Living what we believe

Mildred Lisette Norman, an American peace activist, said that we should live what we believe. James, the brother of the Lord, said it this way, "Faith without works is dead." He said to be a doer of the word and not merely a hearer.

If we believe in a living God, should we not have a living relationship with Him?

If we believe in a personal God, should we not have a personal relationship with Him?

How do persons relate? Is it not through words in conversation?

If we believe this, we should live this. We should speak to God, expecting Him to respond to us...in words...in a conversation.

But many are considered insane when they say they converse with God.

Insane.

Now what could be more sane than conversing with God? Whose mind is clearer: the one who ignores the voice of God, or the one who enjoys it?

Our belief comes from hearing, and our hearing from the word of God, according to the Apostle Paul. And the Lord Jesus said that we live by the very words that come from the mouth of God, not from the finger of God, not from the writing of God. In fact, Jesus said, "It is written," not "it is spoken," "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

I emphasize this because we in western culture emphasize writing, exalting the written word above the spoken word. But the written is a servant of the spoken. We write when we cannot speak. We write to make permanent what was spoken. God spoke the heavens and the earth into existence. He didn't write it into existence. What is written is a record of what was spoken.

God speaks.

Do we believe this?

Then we should live this.

Is God an "Absentee Landlord?" (Part 2)

Some say they only feel like God is absent, that it only seems like he's an absentee landlord. These acknowledge this as a dishonorable lie. They resist it.

Yet others speak with the same venom of the serpent in the movie mentioned previously. They even resent those who experience God's presence daily, even in adversity. They shun the ones who maintain communion, the very ones who could help them fight the deception. Those who feel far from God can be helped by those who feel near. Indeed, if I draw near to God, and God draws near to me, then those who draw near to me indeed draw near to God.

Of course the ones experiencing divine loneliness need nor want a mediator among men and women. They don't want a go-between. They want to know God directly, for and by themselves. This is good. Until then, they accept indirect communion, for whatever reason.

But those who revile God as distant need to be reminded of the truth:

He is not far from any of us.

His son came from heaven to be one of us' dying and rising from the dead for us.

His Spirit came to live inside of us.

This is far from absentee.

Some shun the "personal experiences" of those who are close to God, making it clear that "their experience is not every one's experience."

Forget the experiences of the so called few, if they must be forgotten. God made us all and is near us all, according to Paul. Jesus died for all, for every man and woman. This should never be forgotten or taken for granted. Creation and salvation are not the actions of an absentee landlord.

God is near to all, felt or unfelt. Of course those who want to feel his presence want a good thing, and will receive what they want. They should settle for nothing less. But while they wait, they should not dishonor the one who never left them nor forsook them. They should honor him, the invisible one; the one closer to them then the breath in their nostrils. He breathes into their nostrils the breath of life. He is their very life. There is nothing closer to the living then their life and breath itself.

Where is God? He is in every breath you and I take. For it is written, "The Spirit of the Almighty has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life."

Is God an "Absentee Landlord?"

"Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughin'....He's a SADIST! He's an absentee landlord! Worship that? NEVER!"   Al Pacino as the devil in "The Devil's Advocate"

I left out the profanity, though I considered leaving it because, well, it's the devil. He's profane. The movie gives one of the best depictions of the evil one I've seen, though he's still too charming.
The key point is that the devil, the accuser of God, calls God an "absentee landlord," a description that I've actually heard from the mouths of Christians. Words attributed to Satan come from the mouths of those who claim to be his children.

Now of course the movie is fiction. But is this better? Is it better that even nonbelievers know that considering God an "absentee landlord" dishonors him?

I've actually had an absentee landlord, who came to be known as "the voice." I never saw him or met him. We only talked on the phone. But I could talk to him. If I sought him with all of my heart, I would find and talk to my absentee landlord. Yet God is made out to be worse than even this. Those who accuse him, with the devil, of being an absentee landlord, make God out to be even more absent. They make God out to be unreachable, no matter how hard the seeker seeks him.

In doing this, they make him a liar, because he promises to be found by those who seek him with all of their hearts.

This is the irony: God is and will be absent from those who consider Him so, from those who doubt his presence and his desire to be present.

Where is God? He is with those who refuse to believe the lie of his absence.

The first words of the Lord Jesus

These are the first recorded words of the Lord Jesus Christ:



"Why were you looking for me? Didn't you know that I had to be in my father's house?"



He was twelve. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, as well as others who travelled with them, went to Jerusalem for an annual festival. When the festival ended, Joseph and Mary thought Jesus was with them.

They thought they knew where he was.

Hundreds of years before this, in Israel's history, two men were unaware of God's presence, or absence. Jacob declared his ignorance of the Lord's presence, after experiencing the "stair way to heaven." And Samson awoke as he had done before, expecting to easily defeat those who sought to take his strength. But he did not know that the Spirit of God had departed from him.

So it was with Mary and Joseph. Twelve years earlier, angels came to shepherds announcing the birth of God's son. Nine months before this, one angel told Mary of the birth of Immanuel, God with her and Israel. God was in Israel, the son of a Jewish girl.

He was also at a Jewish festival. But who truly knew who he was, or where he had to be?