Meditation #3

        Have you ever thought about being in an epic poem or epic story? Have you ever thought about being in the Iliad or the Odyssey or Gilgamesh or Beowulf? Have you thought about being Frodo in the Lord of the Rings, or Bilbo in the Hobbit? These are stories with heroes and villains, adventures and epic lives, and live and death situations? They give you a life of living beyond yourself and your personal issues, and to be a part of something heroic and transcendent. Well, there’s a true tale that tells you an everlasting story that is written by God through His many prophets and people of faith. God has an epic story to tell to save fallen man from themselves, and those He called are a part of that story. I love reading the bible because everyone who lived and knew God had a part in this epic tale of God’s glory. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and His brothers, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and the Judges of Israel all had a role to play. Men and women played a role in this epic adventure of God’s story, and God doesn’t play favoritisms between the sexes or class or race or anything that can separate us from each other and Him.

        God’s story is a love story: more specifically a story of God’s love for fallen man, and that love back to God and Man’s fellow man. We will have to face sirens like the hero of the Odyssey, and the monster like in Beowulf, or orcs like in Lord of the Rings, but that’s inevitable in a world that is influenced by satan and his demons. God’s story is an epic story that I want to be a part of. God calls us because He’s writing our history and story about our lives, and He wants us to be a part in His story: to play an important role in His epic tale. Some of us do not know what that role is, but some of us do know that role, and should live up to it with all our might. Rahab helped the spies of Israel, and then married into the lineage of Jesus. Ruth became a widow in a foreign land, and married into a rich man’s heritage becoming the lineage of David and Jesus. Gideon used a little fleece to test and see if God will save Israel through His hand, and He did though 300 men that lapped. These people played a role in God’s epic story.

        I’m sure you are sitting in church listening to a sermon, or sitting at home going on facebook and or possibly reading this blog, and you don’t feel like anything epic is happening in your life. I understand the feeling, but that’s not how life should be. Life is a story full of great adventures: some stories are bad and wicked with moral lessons, and some are good with heroism and good moral lessons. If we have love for God and love for self and others, we’ll have a role in God’s epic story. You maybe a father or a mother or a grandparent or someone whose disabled or you are a small child just learning about life. Whatever stage you are in in life, God has an exciting and epic role for you to play—even if it’s just a small little adventure that’ll make your family and friends smile from it. Maybe it’s a joke that only God can share with His beloved that can make everyone smile: like giving Sarah a son with a name that means laughter. Whatever the situation, life isn’t about self, or violent movies or violent video games or porn, but God’s story for you and me. I have been in this journey with God for 11 years this day, and God hasn’t left me since He called me—even through the good and the bad in my own vain life. God has given me a rich history, and wants a rich history to come to you, so that you can have many tales to tell your children with lessons for each trifle tale. I do believe that God loves a good story, or Jesus wouldn’t have said so many parables to people. This is the God whom I serve, and I hope to find that role in His epic story, and I pray that God will show you your role in His epic story.

A Meditation #2

        Let me ask you something. O reader, what do you want out of your life? Do you think that God wants you to have freewill and to have wants and desires in life? There are some that believe that God’s will is set in stone, and that whatever He will to do that will would be done and your will doesn’t matter. If that’s true then what’s the point of praying to God then? If Moses believed this theology then the children of Israel would have been dead a long time ago. In Exodus 32:9 – 13, God was responding to Israel’s Golden Calf sin saying that they were a stiff-necked people and that He wanted to destroy them in His wrath. If Moses believed this theology that God’s will is set in stone, then He would have let it happen, but that’s not what he did. Moses didn’t want Israel to be killed, and argued with God about making sure that He didn’t consume them. He told God to repent—which was a very courageous and bold move on his part. The most remarkable part was that God did repent and stopped His own wrath against Israel.

        If God’s will was so arbitrary and He believed that His will was final then He would have killed Moses for trying to change it, but God isn’t that way at all. God was probably pleased to hear Moses make His case for Israel, and talk with God as a friend with full passionate arguments from his own will. Do you believe that God wants you to have a will of your own? In the Greek new testament, prayer in the Greek is two words meaning will or wish and toward, so a prayer is your own will and wish toward God. God has a will, and you have a will: Jesus had a will to not go through with His suffering and made it known to God the Father, and the Father’s response was to send an angel to strengthen Him. It’s clear that the Father didn’t want Jesus to deal with the suffering by Himself, but He also knew that what He had to go through was absolutely necessary to save Mankind. Jesus prayed three times for God’s will to change: fulfilling His own parable of the persistent widow. However, after He realized the will of His father, He faced the suffering like a real courageous man of God.

        Just because the Father’s will wasn’t exactly what the Son’s will was in this circumstance, doesn’t mean that Jesus had no will of His own and didn’t have the courage to let it known to His Father in prayer. Prayer is what’s required to make known your own will to God, but what if you don’t know your own will is in life? Will you be timid to let it be known to the Father—if you don’t know what it is yourself? Also, on the other side of the coin, if you know your own will for God to know, why would God give you what you want? I have been praying for a job that I love and that I can see the good in my labor as Solomon said about a worthwhile life, but why would God give it to me when there are others out there who don’t have the samethings I do? In fact, they probably don’t even have a job at all to pay their bills or support their families? I work with people from other countries that came to the U.S. because they want to support their families and get the money that America has because of God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that was given to this nation. The people I work with have next to nothing in their old country, but in America they have a lot of blessings that this nation offers. I am blessed to be in America, so why would God give me a good job that I love? I don’t have an argument to give God for this, but I realized now that I need to persuade God—even if it’s may not be His will. For the most part, unless we read it in the bible, we don’t know God’s will for our lives. If someone says that they know God’s will for your life, then I wouldn’t talk to that person—they are probably deceiving you.

        God is often silent—which is the reason why the proverb is so profound: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the honor of kings to search it out” (Proverbs 25:2). But, God is not so distant from us that He doesn’t work in our lives and doesn’t have a freewill, imitate relationship with us. God wants to be near to us, and wants to share the responsibilities of making decisions in life—even if we believe that our will doesn’t matter. Jesus told us to be persistent with God in the parable of the persistent widow and the parable of the friend who went to His friend at midnight to give him bread for his other friend. These parables were for us to bring our heart’s desires to God. The truth is: We are not robots or animals that have no will of our own, and have instincts to eat and drink and mate with everyone we see. We have a will to do right and wrong, good or evil, live or die, and even make mistakes or be wise. I wouldn’t want it any other way in this life because God doesn’t want us to be His slaves, but to be His freewill sons in Christ. Jesus told us to ask, seek, and find because God wants us to have the best in life. We are blessed to be in a country that loves freedom because freedom is what man needs to come to God.

A Meditation #1

        I was listening to a sermon about the topic that this blog is about. I was moved by the sermon into doing some of my own meditations; for I haven’t done them in such a long time. I, like every other Christian, have been planted by God into this cosmos just as Jesus said in the parable of the wheat and the tares. We live in a mindlessly ruled orderly arrangement of society, and that system that rules this world was designed to take our time and to keep us busy with the cares of this world: jobs, entertainment, political discussions, even family and friends. The cosmos steals our time away from God, and satan loves it that way. The less time we spend with God the happier satan is. Everyone under this cosmos is born, lives a short while, and then dies. It’s vain, as Solomon said in Ecclesiastes; for he said about this life: “Vanity of vanities all is vanity.”

        I find myself in Solomon’s shoes lately: trying to find the reason that God planted me on this earth. Solomon searched for the reason all of his life, and couldn’t find it. I pray constantly for God to show me why I am here. As I was thinking about the sermon and learning about this world and what it really is, I realized that I wasn’t meant for this world. I was meant for God’s world when Christ returns, and as long as God planted me in this world, I am supposed to be a light to it by making small influences in the world to inspire God’s way of life in others. God has a plan to end this cosmos system that has no meaning, and give it to His Son to tend and keep it forever. In God’s world, life will be meaningful and valued, and the people of this world tomorrow will have their problems solved by their Creator.

        The poverty, disease, refugee problems, and problems with people not living up to their full potential will be solved in God’s world where everyone will be full of love and truth taught by God. The mindless cosmos will have a humble, freedom-giving, and loving mind directing everything from the top, and everyone in the world will keep God’s way of life from the heart and mind. There’ll be no more war. I look forward to that day, but until then I live on in this mindless, meaningless cosmos that satan uses to keep us away from God—if we love it more than God. I find myself not loving this empty world, but to look forward to the building whose foundation is laid by God in the New Jerusalem. I have to live in this world, and this world will have its influence on me, but I try to keep it to a minimum, and influence the world as much as possible with the love of Christ.

        I hope to encourage my readers with this meditation, and any further meditations about life and other things to think about. Meditation is something that we need to do more of; To get away from the world, and just think about God and other things in our lives: to listen to the Holy Spirit as we think about things in a focused meditation. I need to do this more often in my own pilgrimage to the Kingdom of God, and I hope to continue to do it on a regular basis. Joshua was told by God to mediate on God’s law day and night in order to have good success. I hope to continue with further meditations about God, His law, and His way of life working in me. God willing, He can influence and inspire others to do the same with this and other blogs.