Seek God with the Whole Heart

Normally we seek Truth with our intellect alone, while our hearts deceitfully reserve their loyalties for our idolatrous desires.

Our hearts convince us that we can stage God and Truth within a marginalized compartment of our minds (satisfying God's supposed legalistic expectations for a relationship), while secretly working to fulfill its own self-made and culturally infused image of success.

Our heart will even falsely magnify that compartmentalized place for God and Truth to make us believe that our relationship is much stronger and more authentic than it actually is, all the while completely blinding us from seeing our particular Idolatries.


"The Heart of a Rose" picture used by permission of White Book

Be Anxious for Nothing

This walk over the past few years has increasingly become more about  being discipled by the Spirit of Christ Himself. With that being said, here is some insight into why Christ would instruct us to not worry as the "unenlightened" do.

Once you know a little about Christ, you will easily hear him say that he was only concerned with God's will, and not his own.  This is because "The Way" in which he claimed to BE was the way of complete "self" abnegation.  The acts of mankind that are less than perfect can be traced back to man's identification with a perceived individual "self". What made Christ able and equipped to do only God's will is that he was living completely out of his identification with God alone.

As we interact with the world out of our relation to the "self" we develop a false sense of control, of which truthfully we have none outside of our own decisions and character. It is here that we build our expectations of life, which in turn create our anxieties towards unfavorable outcomes.

Christ is brutally clear, "He that finds his life, shall lose it: and he that loses his life for my sake, shall find it".
If you are trying to hold onto your "self" made life, it and you will experience an undeniable loss. If you will follow Christ's example and renounce your "self" made life, you will experience Life and Peace.  We are exhorted in no comfortable terms, "If a man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up HIS cross, and follow me". We can only pursue the life giving power of Christ in recognition of this self denial and death.

When we begin to destroy the "self", we will find it wholly impossible to concern ourselves with the petty worries that our flesh has distracted us with all our lives. Instead of bringing our "laundry lists" of concerns TO God, we will move on to the True Faith of concerning ourselves WITH God alone.  Only then, can we transcend the storms of life, because we no longer entangle ourselves in the affairs that rest Solely in God's hands to begin with.

I would like to take the time, over the next few posts to give the practical side and experiences of living out this Truth.

May This Find You In Peace!!

Loren

Where is the True Christ?

In our many engaging conversations lately, my wife and I have been focused on the concept of the "Authentic Jesus" of the scriptures.  It is amazing to see and recognize the great care and boldness with which Christ instructed his followers on issues of the greatest spiritual importance.

I am certain, as he has taught me, that the extent to which we are faithful to hear, reflect, and assimilate his divine truths will directly determine the success we experience within this Kingdom of Heaven. It is because of this knowledge that Christ spoke quite abruptly to the root issues that men and women deal with as we try to maintain a gratifying existence here on earth.

We have discussed  many of the "common" characterizations of Christ throughout the our generation, and how profoundly inaccurate they are in representing the basic purpose for his coming to this earth. As Christ came to cause people to break free from the oppression of their culturally planted worldviews, it is ironic that the most common views of Christ in our time can literally make his teachings compatible with any pattern of life we find ourselves locked into.

The most common characteristic we find within the current landscape is the "non-judgmental" Jesus.  This image is mainly justified by the often quoted text, "Judge not, lest ye be judged". This quote has been used by every person that has felt the sting of someone other than themselves pointing out what they already know to be true of themselves. I am no stranger to this feeling as well. And yet, left to itself, this misrepresented divine edict would stop Christ himself from accomplishing what he came to accomplish, AS WELL AS from saying most of what he said during his ministry.

I will address this Truth further in the next blog.

For now I would like for you to tell me your thoughts and experiences with Judging.

Peace

Loren



 

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