Thank God

 I just want to thank you God for all the help you have given me, the guidance and direction you provided me in the past, and the guidance and direction you will provide me in the future because I still don't have all the answers, and I still don't know what I am doing! I need you now more than ever and I pray you will help us through this mess. I also pray for others, Father, that you would wrap your arms of love around them and give them comfort, even after the funeral and it is all said and done, let them know you still care. 

God Is

“I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”- Psalm 16:8

How Much Do You Trust God?

This morning I awoke to God telling me to look up the scripture that talks about lean not on your own understanding but trust in the Lord with all your heart, instead I chose to go back to bed. I slept in for another hour before getting up and doing what the voice of God had told me to do. Now that I am up and trying to study the bible, the TV's are on, the kids are up, and children are demanding my attention. But nonetheless, I know God has forgiven me and I will do my best to read what He has told me too, although I won't get as much out of it. 

I found the scripture by using google and located it in Proverbs 3:5. I decided to go on and read the whole chapter, it was short enough for my attention span. But for now I will speak only to the verse at hand, I get too easily distracted by other things so it would be impossible for me to cover the whole chapter in an organized manner. In the amplified Proverbs 3:5 says "Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding." 

In order to be able to trust someone, you have to know them, you have to have spent some time with that person. You have to go through some stuff with him or her to be able to know what they are going to do in a bind. Take work for example, say you have to be somewhere and there is a report due that you have finished. You pass this very important report off to a friend trusting that they will deliver it on time. If they don't, you are accountable regardless, it was your responsibility to turn the report in. You have to have a certain amount of confidence and trust that that person will deliver it on time. You wouldn't trust just anybody with the report, you would give it to someone you know, someone you have spent some time with and you know they are trustworthy enough to handle the job.

God is asking you to trust Him with everything you have, that same person you trust with the report you might not be able to trust with your atm pin number for example. You don't have the same level of trust with all people. It depends on how well you know them. God is asking you for ALL levels of trust, from your work, home life, finances, all of it. Even as I sit here I am convicted because I have not trusted God with all areas of my life. I hope that as I continue this journey with Him, I will come to trust Him with all I have, and all I am. Do you trust Him as much as you think you do? Really? I challenge you to look inward and identify the areas you have not given over to Him, trust Him, He has your best interest at heart, and He will not burn you, like so many other people you have given your trust to in the past, have. 

Space Time

Ok so I am watching the Science Channel, in HD of course, and I just learned that according to Einstein, and his theory dealing with Space Time and that whole thing about gravity, that time actually ticks at a different rate on the earth than it does in outer space. This is due to the difference in gravity, closer to earth, time goes slower, farther from earth, time goes faster. In fact, the Air Force has to send updates to their GPS satellites because perfectly timed clocks tick faster in outer space than they do on the earth. That's crazy! 

So what does this have to do with the bible? Let me present to you that I have heard people not believe in the bible because of the link between the book of Genesis and a little thing called carbon dating. Carbon dating can accurately identify how long ago a carbon life form died, or how old things are that used to be alive. That being said, it all makes sense to me now. When God spoke it, it happened that instant, but here on earth, given that once a gravity mass was formed, time actually ticked slower here than in outer space. 

Now I know that God is omnipresent, and I also believe that he is everywhere in time also. So this would explain that when He had man write down His word, it was written exactly as it happened and there is no mystery anymore in my mind about the differences in time. 

I would often ponder and wonder how it happened as God had said it, and compare it with what we know scientifically. The explanation I had in my head at the time before hearing this new information about space time, was that maybe our time frame was different than God's. Maybe one minute of God's time was a thousand years here, or some notion to that extent I had cooked up in my brain to explain this. But it turns out, my ideas might not have been too far from it. 

Perseverance Finishes

Ok here are some thoughts before I go to bed. In James chapter 1:2-4 it says

"2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. " New International Version from biblegateway. 

Now I don't know about you, but facing trials of many kinds doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me, yet here is this man of God, telling me to consider it pure joy. Now I learned from TV pastors and my own pastor to look things up in a dictionary, I have a concordance that I bought for my wife, but I don't know how to use it so I just looked up some words at Merriam Webster. 

Merriam Webster online says that joy is "the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires". So when you leave the Wal-Mart parking lot after having bought a load of groceries when you really don't know how to shop for a house hold of six people to begin with, and you unload the cart into the trunk of your car only to realize that you have a flat tire on the passenger side and now you have to unload the trunk of the car to change the flat I am supposed to consider it good fortune or possessing what I desire? Or when you are leaving work early, and you are going to be home four hours early to surprise your wife, and then you are on a motorcycle and you have a flat 60 miles from home and AAA says you don't have long distance towing after you know you paid for that option specifically because this is not the first time this has happened and you have the bill at home to prove it and your cell phone dies before you can rectify the situation I am supposed to experience well being, success and good fortune? Sounds crazy to me. 

The second part of this says that the testing of our faith develops perseverance, and that perseverance must finish it's work so that you may be complete, and mature, and not lacking anything. Ok so now we are getting somewhere, I don't want to be lacking anything, do you? Merriam Webster online says that perseverance "is the action or condition or an instance of persevering", persevering is "to persist in a state, enterprise, or undertaking in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement". So persist means,"to go on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of opposition, importunity, or warning". The testing of your faith develops the action of going on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of opposition and remaining there at all odds so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 

If you don't go through trials, how will you be able to handle that new job you asked for, or how will you be able to keep up with the new ministry you took on? So next time you are in a trial, just think to yourself, ah, God must be getting ready to move me to a whole new level, and if I am not properly prepared for it, I would really be in a world of hurt.