Let us.

Where to start?

Recently I have been extremely busy with my life, a simple way to emphasise this is that I have only Wednesday night free at the moment, remembering I have school everyday on top of that. Amongst this busy schedule I lost focus on God, forgot that in putting him first everything will fall into place. I really felt god telling me to just stop, not slow down but just stop completely and focus on him. I took Friday off school and did this, spending the day at church with my pastors just praying, talking and reading.

I think there is a lesson in this, sometimes although we are focusing on god; we lose sight of him as soon as an earthly task comes to hand. I believe quite literally that we need to be offering all that we do up to our lord and this is more than my thoughts -

I Corinthians 10:31
Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.

God wants us to do so, he doesn't need it there is nothing he 'needs' except for us to follow the two greatest commandments - Matthew 22:37-40

And He said to him, " 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.'
This is the great and foremost commandment.
The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.'
On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.

I need not expand on that however let me get to the bone of my post today,
In Genesis 1:26 it says this.

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

we see a confusion here, it says 'and GOD said' God as one individual however when its God's word we see him say 'let us make..', so we know this is before Adam and Eve, in fact this is the very moment that God wants to create Adam. So who is 'us'?
It the goes on to say 'according to our likeness' the functional word here is once again 'our' as if there is more than one God. No not more than one God but the same God, this verse is the very first instance of the trinity. The Father. The Son. The Holy Spirit. So is this to say that we are not only made in the image of God, but also the image of Jesus and the Holy Spirit? yes that is exactly what this means.
Just try to grasp that for a moment, YOU are made in the image of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, you are made in the concept of three entities. So what does this mean for us? I'm sure anyone who has read 1 Corinthians knows about chapter 13, the love chapter, a very beautiful chapter indeed. But before Paul writes that he wants to tell us about the characteristics of God. We all have some vague idea about how the trinity works, basically its three entities but the same character (being God).
So what does this suggest about us? Well firstly we have the father, which directly relates to God, our Father in heaven. Now God is the one whom we find ourselves in, he is the one of which we find or purpose in. our role. Secondly we have the son, Jesus, our saviour. Jesus walked this earth as a man and he represents the body, the body of Christ and how we are all a different part of this body. Lastly we have the Holy Spirit; the spirit empowers us to do what we would not be able to do on our own. The spirit empowers us for service. So we have the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. Our gifts, our unification and our service. I think it’s obvious in some churches that we focus on one of these three and almost forget about the other two. For example some churches may be all about service, all about evangelising to reach people. And this is great however they need to acknowledge people and that function they have in the unified body of Christ, they may be missing unity. Other churches may have this unity but have it so much that they feel closed off to newcomers, to reaching people. These churches possibly won't acknowledge people gifts, people’s talents. And the churches that do recognise gifts and talents of their congregation but at the same time have conflict within their church; they may not be unified with one another.

Three is the magical number here, a tripod for a camera is a very strong and reliable stand, however with just one of the legs missing it will fall, the rotary motor would not function without all three points. Like this we must remember that we have our three aspects on our journey towards conforming to Christ, we each have our own gifts and talents that god calls us to use, we are all part of the same body and need to be unified, and we all need to reach people. There was a survey done of 400 people, it showed that almost every time 9 out of 10 people would come to a church if they were invited.

So use your gifts, be unified within church but don't get comfortable, step out of that comfort zone and reach people.

'You are a Christian today because someone cared,
Now it’s your turn'

Peace and Blessings.

Dan

I Wonder

God is wonderful isn't he.

it seems more and more that his wonders have been revealed to me, everything you see in front of you now is thanks to god, the photons and electrons givings at the speed of light into you eyes which transmits the image to your brain to see, the very seat you sit on and even the simple keyboard keys you tap on probably everyday.

the more i think about it the more i stand in complete amazement and awe of his works, his power, his glory and his wonder.

so i wonder, why does it all seem to pass us by every single day, whether you believe that everything is in and because of god or not, life is a beautiful thing. we are surrounded by beauty and complexity, by masses of mountains yet droplets of beauty fall on them every week. how is it that we miss the wonders around us, it takes a simple observation and calm of mind to begin to realise just how empowering the things around us are. we live in a world that is full of suicide, full of depression full of a lack of motivation, yet there is inspiration all around us. beneath our feet, in our hearts, everywhere we go there is complexity and complete motivation.

it seems im just ranting now, i always tend to do that.

i just stand in complete awe of the beauty of our world, of my life, of your life and of every living thing around us, how can we miss this beauty. why do we not take the time to indulge in it and begin to comprehend the inspiration that surrounds us.

may we all be more observant and aware of the simple ecstatic joy that awaits us at every moment of every day.