GOD IS A GOOD GUY, SOMEONE WORTH KNOWING

God is a good guy and indescribably worth knowing.  Abraham was his friend; you are, too.  God wants all of us to worship Him as God Almighty, but He also wants us to understand that we are His friends. 

Never forget: Even though He is Almighty God and you are his friend, pride should have NO purchase in your heart or mind because no matter how deep your relationship is with Him, he will judge sin and wrongdoing; He will correct you, just as any engaged, loving father would do.  Having said this, in His faithfulness, love and fatherhood, you will find peace, love, wise counsel, and eternal friendship. 

The whole thing sometimes seems absurd, doesn’t it? How can one person, standing on a speck of a planet in an extravagant universe, know God and be His friend (or anything even close)? 

King David, too, pondered this question in the eighth Psalm, v. 4, “What is man that you think of him, man that you care for him?”  

After all, when was the last time the ruler of your country called and asked to be your friend?  Why would the ruler and creator of everything want to befriend you or me…to allow us to know Him? 

I don’t have that answer! All I know, from all I’ve read and from my own experiences, is that this is exactly what He wants to do. 

I can’t begin to understand what God sees in me that He considers it worth the bother. What can I possibly bring to the table?  

My conclusion is that His character is love, fatherhood and relationship. He went to the point of moving heaven and earth through His Son’s death to reconnect with you and me, because He places great value people on folks like us. 

Can it possibly be that God sees us in our defeats, battles and losses and cheers for us – not excusing our sin, but seeing the hordes of dark evil spirits working against us and impossible odds of being saved (“easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle”), he helps us, the underdogs – choosing us, caring for us?

GOD'S NATURE AND CHARACTER

The greatest thing that God has for you is Himself.  From Him, from His nature, flows everything you require: love, life, salvation, understanding, knowledge and all of His blessings.   At His death on the cross, Christ gave you, as your inheritance, oneness with God, so you can have God and enjoy the things that come from Him, from his nature and Being. God is life.

When Moses asked God His name, He defined Himself as “I AM” (Exodus 3:14).  In various other parts of the Bible He elaborates, saying He is the Living God.  In Genesis, the Bible says He created all things, including all living creatures.  He is both alive and gives life.   Life is part of His nature, Who He is; life comes from Him.  His life becomes yours when you accept Jesus as your savior. Through your acceptance of Jesus you connect directly to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit which results in the flow of Life to you.  In John 11:25, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life…” 

The message of the cross is the message of life.  It is life to life and death to death (2 COR 2:16).  It is the way out of the kingdom of death and the way out of Satan, the prince of death.  Satan hates the cross and detests the idea that you should come to know what comes to you through Jesus’ death on it.

Connected to the Source of life, you have access to life and health.  God Himself flows to you.  God’s presence and provision result in healing.  Jesus’ death specifically made a provision for your healing, allowing you to reconnect to God and through His suffering remove your pain and infirmities.

God is Love

The Bible tells us that God is love (I John 4:8).  The Bible also tells us that love is of God (I John 4:7).

 Christ Himself is God (John 1:1).  And to repeat what I wrote earlier, in the gospel of John, Philip asks Christ: "Show us the Father." Christ responded, "I have been with you for so long and yet you do not know me.  Those who have seen me have seen the Father." (John 14:9).  Read what Jesus said, how he acted and what He did.  Jesus was not a prophet (a man inside a human body who spoke God’s words), but God inhabiting a human body.  (Incidentally this is not rocket science; it was a very easy fertilization, similar to cloning, of Mary’s egg that produced a human body.  Instead of sending a human spirit inside it, He went Himself.)  The personality and character of God can be seen in Jesus.  You can see the nature of God by looking at Christ and by looking at what He did for you on the cross when He died. He RESCUED YOU.

God came for you.  He came in the only way he could to legally and factually save you by reuniting you with Himself.  He took away your sins, punishment, and the curses and the evil that exist on and in you.  The cross was not a place of defeat; on the contrary, it was a place of victory and compassion.

 Focus on and understand the sacrifice, pain and hardship and the mind-boggling, emotional experience it was for God to do what He did: come for you and me and take what we so richly deserve so He could get us back.  God wanted and wants you with all His heart.

Let me repeat: God came for you!  He is not mad at you. He came to take away what is between you and Him.  He came because of love.  He loves you.  He came to save you and to welcome you into His family.

A last comment about God’s love: understanding the immensity of creation—(billions of planets), multiple dimensions, 7 billion people on this planet—it can be hard to think that any person is special or personally loved.  However, in the infinite greatness of God He is able and does LOVE us individually and completely…and He has time for each of us as though we were the only one (see section on God’s humor).

God has a sense of humor                          

I was in Lima, Peru en route to Ecuador.  I arrived late but wanted to go out for a meal.  The room clerk advised me to leave everything in the hotel safe except what I needed, so I took $20 dollars and went on my way.  Not long after, I was assaulted and the $20 dollars stolen.   I went to the police.

I was mad. That night I complained to God.  In my heart, I wanted a Christian to comfort me, to tell me how nasty these folks were to rob me.  But what I said to God was:  “Father God, send me a Christian.”

Before my flight left the next day, I got into a taxi for a tour of the city.  The driver, an off-duty cop who was moonlighting, would not shut up. He spoke of his misadventures and, as the ride went on…sin.   I didn’t want to hear it; I wanted a tour.   But he just would not shut up. For more than two hours I listened to this cop’s sins. 

When we arrived at the airport, fed up, I asked him if he would like to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior.   Suddenly in tears, He replied “Yes!”

I led him through the sinner’s prayer – finishing just as we pulled up to the terminal.

As I reached for the door handle, God spoke to me:  “You met a Christian!”  I could hear Him laughing.  He knew that’s not what I had meant when I told Him I wanted to meet a Christian; I had wanted to be comforted.  The joke was on me.

I didn’t know how to react.  It seemed unfair. I wondered if there was any way I could return the “Touché” and play a joke on Him without His being able to know all about it beforehand. (Alas. No way!  Well maybe, using the Bible to hold His feet to what we want?)

Yes. God has a sense of humor.

CRAZY LOVE - THE LOVE FROM GOD

The love of God is aggressive, self sacrificing, merciful, faithful and caring beyond all measure, reason and emotion.  The love of God is like that of a parent who puts all hurt and disappointment behind him and pursues his child. 

God has left no stone unturned in his pursuit of you. He sent Jesus to rescue you.  And in the continuous now He never lets go. He is faithful in His efforts to continually draw you to Himself.   When you run down the wrong spirit trails, He stays with you to draw you back to Him. 

It is crazy love; deeper and better than all joyful or tragic love songs.  It is a love from the heart and mind, supported continually by aggressively kind and loving deeds.  It is the only true love that exists… and it’s yours! It’s for you.   It’s the kind of crazy love every heart desires.  And if that’s not enough, He’s also your friend.  He unselfishly wants the best for you.  He likes you, He jokes with you (you mostly don’t get it), creates weird funny stuff for you (weird “coincidences,” ironic situations, and comic events), and He encourages, empowers and makes you who you were meant to be, who you truly are. 

He is always with you, continually trying to help you. When you fail (morally or otherwise) and totally give up on yourself and want to die, He still believes in you and will put you back on the path of life. He is the cheerful, faithful friend who lifts you up.  He has your back at all times: crazy love, crazy friendship. 

From my point of view, God is crazy to love so much.  Somehow He can risk caring so much.  He can handle it. I suspect that if you and I ever truly understood the love of God we wouldn’t survive: our physical hearts would fail as a result of the magnificence of His love. Why does He care so much?? Why does He care at all??
 
God’s accepts us in His love.  He’s our Father.  In Jesus, he made us His own; He made us part of His family, whether we, or anyone else, recognize it.  We bear His name.  We are His.  He is your parent and He wants to teach, bless, and train you.   

Excerpt from Defeat Your Saboteurs

 

Spiritual Father

When we listen to what the many spirits tell us, then they become our spiritual father and we believe, think, do, receive, what those spirits want.  The spirits tell us about health, hope, happiness, being overwhelmed, sex, thievery, love, acceptance, self-image, eating, work, and everything else that has to do with our life here on earth and for eternity.  Unless we counter act the flood of information with what God says, we  think, feel, have, live what evil says rather than live, feel, have and live what God has for us. The only way I have found to get what God has for me is to know what it is (see Defeat Your Saboteurs) and then say what God has for me and then claim it... otherwise I believe and live less.  It is a continual effort because there is a continual download of information, sensations and belief from the spirit dimension. 

GOD IS NOT MEAN

I struggle with the question of God's love and forgiveness since I continually find myself doing things I do not want to do and know are wrong.

King David messed up a lot:  adultery and murder among other things.  In Psalm 103  he said:

Verse 2 and following:  “Praise the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.  The Lord works righteousness and justice for the oppressed.”

Verse 8:  “The Lord is compassionate and gracious and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love.”

Verse 11:  “For as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love for those who fear him; us.as far as the east is from the west so has he removed our transgression from ”

FAITH? WHAT IS IT?

I have thought a whole lot about faith.  I have concluded it is a very real thing.  It is part of the invisible spirit stuff that is made of spirit material and has rules that govern it just like things made of physical material have rules that govern them: density, mass, etc.   I have also concluded that without faith in the things of God and especially what Jesus did, you can't get the most important things of God.  You get some because everyone has a degree of faith even if not knowingly in the things of God.  I stated in the faith section of the book:

"Faith is a force.   The Bible says that your faith, even faith the size of an almost invisible mustard seed (Matthew 17:20), is sufficient to move mountains.  As we can push and move things in the physical dimension, so faith pushes and moves things in the spirit world (dimension).  Great faith operates like a bulldozer or crane does in the physical dimensions.  If it is big enough, obstacles are removed.                                                                                                       

Faith is a conduit.  Faith is a passageway between the spirit and physical worlds. The things (and works) of God that exist in the spirit world manifest in the physical by your faith in them.  Your faith is the channel that allows spirit things to manifest in your physical world.  Faith also is the interface where God moves on your behalf." 

A bit later, I say: "Faith is both the conduit and force which God has given humankind to bring the completed work of the cross (and all spiritual blessing in heavenly places – Ephesians 1:3) into the natural world.  It is through faith that Jesus’ completed work manifests in the natural.  By faith, the work of the cross supernaturally overpowers the natural. (The focus here is on healing, provision, and living the promised abundant life.)"

After thinking more about faith, I am even more convinced that faith is both of those things as well as the enabler that let's you go forward when things seem impossible.  Without faith, and specially faith in what the Bible says, you are limited to the natural course of events and cannot jump into God's supernatural provision for you.  When there is no hope in the natural world, there is hope and provision for you from God to help you.  Faith is how you get it.