Category Archives: SPIRITUAL INTEREST

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The Human Need for God and How it Influences and Pertains to Real Life

Why do we need God? I don’t think we consider this question very often. “Need” sounds weak, like a problem or a weakness. I believe we need God, and we cannot exist without Him. It is not a weakness, though, it is a reality. We need God to make sense of this world and our part in it.

I asked myself this morning, why do I need God? Why do others need God? What is it about God that I need and find important in life? The list in this blog contains the thoughts that came to me immediately, one right after another. I do need God. I need Him every second, minute, hour, and day. He is part of my life in a concrete and living way. I know I could live life without embracing His presence, but His presence would still embrace me even if it was unrecognized by my belief system. His reality is very “present” with me. I see Him in little and big details all around me. Even the symmetry of life and the intricacy of its mathematical composition speaks to me of His being here with us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

I think the god of Science has robbed the secular world of the wonder of God. Science has replaced God in the minds of intellectual society. Thinking people tend to discount the religious belief of others not realizing its basis in truth. It is a shame. Most people who have an awareness of God are thinking people too. Some are great intellects who brave the exclusion with courage and fortitude. They speak when the world mocks them. It is a shame that they have been devalued in the estimation of polite society.

I see the beauty of our human giftedness as a semblance that originates in the giftedness of God. He creates every day of the year. Each new fertilized seed that springs to life is one of His creations. The sticker label says, “Made by God.” He has made us in His own image. That is why we create, and we will always create. It is a human quality that we have been given from Above. We are separate from other created creatures in our human ability to create and to improve on our creations with more created expressions, tools, and mechanisms. It is an amazing thing. While I was driving on the freeway yesterday, I was imagining human travel one hundred years from now, people coasting along in driverless vehicles. I pictured people moving in the sky with self-propelled individual crafts, hovering like a helicopter when necessary. I’m sure the technology is present now, just the managing of space travel is problematic; how would we keep from crashing into each other?

God created us to need Him. We cannot operate independent of His help and benefits. Our very lives need His breath of life. Our hearts need His perpetual life-giving source. Our earth needs the sun’s energy, earth’s transpiration, and life-giving nutritional substances. We wouldn’t get far without God’s intervening on our behalf. Every so often, God shakes it up a bit so we will remember that He is the One Who is in charge. We are independent creatures bent on our own wants and needs easily forgetting the God of the Cosmos. God gives and gives to all of us people.

Here are a few areas where we need the touch of God in response to our physical, mental, and emotional human need and development.

  • We need God for the wisdom He imparts to us on a daily basis.
  • We need God to help us with the trials in life. He gives to us in an a sundry of ways.
  • We need God because we need His love. His love is unconditional. He loves because He personifies love. God IS love. It is who He is, His nature and being.
  • We need God because we are weak and unstable and easily influenced. He speaks truth to us, and He gives us strength.
  • We need God for health, life, and energy. He is the divine Giver of all. Without Him, there would be nothing. We would be without life and without hope.
  • We need God to bring us into a right relationship with Him. Through Jesus Christ, we find redemption for our unrighteous spiritual condition. The lost is found and then given a new status with God. It is called eternal life.
  • We need God for us to understand the nature of truth. He gives us understanding. He enlightens our thinking. He gives us truth. His Word, The Holy Bible, gives the essence and full measure of His truth. It is a road-map that shows us the way to live a life well-lived and victorious.
  • We need God to know the way. God is the director of our destiny. A life yielded to Him will find the meaning of “journey.” We are strangers, pilgrims, not meant to live the totality of our lives here on earth. This is just the introduction. We are made for God. The journey here is but a foretaste of the better and fuller life to be lived in the hereafter in glory with God, the place where we find that which is everlasting eternal.
  • We need God to help us. We need to heal, we need hope, we need faith, we need fortitude, we need strength, we need friends, we need solid relationships, we need family and children, we need ideas and new beginnings, we need food and shelter, clothing and resources, we need jobs and skills, we need a church family and people to love us and want us, we need a reason to live and positive self-worth and intrinsic value, we need purpose and kindness, strength and courage. There is so much that we need. We need forgiveness, we need second chances and new beginnings, we need removal of painful damaged emotions, removal of hurt and difficult problems, freedom from depression, overcoming of addictive behaviors, freeing in our inner person, better relationships, better situations, stronger character, positive mentors and teachers, people who believe in us. We need so much. We are a needy people. It is hard to admit, but it is true.
  • We need to find God. We need to reach out to Him. We need to ask Him to reveal Himself to us. We need to understand what relationship with God looks like. We need genuine life in God, not false ideas that fall flat and are worthless in value. We want to know that life is better with God. We want to see Him manifest Himself into a living relationship with us. We need Him to infuse His character and His likeness into our character and our likeness.
  • We need God to show us how to love well and how to love others with unconditional love. Love finds its essence in God. We would not know love without God giving us the capacity to know and absorb love. He is the greatest and purest example of love. He demonstrates, through the life of Christ, that it is in the poor things of the world that one can find richness that fills and has lasting value. The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, & 7, unfold the core teachings of this type of purity of lifestyle and meaningful existence.
  • We need God for His life-giving sustenance. He is living water, living bread, living light, living peace, living life.
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Atheist or Christian? A Matter of Belief and Viewpoint

Belief or unbelief, Believer or Unbeliever, believing or unbelieving. . . .There are many ways to say it, but it can be reduced to a state of belief.

Yet, again, I read through another blog written by a former minister of the gospel who is now a professing and sharp-tongued critic of the faith. His world view is that of a rather new atheist who has found his peace in non-belief. I read his words and, actually, appreciate his honesty and transparency. His views along with others I have been reading who left the faith and have embraced atheism, shares a bitterness toward what they once believed and proclaimed but now whole-heartedly reject.

Even though I find it disheartening and sad beyond measure, I do somewhat understand their angst and desire to be removed, disconnected, and distant from what they once proclaimed. Christianity takes heart-belief not religious conformity. I can see anyone dissing that from their life. It offers emptiness. The falseness was overwhelming to them.

In my life, it worked just the opposite. I was floundering in my faith, feeling empty and lacking in joy, when I gave up. I couldn’t sustain the effort and hated the “going through the motions” that scripted religiosity serves to a person. But I loved God. I knew there had to be a better way. I asked God to show Himself to me and to change me.

Everything changed as a result of that prayer of sincerity. God came up close and personal. My spiritual life went through a radical renewing, I came to lose interest in Christianity that is performance driven. Instead I came to Jesus in heart, soul, and being. Then He gave me His love, and I accepted it. God’s love is earth-shattering real. I wish all would partake of it.

What drove some Christians into godless atheism, effectively drove me into God-inspired realism for lack of a better term. I didn’t want to continue living as I was, with a faith that is lacking in life and substance. The atheist and I have that in common. However, I went “to” because I still believed in God and His goodness, but they went “away” because they no longer believed in the truth and realness of God as a good God or as an entity who offers hope and life.

Resurrection is what I embraced in my inner self, my spiritual life. On this Easter weekend, I can truthfully say, you and I can go through our own crucifixion experience, where we die to self and become alive to God. It is so alive that it causes “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

“The love of God is greater far, than tongue or pen can ever tell.”

Why do they no longer believe in God? It’s hard to explain, but if the thing is no longer “real” to someone, then it is useless and lacks in value. Add to that the “harsh” side of rigid views, people that only “love” those who are like them. And you have something that is easy to loathe because it lacks a genuine spirit of love.

Love is what brought God to man and man to God.

It is Easter weekend. I went to a three hour Passion Play last night in Elk Grove. The day before, I read the complete offering of the atheist I mentioned in the first paragraph. The contrast is great. As I watched the play, I kept thinking of former Christian believers who no longer share the faith. I was trying to see it through their eyes, and, quite frankly, it wasn’t that hard to see. One can’t help but wonder about it since there are so many who have “turned away” as Christians like to term it (but I prefer not to). I take their views as valid, and ask myself many questions. Christ needs to be real and life-giving or it is a mockery.

The Christ Story is a hard one. It isn’t neat and tidy or even happy. The love of God, when it is seen as brutal or belittling, cannot reach the soul. Is God’s love, real love? Is it pure? Are we at liberty to embrace His love? I cannot answer that question for you. It is a personal question one must grapple with.

I  do know this, though, God cannot be embraced through another person’s beliefs. It is through your own. I find God to be life-giving life-changing real. He completes my life. I would be much less a person without Him. I don’t believe I am making my emotions become who I am. It is not false or a facade. We live in a cursed world, one that is angry and struggling. The cross of Jesus Christ provides a way of escape for in Him new life is given.