The 12 Days of Christmas

A very interesting read guys..... -----> http://www.crivoice.org/cy12days.html <-----

The "mystery" (Ephesians 3)

The mystery of God's plan was made known to all Jews who would listen. God pretty much had to make some listen because the Jews had been made very stubborn. Maybe God loves and doesn't love that about them. Maybe He loves that about them, looking for a challenge? Verse 6 of chapter 3 of Ephesians spells it out,"...the gentiles follow heirs and members of the same body..." Paul is making know a hidden thing. I'm not sure why it was hidden. Maybe because God's revelation for all at once wouldn't automatically be accepted by humanity, He knew that it would be rejected. We humans aren't much more than dumb sheep. We march right over a cliff, if we see the steps right in front of us. We just take one step after the other and evidently fall off the cliff or walk into the wolves teeth. We don't take ahold of what is promised to us(i.e. safety, food provided, that we're going the right direction), unless we know the leader/shepherd. I believe that's the reason why God let us humans in on the mystery a bit at a time, because we "need" to be able to trust our guide before we take steps. It's an annoying challenge God has taken up but His patience and love are beyond what we can imagine. I have alot to learn, I still fall into that pattern of trusting what I see. -Matthew

True Meaning of Grace (Ephesians 2)

We are a fallen people, all of humanity. We've fallen into the passions of our fleshly desires, wealth,sex, etc. (fill in the blank). Not wealth and sex alone, those aren't sins of course...Now, I'm going to go a little further. This sounds right inside logic. I've learned before the definition of sin within the meaning of Genesis 2:17b, "or you will surely die." I think that eating the fruit wasn't necessarily against God's will. The quality of the fruit had the ability to unlock a part of the mind that had been locked, eating the fruit was forbidden until God had found humanity ready to have this part of the mind unlocked. That "sin" causes death in humanity I.E. sex feels good so we think we should do it,it's only really "good" for as long as we constrict it to a single partnership, otherwise it would cause disease (aids), sexual mistrust (general mistrust), illegitimate children, and strife. That is the reason that I believe God wants us to wait. Not because of that weird "rule" you had as a child from your parents with only the reason, "because I said so." There is an actual reason behind it. It's like a warning sign of "no bridge" across the gorge. There is alot of hope for us though. We have grace through faith in God, He makes us new again. By choosing to believe God's life is the right way to take. He offers us life in Himself, and forgiveness and He gives grace!

unity:one of God's desires for us,psalms 133

Unity is a concept that I've really begun to see is an amazing concept,& one that God's designed for Hector experience too. Unity is one thing God made from the beginning. It's interesting that God is unity. He gives us analogies in life to explain Him better,they represent Himself. God is the Father,So,& Holy Spirit. He is perfect unity. He made different examples in life that we can have to experience to understand Himself. He made us to have unity with our spouses ( a very powerful and under attack example of unity), unity with friends, unity in church as His body,and unity with our families. Unity is a very beautiful thing to have, and Satan attacks it all. It can be broken,abused,and crushed. Broken in divorce,abused for evil purposes, and crushed in loneliness. Even then,God repairs that. -Matthew Kelly

The little things (ezekiel 36:26)

“ And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you....”
I like the next part, how God will remove the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh. I know this is specifically about Israel in their defiance, but it’s what he can do and has done for us. We got hard callous hearts in this world. We needed it to deal with things. We trade something. Yes, we are harder and it protected us but we also don’t experience those joys that God created us to experience.  It’s like taste buds. Yes, after our taste buds are accustomed to hot flavors, we are protected from hot things, but we don’t experience the more delectate beautys that God created us for. Our hearts aren’t the same way, we got used to alot of hard stuff in this world. We lose the delectate beauty that God made for us to experience. Our hearts are made to commune with Him. We are made to be sensitive  with Him. That’s in itself a delectate beauty. We partially lost alot of that with the fall, the innocence. He wants to make us new, to experience those things that we were created for. He made us to get it all, not some. He made us for those little beautys. God is here to protect us, we don’t need to protect ourselves as much.

-matthew

Analogies.

Here's something I realized. God makes and has made analogies for us to comprehend and understand His nature. God is sooo big, we are sooo small in comparison. The analogies are throughout nature! We can see that God is wildly creative through the extreme amounts of variety in nature. He is wildly creative. He is very much one who enjoys details because everything that's made mas detailed plans for them to exist and recreate themselves. He must also be creative in the sense that He's made complex personalities. He loves beauty because the world ranges in many different shapes, alot of beauty, designs and beautiful creations in animals, and colors of plants. He's saved it all and has allowed it to continue living. It has beauty besides just by appearance, but also through smell, sound, and touch. I'm not saying that everything He's made "has to be beautiful," or he didn't create it. There is functionality as well as beauty, and that's beautiful as well in its precision. We will sometimes rearrange chemicals, colors, and shapes to create beauty and that isn't a "sin" or copying. It's rearranging into something else. The only purpose that we do that rearranging for is to create a different kind of beauty. I'm going on a limb here,is "ugliness" "sin?" I don't mean a person that's ugly, just plain mis-shappen things that aren't supposed to be. So does that mean a creature like a pig would be a sinful creature? Of course not because a pig does have alot of supreme structuring. The pigmentation (no pun intended) of a pig ,is pinkish, pleasantness (a comfortable color), the supreme functionality of its upright nose offers a good sense of smell.

           Back to the very beginning of this entire thing. Our big mistake (downfall of life) hinges on on one single mistake, and cause a whole lot of death. The rejection of His words and the decision they made was to eat the fruit.

      God,  also is beautiful because His mind truly is. What is inside eventually reflects what is seen on the outside. "Wrong things" you do are called "sin," that's obvious but I think it should be defined.  Either God drew a giant analogy through sin equaling the fallen nature of everything so that we would draw the conclusion that sin = death or that sinful act physically caused it (eating the fruit when God said not too) or they (nature, animals  and everything) weren't supposed to live for an extremely long time anyway.

            God loves analogies. He makes us have the ability to understand things through analogies. His sacrifice for all humanity is a huge analogy. The pre-Christ animal sacrifices were also an analogy of His redemptive purpose. To only make it fair in the universe, something has to die if you do something wrong, so God Himself paid the price because we couldn't. God thought "I forgive you," and to pay for that, that caused the religious act of sacrifice for sin to demonstrate the true sacrifice to come. whew.....does that make sense?

"one"

5/10/12

I think “oneness” is a very foundational concept for Christianity. It’s been growing in my heart, this whole need for “oneness” and close community. God wants that. It’s beautiful how he made us to be separate persons but brings us together. He wants this because He wants us to be imitate His own “Oneness.”  His Oneness is perfection to the maximum. It’s sometimes amazing if you think about it, one, and only one, seems incomplete, but 3 in 1 is perfect. That covers all the angles. Not that one part can’t do, (they can all do the same part)but one part is specified to do that, He has certain responsibilities. I can can make a structure, but I’m not specified for that. I don’t want to be confusing. God wants us to be “one,”  not in competition, but because that’s perfection. It’s like why, is dirt brown? it just is, if you think about it, it covers a variety of different colors as a base. White light covers all of the spectrums of light scientifically. That’s how it works...why is water wet? That allows for movement through our body if ingested and for the climates to function. The characteristic of it allows for existence. Why does three with God equal one? He just does, and must.

-Matthew

Recklessly (Luke 24:1-12)

I love what Peter did here. The others just sat and listened  like the women were babbling stuff (read it) and they didn't believe them, but Peter got up and ran to the tomb. I imagine him running as hard as he could, wanting desperately for what they said to be true.I see Peter like a grown man becoming a boy again, wanting deeply for the tales and dreams to be true (I think we all need to do this sometimes, a child is carefree). Just  going and doing it because His true Father says, "you can do it." This is the way the way that Jesus comes to us. We are all little children compared, in this broken world where we're lost. This is a dangerous place, and although we want to see ourselves as big and strong, we aren't, by ourselves, without our big strong Dad to protect us. We can live and dream of the impossible because that's what our Dad is with us, He makes the impossible happen out of His beautiful wisdom. All He does is amazing and nothing but art. He creates beauty out of the broken and ashes. We kinda are falling apart. No, not kinda, we are. We have a brilliant Dad who carries us the steps we can't make anymore. We were given the freedom to dream again. In John 21:1-14, Peter does the same kind of thing. He jumps off the boat pretty much recklessly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7uoC-YTQy8