The Gospel Of John

 It has been some time since I have posted here. But I want you  to know I am still alive.

  During the pandemic most churches have been doing on-line services, if at all. I have found a church that livestreams and does have in-building services.

 The pastor there is going through the Gospel according to John. He was the one Jesus loved.  

  Slowly we are moving through the story-verse by verse. . It is interesting to view the story and actually seeing the God/man. Fully God and fully man. United into one-- not mixed but equal parts. A unity..

   And I am blessed by being one of those who each week opens the service. My wife and I co-team. One week I do it. The next, she does. We get up and read the psalm of the day, chosen by the youth pastor, And then we open in prayer. When we finish we turn the service over to the praise band to offer us worship songs before the pastor speaks. Sometimes the senior pastor preaches. Other times the youth pastor preaches. When they are gone we have guest pastors.

   It is good to be back in group fellowship. Watching on line services is good, but you don't really have fellowship with other believers. 

Your Authority Is The Bible

 All  this talk and you ,may be wondering, just where does this guy get off? He is writing so much about a Bible and yet, ..

 Yes, the Bible is the authority I go by when I write in this blog because God has spoken and has recorded all He has said in the Bible.

Not everyone has a Bible. Hard to believe. But even those who say  they do,  may only have opne thnat is never read and therefore is collecting dust. 

Brush it off and sit down and read it.

And for those who wish to send a Bible or support a group that sends out Bibles, let me put a banner on the bottom of this post. Click on it and find out how you can be part of the distribution of scripture.

Mostly, unless you have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ you won't be able to really understand what you read. I k now I have covered this topic earlier, and well again in the future. As for this post I just want you to know Bibles are available

Stay a reader of this blog and join in the journey.

May God bless you in your journey/

Gender Identification

 It is all around us now. Or at least it seems to be. I mean this teaching in the schools that boys and girls are the same. That there is no difference. That you can chose who you are sexually. Chose to be a make or a female. Be what you were born to be. And so on.

I am here to tell you a secret. Come closer now. Closer.

When God created you  through the process of birth into this world, He made no mistake. He knew your sexual identity before you were formed in your mother's womb. He knew if you were male or female.

He did not make you a whatever in your mother's womb. 

God did not make a transgender.

"Then God said, "Let us make make man in our image..." God created man in His own image, male and female He created them.

God's image is not what we see when we look at a person. It is inner. 

Let me venture that God's image is relational, in that we were created to be in relation to another person. God also created  him; male and female. He created them to procreate and to fellowship and to subdue the elements around him.

I guess a whole different post could be written, and will be written, on subdue.

Point is, God did not make a  mistake when  He created male and female.

I believe when a person decides to become a gender they were not born as, they tamper with the image of God they have.  They are making  their own god. That new god is self. And God, the creator, is a jealous God. He doesn't share Himself with anyone or thing.

Feel free to post feedback. I will respond.

People Need To Hear From God

 

With all this basic foundation laid down in the past few postings, you may be saying to yourself, sure, but what if the scriptures that will allow me to know God are not in the language of the person I am talking to? I mean, what if I can't end my conversation by handing them a Bible in the tongue they can best read?

I have an answer. Get them a Bible in their tongue. And you can. I can link you to a Bible organization that will help you.  

Everyone should be able to read what God has said. I believe God has spoken and has overshadowed some writers to record what He has said. This was because He wants to communicate. Since He is spirit the only way He could connect would be this way.

I wish to inform you that this posting contains a link to an affiliate market. When  you enter using my link given and purchase an item, I will get a commission for providing you a link.

Created To Be Special

 God didn't have to as he was complete in and of Himself. God, being a trinity, three persons in one being, He was not alone. The Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 God is also love. And love likes to share. He wanted to share. He had finished creating angels, but these angels are ministering spirits. God needed no one to minister to Him if in ministering it means to provide something lacking. God can not lack. God is not his creation . That is above space, time, material and need. But He could create time, material, space and humans. AN dthen HE woujld have something for the angels to minister to. 

The human was not divine. He is not God but in the likeness of God. He was created to share with God the control of the material, time, space around him. But not to rule or manage God. God is above and always has been and will always be outside time, space, material.

As detailed in earlier posts, man blew it. Big time.

Man is still special. Yet now he must deal with blockage in the way to greatness. The only one who could remove the blockage is the creator.   

Stay tune for further posts.

Man Needs To Be In Relation

Next step in the story. God creates man. Gives him authority over animals and co-ruler-ship. He creates a woman for man so he won't be alone. Daily God would come and fellowship with Adam and Eve. All they had to do was tend the garden, eat of the produce .
The produce of the garden was theirs. All except one thing.
In order for God to test them as to their obedience, He gave them one restriction. There was a tree in the midst of the garden. Of this tree they were not to eat. It was a simple rule of obedience. Not at all difficult to understand or obey.
This makes one ask, in what state was Adam and Eve created? They were innocent. But untested. That is the best answer I can give.
But they disobey a command. And now they must be punished with (As God promised) death."The day you eat of it you shall die." was what God told them when he first gave them the restriction.
We don't see them dropping dead at that moment. (Maybe this is where death was introduced into the story. We will never know.
But they are driven out of the garden and the relationship they had with God.
So now we say.. wait! God created them for a relationship with Him. This I believe.
It so happens God was not surprised at what happened. God had already decided in eternity pass what He was going to do when this happened.
There was a way provided back to a relationship. It required shedding blood. Not just any blood would do. It had to be the blood of a sinless creature. Adam and his offspring could not give this blood. It had to be from a perfect individual. A sinless creature.
The only sinless subject was God Himself. I wouldn't say creature because God is not a creature. He is the creator.The un-created creator. The plain was to take on humanity and live a sinless life so he would be the perfect person to die for our sins (disobedience, though that is a very limp term. Sin being anything that is less than the perfection of God, which He demands).
So God started His plan by preparing the world for that event.
And that is the cliffhanger I leave this posting on.

Man Is Special

To further our discussion as started in the last few earlier postings--What is man that you are mindful of him. Man is a  separate creation of God from the rest of creation.. God did one more thing  than He did with the creatures created on the sixth day. He took him and breathed into him the breathe of life. A special endowment the creatures created on that day didn't get.
Man thus is able to fellowship in a relationship with his creator. This is something the animals don't have.
You may think your cat of dog is able to have this type of relationship with you-- his owner-- but it is not the same.
But.. get ready for the bad news. when Adam and Eve were given a simple request, they chose to disobey and use their free will to  act independent of what God had told them.
We can see that in the parent/child relationship on a lesser level.
But God still wanted to have a relationship with man. This is what makes man special and makes God take mind of him.
But since man-- Adam as our representative before God-- disobeyed, God had to , from the human standpoint of looking at things, set up a way man could get back in relationship with God without God brushing the act of disobedience away. In other words, God could not say, forget it. I will pretend it never happened. It happened and, if I may say, hurt.
I plan in a later posting to return to this. Let me leave you with this posting. A sort of cliff hanger.