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