Posts from December 2013

God Works

Religion mostly works well within the context of four walls. It rarely works in daily life or crisis situations.  The lives of religious people prove it every moment of every day in every nation. God the Being, the Creator, the Bible God and not the topic of religion or the Big Guy in the Sky god often thanked for awards, that God works within us so that everything outside of us works better. This God works. When we are alone,…

Right Standing Without A Leg To Stand On

To be self-righteous is to attempt to show right standing by our actions and that type of righteousness carries no weight in any courtroom in the world nor in the Courtroom of Eternity. The imagery of self-righteous is to be our own witness, our own advocate. The idea that we can put ourselves in alignment, in right standing, with the perfect, completely righteous God of the universe is absurd, leaving us without a leg to stand on. Yet, we regularly…

Wrong Side of the Courtroom

Righteousness in scripture is always connected to the courtroom.   It is here where we use the imagery of Right Standing. We stand in a room, facing a judge, awaiting a sentence.  If the court finds in our favor we are called righteous.  If the court finds in the favor of the plaintiff, the one who has initiated the legal suit against you, then we are called unrighteous. We either are in right standing with the court or not.  No…

Contempt For God’s Kindness

We show contempt for the riches of God’s kindness when we judge, condemn, hate, and gossip. They spit on the work of the cross as they condemned THOSE People. Forgetting that they have been forgiven and given eternal life, they judged the weaknesses and wounded ways of THOSE People. Shouting down the kind and gracious voice of God, they greedily offered up their tongues and ears to gossip and rumor about THOSE People. Thinking that love was something they, instead…

Rest That Produces Life

The man who is perpetually in motion is a man who is afraid of what might be said in the silence of stillness. There is something that happens when we set aside time to be still.  We see this in scripture with “Be still and know that I am God” and “It is courageous to wait…”, as well as the Sabbath law of the Old Testament and the Sabbath rest of Hebrews. For most of my life I have been…