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Does God only live in here?
Recently, I’ve seen a lot of pictures and posts on Facebook alleging that shootings, bullying, or any number of tragic or thoughtless events are just what we get when we take God out of schools, workplaces, or government.
Do we have the power to put God in a school, or to take Him out? Does God depend on whether or not employers or politicians say the Lord’s Prayer, or on if they see the Ten Commandments every day? If so, this makes God a very conditional God indeed.
Now, if this does line up with your concept of God, I’m not here to try to change your mind. In fact, regardless of what you believe, I’d love to have a conversation with you (through the comments, or you can email me) about how and why you understand God the way you do. However, in this blog, and considering the prevalence of that particular conditional view, I’d like to share a bit of how I understand and love God.
What if God isn’t anthropomorphic? What if God is actual, divine, Life itself – is actually good itself?
I don’t see God as a polite man who backs away when someone doesn’t want to say the Lord’s Prayer. The redeeming, healing power of God’s love isn’t limited to folks who say or even know a particular passage from the Bible. Rather, God is divine Love itself.
What if God shepherds and loves everything and everyone?
God is not confined to specific letters or combinations of words. God is ever present – and a deeper and more lived and loved understanding of this always brings healing. Healing is the revealing of what God has already done. Why shouldn’t we give our consent to trusting and loving God more than we trust and love anything else? Why should we give our consent to believing that we could limit God – that, essentially, we are more powerful than God?
Here’s a story from a man who, even though he started off having no interest in God, experienced full healing from a variety of physical problems. Now he’s devoted his life to a public healing practice (as have I and thousands of others around the world).
As always, this blog isn’t meant to be the end of the conversation! Please share your thoughts and questions and let’s see what we can discover together.
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:25, 26, 29-32 NIV)
Isn’t that beautiful? Not just someone’s father. YOUR Father. Your Father, Mother, God is not waiting around for you to come around. God is not tapping His toes till you say the right prayer, or looking sadly down on you, wishing you’d really believe.
What IS God doing? God is loving His children; cherishing Her little flock, who depend entirely (if sometimes unknowingly) on God.
Does all the trying really hard, or all the worrying, or all the opinionated debating, or all the religiously motivated conflict, make God love us any more, or any less? If all our thought, all our worry, can’t add even one hour to this earthly experience, then how could our struggles and conflicts make a difference for actually acquiring success? Will worrying increase our ability to rest peacefully, or help us know that we are secure?
In a posting like this, filled with questions, you might think I’d have an answer to close off with. I don’t. Instead, I have an invitation for you to open the rest of your day with. Consider what it would be like, if your life was actually the effect of the existence of divine Life itself. Don’t try to ‘manifest what you want’ or live some kind of prosperity gospel. Instead, just see what it’s like to live as the effect of a Truth that is already complete. Cease your worries, even just for five minutes, and see what it is like to LISTEN for who you are, instead of trying to create yourself.
Try living out what Jesus was talking about, in the excerpt of the Sermon on the Mount that introduced this post. See what it is like, to live secure in the knowledge that you are deeply loved.
You might enjoy this musical offering about the depth of living this secure, restful confidence.
I’ve become aware that on some web browsers, advertisements show up at the bottom of my posts. Sometimes the ads are a little silly, and sometimes they’re irrelevant, but one thing is the same for all of them: they’re not a part of my page. I never signed up to have ads, and they have nothing to do with what this page is about.
Now, this post isn’t turning into a tech rant, or anything like that. Although I’ll keep exploring what to do about the ads, I realized something really fundamental when considering this issue. There could be a host of reasons why certain particular ads show up, or why I have ads at all. But none of those reasons will actually provide any foundational justification for those ads being there.
Life obviously consists of more than webpages! But how many times in your day does something try to come up and quietly attach itself to you? Perhaps a suggestion to be frustrated with someone. Or maybe you’ve been seeing the thousands of signs up at grocery stores about vaccinations, and started to feel a little fearful of some disease. Or what about the popular one these days, of blaming the government or some political party or person for all that is wrong in our lives.
Do any of these suggestions actually carry any weight? Do any of them deserve to be there?
No.
The only thing that comes along with you is….you. All that you’re made up of, and all you ever could have, is the emanation of God. Think about it – if God is all, and God is good, then where is there room for anything else?
We’ve got a great, enduring promise of who man is and his relation to God, in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible. We’ve got records of healings throughout the Old and New Testament which speak to the power of recognizing man’s unity with God. We’ve got thousands of records of healings today, realized through a clearer understanding of man’s oneness with God as His beloved idea.
The fact is, God IS good and is everpresent. So there simply is no justification for anything other than goodness. Yes, we’re all certainly discovering for ourselves, in our own ways and words, the truth of this. But just as the science of aerodynamics has always existed, but we needed to learn how to access it more and more efficiently, so too, the truth of God’s goodness is the infinite fact of being, and we have the opportunity to understand and live that truth more and more clearly.
So, while I figure out how to stop these ads from appearing (if I can!), will you join me in un-accepting anything which has no place in your day? Anything that would limit you, or anyone, has no place in your life.
This is a great day to enjoy your freedom! I hope you’ll enjoy this video of a young man sharing his testimony of freedom. Accidents are no more justifiable than any other false label of limitation!
Enjoy this beautiful day 
