It's not about RELIGION

What are your ideas of christianity? A book filled with a bunch of stories? A savior with fair skin and long brown hair holding lambs? Or a building with institutionalized norms of how to live? All these are mostly false representations of religion. It is my strong belief that God really is, the very definition of God is the intelligent existence holding the entire fabric of universe together, to the air you breathe around you, to the love you see in others; yet, you, I and everyone "living" is bound to this dying place and its broken systems in our biological bodies. Thus, your soul and your flesh are both struggling to go two very different directions. This system of "negative energy" is a separated (quarantined) system. It is a system under the control of the prince of this world and those with him whose time of CHOICE has passed. While unconnected and in this flesh, we are all under the thumb of the things we cannot see. the world around and even our own flesh can be compared to a bicycle going downhill gaining speed until it reaches a velocity, that without outside intervention, will ultimately meet with disaster of one form or another. This is the default setting. The automated direction that mankind blindly moves when God's light of all that is, was, or remains to come, an indwelling connection to Him are willfully, or even subconsciously, cast aside in the great pursuit of the sin which may indeed summarize all sin: Self-will. And unless a saving figure intervenes and absorbs that inevitable shock at the bottom then we are destined to ride the downward spiral toward  oblivion. In the grandness of all the stars, the solar systems, the world within worlds, the great beyond and all that which this feeble human mind would shutter to understand, we are such a speck; a tiny, tiny speck. We, and when I say we, I really mean "I" as well as everyone else have fancied ourselves as little kings, self-important, self-proclaimed gods to which all should bow to recognize our trite conquests, trials, problems and achievements. It is like a drop of water telling the ocean how important it is. But God despite all this still strives to connect with us. The programmer is still at work salvaging a part of the program by interjecting His own blood into a system infected with a deadly serum (the sin virus) it is wildly contagious and affects is all. Yet the great architect behind all things, is on the move, undoing this cosmic curse with incredible care and patience.

I've often wondered with perplexity : if God is the all-consuming power, why are so few are saved? Does he want this ratio? Jesus said MANY people will seek to enter Heaven, but will not be able. Most of the people in the world today want to go to Heaven, i.e., to go to a better place; but they love their sin-habits too much to come to Christ for salvation... "For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved." I've heard people that say "yeah I beleive in God, He died for me, that was real, but when asked if they've been born-again christian. They have literally said, "I'm not ready for that." And the reasoning "I love the women in my life, or I want to live life how I want, unrestricted, basically, I'm not willing to change my  lifestyle." Yet God doesn't expect you to make lifestyle changes once you're saved because that is impossible to do without him. The more you get closer to God, the less desirable these worldly things become, the more you realize true freedom is in following God because it is liberating and not oppressive. One of the devils greatest lies was convincing mankind he was free while forcing him to put the shackles on binding and controlling their instincts to every corrupting way of the world. I'm not here saying I'm the holy man, cause I'm not, in fact the reason I'm writing this is because that was me and still many times is me. I was angry, angry that God is just plucking a few out of the masses of humanity while the rest suffer unending punishment, I was tired of the battle of self denial the what I considered a self-flagellating lifestyle of denying your selfish impulses. Essentially though I think that's the reason so few are saved, because so few want to be saved, so many want to let their pride govern their way of living and choose the praise of people over the praise of God, Yet this world is a gift, your body is a gift, you were a created being. God isn't up in Heaven masochistically saying "oh praise me praise me" like He needs that. He's perfectly happy without that or you, but He knows you can only be really happy with HIM, yet apart from him an exchange takes place. WE are inherently created to worship something. It's in our very nature, similar to a hose one cannot shut off, and when God is not the focal point, a horrid EXCHANGE transmits energy back to self. People worship the human-physique, music, motion pictures, news personalities, celebrity figures, all these are the EXCHANGE from GOD that takes place and pulls our desires away by redirecting the current of our praise into abasement.  Now even the angry, unpleasant human beings that seemingly have all these gifts and wealth are benefiting from God. He showers out blessings on the earth like rainfall ,so that they'll have no excuse. We were created in a such a way, that we are INNATELY drivin' by desires to make much of and worship something else, either a certain movie star, body type, personality, money, we strive for means of happiness outside of ourselves because down deep we know we cant find it in ourselves! 

That should say something about us, even in movies you see the need for a savior, (batman taking the grenade for helpless gotham, Leonidas taking the famous stand, dying so that Sparta can be free, Harry Potter dying so that Hogswart could be free) Well there was one hero these stories, novels and values are pointing to and so desperately attempting to understand the kind of joy and satisfaction from a powerful force that sacrifices for the many. Even among the pharisee's there were those who knew who this was they were crucifying but they craved the praise of people over God, which is what so many of us crave, so they got rid of him, Jesus was in the way of that. He convicted them of their wrongdoing and this infuriated them, how many of us are in that same exact boat? If more people really understood how sickening and horrific sin is, more people would seek the all powerful assistance of the Almighty God in their lives.

Cpt. Kirk Sr's Sacrifice aboard the USS Kelvin: An allegory of Christ and Calvary

In the opening scene of the newest Star Trek film, we were all witness to Cpt George Kirk, sensing an oncoming danger and forthcoming destruction of his vessel, he eventually yells:  "Everyone get off of the Kelvin!" and kisses his super pregnant wife Winona goodbye as she goes into labor with his son James. She gives birth as George sacrifices himself and crashes the USS Kelvin  into the Romulans, saving everyone's life but his own. It's a pretty busy, and depressing, opening scene. Yet, while Captain Kirks father may have died rescuing his family and friends aboard the Kelvin his legacy lives on, emblazoned in all of our hearts. Yet what impacted me the most during this opening scene is the manner in which George Kirk Sr. dies, it is the finest picture of a selfless sacrifice. As the USS Kelvin hurtled toward impact, his thoughts were toward his wife and newborn son. He is naming him and thinking of the boys new certain and "safe future". We can all see representations of Jesus looking toward his mother Mary and brother John on the cross as he tells them in no uncertain terms to leave this place of shameful suffering and look after their needs. His mind must have drifted in this moment to the joy set before him, our new names and safe identity in Christ which are written in his nail scarred hands. He is most likely visualizing the wedding feast in his Fathers kingdom, an eternal life of joy, the creation set aright into an unfallen state, all of Satans lies exposed and done away with, forever. The new Jerusalem, his eternal bride composed of every tribe every tongue and nation, washed clean with a new redeemed nature in whom he was bleeding for. It must have been the only thing that comforted and sustained him in this shameful state of horror and morbid suffering.

I see Cpt. Kirks sacrifice as a picture of Jesus. His earthly pod is heading speedily toward incoming divine wrath and certain destruction. Yet his thoughts are toward us and our future lives we would get to enjoy as our death would become his. It must have been these images which comforted his poor tormented tried and vexed soul as he endures the unfathomable crushing weight our sins are so deserving of.  

"They are coming to you FATHER! I am bringing them to you". 

A cup mixed with gall is thrust to his lips. 

He refuses... 

He must taste the bitter pangs of death to the fullest.

If the weight of the fall is to be placed on the redeemers graceful shoulders. He must drink that awful poisoned cup to the dregs. 

It was in the very words He spoke to the Roman contingent right after his betrayal and before his arrest. 

"IF YOU COME FOR ME, LET THESE MEN GO THEIR WAY!"

In the same way Cpt Kirks mother was in labor, Jesus was experiencing the birth pangs of our new spiritual lives. It would NEED to take his sacrifice, a substitute in our place. An eternal redemption could only be purchased by an eternal being and the awful price of sin could only be understood by the death of the apple of God's eye: 

His own dearly beloved son. The God-man...

JESUS mans the doomed vessels we are all on, whose trajectory is a collision course for eternal destruction. In doing so the great exchange transpires as He vicariously interposes our broken and sorrow filled life for HIS perfect one...

The SON passionately yells at the adversary the same way he yelled at Pharaoh through Moses 1500 years prior 

"LET MY PEOPLE GO!"  

 Out of slavery of sin and Satan the redeemed must come...

In every cell of the dungeons of Despair, the sound is echoed.

 "Let these go their way," 


Satan hears the well-known voice, and lifts his foot from the neck of the fallen; and Death hears it, and the grave opens her gates to let the dead arise.  

Their way is one of progress, holiness, triumph, glory, and none shall dare to stay them in it.

By faith let us rejoice that we shall still reign in Christ Jesus. The woman's seed in spite of the decision of the first of her kind to taste the tainted fruit shall in the end prevail.What dishonor to Satan to have his head bruised by human feet! 

For Jesus, the ruling passion is strong in death. He resigns himself to the enemy, but he interposes a word of power to set his people free...

As to himself, like a sheep before her shearers he is dumb and opened not his mouth, but for his disciples' sake he speaks with almighty energy. Herein is love, constant, self-forgetting, faithful love. 

"No lion shall be on their way, neither shall any ravenous beast go upon them. "The hind of the morning (The Son of God)" has drawn the cruel hunters upon himself, and now the most timid roes and hinds of the field may graze at perfect peace among the lilies of his loves. The thunder-cloud has burst over the Cross of Calvary, and the pilgrims of Zion shall never be smitten by the bolts of vengeance. Come, my heart, rejoice in the immunity which thy Redeemer has secured thee, and bless his name all the day, and every day." -CH Spurgeon

By his love, and pity, and compassion, he is sure to remember you. A woman can sooner forget her nursing-child than your God could forget you...Amen :)

Our Spiritual Father

   My understanding of the family of God as little as it it is is nowhere close to the appreciation of the grandeur it deserves. We have been brought into an heavenly family. God is our real spiritual Father. He is as connected as an earthly father in fact more so, because we share one of his sons X chromosomes. I may be poor but I have a brother in heaven who is rich. A brother in heaven where I am going and will one day meet.

   Yet, if we look around we shall find we are in an enemies country. There are more spies, double agents, and deceptive forces than we realize. The mere act of looking out a window can cause the green sin of envy and jealous root of bitterness to shoot up within us. Therefore we should expect trouble, in God's regiments we are the mark of all the riflemen of the enemy.We must all be on our guard for the devil has deceived many soldiers of the cross by making them fall into sins that few thought possible at one point in their spiritual walk. We are strangers and sojourners in a land not our own, as Israelites seeking the promised haven, so we as Christians are today. The world is not our friend if it is then we are not God's friend. According to CH Spurgeon: "Be assured that thou shalt find foe-men everywhere. When thou sleepest, think thou art resting on the battlefield; when thou wakest, suspect an ambush in every hedge. As mosquitoes are said to bite strangers more than natives so will the trials of earth be sharpest to you. Lastly look within thee, into thine own heart, if thou hadst no devils to tempt thee, no enemies to fight, and no world to ensnare thee, thou wouldst still find in thyself evil enough to be a sore trouble for thee".

   I pray that we will remember that we are eternal beings, future-eternal not past-eternal and we will one day judge angels on thrones, judge angels? The seraphim and cherubum? It is impossible, surely angels are greater in power and might than us poor feeble mortal folk? Yet it says it scripture "we shall judge angels" how marvelous a picture this is. As humans we were all made lower than angels but Jesus through being made"a little lower than the angels" he has brought us up with him, and now through his efficacious blood we will reign with him and have his very righteousness attributed to us. Could these be the fallen angels Paul is referring to? Possible, he does not make this distinction. However, judge we will is all we are sure of in this present estate.

In Ephesians 1:5 “we read that he predestined us to be adopted as his sons (and daughters) through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”

    According to Charles Spurgeon: "I believe God has made many things that are not his children. He made the angels, who stand in an high and holy position, are they his children? "Unto which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my son?" I do not find, as a rule, that angels are called the children of God; No, beloved, it needs something beyond creation to constitute the relationship, and those who can say, "Our Father which art in heaven," are something more than God's creatures: they have been adopted into his family. He has taken them out of the old black family in which they were born; he has washed them. and cleansed them, and given them a new name and a new spirit, and made them "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;" and all this of his own free, sovereign, unmerited, distinguishing grace." John Bunyan, in the first part of his "Pilgrim's Progress," describes Christian as a lonely traveler, pursuing his road to the Celestial City alone; occasionally he is attended by Faithful, or he meets with a Hopeful; but these are casual acquaintances, and are not of his kith or kin: brother or child after the flesh he has none with him." SO as we as Christians make our way through this weary world full of woe, we will find heavenly family members who are our brothers and sisters in the spirit. I must hold that in the moment when Jesus Christ paid my debts, my debts were cancelled—in the hour when He worked out for me a perfect righteousness, it was imputed to me, and therefore I may, as a believer say I was complete in Christ before I was born.I find this amazing truth in the gospel that states: It is in the souls of men that God delights. Angels have not souls as they are heavenly spirits and cannot sing in this same redemption song. But can only be partakers to gawk and wonder at the unfathomable love of their God. 

     The legalist says "I don't see it. I cannot have it and I won't, if we are both equal in character, it cannot be fair that one should be lost and the other saved" and thus he mocks at free grace. This will always be unpopular and men will hate it. They cannot fathom how it could not be a show of works and instead a show of God's rich and free undeserving grace to us poor sinners. What? Popular to humble a mans pride, to abolish mans standing, and make him cringe before God as a poor sinner? No they grind their teeth at this. WE all fancy ourselves as little Gods, little deities in this vast universe, surely that cannot be the case. it is far too self-abasing No it will never be popular til men are born pure as angels, and all of us love the Lord with an appreciation unmatched, and that will not be seen just yet in this world.

    I wanted to close this with another inspiring quote from the prince of preachers: "He who knows himself will never think that he has much to recommend of himself to God. In cases of adoption, there usually is some recommendation. A man, when he adopts a child, sometimes is moved thereto by its extraordinary beauty, or at other times by its intelligent manners, and winning disposition. But, beloved, when God passed by the field in which we were lying, He saw no tears in our eyes till He put them there Himself! He saw no contrition in us until He had given us repentance; there was no beauty in us that could induce Him to adopt us—on the contrary we were everything that was repulsive! And if He had said, when He passed by, “You are cursed, be lost forever,” it would have been nothing but what we might have expected from a God who had been so long provoked and whose majesty had been so terribly insulted! But no, though He found a rebellious child, a filthy, frightful, ugly child, He took it to His bosom and said, “Black though you are, you are beautiful in My eyes through My Son, Jesus. Unworthy though you are, yet I cover you with His robe, and in your Brother’s garments, I accept you. “you are made a prince! You are adopted into the royal family, and you shall one day wear a crown! You are now as much the son of God, as you are the son of your own father.” You can conceive the poor creature fainting with joy at such a thought, that he whose neck was just ready for the halter, should have his head now ready for a crown—that he who expected to be clothed in the felon’s garb and taken away to death, is now to be exalted and clothed in robes of honor! So, Christian, think what you did deserve—robes of shame and infamy—but you are to have those of glory. Are you in God’s family now? Well said the poet— “It does not yet appear, How great we must be made.” We do not know the greatness of adoption yet. Yes, I believe that even in eternity we shall scarcely be able to measure the infinite depth of the love of God in that one blessing of “adoption by Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.”

Let us think of the many of our brothers and sisters that are in the back streets of the world, that are in the dens and caves of Satan. "Think of the poor brothers and sisters that are intoxicated with the spirit of the evil one; think of him or her, led astray by pride, greed, lust and discontent, and perhaps to murder, pray for them, pray for us all and may God keep us all -- His eternal family, in the sovereign grip of His Almighty Grace" 

Light shining through darkness (Myth vs fact)

   "A believed idea feels different from from an idea that is not believed . And that peculiar flavor of the believed is never in my experience without a special sort of imaginative enjoyment" This struck me as very unique perspective, yet there is another sense of the meaning C.S. Lewis goes on to describe "On the contrary though, we spoil a mythology for imaginative purposes by believing in it. Fairies are popular in England because we don't think they exist. The contemplation of what we take to be real is always, I think with a certain level of aesthetic satisfaction-a sort which depends solely on its supposed reality. There is dignity and poignancy in the bare fact that a thing exists" -Lewis. This is why mythology and spiritualism in my mind is more popular than rigid Christianity. "It looks as if the confusion between imaginative enjoyment and intellectual assent, of which Christianity is accused, is not nearly as common as people suppose".

   For to me a story resonates within the myth, that which was told became incarnate (Jesus) or fact. A living breathing organism, no longer unbound by the constraints of time, space and matter, but fused the divine with the mortal, to share our fleshly fate. I mean is this not what we all wish for? Is this not why Harry Potter, Star Wars and Peter Pan to certain minds become so fulfilling. There is an enjoyment of that which is uncannily and strictly imaginative which pleasantly suits our imaginations. This kind of free range imagination without rules of gravity, laws and finite limitations is what we all inherently long for. The undoing of a particular "unpleasant" curse is the very idea we so nobly agree as heroism, (beauty kissing the beast), the beast tells the princess of his life before the curse, of his noble splendor before he was damned to his hairy fate. What motivated her in this movie? Was it nothing utter than compassion? Michaelangelo was once asked as he chiseled a small chink in each statue; why are you not focusing on just one whole statue at a time? "Because he said, I'm trying to set the angel free in each one" Like the grand artisian himself, God visualizes a perfect angel inside all the covered up layers of sin, pride and narcissism, the real you is a hidden internal beauty. Another example of heroism that has moved me is Gandalf abysmal fall in the moria mines against the Balrog, and his subsequent return stronger than ever. Darkness cannot quench out light however hard it may try to do so, or how it appears, even the darkest blackness, the black flame itself cannot hold the lightest light. Because when it does attempt to quench, the light just comes back and shines brighter than ever.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it." -John 1:5