Stagione 24
The Five
Boom! Boom!! Ka-Boom!!!
Wrong Way
It's Not You
Trust Him!
That You May Believe
The Trifecta
Trouble
Stagione 23
Stormy
Containing or Confessing
1 di 31
First, we all know that God is love but John’s epistle starts with another fundamental truth which is really two truths. God is light. Not visible light; not sunlight or any light on the EM spectrum, but eternal, unbounded, immeasurable spiritual light that shines everywhere. It illuminates not only all His creation but every heart and mind. It reveals truth, it warms the soul, it cleanses and lifts up.
All people exist with the ‘void’ of being separated from the divine. Some are so senseless and dead in their separation, that they don’t even realize the void. Some sense it and cope with it by imagining they can cross or span the void by doing enough good (or evil) and some sense it but deny it in the hope that the emptiness will go away. Some imagine fantasies of there being no divine at all and as a result live like animals.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden was ‘marketed’ by the serpent as God withholding something divine from us. But instead of just knowing good and evil, it warped our minds, causing our perceptions to ‘think’ 180 degrees away from God’s thought and to be in sync with Satan’s.
Yes, we are called to do good (He who does good is of God… 3 John 1:11), we’ve been told to love one another (“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12), we are called to trust God like Jesus, to pray without ceasing, to help and edify those in need, to set our mind on things above, on and on. All of this is part of imitating Christ but none of it is done in your strength. The necessary strength and character attributes come from God’s Spirit:
Just like the serpent did in the garden of Eden, Satan always wants to pollute your perception of Who God is and His promises. He wants you to focus on your sin rather than repent and TRUST for the instant you do you realize that God never left, that you never ‘surprise’ Him, that His love and grace are infinitely more powerful than your failures, that Christ’s blood is and always will be the final Word.
So, what we are meant to understand is that the God-Son, as the Almighty’s Expression, His Agent, didn’t simply create life but rather He is life. Thus, the entire cosmos was vested in the outcome of His sacrifice.
This is why the trifecta is so important. God could have done anything to rectify what was being spoiled. He could have created literally anything, and yet He chose to create a beautiful world with a magnificent garden and a situation that would teach all His creation the one fundamental truth.
Do you want to live as Jesus, like His disciples (post Calvary)? Meet each moment, good or bad, with trust in Father God. And don’t worry about it, don’t try to make yourself trust. Just choose it and rest in Him.
In our day, you might say ‘he just couldn’t catch a break’. He started off as kind of a ‘grumbler’, not at all happy about what God had told him to do. Ironically, he came from a small town just a few miles from modern day Nazareth which of course was where Jesus grew up.
Why is the human heart and mind ‘coping’ with Jesus by trying to define Him in these myriad ways? Simply put, to define Him is to put Him in a ‘box’, to ‘contain’ Him. When something we perceive about Him or those we associate with Him bums us out, we can simply adjust our definition and thus His ‘container’. That’s how we remain ‘superior’.