Thanks for stopping by. If I may, how did you happen across my site?

I don’t worry near as much as I used to for almost the same reasons. I struggle at this time with how much of my thoughts I SHOULD put out there for the general public. I’m working on a post now that will explain (hopefully) why I’m tentative about publishing these things. It’s called “Pearls Before Swine” and it has nothing to do with the idea what I was raised with.

I like to use this analogy: God has one foot on the beginning of time, and one foot at the end of time and He sees all things as they are (meaning present). We Pentecostals at times can only understand blessings when it comes to God interaction. So let’s stretch out this time line. When it comes to bells and whistles interaction God reaches down and touches us. For example there was a time in my life when I couldn’t walk a few feet without loosing feeling in my legs, and horrible pain racking my body. One a Sunday night a friend prayed for me, after being prayed for the constant flow of pain left, and I was able to walk without the constant assistance of a cane.

Again picture the time line, the feet of God. Ok… When we pray for something I feel that the pray is immediately answered in God’s time. Remember God sees everything in the present. God takes your prayer and places it in future on the time line when it will be most effective, and when He receives the glory and testimony. When this happens I feel that when we finally arrive in the time where God has placed that answer to the prayer and we are not actively looking for it, the occurrence will be a natural turn of events. No bells and whistles, no ticker tape, but a moment equivalent of breathing in and out and blinking.

We have a tendency to expect the bells and whistles all the time, or that God inspired a large blinking arrow saying “you are here”, with a bright line leading to another large blinking arrow saying “ this were you need to be.” Spiritual growth is a personal thing that demands personal devotion. Its personal devotion that builds relationship with God, that relationship builds faith. Faith knows God is who he says He is, and will do what he says He will do. The testimony of God is written in the Bible. Therefore I believe if the Bible is held in question, then God is held in question. The great thing about God is that he doesn’t have to prove himself to anyone, he is perfect.

God is only being in existence whose existence is within him. He is uncaused He just exist, while other beings look for existence outside themselves. We are caused, we are created therefore our search for existence is outside our selves.

God will not always use the large blinking arrows; He wants you to search out on your own salvation with. You search activating personal devotion through prayer, reading His Bible, and observing. By doing this I find moments when my decision are made by that still small voice in my heart telling me this is the way you need to go. Yes it feels like I made the decision on my own, but simultaneously I feel deep within my being that it was God breathed. I don’t see the large fire-cracker show with the awesome grand finale, but what I do experience is that small Pop for that single black cat firecracker in the back of my heart that tells me this is right.
Finally I would like to end by saying: No, agnosticism is not similar to belief. To believe one must rest secure confidence in another. Therefore agnosticism does not allow one to fully rest securely in the knowledge of a supreme being. I submit that if one believes in right and wrong, then one believes in morals, if one believes in morals one must believe in a moral law giver, if one believes in a moral law giver, then one must believe in a divine first cause.

If it is the latter – the question that I feel compelled to ask: if we don’t truly comprehend his interaction, then what is the point?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the supernatural and ability for God to interact with us. In fact, I even expect it BUT I don’t hear booming bass-toned voice in my head telling me what I need to do or what I should do.

So, is agnosticism often similar to belief but the difference between the two is the faith that the belief is a catalyst for?

My brother may or may not use scripture references to prove his points, and his reasons for doing so I can wrap my head around and understand. Me on the other hand, I use references with gentle care. Please do not read a vindictive spirit when drawing out the Bible, which I like to reference as the Holy Text, Sword of the Lord, or the Word of God.

In Mark 14, you will read where Jesus and His disciples have gone to the garden to pray. After a time the disciples are found sleeping 3 separate times, the last time Jesus finds them in this sleeping state he tells them “sleep on”. Then the crowd arrives to arrest Jesus, a servant takes a step to close to Jesus, Mark plainly fingers Peter as the one who pulls his sword and cuts an ear off the unsuspecting servant. What we have witnessed is a sleeping follower of Jesus Christ, who has been forced to wake up to witness the divine will of God, has misinterpreted the circumstance, and pulled his sword and it used it irreverently. In using his sword Peter has caused a neighbor’s hearing to be altered. Peter has shown to us that a sleeping Christian can improperly use the holy text to alter the hearing or even take the spiritual life of a neighbor. It is amazing to me how some can easily justify the spiritual abortion of the innocent. While on the other hand murder those who thirst for spiritual knowledge, labeling the murder under “snuffing out the seed of rebellion.”

In conclusion, I received an email with a quote from T.F. Tenney “Christianity is not defined by its disciples, but by our passion.” Christianity is defined by the passion of the real Christian, who is not asleep, that is awake and resolved to love the Lord God with all his heart, soul, mind, strength, and with every fiber of his being. While simultaneously loving his neighbor as he loves himself. With this passion, the great commission that we have been given by Jesus, to preach the good news, is effectively done. The Irish evangelist Gypsy Smith once said, “There are five Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian, and some people will never read the first four.” What Gospel are you presenting to your neighbour, a list or a life, as proof of the redeeming power of Jesus Christ?

I don’t disagree with much that you have said. I guess my issue is that the word “tradition” has been so… umm… mutated, I guess, to force other people to abide by “my” opinions.

I’ll admit that I’m so anti-man-made traditions that I tend to question all traditions. To the point that, outside the words of Jesus, why are the rest actually considered “tradition”? Were they tradition before and just written? Can we trust the humanity of that time to have actually written what Jesus would have written? We can… but do we have to? Why?

I have no issue in reading Paul and following his words… the question becomes why do I have to?

I read something once where the author (I believe it was Brian McLaren) said that we all to often read the words of Jesus through the eyes of Paul instead of reading Paul through the eyes of Jesus. Which is along the same lines of why do we take Paul as the end-all of the conversation of apostolic tradition? What about the scriptures that didn’t make the cut? If we’re to find tradition, shouldn’t we take into account that the only reason they aren’t tradition is because an over-reaching authority decided to make them “castaways”.

And then there is the whole idea that many Jews followed, according to law, that said that the only way that a person could actually teach scripture was to have been blessed by a Rabbi and have taken decades to accomplish a knowledge of it.

I have a friend who believes that a person should not teach at all unless they are able to take the scriptures back to the original intent; not just definitions but understanding of the Jewish culture to the extent that the understanding of all symbolism is understood. For instance the parable of marriage that Jesus spoke of that we often take to mean a rapture — when it is completely different than what we see of it. But that’s an entirely different aspect of the parable.

There are times, though, that I realize I have my own traditions. And most of them are the same as every other Christian… I tend to keep those traditions to myself simply because I refuse to step into position that Jesus should rightfully hold; that of mediator between man and God.