Sorta ironic…

I work at a big lumber and garden center, and I have a obsession with watching people while I work.

I watch while people go in and out of the store with the new possesions of fixing their home or new addition or new landscape. I watch them go in and out of the store every year, doing the same thing as the year before, making it prettier and fancier to suit their taste this whim.

Never knowing when it will be just right, to please themselves or even the neighbors to whom they work so diligent for.Making their home into something that only God could build. Nothing they could do, could duplicate what God had done before. Their springtime ritual, has come with a price, because it happens again next year and the next year and again the next year.

You see, it never ends.

But it occurred to me, It’s that garden thing!

It’s that wanting to have that perfect garden to which we had a long,long,long time ago. The one where we were surrounded by all of nature that God put around us to walk daily with thru the green and leafy foliage with the roses and lilics and the smell of newness in the garden. It was all for us, God and his love of his life, His Bride.

We know that we are missing something, we are craving it, there is a hole in our hearts where the past was seeking us. The past will be our future. It says so in Revelation 21 and 22.

Community?

What defines the word-‘community’?

It is used in so many ways that we have a distorted understanding of it. We also have a lot of questions about it too. Some people believe that it is your neighbor, neighbors, your little town, your big town, or maybe just who you associate with. It is also could be the community of your beliefs, community of your work, or the community of family.

Maybe, just maybe if we could just combine all these things that we believe is just the one that we see as a community as we are involved in. It is because ‘we’ need to see that our community is the entire creation that God has created.

Community is a unique way of distinguishing a people that are united in their nature in something that unites them all to one thing. That one thing is God, the creator. We are his creation, he is our creator.

Which is it?

I hear different reason’s why christians ‘have to’ go back to their place of worship(church).

The first reason is that they must meet together with their fellow worshipers which they have not seen since the start of the pandemic. This seems just to wrong in so many ways. If they were your friends of any sort you would tried in any way,shape, or form to get in contact with them. There is still telephones, paper and pen to write, zoom, or just go to their house and stand at a distance and talk to them. Two, if the reason to go to church, to meet those said friends was the sole reason to go, then you have the wrong motive to be going there in the first place. Nowhere in the scriptures does it even slightly say that our worship is needing fellowship with other believers when we worship God.(No, you can’t use Hebrews 10:25 as an example, it is usually used out of context)

One thing that needs to be said or understood on this subject is what the meaning of ‘Worship’ means. Worship is not based somewhere, this church or that church, this denomination or that denomination, it is who you believe is the God of all, who has your allegiance, who is king, who is Lord. Mankind has had to just stay ‘in touch’ with God,by having a ‘place’ to go and be in ‘his presence’, but what we must understand about this is that it was God that set this up for Him to still be in contact with us even though we shunned him in the garden of eden(Example’s of this was the Mt. Sinai,The Temple,The tent of Meeting,The burning bush,the synagogue.) This is why we have felt the need to ‘go’ to the only spot that God was at. Which was true for awhile until God sent his son to the world for that physical being to be ‘in’ the world but a moving ‘God’. It was then that when Christ was crucified and resurrected that God was then in his people, which in and of the world that made his presence even larger in scale than the previous way.

The ‘need’ to go to a building to ‘be’ with God is still around to this day, with all religions. (didn’t think of this til just now) This is what we are all looking for, that sensation or knowing that God is with us, which is ironic that we say this, when God tells us that He is all in all. He is everything in everybody. Why do we miss this understanding?

I believe that because we ‘go’ to something, or somewhere to be with God, that we substitute this for having God always within us,at all times. Or maybe we don’t understand that the new covenant has taken over from the old one that Jesus has said to us. ‘That You should worship only God,and to love your neighbors”,(paraphrased by me).

God is within us, around us, in all for all. I wonder if this pandemic is God’s way of telling us this very thing? Just saying…..

There’s change in the wind

God works in mysterious ways.

It’s taken a life changing event for everyone in the world. Now, let’s look at this statement. We might not look at a life changing event if it was just in one or two countries, because it could be considered just their way of life that has led to it. But it wasn’t.

It effected the whole world. It was meant to change the routine and belief in mankind. It has really worked, we are all fighting over what we should do, or don’t do. When we should do it and for how long? Should we be together or away from each other. Where can we go to be with God, our house is banned from us? Why?

Mankind is in turmoil. What should he do? Where should he go? Can I go back to normal life? Why should I have to change my lifestyle? My control of my life is gone.

God is working in the whole world. The whole world. Think about this. He is changing the way we do our life as we know it. He is interrupting our lifestyle, our routine, our life. Maybe, just maybe he is telling us that we are not in charge. He is in charge again. Not us.

God is pointing everything and everyone to himself. God is God and His ways are His ways. He is in control of his world and all it’s creations. God will do what He needs to do to bring it back to its original status.

Our world that we live in, is and will be changing from what we know it, it will likely not be the last thing that we see change in the world. One key thing that we must remember in this action of God, It is not just us that live in the United States but to the whole world. It is a sign that the whole world is corrupt in its ways. How we can, and must look at this, is to change our way of talking,thinking or viewing our issue, is to look at it as a we issue or us issue, not a I issue.

God looks at us as His one creation, an corporate creation, not millions of little creations. Man is God’s creation, his only concern. It’s his Life of saving the whole world to him.

Worship

Is it changed forever now?

Tell me your thoughts, explain it how it will effect you personally or corporate to all.

Idols

They have been around ever since man has been alive.

In fact, we made ourselves one.

Man has needed to give glory to something to which it never was meant to be given. If I was to give a full list of things that we have given Idol status we would need a full day to write them down. But let’s just list a few to understand where we are going.

There is always the big three that is always mentioned in conversations: Money,Power and Sex. Now let first set the stage with some context for this, the paramaters for this is for our context, this is for the United States. The stage will be different for other places, or other area’s of the world for various reasons.

Now I think that we could if we wanted to really delve into the very deep perspective on how and why we got to these things, but we will keep it shallow for now. If we use just the three that have been mentioned, We must understand that where we are coming from using these three.

All these are coming from the perspective of humanness, where do these things to survive in our human world, without them we would be irrelevant. So we would believe. These are the things that we believe that without them there is no existence. For this is all we can see to do to survive.

Mankind is looking within it’s self to solve the paradigm of man in charge. It was when adam and eve decided to go out on their own to be the King and Queen of their own realm, that we set the stage for all these issues. Our failure to see that mankind is still considered ‘good’ in God’s eyes we are still flawed. God made us this way, for a reason. We were to realize that we needed Him, to be whole. To be relevant to be in his Kingdom, we have to be a citizen of the Kingdom itself, one of the realm, the paradigm.

The story of the Garden of Eden in the scriptures was the storyline of all the issues that we are talking about today. It seems that for the most part, what is always talked about in this storyline is the last part of the story, until recently that some people have been bringing up the first part of the story. In fact, my blog’s title “Eternal Purpose”, points to this very thing. It’s the story that never really gets talked about.

It’s the story of God’s design for us. It’s the story of God’s design for us. Let this sink in. God had/has a plan. It was/is for us. To be with God. For God to prepare a place for us. To plan the way of life for God and his creation’s. The world, the environment, the way of life, the Kingdom.

It was the paradigm.

But mankind had other idea’s.(we know where this goes)

God is in control, and now beginning to re-take shape into the one that God originally designed. God’s Kingdom is now being re-made with man and Himself being the way that He had in the Garden of Eden.

God will be worshipped, no more idols will be worshipped. Only God.

Heaven and Earth will be joined together again! It’s coming!

Is the ‘church’ preaching from the old covenant?

I read alot of blogs,articles, and commentary of said written articles, and I always find them interesting to see where everyone’s perspective comes from, in fact I like reading the comments almost more than the blog or article itself. One can ‘see’ where the participants theology is or was founded. It is also beneficial to me to see this varied perspectives on things, because I will then start a conversation with different people that I agree or disagree with in the topics.

One of my latest finding of ‘listening’ to the the blog or just a question on something biblical, is that the references always seem to be coming from the old covenant scriptures, as if it is the manual for current christians to live by.

I find this disturbing to find alot of references on topics of today that go back to OT, as if it is a manual to live by. This is wrong in two different ways, one, the OT was the shadow of what was to be in the new covenant. The OC which was to be adhered to in a very ritualistic legal way because of the circumstance of the people. This covenant with God’s people was in the most sincerest form a legalistic way of life. Using the reasons mentioned before this was the catalyst for God to bring his son into the picture for his people. It was the word picture that needed to be shown to his people at the time to let them ‘see’ that ‘they’ could not ascertain the height of God. It was impossible. The Israelite’s, let alone the ‘gentiles’ could not ‘be’ what God has set before them. It was that mankind had taken the road that said “I can do it by myself”. But in a world that God had designed,created,and purposefully eternal life to his creation, man had no control or power.

The old covenant with a particular people and particular reason cannot be used just as a reference to something that is of interest in the new covenant. What is also missed in the commentaries of seeing in the new covenant is that the two parties of the covenant have not changed. It is between God and His people, albeit his people are now the whole world. This new covenant is now, back to the basics, Love your God, love everyone. This same sentiment is ironically the same one used in Genesis 1-2.

When I am studying things on my own I will sometimes try something differnent to maybe shed some light on the subject or just get clarification. I will take a sentence that someone says, or even what God has said and say the opposite of what is being mentioned. When God said in Genesis that you shall have no other god but me,(do you think that he knew this might be a problem down the road with them?) It was the number one thing that ‘His’ people had the problem with. So, God being the subject of the issue of worshiping Him, instead of someone or something else, this was the link in the chain that was missing. God was not in their picture. It was just man. Or man and his idol. This was the Sin. The actions from this ‘Sin’ would be considered ‘sins’. Worshiping the Creator, was the Eternal Purpose that God had always wanted.

For the Church to progress it needs to ‘see’ that the Kingdom is founded in the New Covenant.

LIFE

Do we not understand what LIFE is?

A very simple explanation of life is it is the opposite of death! Now what is death? Are automatic response is the physical death of our body. We need to understand that this is also in relationship to our spiritualness in our Spirit.

When we chose the tree of the “knowledge of Good and Evil”  this was the choice of the opposite of “the tree of Life”, so by default the tree of “knowledge of Good and Evil” is death. God’s tree of Life is one that is designed for God’s creation, man and his creator.

Man’s desire to control his ‘life’ was never intended. The creation is never greater than the creator. God’s design was to ‘live’,commune,with his creation. Mankind is ‘King’. We are in charge of our realm, we are all knowing, we can fix it, make it better and or great, we can salvage what ever comes up when something goes wrong.

Are we missing something? What does ‘life’ mean? Is it temporary, is it forever, eternal? What is it? Does it depend on us, or does it come from outside us? The word ‘Life’ is used in our society as a measuring stick to differentiate between ‘being’ or ‘death’. Could this be the issue? Has our notion that our ‘life’ is just ‘being’ that is what it is all about? Or is it that we are not ‘dead’ that what we are?

Generations have struggled to define or ‘know’ what life was in their religious or secular world. It’s that uncertainty or that just aloofness of mankind that we can figure it out one day that we just don’t worry about it.

It could be that mankind has substituted that ‘life’ with idols of our realm that we have made for ourselves that we strive for everyday in every way. We have made them our ‘life’. It is what we are always striving for, every day for all our lives, until our death is in sight, then we ‘see’ what we thought was ‘life’ was not ‘life’ but ‘death’, in that it had captured us and had us in  it’s grip. We weren’t experiencing ‘life’, we are a slave to our creation of idols,death, something that is opposite that we were striving for.

So, where do you we go from here? Maybe we need to realize what the meaning of ‘Death’ is?

It has been fulfilled,only once needed.

Man has tried.Woman has tried. Mankind has tried.

But to no avail, century after century it has been engaged to fulfill the law.

Jesus was the one and only one that could.

The law, being the covenant between the pre- Jewish nation led by Moses, and totally fulfilled with Abraham and his covenant with God. It was a journey, more than the 40 years that Moses led, more than the time of Abraham, more than Jacob’s time. It was never meant to be. It was like something was keeping these great leaders from accomplishing their goal in God’s covenant, God was keeping his end of the covenant, but why was man struggling, or just plain failing on his end of the marriage.

Man was never meant to achieve this goal. Say what? Think about this, if man was to eventually accomplish this goal of keeping this side of the covenant, there would be a totally different ending to this story. Jesus would of never had to arrive on the scene at all. No birth, no disciples, no ministry, no cross, no resurrection, no eternal life. Different story altogether.

Jesus’ fulfilling the law of Matthew 5:17 was the action of a God that ‘knew’ that his creation was unable to fulfill this great goal. Man was not created to do this, for it was not designed to accomplish this heavenly request. Mankind’s actions on it’s own would not be a match for the ‘law’ for it was created for only a communion of man and God to fulfill. It had to be so. It only could be this combination. Not just man, not just God, but God-man.

Think on this. God’s desire was not for us to accomplish this on our own but for us to see that it was designed for the only marriage of God and man together; Jesus.

Our vain attempt to do this on our own thru the centuries from the time of Paul, was always going to be fruitless, until we ‘saw’ that we as the union of God and man, thru Jesus was this very communion. It was not realized thru the entire old testament, and even thru the new testament there was only a crack of light that was coming thru to Paul and the christians. It is here, in the new testament that we must see that it is now the marriage of God and man that has shed some spotlight on what God’s new Kingdom was.

It is to be our desire for us to just see that the old testament’s covenant was going to be a failure on man’s side, from the get go. But it was to be known that God was in it for the long haul, he had a plan. His son, Jesus was going to be the true example of the ‘man’s side of the equation to be God’s image of his creation.

It is in the new testament that we see that our goal is not to continually try and accomplish these laws or to be perfect or to worry about if we fail in one or all of them, it is for us to ‘see’ that we are the perfect example of God’s creation, His new creation, for his new Kingdom.

It has to start somewhere

Working in retail most of my life, I feel that I can say these things in great assuredness that I have seen very little of the christian’s ‘mark of proof’ that they have instilled in their ownership.

Let me expound on this. It is the little things. Christians are everywhere(I hope), but I cannot ‘see’ them because they look and act just like everyone else in the world.

You see, it’s the little things that should be noticeable in their daily lives that should let them stand out in crowds or just in their everyday lives, that make them different. It should be that time in the store that some older lady is having problems picking up a box of food, and can’t quite pick it up and out of nowhere a man comes up to pick it up for her and puts it in her basket. It could be a time when some friends are talking about their home projects that they are starting and bob says that he has a big job of putting in new cabinets in his kitchen and it is a two man job, and without hesitation all the friends come to his aid the next day to his house.

It is that mentality of it’s not about me, but it’s everyone around me that matters. I struggle when I work, that I have a particlure job description, as does everyone else, but it seems that we as humans see ‘us’, me,and you as the only ones that can do it. No, everyone can do the kindness, the my needs can wait, lets work on your needs first. It is this unselfish ‘nature’ of a christian that should be ‘lighting up’ this world as it says in the scriptures, for christians are to be ‘different’ to stand out, to be called out to be different. But are we? Why not?

Is it because we don’t know what it is, or how it’s done? Is it because we do know, but we never do it, out side of our comfort zone? Is it just to be used in that institutional place that we go every week? Why not? Do we really know how to be different? Are you different? Are God’s people different? These questions need to be relooked at in our lives, but mainly in the christianity’s mission of who we are. What God designed us to be, and are we the image of that design?

In the end we must revisit what God’s people were designed to ‘be’ and why. Christianity has strayed from it’s vocation that God gave them in the beginning. It hasn’t changed. Even tho, there was a little hiccup along the way, It is still the same. Start with Genesis 1 and 2. Then look at Rev. 21 and 22, that is what it looks like when completed.

It starts with the little things.