It surprises some people that our spiritual guidebook — “The Holy Bible” — mentions the reality of other “gods” and many “lords” in heaven (where that is, I can’t say) or on earth (a real place for many).  It’s an acknowledgement that the human family has been willing to embrace — not just the idea of many gods — but to accept their existence as normal.  And yet when asked to represent their reality as valid, the gods of other belief systems fall short of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  And so, because we have come to accept the presence of God living and working in and through Jesus Christ based on the works that Jesus performed and upon his resurrection from the dead, we can accept the reality of Jesus Christ based on historical evidence.  But more accurately, the activity and presence of God’s Holy Spirit alive in us, confirms that what we know of God’s reality and Jesus Christ are one and the same reality.  Add the third layer — the witness of the Holy Spirit — and we have confirmation by two witnesses (excluding that of our own) that “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”

         And so, for us, God is neither a figment nor a creation of our imagination.  God is a reality who speaks to us and through us, who acts within us and upon us, who leads us and guides us in ways that are designed to represent and give evidence of God’s reality in the world.  And it’s our response to God’s activity in our lives that is the concrete evidence and proof that God is real and that Jesus Christ has called us as believers to manifest the reality of God alive and active in our world.

• To what extent does your knowledge that there are other “gods and lords” influence your belief in the reality of your God?
• If there are (in fact) “other gods and lords in heaven and on earth” how do we express the difference between our God and the Lord, Jesus, over the other gods and lords?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Loving God empower me to cling to the understanding of my faith in You as God and the Lord, Jesus Christ as evidence that You are real.

         If we’re honest with ourselves, most of our lives are based on someone’s need for us or our need for them.  The poet, John Donne once wrote, “No man is an island — no man (or woman) stands alone.”  It is a powerful statement identifying our human need and dependence upon one another.  We have — because of our human connection — become so dependent on each other that our dependence has developed into an interdependence, further complicating the nature of our relationship with each other.  Someone supplies water to us, farmers help to maintain the food chain, doctors, nurses, lawyers, take care of our health and legal needs.  There’s someone in our family that is dependent on us for their needs, however small or large.  And so, by virtue of our relationship with each other, we can easily drift into the idea that God needs something from us.  And sacrifices, while honored by God, can be misunderstood as a way of believing that we are supplying God with something that God needs from us.  It lends itself to the old idea of “providing food for the gods” as if God needed it.  Yet if we acknowledge that God’s life and existence is not dependent on our physical need for food or shelter, that in fact, any sacrifice made to God is symbolic, then we come to the point of realizing that the God of all creation could — if it were necessary — provide God’s own sustenance, God’s own shelter, God’s own food, God’s own self-reliance.

         That we depend on God and not the other way around is sound evidence of God’s reality.  It is our praise of God who sends the rain, offers sunshine that speaks to God’s reality.  It is God who provides for us when we can’t provide for ourselves that elicits that praise.  And the fact that God often is present providing what we need at just the time we need it is proof that our God is alive, that God cares for us, watches over us, provides for us when we are unable to provide for ourselves.  These events are more than coincidences.  They are God-incidences giving us evidence that God is alive and moving within God’s spiritual world while meeting the needs of those of us in this physical world.

• Can you recall a time when just when you needed God, God provided what you needed at just the time of your need?
• How does the mystery of God’s timely provisions in your life continue to reinforce your faith that God is real?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Almighty God, enable me to live within the certainty of my faith that Your care for me is based on my need of You and not Your need of anything from me by praise for all you do.

         We have long viewed God as a human/spiritual dynamic within our relationship with God.  We call God Father because we choose to assign to God some human characteristics and qualities.  After all, we were made in the image of God.  We’re human.  So — we reason — at some level God must at least hold some human qualities as a part of God’s person, also.  We don’t, however, give God an address beyond a location called heaven which we can’t fully describe.  It doesn’t have a physical location that we can go to — at least traveling in these clay forms called our bodies.  Nor is God’s Kingdom a place that we can point to with any discernible accuracy.  Jesus was quoted as saying,

       “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:20-21)

What we believe is that it must be nice — absent the human horrors we have to endure while living in these clay shells.  As it’s been said, “everybody wants to go to heaven … “.

         We’ve also been told that we are God’s temple, yet we’re not made with human hands but simply hold within this fleshly shell the essence of God’s Spirit.  And we don’t contain God’s Spirit so much as it (God’s Spirit) contains us, restrains us, and maintains us.  Our God is not confined to buildings of stone, glass, brick, or wood, or other structures and is not in need of such constructed places to exist.  God simply is.  God exists without form or substance.  And our only revelation and knowledge of the invisible, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and, living God has been realized and experienced in the man known as Jesus Christ.  He is the image of the invisible God and the only human living proof of God that the world has as its example.  Though, not everyone or every faith joins in that understanding of God’s reality.  Yet, for many, Jesus Christ is proof positive of the reality of the living God.

• What characteristics of God do you give a more human perspective than Spiritual?
• Does assigning human qualities to God make God any less real to you?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Loving God, empower me beyond the physical limitations of Your existence to trust in Jesus the Christ as proof of Your reality.