Biggest Bang for the Buck ...

Once the core of your selfishness has been released to Christ to have Him change it, the question becomes what next? Outside of teaching you to serve others rather than to serve yourself which is going to positively impact your life beyond anything you may imagine to date; I believe the next area to focus on is our relationships. The most important relationship to focus on first is our marriages which should also cover the dating process. This would be followed by our parental relationships, then our families, friendships, and work place associations. When you consider that nothing of value in this world will transcend into the next one except your relationships, it seems to make sense we focus a bit here first.

To quote George Lucas … “You must unlearn what you have learned.” [Yoda, Star Wars Episode 5] This has never been more true than in the interactions and social relationships people have with each other. It begins with recognizing the true value of the individual. You are unique. You were created with a specific purpose in mind by a God who praises infinite variety. Your purpose may have many layers – something for this world, for the place in which you work, in your home life, and in the next Kingdom God as designed. But your purpose is unique to you, not just now but for all time. Therefore the loss of you, is a loss to the entire universe, and for all time. It does not mean that God’s plans will not go forward, they will. But your role will never quite be duplicated within them. You remain unique.

When you understand that each soul has a special purpose as ordained by God, then you begin to appreciate just how precious each life is. When looking to first form relationships with others, it is important to begin by understanding that this person you intend to interact with, has an equally important role in God’s work, is equally loved by God, and is equally critical to the family of God as yourself. Just as God compared our body to His church, so people can have radically different perspectives, talents, skills, and abilities – and NONE are any less important than another. Your eye and your ear for example share little, but you could not exist as well without each of them. They are both precious despite their seeming to have nothing in common with each other except improving your own life.

Respecting differences then is the first step towards having successful social interactions. Often men in relationships will dismiss differences with a potential dating partner or spouse as unimportant. But these differences make up the person you are interested in. They are in fact important, because without them, the object of your intentions would not be who you are drawn to. Women conversely dismiss differences as if on a checklist of “things to change” once they settle down with this man. Enlightened women understand there is no Mr. Right, or perhaps Mr. Perfect, but falsely believe he can still be built from Mr. Right Here and Right Now. He cannot. Perfection is not built by the nagging or encouragement of a woman, nor can Perfection be defined by one. Perfection begins once the will is submitted to Christ, and only then does one have anything to offer in a relationship with another.

Having learned to accept the differences we encounter with each other, we must begin to redefine what Love means in a relationship. Valuing another human being means they cannot be treated as mere objects, or possessions. Evil has fostered the idea that another person can be a mere plaything. You can trifle with someone’s emotions in order to get from the relationship whatever it is that you want. This objectification of the human species tears our value down from its core. If allowed to infect our thinking, it keeps us from ever understanding what true intimacy means and has to offer us. It makes us willing tools in the destruction of ourselves and of others. And it makes us wholly unfit to have or maintain any meaningful relationships with nearly anyone. People can simply not be treated like packages on the shelf at Walmart.

To love someone, is to give to someone. It is to act in that person’s interests above your own. It is to find joy in the giving, not in the taking. It is to care about the needs, interests, feelings, and well being of someone else ahead of every other competing desire of your own. When you love someone, you want that person to be happy. You will spend every waking minute trying to figure out new ways of making that person happy. And in so doing, you will find the greatest of contentment you have ever experienced. This is how our God loves us. This is what our God does for us. If our God is love, then this is what the example of our God and of love is to us. Not mere words, not mere feelings, not mere hormonal attractions that can fade with age – but daily meaning actions that demonstrate the desires of the heart.

Some have said that love is pain. This is untrue. It is the lack of love that brings pain. It is the rejection of love that causes heartache and suffering. But the embracing of love as a freewill choice between two people can bring more happiness than ever dreamed possible. Why two people? - Because it is nearly exhausting to respect the differences in another, and to try to find ways of making them happy in an imperfect world. Achieving unity with just one other person can be a life’s work. To add a third party to the unity quest is to make it virtually impossible to find. Our differences are vast, and the effort it takes to respect them, and perhaps even to embrace them, is no small self-sacrifice. But the level of intimacy that can be achieved can be life altering. And though love rejected can feel like a sharp stick through the heart, it can also reveal the true nature of what we call love for another. For if we truly love someone else, we would desire their happiness above our own, even if it means we will not be the one to make them happy. This may be a painful acknowledgement, but it means we know what love is, and someone else will one day be the beneficiary of this knowledge. We can only hope as much for those we wish well as they depart from us.

With these prerequisites in mind we are ready to discuss dating …

A New Perspective ...

You do not know what you do not know. We are finite creatures who have been conditioned to accept less than what is possible by an evil that is bent on our misery and ultimate destruction. It was never God’s intent that any sickness, blindness, disease, or addictive disorders would impact our lives and our souls. All of these maladies are a byproduct of evil. Death itself is a natural consequence of evil, as life is a natural consequence of God. But freedom from the shackles that have bound us, vision to see truth and beauty in a world that sees neither, and love poured out without measure are the hallmarks of a changed life; a life that has finally humbled itself and submitted its will to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Chemical additives (by this I mean recreational or even misused prescription drugs), cannot come close to offering you the experience of a liberated mind, heart, and soul. Endorphins that your body produces when you exercise strenuously are a mild alternative next to the feeling of freedom to the unbound heart. This is something new. This is something unheard of. This is truth and knowledge we have not had, for we stood in our own way of obtaining it. This is the experience and exhilaration that only comes when Christ sets you free from the chains of evil that have so long governed your life.

We spend so much time consumed with our sins. Either we are trying hard to avoid doing them again, or consumed with guilt after recently committing them again, or cleaning up the mess they cause – our lives, minds, and even prayers are consumed with living in bondage. In so doing, we have focused on the disease and not the cure. By turning them over to Jesus, by admitting that we actually like sin and evil and that without Christ changing our wicked core, we are doomed to continue in it – we are MADE free. Note that the work still belongs only to Him, but the freedom is far more liberating than you can imagine if you are still bound in sin. This freedom of the mind offers you an entirely NEW perspective.

There is an old computer axiom that states – “garbage in – garbage out”. Its meaning is that if you put in bad data or bad coding practices, you can expect to get inaccurate, misleading and false results. Evil has fed us nothing but garbage our whole lives and has told us we were eating cake. Take the scriptures for instance; the Old and New Testaments are considered by a great many believers to be very different from each other. Bill Maher’s famous joke line that … “having a kid seems to have mellowed out God” in the New Testament; is tacitly agreed to by many. This of course is not logically possible. God does not undergo a personality change, nor would we ever want Him to abandon the Good that He is for any alternative. So why the perception difference? It is because we view things with blurry vision, and prejudiced minds. The truth of God’s infinite love is all through the Old Testament writings, but is ignored in favor of the blood, guts, and errors of man that are so vividly described.

Many people non-believers accuse God of genocide because of the wars the Children of Israel waged on the inhabitants of the Promised land. But these wars were not God’s plan, they were made by Man’s interference with God’s ideas. God wanted to send in wasps to the promised land (plague style) to drive out the inhabitants of the land so that His people could just walk right in and settle down. No blood, no bodies, no genocide, and no wars that continued because the Israelites did not finish the job of driving their enemies out, instead getting lazy and having to contend with them for generations to come. But God’s idea about using wasps is long forgotten, next to the blood and gore of warring exploits.

People site the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of the vindictive nature of God. Yet Christ Himself went to these two cities in the flesh before making a final decision of their destruction. And all those who were not guilty of their crimes were spared. This example of the ultimate extinction of evil was designed to remind us that evil is on a time clock. It will not be granted liberty to exist forever. Someday it will be fully consumed and disappear. Think of it, Sodom and Gomorrah are not STILL burning, their residents are NOT still tortured. They were burned up and dead. The place has been grown over, and the evil that existed there is NO more. This is not a story about an Angry God, it is a story about a God who one day offers us the hope of existence without evil, in both this life and one to come.

How you see the Bible depends much on your history with it, your parents views, your pastors views, and your own clouded desires. We often try to use the Bible to justify our decisions, or prove our doctrines are correct. This is a huge mistake. In so doing, we are attempting to lead the learning ourselves, instead of being led to the truth God would share with us in His word. Using the Bible to condemn the actions of others indicates a COMPLETE lack of understanding of the message of the Bible. This book is NOT about punishment and guilt. It is about freedom from pain, about reclamation of addicts, about reconciliation with a God who is suffering from a major case of empty-nest-syndrome. We have a Daddy who wants us home. This book is a love letter from cover to cover. It is real, not dressed up, or exaggerated, it shows the mistakes so that we can learn from them, not learn to repeat them. But this requires a new perspective to see. It requires a freedom from bondage. It requires a changing life, or I am guessing you have NO idea what I am talking about. Why not give up your will to Christ and see what happens in your own life …

Truth Begins ...

A gift is something you cannot earn, you may not deserve, and you are free to return. So it is that the saving of man from his own evil was devised as a gift of God to His erring creations, namely us. It was not because we deserve it. We openly and freely rejected God, we broke trust with Him. Our lives and our actions remain in this state from Adam to me. But love was larger than justice, love was greater than evil. And so Love found a way to redeem us from our first decision and the slavery that would follow. And Love knew it must do all the work of our redemption, for it relied upon us, we would remain doomed. You cannot trust an addict to voluntarily give up his drugs, so are we with our nature to please ourselves.

Evil would not be content to just let God bring us all back to Himself. Far from it, Evil had to find a way to mask the plan of Salvation, to alter it just enough as to keep it from being effective. And given our nature, it was not hard to accomplish this. A simple insidious plan to introduce self into the core of the Christian religion has been slowly introduced over the years. Instead of accepting the gift of our freedom from evil, sin, and ourselves – Satan altered the design by insinuating that the work of removing evil from us, was up to us. Catch phrases like “Sanctification is the work of a lifetime” and mis-applying scriptures like “Faith without works is dead”, have led Christians to believe they too have an important work in the saving of man. Over a period of time, we adopted the idea that we must be responsible for ending our own bad behavior. If we are failing at it, it is because we are praying too little, reading too little, or trusting too little. We were told to try harder. No matter the reason, we would be held accountable for our failures in a coming judgment.

The very definition of Salvation went from saving man from evil and himself, to strictly “going to heaven”. This removes the timing of getting rid of sin until a far future date. It sets expectations of perfection to a far off distant future, and given our abject failure at getting rid of our own sins, it seems more than reasonable. People start getting obsessed with when Jesus will return, because they pin all their hopes on a better life with less pain on “going to heaven”. We have consequently placed self at the core of our religion, and have thus robbed it of both its good news, and its power; time for truth to re-emerge.

Christ said “come unto Me all ye who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” It was Christ who defeated evil, paid the penalty we deserved, and in so doing won back our chance for freedom. We were condemned to the evil we chose, our guilt was never in question, but remarkably our defense attorney (Christ), upon hearing our sentence decided to take it upon Himself in our place. He would offer us as a gift, what we could never earn. He would do the work it takes to remove the sin from our lives, if we would just let Him do it. We would have to choose to allow Him to save us, but in so choosing, HE WOULD SAVE US. The plan of salvation was not enacted to make us free TO sin, but rather to make us free FROM sin. We do not need another excuse to continue in the pain we choose to inflict on ourselves, we need a method of escaping it. We need a reform of our thinking. We need a recreation of our very nature, of our desires, of our souls. And this is what Christ offers us each one.

His work in our souls is highly personal, as each of us is highly unique. We learn differently, we respond differently, we have different motives and thinking on almost everything. How He removes our sin and changes our thinking is a mystery, but the fact that He does only rests on our willingness to let Him do it. Think of it folks, REAL relief from real pain that has infected your existence since birth. It is available to you right NOW, right here, no matter your condition, no matter how deeply you dug yourself into the hole of pain you wallow in; there is hope and immediacy in the relief in Christ. Stop trying harder to kick a habit you cannot kick. Stop trying to put your own strength in a place God never intended it to be. Instead rely on the only God capable of beating evil, and of recreating the heart of man. You need only take His gift and submit your own will to His.

The key to changing our lives, and ending our pain lays not in how strong we are, but is made perfect in our weakness as He does what must be done in each life. Christ removes our pain. Christ changes what we want, and how we think, so that the nature and causes of our addictive behavior are ended permanently. We begin to wonder as time passes, how we ever wanted the things of the past, and why we did not allow Christ to end them sooner than we did. This level of freedom brings rest. We can give up the fighting, and turn over the battle to the only one who can win it. We need not judge each other any longer, nor condemn each other pointing out obvious flaws in each other, for Christ can fix all of this. Our witness transforms from condemnation and guilt, to redemption reclamation and joy. Our vision is opened up. We begin to see truth on an entirely deeper level. The mis-application of scripture begins to fade as we no longer look for a club to beat people with, we look for love to save people with.

When someone throws the phrase “Sanctification is the work of a lifetime” at me; I respond yes it is, it is the work of submitting our will and our desires over to Christ so that He can change them forever. Even in this, I depend on His strength to cover my weakness, as God is both the Author (creator of) and Finisher of my faith. When someone says “Faith without works is dead” to me; I respond yes it is, and it is like life without breathing in the air. When you have the one, you cannot help but have the other. The works follow the faith, for it is the nature of faith, to redefine our actions, our motives, and our behaviors. This text is merely a statement of the obvious, not a condemnation of those who do not try hard enough.

I can accept anyone in any condition, not because I endorse their particular sin or pain, but because I know Christ can fix it in them, as He does in me. I am free to love without condition or prerequisite. I am not constrained to love only those who think like I do, but to love those who disagree with me, or even those who hate me. I have no need to preach to people, for I have nothing of value to say. But I can answer questions about how my life has improved and why I am so happy being connected to the source of all love and happiness, and how you can achieve it too. The good news of the gospel has returned, for saving us from evil is truly a gift once more. The power of the gospel has returned in that real change can happen right here and right now, by the miraculous redeeming power of Christ’s love. This is exciting. This is the birth of truth.

Freedom to Choose ...

To end the pain, and see truth, one must make a choice to do so. Life does not require it. It is deeply personal and it cannot be forced by circumstances, peer pressure, or even supernatural forces. It is the singular choice we make in our lifetimes. Every other choice we make stems from this one, whether for our benefit, or our ultimate destruction. We are in fact, free to choose only whom we will serve. In our addicted and pathetic state of slavery to evil, it requires God’s grace to even have the freedom to make this rudimentary choice. But this is the choice we are offered freely. And we are free to choose our end as a result.

The outcomes are sure, but the selection is up to us. To choose our Creator God and His plan for our Salvation from evil, is to destine our lives towards success. To not make this selection, to delay or quibble, to remain in a state of contemplation on the topic and avoid commitment – is to prolong the condition we are in today, and keep pain as an active part of our daily lives. Our own nature of self interest will someday cause us to implode. The core of how we function is based on a premise to cause us immeasurable pain throughout our lives. It is the recognition of our condition that leads us to the need of a Savior. When you do not see the pain you cause yourself, refuse to recognize it, or blame it on others or even God – you remain bound to its power over you, and a slave doomed to feel its effects again and again.

Love is a choice. Love cannot be forced. This is why God offers us His plan and never commands us or forces us to choose it. It is logical to choose love. It is smart to choose relief over pain. It seems ultimately what the best choice is, but it remains a choice many walk away from. Satan is about control. He is the opposite of God in every respect. Where God offers you love, Satan would impose his will over even your basic decision to choose. This is the nature of the evil kingdom, where slavery, addiction, and power over the weak are things of praise. Obviously none of these facts would do well in a marketing brochure, so in order to deceive the masses, evil presents the alternative choice to God, as merely self-control, self-domination.

Evil would have us believe that should we choose to avoid a choice for God, we are free to run our own lives, free to do anything we want without guilt or condemnation. Evil would have us believe that we cannot be free while serving God or others, we can only be free when serving ourselves. And this alternative choice has been very popular for a long time. It fits well with our nature. It appeals to our ego and natural self interest. It is what we WANT to hear, and what we WANT to believe, whether it is true or not. But facts on the ground reveal its fallacy. The pain we continue to inflict on ourselves and others while we remain under the illusion of control is a real-world testament to the fallacy of freedom absent God. To deal with this fact, Satan simply blames God for it. Rather than let you take any responsibility for your own actions, decision, and behaviors which have caused you inordinate pain, Satan blames God for allowing you to do all these things. And very often we buy into his arguments hook, line, and sinker.

The truth and the facts, when examined without the rose colored glasses of self interest on, show that indeed we are our own worst enemy. Acting selfishly is the primary cause of pain in our lives, and our condition of addiction requires something outside of ourselves if we are ever to break this cycle. In short we need a Savior to save us from ourselves, from our natures, from our thinking, from our behaviors. This is what each of us desperately needs, and as each of us is different, a unique individual, so the work of saving us must be personalized to fit our unique needs. This is exactly what God has offered us in His gift of love.

But some Christians have taken God’s gentle offer of love, and tried to turn it into a mandate of enforcement over “the guilty”. While Christ Himself did not condemn our guilty world while here on earth, some of His purported followers spend their entire existence doing just that. They reason that sin must be called by its proper name. They reason that attention must be drawn to the law of God so that evil doers can see the error of their ways. Yet they do not look in the mirror. They do not see the evil that lies within them, nor that they are doing the very work Satan does – accuser of the brethren. It is not a question as to whether the world is guilty of sin and evil, it is. Neither is it a question as to whether we are guilty of it, we are. Guilt has never been the question. Our pain alone should tell us that. What to do when you are guilty is the question, how to save the guilty is the question, ending the pain of the guilty is the question. Redemption itself is the goal for all who feel the sting of self inflicted pain.

For a choice to be true it must be free. This is the peril of our existence, that we are truly free to walk away from the offer of our Salvation. God actually does allow us to reject Him. He does not recommend it, His love fights hard to lure us back, He does everything He can to try to show us why choosing Him is our best decision. But at the end of the day, God unlike Satan, does not compel anyone to do anything, or make any choice. His followers would do well to learn this lesson and stop imitating Satan and calling it the work of divinity. We are indeed free to choose. Life or death, it is our choice, and therefore someday our responsibility and no one else’s.

 

Stop the Pain ...

It is nearly impossible to appreciate truth when suffering excruciating pain. Our lives are full of it. And sadly, most of the pain we endure is primarily due to the decisions we make ourselves. The irony of self interest, is that the more we try to serve only ourselves, the more we make ourselves miserable. But to stop this downward cyclone of horror we must first recognize the truth about evil, and our relationship with it.

God is love. He is omnipotent and pure. He is only comprised of everything that is good. He is life, love, and joy. So it stands to reason that anything that is not God is also not good. Any deviation away from the source of life, leads to death. Any deviation from the source of joy, leads to misery. This was the knowledge of good and of evil that Lucifer discovered when he stopped looking to serve others and began to serve only himself. It was not murder that comprised the first sin in our universe. It was not sexual immorality, or theft. It was something far more insidious, it was internal, it was pride. It was a deviation away from God’s perfect order of service into the horribly destructive world of self interest. Serving self is at the center of everything we have to come know about evil.

Because of the history of our world according to our Bible, man gave up his dominion over himself and planet earth to Satan. In breaking trust with God, we gave up our ability to have control even over ourselves. In short, we were bound by sin and evil. Our nature is to act in the perseverance of self, and further in our own self interest. Evolutionist’s call this survival of the fittest, yet these are the acts behind every horror history has to offer. It is not acts of love and sacrifices for others that mark the hallmarks of atrocity in our world; it is rather acts of naked aggression, of insatiable lust, of quests for more and more power over our fellow man. All these traits share self-interest in the core of their motivation.

Each act of self interest however carries with it a degree of consequence and pain. The consequences and pain may not be felt immediately, however the longer they are delayed, the more severe they usually are when they inevitably are realized. Getting lung cancer from smoking cigarettes is not a punishment from God, it is simply cause and effect, fill your lungs up with enough tar, and you get cancer. Cancer hurts. Cancer spreads. Cancer kills. And the pain of cancer is not restricted, whether we are talking physically inside the body of its carrier, or emotionally to the entire circle of friends and family who share the pain of the afflicted, and his/her loss. Evil is much like cancer. It seems inconsequential at first. It might come wrapped in a pretty package and even feel good in the short term. But underneath is death incarnate, underneath is pain on a stick, underneath is cancer just waiting to spread and make life a living torture factory for you and everyone you know or care about.

So why on earth would any logical thinking human being choose to participate in evil, knowing the outcome is what it is? Are we clinically deranged, do we all have a death wish, are we at heart masochists - perhaps. More likely, we are all just a bunch of junkies. We are literally addicted to our self destructive behaviors. Those that believe they can stop when they want to, never seem to find the time to actually make that decision. We are as we have always been, bound to our evil, slave to it, addicted in every way that matters. It is the only logical explanation to an illogical set of facts. We know we should not choose to do it again, but we do anyway, over and over and over again. Christians take their sins to the cross and ask forgiveness, but even though forgiven, they seldom cease from the behavior that requires them to go back to the cross again and again.

And thus pain runs rampant in our lives. We hurt ourselves. We hurt our victims. We hurt those who care about our victims. We hurt those who care about us. We make a ripple of pain in the pond of our world, and the ripples carry with intensity for a long way. So what hope does a slave have in light of the overwhelming evidence of our slavery? What hope does the addict have, when at rock bottom they finally realize their own condition of helplessness? We need outside help. We need a savior. And fortunately for our desperate need, God has provided just what was needed to break this horrific cycle of doom.

We will discuss later the process of how being saved from evil works, but for purposes of this discussion the fact that there is a way to end the pain is the significant point. Most of the pain we feel in our lives is due to the decisions we make. Sometimes it is due to the decisions others make but this is far less the case. The reason why we are the major supplier of pain to ourselves, is that our very nature and very addiction cause us to make poor decisions, repeatedly, and often. This condition must end, if our minds are ever to see truth. This condition must end for us to be able to rest. This condition must end, if the world around us is ever going to be changed for the better. This is the final battle. It is the battle for our souls, for our selves, and for our very nature. It will be fought in the mirror. And it will be won or lost depending on who we choose to align with in the coming fray.

First Things First ...

How much junk mail do you get in your mailbox? How about spam in your email? How much of it do you pay attention to? If you’re like me the most attention you pay to junk mail in either location is just to make sure it is sorted properly to be discarded. I don’t want to lose “real” mail amidst all the coupon flyers and pseudo newspapers in my mailbox. Nor do I want to delete any “real” messages that may get put in my junk folder by mistake. But no-one I know has the time, let alone the interest, to actually read or pay any real attention to something they have no interest in, like junk mail.

To begin, we need to have something to say. Not just idle prattle, not just words that have been repeated for hundreds of years but have lost all real meaning or relevance, we need something worthwhile to talk about. In short, we need truth. We need the kind of truth that makes a difference in today’s world, and therefore in our own lives. If our lives have not been changed or improved by truth, then we have nothing further to discuss. Our reality must match our language or the gospel becomes nothing more than well packaged junk mail.

Take for instance the topic of romantic relationships and marriage. The traditional Christian viewpoint has much to say on the topic. An entire list of do’s, don’ts, and how to’s – but reality shows us that the divorce rates are as high within the church as outside of it. Obviously what we think we know about marriage is not changing our lives, or improving our ability to stick together. It is plain we are simply doing it wrong. This does not mean the Bible is mistaken, or that we have no knowledge of truth of any kind. It does mean we are missing something substantial in our teachings that would make our marriages the success they should be. Unbelievers have no compelling reason to seek guidance from the church when our failure rates are as high as theirs. It is simple math. We are missing something. Time to fix it.

What we say must be relevant. Nobody cares about a ninety percent off sale that ended two weeks ago. The message must meet the needs of today. It must make a real difference to those who hear it, when they hear it. So often Biblical truth has been taught like a history 101 class. Facts, figures, and morality lessons based on characters that do not face what we face, and do not live in our world. But this need not be the case. It is possible to look at historical truths and extrapolate the values into the world in which we live. It is possible when we see scripture for something more than simple history. Truth must be applied to be relevant.

What we say must be personal. You cannot share what you do not know, what you have not personally experienced. So often Biblical truths have been presented merely as “other people’s” stories, with no real personal application, no real personal insight. No-one seeks advice from the friend of a counselor, they go directly to the counselor for advice. Knowing the relationship that someone else has with God does not give you one of your own. If you have not lived it, then you have no idea what I am talking about. God gets personal with each of us if we let Him. Personal means personal, unique to a great degree, when God interacts with us He meets our individual needs, in the way in which we need Him the most. If we cannot relay our personal results, we are simply repackaging the junk mail again.

What we say must be important. What if I told you that this BLOG will change your life forever for the better? What if I were willing to guarantee it? You might be skeptical, in fact I would expect nothing less. In a world of half-truths and constant disappointments, it is easy to become hardened against any claims of real change, real meaning. Many charlatans make their living from selling dreams that will never be delivered, to people who can barely hang on to hope. But what if the dream were real, and what if it really did not cost you a cent. What if profit were not the motive here? If I am not looking to get rich from helping you then what is my angle you ask?

It turns out, I am already rich, beyond all measure, in everything that is truly important. And it was all a gift, I never deserved or could have earned. I want to share it, because I find joy in the sharing. It is important because it is real. Life altering real. The kind of real that will change the very core of who you are. It changed me, and I have no complaints (well none that matter anyway ). When you discover truth that has meaning, you simply cannot bury it, you cannot hide it – when it is real, you want to shout it from rooftops and hope the whole world can hear you. This is why I am writing. And the more you interact with me, the richer will be the experience for us both. For like you, I remain in the process of learning, even of the truths in which I believe.

Foreword & Introduction ...

There is an inherent tension in a believer in Christ between spreading the gospel of truth and respecting the choices and beliefs of others.  Once there is a belief in truth, there is a desire to share it.  But so often our approach comes off with condescension at best, or worse as pure condemnation.  Learning how to share truth in love while realizing we remain in the learning process is a topic that deserves further study.  In this book, we will discuss the delicate balance of witnessing effectively while respecting the views of those we are trying to reach.

 

Our world today presents many new opportunities for sharing information.  However with the increase in capabilities has come an increase in competing philosophies for what has meaning and value.  So many people believe in so many different ideas about God.  How do we have an intelligent respectful conversation about who God is?  How can we effectively communicate truth through the barrage of half-lies, traditions, and personal bias of those who so desperately need to hear real truth?

Traditional approaches to sharing the gospel have become dated, predictable, and largely ignored.  It is time for a new voice, a new approach, and perhaps new truth that is relevant to what we face today.  There is far less need of history lessons, and biblical theory, than there is for applied religion.  In short we must present a message that is worth hearing, and that can be used in how we live today.  But having worthy content is only the start. 

How we share the new ideas we discuss becomes the focus of our endeavors.  Reaching those in need in a virtual sea of information is our quandary.  There is room for debate on this topic.  There is room for discussion.  Hopefully this BLOG will serve as a beginning vehicle to serve this purpose.