Letters from Christ

The greatest challenge a person living outside the family of God can face is living in the presence of a Child of God that knows the love of Christ and has a passionate, intimate love relationship with Abba Father. The longing for this relationship is built into the heart of mankind and your very presence awakens that burning desire to know this ultimate relationship, to comprehend the reality of knowing the creator of the universe as Abba Father.
Hence, as Christ Himself challenged us, it is by our love for the family of God that the world around us will know we are true children of the One True God. As they see the love relationship we have as His children, they will come to understand what it means to have this family love relationship with our Abba Father.
We truly are a letter from Christ written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God on tablets of human hearts.

Wanderer101

Where is Hope?

If we are to discover a hope that continues through shattered dreams, that hope must be available to every one regardless of their circumstances. We must find a hope available to sick people, poor people, lonely people, unnoticed people. And it must be the same hope we offered to healthy, rich people with lots of friends and talent. We must discover a hope that thrives when dreams shatter, when sickness advances and poverty worsens and loneliness deepens and obscurity continues, the same hope that anchors us to God when dreams do come true.
How can I live with hope when life is collapsing and darkness looms on the horizon? What is hope when I feel the pain of those I love and know that the 'good life' is not waiting just around the corner? Where is hope when silence and pain is so strong?
That hope comes only from knowing God as my Abba Father and walking with my hand in His in a moment by moment existence. A hope that allows me to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in my inner man, to be rooted and grounded in His love, and to be able to comprehend with fellow travelers on this journey what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that I might be filled with all the fullness of God.
I know the reality of shattered dreams and I know the struggle of trying to put life together again, to renew my faith in God when it seemed He did not answer in darkness.
I understand the reality of attempting to comprehend the possibility that the greatest blessings I can know is to be placed in a situation where all I have to hold is my faith, faith that God understands and knows and will welcome me and all His children with open arms when we finally leave the sufferings of this world?
I faced the question, 'What if God did not promise me the good life in this part of the journey? and began a new path in my journey towards knowing God in a new way.

Wanderer101

Out-giving God

A phrase I have heard over the years is, 'You can't out-give God. If you give to God He will give back to you many times over.' I have tried to understand this seeming promise from the perspective of that part of the church that is living in poverty and suffering.
How does the hungry, destitute, persecuted believer on the run for his very life understand the promise in Mat 6:33 "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you."? How do they understand what has been promised by the phrase 'these things' when they have nothing and have seen their loved ones die of starvation?
Are they just not seeking the kingdom of God and therefore this promise is not for them?
Or do they understand that the intent of the passage is not on the 'What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, With what shall we be clothed?' but rather centers on the admonition given in 'Mat 6:20-21 But lay up treasures in Heaven for yourselves, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'?
Have we made God one who deals in currency, in dollars and forgotten that His treasures are eternal?
Where is my heart today, this moment?

Wanderer101

The Shadows

As I look back over my life I wonder how much of it was spent in the shadows. I had escaped the darkness through coming to accept the gift of salvation provided by God through Jesus Christ, but somehow I missed what it meant to walk in the light. I lived a life between the darkness and the true light and freedom promised by God. I looked at the freedom and was not sure I could accept it, I feared all it could mean in my life.
I thought about the words of Christ, 'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.' But I did not comprehend the depth of the message. I dedicated myself to knowing about God from the Bible, but somehow this did not give me the freedom Christ seemed to be offering.
And then one day a thought occured to me, what if the truth was not only the written word, but was also the living Word of God, the 'logos'? John told us that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, the word 'logos' of God and that knowing God and and Jesus Christ whom He has sent is the very definition of life eternal.
The more I thought on these things the more I came to understand what it means to walk in the light as He is in the light. And the fear of the light was overcome by the light of knowing God and understanding what it means to be free in Him.
To walk from the shadows to the light of freedom.

Wanderer101

Measuring my day

How does God measure my day? I am prone to think about the checklist I was able to accomplish in the day. Did I finish the tasks I had planned for the day? But, what if God had a different way of measuring my day? What if the true measure of my day was how much love I put into my deeds every day? I am prone to look at the externals, the activities but God desires my heart. The true measure of my day is not in my doing, but in my being. Was I constrained by the Love of God moment by moment throughout the day? I must ask myself, 'Why am I doing this?' Are my actions driven by the routines and demands of life and work, or am I truly living in the presence of God and His love?

Wanderer101

A Foreign Language

God has designed his children to live in the rawness of life. Not secluded away in our own little world, our own little sub-culture. We have become so lost in the words and thoughts of our religion that we have a very difficult time even beginning to understand what the world is saying. Their words are foreign to us and we tend to shy away from them.

We must learn their language, learn to communicate with their words and tell them what it means to enter into the Family of God, to become a part of a true body of believers, the Body of Christ. We have everything to offer and yet without the words that make sense, it seems to the world we are speaking a foreign language and they watch in amazement, wondering what we are talking about. We can offer wholeness, a filling of the void that resides in their depths, the unconditional Love of God, a passionate, intimate love relationship with a holy, all-powerful, loving Father.

God is making us into His messengers, allowing us to know Him, the depths of His love and grace so that we might show others what life can be like.

Wanderer101

Channeling God

We must distinguish God’s speaking to us via our own thought processes from channeling. Channeling is a pagan practice in which one is believed to have lost the use of his faculties in order to more freely function as a “spirit guide.“ Orthodox Christianity has never adopted channeling as a Biblical practice, although some Christians talk about God speaking in ways that sound strangely similar to channeling. If we have been instrumental in communicating a profound message to another person, we must not confuse our part in the process as being mechanical in nature as though God use used us as we use an electric drill. At times, a pastor or speaker will sincerely and innocently pray, “God, help me get out of the way so You can speak clearly.” But to think he is simply channeling God is in a naive assumption and can potentially make for a destructive use of the platform.
[RE]Understanding Prayer 151

Wanderer101

Honest to God

Until reading Brueggemann, I never considered such levels of honesty as “an act of bold faith” – rather, the opposite. But I certainly do now. When he writes about the gut – wrenchingly honest prayers we find in the Psalms, he says,
It is an act of boldness on the one hand, because it insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way. On the other hand, it is bold because it insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. Everything properly belongs in this conversation of the heart. To withhold parts of life from the conversation is in fact to withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God. Thus these Psalms make the important connection: everything must be brought to speech, and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God, who is the final reference for all of life
If we are to live in close proximity to Jesus, how can we open ourselves up to his presence in the hidden, remote areas? As the apostle Paul said, how might we “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ“ (2 Cor. 10:5)
[RE]Understanding Prayer 122

Wanderer101

Love the Word of God / Love the God of the Word

I have been listening to people talk about their commitment and their love and the most often phrase is that they are committed to the Word of God or they love the Word of God. I have very seldom heard an introduction or a message where a man is talking about his commitment / love that he makes the statement that he loves God or is committed to God. I think it is possible to be in love with the Word of God and not with the God of the Word. It is like we have developed a passion for the text, but have forgotten from whence it came or why it was given.

Walking in the Spirit, being led by the Spirit, hearing the voice of the Spirit, these are critical elements to the process of knowing God. The desire to know God is the desire to enter into the mystery. God is in us, we are in God, God is our Abba Father, we are the Children of a holy, omniopent God and He loves us with an eternal, unconditional love.

Wanderer101

Protecting God

My experience of life outgrew my understanding of God. Pure and simple. At some point, I was overcome by the realization that the God I was raised worshiping could not handle the complexities of real life. He was perfectly fit to deal with lollipops, candy canes and sugar plums, but avalanches, wildfires, and tsunamis He was not. Literally and metaphorically. What’s odd about this realization is not its ridiculous nature but my response to this realization. The next few years I shifted into a defensive posture. I became protective of God, like an older brother watching out for his diminutive little sister who couldn’t hold her weight on the school playground. And this posture eventually seemed odd to me. Why did God need defending? Who was I really protecting?
[re]Understanding prayer page 4-5

Wanderer101

The Other Side

I’ve had this experience in life where what I perceive to be real was in fact not real at all. Some of these experiences have been spiritual in nature because they pertain to how I’ve understood God, or rather misunderstood God; how I’ve understood scripture, or rather misunderstood scripture; how I’ve understood the nature of prayer, or rather misunderstood the nature of prayer. When God, scripture, and prayer create 98% of your worldview, you can imagine how jarring it can feel to have someone or something come along and tilt the axis on which your world has spun for more than 30 years. At times the jolt is so overwhelming that I choose not to accept it and simply continue along my merry way. It may be truth, but truth is not welcome when it comes to such a high price. The hollow cavity it creates in the pit of my stomach cannot be worth whatever awaits on the other side, or so I tell myself. And that works for a while . . . . .
[re]Understanding prayer page 3-4

Wanderer101

Prayer -- Way of Life

Henri Nouwen said that when prayer becomes a way of life for you, it does not mean that you think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or that you spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts into thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove Him from our daily life and put him in a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings.
[Re]Understanding prayer, page 100

Wanderer101

God's Grace at Work

It’s possible to learn to recognize the myriad ways that God touches us outside of that which is openly spiritual and we can share these moments with others. God touches us through painful growth experiences of loss and grief, through moments of creative and athletic excellence, through moments of victory over our problems and through the tenderness of relationships. God’s grace falls on the just the unjust alike. All of humanity experiences God’s hand. These moments when we touch something eternal and noble and good are God’s footprints in our lives – his prevenient grace. People need to realize that the God they feel they do not know has, in fact, been at work already in their lives in many ways.
The Shaping of Things To Come, Page 105

Wanderer101

Who Do Men Say We Are?

In the second century, Diogenetus wrote of the fledgling Christian community in the following way:

They dwell in their country, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country and every country of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all others; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flash, but do not live after the flash. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many are rich; they are in lack of all things and yet abound in all; they are dishonored and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled and blast; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evil doors. When punished they rejoice as if quicken into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.

Do people say this of us as we sit in our beautiful structures, watching a well choreographed presentation, seeing yet never being asked to question or even to speak. Watching, alone in our own thoughts, knowing the pain that dwells deep within our being.

Who do men say we are?

Wanderer101

A Billabong

A billabong is an Australian term for a pond or lake that was once part of the bend of a river or creek but which has been cut off from the flow as the river slowly changed direction. Many 2nd or 3rd generation Christians find themselves in a church billabong. Where once their parents or grandparents were part of a church that was like a flowing stream, now they are trapped in a stagnant backwater. Growing up Christian, they have adopted a middle-class perspective and embraced a certain way of doing church. Their motivation for staying in the church is no longer to fulfill Christ's mission in this world, but to have their own needs met.
Page 85-86 The Shaping of Things to Come

Wanderer101

Submit to One Another

In our power structure based culture the thought of submitting to one another normally evokes thoughts of position and control. But, what if the command to submit to one another is simply an exortation from God to allow ourselves to be willing to receive a helping hand from a fellow traveler on the journey of faith? Can we truly allow another believer to 'bear our burderns' if we do not open ourselves up and allow him access to the depths of our being?

Wanderer101

What If?

What if this is what Christianity was meant to be?A radical, almost extreme commitment to the faith; a deep desire to create community; a longing for a worship that emphasizes the otherness of God’s transcendence, yet the healing power of God’s presence; a ministry not based on programs but on transformed lives; a commitment to rebuild the cities of the world and establish a presence of the kingdom that changes neighborhoods. Page 47

Wanderer101

Submission

Submission is a very interesting biblical term and in our cultural hermeneutic it is often interpreted as an issue of power, where one is to submit, be under the authority of another. A very popular usage of this term in some circles occurs in the command for a wife to submit to her husband. However, what if it is not a power term but is instead a relational term. What if believers were to have the 'mind of Christ' and in so doing be willing to do whatever it takes to bring health to a relationship, the body? This interpretation would allow for the possibility that all believers are to submit to one-another.

Wanderer101

Oyster and the Pearl

I wondered about oysters and pearls...I wondered if oysters ever got used to the irritant that caused the pearl. Not being an oyster, but realizing that they keep covering up the irritant to make it more acceptable to live with, made me realize, that when God doesn't remove an irritant, we can 'cover' it to make it more acceptable...We ARE supposed to be gems in His crown aren't we? The gates of the Holy City are going to be massive pearls.... anyway....
Irritants can be lodged in our body, our heart, and our soul....The question is...what are we covering our irritants with? I think...if we cover them with love, prayers, hope, kindness...that we will create a beautiful pearl...one of great value...

I suppose the oyster could allow the irritant to make him/her irritable...which would be fruitless...as that does nothing to remove the irritant....

Anyway...for those things that are irritants in your life today...may they all become Pearls of Great Price.

A Fellow Traveler

Cristianity & Institution

The heart of our Christian faith is a personal, intimate relationship with God and with the Children of God? What happens to this relationship of mutual care and submission to one-another when it is to function within an institutional setting? If institutions are a manifestation of relational cultural norms and if the cultural norm is structured around power and authority, then what happens when believers enter into that setting and give tacit approval of the relational cultural norms? Would this limit the ability and desire for a believer to move up in the system if it would mean that they have to take on more of the structrural norms of power? Why is the question, 'Who is in control?' so significant in settings where our greatest desire is to be the greatest servant?

Wanderer101

The Gospel

What is the Gospel
What if we have missed the heart of the Gospel. What if the essential element of the Gospel is that mankind lives a life of total separation from personal relationship with God and we have been given the task of telling men and women that God has made a provision by the death of His Son in order that they can be born anew into the family of God?
What if Pascal was right in his diagnosis of the core element mankind seeks after? "Years ago Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) insightfully said, "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known by Jesus Christ.""
Do we tell people by our relationships that we are a part of God's community, God's family and we are inviting people to join us in His family?
Can we effectively demonstrate our faith by our love for God and for one-another? If not, what is the message we are really telling the world?
Wanderer101