What really makes sense?

Think about this for a minute.  How many of us have been taught that the way the Pharisees understood things is the way God intended the old covenant to be?  The truth is, Christ’s discussions with the Pharisees were to show them that their understanding was flawed, not the covenant.  If we allow ourselves to listen to what Christ is telling the Pharisees we come to understand what He was telling them is simply “you aren’t getting this”.  If we want to understand God, Christ, and the New Covenant we must listen to what Christ told the Pharisees and apply what He told them to OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE OLD COVENANT and bring that understanding into our foundation of the New Covenant.

Forgiveness, repentance, and acknowledgement of sin were always a perpetual and ongoing aspect of a defined relationship with God.  The Day of Atonement only carried special considerations as far as worship...not physical function.  The animal sacrifice only carried special considerations as far as worship…not physical function.  The roll of the high priest only carried special considerations as far as worship….not physical function.  If the law included a day of forgiveness and a sacrifice for forgiveness, and the law required that these events be honored than the truth is, in honoring these aspects of the law, the entire law has been honored.  In other words, the law included the requirement to let God forgive us of any transgressions committed in the prior year (time period).  In other words, the foundation of the law and the Old Covenant was grace, accepting God's forgiveness, repentance, and acknowledgement of sin.  Does this sound familiar?

The function of salvation relative to forgiveness was, and still is, addressed in the ongoing moment by moment relationship between God and His people.  The law provided everything offered through Christ except the strength of the Holy Spirit, the person of the High priest (the one that goes before God as a cover for our sins), and a much more substantial sacrifice opposed to animal sacrifices that did not impose the conviction required to bring true repentance into the heart of the sinner.  Contrary to teachings...salvation was never through works (except that the Pharisees did teach this during the time just prior to and during Christ’s time and as such Christ addressed this view in His discussion with them).  The reality is that what they understood was not representative of what God provided or how He wanted it understood.  This is the very point Christ was attempting to make.

This understanding helps us understand Why Paul and every other author of our scriptures including Christ himself continued to honor every aspect of the law to the best of their ability and why they continued to honor the traditional holidays.  It also helps us understand how important it would be for Satan to confuse us over these things and to get us to reject what God provided.

The law...better referred to as the tutor....reveals to us the nature of our flesh filter, and provides a foundation that God uses to reveal the nature of a life that will grow toward being more and more in harmony with our God nature.  It is for this reason we prosper in the fruit of the spirit as we are led by the spirit....toward AND BEYOND the letter of the law.

The holidays are used to connect us to our heritage, history, and God’s plan in general.  God uses the nature of the holidays to speak to us in many ways.  It is through the observation of the holidays that we remember our past, remain focused on the future, and become aware of deeper levels of revelation as His plan unfolds in harmony with the sequencing of things established in the beginning.

Yes, Christ replaced the high priest and the sacrifice; one time for all time.  But.... how does this change:

• The foundation of what He GAVE US to use to help us understand the essence of who He is,
• What He GAVE US to make it easier for Him to communicate with us, and
• How we should be thankful to Him for being so kind as to give us these things to make the journey easier? 

Yes, we can grow in our relationship with God without the law and without the holidays.  A simple example would be someone totally sold by the world systems.  Let’s use the example of someone who doesn’t honor any laws (even laws of the state) and who celebrates only pagan holidays.  Is it still possible for God to reveal Himself to these people?  Is it possible for God to show these people that life “Satan’s way” doesn’t work, and that life “His way” does?  Of course it is.  We see it every day.  These are the most hurt, lost, and destructive in society.  The pain they feel and the pain they impose are beyond what most of can understand or relate to.  God speaks to them in and through this pain.  Some are fortunate enough to come to understand that the pain is associated with the lies they are living and as such they come to seek truth.  They turn to God and He leads them into the light.  In this example we come to see that we learn one of three ways:

• We learn by reading, hearing, or being taught,
• We learn by watching others fail and/or succeed, and
• We learn through our own failures and successes.

The simple truth is that the law and the holidays simply provide US with an opportunity for God to speak into our hearts, minds, and souls in a way that is easier than the latter two options.  It is our free will choice to reject the reading, the hearing, and the being taught and seek our lessons the hard way.  The reality is, the only difference between us and the criminal referenced above is the size of the foundation we accept as good, embrace as being for us, and trust to be righteous.  So what does this all mean?

What I see is that by eliminating the law and replacing the holidays we have left ourselves without the tutor.  We have found ourselves attempting to establish a relationship with God based on only trivial differences between our view of ultimate truth and the world’s view of ultimate truth.  In other words, our foundation is only marginally different than the worlds.  As such, the pain and suffering God uses to open our eyes looks basically the same as the pain and suffering He uses to open “their” eyes.  At the end of the day we find ourselves asking God to show us why we are suffering like we are while at the same time arguing that we “don’t need…..” for our salvation.  The truth is, the mindset that utters these words misses the reality of the gospel and is found on a works based salvation.  If the mind thinks “I don’t have to do that”, it must have a counter part that thinks “this is what I must do/can’t do”.  Until we approach the law and the holidays as a GIFT, embrace them as what God gave us to HELP us we will never understand the gospel, the love of God, or what it is to be in relationship with Him.

The truth is, without the law and holidays as a foundation we are left looking no different than the world...we are left with relative truth within the church with the illusion that each of our views of that truth is the same as Gods.  That opens the door for exactly where we are today.  The reality of the current state of the church is that it has thousands of views, no harmony, marginal leadership, little to no love, and expresses very little of the holiness of God.  In short..very little pure fruit...mostly cheap imitations.  My proof of this view is summarized in the prophecy of our pending failure, the current condition of the church, and our inability to even allow ourselves to be comfortable standing in the presence of Gods light.  If we won’t embrace it...how can we lead anyone into it?  The truth is we try to push them into the light as we hide in their shadows claiming we want to save them from the wrath God will bring on them for what they have done.  When will we come to realize that God gave us the responsibility to lead them to Him, their failure is the evidence of our failure, and our failure is the evidence of our pride.

I pray that you have a God filled week and that this blog will in some way drive you deeper into the arms of the one who created you, help free you from whatever bondage you are in, and be a part of the foundation of a deep and meaningful life.

An Eternal Agenda

Moving forward with this discussion we are transitioning from gaining an understanding of the “human condition” into “God’s plan”.  In order to understand this transition we must come to realize that:

• There is something beyond this existence, 
• What is beyond may very well be more important, and 
• Everything gained through this existence is an integral part of the journey beyond.

The common theme between the messages over the past two weeks is coming to realize that the key to spiritual growth comes through humility.  Humility is the opposite of pride, and the ultimate in pride believes we “can be just like God”.  Way back in the garden Eve was tempted to believe that if she and Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would become just like God.  The temptation has not changed.  This is what Satan wants for himself and what he uses to draw us closer to him and further from God.  We must remember that this is a spiritual battle and that he is the greatest hunter ever created.

I’m not a hunter but I do know some things about hunting.  A good hunter understands his prey and what his prey finds most tempting.  For most animals it would be some kind of food or the sound of its mate.

Let’s take a minute and think about how God created us.  Didn’t He create us in His image?  Wouldn’t it make sense then that our greatest desire would be the same as His?  What is God’s greatest desire for this world?  Isn’t it drawing all of us back to Him?  Another way of saying that would be, God’s greatest desire is to deliver us into spiritual freedom.

If this is His greatest desire and He created us in His image, than I would argue that this is our greatest desire.  If this is our greatest desire, then this desire is the path for our greatest temptation.

Knowing that Satan is a great hunter we come to understand that he has set up a really incredible plan to use our pride along with our desire to bring about global spiritual freedom to lead the world into global captivity.

But, the truth is, God is the ultimate hunter.  Satan is the greatest hunter He created, but we know that the created can never be greater than the creator.  So, what is God’s angle?

Does it make sense that God would create us with a desire to be free, help others, and bring about peace and then create a hunter to take advantage of these attributes simply to lead the world into bondage, pain, and suffering?

At first glance we would say of course not.  Even the thought of that is beyond reason.  But what if the most important part of this journey is coming to realize that God is God and we are not.  Maybe the most important thing isn’t the freedom or the peace.  Maybe the most important thing is that we allow Him to use the experiences of this journey to show us that we will never fully understand all that is to be understood, that as such we will never totally comprehend the difference between good and evil, and as such there is no way we will ever be just like Him.  Maybe what He has prepared for us once we move beyond this realm requires that we come to this point in our spiritual development.  If we don’t leave this realm and immediately come into the full knowledge, understanding, and likeness of Him then it would only stand to reason that there is more to our spiritual development than what occurs at that moment we leave here and go there.  Assuming we never reach the full knowledge, understanding, or likeness of Him we come to understand that this is an eternal journey that has no room for pride.

Coming to understand this leads us to understanding the critical nature of our being purged of any tendency to succumb to temptations toward pride.  If we embrace this as the sole purpose of this aspect of His creation (the story of planet earth and the human race) we come to see things from a different perspective.  We come to realize the magnitude of the humbling we must endure.  Simply stated, we begin to understand why we must:

• Be allowed to believe we are free, 
• Be tempted into believing that we know the difference between good and evil, 
• Be used by Satan to lead the world into his bondage, 
• Be shown how our own pride in these specific areas is what created the opportunity for Satan to take advantage, 
• Feel the pain of seeing the results of what transpires, and 
• Make a free will choice to kill our desire for freedom and our belief that we will ever fully comprehend the difference between good and evil.

This awareness is exactly what God’s plan ultimately leads us to.  Our full maturity into Christ ultimately comes through:

• The realization of the damage we have done in our desire to do what is right, 
• While not allowing God to transform us into what He desires, 
• While holding onto what we believe to be true, 
• Thinking we are capable of doing what only He can, and 
• Blaming others when we fail (because they disagree with our version of good and evil).

This takes me full circle to the question that stimulated this entire 5 blog series.  Do I agree with replacement theology?  For those of you who don’t know what this is, it is a theology that believes that the church has replaced Israel as God’s “chosen people”.  The following summarizes how I see God using “His people to carry out His plan”:

• The Jewish people were chosen by God to be His partner in bringing His plan of purging all mankind of our tendency to succumb to temptations toward pride, 
• As such they would have to be the first people to be purged of this tendency, 
• God gave them the foundation to what is right and wrong, 
• Their pride allowed Satan to blind them to the foundational aspects and led them to believing these things to be the totality of ultimate truth, 
• Believing these things to be the totality of ultimate truth they saw themselves as free and containing the ability to bring forth freedom to others, 
• This provided the opportunity for Satan to make them his slave, 
• God stepped in at the appointed time and did something new, 
• Because Christ pointed these things out instead of lifting them up they rejected Him (pride), 
• This rejection has led to the church carrying on the commission to work with God in purging all mankind of our tendency to succumb to temptations toward pride,
• Over the past 2,000 years the Jewish people have been the most persecuted people on the face of the earth, 
• During this 2,000 year period the Church has followed in the footsteps of the Jewish people, 
• Satan has used our pride to blind us to the foundational aspects of the teachings while relying too heavily on scripture such as John 3:16, 
• This has provided the opportunity for Satan to make us his slave by reducing what it is to be a disciple into little more than wearing a cross, doing good works, and telling people about Christ, 
• God is going to step in at the appointed time and do something new, 
• What He does will bring about so much pain and suffering it will be the catalyst necessary to bring the Jewish people to the humility necessary to once and for all be purged of their tendency to be drawn from Him, 
• The church’s humility will come when we find ourselves feeling as separated from God as the Jewish people have over the past 2,000 years.  This will be the result of our being subjected to the same persecution as they have endured, and the same tribulation as the rest of the world. 
• Our pride has led us to believe that we will “be lifted up” and that God’s wrath “will fall upon those that deserve it”.  God will use these events to open up our hearts to a deeper truth than we have previously been willing to see, 
• Together, Jew and Gentile who have allowed these things to bring them to their knees in ultimate humility will finally be prepared to be His ultimate bride, 
• The millennial period will be ushered in as Christ sits on His thrown with Jew and Gentiles working together, under His lordship, free from the fleshly temptations of the world, to do His work His way, knowing it is He who is bringing all things about.

The bullet point on the church “needing” the humbling of our failures is probably the most difficult for us to comprehend.  The truth is there are many parallels that we could use to understand this point.  Let’s look at the attitude of the Pharisees prior to Christ’s first coming.

• They were anxiously awaiting the coming of the Messiah, 
• They were celebrating the feasts and honoring “His appointed method of atonement”, 
• They felt as though they were living in accordance with God’s desires and that they had been properly forgiven of their infractions against the law, 
• They believed the Messiah would come to lift them up and crush their enemies, 
• The prophecies clearly told them that the Messiah was going to come BECAUSE of their misunderstandings of what God had given them, BECAUSE they were not going to be living in accordance with His desire, and that He was not going to send the Messiah to come and lift them up or crush their enemies, yet 
• They were not able to see the truth of the prophesies because their pride did not let them.

Answering the question in typical fashion, I say yes and no.  Yes, the Church did replace the Jewish people in taking the commission for a time (the time of the gentiles).  However, this will be just long enough to humble the Jewish people and to set the stage for the Church to experience the humbling necessary to come to know what must be understood.  In the end both Jew and Gentile will come together and work with Christ in the establishment of His millennial government.

Here is the cool thing.  I fully believe that individually we are free to come to these realizations prior to these events taking place.  We can read in the prophets how people in the future will come to understand these things and how God will communicate with them as they come to these realizations.  I fully believe that we are capable of having these conversations with God today, prior to the experiences taking place.  We can accomplish this by simply realizing that we are as responsible as those who will have to endure it.  As we come to understand our roll in what will take place in the future we can feel the pain of our humility just like those who will feel it in the future.  As we read the conversations between God and those who will come after us we can claim their words as our own.  Together we can go on our knees before God, embrace His plan as good, and have peace in all He is bringing about.

The people who are willing to walk this road are the people He has called me to share these words with.  God is calling me to share these things because He has told me that there are those who are willing to accept our roll in what will take place in the future and who are willing to repent before a kind and loving God.  He has asked me to share this to prepare that people to hold the hands of those that are not willing to see it, to go before Him and repent in their behalf of the sins they do not even know they are committing, and to be prepared to comfort them through what is to come.  He has told me that there are those who will see this as a blessing and that these words will bring them peace.  I pray that you are one of those people.

If you have been moved by the experiences of these blogs, challenged by what you have read, feel led to point out where I have overlooked an aspect of scripture, or would simply like my thoughts on something I encourage you to email me at JeffAndras@gmail.com.  It would be an honor to continue moving forward with posts addressing particular thoughts, comments, concerns, or life application discussions.

If you have been totally moved by where we have come I would encourage you to go back and start with “Choices” and take another read through the blogs.  Understanding the perspective from which all of this has been written will probably change everything about what you hear.  I am going to spend the next several weeks going back and re-writing some of the early blogs to fit the more current format.  I have learned so much over these past several months and thank you for supporting me in this effort.

God bless.

The Big Picture--A Global Experience

We are now into our 4th week of breaking down the blog posted on January 7^th.  Over the past 3 weeks we have looked at:

• How God’s thoughts and ways differ from our thoughts and ways, 
• What do we think about when trials and tribulations come,
• How is God using trials and tribulations to speak to us, and
• Asking God to show us how to silence our own thoughts and to hear the Spirit when we are challenged with difficult people, challenging situations, trials, and tribulations.
• A deeper understanding of what “truth” sets us free,
• How our emotional responses reveal the sin in our hearts,
• How this “heart sin” is heavy, burdensome, and contrary to our design,
• How this “heart sin” reveals the very nature of the bondage we are in, and
• We cannot be Christ’s while in bondage to sin (Satan’s slave).
• The purpose of life and God’s plan for our personal salvation,
• Why God created Satan knowing what would happen,
• Coming to understand that in our pride to “have no master” we fall prey to Satan’s temptations as he uses this desire “to be like God” to make us his slave,
• Understand that life as Satan’s slave is unfulfilling, empty, and painful where as it leads to a hunger and thirst that will never be satisfied,
• Satisfaction comes as we embrace God and His ways, give Him the authority to be our master, and serve Him doing life His way, and
• This brings us spiritual freedom as we come into harmony with the nature of how He created us to be.

Today we are going to take the following two aspects of our personal journey and apply the same principals to humanity and religion:

• The relationship between our pride and our desire to “be just like God”, and
•  How God’s plan uses Satan to reveal this to us, humble us, and lead us to accepting God as our master for our ultimate freedom from Satan’s bondage.

Dear God, help us to understand what you are attempting to communicate to us through the processes of this world and how the following questions help us come to understand You and Your ways as we never have before:

1. As we contemplate the “mission” of the various religions of the world, what do we see that they believe they can bring about?
2. What do they believe must take place for their “mission” to be accomplished?
3. Have we ever heard anyone say that “if everyone believed like I do we would have peace on earth?”
4. Don’t we believe that if everyone saw good and evil the same way we do we could have utopia?
5. What does the bible tell us about “who will bring salvation?”
6. Isn’t “religion” another form of buying Satan’s lie “if you know the difference between good and evil you can be just like God”?

This reveals one of the greatest aspects of the global experience.  Deep within us we all have a desire to be a part of what is good, we want to play our part in bringing God’s plan of salvation into being, we want to be a part of the progression toward that utopic society; but we want to do it our way.  Satan uses our attachment to comfort, luxury, power, sexuality, self-righteousness,……. to blind us to our inability to be just like God, look just like God, or do what only God can do.  Making it really simple; if we are not capable of looking like Christ individually, how could we ever think we are capable of looking like Him cumulatively?  Let’s take a moment and look at some various religious groups and consider the pride aspect of how they believe God will use them, just like they are, to bring about what only He can accomplish.  What do we see as the “pride” aspect within each group?

1. The anti-religion “religion” (belief that if it were not for religion we could have peace), 
2. Atheism (no ultimate truth, no God),
3. Religions of the mind (self-awareness),
4. Religions of definition (defined standards of righteousness),
5. Religions of faith (believing),
6. Pagan beliefs (worship of creation, heavenly hosts, other gods), and
7. Others as they don’t fit into the above.

Here is a quick overview of what I see as some basic concepts regarding the revelation of pride in each:

1. Claims that doing away with “organized religions” will not bring about utopia for many reasons including the fact that evil, selfishness, and self-righteousness are not the result of organized religion.  The foundation of this religion is a self-righteous view of blaming others for its inability to accomplish its mission (utopia),
2. Same as above plus a total denial of God.  This is a statement of “we define our own truth, we are our own masters”.  It neglects to realize the conflict found in oppossing views of truth found within the embracing of each person being given the latitude to define what truth is,
3. Claims that humans are capable of personal transformation and purification necessary to bridge gap between man and God.  Interestingly enough this is based on coming to a point of ultimate humility.  I would define ultimate humility as accepting we can never bridge the gap between man and God.  The concept itself proves itself to be futile and pride based.
4. The legalistic approach to “ultimate truth” fails because:
1. Those imposing it are not capable of living to the standards,
2. Ultimate truth required for utopia is beyond human understanding and as such cannot be written, spoken, or taught.  It must be experienced, understood, and embraced.
3. It is pride that leads us to believe that we understand truth well enough to teach it to the point it will be embraced and lived by others.  It is pride that leads us to believe that we can teach others well enough to protect them from their own need to experience pain, suffering, and failure.  It is pride that leads us to believe that our teachings can replace God’s plan of bringing humanity into an understanding of what simply cannot be taught by man’s words, books, or love.  In other words, we believe we are capable of teaching others what only God can reveal to them.
4. It is our pride that judges others in their inability to learn from us as we hold them responsible for the pain and suffering God is bringing about in His plan of salvation.
5. In its purest form this is truth.  It embraces God as savior, it embraces His truths, it embraces His Spirit, it embraces His plan, and it embraces His ways.  However, as it is demonstrated, lived out, and conducted it falls short as we argue over what we believe to be “required” ignoring what is a gift, and embracing flesh based lies.  We do this because we like our lives like they are and we grasp hold of any teachings that support our view of “good and evil” so that we don’t have to change or “sacrifice”.  This leads us back to a “works based mentality” which lands us in a life demonstrating a religious belief that is represented more by one of the other “religious” categories than what we claim.  Those living this religious understanding day by day, moment by moment are non-existent (including me).  It is pride that blinds us to this reality.
6. A turning from the God of creation to the things He created.  In the light of understanding of a higher power there is a refusal to accept one God, one path, one way.  It is pride that says “I can’t accept that the God that created me would only have one way to Him”.  Going further down the rabbit hole would lead us to a total worship of the things of this earth and fully embracing Satan as a master believing His promises over God’s.

The truth is that if we apply the same concepts of our personal journey to that of the global experience we find the same required results.  Cumulative people groups called religions having common beliefs must come to understand that even in their common goal, common desire, and common vision they are no more capable of bringing salvation to the earth than each of us individually.  This is our cumulative humility.  We must come to understand, that even as a groups, we are still prone to Satan’s lies and his deception.  Our humility comes when we come to understand that cumulatively we have allowed Satan to manipulate Christianity into the mold of the other religions that trust in the power of man more than the power of God, that deny Satan and his influence over us, that embrace the ways of this world under false teachings, and that has set a mission to accomplish what only God is capable.

Let’s take a minute and go back to looking at the various religious groupings one more time:

• The anti-religion “religion” (belief that if it were not for religion we could have peace),
• Atheism (no ultimate truth, no God),
• Religions of the mind (self-awareness),
• Religions of definition (defined standards of righteousness),
• Religions of faith (believing),
• Pagan beliefs (worship of creation, heavenly hosts, other gods), and
• Others as they don’t fit into the above.

As we scan back over the list while being totally honest with ourselves: 

1. Which of the above people groups would we say show the greatest visible representation of “freedom” in their personal lives and within the lives of their communities?  (Consider freedom to be free from gossip, harsh words, divorce, rebellion among their youth, factions, disputes within the body, addictions, immorality, materialism, self-justification, anger, ….).
2. Is there a difference between looking “free” and “looking Christ like”?
3. Where would you fit into the list?
4. Where would your family fit into the list?
5. Where would your church fit into the list?
6. Where do you see Christianity fitting into the list?

Can we let what we are feeling right now be our humility?  Do we have to wait for God’s plan to come to full fruition before we allow ourselves to look at this for the truth that it is?  Do we have to wait for God to do what He has to do before we are willing to see what it is that we must see? 

 “As for Me, this is My covenant with them,” says the LORD: “My Spirit which is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring's offspring,” says the LORD, “from now and forever.” Isaiah 59:21.

Can we accept that God is telling US about a covenant He will make with the hurt and lost of the world?  How does it make us feel to understand that this is a covenant that will be established in the future?  Why would God have to issue such a covenant? Why will He have to tell us how He is going to change US as a part of this covenant with THEM?

Dear God, please open up our hearts, minds, and souls to come to understand where the religions we have come to trust are in bondage.  Dear God show us where we have picked our “religion” based on our own fleshly desires and what we are comfortable as defining as “righteous and holy”.  Dear God please help us to see the destiny of what we represent and help us break free so that we may properly represent you and enjoy being one with you.  Dear God, help us to experience life as You so desire for us to experience it…..in harmony with how You created us, in harmony with You.