Tag Archives: relationships

Remove Our Craving for Controversy

We live in a world where controversy sells. But most of us work in a business that aims to solve problems. And yet, many of us relax with entertainment designed around conflict. We watch sports, and we watch so-called reality television, and we watch news channels that hype every social and political conflict. We are being conditioned to crave controversy. Many social media apps are built on a model to increase clicks by prompting us to become voyeurs of interpersonal relationship strife.

Peace and harmony should sell, but like Pavlov’s dogs, we are being trained to seek out more and more controversy. At the core of our being, we are at peace and find happiness. Jesus’ sermon on the mount teaches ways to escape interpersonal conflict. Those who have mastered the art of escaping conflict find life refreshing. For example, when at sea and caught up in a hurricane, the only place to find peace one must dive deep.

Likewise, we must dive deep because the world is full of people agitating our thoughts for their popularity ratings. We must shut off the input and still our thoughts. We must breathe slowly and deliberately to steady our physical systems. If controversy is what they are selling, we must stop being consumers. Breaking the cycle will be like a drug addict going through withdrawals. But once we are free, life becomes refreshing. Our essential nature is peace and happiness, but if our awareness remains in the whirlwind, we will lose sight of what is true.

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Where Our Loyalty is, There We Will Find Our Evidence

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Where is your loyalty? I am sure we have all been in situations where this question required us to give an answer or made us wonder it about others. The answer to this question is more a geographic issue than we might think. Also arriving at this answer has plenty to do with our navigation skills. Loyalty is spiritual evidence, and it is about the substance that lies at the core of our being.

We humans have devised many forms of organized relationships such as marriage, friendships, business relationships, team sports, work, and small and large communities. On a global scale, we are members of nations or states, sovereign kingdoms, and multi-national corporations.  In addition, and just over the horizon more of us will enter relationships through user collectives of global telecommunications apps and other virtual products like Second Life and Bitcoin.

Every human enters this world via a family relationship. Some families are biological and others are social in nature. From there, the layers of relatedness such as gender, race and a host of genetic characteristics make us part of various social groups. Christians baptize themselves, some at birth others later in life as a sign to others of their membership as part of a spiritual community. Likewise, other people perform ceremonial acts to celebrate and signify their relationship to others and of their membership in one of the various spiritual communities of the world.

Developing a hierarchy of loyalties (ex. God, family, work and country) is a way to help navigate our many relationships. However, loyalties can still become confused. For example, we can be loyal to our relationship with our religious community and at the same time we can betray our relationship with God. We can also be loyal to a political or military objective of one group and betray our loyalty to other groups like our race, gender, family or humanity.

We each have also inherited the awareness of the many cultures connected to us. At every moment of every day, we knowingly make decisions that help one of our entangled relationships often at the betrayal of another interwoven relationship. However, as ambassadors of God our loyalty is really a manifestation of God’s loyalty. Therefore, when we experience breaches in trust they should not be personal to us because in every relationship we are representatives of God.

Luke 7:47 (NLT) “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.”

Luke 17:3-4 (NLT) So watch yourselves! “If another believer sins, rebuke that person; then if there is repentance, forgive. Even if that person wrongs you seven times a day and each time turns again and asks forgiveness, you must forgive.”

Forgiveness, grace and mercy are the tools God uses to restore relationships. The sole mission of Jesus was to help all humans understand that their relationship with God is whole and therefore, living in unity with God is available and possible. It is a bad religious point of view to see humanity today as separated from God. The purpose of the gospel or good news is that any person can live a life in unity with God. Therefore, as we re-present God, when betrayal happens, we have the opportunity to die to self and forgive like the One we represent.

It is my encouragement that we understand the source of our loyalty. Only God, is good, and if we are open and sensitive to His Presence within, He can live through us. It is God’s desire for the entirety of humanity to understand that His forgiveness, grace and mercy have already made every human relationship with Him whole. In all relationships that we are the party to, we should likewise have this same goal when we perceive betrayal of trust. And that goal is to love and make every relationship whole.

If we can let go of the false belief that we never betray others and that others only betray us, we have a chance at peace on earth. Our false beliefs result in unreal expectations, which put others under undue pressure to live up to our unreal expectations. Our loyalty is a manifestation of God’s love and loyalty every time we forgive and extend grace and mercy.

Jeremiah 3131-33 (NLT) “The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 32 This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the Lord. 33 “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Therefore, our initial question remains standing. Where is your loyalty? Is our loyalty rooted in false beliefs? No! The true substance of our loyalty is embedded in love, forgiveness, mercy and grace. God gives these inherited traits to every human child. At the core of every relationship we are involved in, if we are actively aware, is the very Presence of God. It is there, where we shall find a treasure of evidence proving the existence of God.

Mark 10:2-9 (NLT) Some Pharisees came and tried to trap him with this question: “Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife?” Jesus answered them with a question: “What did Moses say in the law about divorce?” “Well, he permitted it,” they replied. “He said a man can give his wife a written notice of divorce and send her away.” But Jesus responded, “He wrote this commandment only as a concession to your hard hearts. But ‘God made them male and female’ from the beginning of creation. ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”

Luke 12:33-34 (NIV) Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

 

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Removal of Shame is the Evidence of Intimacy

2014-07-27_1369026_73305527As ambassadors of God’s Kingdom our number one job is to make known and make available our Father’s Kingdom to all of humanity. It is my belief that God will not hold us responsible for another person response to His invitation through us. But He will hold us responsible if we pre-judge and only offer that invitation to those we think deserve intimacy with God.

Romans 8:38-39 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord

God’s love is unconditional and there is a big difference between the religious persons who feel that God’s love should fall on a privilege few and those spiritual persons who understand that God’s love is universal and that he loves equally all His human children. This is God’s point of view and it is the true spiritual point of view.

Today however, there is a prevailing point of view in many of the Christian religious circles and it has a materialistic perspective which falls short of God’s spiritual point of view. Likewise there was also time when people on earth held in common a point of view that the sun revolved around the earth. This perspective remained the status quo until human understanding was able to accept the illumination of an alternative perspective. Today this perspective of God’s love for some remains as the status quo in many parts of the Christian religious experience, but that is changing fast.

Even though the words of scripture reveal what is true, the religious (or materialistic) interpretation misses the point concerning which persons have received God’s love. The desire to feel special and wanted is as natural as breathing and is the unfortunate motivation behind this interpretation of scripture. To paraphrase, Jesus rightly said love God and love other humans equally as you love yourself.

What Christianity knows more than any other religion is that Jesus removed the sin of the world. Therefore every human can have a wonderful and beautiful relationship with our spiritual Father. But how does that make one feel special if God loves all equally? And so even though the sin has been removed religion allows people to hold on to their guilt and shame. It even unconsciously (I hope it is by unconscious motivation) constantly reminds people of their sin, shame and guilt.

A shepherd needs sheep to have a purpose. As long as local congregations are full with sheep the status quo can be maintained. But discipleship means the training and maturing of God’s children. Jesus was the first human child to possess and demonstrate this understanding of God’s love since Adam lost that perspective after his sin. Yet again from God’s perspective His purpose for sending Jesus was to mature His children so they would understand His point of view. God has nothing but love for His children and He only desires an intimate relationship with each of us.

John 7:28 Then Jesus cried out, as He taught in the temple, saying, “You both know Me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know.

Matthew 16:13-17 When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” 14 So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

Only children of God can be ambassadors of God’s Kingdom. That means that any human that has matured in their spiritual understanding of our Father and His love for all could operate as an ambassador to His spiritual Kingdom. Kingdom ambassadors are mature children of God who help people to understand that their sin has been forgiven and that they no longer need to carry the shame of something that God has already forgiven. That my friend is true freedom.

To be able to live in the Presence of God or should I say to enjoy the Presence of God living inside of us is the ultimate definition of spiritual freedom. Adam enjoyed walking in the Garden with God all the while having a tangible experience of an intimate, two-way relationship with the creator of our universe. Jesus who is called the last Adam demonstrated that we all can have this type of relationship with our Spiritual Father. His work as the Christ made that available to every human.

I read in a blog post recently where this person had asked many people over time the same question. Why did God make humans and give them free will? He said the best response to that question was simply that God does not like to dine alone. God loves us and He loves us all. Part of the paradigm shift that is occurring now in Christianity is this simple truth about God’s love.

Those that have made that shift have no problem loving equally people of a different gender, race, culture, religions, lifestyle, economic background or national affiliation. Jesus came to remove the separation between God and humans. As this spiritual shift in our perspective spreads throughout humanity we will begin to notice a new global consciousness as it relates to God’s love.

God desires intimacy and He is capable of creating personal and private experiences individually with all seven plus billion of us humans. He is also able to create experiences that can be shared by small or large numbers in and without the many sub-groups and divisions that make up the human community on planet earth. But we humans must continue to grow in how we interpret these spiritual experiences so that we do not conclude that God’s love prefers or favors us as chosen above all others.

So I encourage us all as ambassadors to help those we come in contact with to remove the shame that blocks true spiritual intimacy with God. There are enough people and thoughts in the world to remind us of the  false-truth that someone is love more by God that we are. In the immortal words of the songstress Dionne Warwick “What the world need now is love sweet love. No not just for some but for everyone.”

John 3:16-17 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

 

Chime in and let us know of your thoughsts about these questions below:

Are you constantly reminded by others about stuff you repented of?

Does the spiritual community you are a part of cause feeling of guilt to come up?

Do you look at others through the lens of their past sin?

Does the sin of others offend you?

 

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