Experiencing God

Experiencing God is experiencing Reality. For God is the ultimate Reality. The true God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is love, and has always lived the life of love. It would be silly to say that God is love, and then believe that God would live some other way. If God is love, he can never be hateful. He can never live in opposition to who he is. He would be a hypocrite if he did that. 

The only true God is revealed in Jesus (Col. 1:15). There is no other God but the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Any thought that we have of God that doesn't look like Jesus, we need to discard (John 10:30; John 14:9). God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit, look like Jesus. This is Reality!

What God has accomplished in Jesus Christ, he has accomplished for all. When God became man in Jesus, he brought human beings back to their rightful place. Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26-27). We are God-like because we are God's divine children (Ps. 82:6; John 10:34; Acts 17:28-29). 

Jesus said, "The Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives but to save them" (¹Luke 9:56). He said, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work" (John 4:34). Jesus came and did the Father's will. He said, I have finished the work that you have given me to do (John 17:4). The Father's will is to save all men. In Jesus' person, and work, Jesus did the Father's will in saving all men. When we experience God, we experience God's love for humanity. When we experience God, we experience love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). When we experience hatred, strife, anger, and envy, we are not experiencing God, we are experiencing the desires of the old, crucified nature (Gal. 5:19-21). 

So how do we experience God? First, we change our mind about God. We get to know the true God revealed in Jesus, and abandon the false god(s) that do not look like Jesus. Then, we change our mind about ourselves, and about other human beings. We know, and believe that God loves us, and has saved us. We know, and believe that we are divine children of God created in God's image, and likeness. We live in the Reality of the true God, and in the Reality of our true, authentic, self. Then we will experience God. We will experience love, joy, peace, and all the fruit of the Spirit. We will no longer experience anger, hatred, bitterness, and resentment toward others. If these thoughts, and feelings become present again, we simply remind ourselves that we are divine children of God, and that we look like God. We remind ourselves that we live, move and exist in God (Acts 17:28-29). We remind ourselves that we died with Christ Jesus, and that we were made new creations in him (Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:3-4). It's not somehow that we must get ourselves into God, or that we must somehow strive to get God to come into us. The gospel is the good news that in Jesus, God has found his way into us, and that he has brought us into himself. 


¹All scripture references are from the New American Standard Bible (NASB).

My Ragamuffin Vegetables

My leftover 'ragamuffin' veggies. 

I recently reaped the remainder of my garden's spring harvest.  I grew beets, turnips, lettuce, radicchio, basil, and artichoke. I was a virgin at growing artichoke, and they didn't fare well through the wet and hot summer here in Kentucky. The other vegetables thrived, but a few were certainly not the most stout plants I've seen; however they were still edible.

As I placed some of the leftover vegetables in a bowl to wash them, I thought about when Jesus broke bread for the crowd that was following him. Jesus had been healing people of various diseases, and crowds of people followed him because of the miracles that they had witnessed. After multiplying a couple of pieces of fish, and five loaves of bread enough to feed the crowd, he said to his disciples, "Gather up the LEFTOVER [RAGAMUFFIN] FRAGMENTS so that nothing will be lost" (John 6:12 NASB throughout, last part, my emphasis).

Why was Jesus so concerned about leftover pieces of bread and fish?  The gospel writer John tells us that there were twelve baskets of leftovers - one for each of Jesus' disciples. So maybe Jesus was teaching his disciples to focus on others before themselves. We know that they were at times bickering about who among them was the greatest, and Jesus told them that the greatest is the one who is the servant of all.

But I believe the most important reason is found in what Jesus said. "For the [TRUE] Bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives LIFE TO THE WORLD [ragamuffins and all] (John 6:33). "This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should LOSE NOTHING, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the LIFE OF THE WORLD" (John 6:39-40, 51).

Heaven and earth is interwoven in the True Bread, Jesus. There are no fragments of bread [ragamuffin pieces] outside of the True Bread.

Yes God loves everyone that might be considered a 'ragamuffin,' a 'loser,' and the 'leftovers' of society.

We're all God's children - that's the reality, despite what we might believe of ourselves, or what others may think of us.