Category Archives: God Stuff
Book Excerpts: Mister God, This is Anna by Fynn
- Fynn began the adventure of Anna’s friendship when she was about age four and a half. She did not live to reach the age of eight.
- “I know to love Mister God and to love people and cats and dogs and spiders and flowers and trees” — and the catalog went on—” with all of me.” …And God said love me, love them, and love it, and don’t forget to love yourself. (19)
- After the evening meal, I always read to Anna, books on all manner of subjects, from poetry to astronomy. After a year of reading, she ended up with three favorite books. The first was a large picture book with nothing it it but photographs of snowflakes and frost patterns. The second book was Cruden’s Complete Concordance, and the third, of all the strange books to choose, was Manning’s Geometry of Four Dimensions. Each of these books had a catalytic effect on Anna. She devoured them utterly, and out of their digestion she produced her own philosophy.(20)
- “No, he [Mister God] don’t love me, not like you do, it’s different, it’s millions of times bigger. // You see, Fynn, people can only love outside and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so it’s different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet. // Mister God is different from us because he can finish things and we can’t. I can’t finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so it’s not the same kind of love, is it? Even Mister Jether’s [Jesus] love is not the same as Mister God’s because he only came here to make us remember.” (27)
- “Fynn, that’s the difference. You see, everybody has got a point of view, but Mister God hasn’t. Mister God has only points to view.” [viewing points] Humanity in general had an infinite number of points of view, whereas Mister God had an infinite number of viewing points. That means that — God is everywhere. “Mister God can know things and people from the inside, too. We only know them from the outside, don’t we? So you see, Fynn, people can’t talk about Mister God from the outside; you can only talk about Mister God from the inside of him.”(28)
- And God made man in his own image, not in shape, not in intelligence, not in eyes or ears, not in hands or feet, but in this total inwardness. In here was the image of God. It isn’t the devil in humanity that makes man a lonely creature, it’s his God-likeness. It’s the fullness of the Good that can’t get out or can’t find its proper “other place” that makes for loneliness.(39)
- Mister God didn’t at all mind making himself small. People thought that Mister God was very big, and that’s where they made a big mistake. Obviously Mister God could be any size he wanted. After all, Mister God did not have only one point of view but an infinity of viewing points, and the whole purpose of living was to be like Mister God. Religion was all about being like Mister God. The instructions weren’t to be good and kind and loving, etc., and it therefore followed that you would be more like Mister God. No! The whole point of being alive was to be like Mister God and then you couldn’t help but be good and kind and loving, could you?
- “If you get like Mister God, you don’t know you are good and kind and loving, do you?” As for people…”Well, if you think you are, you ain’t” (40)
- “Mister God is empty.” [Anna was learning that the yellow flower appeared yellow because that was the part of the light reflected back to our eyes.] ”Yellow is the bit it don’t want! So its real color is all the bits it do want.” Mister God wanted everything, so he didn’t reflect anything back! Mister God was quite empty. Not empty because there was truly nothing there, but empty because he accepted everything, because he wanted everything and did not reflect anything back! Of course you could cheat if you wanted to; you could wear your bit of colored glass marked Mister God is Loving , but then, of course, you would miss the whole nature of Mister God. We were being asked to throw away our pieces of colored glass and see clearly. The fact that Old Nick [satan] was busy turning them out by the million made things a bit difficult at times, but that was the way things were.(43)
- Fynn asked Anna how come she didn’t have “bits of glass” over her eyes. She replied, “Oh, ‘cos I ain’t frightened.” It is simply the ability to move out of the “I’m the center of all things” and to let something or someone take over. And as for Anna, she had simply moved out and let Mister God move in. (49)
- “Can I make a language of my own?” and “Just what is a language?” The number 1 is the most important number and bears the weight of all the other numbers. God is the most important word and bears the weight of all the other words. We each have a triangle and are responsible for bearing the weight of the things we’ve done and thought when we answer to God’s questions.(56)
- The soul is imprisoned, protected, nothing can get in to hurt it, but then it can’t get out either. Being saved is nothing to do with being safe. Being saved is seeing your self clearly—no “bits of colored glass,” no protection, no hiding—simply seeing yourself.(60)
- “Every person and everything that you know has got Mister God in his middle, and so you have got his Mister God in your middle too.” (72)
- As a supposed Christian you can stand outside and measure [judge] Mister God. The meter doesn’t read voltages, it reads Loving, Kindness, All-powerful, Omnipotent, etc. You have a nice lot of labels to stick about the place. Now I open up the Christian circuit and pop me, the meter, inside. Hey, wait a blessed minute! Who was it that said, “Be like your heavenly Father”? Quiet that man. If I’m inside the God’s circuit, then I’m a working part of Mister God. [as a working part of Mister God, outside distinctions of Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. have no meaning.](84)
- Properties depend on circumstances. Being outside Mister God and measuring him gave you properties, seemingly an unending list. The particular choice of properties that you made produced that particular kind of religion that you subscribed to. On the other hand, being inside Mister God gave you the function, and then we were all the same…The function of Mister God is to make you like him. Then you can’t measure [judge], can you? Mister God shows no preference in his function. (85)
- Like a toddler, Mister God puts you down on the take-away side of the mirror [made in His Image] and then asks you to find your way to the add side of the mirror. You see he wants you to be like him.(102)
- “Take-away people live in holes.” On our side of the looking glass the whole place was littered with holes [called Greedy, wicked, cruel, liar…] with people living at the bottom. On Mister God’s side were appropriate piles of whatever, ready to fill up the holes if only we’d got the sense to ask for them. His piles also had names like Generosity, Kindness and Truth. If you managed to fill up your hole and still have something left over, why then you were well and truly on the add side. Sometimes, Mister God sort of fills someone’s hole up for them. It was what we called a “mirror-cle”! (103)
- “When I find out things it makes the difference bigger, and Mister God gets bigger. Sunday school Teacher makes the difference bigger but Mister God stays the same size. She’s frightened. She just makes the people littler. You go to church to make Mister God really, really big. When you make Mister God really, really, really big, then you really, really don’t understand Mister God — then you do.”
- When you’re little you understand Mister God. He sits up there on his throne, a golden one of course; he has got whiskers and a crown and everyone is singing hymns like mad to him. God is useful and usable. You can ask him for things; he can strike your enemies deader than a doornail; and he is pretty good at putting hexes on the bully next door, like warts and things. Mister God is so understandable, so useful, and so usable, he is like some object — perhaps the most important object of all — but nevertheless an object and absolutely understandable. Later on you understand him to be a bit different, but you are still able to grasp what he is. Even though you understand him, he doesn’t seem to understand you! He doesn’t seem to understand that you simply must have a new bike, so your understanding of him changes a bit more. In whatever way or state you understand Mister God, so you diminish his size. He becomes an understandable entity among other understandable entities. So Mister God keeps on shedding bits all the way through your life until the time comes when you admit freely and honestly that you don’t understand Mister God at all. At this point you have let Mister God be his proper size — and wham! — there he is, laughing at you.(106)
- The thing you really counted with a number, was the shadow of a shadow of a shadow, which was a dot. Every scrap of uncountable information had been lost by this method. This was it. This was what you counted. [Unwinding up the dimension ladder from a dot took you in infinite directions] There was one thing in this universe that was so complex that it couldn’t become any more so. Mister God. Anna had reached the ends of an infinite series of dimensions. (119)
- “Old Nick and Jesus — both the Light. You know what Jesus said, don’t you? ‘I am the Light.’” Two kinds of light: a pretend one and a real one. Lucifer and Mister God.
- First we have Mister God and we know that he is Light. Then we have an object and we know this is Mister God’s creation. And finally we have the screen on which shadows are formed. The screen is that object that loses us all the redundant information that enables us to do things like sums and geometry and all that. (120)
- This was the problem with places like schools and church; they seemed to be more concerned with the answer part of the language than with the question part of the language. Certainly you could make up the questions from the answer given to you, but the trouble was that so often this kind of question had no real place to land; you just kept forever and ever. No, the mark of a real question was that it landed somewhere. “Do you like skudding?” You could go on asking questions about it all your life and still get nowhere. The question of where heaven was was one of those non-questions, it had nowhere to land, and therefore was no question fit to be asked. (127)
- Any place could be heaven where the senses were perfect. Mister God’s senses were perfect — to be able to see and hear everything over vast distances… (128)
- Mister God’s only got an infront, he ain’t got no behind. ‘Cos he don’t’ have to turn round to see everybody. [no face, eyes, etc.] (129)
- People ought to get more wise when they grow older. People’s boxes get littler and littler. Questions are in boxes and the answers they get only fit the size of the box. The questions get to the edge and then stop. It’s like a prison. We put Mister God into little boxes. We got to let Mister God be free. That’s what love is. (140)
- Evidence for Mister God’s existence could be arranged in too many ways. People who accepted one sort of arrangement were called by one particular name. (141)
- [upon learning about basic chords on a piano and the different positions for the same notes] “We’re all playing the same chord to Mister God but with different names.” but it seems we don’t know it.(143)
- “Your soul don’t go very far in the daylight ‘cos it stops where you can see. The nighttime is better. It stretches your soul right out to the stars. (146)
- My reason for preferring the darkness is that in the dark you have to describe yourself. In the daylight other people describe you. Develop your brain and your five senses. That’s only half of it. Develop your heart and the wits. There’s common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation and memory. Daylight is for the brain and the senses, the darkness is for the heart and the wits. Never, never be afraid. Your brain may fail you one day, but your heart won’t. [per Old Woody] (151)
- The Mister God light inside us is so’s we can see the Mister God light outside us and the Mister God light outside us is so’s we can see the Mister God light inside us. (156)
- God is our center, and yet it is we who acknowledge that he is the center. That makes us somehow internal to Mister God. This is the curious nature of Mister God: that even while he is at the center of all things, he waits outside us and knocks to come in. It is we who open the door. Mister God doesn’t break it down and come in; no, he knocks and waits. Now it takes a real super kind of God to work that one out, but that’s just what he’s done. As Anna said, “That’s very funny. It makes me very important, don’t it? Fancy Mister God taking second place!” (167)
- “If you are “full up” you can use anything to see Mister God. If you’re full up, you don’t need the cross ‘cos the cross is inside you. If you’re not full up, you have the cross outside you and then you make it a magic thing. If you’re not full up inside you, then you can make anything a magic thing, and then it becomes an outside bit of you. If you do that, then you can’t do what Mister God wants you to do. Love everybody like you love yourself, and you’ve got to be full up with you to love yourself properly first. It’s the outside bits that make all the different churches and things like that. Mister God said ‘I am,’ and that’s what he wants us all to say — that’s the hard bit.” You don’t have to want things outside you to fill up the gaps inside you. You don’t leave bits of you hanging around on objects in shop windows, in catalogs or on advertising. Wherever you go you take your whole self with you; you don’t leave bits lying around to get stamped on; you’re all of a piece; you’re what Mister God wants you to be. An “I am,” like he is. All this time in church, Mister God’s been trying to turn an “It is” into an “I am.” (171).
Book Excerpts: The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
=> The bending of the mind by the powers of this world has twisted the gospel of grace into religious bondageand distorted the image of God into an eternal, small-minded bookkeeper. (17)
=> The bending of the mind by the powers of this world has twisted the gospel of grace into religious bondageand distorted the image of God into an eternal, small-minded bookkeeper. (17)
=> We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works — but our lives refute our faith.(18)
=> How could the gospel of Christ be truly called “Good News” if God is a righteous judge rewarding thegood and punishing the evil? Did Jesus really have to come to reveal that terrifying message? How could the revelation of God in Christ Jesus be accurately called “news” since the OT carried the same theme, or “good” with the threat of punishment hanging like a dark cloud over the valley of history?(21)
=> Morton Kelsey: “The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.” (24)
=> My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earnit or deserve it. (27)
=> If children are close to God, it is because they are incompetent, not because they are innocent. If theyreceive anything, it can only be as a gift. (28) Eph 2:8-9
=> Paul Tillich: “Simply accept the fact that you are accepted. If that happens to us, we experience grace.”(29) 2 Cor 12:9
=> Grace: Rom 5:20-21; 3:24; Titus 3:7; Gal 1:15; Eph 1:6; Titus 2:11; 1 Tim 1:14; Rom 5:2; 5:17; 5:15, 20-21, 6:1; 1 Cor 1:4; 2 Cor 6:1, 9:14, 4:15; Rom 11:5; Eph 2:5,7; 2 Tim 1:9; Acts 15:11; Gal 2:21, 5:4; Rom6:14, 4:4; Acts 20:24, 14:3, 20:32
=> We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowingJesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited. (45)
=> Philosopher Jacques Maritain said that the culmination of knowledge is not conceptual but experiential: I feel God. Such is the promise of the Scriptures: Be still and know (experience) that I am God. I mean that a living, loving God can and does make his presence felt, can and does speak to us in the silence of our hearts, can and does warm and caress us till we no longer doubt that He is near, that He is here. (46)
=> …the more fully we accept ourselves, the more successfully we begin to grow. Love is a far better stimulus than threat or pressure.(49)
=> Whatever we have done in the past, be it good or evil, great or small, is irrelevant to our stance before God today. It is only now that we are in the presence of God. (53)
=> AA: Don’t let yourself get hungry, angry, lonely, or tired or you will be very vulnerable for the first temptation relapse. H.A.L.T. (67)
=> Have you learned to fear this loving and gracious Father? “In love, there can be no fear, for fear is driven out by perfect love. Fear has to do with punishment and anyone who is afraid is still imperfect in love” 1 John 4:18. Have you learned to think of the Father as the judge, the spy, the disciplinarian, the punisher? If you think that way, you are wrong. (75)
=> The Father’s love is revealed in the Son’s. The Son has been given to us that we might give up fear. There is no fear in love. The Father sent the Son “that you might have life—life in all its fullness” (Jn 10:10). Is not the Son the Father’s unsurpassable sign of love and graciousness? Did henot come to show us the Father’s compassionate care for us? (“Whoever sees me sees also him who sent me” Jn 12:45). The Father is not justice and the Son love. The Father is justice and love; the Son is love and justice. Abba is not: our enemy; intent on trying and tempting and testing us; Abba does not prefer and promote suffering and pain. Jesus brings good news about the Father, not bad news….We have to be converted from the bad news to the good news about God. (76) [openness to God’s grace is “a little willingness” from ACIM]
=> For a moment allow me to sketch with broad strokes a biblical theology of divine agape…(99)
=> The hesed of Yahweh draws Israel into greater conficence. Justice says: “I owe you nothing, for you havebroken the contract.” But where justice ends, love begins , and reveals that God is not interested merely in the dividends of the covenant. He is looking into the eyes of Israel from His depths to hers. He sees through the smokescreen of deeds good and bad to Israel herself. She glances up uneasily, “Who? Me?” (101)
=> Yes, we feel guilt over sins, but healthy guilt is one which acknowledges the wrong done and feels remorse, but then is free to embrace the forgiveness that has been offered. Healthy guilt focuses on the realization that all has been forgiven, the wrong has been redeemed.(114) [even before being committed]
=> Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have not only been forgiven but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb. (116)
=> Grace is the secret to being able to forgive ourselves. Trust it. (115)
=> The grace to let go and let God be God flows from trust in His boundless love. Only love empowers theleap in trust… (117)
=> In Christ Jesus freedom from fear empowers us to let go of the desire to appear good, so that we can movefreely in the mystery of who we really are. (147)
=> Living by grace inspires a growing consciousness that I am what I am in the sight of Jesus and nothingmore. (149)
=> Compassion for others is not a simple virtue because it avoids snap judgments—right or wrong, good orbad, hero or villain: it seeks truth in all its complexity. Usually we see other people not as they are, but as we are. A person, in a real sense, is what he or she sees. And seeing depends on our eyes. Jesus uses the metaphor of eyes more often than that of minds or wills. (151)
=> Gentleness toward ourselves constitutes the core of our gentleness with others. (153)
=> The gospel of grace announces: forgiveness precedes repentance. (181)
=> What is the nature of Ultimate Reality? Jesus responds that the Really Real is generous, forgiving, savinglove. (192)
=> If you reject and turn your back on Christianity, do so because you find the answers of Jesus incredible,blasphemous, or hopelessly hopeful. (193)
=> With all the goodwill in the world, you can’t make anything happen. Don’t force prayer. Simply relax inthe presence of the God you half believe in and ask for a touch of folly. (196)
=> Love has its own exigencies. It weighs and counts nothing but expects everything. Perhaps that explainsour reluctance to risk. We know only too well that the gospel of grace is an irresistible call to love the same way. No wonder to many of us elect to surrender our souls to rules rather than to living in union with love. (203)
=> Francis Schaeffer: True spirituality consists in living moment to moment by the grace of Jesus Christ.
=> C.S. Lewis: People need more to be reminded than to be instructed. (204)
Book Commentary: The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
- Some thoughts on Rick’s approach to the question of God’s purpose for our lives…
- His criterion for truth appears to be the Bible. This works at least two ways. If he can find any part of the Bible – using any translation – to confirm one of his points, then the conclusion must have merit. Conversely, if he finds anything in any part of the Bible – using any translation – then it must be true at face value.
- On page 325, he explains his reasons for using 15 different translations. While most of those listed are accepted as developed with some reasonably legitimate scholarly effort, The Message (which is one of his favorite choices to quote) was written by a pastor, Eugene Peterson, to make the Bible easier to understand for his congregation. http://www.crossroad.to/Bible_studies/Message.html
- What prompted my inquiry was coming across a scriptural reference that I was pretty certain was NOT in any Bible I had ever read. Sure enough, a quote from The Message.
- In common with all writers or speakers trying to make a point, Rick does not hesitate to quote only a few words – completely out of the context of the rest of the text or situation.
- Having chosen this approach, it is inevitable that Rick will generate seemingly contradictory points of view – because he can find Biblical quotes for each side.
- So, we will be presented with a God who has pre-planned every detail of our lives, without our input, before our conception – who then somehow tests us daily – the results of which determine our everlasting place in or out of God’s presence.
- We will have described a God who is constantly present with us to guide us and love us and… who sometimes “leaves” us to test us.
- Rick is strong on the concept of “specialness.” We are special because we were “chosen” before the foundation of time. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and forgive those who persecute us and crucified him. I believe that God’s love is so inclusive and all-reaching that it includes everyone. We can feel a special connection with God and His Love without assigning a lesser connection to other people.
- It seems contradictory that “before Abraham was I AM” or that “you were chosen before the foundation of creation.” If we consider time differently, these statements make more sense. God is not confined or limited by the flow of time as we perceive it. God is so “connected” with his creation that “he is already there” and doesn’t need time to cover some spatial distance. Physicists describe a theoretical particle called a Transcendental Tachyon as a particle which travels at infinite speed and is therefore “everywhere at once.” From that point of view, the “kingdom is at hand.” It’s interesting that when God was asked his identity, he responded “I AM” – not “I used to be” or “I’ll see you later.”
- On Day 5, Rick quotes Anais Nin: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” I would suggest that Rick strongly assists us in doing that with God: we don’t see God as He IS (I AM), but we see Him as we are and project all kinds of human characteristics and personality flaws onto God.
- I’m looking forward to the Holy Spirit’s blowing among us whither it will and bringing us more completely into an awareness of the Christ in each of us and the God we never really left.
- Some further thoughts…
- A. Are we trying to divine THE individual purpose God has planned for our lives?
B. Is this a result? A measurable thing or event that can be judged as accomplished or not? - C. Could we have been working on the “wrong” thing all this time – despite God’s pre-determined,micro-management of our every move and circumstance?
- D. Will we then receive some “eternal consequence for our inability to use our free will to produce this Divine Objector Purpose (hidden slyly behind one of the curtains?) in our “brief-as-a-blink” lives?
- E. “God has emotions too.”(page 64) Warren also quotes Nin to remind us that, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Attributing human emotions to God because the description can be found somewhere in the Bible doesn’t make them reality. How else were those writers supposed to describe their spiritual experiences?
- F. The first key question is: What is God’s nature? If God is Love it’s the most Awesome Love we can imagine. Such a Love is Oneness and Unity – not Chosen and Un-chosen. His Love is already connected to all His Creation – all that is Reality—in the Holy Instant or the Eternal Now. God’s Love does not depend on our limited sense of “time” to “make the connection.”
- G. If God is not One with His Creation through His steadfast Love, then is Evil a piece of creation that “got away from God’s control?” Does God thus struggle to “love His enemies” and “forgive those who persecute Him” while “battling these runaway forces?” We have found ourselves in this apparent predicament – not God.
- H. Perhaps God is as oblivious to “evil” as Light is to darkness because “in the Light” darkness is illusory. Darkness is the “absence” of light yet appears to “flee before it.”
- I. Like darkness, evil certainly seems real, even palpable, to us. Perhaps we “see through a glass dimly” and without a “single eye.” We are not “tempted” to buy the house IF we see it clearly as built on the shifting sands. Perhaps it is ignorance of God’s Reality.
- J. Imagine a God united/connected with all creation (including each of us) in Love and Oneness. There seems no place in that amazing Peace of God for wants or needs. He is All. We (our egos) are the ones who want and need judgment, control and being right.
- K. This book is full of “specialness” where God’s Chosen get special treatment. Of course if I see myself as Chosen, the absence of “special” treatment is “testing”—which is also “special.” God’s vast love and oneness doesn’t play favorites. That’s my ego’s game.
- L. God’s name is I AM, not I Used to Be, or I’ll See You Later.(Prather) God’s Loving Presence isn’t something sent 2nd-Day Air for future delivery. God and His Love are Present This Moment. The Kingdom is “at hand.”
- M. From God’s perspective “time” is one. Already connected means He needs none of our “time” to travel through our “space.” Being ONE, He need “wait,” “hope” or “want” for nothing. In similar fashion, looking at a parade from a tall building captures the entire parade in the “now” while the people on the sidewalk experience a past, present and future. In this same sense of an Eternal Now, “before Abraham was I AM”and“I am the Alpha and the Omega” and “you were in my care even before you were born.” Eternity is so much more than just “a really, really long (boring?) time.”
- N. Since “the sun shines equally on all” our “purpose” is to come in to the Light – and remain there “praying without ceasing.” By listening more consistently to the Holy Spirit and Christ’s guidance, we are better able to discern God’s Love and Present Reality from the dream of suffering from which Adam never awoke.
- O. We usually think of the “Will of God” as some preference or choice on God’s part – as if I AM would rather go by “ I AM THAT BUT NOT THIS.” So we are taught to pray for God’s will about which job to take, spouse to marry, house to buy, or whether someone will be healed, etc. – and discern His Answer. It’s multiple choice with no options for “all of the above/none of the above/wrong question.” While we ask God whether we should go right or left, in or out, up or down, His message is Go in Peace and Love.
- P. Imagine what our actions – our Lives – would be like, if we all intentionally sought first the Peace of God in our hearts and minds – and then acted from that place. Consider that our Purpose is BEing aware that we are Children of God and letting our DO-ing flow from that – as delightfully unpredictable as those actions might be.
- Day 15: You were formed for God’s Family [My comments]
- “Every human being was created by God, but not everyone is a child of God. The only way to get into God’s family is by being born again into it. [Once and done or like Paul’s “I die daily”?]
- You become part of the human family by your first birth, but you become a member of God’s family by your second birth. God “has given us the privilege of being born again, so that we are now members of God’s own family.” (1 Peter 1:3b LB)
- The invitation to be part of God’s family is universal, {Mark 8:34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
- Act 2:21 & Romans 10:13 quoting Joel 2:32 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
- 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
- (preceding verse not referenced 2 Peter 3:8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. NIV}
- but there is one condition: faith in Jesus.”
- Recap of previous chapters…{Day 1: It’s not about me. Day 2: “I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born.”[in my care just not in my family?] Day 5: Life is a test and a trust. Day 7 “For everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by his power, and everything is for his glory” It’s all for him. Day 8: I was planned for God’s pleasure. Day 9: God smiles when I trust him. Day 10: The heart of worship is surrender. Day 11: God wants to be my best friend. Day 11: I’m as close to God as I choose to be. Day 12: God wants all of me. Day 14: God is real no matter how I feel. “For God has said, ‘I will never leave you; I will never abandon you’”[except when you lack “faith in Jesus”??? Does anyone find it strange that “unbelievers” could fully practice the “2 greatest commandments” given by Jesus without having heard of Jesus? Are they thus “excluded” from God’s family?]
- Day 16: What Matters Most
- “Of course, God wants us to love everyone, but he is particularly concerned that we learn to love others in his family.” (p 123)
- “Why does God insist that we give special love and attention to other believers? Why do they get priority loving?” (p 124)
- [and the “unbelievers” who we are to love with less “priority” because they are not part of God’s “family” via the one condition of “faith in Jesus”…would be people like the ones Jesus specifically told us to love as we love our selves: our “enemies?”, the good Samaritan?, our “neighbor?”
- God-like Love, Agape Love, is unconditional. Period. It is GOD’s LOVE. How can it be “less than” perfect, whole and complete?
- WE are the ones who feel a need for specialness. To be part of a special family while others are excluded due to the “rules of the club.”
- The relationship of God with His Creation and humanity-made-in-His-Image is far above and beyond this petty word play using “our” (Christian) labels vs “your” (non-believer) labels. God is “inclusive” by definition… God is “in whom we move and breathe and have our being”! Absent some set of magic words, are we or were we ejected from this state of intimate Being with God? By Whom? Our Loving Creator?
- “They will know we are Christians by our love” (do we now add “of each other”?)]
A-Maze in Grace 