~ Random thoughts on the marvelous reality and relevance of scripture.

 

Proverbs 3:5                     Getting Real                     Be Thou My Vision

The Gospel                Christian Nationalism                     Love... Who?

Grace                      Prompted?

 

 

Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the Lord, and lean not on your own understanding.

Here is an interesting thought:  consider substituting the usage of the word understanding that John gave us at the beginning of his Gospel:  The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it --
as in overcome, conquered, overpowered, mastered...
Hmmm -- yeah, my mastery is pretty limited, while His is sure.
Which would you rather lean on?

Now, let's slice and dice and reassemble:

Trust in the Lord...
*He knows what's best.
**He can, he has the power to make it so.
***He will -- he sees you, hears you, loves you, acts for you (see Romans 8:28).
So... He knows, He can, He will.

Lean not on your own understanding...
Lean -- as in relying on, depending on --
what happens when what you are leaning on falls or is removed?
Down you go.  Lean not on your own power or mastery...
Wouldn't it be more sensible, safer, to rely (yes - utterly!) upon God
for what is most important to you today?

Takeaway: Do your Best, and Trust God for the Results.

 

Getting Real

~If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?  Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
~What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?  Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

...as your Actions prove or disprove the Truth of your Love,
...so your Works will prove or disprove the Reality of your Faith.

 

Be Thou My Vision

I like to sing a bit while driving, biking, walking -- but memorizing four verses is daunting.  So, I took a stab at condensing one of my favorite hymns into a single verse.  Not an academically correct representation, but one which strings together my favorite ideas from the whole...

Be Thou my Vision, and Thou my True Word;
I ever With Thee, Lord, my Great Shepherd;
Thou my Best Thought, Thy Heaven so Bright;
Heart of my own Heart, Thy Presence my Light.

 

The Gospel

The Gospel in short is this​: God loves us so much that he wants to spend​ his life ​together with us. ​ This life together we call Eternal Life.

​Though we are made in His image, we can't reflect His power and perfection -- primarily because we have chosen to go our own way instead of choosing to live in His reality. This state of being out-of-alignment that we find ourselves trapped in we call sin. And in this state, it is quite naturally impossible to fully connect with Him.
​
​In his love for us, God has moved to remedy this situation, to reconcile all of us to Himself. He has revealed a "rightness" (or righteousness) that comes to us entirely by faith... by trusting His nature and love and justice as expressed through his Son Jesus, whom He sent to release us from our bondage so that we can instead enjoy the Eternal Life that He created us for.

For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have Eternal Life.

"...believes..." as in trust, rely upon:  Jesus and the Grace he brings to us for the care of our souls and our Life together with God.

 

Christian Nationalism

We are earnest followers of Jesus, but...
Political Christianity not spoken here; we reject Christian Nationalism and the Religious Right's efforts to that end.  Both are simply counter to the Gospel.

Jesus said to expect persecution, alienation, and troubles in this world; he never spoke of agitating, mobilizing, seeking power, or any other explicit connection joining politics with faith.  Rather, his strongest criticisms were pointed at those sitting at the intersection of institutionalized religiosity and political power.

We believe that the Religious Right , the so called Moral Majority, totally fails to reflect the values, ways, means, spirit, and purposes demanded of followers of Jesus.

It is unsurprising to note that the proximate causes of Jesus' death (of course, the main factor being God's plan to redeem us) were: his claim to be God, his threat to the religious power structure, and... Purposely not meeting peoples' expectations/desires for a "national" power and destiny. He had something bigger and more important in mind: Destiny, yours and mine, in the personal and eternal sense.

 

Love... who?

John's first letter talks a lot about the verb "love" -- as a command, a state of being, a basis for connection with God.  In this particular letter, he focuses in on loving our brothers and sisters in the faith.  For many, this raises the question, "Do I need to love everyone, or just other Christians?"

Let's see what Jesus said.

First, He identified loving our neighbor as central to the Great Commandment.  Then, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, he answered the question "who is my neighbor" as he illustrated what love looks like, and held up a member of a despised ethnic class to exemplify it.  He also said to love our enemies.  And, of course, fellow believers.

Trouble is, if the command to love pertains primarily to love amongst believers, it puts us in the position of having to judge who else is saved...  and that, clearly, is not in our job description.

So the answer, as unpalatable as it may seem, is.....  we love, everyone.

 

Grace

Grace is at the core of the Gospel -- Grace, as in unmerited standing or favor, or simply, not getting what we deserve.

As "children of God" would it be reasonable to assume that we should, imitating Him, extend grace to each other?  Imagine:  beams of Grace emanating from God, through Jesus, to each of us -- and then multiplying as they emanate from us to those around us...  I wish I could draw this!

We might not be called to literally lay down our lives for others the way Jesus did, but we are indeed called to lay our lives (or felt needs) aside momentarily for the sake of another... this is called love.  Extending Grace to each other is fundamentally an act of love.  So what does this look like?

Simple:  Grace is not giving our fellow humans what we might think they deserve...  our impatience, our anger, our judgement, our resentment.  Refraining from returning hurt for hurt.  That is a reliable working definition of Grace, extended from one person to another.  Grace.

Pass it on!

 

Prompted?

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Sometimes we may agonize over the question of how do we know if what we are sensing is the spirit prompting us, or just our own desires being projected...

One simple rule may be:
If it has to do with loving another, then it is from the Spirit,
because God is Love, the Great Commandment is Love, Jesus' ministry was love.

Perhaps does not cover 100% of cases, but very very many......