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Random ThoughtsThis page contains random thoughts on God, and our relationship with him.
Why does our spirit need to be rebirthed: In the Bible, man is composed of three parts: flesh, soul, and spirit. The spirit is the part of man that could have communion with Gods Holy Spirit. In the garden of Eden, God communed directly with Adam and Eve, Gods Holy Spirit to their spirit. Adam and Eve ate of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. By doing this, sin (rebellion) entered into their hearts. God, being perfect, can not commune with anything that contains sin. Spirit can only connect to spirit. To God, since Adam and Eve both had sin in their hearts, their spirit's were effectively dead. One of the major things that Jesus does is to rebirth or resurrect or spirit. This allows us to hear God, just as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. The more we listen to our spirit and the more we allow Gods Holy Spirit to connect with our spirit, the more we can hear God speaking to us. Unfortunately, there are unclean spiritual beings in the world. The best way to make sure that you aren't deceived by an unclean spirit communicating with your spirit is to test everything against the Word of God (Bible). Why do we need to be refilled with the Holy Spirit: My best guess is that it's a design feature. If we didn't leak, then when we were exposed to unclean spirits, we would not ever be able to get rid of their pollution. What does the Holy Spirit do: The Holy Spirit is called the helper, and he also reveals Jesus to us. The Holy Spirit helps us when we pray by translating our prayers to God the Father. The Holy Spirit softens our hearts. The Holy Spirit helps us become more like Jesus. The Holy Spirit convicts us of Sin. The Holy Spirit reveals the heart of Jesus and God the father. Why should we pray? 1. God wants a personal relationship with us. Prayer is our way of interacting with our Creator. 2. Our requests create a context for God working in our life. If God did everything for us before we asked, we would not appreciate him, or how much he loves us. 3. God wants us to learn more about him. By forcing us to talk (pray) to him, we learn more about him. For a more complete treatment of this subject go to Prayer What good is the Bible: The Bible reveals the attributes of God. The Bible reveals the personality of God. The Bible reveals the laws that govern the spiritual world that we live in. The Bible reveals Gods love for us. Prayer similar to pulling the trigger on a gun I believe that God wants us to learn about the family (Family of God) business. The best way is to come to a better understanding of God's perfect will. My experience is that God will sometimes reveal things that are on his heart, things that he would like to have changed here on earth. He then gives me the opportunity to pray to him that these changes would happen. In effect, you get to pull the trigger of a loaded gun. God loaded the gun, and put it in a vice so that it could only point where he wanted it to point. God then get's your attention, and points to the trigger. It only takes a simple prayer to pull the trigger. This entire exercise is meant to show his heart, that is where the pistol is pointed. It also shows me his love for me, in that he is spending time and effort to show me his heart. Baptism I believe that Baptism (water) demonstrates publicly that someone has accepted Jesus as their Lord and master. It's a way of publicly "crossing" over from death to life. I do not believe that how it is done is important. It doesn't matter if you are dunked or sprinkled, what really matters is a public confession of faith in Jesus. Communion I believe that when we partake of communion, we are partaking in some fashion of the spirit and substance of Jesus. According to 1 Corinthians 11:23-33 , Communion is to remind us of the death of Jesus. Paul goes to great lengths to communicate the seriousness of one of the only two ceremonies that Christians have. He reminds us of the consequences of taking communion in an "unworthy manner". It is obvious that some of Paul's concern is that the Corinthians we're forgetting what communion was all about. They we're forgetting that the ceremony was about Jesus, and not an excuse to get drunk. That said, one has to wonder why there are consequences of taking it in an unworthy manner. Baptism is the only other ceremony that Christians have, and there is no stated consequence of doing it wrong. So, why the serious consequences of taking communion in an unworthy manner? If communion is just a ceremony, what's the big deal? I believe the "big deal" stems from the elements of the ceremony. Jesus teaches about the elements of communion in John 6:53. There it says "So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.". So, what does this mean? What is the flesh and blood of Jesus? In the Old Testament, blood symbolized the life of an animal. The life of an animal is sometimes equated with it's spirit (Genesis 7:22, John 6:63). From these verses, we can infer that the blood of Jesus represents his spirit. So, what does the flesh represent? In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, it talks about the Word, and Jesus. The Word became flesh (John 1:14) as Jesus. In this case, we can not say that the Word is a direct reference to the Bible. The Bible is a static thing, and Jesus is quite dynamic. So, in this case, we can only infer that the flesh is in some way the "substance" of the Word, or Jesus. So, what does it mean to partake of the substance and spirit of Jesus. I believe that communion is a spiritual meal. That when we partake of the elements, we are partaking of in a real sense of the substance and spirit of Jesus. What you eat affects your spirit. If we want to grow spiritually, we need to eat things that build up our spirit. The only thing that does that is Jesus. If communion is a spiritual meal where we partake of the Spirit and Subtance of Jesus, then one could understand if God got upset if someone didn't take it seriously. I suppose at some level, if we partake in an unworthy manner, we are wasting the blood and body of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:27). In summary, I believe that communion is a spiritual meal that feeds the spiritual part of a man. The focus of the meal must be Jesus. It is his blood and broken body that make the meal possible. It is by his sacrifice that our souls may be saved, and that we can have eternal life. It is by partaking of the Blood and Flesh of Jesus that we can be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). Matthew 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24, Luke 22:19,20, John 1:14,John 6:53-56, 1 Corinthians 11:23-33 |
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