Let me start this topic with a couple of simple beliefs that I have: First, I believe God heals people, plain and simple. Second, I do not believe healing is in the atonement, but rather it is God’s design and desire to heal us prior to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
I am glad that most churches conduct baptism during their Sunday services and not at some small service during the week but I am usually disappointed when I see them because they are so hurried. Sometimes they ask the person who is being baptized a few yes or no questions. Why is it that something as significant as baptism is rushed through quickly?
If you have been raised in a church culture, often you can have a narrow perspective of who God might use and why. What I am referring to is that “FLAWED” people can often be rejected because of some past problems. Somehow, Christians tend to think or are taught that God only uses pure and un-defiled people when there are so many examples and instances of just the opposite.
Have you ever focused on the difficult passages of scripture in which Jesus said things that seem difficult, if not impossible, to live out practically? I know I have, and I continue to circle back to them throughout my Christian walk because I know the more I try to understand the scriptures the better I am able to understand God and my walk with him.
One thing I discovered studying the scripture over the years is that when considering Jesus Christ and his offer to be my sacrifice for my sin it is clear there would be an exchange. I would be exchanging my way of life for his and that meant appreciating who and what he has done and will do in my life.
This is the third article on myths we believe in. If you have not read the first two, please read them first to understand why I am calling these topics myths. When Christians read the scriptures we take our cues about how to understand what God is saying from so called “Intelligent” people who claim they know Greek and Hebrew words and sentence structure. But, have we been brainwashed to believe false ideas about what God is saying? History is not always right, especially when it comes to scripture.
We have been seeing violence on the daily news lately with all the chaos and protesting on university campuses in America, which in my mind is the result of poor parenting. The rioting of students on the university campuses is not a surprise given that parents have believed in the lie that providing college for their kids is the best way to love their kids. This, I believe, is a clear deception of Satan. When parents turn over their children to atheistic teachers to be indoctrinated in twisted and evil thinking, the end result is that their children become God haters who no longer understand how to reason truth from error.
There should be times in our faith journey were we have encounters with God that are considered special in the eyes of God. In those times God expects that we will “RESPECT” him in a higher way in those encounters. My belief is that many don’t know they are experiencing a special time with God because of distractions in their lives. We can be so caught up in the complexity of our lives that we don’t notice God is doing something special for us and around us.
When you listen to many in the Christian community who profess they believe the Bible is the word of God and the ultimate authority in their lives you might want to dig a little deeper to see if that is in fact the truth or if what they really mean is they support their Christian doctrine with their particular slant. There are many who profess they believe that scripture is the final word in their lives when it is not.
We live in a time in history when we are so attached to our technology that we are losing our ability to truly care for one another in meaningful ways. Our addiction to smartphones have beguiled us into an insatiable hunger to be informed about what’s happening in the world, and people in whom we are interested, that we are unaware of how separated we have become from the people right around us.
