Hi There
I was sitting in my sunroom today contemplating God's purpose for my life and reading a book by Max Lucado. For more than a year I have been struggling with what does God want me to do with my life. I don't mean how do I handle the little things like work and relationships and getting older and well you know. I mean what does He want me to do!
The one thought that has been resonating with me this whole year is that God wants me to..."Help the world to see how big HE truly is". So in the next coming days, weeks, months and who knows perhaps years (or at least until I get tired of writing and/or He tells me to move on to something else) that is what I will endeavor to do with this blog. I don't know if anyone will ever read anything I post here, I'm not sure that I want them to, but I am trying to do what God has purposed me to do.
As a description I decided to describe this as an exercise in defining God which may sound ridiculous to some and arrogant to others. It may be both but time will tell. Let me just say that to me defining God will never mean settling on one and only one explanation of who or what God is. It doesn't mean arguing over pronouns. I truly don't believe that we will ever be able to define God. I do however think we can make headway in our understanding of Him by understanding more about ourselves by looking at the terms, descriptors, epithats and ways in which we acknowledge or choose not to acknowledge His presence. For my purposes and according to my beliefs I refer to God as Him. Just so we understand one another, I have no problem with you referring to God as the divine power, Her, etc. However, Christ was a man and if we start off arguing over semantics on that point, then the exercise is pointless.
I titled this space "Don't forget your common sense" because I believe that too often we talk about God and lose our ability to see Him. We want to make sure that people know what we think more than we want them to see what we believe. We want to beat faith and belief into others as if this were a war and they were the enemy. We want to yell and "be right" more than we want to share the spirit of Christ. We want to proclaim ourselves "Holy" more than we want to show ourselves "worthy". And don't get me wrong by "we", I'm not referring just to Christians, or Jews, or Muslims, I'm referring to all people of conviction. Whether its religious, personal or political conviction, we humans are notorious in our desire to "Be right".
Now a little background on me:
I am a Christian. I believe that Jesus died for my sins and He rose from the dead. I believe that we are covered by the blood of Jesus but that It the greatest sins are the ones we commit against one another because of our childish natures. I believe that little sins are the same as big ones in the eyes of God and that He makes no distinction between a sin of indifference and a sin of pride. I believe in the power of prayer and can give a testimony with the best of them. I believe that America and Americans are blessed but the blessing is not exclusive. I believe I am not a religious nut although I certainly believe that God chose me for this purpose (you may disagree). While I believe God speaks to me, to the best of my knowledge He is not telling me to do anything the least bit wacky. I have no intention of proclaiming myself the messiah, I don't claim to be the mother of the second coming, I can't fly and I don't know the future. I don't claim to be perfect and if I had all the answers I'd be too rich and too busy to start a blog of any kind.
To understand and enjoy this space you must understand or at least be open to the idea that
God is not a man that He should lie and He is not a concept that can be contained. Perhaps by putting down my own thoughts, I will gain greater awareness of the ways in which I limit God in my life and learn to take Him out of the box. My hope and desire with this exercise is that people will ultimately be challenged in their belief of God, that we will ultimately be forced to stop trying to get God to fit our construct but open our eyes to see that HE is without construct. There is nothing that we can conceive of that God cannot and does not exceed. So whether the subject is politics, gender, race, economics or alien life, I believe that we can find God in the discussion. I don't expect that we will all agree but I do expect we will at least listen.
Sorry for the rambling but I'm excited to get started and trying to contain far too much in a simple welcome.
Happy reading,
Tracy
