Category Archives: Atheism, Belief, Perspective, Religion, Viewpoint

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Spiritual Perspective of an Organic Christian

A Right Spiritual Perspective Starts with Me

JOURNAL MUSING:

God prepares us for the ministry He has for us. Often I battle the feeling like I’m wasting time and being unproductive during the hours I spend with Him. Yet this really is the most important time of the day. God is refining me. What a true blessing. I rejoice in all He’s done. It’s like entering a new world–and I want everyone to go with me! Returning to normal living is the challenge.

Put to death sin that is in me that is against You, dear God. Expose it. Search me and try me, see if there is any wicked thing in me, Oh God, I ask it. In Thee do I trust from morning to evening, in season and out, year after year, I ask Your hand upon me, Your truth within me, and Your Spirit flowing from me.

We are either living in the Spirit or in the flesh (self first etc.). The door to both cannot be open at the same time. I’ve been thinking about Christians, how some find themselves living partly for the world and part in the church; how when the world becomes greater they want the church to adapt to the world and embrace some of its tenants. In its pure form, the church cannot remain unspoiled or unsoiled if it becomes sullied by the world–especially in its philosophy.

What the church believes about the authority of God, and then its response to that authority, makes a great deal of difference. If truth is compromised, the end result is a weakened message and an unstable foundation.

Remaining pure can also be practiced as an outward visage or manifestation–a conformity of behavior to codes and standards–which can also be misleading if pride and arrogance generate from the separateness. This one is subtle and takes great humility to recognize and overcome. I know, since I have been there and could easily return.

We are such a people of extremes. We rarely live in moderation. In truth, it all starts with me. No one else can live my life for me nor make my decisions. I long to have the blessed beauty of Christ to be made manifest in me.

I’m struck by how fickle people are. At one point in Acts 14, the people were practically worshiping Paul and Barnabas. Later that same day, the two missionaries were stoned and left for dead. It is amazing how opposition can create mass movement in a crowd–almost a frenzy.

Our hope has to be in the Lord. When we turn to Him and depend on His strength, our lives show forth His joy and good pleasure–which is seen by others. Sometimes we resist His pruning and become bitter complainers. Oh to let go of self and let God produce in us His blessed work.

After the winter comes spring.
After the rain comes a rainbow.
After sorrow comes joy.

…

April 2003
Journal 3

‡Copied from journal quotes written the year I was struggling with the effects of  job loss and divorce. I was seeking to know God in close relationship. I spent long hours in bible reading, supplication, and meditation while my children were at school.

True Christ-following is real, genuine and authentic Christian living and is a highly personal journey, no two Christ-followers are exactly alike. “An Organic Church is not a theater with a script, but a lifestyle, an authentic journey with the Lord Jesus and His disciples” attributed to Frank Viola at www.organicchurch.com.

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Authentic Christianity

I have never claimed to be a very smart person. That, I am not. But what I am is a seeker of God and a follower of His way. My spiritual journey is an honest one, at least as much as is possible within me. God has changed my life. He healed me and has renewed me. I owe Him a debt of gratitude. He blesses me at His table of grace and fills me with His ever-deepening love. I have received His unmerited favor. I experience His unadulterated peace and holy presence. It is lovely to be God’s child, a safe and secure place to be.

God is the needle. I am the thread. He leads. I follow. With a willingly heart and an open attitude is how I follow my Father God. I learn from Him wherever He sees fit to take me. Praises to God.

It is God Who makes our lives holy. He consecrates the offering and proffers blessings as He sees fit. It is our responsibility and good pleasure toward God and His anointed Head, in reverent obedience and in unveiled contriteness of heart, to adore and worship our divine Creator and Lover. In this, ‘Come unto Me,’ our turning to Him, we find ourselves willing and able to receive more of God with a greater awareness of His being through a soft and sweet joining within the intimacy of spiritual relationship.

We are accepted children in the welcoming and warm embrace of our loving, heavenly Father God. This happens on God’s terms, not ours, and is meant for our own good. He knows the depth of our neediness, and He desires to meet us at the crossroads where faith meets reality in a decided, yet glorious, supernatural way.

No religion or theological position can unmask or detail for us the tenderness of knowing God as the Lifter of our souls. It is a divine union of a Father with His child in the wonder of close, unencumbered and uncomplicated, family relationship. In Him is life eternal.

We, far too easily, get hung up on the wrong things. What God wants from us is our heart, first, then our trust, loyalty, and obedience. What tripped up the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, can trip us up in today’s contemporary Christianity. We can pride ourselves on our ‘good lives’ and ‘good deeds’ our ‘ministries’ and our ‘outreaches,’ our church programs and building ventures, but, do we say the Jesus Prayer? “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and is our life a reflection of the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief, who said, ‘Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more’ to the one stained by her sin?

It was the form of worship that overtook the Pharisees’ religious hearts. They lost the abiding truth of the love of God which demonstrates itself in a love for all the people in the world.In this there is a form of hypocrisy that our religious eyes fail to see. The religious form can smack of spiritual arrogance and over-indulgent (religious) self-worship, a nauseous presence that grows inside church institutions of all religious traditions. There is a dullness that inhibits and blinds the person from knowing God and His ways. We are to come as children to Jesus, He will allow none to forbid the little children to come unto Him. Here we find innocent trust.

The church, its traditions and theology, is not in competition for primacy in a competing religious market despite what we may think or believe. That way of thinking is to have the wrong focus and gaze. Rather, it is the holy trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who, with our gaze fixed upon Them, will bring us into spiritual unity and holy union no matter the religious belief of our childhood days and past spiritual experiences, present church leanings or lack thereof. “Come, unto Me.” is simple and profound and will fully be embraced the day we physically enter God’s holy presence in that day of all days.

God alone.