On Earth We Know in Part

1 Cor 13:8-12 NLT - Now we know only a little, and even the gift of prophecy reveals little! But when the end comes, these special gifts will all disappear. It's like this: When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.

I love that Paul, who wrote so many of the epistles in the New Testament claimed we all knew in part. I believe this is true. Just like children we have to learn things in stages and God reveals things that way.

It’s good that it makes us want to know more, but we should not be making things up to fill in the holes due to impatience. When we do that we skew God’s Word. God reveals things as we are able to learn and properly digest them. I always equate this to an onion. The first few layers come off pretty easy. Deeper in they are fresher and as they come loose the smell is strong enough to make our eyes water. We all have our own layers we should peel away to be like Christ. The deeper we go the harder it may get, but well worth the effort.

God did not leave us here without help. He gave us the Holy Spirit as our counselor and guide. He made sure we had his revelations over time written into the Bible. If we are unsure that something is of God, we should be checking the Bible. The Holy Spirit will help us feel God’s peace about things that are right, but we should always be in our Bible daily.

Knowing the Bible keeps us close to God’s plan, promises, and purpose. It is our weapon against our enemy who would rather devour us than see us take even one step with Christ. Without daily Bible study to know more and maintain our connection with God, we leave ourselves open to being sidetracked by the wiles of our enemy. This should really scare us: we can know the right way to go, but still run off the grid to do wrong. Some of the kings of Israel were guilty of this and led the people into greater wrongs than could have been imagined before.

I encourage you to keep pushing through and growing. If you can’t figure something out, go to your pastor or someone you trust with God’s Word to help you understand it. Get encouragement when you need it from a church member you know. God made us a family. We are not perfect, but together we can learn from each other and grow stronger in the Lord.

For the non-believers reading this, I encourage you to seek out Jesus and when you do accept him, I promise you will know who to run to. You will know the Christian friends or people in your life that truly walk with Jesus and they will welcome you in so you can learn to grow with God. It happened for me at thirty-three. Don’t go looking for perfect. Go looking for God’s love and you will see it in them.

Let’s all learn to walk with the Lord together and shine his love into a dark world one step at a time.

He Is Risen

The cross is the hardest thing to digest with the Christian faith, but it is the crux of it. If God knew we would require His son, Jesus, to die for us, why did he give us free will in the first place? Why not do it differently?

The answer is in his love. He reveals himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit to show us proper relationship. He gave us free will so we could choose him. He could have so easily made little automated toys to tend the garden.  Instead he made man in his image and gave him free will.

We can now read the Old Testament using Jesus as a lens. God knew what was going to happen. He made sure man knew about it. The more we dig to prove things right or wrong with the Bible the stronger its truth becomes. It keeps pointing at Jesus and his death on a cross for us. It points at how God wants us to be part of His family, but only through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is definitely Lord of Lords and King of Kings, but he is also our brother when we are adopted into God’s family. He wants to be our friend. When Jesus returned to heaven after defeating death, God made sure we had a helper in the Holy Spirit.

This should be blowing our minds. It is very hard for us in our short lives on earth stuck in the confines of time to digest this. All eternity is out there beyond our own deaths and that scares us. However, we know Jesus defeated death and is eternal. Being in the image of God we have an eternal piece that longs to be acquainted with him here and now, and beyond.

Some wonder about Christians who truly believe in eternity and whether what Jesus told us was the truth. Honestly, after many disappointments and downfalls in life, I decided to give Jesus a shot. I’m going to stick with him.

If you are not walking with him yet, I would like you to really think on why. Some say it is all nonsense, but I’d rather have a chance at heaven rather than an eternity in hell when Jesus is proven right upon his return. If he is proven wrong, I am still no worse off than anyone else at the end. So I’ll be talking up Jesus until the day I die and sticking to His ways. It has made far more sense than a lot of other things.

Please take the time to check Jesus out for yourself. He wants you to be part of his family and his friend. He wants a one-on-one relationship with each and every one of us.