Our Lives

Our Lives

2/11/14

All of us at one point in our lives wonder if the things that we do while we are walking upon this earth actually matter.  Are the tasks that we complete and the direction in which we go and are these actions of ours accountable to anyone besides us?  We are bombarded everyday with troubles and strife that easily gives foundation for this questioning.  On the other hand each one of our lives is defined by a set period of time which means that we do have a reason and purpose because if we did not then our time on earth would not be measured.  That is why it is important that we understand that we do have a Creator and He has a specific plan for each one of us.

A few weeks back I wrote an article stating how we need to understand how our lives operated when referring to stories within the Bible. How many times have we directly or indirectly run across people who are questioning God’s ability and legitimacy to inflict what might seem as harsh punishment on humans.  I also asked the reader to think about how God had to come to that point and to define why it had to come to this method.  Part of having a purpose in our daily existence is to have a flow of direction and when that direction progresses enough in the manner that our Father has deemed for our lives, He must act accordingly.  There is nothing wrong with the human heart progressing, but it is in the direction that it progresses that is of the utmost importance.

Another topic that I have been writing about recently is the completeness of God and how this characteristic of God relates to our lives. God cannot change His laws or His ways; this is a fact because if God did in any way He would be classified as a liar.  So if He does something in one manner He must follow suit when another situation arises that He deems necessary to intervene.  See there is an enemy that we all have and that enemy is out to prove that God is wrong and that His ways are limiting, when in fact it is our enemy’s ways that are bad for our lives and will only bring death and destruction.  God and our enemy have defined kingdoms and while God is the Creator of all living matter it is because of His eternal existence which proves that all of us were created for a purpose.  And it is this truth that our enemy wishes for us to ignore and to veer away from at any cost.

Therefore, since God is a holy being and cannot create anything unholy, then that means that it was our choice to go our own way and disobey God’s only command to us.  So does this mean that our enemy has won a significant battle?  In some instances that is a correct statement but knowing that Satan cannot create a spirit that is where God has seen fit to set us as an example of His redeeming authority. It would then seem logical that God would send His son to the earth to represent God and to provide a legal, spiritual and physical means by which redemption and restoration could be achieved between God and man.  God did this when He sent Jesus to the earth in the form of a human being.  Yet instead of having a human / human bloodline and God being the omnipotent being that He is, created Jesus’ body inside Mary from His bloodline, which totally bypasses any illegal spiritual lineages that Satan could argue against.  More about this topic at a later date.

So when do our lives and the life of Christ compare in this scope?  The topic of this article is called “Our Lives” but it really should be titled “In Between” since our existence was already known about even before we were created by our parents.  After our physical life is over we will have an eternal existence somewhere that we can only imagine about at the present time.  So if you wish to take into this context we are actually living in between two time periods.  God, in keeping with His completeness, had the same plan for His son and it is a historical fact that Jesus did walk this planet and due to man’s recording skills no one can deny that Jesus existed.  So, in summation our lives are created, born, live and then die just as Jesus’ life did.  The only difference is that our lives are created by human / human origins and Jesus’ life was created by His Father which would be considered holy / human in origin.  With this evidence it would be safe to say that since Jesus’ life had a direct purpose in this life just as our life does. 

A few months ago a song was released by an artist named Francesca Battistelli entitled “In Between”.  It has not been out too long but I understand its popularity has been continually growing ever since it hit the airwaves.  The message of this song confirms what we all have known but it also establishes the fact that Jesus was here for a specific time.  While my written words were placed into the public before I heard this song both areas confirm that all of our lives have a reason for living and how important each life is and why we should pursue the idea concerning life.  We can easily grasp this concept about human history but for most of us we have struggled about inserting our lives into the stories of the Bible.  We cannot forget that it was humans and the societies that they lived in when Jesus came to the earth. Humanity continued as if nothing special occurred even though God’s own son was present on this earth fulfilling His mission that God gave Him to complete.

A common theme that I am hearing today about Jesus’ life claims that Jesus was a social person and how these religious and non religious people alike use this logic based upon the situations that the Bible records where Jesus was with many people and in the public eye a good portion of His time on earth.  But many people like to stop there and end their conversation at this point and forget to address the real reason why Jesus came to this earth.  Restoration and the re-establishment of a relationship between God and man was the main reason that Jesus walked on this earth; however, for this to occur Jesus had to play a social role with the people just as God did with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  And while these beliefs of the mentioned people play into the progressive ideas of socialistic convenience between the religious communities and the world it only provides a half truth concerning Jesus’ mission on the earth.  Frankly, while this information is technically correct it is taken totally out of context and used only in a partial stance which makes the entire concept a lie.  It is this type of worldly thought and ideology that we must protect ourselves from believing and it also serves as a foundational block for what the modern day church is trying to build upon. 

This type of philosophy and belief system allows for the human mind to not focus on what is not being said in scripture but to gain human access to their own creation of what Jesus was supposed to be doing while He was on earth.  In other words these beliefs transform Jesus from a “He” to a “he” in status.  These believers like to inform those who argue against their social beliefs that we are “picking and choosing” how we think and take the Bible’s verses outside of its meaning, they are once again transforming Jesus’ life from deity status to a human status which is another example of a partial truth.  And when all is said and done, it is they who are picking and choosing how they wish to see and acknowledge Jesus instead of recognizing and proclaiming Him to be the true Son of God.

I am going to play with this for a bit.  In order to be fair the Church has used this type of ideology in the past to condemn many people for having different concepts from Church authoritative beliefs.  What makes this situation more tragic is that the Church is now trying to make amends to the world by not preaching the entire gospel.  We cannot limit ourselves to just what is typed out on the pages of the Bible and take into consideration of how the attitudes of the people were at that time and then we can understand why these things were written in this manner.  In order for us to use the Word of God as a defense we must first understand everything that it says and what it means in our lives.  We cannot use this text as a ground source if we only use what we wish it for.

A point I like to make about why Jesus went out to the public.  Have you ever asked yourself why He did this?  How many times have you read about the High Priest and his other clergy members going out to the streets?  And when they did what were they doing and how did they present themselves?  For the majority of their time was spent inside the tabernacle arguing who was right about which law and then dictating their own interpretations on the people.  They had no relationship with the people nor did they have any cares for the people. They sat and judged the people’s problems as true sin and demanded total enslavement to the scriptures as a penance for their troubles. They were politicians and aristocrats who believed that because of their bloodline they deserved to be in the positions that they had, which was a partial truth.  Yes their bloodline deemed them to be priests but their attitudes towards humanity disqualified them from their hearts outward.  While King Henry VIII of England was talking about the leaders of the Church in England when using this phrase, he accurately described the high priests of Jesus’ time as “aristocratic bastards”.  Which Jesus understood perfectly when His anger presented itself when He turned over the tables that had lined the corridors of the Synagogue.

Scriptures tell us that Jesus went out into the public often, or at least one can gather this because of the many references that project this image.  When Jesus went into the public setting He did so in such a fashion that He would not stand out from the crowd but to be a part of the crowd.  Nor did He try and put on a false image show while He was talking to the local townspeople.  Can you imagine how the leaders of the synagogue must have scoffed at His appearance, especially since they were so formally dressed and looked totally different that He.  I guess that is why the high priests and the other synagogue leaders followed Jesus Him around a lot trying to figure out how come He was so popular while dressing the part of a commoner.  The synagogue leaders had become so focused with the religious settings within their own world that they had forgotten as to why they were there in the first place; they totally ignored the people and hid themselves within the confines of their temple walls.  Kind of like what we are doing while we are sitting on our favorite pew each Sunday. 

This is the reason Jesus was social with others not to make a spectacle of Him in public but to establish a relationship with the people, just as God did in the Garden.  This was part of His mission that His Father gave Him to do while He was on the earth, not to found a social club with the people.  So if one chooses to only believe that Jesus was just social that is fine but that person should also remember they believe a lie, and that person must also understand that while Jesus was being social He was completing His mission. 

If people who believe that Jesus was just social only, then a “social” Jesus has no legitimate reason to enforce the laws of God either upon Himself or our lives.  If we were put on this earth to be social then there would be no reason why Lucifer had to fall and there would be no defining line between God’s Kingdom and Satan’s kingdom.  This is what a social Jesus and a social Church tries to implicate that there are no Kingdom boundaries that have to be recognized.  Everything is acceptable and should be placed upon an equal plane with no consequences of anyone’s actions or beliefs thereof. 

While equality is a great philosophy and it is a true and valued concept of the laws of God its concepts should be done in a godly manner and with selfish intentions.  God’s laws do not mention anything about accepting these choices without there being any consequences if they are not based upon His laws but there is plenty that He makes reference to if they are not.  I can guarantee that Satan’s kingdom will not officially recognize these boundaries so it would be a natural course for him to try and blend the two kingdoms together.  This blending totally strips the Church’s mission and renders her ineffective and in a sinful state.

When the Church lives in a camouflaged state she is shouting to the world that she no longer believes in her mission.  Jesus’ life on earth defined the Church through the means of life and restoration through death to the world, not be being socially acceptable to the world. Jesus understood that you had to be social with the people of the world in order to bring them into the Church, but if that is all you do with them and not build a relationship with them, the Church will act accordingly since you are the Church.  You will just bring them into the church then accept their lifestyles and beliefs and masks their repentance and restoration through a lie.  If Jesus was as social as many say He was then there should have been NO reason for Him to be crucified.  The world would have accepted Him for His social beliefs and then would have lived a long life.  Jesus crossed the spiritual lines many times while He was on earth and He understood that this line needed to be crossed.  He used Himself as an example for His Church to do the exact same thing so that the darkness should be pushed back and to reinforce that just being social does not cross this line and is not acceptable in God’s Kingdom.

A socially acceptable church does not have the vision and the means that Jesus proclaimed while He was on earth.  A worldly accepted church shows signs of a humanistic progression which conforms to the standards of her property and not her spiritual standards.  From the initiation of Jesus’ existence here on earth He set the example of His mission for spiritual restoration and what God had intended for us to understand about the newly reinstated relationship between God and man through the physical life of His son.  This restoration must take place in order for this process to take place. 

Our lives are of only a short period of time and it is necessary that we do not cower to the ways of the world, either by accepting them into our lives or by keeping our blinders on our eyes and ignore what the world is proclaiming.  If the righteous do not stand up with the authority of God’s Kingdom and push back the darkness of our enemy, I can guarantee that the completeness of God will come down upon this earth just as humanity has witnessed with what God has done in the past.  It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that if we do not obey what God has established there will be consequences for these actions.  The reason that Jesus came to the earth, the mission of the Church and our own personal meaning of our lives have the exact same meaning.  It does not matter if a person wishes to use examples from the Old Testament or the New Testament, the goal between God and humanity is the same and that is restoration between these two parties. 

I thank God every day that He sent His son to this earth for a period of time.  I am thankful for what Jesus did while He was on this earth and that through His actions we may once again have direct access to God.  But I am totally ashamed that the Church has forgotten about this direct access to God and has focused our attention on the world in a social standard instead of a spiritual mission.  I am also ashamed of what our lack of conviction of our actions means to our standing with God and that we seem not to care what is about to transpire either.  I also thank God that He sent His son to establish the Church and for the mission that He gave her.  I pray continually that the Church will take off the blinders that she has on her spiritual eyes and to allow God to refocus her eyes to see the truth once again.  It has been so long since she has proclaimed the real truth about God and it is time for her to shun the world and to proclaim the gospel of Christ to the dying world once again.

If it was not for Jesus’ mission on earth our lives would be totally different but our human progressions would be the exact same.  It is the spiritual Church that is the difference now and we must understand that the Church has only but a limited time on this earth and if she does not wake up and stop prostituting herself with the world God will usher in a corrective manner that will shake this world and the Church to its core.  Do not believe me?  Read history and look at every democracy that has ever existed and tell me what happened to them.  Read the Bible and see what happened to those who did not agree with God’s ways and took their own as their standards and see how they turned out.  Read Church history and one will understand how far we have fallen from the mission that Jesus commanded us to complete and the reason He commanded us to complete this mission has also been totally scrubbed from Church foundations.

I urge to find the song that I mentioned above and listen to it with the mission of the Church’s heart and see just how far we have gone astray from what we are supposed to be living.  What is the Church thankful for today?  They cannot be thankful for what Jesus really did while He was on earth, or our condition would be in a total different light.  God is allowing everything to occur for a reason and that reason is because He has instilled in us the capability to learn from our past and to understand the importance of making a choice.  He also has allowed us the freedom to choose and the freedom to accept the consequences of our choices.  Through these human abilities God has enabled within our lives to be capable of knowing and making the right choice to further His Kingdom and for us to have true dominion over the world while we are in between time periods.

It is imperative that we take the time while we are still within the “in between” period of our lives and to evaluate which direction we are heading.  As it stands now, the Church and its hosts are heading into a direction where we will be sure to receive an earthquake, financial collapse, spiritual tie cutting or whatever means that God may choose impose to wake us up before the really hard times set in.  Will we continue a course of slapping God’s face and thumbing our noses into His realm with our selfish and lustful ways?  Or will be choose to turn our lives around and to proclaim God’s laws within our lives and end our covenant violations and return to the confines of God’s blessings?  Whichever way we choose to continue, it is strictly our choice.  Jesus had a time in between and so do we, will you live your life as He did or will you adhere to your own personal Jesus?  God is calling for us to repent and to be restored and if we heed His calling our land will be restored but if we do not the devastation will continue and will increase both physically and spiritually.

DLB