Stressed! ... We say we love God and each other... but is this "love" God's love? or the enemy's deceptive replacement? Is the OT God different than the NT God? And other wonderings...

28 February 2010

Oh dear. What if I’m wrong? (Yeah, me too…)
(My stomach is so sick…. Been in pain the last few days, then feeling really ill last night… and now dizzy…. I thought I was maybe getting past being “stressed” … that maybe I had really learned to trust in You… but it seems I have an awful long way to go, after all, in that department…)

This morning we actually had our street family gathering after breakfast outside on the lawn… first time it was warm enough to do that since fall tie… (still pretty chilly, though, lol!)…. (it was awesome… folks who’d come for breakfast stayed, others passing by joined in)… and we talked about faith… and how initially it is adherence to an idea, I guess… but then it needs to turn into action, based on that “belief” … and I’m thinking, well, if I really “believed” and had “faith” … why am I having these stress symptoms (I’m pretty sure that is what they are)?

I’ve been reading this book, The Misunderstood God (by Darin Hufford) about what we (North American church, particularly) have come to “believe” about God… and how an awful lot of it is really contrary to the God of love to whom we are introduced in 1 Corinthians 13… because we see “God’s love” according to the world’s understanding of love… which is generally the opposite of God’s Love… in fact, the “world’s love” is really so often demonic: satan’s replacement for God’s love… and so selfish!!

And as I’ve been reading that book, I do see some of the “why’s” of what goes on in too many churches… why people constantly say they love God and love each other… but they sure don’t act like it…. (And, oh my goodness… and this is the painful part… I see myself getting deceived by this false love, too… oh dear…) (I’ve been scared to read the book… who is it that doesn’t want me reading it??? Why???)

Some people I know seem to, for the most part, avoid the Old Testament… and some book writers (maybe this one, too?) seem to kind of scorn the image of the God of the Old Testament (or at least ignore it/Him)… but I wonder… if it’s the same God, how can we ignore what the Old Testament reveals?

Did Jesus really “change everything?” (There seems to be a rapidly growing belief in universalism which says that a God of love, in the end, will bring all people to Himself… and they claim to “prove” it from the Bible…) (I’m getting awfully nervous about reading anything other than Your word, Father… but there seems to be a lot of scorn about that – focusing on Your word rather than the words of men – too… and I can understand that scorn if a person has not really encountered You, talked with You, experienced You in their reading of Your word… but once one has really known You and experienced You and Your love, how could they ever “scorn” time spent in Your word, when it is really time spent with You?!?! Well, I suppose that a lot of people haven’t really met You yet, personally, there in Your word… haven’t really personally met Your Word (You! Jesus!)… I know that, for me, it really was, for the most part, mostly just a lot of nice “stories” for a lot of years… though now, I can hardly imagine how that could have been, though I do remember!)