> General Discussions

The character of a person.

<< < (2/3) > >>

Deborah-Leigh:
From a certain perspective it seems exactly as you describe ~ absurd.  Enter one tiny catalyst of information and the whole thing jells. Any wonder that we perish for lack of knowledge yet in another place, the Scripture says much knowledge makes ill the heart and more knowledge puffs up to pride that precipitates a fall. So where is the line and the balance and the sense of this knowledge that we need, yet don’t need too much of, and too much will cause us to fall flat on our faces?

It is all in the balance, knowledge, supreme understanding and Presence of God everywhere.

He is calling all the shots all the time. We are in a time and human frame, in an experience of our God making us in His Image. We want to see what He is doing but at best we faint when He gets too close to the bone. We pass out when He gets so near we lose strength and energy by contrast to His Mega Power Supremacy. Just recall the times when you sat in the dentist’s chair and heard the drill or slammed on breaks to avoid a car accident. See what I mean? We simply just don’t recognize Him in our present mortal structure of perceptions.

He even tells us that He speaks to us in our dreams, and visions are His Forte. Those things you cannot go out and purchase, beg, borrow or steal and there are many counterfeits in life. The true God Gifts of perceptions, insights and language of His Love to our deepest most unexposed places within our souls, are His to Give. He is the lover of our souls.

The stuff we are made of is just a particle of that which is God who is all, everywhere, all the time, before and beyond. Figure that out without blowing a gasket of carefully placed mental alignments and comfort zoning of emotional dispositions proportioned to the desire frame capacity of our being and whoops...we fall off the ceiling, Scriptures and all.
 
I am so with you on this one gk but let me assure you, it is far better to fall off the ceiling than to be gravitationally pulled to the floor to feel the strength God has placed within the centre of our earth that blocks out the light like a black hole. Also, a black hole as such, is not a hole,  but an intense density where light disappears. So what’s that if there be no darkness in God if such a thing as a black hole or a dark night can actually present itself to our perceptions and blindness?  What’s that but a human testimony of our fear that God might not be and is not necessarily everywhere all the time for us in our estimate and perception, because in our carnal, mortal and fear prone vulnerabilities,  we can and do visit those places in mind, heart and body where God doesn’t appear to be anywhere insight! Those places are real and they hurt like proverbial hell.

That is why we need each other to remind one another we are not without God, when we fall down or just crawl out of a tumble into fear and suffering. We need each other’s assurances and affirmations that God is not asleep or absent, ever!

 God is not only in our minds and perceptions that can and do exhibit A Class illusions of such magnitude we can experience death, and heart stopping moments of fear and anxiety, all brought on by our situations in a our individual worlds that are so real to our nerves and physical anatomies and emotional physiologies, that we need support and comfort in our realms of human experiences and circumstances. Yet, though seeming not always to be so, God IS beyond, in, around, with and holding us, all the time and He is not alone for He is accompanied by with through and in His Son Jesus Christ, who’s Spirit is also in us. What an uncanny formula. What an unimaginable combination. Who would have thought it.

To put into practice the delight of awareness of God’s presence inside out and outside in, is a Gift of God. That Gift is real, precious and valuable above any asset of material wealth or physical prosperity.

Think why and how God can give you a thrill of joy and appreciation, just with a cup of coffee, and the next, with the same cup of coffee, annihilate that joy and make it feel like it was never there, can never return and even if it does or can, you feel you will not appreciate it ever again. Did you not know you gave your cup, your porch and the joy of your horses in your soul, to us, here? We received it. Well I certainly did. May it return to you and carry forward into your cup, the heat of the sunny days here in SA and the tears of the rain, only God can return to you to mirror His face in the simple, uncluttered pleasure of His Love.

After the thief came to my home, I thought I’d never again be able to enjoy the ambiance of the nature that surrounds my house, yet again, God proves infallible and can cause me to catch myself enjoying again, the beauty He makes possible and accessible, to perception just as surely as He can cause you to catch yourself long after you have accepted you can no longer enjoy the coffee and the porch, He will meet you right there and give you His joy again despite all the snow in Antarctica .  He’s like that and shows again and again that He can raise the dead despite us being contained in this mortal combustible earthen vessel that is the self, where resides the negative experiences of God’s seeming absence, that feel more certain, more powerful and more real in its time and presence than the feelings of joy and peace that can be shattered at a moment’s notice. That’s a human perception and God given experience.

One moment you are sharing your joy and cup of coffee on the porch and the next, it is snowed out and you are lamenting before the fire that is the next port of call God has given to you to meet your needs for comfort and rest. Return to the fire tomorrow, and He, God can be gone down the road to the next port of call He causes you to encounter of His wind of a Spirit type reunions that are illusive, unadvertised and certainly cannot be retained by our company nor commanded by our needs. The Song of Solomon is an etude to the wispy, willowy yet not flimsy fabric of love presence God can and does continually give to us.

May He continue to meet you on the Porch, in the glow of the warm fire and in your cup of coffee and neigh of your horses. Just put Him nowhere and He can appear everywhere. Stop looking for Him and He can show up everywhere. Stop calling Him and He can make you hear Him in the neigh of your horses, like He did with my cat sitting on my toe. But look for Him, try to catch Him and He will evade you every time. He likes you to seek Him or He wouldn’t tell you too, but stop through sheer exhaustion and lament for His Love and Presence and Here He is....He is looking at you as you read these lines for His eyes are your ability to see and His Mind is your ability to comprehend and His Heart He shares with very few at a time, among which you belong, for you have seen His Blessing to you on the Porch, in the coffee and in your deepest most soft feelings of need that He couches before the fire of His Warming Love for you.

The best possible answer to God could be silence.......that,... kind of hush.....He’s here...welcome and revered.

blessings
Arc

GaryK:
I’m hearing you all, and thank you for your valuables.   It (all things) seem too massive over eons for such control as small as building the character of a single person in such a dynamic universe and beyond.   Looking at the world, both the good and the bad, they’re overwhelming.   And I see people who’ve never seem to have had a chance at life, and some who’ve ‘got it all’…and appreciate none of it, and some who seem stuck wandering...and wondering...altogether.  And then I have to wonder….where is God in this mess that...that person over there.....got the short end?...is that some sort of chastening, rebuking, character building, or just flat out he doesn’t care.  And that’s as far as I can get.  Then the anger comes.  I can’t see the ‘good’ because it’s in the future and known only to God.     And right there is the point I realize HIS faith is needed, not mine, which I mentioned in another topic posting.  THERE is that tiny catalyst, I think Arc, it seems to me.  But, just exactly who controls that giving of faith?...he does.  And then I think, why doesn’t God just give this faith to those who need it, speak to them, and then I remember Ray saying he does speak, right in the scripture he does.  But, he gives both the antenna and controls the reception.  So some remain lost while living in this world.  Massively mystical.  And still, there are people in this world who are hurting, badly, not just with debilitating physical pain but those with debilitating mental insufficiencies.  Some are living in horrendous conditions, some are living nightmares of torture controlled by other despicable beings........all.......that could be resolved by just the smallest glance from his direction, or the smallest merciful thought.

But nothing.

Quagmires.

Arc, that quiet you speak of, I probably need it most in my head and my heart, a silence for awhile.  But I swear where I live you couldn't get more quiet.  Even the crickets complain most of the time.

My spirituality, 'a' faith, what I once thought I had a good amount of, and so ignorantly proud of, is eroding to nothing.

gk

Deborah-Leigh:

At least you know what is happening yet are still to experience the beyond the eroding to seemingly, nothing.

We see God in hindsight, here, in this reality.

He is in front of us, but as we are, we would die if we saw Him. He is changing us so after we have died, eroded to nothing, we shall live to see Him and never be without Him again, as where He is, we shall be too....

The silence in your heart and mind, only He can give though the crickets complain.....

You are on His radar....

Arc

Kat:

Gary, we are just in the first stage, the age of Satan, so to speak. We are in the middle of all the turmoil, it's like we can not see the forest for the trees, right now and we do not really understand what is yet to come. But I am convinced in the next age all these terrible and evil things that are happening will be vindicated and rectified in the most just way! All things are possible with God (Matt. 19:26; Mark 10:27, 14:36).

Well it's only natural for us to resist the pain and evil while in the flesh, even Jesus Christ despised the shame of the cross (Heb 12:2). We should hate sin and the evil it brings and we are learning to do just that.

So I believe for a certainty the God that I have come to know is only putting us through this evil experience (which is actually for our good in the long run), because of the justice all will receive that He has already prepared for them in the next age.

Rev 21:3  And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.
v.4  And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."
v. 5  Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." And He said to me, "Write, for these words are true and faithful."
v. 6  And He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.
v. 7  He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.

mercy, peace and love
Kat

hillsbororiver:
Hi Gary,

Your post here, the original topic's premise as well as the excellent responses from Deb, Kat, John & Marques inspired me to attempt to add a few of my own observations from personal experience, with His Word and a small dose of (mind bending) science... 


--- Quote from: GaryK on February 02, 2011, 02:02:09 PM ---I’m hearing you all, and thank you for your valuables.   It (all things) seem too massive over eons for such control as small as building the character of a single person in such a dynamic universe and beyond.   Looking at the world, both the good and the bad, they’re overwhelming.


--- End quote ---

Overwhelming is probably stating God's designs, power, mind and plan (for creation) lightly.

Not that I am saying you purposely understated this truth but rather that we as finite, incomplete, natural men (women too obviously) cannot at this time begin to truly comprehend His majestic work, or as Isiah stated (in Chapter 28) "His strange work"...

For one small example of this strangeness I want you to consider the simplest, most common element in the universe. Hydrogen. We all know that everything in the physical, natural state is made up of atoms and that the most basic of atoms is hydrogen. But try getting your mind around this illustration of the simple one proton, one electron element.

Take an object approximately the size of a soccer ball to represent the proton, the electron in scale would be about the size of one pixel, if you have trouble picturing one pixel imagine instead the size of a dot made from a fine point pen.

To get an idea how atoms and therefore everything physical is mostly empty, actually an illusion, this proton (soccer ball) in scale is 11 miles away from the pixel. Yes, the hydrogen atom has that much space between the proton and electron. The link below illustrates this further;

http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/atom/

Who could have dreamed this up?

Contemplate creation, contemplate design, control and wisdom down to the smallest detail, this is our God, this is our Father! Our own personal Father who wants us to be His perfect children. And He is indeed a Master of detail!



--- Quote from: GaryK on February 02, 2011, 02:02:09 PM ---

And I see people who’ve never seem to have had a chance at life, and some who’ve ‘got it all’…and appreciate none of it, and some who seem stuck wandering...and wondering...altogether.  And then I have to wonder….where is God in this mess that...that person over there.....got the short end?...is that some sort of chastening, rebuking, character building, or just flat out he doesn’t care.  And that’s as far as I can get.  Then the anger comes.  I can’t see the ‘good’ because it’s in the future and known only to God.


--- End quote ---

Gary, just as our physical reality is virtually imperceptible to us so is the way God forms us as individuals, as I have shared in the past both of my parents were considered back in their day to have had no chance in this life to be productive citizens, serious physical handicaps plagued both of them, my Dad from birth and my Mom from a severe dose of Polio at 2 years old. They both were too stubborn and too motivated to accept this fate, where did this "spirit" come from? They both eventually were gainfully employed, were independent and yet struggled with the day to day physical activities before the time of handicapped parking, electric shopping carts, wheelchair lifts on buses, etc.

My parents belonged to a club of other handicapped people some of whom were actually in a much worse physical condition than they were, double amputees, paraplegics, quadriplegics, cerebral palsy, you name it and I bet one of their friends probably had it. I knew these people from my earliest memories but I have no memory at all of any of them complaining (not that they didn't at times, but I never heard it) or say they were dealt an injustice, they were who they were, they accepted it without malice or a sense of being owed anything...

Where did this strength of character come from?


--- Quote from: GaryK on February 02, 2011, 02:02:09 PM ---
My spirituality, 'a' faith, what I once thought I had a good amount of, and so ignorantly proud of, is eroding to nothing.


--- End quote ---

Please don't be troubled Brother, this sentiment is part of this fleeting experience that will culminate in an immortal, perpetually perfect existence, just like the memory of our childhoods where some situations seemed endless (now in perspective they were a very short time indeed) this life too will seem to have been a very small price to pay for the endless treasure and glory awaiting us soon.

There were a few verses that came to mind as I was writing this, I hope you can see some relevance; 

Psa 139:13  For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.

Ecc 11:5  As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.


Isa 44:24  Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;


Isa 49:5  And now, saith the LORD that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the LORD, and my God shall be my strength.


Jer 1:5  Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Heb 12:9  Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

2Pe 3:8  But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Jas 4:14  Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

And especially;

Rom 8:18  For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Amen!

Peace,

Joe
         

   

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page