Welcome to our Blog
April 17th, 2008 in Announcements
Bayside of Woodland is about God and His community. We have created this blog in hopes that you will join in a conversation as a community. We will post short writings and invite you to comment. Submit a post and we will approve it to go live. So join us as we hear one another, encourage, and build community.
I have been trying to learn more about God this past year and what He is doing in my life and in our Church community and I would just like to share some thoughts and maybe carry on a spiritual dialog with anyone who would like to respond.
Why is our appetite for God so much weaker than our appetite for solutions to life’s problems? We ask God to bless us and take away our problems rather than using our problems to find God. Do you catch yourself praying selfishly? Just some thoughts, Norm
Are you resting confidently in the care of a God who has given you no guarantees of good health, a faithful spouse, obedient children, or an adequate income? God’s love will make a difference in your life! Yes we do pray selfishly, we do ask God to bless us and take away our problems, but He wants us to use our difficulties to find Him, to know Him, to intimately get aquainted with Him. Do you live with the nagging fear that something terrible might happen tomorrow, something you won’t be able to handle? When you are the in middle of intolerable pain, there can be a joy beneath the suffering because you know that God’s goodness will one day swallow up all the badness in life! Could there be a dimension to knowing Christ that effectively addresses all the root causes beneath the problems with which you struggle? What do you think? Norm
God is actively at work all the time. 24/7. He never sleeps He never slumbers. Me on the other hand I stumble and fall all the time. Some of the things that cause me to stumble and fall in my life are my emotional health, my circumstances (and how they affect my happiness), my wife’s health, my business success, (which is not doing so well in this difficult economy!) my relationship with my children. I have been a Christian for almost 50 years and I’m tired of just asking God to answer my requests, I want to Know Him! I want to be intimately aquainted with Him. I don’t want to just say hello and 5 minutes later say goodbye. Life is not about a plan to get the blessings I want in this life. I need Jesus….only Him in the good times and the bad…I desperately cry out for Jesus. Not to just take away my circumstantial problems but to have mercy and grace on my life when those problems persist and to let me have a deeper understanding of true joy…Christ alone. What are you thoughts? Norm
Norm,
I understand just what you are saying. I’m not know for my patience, but I am learning to wait upon Him. I’ve recently become a compulsive listener to Mark Shultz’ song, “I Am” and it puts all my wants and needs into perspective. How many of the names of God has He shared with us so that we will know and understand who He is? In each name He has shared with us (I think that there are a whole lot more, but we wouldn’t be able to grasp them), He tells us how He loves us so much. He wants us to come to him, Abba, Father, for every big and little and annoying and precious request. To ask of Him, requires trust on our part, and He will always answer. You’re right that a 5-minute conversation with the maker of our hearts and the universe will create the intimacy our souls crave. A 5-minute conversation is like saying “Hifine!” It may be a greeting, but there is no depth. So, how do you think that we can create a closeness that goes beyond the Santa stage ( I want this, and this…) and closer to the 1:1 relationship that He wants to have with us?
You’re both right.
I’ve been wrong about how to judge spiritual progress in myself and others. For a long time I assumed that the best indicator was the heart of service to God that only comes from His supernatural injection of grace to change out motives and attitudes. That’s wrong, because in those conclusions I’m assuming that the activities I do in His name have some merit to bring me into better “standing” with Him. At best, rating a person’s (including my own) devotion to service isn’t the scale that God applies to us. It’s far more important that our relationship with Him is strong than that our time is spent serving in His name. The Body of Christ is about relationships, and I’ve too long spent a lot more time seeking opportunities for service rather than relationship.
I’m glad we’re on this recent message series focusing on the importance of committing to a daily meeting with God in the Word and in prayer. It’s a good thing to keep the key element to maturity in front of us as often as is practical. Getting the old nature killed off is hard work, but feeding the new nature will help us gain the gold medal (“…for I am crucified with Christ, but yet I live.”)
The recent sermon series topic “Nobody Trains for Bronze” is doubly appropriate in this season of the Olympics, and this season of many at Bayside Woodland rededicating themselves to that daily head-to-head meeting with God and the Bible. I’m looking forward to more of the same from John and to seeing from myself better success starving the old nature in my own life as I feed the renewed nature by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Relationships…With God, ourselves, and those around us. When we die and stand before God we will not be thinking about that beautiful car we bought, or that business deal we wished we would have made, we will be thinking about relationships. We’re very much like the prodigal son telling his father to give him his inheritance…he could care less about his father and being with him! So much more is available to us in Jesus than we can imagine. We experience so little of the joy that sustains us in suffering and the hope that anchors us in difficult circumstances when we approach Him only with requests instead of the complaint-ending awe that His presence brings. Life will never work well enough to create the joy we desire. Relationships with others will not bring the complete joy we search for, only relationship with Christ. Is there a dimension to knowing Christ we have not discovered? We tend to focus on what others can do to satisfy our needs, I’m hurting so you must have failed. I don’t think I will ever get life to work right, I’m not sure it is supposed to until heaven. I want to pursue a deeper relationship with Christ rather than living for a better life in this world. It’s not easy to re-focus your mind and energy this way, but it really does take the pressure off your shoulders.