Awe struck

I was awed (I know, not a word) today by something my wife told me. Her mother, my mother-in-law, broke her left ankle in an auto accident about three weeks ago. Yesterday they took off the splints and put on the cast. The surgeon who worked on her mom’s ankle explained to my wife and her mother how the bones in our body have polarities similar to magnets. When a bone breaks, the polarities at the break shift so now there is an attraction instead of what would normally be a repelling motion. This shift lasts for about three months and then the polarities shift back to normal. Since the discovery of this phenomena, they have found a way to prolong that shift before shifting back to normal. This stretches out the healing process which is sometimes needed for older people or people who need that extra time.

 

When I think about how God has put together our bodies, it awes me (I wished I could find better words but I just cannot find any words good enough to describe my thoughts of God.) He has thought of everything.

 

I’ve been talking about a marriage with God. Here's some scripture to think about:

 

 Isaiah 62:4-5

New International Version (NIV)

⁴ No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah,^[a]
and your land Beulah^[b];
for the Lord will take delight in you,
and your land will be married.
⁵ As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.

Footnotes:

1. Isaiah 62:4 Hephzibah means my delight is in her.
2. Isaiah 62:4 Beulah means married.

Matthew 23:8-10

New International Version (NIV)

⁸ “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. ⁹ And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. ¹⁰ Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah.

Who is better to teach than the bridegroom, Christ Jesus!

God's way.

God gave us, humans, through Moses, the laws. I believe that this is God saying to us, “OK, you want to control your own lives, without ME, so then follow these laws. Remember, there are consequences for disobeying them. If you don’t follow these laws and you don’t take care of disobedience, you will never have peace.” And so, we have no peace because something inside us (our sin nature) makes it hard to keep the laws God gave us.

 

God, in His infinite wisdom and His great compassion, became a human in the person of Jesus or Yeshua, as the Jews call Him. He obeyed all those laws that He Himself gave us to obey, the ones we cannot. He became that spotless (without sin) lamb who the Jews used to sacrifice during Passover. He took our punishment upon Himself and was put to death in our place. The amazing thing was, He didn’t stay in the grave; only God can accomplish such a thing. On the third day after he was crucified, He came out of the grave, alive. Many people witnessed seeing Him and the wounds on His hands and feet and side; before He disappeared in the clouds, about 40 days after He arose from the dead.

 

I believe our religions too often, become like the laws are to the Jews. Right now, I’m thinking about just Christian religions like Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, and on and on, but this analogy probably holds true to other non-Christian religions as well. I said in the previous post that religion is like our way of coming up with a recipe for life. You must be baptized some say; some say dunking is the only way, some say sprinkling. Some say you must go to church or synagogue every Sunday or Saturday whichever the case. Some say you must be able to speak in tongues. Study the Bible, feed the poor, tithe to the church, visit the sick, the orphans, the widows, and on and on. I hope you can see how, in a way, this is like making a recipe for life.

 

I’m not saying that these things in our recipes are wrong. They are what we should be doing. The problem is that they are something we try to follow just like we would try to follow a recipe or instructions to make a cake, or build a house, or assemble a bike, or whatever. They don’t give us what we hoped for or what we would have liked to have.

 

God, through the person of Christ Jesus, says, “Marry with me. Through our marriage and the power of the Holy Spirit, we will become as one. You won’t have to try and do things on you own accord anymore. We will do them together. Those things you’ve tried so hard to do will become more natural to you as we become as one in our marriage.”

 

God becomes our husband and we become His wives, in submission to Him. His way is so much easier and is as it should be! Who knows better than God, the creator?

Why so many religions?

Have you ever wondered why we have so many faiths or religions; I have? There is but one God who created all things seen and unseen. You may ask about or have contemplated why the Bible talks about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as though there are three? ............. Maybe this is the only way we humans can begin to understand Him. God has to bring knowledge down to a level we can understand.

 

Have you looked at His creation lately? What I mean is look beyond the surface. Take a moment to ponder just one thing God has made; a tree, a flower, a butterfly, a cloud, an animal………… Pretty awesome isn’t it? Now pull your mind out of that one thing and look at all the other things He’s created; and this is just what we see. How can we possibly begin to comprehend God?

 

Before I go on, have you taken a close look at us humans? The next time you are in a large group of people, look around at each one of them; all look different unless you happen to see identical twins. But even identical twins are different inside. We are all uniquely made. There are no duplicates. Some may look the same but their characters are different. Can you imagine, that there are an estimated 7 billion people in the world today, all uniquely made and God is able to see and know each one of us personally; like each of us has our own god? Isn’t that absolutely mind-boggling? Our very thoughts He hears as though we speak them out loud to Him. He knows why we do things when we do not. God knows us better than we know ourselves.

 

When I think about 7 billion of us in the world today all uniquely made, it’s no wonder we can’t get along with each other. It seems to me that the only way possible to have peace is for us all to marry God; become God’s bride. Think about it. We’ve all seen that the longer couples are married, the more they become as one.

 

Earlier, I said that seeing God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, may be the only way for us to begin to understand Him. I’ve been studying the book of John.

John 1:1-5

New International Version (NIV)

The Word Became Flesh

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome^[a] it.

He is talking about Jesus as "the Word". What I believe he is saying here is that Jesus is the part of God we can see, touch, communicate with; the part of God we can marry. The Holy Spirit is the part of God that binds us together.

 

Back to why so many religions. I believe this is our way of creating a recipe or instructions for life. Something we can follow to have what we believe to be the way to have a good life.

 

Have you ever tried to make something from a recipe? You see something with a picture of a food that looks scrumptious. It has a recipe and so you try to make it. You follow the recipe to the letter but your end product looks nothing like the picture you saw or may not taste as good as you thought it would. Maybe you have something you like so much that you want to share it with others. You meticulously create a recipe or instructions for someone to be able to make the same thing but when they try to make it, they somehow misinterpret your instructions and end up with something different.

Well, I believe that is what religion also does for us. We try to follow the teachings of our faith only to eventually find the results not to be what we expected.

 

You see what I’m trying to say? It is only through the marriage with God, Christ Jesus, whereby we can have that peaceful life we are all searching for.