Tag Archives: Jesus

Phenomenology Response

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Chart about the Hegel's "Phenomenology of...

Chart about the Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes (actually more often than not) the Lord directs our words with a specific flavor when we converse with others about the nature of Himself and the Gospel.  I wanted to share His reply to an individual who is searching out the meaning of (or in) life.  Perhaps you too will find it interesting and useful:

Chinny:  I had never heard of phenomenology.  But the concept has rattled around in my mind for decades.  I didn’t think the world would have a word for what comes natural.  But, go figure.

Every man can approach an understanding of life from any aspect he chooses.  Who am I to say we are wrong as we search out the truth.  On the other hand, when we find a helpful directive, it is wise to attempt to share what we know.

Please allow me to respond to the concept of understanding the ultimate meaning of and in life.  If we are striving to understand or grasp the absolute truth of any subject, we may toy with lesser values in the beginning.  But there is a place where diluted materials stop providing information.  I have reached that lack of answers years ago.  And was forced to turn to pure materials to develop a pure understanding of what is pure and true.  Scientifically speaking, we get the answers we deserve according to the purity of the experiment.

People, in their best basic format, are full of misunderstandings, differings of opinions, and tossed about by all kinds of misinformation.  It seems a bit crude to me that we should strive to understand the perfection of God truth by linking together a mass of fallible knowledge.  Therefore, I would suggest that we would be better served in our quest by searching out the purest truth available to man.

The truth we seek should not be a peaceful and joyfilled understanding.  We have both established that man’s relationships will be full of turmoil.  So we surmise that any understanding of purity will necessarily be a bit disquieting to a tumultuous creature.  Only after repetition and learning can we hope to endure that truth with any sense of peace.  In other words, we come to understand the value of purity by experience alone (assuming that we have found what is pure and make it our specific target of bending our will.)

This is a very difficult subject, as is proven by the amount of words men have employed to research it.  I believe you and I are on the cutting edge of balance between true discovery (of a personal nature).  Now what remains is the ability to willingly approach the subject minus that sickness of pride that attends every man.  Don’t misunderstand that comment about pride.  It lives quite vibrantly in every one of us, and often goes undetected by our own perception.  It is quite obvious to others, however.  And, in the end, we find that we have not reached the fullness of understanding simply for lack of true humility.

I hope I have added something to the conversation here.

No Choice?

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Vegetables

Vegetables (Photo credit: WordShore)

We go to the store to buy something.  When we get there, there is an amazing variety of choices for each product.  We get up in the morning and encounter choices.  We want to explain something and we have thousands of words to choose from.  In everything we encounter here, there are billions of choices.  We get accustomed to making choices.  And we begin to believe that everything has a choice to make.

But in the way of eternal life there is no choice.  You either have life or you don’t.  You either have Jesus’ blessing or you don’t.  There are many choices we can make as we work out our salvation.  But God is truth.  There is very little room for choice when it comes to truth.

There are variety of items in creation.  But there is One God, One Savior, One Holy Spirit, One baptism, One faith, and so on.  It isn’t up to us to create choices in our salvation.  It belongs to us to limit our appetite for choice and accept the Lord’s offer.

What God Promises Comes to Pass.

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English: Woodcut of the Augsburg Confession, A...

English: Woodcut of the Augsburg Confession, Article VII, “Of the Church”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What God has promised to do will be done.  Though man counts time in days and years, God’s promise to transform His people cannot be broken.  We look at our lives and worry attends our thoughts.  We have come to believe that we have stepped over the line and now stand counted as an enemy of God.  How can that be so?

Look back.  How easy was it to believe when you first heard the Gospel?  What has changed over the years?  You heard the call to righteousness and holiness.  You allowed yourself to believe the message that those who live in sin can’t expect eternal life.  Your soul shook with fear and your responded with confession.  Remember how you felt that first touch of freedom from a guilty conscience when you embraced the promise of God to forgive?

We all know what has changed.  In our struggle against sin we have fallen to temptation.  At first it was a mistake to allow ourselves to be fooled into death.  But when we turned to God for help, didn’t help arrive?  He no more desires us to die now than He did when we first believed.  As long as you are in this bag of flesh hope remains.  What has changed is a gradual dulling of our hope, which is a direct result of a learned disobedience.

How do we reclaim that vibrant hope?  Refocus your efforts to believe.  It’s not something we can actually manipulate with our hands.  We simply give up our own struggle, confess our lack, and wait for His response.  The struggle will resume soon enough.  And you will be tested again.  But the renewal of our time of confession, and subsequent receiving of hope, will give us a strength we did not have at the start of our journey.  We will have proven to ourselves, once again, that God’s promise is stronger than our failings.

I do not say these things as a novice.  Over 25 years God has proven His ability to save me.  Though you have no need to trust the word of a man, the testimony I give here comes from a myriad of testings regarding this hope we share.  I testify, as do all who remain hopeful, that God is able and WILLING to cause us to live.  If you give up it is because you choose to stop believing.  Simply make the choice to believe again.  It’s really that easy, my friends.  You need not wallow in pig slop any longer.

What is the Power of The Gospel of Jesus?

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Power Lines

Power Lines (Photo credit: shaundon)

What is the power of the Gospel of Jesus?  How does it manifest itself among men?  What is its target?  And how do we know we have entered into the envelope of salvation?

The power of the Gospel is that The Sacrifice necessary to gain The Holy Father’s smile has been paid.  We are now free to live our own interpretation of the “Good Live”.  We who believe have gained a confidence to live that others cannot own.  Not only eternity is promised, but guidance and protection is extended from the only One who can give it without reservation.  So the power of the Gospel of Jesus is a powerful peace, confidence, freedom, and hope that cannot be taken away by anything.  It is God who gives it.  Who can strike His Kingdom and rip away what we have?

The manifestation of this Gospel among men is a violent love.  It does not care what others think about what we do.  Those who love as God loves are not bound by the laws of men.  Social norms of men are but a shadow of a tree in the darkness of night, while the norms of God’s rule are like blazing explosions of good in the streets of the city of blind wickedness.

God’s good works among His people cannot be hidden.  But they are never announced with pride.  The Gospel does not announce itself to men, as if to say, “I am about to do a good thing.”  The good work begins and comes to completion; power displayed and unrestrainable.  Do the clouds announce that the sun is about to rise?  Doesn’t the sun simply come up every morning?  While men will praise their light bulbs, they also complain that the sun is too hot, that there are too many clouds, or that it came up too early.  But the Gospel moves forward despite the desires of men.

This is the target of the Gospel:  That God should receive all praise for what has been established.  Men will contrive many means to manipulate what He has ordained should be.  They will build houses to shield themselves from the elements.  Men curse the night.  They curse the day.  They curse the cold and heat.  But the elements are established by God.  And it is praise that is due what He has caused to be.  Many other elements of life here in this place of testing are cursed by man.  But it is those who trust Him completely that find release from this cursing. They learn to accept what comes upon them without murmur.  This is the target of the Gospel of Jesus: that His people should learn to live with God as their leader, no longer listening to their complaining desires.

This is how we know we have entered into the envelope of salvation; that we no longer perceive our life as a victim.  Through belief in the message of hope we are transformed from hopeless men to partakers in God’s lovely scheme of transformation.  We endure without complaint.  And when we find our hearts complaining we also hear a restraining voice within, compelling us to reconsider our attitude.

Violent love attacks all sin in the heart of the believer of the Gospel.  As if someone were to step in front of our folly and push it back, while pulling us forward to trust at the same time.  Refinement of thought toward what is good grows.  Restraining of stupidity holds us back from the things that lead to death.  And, in the end, the believer of the Gospel of Christ grows from a walking dead fool to a semblance of a righteous man.  We know we are His as we witness this occur in our very bones.  It does not announce its presence.  And there is no written word that appears on our forehead, marking us as those who are being transformed.  Yet the transformation will be obvious; first to the believer, then to all who know who we were.

Stupid Intelligence

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Stupid signs

Stupid signs (Photo credit: pkevinconnell)

I cannot understand us.  How do I put this?  I guess I’ll start with what we all know.

Men love selfishness.  And I guess that’s natural.  I’ve often said that we are born defensive.  After all, we can’t get outside our vulnerable skin.  So we are on the defensive from the moment we notice we have fingers.  Ok, I got that.

Now I know that this selfishness lends itself to rebellion against manipulation of any kind.  Even if we try to help another man understand his responsibility to others, it’s like pulling teeth without pain-killer.  Isn’t that what we face raising teens?

And what if a teen has not learned responsibility when it was due to learn?  He becomes an adult full of selfish and childish attitudes about life.  In this way, we see rebellious adults all over the place.  So we know about rebellion first hand.  Yea?  I think we can all nod about that.

Now we don’t really know a whole lot about pure good and perfect responsible behavior.  We all take stabs at it as best we can.  But we all know we fall short of purity in one way or another.  Again, I think we can all nod to that.

Here is what I don’t get:

Perfect isn’t a word that lends itself to interpretation.  Perfect is perfect.  That also means perfect is eternal by nature.  So why do we find men trying to water down the word “perfect”?  Why don’t we find them, instead, admitting that they are far less than perfect?

I am astounded that certain men, who know better, believe and teach something other than the whole Gospel.  Some how they have been duped into something far less than the perfect message of the Gospel.  And they seem to think that it’s ok to just kind of tear away at the concept of perfect.  I’m sorry.  I’m just amazed at us!  In the end we have to say this (as it was said by that wonderfully deficient character), “Stupid is what Stupid does.”

Tough Stuff Requires Tough Response

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Sayer fight

Sayer fight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We live in a very controlled space.  Vacuum above, rocks below, winds, storms, great cold and heat, all assault our experience here.  Then there’s bugs of various sorts, some can cause harm, others are simply a bother.  Animals abound; some to eat, some to treat, some to abhor, and some would love to eat us.

Then we have the humans themselves.  To make a friend is a milestone in our experience.  To keep a friend is a milestone in itself.  But we can be sure we will be assailed by humanity, along with all the other plagues we encounter here.

Added to this boxing match, arrives political, social, economic troubles, personal thoughts and attitudes that need adjusting every day all day long.  We all know about these things.  But what has arrived among us is something a bit out of the ordinary.

It was that sins were a bit isolated among men.  One city would embrace a certain sin.  But you could always walk or ride to another place to escape their folly.  But with the advent of communications and faster, more reliable, transportation, the isolation of the sins of man have encountered a boundless habitat.  Now I challenge anyone to point to a place on earth where we can set up a roof and live a life absent of the refinement of wickedness we have come to teach each other.

How I desire to be removed from the complicated garbage that man advertises as prime today.  The body has replaced the concentration on holiness of spirit.  Medical commercials, ways to play, and financial “get well quick” schemes abound.  It is getting to where we are more aware of the things of this world than of eternity where God lives; forever past and forever future.  The temporary has become man’s god en masse.

This is not the end to escalation for sins.  There is a place where man is allowed to abandon all trace of conscience.  If it is hard to live in purity today, what will happen in that day?  Gone will be any hint of a peaceful little town where you can leave your doors unlocked.  Gone will be the day when owning some kind of lethal tool to protect what you call yours is an option.

Most people I know simply don’t want to talk about what they see happening anymore.  And if you bring them the Gospel, you find them backing up.  They no longer see the Gospel as a message of hope.  They only perceive another demand.  And they are absolutely inundated with demands.

What a curious ruse has been set upon man.  He is in a position of defence, from waking to waking again.  Peace is no longer an option.  And this isn’t even the height of horror that is bound to come.  Slowly, man is being squeezed into a stark choice; Fight or die cowering.  The evil one has man just about where he wants them to be.  And the end of things can’t be far behind that point.

All this said, it is important to encourage one another to fight the good fight with even more strength.  Even the best of us today is plagued with a monstrous onslaught of sin.  Hold each other up.  Look for signs of tiring.  Strengthen trust between your brothers and sisters.  The silver lining surrounding all this is the grace of God in Christ Jesus for all who are struggling to obey.

I posted this to say that I see it clearly enough (the struggle you face every day).  Oddly, this is a post of encouragement.  May God bless this message to all His people.

By His Grace.