Who's in denial?

11 Here is a trustworthy saying:
If we died with him,
we will also live with him;
12 if we endure,
we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
he will also disown us;
13 if we are faithless,
he remains faithful,
for he cannot disown himself.

2 Timothy 2:13

We're inseparable from his infinite, good character. We are never NOT in relation to him. How do i know...? He became a man, "God with us." Ask, why? ...to grasp the wide and long and high and deep love of Christ, with the saints! There is something about God's personableness in sending His Son that helps each of us in the silence to see the Father. Jesus says this, "No one has ever seen God.The One and Only Son-the One who is at the Father's side-He has revealed Him." (Jn 1:18 Holman translation) BUT THEN, there is something about God's magnitude...His weight, His glory, that is comprehended being rooted and established with the saints. We need power and each other to even apprehend this love of Christ...and he is coming again. I imagine us standing together beholding this great faithfulness, this rapture, this Person we've always wanted to know. 

Knowing the Father

...to know everything and anyone else. I love this sermon. As soon as I can I'm going to write a narrative reaction.
http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sermons/knowing-father

God's Big thinkers

'Tis certain with me that the world exists anew every moment, that the existence of things every moment ceases and is every moment renewed. For instance, in the existence of bodies, for there to be resistance, or tendency to some place; 'tis not numerically the same resistance that exists the next moment, 'tis evident, because this existence may be in different places. But yet this existence is continued so far, that there is respect had to it in all the future existences; 'tis evident in all things continually. Now past existence can't be continued so that respect should be had to it, otherwise than mentally. If the world this moment should be annihilated, so that nothing should really and actually exist any more; the existence of the world could not be continued so that, if another world after a time should be created, that world should exist after this or that manner from respect to the manner of the existence of this, or should be so only because this had been thus or thus. Indeed, we every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen, if we had seen [him] create the world at first. Revelation 4:11, "For thy pleasure they are and were created." ~Jonathan Edwards, Miscellanies No. 125

I believe Edwards was contemplating the eternality of God as immanent in creation. He describes this in relation to time and space in the way we talk about “never stepping into the same river twice”. A river body remains and is identifiable “in different places” but it isn’t the same physically or molecularly or in “resistance” in time. Then I think Edwards is talking about the passage of time. “But yet this existence is continued so far, that there is respect had to it in all the future existences; 'tis evident in all things continually.” Here perhaps it’s helpful to think of how we look at one river and think of it’s origin in the mountains (the past) and how we know we where this same river is going (in the future) to a delta or another river. But then Edwards changes the paradigm for the reason to contemplate time and space—creation or a river. “Now past existence can't be continued so that respect should be had to it, otherwise than mentally.” He’s saying the past (origins) can’t exist simply to reflect on. The river isn’t just a river. Why is it there? Then he conjectures about the reason for the world’s existence. Why should some prior existence or time be the template for a future? Or why should a future time and world exist in the manner of a former? There is NO reason other than God has pleased to order the creation as we perceive it in time, with our senses, as it is displayed. We know the world won’t go forever. It draws us to wonder into His eternity, which beats in the present moment. He makes all things hold together because He is immanent in creation. This reminds me of two things A.W. Tozer said. "The value of the cleansed imagination in the sphere of religion lies in its power to perceive in natural things shadows of things spiritual. It enables the reverent man to "See the World in a grain of sand, and eternity in an hour." And, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. ...Thought and speech are God's gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him.” (Born After Midnight. Knowledge of the Holy.)

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." ~Chesterton

Sex in the city

I deeply appreciate my pastor's desire to communicate a godly view of sex and who we are as people. This is the 3rd of three sermons on that. If you listen, pay close attention to his reference to Augustine, one of the greatest theologians (and ostensibly a sex addict), and Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate. Augustine, and any believer who tells of the weight of his sin, knew God's doctrine of "unmerited grace", and Jerome, alone in the desert, realized no self-imposed rule, no effort of his own, undid his impurity. In Colossians 2, Paul says, "These rules seem like wisdom, but they won't work...because 'you' (people) thought of them. They're even an effort in false humility. Nothing can restrain sensual indulgence." EXCEPT, a turning from sin and turning to turning to Christ. v. 13 "When you were dead in your sins...God made you alive with Christ." This is the mystery Paul says he labors for, "struggling with all His energy, which so powerfully works in me." This is knowing Christ and having fellowship with the Father and their Spirit. Their spirit is so convicting, arresting, and transforming that it consumes a person with desires inseparable from the world...because we have these earthly bodies, but yet not worldly. A Christian cries to be sanctified.

Amazingly, I was listening to John Piper preach a sermon called, Battling the Unbelief of Lust. He references the exact same texts in Matt 22:34-40 and 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8. Jesus says in Matthew, the greatest commandments are to love God with everything in you and then love your neighbor as you yourself. Thessalonians 4:4 is saying, "be holy and honorable". Why? because you know God and the will of God. The will of God is sanctification, which in marriage, is explicitly tied to sex. That's why Piper thinks the RSV most aptly translates, "that each one of you know how to take a wife...." BUT whether that or "control his own body" isn't the final point because not everyone marries. The final point is that knowing God, loving Him with your very self, is demonstrated in a holy and honorable love for your neighbor. Lust, which cannot be bridled apart from its replacement with a greater affection, a desire for God, is akin to rejecting God and his sanctification. (He makes us holy so we can be honorable.) It's a denial of the Holy Spirit (v.8) to renew what we think can't regenerate. It is unbelief. It is powerless despondence. To me, that's when there is no more mystery in the world or hope within me. Worldly indulgence is all can I see.

Sexuality and spirituality are not, of course, exactly the same thing. They are not identical twins, but they are kissing cousins... The fact is that sex is the closest that many people ever come to a spiritual experience. Indeed, it is because it is a spiritual experience of sorts that so many chase after it with a repetitive, desperate kind of abandon. Often, whether they know it or not, they are searching for God. ~M. Scott Peck

i call it thinkings

I was thinking about God. I was thinking about how I can't hear him and how I have no concept of what he looks like. And I was thinking about how I can understand God when he seems so far beyond me. Who the hell is he and what's happening in my life? So sometimes to answer all the questions that I have more questions than answers for because I have a lot of questions, (get it?) I read. My Bible describes God as beyond me coincidentally, but intervening, in every sense of the word, in the lives of men. My Bible is undeniably a book of fantastical (extraordinary) stories and relevant, credible historical events and peoples. Its praised and demeaned as some of the greatest literature ever written among ordinary men who may or may not have accomplished some noteworthy things in their life times. Historians dont deny its transcription either. Yes, there are versions of it and books not canonized, but its message and content is more or less the same all the way through. It's about God who made the world we live in and his love for the people he made. Its about the perfection of love because we creations can choose to love, and disobeyed because we don't fully get it. And this is a hang up for a lot of us because we don't understand "what's the significance" if we didn't want a perfect love? "How is it perfect?" But I think therein is the story, love is this. It's heart wrenching because we cant comprehend its depth and hurt. It's redemptive because love is forgiving. So 'God is love' in his infinite wisdom illustrated this and gave us his Son. Love is a choice too. We accept it and reject it all the time. So the significance of Jesus is seemly everything. God wants us to comprehend his love for us, so he gives us a way back to him. He shows us how to love because we don't understand. We accept his love and his example or we can choose not to accept it.

In everyday life I often think about myself and where I'm trying to go and I forget about the whole world. What if there was a way to describe all the meaning and humor and personality of people or the 'Bible story' in one blog or a paragraph? I think about that all the time. Why is it so hard to illustrate magnitude? But that's all I can do, that's all anyone who wants to describe what he sees can do. It's an attempt. I'll give you a glimpse of what I feel and think and who I perceive you to be and what I think about God, and you will do your best to understand and that's how we live. Btw, I want to be an ideal person. What's an 'ideal person', you say? I don't know. I'm formulating a prototype. Can people become geniuses, or is it inborn? I want to be a genius.... There will always be people who disagree for good reasons and lame, selfish reasons about everything. And if I knew how to tie everything together and show the interconnectedness of nuances and bottomline beliefs and behavior, I'd be the greatest writer to ever try to communicate. I should not presume.