Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Shaken

People have religious structures surrounding them, and in them. People work out their philosophy, theology and often, depend on them more than Jesus. So, there are numerous people that Jesus has worked through a process of stripping away these structures that people build.

The stripping process is very scary. The ground we stnd on seems to vanish beneath our feet. All the things we were sure of do not hold up anymore.

God want us to trust Him, so He needs to be the foundation. So, He intends to shake, sift and remove anything “false” that we rely on.

I put “false” in quotes, because often our foundation may even rest on true or good things. But, if the truth distracts us from real devotion to the person Jesus, we will eventually find ourselves going through the a stripping away.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Designed for Communion

Seems to me that I mentioned this idea previously, but I don't seem to find it. Maybe I need to start using labels. (I really like to understand embedding pictures and links. I'll experiment with those one day.) But this will expand a little on what might have been said previously.

God made us. God designed us. We are designed for communion with Him. We are designed for communion with a community. We seek out naturally our spiritual centers. We seek out naturally people to share with. We need these things. We are not whole if we do not have them. They are our fuel. We do not run correctly if we do not have them.

We seek them out and find them, one way or another. Whether they are the right sort of communion is another matter.

Many people find spiritual communion in counterfeit philosophy. We may find community outside of God's family. But it is not the proper resting place. Our hearts will still long for the correct place ... if we listen to them. One of the tactics of the enemy is to suggest a place, get us to stop there, and then try to drown out the calls of the Father, or the calls of our hearts. He tries to convince us to settle for a counterfeit. And our souls do not function well on polluted fuel.