If you have been keeping up with the series that we have been going through the past two weeks, Identity Theft, you will know what this post is all about. For those of you that are keeping up online or have been a bit out of the loop, this might help…
Our series is focusing on finding our identities in being in covenant with God and in being sons and daughters of the King. I won’t go into how amazing those two identities are, but please check out our talks section to get up to speed. (Please note, as we are shifting our website to a new server, there are some glitches here and there. Unfortunately our talks section has some, please keep checking back!) A key point of the series is that many of us have allowed those true identities to be stolen, so now we need to get them back.
This past week we talked about the first step in reclaiming our true identity. And it is pretty straightforward.
The first step in reclaiming our true identity as someone who is in covenant with God is to realize that we need to and can. We start with a simple realization. A change of our minds if you will. We lock into the thought that we are capable of reclaiming an identity that some of us had stolen years ago, and that once we do, we will see God move in some amazing ways in us and around us.
To help in that process, we are having a couple of postings to keep this thought process in mind as we prepare for next week’s focus on specific steps we can take based on where we are in the overall process. You won’t want to miss it! But instead of jumping too far too quickly, let’s take some smaller steps that will help us to make both processes more meaningful to our souls.
Between today and tomorrow, read Acts chapter seven. This is the synopsis of how God had interacted with the Israelites from Abram (before he was Abraham) all the way through the day Stephen was killed. As you are reading it, reflect on the question, How was God’s interaction with the Israelites impacted by his covenant with them? Spoiler alert… God proved that he would keep his end of the bargain even when the Israelites didn’t.
He is still like that today. You can absolutely count on him for two things. Okay, you can count on him for quite a bit more than two, but let’s look at those two! 🙂 You can count on the fact that if you are not covenantally connected to God, he very much wants you to be. And also, if you are, you can be certain that he will honor his end of the covenant. In fact, in Romans, Paul was referring to the Jews when he said this under the guidance of the Holy Spirit: True, some of them were unfaithful; but just because they were unfaithful, does that mean God will be unfaithful? Of course not! Even if everyone else is a liar, God is true.” Romans 3.3,4 NLT
God is promising us that he will stick with us and that as we turn our lives over to him, we will discover our amazing calling of being those who have experienced true connection with God and are called to share that opportunity with others.
Try and take some time to reflect on chapter seven and those thoughts. Then let’s connect again in a couple of days and keep the conversation going.
Please know, I love hearing thoughts that you have. Please comment back so we can have some web-interaction going!
Peace, Jim
Martin, creating begins with the freedom to choose evil is not the same as creating evil! And if you take the position, as I do, that evil is not itself a thing, but rather a lack of good (in the same way that darkness is just the absence of light or cold is just the lack of heat), all you could say then would be that God allowed the creatures he created with freewill to choose to be less than good, or to reject good thereby becoming less than good, or evil. In this case the question becomes does God have sufficient justification for allowing evil? And does this in anyway make him responsible? I would say it does not in a similar way having children who grow up to do wrong things does not make parents responsible for the children’s wrongdoing (usually).Mike, I would ask what exactly you would consider sufficient evidence? It seems to me that in a great many cases atheist are just simply unwilling to consider the vast amounts of evidence that convinces a great many people as sufficient. In the debate between those who believe in naturalism/materialism and those who believe in creationism or intelligent design, the argument is not over what is evidence (they are all looking at the same stuff!), but rather what will even be considered based on philosophical presuppositions! In that sense it seems the creationists/ IDers have more open minds since when science cannot give satisfactory naturalistic answers they can allow for the possibility of personal intervention of some kind, while continuing to study the evidence. In the case of all the many things science cannot deal with (i.e. non-material realities, numbers, logic, morality, personality etc.)a supernatural creator is the only reasonable answer!With regards to your statement that you have not been presented with one piece of evidence that Christianity is more valid than any other religion, that is unfortunate, unless of course you have been but have ignored or discounted it!I would offer as evidence of Christianity over every other religion the historic reliability/ accuracy of the Bible (the Gospels in particular being excellent examples of reliable ancient texts), the person of Jesus Christ (and his claims about himself), the coherence of Christianity with reality.It is simply not accurate to say there is no science in the Bible that was not available to iron age man. There are references to the shape of the earth, wind patterns, currents in the oceans, not to mention the practices the Isrealites lived by that medically speaking blew away all the cultures that surrounded them.I would ask in what way you think the Bible could be more accurate historically? It’s never been shown to be incorrect. There may be some things that have not been verified for sure yet, but no archeological find I’m aware of has ever dis-proven it! There are references outside of the Bible to Jesus Christ but even if there weren’t, as I mentioned above the Gospels are simply the best and most reliable ancient texts in existence. Just because they were later collected into our modern Bible does not diminish their reliability as ancient sources of history!