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	<title>Norma L. BrumbaughAuthentic Christian | Norma L. Brumbaugh</title>
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	<description>CONNECTING WITH GOD IN EVERYDAY LIFE</description>
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		<title>Authentic Christianity</title>
		<link>https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/authentic-christianity/</link>
		<comments>https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/authentic-christianity/#respond</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2015 00:10:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Norma L. Brumbaugh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Atheism, Belief, Perspective, Religion, Viewpoint]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[authentic Christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[come]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[encouraging]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/?p=2829</guid>


				<description><![CDATA[<p>I have never claimed to be a very smart person. That, I am not. But what I am is a seeker of God and a follower of His way. My spiritual journey is an honest one, at least as much as is possible within me. God has changed my life. He healed me and has [&#8230;]</p>
The post <a href="https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/authentic-christianity/">Authentic Christianity</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com">Norma L. Brumbaugh</a>.]]></description>
					<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="760" height="398" src="https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/blog-christian-authenticity-760x398.jpg" class="featured-image wp-post-image" alt="" srcset="https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/blog-christian-authenticity-760x398.jpg 760w, https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/blog-christian-authenticity-300x157.jpg 300w, https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/blog-christian-authenticity-1024x536.jpg 1024w, https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/blog-christian-authenticity-518x271.jpg 518w, https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/blog-christian-authenticity-82x43.jpg 82w, https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/blog-christian-authenticity-600x314.jpg 600w, https://www.nlbrumbaugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/blog-christian-authenticity.jpg 1050w" sizes="(max-width: 760px) 100vw, 760px" /><p><span style="color: #000000;">I have never claimed to be a very smart person. That, I am not. But what I am is a seeker of God and a follower of His way. My spiritual journey is an honest one, at least as much as is possible within me. God has changed my life. He healed me and has renewed me. I owe Him a debt of gratitude. He blesses me at His table of grace and fills me with His ever-deepening love. I have received His unmerited favor. I experience His unadulterated peace and holy presence. It is lovely to be God’s child, a safe and secure place to be.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">God is the needle. I am the thread. He leads. I follow. With a willingly heart and an open attitude is how I follow my Father God. I learn from Him wherever He sees fit to take me. Praises to God.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">It is God Who makes our lives holy. He consecrates the offering and proffers blessings as He sees fit. It is our responsibility and good pleasure toward God and His anointed Head, in reverent obedience and in unveiled contriteness of heart, to adore and worship our divine Creator and Lover. In this, ‘Come unto Me,’ our turning to Him, we find ourselves willing and able to receive more of God with a greater awareness of His being through a soft and sweet joining within the intimacy of spiritual relationship.</span></p>
<p><span id="more-2829"></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">We are accepted children in the welcoming and warm embrace of our loving, heavenly Father God. This happens on God’s terms, not ours, and is meant for our own good. He knows the depth of our neediness, and He desires to meet us at the crossroads where faith meets reality in a decided, yet glorious, supernatural way.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">No religion or theological position can unmask or detail for us the tenderness of knowing God as the Lifter of our souls. It is a divine union of a Father with His child in the wonder of close, unencumbered and uncomplicated, family relationship. In Him is life eternal.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">We, far too easily, get hung up on the wrong things. What God wants from us is our heart, first, then our trust, loyalty, and obedience. What tripped up the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, can trip us up in today’s contemporary Christianity. We can pride ourselves on our ‘good lives’ and ‘good deeds’ our ‘ministries’ and our ‘outreaches,’ our church programs and building ventures, but, do we say the Jesus Prayer? “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and is our life a reflection of the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief, who said, ‘Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more’ to the one stained by her sin?</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">It was the form of worship that overtook the Pharisees’ religious hearts. They lost the abiding truth of the love of God which demonstrates itself in a love for all the people in the world.In this there is a form of hypocrisy that our religious eyes fail to see. The religious form can smack of spiritual arrogance and over-indulgent (religious) self-worship, a nauseous presence that grows inside church institutions of all religious traditions. There is a dullness that inhibits and blinds the person from knowing God and His ways. We are to come as children to Jesus, He will allow none to forbid the little children to come unto Him. Here we find innocent trust.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The church, its traditions and theology, is not in competition for primacy in a competing religious market despite what we may think or believe. That way of thinking is to have the wrong focus and gaze. Rather, it is the holy trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who, with our gaze fixed upon Them, will bring us into spiritual unity and holy union no matter the religious belief of our childhood days and past spiritual experiences, present church leanings or lack thereof. “Come, unto Me.” is simple and profound and will fully be embraced the day we physically enter God’s holy presence in that day of all days.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">God alone.</span></p>
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