us about this Jesus person, she actually DEMONSTRATED to us what he was like.
This particular teacher took it a step farther once at a party she gave for her Sunday School class at her home. All the other kids were having a grand time in the house and being shy and awkward as I was, I just wasn’t fitting in. I went out to the porch to be alone and cry about my perceived weirdness. The teacher found me there and came out to sit and talk with me about why I was crying. I can’t even remember what she said, I simply remember her comforting mannerisms and warm, generous spirit. Before I knew it, the other kids had embraced me and I was feeling like a part of something, perhaps for the first time in my life.
This teacher and this class had a real impact on me. My understanding of Jesus and his personal sacrifice was that he was cruelly killed because me and all other people did bad things. And he died so that we didn’t have to be guilty in his father’s view. My mother found me crying about this one night and as we discussed it, she determined that this experience was evidence that I was now ‘saved.’ She encouraged me to share this with my Sunday School teacher the following Sunday. I did, and after a lengthy conversation with her (I don’t remember the conversation, just that I likely responded to all her questions exactly as I thought she wanted me to, because I all but worshipped her righteousness and wanted her approval and wanted to bring her joy), she too determined that I was ‘saved’ and should talk with the preacher about being baptized.
I had a very rudimentary understanding of all this ‘salvation’ and baptism stuff, but apparently my mentors determined that this was sufficient to start me on my life’s spiritual journey.
Soon after this experience, my dad retired from the Air Force and we moved to a small town in North Carolina where we lived for about a year. My dad took me to church every Sunday while we lived there. About the only thing I remember about that entire experience was my dad sitting beside me in church, and that made me feel quite special. I don’t remember any of the sermons, nor anything in Sunday School…I just remember my dad sitting beside me, and that was all that seemed important to me. I began to feel an intimacy with my dad during this time that I’d never experienced before.
About a year later, we moved again. My spiritual journey with my dad continued in a small church near our rented home, a church much like the one I’d attended when I was 12. My mom actually attended on rare occasions too!
We moved again to what was to become our permanent home and what is now my present home. And again we began attending a small, local Southern Baptist church where we actually became involved as a family. All my new friends attended here too and the entire community was sort of like one very big family. It remained like this until the latter years of high school. This ethereal ‘God’ and his son were just part of this one large, happy community family.
My mom eventually quit attending church, using her psoriasis as her excuse for social withdrawal (as had always been common) and she began supplementing her spiritual experience with regular radio programming from broadcasts from the Bob Jones University. It was also around this same time that my own concept of God began once again to evolve…strongly influenced by the changes I was beginning to see in my mother and her OWN evolving concept of God.
If you made it this far, stay tuned for Part 2!
When I was small, my family only went to church on special occasions, like religious holidays, weddings and funerals. My questions about ‘God’ (prompted by things overheard from adult conversations) were answered with the usual religion based explanations about heaven and hell, God and the devil – heaven was the place ‘good’ people went when they died and was where God lived – hell was the place ‘bad’ people went when they died and was where the devil lived. God was some ethereal man-like ‘thing’ that lived ‘up there’ somewhere and saw everything I did. He punished me when I was bad and loved me and MIGHT do good things for me when I was good, if I asked him to, via a thing called ‘prayer.’
My concept of God was slightly expanded when we visited my aunt and uncle. They were very active in their church, so whenever we visited, we attended with them. I would spend a week with them every summer, during which I would attend the summer vacation Bible school that they were involved in. Here I learned about another person often associated with this ‘thing’ referred to as God – Jesus, God’s son. All I really carried away with me from these exposures to this Jesus was that he had long hair and a beard and liked kids and was very kind.
As I got older and began to form my own personalized concept of God from information gleaned thus far. He must be some sort of magical ‘thing.’ I would ‘test’ him with ‘prayers’ (this is what it was called whenever one addresses God in verbal fashion) such as “If you really exist, “ do this or that. When he didn’t respond to my challenge and I asked my mother why, she haphazardly explained that God simply did not ‘work’ that way…he only responded to requests for really ‘important’ things.
So later, I gave this ‘God’ a really ‘important’ request. My dad had gone to Korea for a year of service in the Korean war, and I wanted him to be at home with us. This seemed to qualify as a very ‘important’ request in my mind. He didn’t answer this one either. My mother’s response to this was about as vague as most of her other answers to my deep questions. So my concept of God continued to be equally as vague…
…until age 12, when I began to attend Sunday School with my best friend. Not only did the teacher really talk to us in ways I could understand, but my friend and I always had the opportunity to discuss the subject matter between ourselves on the long ride home. But then, my friend ‘graduated’ to another class and I was left in this one ALONE with other children I didn’t know. I was painfully shy and feeling very disoriented. I did, however, still listen to our teacher’s words with great interest – there was just something about her that seemed so much more ‘genuine’ than most other grownups I’d known. And our class did really interesting things like go to the grocery store and buy food for poor families and deliver it. We’d go to the homes of other poor families and clean their house for them, or take them out to dinner, or take their kids to the park to play. This teacher didn’t just talk at us about this Jesus person, she actually DEMONSTRATED to us what he was like.
This particular teacher took it a step farther once at a party she gave for her Sunday School class at her home. All the other kids were having a grand time in the house and being shy and awkward as I was, I just wasn’t fitting in. I went out to the porch to be alone and cry about my perceived weirdness. The teacher found me there and came out to sit and talk with me about why I was crying. I can’t even remember what she said, I simply remember her comforting mannerisms and warm, generous spirit. Before I knew it, the other kids had embraced me and I was feeling like a part of something, perhaps for the first time in my life.
This teacher and this class had a real impact on me. My understanding of Jesus and his personal sacrifice was that he was cruelly killed because me and all other people did bad things. And he died so that we didn’t have to be guilty in his father’s view. My mother found me crying about this one night and as we discussed it, she determined that this experience was evidence that I was now ‘saved.’ She encouraged me to share this with my Sunday School teacher the following Sunday. I did, and after a lengthy conversation with her (I don’t remember the conversation, just that I likely responded to all her questions exactly as I thought she wanted me to, because I all but worshipped her righteousness and wanted her approval and wanted to bring her joy), she too determined that I was ‘saved’ and should talk with the preacher about being baptized.
I had a very rudimentary understanding of all this ‘salvation’ and baptism stuff, but apparently my mentors determined that this was sufficient to start me on my life’s spiritual journey.
Soon after this experience, my dad retired from the Air Force and we moved to a small town in North Carolina where we lived for about a year. My dad took me to church every Sunday while we lived there. About the only thing I remember about that entire experience was my dad sitting beside me in church, and that made me feel quite special. I don’t remember any of the sermons, nor anything in Sunday School…I just remember my dad sitting beside me, and that was all that seemed important to me. I began to feel an intimacy with my dad during this time that I’d never experienced before.
About a year later, we moved again. My spiritual journey with my dad continued in a small church near our rented home, a church much like the one I’d attended when I was 12. My mom actually attended on rare occasions too!
We moved again to what was to become our permanent home and what is now my present home. And again we began attending a small, local Southern Baptist church where we actually became involved as a family. All my new friends attended here too and the entire community was sort of like one very big family. It remained like this until the latter years of high school. This ethereal ‘God’ and his son were just part of this one large, happy community family.
My mom eventually quit attending church, using her psoriasis as her excuse for social withdrawal (as had always been common) and she began supplementing her spiritual experience with regular radio programming from broadcasts from the Bob Jones University. It was also around this same time that my own concept of God began once again to evolve…strongly influenced by the changes I was beginning to see in my mother and her OWN evolving concept of God.
If you made it this far, stay tuned for Part 2!
Are we all hypocrites?
Or is it just that we are all at different places in the road?
We live a world of hypocrisies, and we’re ALL guilty. In a world, and in particularly, a nation, in which the majority of inhabitants claim some level of belief and allegiance to this one loosely referred to as ‘God,’ why such rampant hypocrisy, even among those who detest the hypocrisy in themselves as much or more than the hypocrisies they see in others?
Brother Leslie made a comment on the first installment of the ‘God Is’ series, that could be said to be whole point of the previous 5 posts: “GOD is greater than any idea that you or I could conjure up.” And in the words of Ronald L. Dart, Brother Leslie declares that “There is no explanation of God offered by man that can do anything but diminish God.”
The demonstration of our belief systems is most accurately and tangibly demonstrated in our behaviors and in how we relate to others and our environment. It is here where the rubber of our declared beliefs meets the hard roads of reality, and it is here where the true quality of our belief system is proven as adequate and effective, or as falling short and being ineffective.
Throughout the scriptures, God makes known to man His desire for man to know Him, while at the same time, declaring that no man can know Him. As with many other seemingly contradictory statements in the scriptures, the contradictions are more in man’s finite and imperfect interpretations than in the intended message. One can no more fully ‘know’ God, than he can fully know another man, or even himself. EVERY relationship is at best, an ongoing PROCESS of learning…about others and about ourselves.
If one were to do an in-depth study of the original manuscripts and the languages in which these scriptures were written, it would become clear that these ancient languages were much more complex than modern English. The words translated as ‘know’ can actually have many varying shadows of meaning in the original languages – anywhere from the knowing that comes from an intimate sexual relationship to the superficial knowing that comes from merely recognizing the appearance of something; from mere intellectual acceptance to the deeper understanding of a concept that enables us to go a step beyond – a deeper level of understanding that enables us to actually incorporate that understanding into our own personalities and relations with others, not just talk about it and profess it.
What God is stating in these passages is His desire to be in RELATIONSHIP with His creation, and His creation with Him. He desires that his creation begin and engage in the ongoing PROCESS of knowing Him, which is in essence, walking in RELATIONSHIP with our Creator. His greatest desire is for creation to interact with Him, that He may interact with His creation because His creation is a part of Him, and He, a part of His creation.
We cannot know God until we begin to know ourselves – nor can we know ourselves until we begin to know God. So where DO we begin?! The best we can do is just jump in the swirl of activity wherever you can and just begin wherever you jump in.
If we continue to hold before our consciousness, the reality that God is infinitely bigger than our grandest ideas and concepts, then we will be far more inclined to remain engaged in this eternal process. We will not be inclined to camp out in the desert because we remember that God cannot be contained in the desert. Nor will we be content to camp out in any religion that is by its very nature, defined by a certain dogma or specific belief system, because we will remember that God is greater than our dogmas and belief systems and He cannot be contained within the walls of our man-made religions and their temples. We will remain engaged in the process, because we know that if we stop, and assume we now have all the answers, that we have already been left behind by the One about whom man will NEVER have all the answers to.
Sadly today, most of Christendom, as with all other religions, is holding an allegiance to a false god that man and his man-made and man-oriented religions have created in man's own image. That is clearly why God repeatedly admonished His people (those in relationship with Him) NOT to have false gods before them, nor to create images to represent Him. It wasn’t that God was AFRAID of sharing man’s allegiance with smaller ‘things,’ it was that God understood man’s mortal tendency to limit himself, and thereby limit Him, to man’s finite understanding.
At best, man’s assorted and varied religions can only offer partial truths. Religion serves a purpose in the development of man’s God-consciousness, but it is but a stepping stone along the way, not an end in itself. And when we allow it to become the end in itself, we cease to grow. We cut ourselves off from the greater God and from the rest of mankind and we create division where there should be unity. When we choose to camp out in the desert of our own limited concepts of God, we have chosen to be satisfied with but a portion of His glory and omnipresence, and we demand that all others be satisfied by our lesser God as well. Yes, God will be there in the desert with you, and will never leave you there. But what of the portion of God that is not a part of your desert – the portion that your finite desert is not big enough to contain? Are you content to know but a small part of this uncontainable God, or do you, like me, want MORE. The God of your desert is wonderful, but surely you know in the deepest part of your being that there is infinitely MORE, and your only satisfaction can be the ongoing quest to discover it. And with every discovery is the exciting discovery that there is yet MORE to be discovered! And so we continue to seek, to move, to change…and LIFE happens – and eternity spins.
Don’t stop the process. Don’t stop the journey. For to stop is to die and to be no more.
“ I hold before you this day, death and life. Choose LIFE, that you may LIVE…”
We live a world of hypocrisies, and we’re ALL guilty. In a world, and in particularly, a nation, in which the majority of inhabitants claim some level of belief and allegiance to this one loosely referred to as ‘God,’ why such rampant hypocrisy, even among those who detest the hypocrisy in themselves as much or more than the hypocrisies they see in others?
Brother Leslie made a comment on the first installment of the ‘God Is’ series, that could be said to be whole point of the previous 5 posts: “GOD is greater than any idea that you or I could conjure up.” And in the words of Ronald L. Dart, Brother Leslie declares that “There is no explanation of God offered by man that can do anything but diminish God.”
The demonstration of our belief systems is most accurately and tangibly demonstrated in our behaviors and in how we relate to others and our environment. It is here where the rubber of our declared beliefs meets the hard roads of reality, and it is here where the true quality of our belief system is proven as adequate and effective, or as falling short and being ineffective.
Throughout the scriptures, God makes known to man His desire for man to know Him, while at the same time, declaring that no man can know Him. As with many other seemingly contradictory statements in the scriptures, the contradictions are more in man’s finite and imperfect interpretations than in the intended message. One can no more fully ‘know’ God, than he can fully know another man, or even himself. EVERY relationship is at best, an ongoing PROCESS of learning…about others and about ourselves.
If one were to do an in-depth study of the original manuscripts and the languages in which these scriptures were written, it would become clear that these ancient languages were much more complex than modern English. The words translated as ‘know’ can actually have many varying shadows of meaning in the original languages – anywhere from the knowing that comes from an intimate sexual relationship to the superficial knowing that comes from merely recognizing the appearance of something; from mere intellectual acceptance to the deeper understanding of a concept that enables us to go a step beyond – a deeper level of understanding that enables us to actually incorporate that understanding into our own personalities and relations with others, not just talk about it and profess it.
What God is stating in these passages is His desire to be in RELATIONSHIP with His creation, and His creation with Him. He desires that his creation begin and engage in the ongoing PROCESS of knowing Him, which is in essence, walking in RELATIONSHIP with our Creator. His greatest desire is for creation to interact with Him, that He may interact with His creation because His creation is a part of Him, and He, a part of His creation.
We cannot know God until we begin to know ourselves – nor can we know ourselves until we begin to know God. So where DO we begin?! The best we can do is just jump in the swirl of activity wherever you can and just begin wherever you jump in.
If we continue to hold before our consciousness, the reality that God is infinitely bigger than our grandest ideas and concepts, then we will be far more inclined to remain engaged in this eternal process. We will not be inclined to camp out in the desert because we remember that God cannot be contained in the desert. Nor will we be content to camp out in any religion that is by its very nature, defined by a certain dogma or specific belief system, because we will remember that God is greater than our dogmas and belief systems and He cannot be contained within the walls of our man-made religions and their temples. We will remain engaged in the process, because we know that if we stop, and assume we now have all the answers, that we have already been left behind by the One about whom man will NEVER have all the answers to.
Sadly today, most of Christendom, as with all other religions, is holding an allegiance to a false god that man and his man-made and man-oriented religions have created in man's own image. That is clearly why God repeatedly admonished His people (those in relationship with Him) NOT to have false gods before them, nor to create images to represent Him. It wasn’t that God was AFRAID of sharing man’s allegiance with smaller ‘things,’ it was that God understood man’s mortal tendency to limit himself, and thereby limit Him, to man’s finite understanding.
At best, man’s assorted and varied religions can only offer partial truths. Religion serves a purpose in the development of man’s God-consciousness, but it is but a stepping stone along the way, not an end in itself. And when we allow it to become the end in itself, we cease to grow. We cut ourselves off from the greater God and from the rest of mankind and we create division where there should be unity. When we choose to camp out in the desert of our own limited concepts of God, we have chosen to be satisfied with but a portion of His glory and omnipresence, and we demand that all others be satisfied by our lesser God as well. Yes, God will be there in the desert with you, and will never leave you there. But what of the portion of God that is not a part of your desert – the portion that your finite desert is not big enough to contain? Are you content to know but a small part of this uncontainable God, or do you, like me, want MORE. The God of your desert is wonderful, but surely you know in the deepest part of your being that there is infinitely MORE, and your only satisfaction can be the ongoing quest to discover it. And with every discovery is the exciting discovery that there is yet MORE to be discovered! And so we continue to seek, to move, to change…and LIFE happens – and eternity spins.
Don’t stop the process. Don’t stop the journey. For to stop is to die and to be no more.
“ I hold before you this day, death and life. Choose LIFE, that you may LIVE…”
God Is - Part 5 (final installment)
"So here it is, the final installment of a 5-part series of what I percieve to be some profound insights. If you enjoyed it, click here for more of similar reading material from the author of "God Is." And come back tomorrow, for MY own 2 cents worth! (BTW...feel free to leave YOUR own 2 cents worth!)"
What is the cause, or source of all the effects we would see manifest as our life?
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. James 3:17,18 The wisdom whose effect is peace, has only one source, that pure and holy ground, the unfathomable I Am. From the perfect uncreated Isness (cause), flows peace, gentleness, mercy and goodness (effect). God Itself is the cause of all things. Stop giving credit to or blaming effects for other effects. Most of the futility of our existance can be traced to manipulating effects, in order to achieve another effect. If the only real cause is God, and God cannot be manipulated, then we find pure wisdom when we stop manipulating and rest in the God that already is perfect. Then we can produce peace.
We ourselves are a peaceable effect when we live, move and have our being in holy Isness, (See Acts 17:24-29). We cannot represent pure holiness unless we are in a state of rest where our total effect is "God-appearing-as-us". If we add or subtract anything from that purity by our input or control, error will enter into our expression, and the effect will be chaotic and not peaceful.
If we are to hold fast to our God as all-powerful and omnipresent, then the whole universe, seen and unseen, must be within God, and so then must you be in God. Anything perceived to be outside of God, can only be fantasy and vain imagination, illusion and shadow. Call it sin, call it the devil, call it what you want. It is simply erroneous thinking. When Jesus told the religious leaders of Israel that the devil was their father, He said that he was a liar from the beginning. A lie is believing something is, when the truth says, it is not. Believing we are apart from God is a lie. The truth says, God is one, how then can there be two? We fear that idea because our tradition tells us that we cannot be God. Have no fear that you will ever become God. God already is. Nothing can become God. That’s another way of stating the same lie that something isn’t God but can become God. What God is, It always has been and ever will be. All I’m asking you to do is include yourself in God. There’s really nowhere else you can be. No other place exists. Include me in God too. You and I are one as God is one. We are also free to live and move and have our being in this infinite universe, provided we let go of every thought that has held us back. We are as unlimited as we want to be. Go ahead and flex your wings.
What is the cause, or source of all the effects we would see manifest as our life?
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. James 3:17,18 The wisdom whose effect is peace, has only one source, that pure and holy ground, the unfathomable I Am. From the perfect uncreated Isness (cause), flows peace, gentleness, mercy and goodness (effect). God Itself is the cause of all things. Stop giving credit to or blaming effects for other effects. Most of the futility of our existance can be traced to manipulating effects, in order to achieve another effect. If the only real cause is God, and God cannot be manipulated, then we find pure wisdom when we stop manipulating and rest in the God that already is perfect. Then we can produce peace.
We ourselves are a peaceable effect when we live, move and have our being in holy Isness, (See Acts 17:24-29). We cannot represent pure holiness unless we are in a state of rest where our total effect is "God-appearing-as-us". If we add or subtract anything from that purity by our input or control, error will enter into our expression, and the effect will be chaotic and not peaceful.
If we are to hold fast to our God as all-powerful and omnipresent, then the whole universe, seen and unseen, must be within God, and so then must you be in God. Anything perceived to be outside of God, can only be fantasy and vain imagination, illusion and shadow. Call it sin, call it the devil, call it what you want. It is simply erroneous thinking. When Jesus told the religious leaders of Israel that the devil was their father, He said that he was a liar from the beginning. A lie is believing something is, when the truth says, it is not. Believing we are apart from God is a lie. The truth says, God is one, how then can there be two? We fear that idea because our tradition tells us that we cannot be God. Have no fear that you will ever become God. God already is. Nothing can become God. That’s another way of stating the same lie that something isn’t God but can become God. What God is, It always has been and ever will be. All I’m asking you to do is include yourself in God. There’s really nowhere else you can be. No other place exists. Include me in God too. You and I are one as God is one. We are also free to live and move and have our being in this infinite universe, provided we let go of every thought that has held us back. We are as unlimited as we want to be. Go ahead and flex your wings.
God Is - Part 4
[continued from yesterday's post...only one more installmet to go!]
I have had some measure of success comprehending a God that is too big to see in any image. It may seem sacrilegious to some, but it will set you free to the degree that you grasp the truth of it. God is too big to be contained. Person is a container. Father is a container. He is a container. We’ve made these concepts in our image and likeness and we need to abandon them. Everytime you think of a zebra, you will see stripes. Change your concept of God. Elevate Him above the things which do appear. Author Richard Bach referred to God as "the perfect invisible Principle of all life". Not a bad statement, for a seagull. God introduced Himself to Moses as Iam, but we still tend to see that as a name rather than a Truth. Another word for "I am" is Consciousness. No, you don’t have to be a guru to use the word. Consciousness has all the God-qualities...no beginning or end ...omnipresent ...all knowing ...infinite ...pure ...holy ...and it’s not an old man with a white beard! When nothing else exists - Consciousness still is. The name Jehovah means Self-existing One. One who is Self-sustaining. God doesn’t require anything else to cause Him to exist, and neither does Consciousness.What was here before anything was created? Before form, before energy, before time and space, before thought? In the eternal nothingness of an empty void, one Is-ness filled all of eternity: the uncreated I AM. Although it would not be accurate to put a time perspective on all this, I believe we could say without error that all the creation we are now enjoying unfolded from the eternal I AM. However, the original perfection of I AM has never changed. What appears as creation is an image in the likeness of the original uncreated Is-ness. Pure, holy, Is-ness.
It is likely that all this is shocking to you. No doubt, it is confusing at first. You knew that God was not "a thing", but to cross the fine line over to "no thing", seems sacrilegious. It may help you to meditate on the idea that "everything" and "nothing" are the same. We favor formed things, believing that something has more substance, more value than no-thing. Just the reverse is true. The unformed thing (Spirit?) is the Father of all formed things. Spirit is the Master, Form is the servant. The servant cannot be greater than the Master. God has always exhorted us not to worship any created thing. Sherlock Holmes would tell you that however illogical, we must conclude that He meant for us to worship an uncreated non-thing. Didn’t Jesus the Christ become nothing, that He might become exalted above all things? When Peter exhalted himself, was he not immediately brought to nothing? The scripture also states that when you empty yourself, I AM can fill you with glory.
And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple . . .Rev 15:8 Man is the temple of God, but so is an atom, a solar system and the entire universe. If the universe were empty, it would still be filled with the glory of the Great I AM, the eternal Isness.
The present realm we are existing in is that of cause and effect. We can’t say if we’ll be subject to cause and effect eternally, but we are definitely in that school for the moment. What we need to learn here is that chasing after the effects will get us nowhere. Let’s say we decide we want to have a million dollars. In that desire our soul is crying out for money, but our spirit wants what money represents: independence, peace, and happiness. Money is an effect and so cannot cause us to have peace. That’s why you can have chaos and strife even with money. Another person may dream about owning a home. What is it that a home represents? Security? Stability? Whatever it is, that’s what they’re really seeking. Owning a home cannot cause these things. It is another effect. However, if one finds peace, security and stability by grasping that which causes these things to be, it doesn’t matter if they own a home or have great wealth. I’ll illustrate this using a firecracker. What is the effect of a firecracker? The bang. What is the cause of the bang? Gunpowder wrapped in paper, set afire. Someone hears a bang, and desires to have bangs of their own. They visit all kinds of stores asking, "Do you have a bang?" The answer is invariably, "No", and they soon become frustrated. "Can you believe this town doesn’t have a single bang?" Suddenly, they hear another bang. Rushing to the scene they ask, "Where did that bang come from?" Why, from a firecracker, is the answer. Now they are able to seek out that which causes the bang and produce bangs as often as they light firecrackers.
What is the cause, or source of all the effects we would see manifest as our life?
Come back tomorrow for the final installment!
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