Category: God’s Love

Dry Land and Home~

We are born into water, the elixir of life.  I was taught how to swim at a very young age and I always loved the water:  rivers, pools, lakes, springs, and the ocean.  I found it fun to float atop the waves  and to dive deep into the density.  It was always different and new, always some excitement to be found there.  A feeling you could get no where else.

I realize I have lived my life figuratively on the water.  No real foundation below me; heading out into the water to see what adventure I could have.  Swimming and frolicking with others like me who craved the unknown.  Coming to shore long enough to catch my breath and decide where I was heading next.  Following the next big wave or winding river into the unexplored.

But when I found God He began pushing me inward, toward dry land.  I fought to go deeper, to head out into the great beyond where I thought He was, to the others who beckoned to me from there.  Those who had what I wanted and who could show me places wanted to go.  Yet I remained evermore in the surf.  That part of the ocean that is relentlessly battering against you and pushing you down.  I would get up again and try a new tack to get out beyond the surf.  Maybe this time I would succeed!  Over and over and over again.  In childhood, in adolescence, in young adulthood, in adulthood, in mid-life.  I am battle worn and weary now, from fighting the waves.  I cannot fight God anymore as He pushes me homeward toward dry land.

So instead of going back out to sea, I am going to follow Jesus.  I am going to leave the water and become a fisher of men.  Those in the water are not my family anymore, and they will soon drift out into the eternal sunset, on their destiny that only God knows.

I am going to finally let Him push me onto the shore.  I am going to use my last bit of strength and grit to drag myself up onto the beach until no part of me touches the water.  I am going to flip over exhaustively and bask in the sunshine I know He will shine down on me.  I am going to rest.  My waterlogged skin is going to dry.  I am going to be more alone than I ever was (for a while).  Then I am going to look up and behind me and see a sea of other folks just like me taking refuge on the land He provided; all of us being born not of water, but of the Spirit.

And I am going to join them and together we will become a new family in our Lord GOD.

Praise You Almighty Father for pushing me home.

Seeking the One~

Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My father who is in heaven.  For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.

What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying?

And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray.

Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

Bless the LORD, you His angels, who excel in strength, who do His word, heeding the voice of His word.

Bless the LORD, all you His hosts, you servants of His, who do His pleasure.

Bless the LORD, all His works, in all places of His dominion.

Bless the LORD, O my soul!

Our Senses and God

There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.  ~Mark 7:15

As I was breathing in essential oils, as I do before every meditation, God occurred to me in thought.  As I breathed in the soothing, healing, intoxicating aroma of the blood of plants which He has made, and which He has imbued Himself into as by His essence being in every living cell, and as it went directly into my brain, I realized I was literally breathing God in.  God, via his wonderful and miraculous way was infiltrating my very being, as deeply physically as possible; not just my physical brain, but crossing over into my mind as well, having effect upon my emotions.

I began to consciously consider the senses He has given to us, but to consider them in context to Him and doing His work.  Some of our senses are passive and some of our senses are active.  Some perceive and others partake, and some do both.  I have ordered them from passive to active:

  • Ears:  Most passive.  Can only take in data, but can be very attuned to their surroundings when trained, as exemplified by how a blind person hears better than a sighted person.  My ears are very adept at hearing emotion in the person I am listening to.  I would go so far as to say my ears are my most sensitive sense.
  • Nose/Breath:  Very passive.  Although the nose can express itself by snorting or snotting or breathing out as in a whisper.  The nose can tickle or offend, basically.  Some have a very heightened sense of smell.  The nose is also a direct line into the brain as mentioned before, so what we put in our nose can bring us immediately unto God or leave us sick (as when we breathe toxic fumes).
  • Eyes:  Mostly passive but can also be an active sense.  What we put our eyes on and view can profoundly affect us, and what we view can also profoundly affect a living subject, even an animal.  When two living and breathing creatures’ eyes meet, there is the sensation that soulfulness can flow between them, giving meaning to the saying that the ‘eyes are the windows of the soul’.
  • Touch:  Equally passive and active.  Touch can hurt us or heal us.  Our touch can hurt or heal.  We can feel immense pleasure or immense pain via our skin, and all the nerve cells contained therein.  We are covered in skin on every part of our body making our entire body either a sensory perceiver, but also a sensory giver.  Abuse often involves touch, but not always, and love-making almost always involves touch.
  • Taste/Mouth:  Passive and potentially the most active in the form of our words.  Even when we cannot touch or see someone, we can speak or express ourselves with words (on a screen for example).  Our sense of taste is passive, but our tongue can also be very active, especially in the realm of love-making.  Our mouth can hurt by biting or by the use of hurtful words, or give excessive pleasure via words or sensual touch as in kissing or love-making.  As James says:  “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of our nature; and it is set on fire of hell.”  ~James 3:6  Our tongue and the words issued from our mouth are, perhaps ironically, the most active sense we have.  We consider communication the most important component of relationships, which is interesting because the two,  language and communication, go hand in hand.  If we cannot communicate with each other, we cannot live out that second commandment which is so important!  If we do not have words, we can then have touch, but touch is not as ideal as words, as explained here.  Even when we lose sense of touch, or cannot be near our loved ones, we can still feel elated communicating with them!  Isn’t that a telling mark of God’s intent with His people?  All of us can connect with God just by thinking.  But the way we love each other is most easily done with our mouth and with our words.

 

So most of our senses are passive; given to us by God to experience the world He has given us and the people He has put us with.  We have control over what we perceive to a certain extent, as illustrated by what we search for and view online.  Jesus also said that a man who looks upon a woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultery with her.  We can use our God-given perception devices to become closer to Him and our fellow human beings, to gain more knowledge of God and each other.  But we can also allow them to distract us from God and knowing each other in the right way.

Our active senses are essential for sharing the love among each other.  We can show God we love Him by our acts and by just passively thinking about Him, because He is in our head, infused in every cell of our body!  He knows what we are thinking every moment of our lives.  But our active senses allow us to connect to each other.  They are His gift to us to share (hopefully) love with each other to fulfill His second most important Commandment:  To love our neighbor as ourself.

I believe that is why Jesus said that it is what comes OUT of a man that defiles him, because we have been given power with our bodies to love each other, but also to harm each other.  What comes out of  each and every one of us has the power to either defile man and his neighbor, or glorify God.

 

 

I pray I use my senses you blessed me with Lord, for good only, and to promote Your Love in the way You intend.  Amen.

Judgment is…

Knowing someone sinned, but loving them perfectly anyway.

Ways to Increase Your Devotion to God

  • Fasting
  • Serving Penance
  • Denying pleasures of the flesh
  • Daily meditation
  • Daily obeisance
  • Bible study
  • Christian friends
  • Moving with His Spirit
  • Daily eucharist
  • Regular offerings
  • Wearing a cilice
  • Burying skeletons
  • Forgiving yourself and others

Jesus is our Scapegoat and Passover Lamb

The Hebrew feasts that were commanded by God to be followed religiously in the Old Testament were, in this order:

  1. The Passover  (1st month, 14th day of the Hebrew year)
  2. The Feast of Unleavened Bread (1st month, 15th to the 22nd day)
  3. The Feast of Firstfruits (the first harvest, 3rd month, variable)
  4. The Feast of Weeks (7 Sabbaths after the firstfruits, or 50 days, also called pentecost)
  5. The Feast of Trumpets (7th month, 1st day)
  6. The Day of Atonement (7th month, 10th day)
  7. The Feast of Tabernacles (7th month, 15th through 22nd day)

Of these, the most important celebration, illustrated by the amount of offerings decreed, and holiness required, is the Day of Atonement, followed by the Feast of Tabernacles.

Notice all the 1’s, 3’s, 7’s, and 22’s in this calendar.  God’s Realm is a circle.  A circle of perfect Love.

The Day of Atonement was the only day the holiest Priest was allowed by God to go behind the veil to minister to Him.  And even then, the Priest had to make a huge cloud of incense to occlude the vision of the LORD so that he would not die by seeing the LORD above the mercy seat upon the Ark of the Covenant.  God disallowed the priests to go into the Holiest of Holies ‘at just any time’ after Aaron’s two sons sinned by making profane fire in the sanctuary.  So the only time Priests could go into this sacred place was once per year.  It was a very holy day and involved much cleansing and preparation for not only the Priest himself, but for the Tabernacle, the furnishings, and all the articles in the Holy Place.

The children of God would bring two kid goats to the Priest, and he would cast lots to see which one would be for the LORD, for the sin offering of the people; and which one would be the scapegoat, to be let go wild in the wilderness.  After making a cloud of incense behind the veil, lest he die seeing the LORD’s presence, the Priest would kill the LORD’s goat and offer its blood by sprinkling it upon and before the mercy seat of the LORD.  This would atone for the Holy Place for all the iniquities of the children of God.  Then the Priest would lay his hands on the scapegoat’s head and confess upon it all the transgressions and sins of all the children of God in all their iniquities they had done, and send it out into the wilderness, where it would bear unto itself all their iniquities, taking them away into a solitary land.

 

When the story of Jesus’ life is recounted in the Gospels, the first act of his adult life we are privy to is his baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist when the Holy Spirit alighted upon him, and spoke, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  Then he immediately was ‘led by the Spirit’ into the Wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  The devil tempted him three times, and Jesus stayed faithful and true to God and His word all three times, using the Law of God to thwart the devil every time.

We could have been apprised of Jesus’ life before this point, and it would have been intensely interesting.  The reason the Gospel starts here is to make it obvious to those with eyes to see that Jesus is beginning with the end of the Israelite’s holy calendar, in order to best symbolize that He was here to finish God’s work, once and for all.

Jesus going into the wilderness reminds us of the scapegoat upon which were placed the sins of God’s people, before he was sent into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement to provide forgiveness and redemption to all the children of God.  Jesus, having cleansed himself with baptism by God’s Prophet, and having been covered by the cloud of the Holy Spirit, went out into the wilderness as a man and defeated the devil by overcoming the sins that would normally plague man.  He begins his mission for God with the last feast of the Hebrew year, as if he is picking up and completing or finishing that which was incomplete before him.

Jesus was in the Wilderness 40 days and 40 nights.  He is not the 2nd Adam, but the 3rd Adam, Noah being the 2nd Adam.  Noah was perfect in God’s eyes and he alone, with his 3 sons, was chosen by God to perpetuate God’s people before the Great Deluge.  However, Noah sinned.  Jesus came and succeeded, not only as Adam, but as the embodiment of God on earth, as the literal Son of God.

God has now divinely established Jesus as the perfect combination of man and God on earth, because Jesus defeats the devil time and time again, and overcomes sin; always while giving attribution to the Father.  Jesus shows us how we are supposed to live and to love in the way God intended.  Sometimes he fixes the law where it was incorrectly related, and sometimes he gives us new Law.  As his work becomes completed on earth, the time for his final and most perfect and holy sacrifice draws near.  This final act is to offer himself as the sacrificial lamb so that all who protect their life with his blood may have the curse of death pass them over; as happened in the days when our people were slaves in Egypt, just before they were set free.

 

But the man who… ceases to keep the Passover, that same person shall be cut off from among his people, because he did not bring the offering of the Lord at its appointed time; that man shall bear his sin.  ~Numbers 9:13

 

This final act of Jesus sets us free of not only our captivity, but from death, if we but paint His blood upon our life.  By making atonement for us with His perfect life, and allowing death to pass over us with His perfect blood, Jesus completed God’s will, drawing us into God’s divine circle once and for all.

 

Thank you, Jesus, for your Divine and Unique and Holy sacrifice for us~

Death and the Afterlife, Part I: My Dream

God gave me insight today in a morning dream whilst still slumbering in my bed.

Heaven

There IS an afterlife and it is not very far away from us:  it is just through the veil on the ‘other side’.  When you die, if you believe in God and try to do good, your body cleaves from you, and you keep all your consciousness but you have no way to communicate with this world anymore because you have no body.  Like how, joined with our body here on earth, we cannot communicate with Heaven.

There is absolutely no change in the essence in our being, we simply go upward, and a little circle in heaven opens and we transcend unto God’s Realm, and are removed from here.  Our earthly dead body means nothing to us.

hell

However, God showed me specifically that if we commit suicide, or do not believe in Him, or do not try to do good; our body becomes tethered or anchored into the ground of the earth, where we become stuck.  We cannot ascend through into Heaven because we have chosen to be part of this world.  And we become like a tree.  Perhaps this is why God hates tree worship so much.  We are the trunk, and our legs are rooted in the ground.  It is horrible because the earthly world can regard us, but we cannot communicate with it.  Nor can we communicate with Heaven.  This felt like something that lasts forever in my dream.  This is hell.

It is not very difficult to go to Heaven.  It’s simply believing in, and loving God, and trying to do good.  Jesus was in my dream, but as a silent witness to the truth of these matters.

10/02/14:  God plants people here alone when they go to hell (as above), leaving them to their choice of life without Him.  This state is miserable, to say the least, and the only solace they will be able to find is finally accepting the Truth of Him, and loving Him.  Because no matter where we are, God, and only God, can give us peace.  Their punishment therefore is hell tethered into the earth with no one able to hear them, nor understand them, but God; not even others in hell, because they chose a life without Him.

But they will see that God is real and God is Truth, and they will finally be put in a situation where they cannot and will not deny that anymore.  Then when the earth is destroyed and God’s Son comes to reign in Zion, those who have turned to loving God, even from hell, will find themselves in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and live in Heaven with Him and His host.  The others will be ejected into eternal damnation, the Lake of Fire.

Praise Almighty YHWH ALHYM~

The Holy Trinity

It takes obedience to the Law and the Prophets,

Along with grace through faith in Jesus Christ,

To bring us unto God; to know His Divine Will and Living Word.

~~~~~~~

Paul argues that being obedient to the Law is not the means to salvation, but that is is faith through Jesus Christ that brings justification unto God.  He points out that otherwise, works would be enough for salvation, and that since all men are sinners, no matter how obedient to the Law we are, we will always fall short of attaining God’s Realm.  He quotes scripture in Genesis relating how,

“He [Abram] believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”  ~Genesis 15:6

This is true, indeed.  It takes faith and belief in God, and His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as our Lord Messiah to attain true everlasting salvation.

But scripture also says eleven chapters later that the LORD appeared to Isaac and blessed him by restating the covenant that He had made with his father, Abraham:

“…I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”  ~Genesis 26:4-5

This shows that it is not just due to faith and belief that we, and our descendants, are blessed by God, but that it is very much due to obedience that we, and our descendants, are blessed by God on earth.

This raises the question as to whether faith in Jesus Christ provides us with eternal life, and obedience to God provides with abundant blessings while we live out our earthly lives.  Indeed, the Old Testament did not speak to heaven, though it did speak about having plenty for our generation, and the generations to follow, if we loved God, obeyed Him, and had faith in Him.

Some Christians seem more concerned with attaining salvation in Heaven, while flouting God’s Law here on earth.  What does this mean?

I think it is obvious that both a grounding and foundation in God’s Law and commandments, along with  faith and belief that Jesus Christ is our Lord Messiah, which enables us to have flourishing lives here, and in the afterlife, are important.  Why, as God’s Chosen Ones, have we argued the importance of one over the other for millenia?

I personally want to please God, love Him, and know Him more than anything.  In practicing this, I want to know His ancient Law, as well as live by the example His Son gave.  I am saved forevermore by faith in Jesus’ sacrifice to me on the cross, but I am also living a righteous life under God’s Law, and will be blessed by Adonai Elohim for doing so.

I do not desire to forego either one of these.  Do you?

Called by God~

“Your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan;

Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

As for your nativity, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut,

Nor were you washed in water to cleanse you;

You were not rubbed with salt nor swathed in swaddling clothes.

No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you,

To have compassion on you;

But you were thrown out into the open field,

When you yourself were abhorred on the day you were born.

And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood,

I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’  Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’

I made you thrive like a plant in the field;

And you grew, matured, and became very beautiful.

Your breasts were formed, your hair grew, but you were naked and bare.

When I passed by you again and looked upon you,

Indeed your time was the time of love;

So I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness.

Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you,

And you became Mine,” says the Lord God.

“Then I washed you in water;

Yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood, and I anointed you with oil.

I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin;

I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk.

I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists,

And a chain on you neck.

And I put a ring in your nose, earrings in your ears,

And a beautiful crown on your head.

Thus you were adorned with gold and silver,

And your clothing was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth.

You ate pastry of fine flour, honey, and oil.

You were exceedingly beautiful, and succeeded to royalty.

Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty,

For it was perfect through My splendor

Which I had bestowed on you,” says the Lord God.

~Ezekiel 16:3-14

God is in our Every Cell

He knows what we are thinking because He is in every cell of our body, including our brain.  As I shared in a previous post, The Image of God, God has made life with a cellular basis because that is how His perfect form is.  In the sacred process of life-giving whereby He creates all beings, He attaches Himself to that being in that process, on a level so infinitely small as yet to be undetectable to human understanding, yet so invasive that we cannot ever escape from Him, our Creator.

This is why dreams and daydreams and aha! moments and intentions and intuition tell us God’s Will.  It is the immanence of God in us at work, in these moments that move us.  He is transcendent at all times too, yes, out there.  But He is always in here as well.  As Rick Warren says so eloquently in The Purpose Driven Life, God is constantly watching us-our every nuance-in every moment to see how we think, how we feel, and how we respond to events in our lives!  He is also feeling us, knowing us, and guiding us from within.  I find that so profound.  I don’t know about you, but knowing this makes a huge difference in how I actually behave!

But it is God in Us that is our ever surveillant Master, but also our dependable safety net.  He tailors our lives to His everlasting assessment of us, if we but learn to hear Him and listen to Him.  This is living in His will for us, and living coram Deo, with God, in everything we do.

Years ago, I read a heart-wrenching account of a young woman lost at sea on a sailboat that had gotten caught in a hurricane somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.  Based on a true story, this woman’s fiancee had apparently been lost overboard when the tumultuous storm tore him off the chains he had tied around himself and the helm, to anchor him.  Realizing that they would not be able to run away from the storm or go around it, he had sent her below where it was safer, while he stayed up top to do any navigation he could.  Down below, her body got thrown around, and she became unconscious for 24 hours.  When she returned to the deck afterward, her fiancee was gone, and she was alone and adrift on the open sea.

She describes how she heard a voice in her head giving her commands which ended up helping her navigate to the coast of Hawaii, and saving her life.  Commands like, “Open that can and eat it.”  The commands were from somewhere inside her head, she knew, but were not from her.  I do not recall her being a Christian or being a believer, or saying the voice was God, as I was reading her book.  But now I know it was God speaking to her.  Because that is how He sounds to me too.  It was nothing short of a miracle how, with nothing but star reckoning, she was able to sail herself to the island of Hawaii in the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean, over a month or more period of time.  And that she did not starve of hunger or thirst on the way.

God is like that in our head.  He feels our aches and pains in our bodies.  We don’t really have to tell Him or whine to Him about what ails us, though He is gracious when we do.  He understands that life is pain.  He sent Jesus to us knowing that life is pain.  He doesn’t want us to always feel pain, yet He knows that we will suffer whilst here on earth, because of man’s inherent sinful nature, from the very Beginning.

But we can also feel joy and happiness and hope.  That is the message of the Gospel.  That is what I want to share with others.  Life is pain, but life everlasting can be bliss with God.  We can have bliss here if we allow God to blossom within us and take over our every cell!  Open your understanding and know He is there, inside you, waiting for you to open your heart and mind and body fully to Him.

God Bless~

Mary