Well, this will wrap up chapter one of this book.  Some of you have probably read these suggestions in other books, I know I have, but sometimes it is nice to get a reminder.  Some people word things differently and a lightbulb just goes off for us.  So, here we go.   Here are the three practical steps for thirsting.

1.  Meditate on Scripture:  Now I have heard this many times.  “Note that we are to ‘meditate,’ not merely read.  Without the addition of meditation, warned the great man of prayer and faith George Muller, ‘the simple reading of the Word of God’ can become information that ‘only passes through our minds, just as water passes through a pipe.”  I needed this reminder as I would read the bible but then sometimes I would have to or choose to jump right into my day.  And also as I get older I need to meditate longer in order to remember things  LOL.  I like this next sentence.  ” if we don’t absorb some of it we will be affected by none of it.  And surely, if we should absorb anything that courses through our thinking, it should be inspired words from Heaven.  Without absorption of the water of God’s Word, there’s no quenching our spiritual thirst.  Meditation is the means of absorption.  Here comes some good practical and even fun, creative ways to absorb.  “Spend 25-50 persent of your Bible intake time meditation on some verse, phrase, or word from our reading.  ask questions of it.  Pray about it. Take your pen and scribble and doodle on a pad about it.  Look for at least one way you could apply it or live it.  Linger over  it.  Soak your sould slowly in the water of the Word, and you’ll find it not only refreshes you, but prompts a satisfying thirst for more.”

2.  Pray through Scripture:  “After you read through a section of Scripture, pray through part of that same passage. …”  It goes on to say that after your reading to go on to the book of Psalms.  This book was the God-inspried hymnbook of Isreal.  In the New Testament it is written twice (Eph 5:19 and Col 3:16) that we should sing psalms.

3.  Read thirst-making writers:  “After the God-breathed words ofthe Bible, read the time-tested works of those Christian writers who wrote with the thirst-making pen.”  Some listed here are: The Valley of Vision, Pilgrim’s Progress, books by John Owen, Richard Sibbes, Thomas Brooks, John Flavel, A.W. Tozer, John Piper’s Charles Spurgeon and there are so many others.

I really enjoyed the first chapter of this book and will be working on doing better with my devotions.  I hope this helped or even reinspired you or maybe it spoke to you in just the right way.  Whatever it is, spending time with God should be most important and hopefully not rushed as we journey along in this hectic world.  And trust me, I am right in there with you in the worldly battles of time, schedules, others interuptions and on and on.  But we must keep perservering.  Have a Great day in the Lord.

Tidbits from “Show Me The Way”  (readings for each day of Lent)  By Henri J.M. Nouwen

The tradition I handed on to you in the first place, a tradition which I had myself received, was that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried; and that on the third day, He was raised to life, in accordance with the scriptures; and that He appeared to Cephas; and later to the Twelve; and next He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time…This is what we preach and what you believed.  1 Cor 15:3-6, 11

“What a faith! What a hope! What a love!  The body is not a prison to escape from but a temple in which God already dwells, and in which God’s glory will be fully manifested on the day of the resurrection.”

“Easter season is a time of hope. …We can be joyful or sad, optimistic or pessimistic, tranquil or angry, but the solid stream of God’s presence moves deeper than the small waves of our minds and hearts.  Easter brings the awareness that God is present even when his presence is not directly noticed.  Easter brings the good news that, although things seem to get worse in the world, the Evil One has already been over come.  Easter allows us to affirm that although God seems very distant and although we remain preoccupied with many little things, our Lord walks with us on the road and keeps explaining the Scriptures to us.  Thus there are many rays of hope casting their light on our way through life.”  Thought:  I read this over and over. I recieved such comfort from this.  I hope it was encouraging to you too.

Prayer:

Almighty, everlasting God, on this day you conquered death through your son and opened for us the path to eternal life.  And so we celebrate in joy and feast of his resurrection.  Make us new through your Spirit, so that we too may rise and walk in the light of life.  We ask this through Jesus Christ.

I am going to just give you some tidpits from the book “The Case for Christ.”

The high school youth group did a bible study out of this entire book which was wonderful.  I would recommend that if any of you have questions and have not yet place your faith in Christ to pick up this paperback and look at the very well researched information.  The Author is Lee Strobel.  He is an investigavtive journalist with a legal background.

Lee is interviewing Craig Bloomber, Ph.D for the answers to these questions.  He is considered to be the country’s foremost authority on the biographies of Christ, which are called the gospels.

1. Can we believe that the four gospels were written by the men whose names are attached to them?  Ans:Yes.  “It’s important to acknowledge that strickly speaking, the gospels are anonymous.  But the uniform testimony of the early church was that Matthew, also know as Levi, the tax collector and one of the twelve disciples, was the author of the first gospel in the New Testament; that John Mark, a companion of Peter, was the author of the gospel we call Mark; and that Luke, know as Paul’s ‘beloved physician,’ wrote both the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.”…”There are no know competitors for these three gosples,”

2. Would anyone have a motivation to lie by claiming these people wrote these gospels, when the didn’t really?  Ans.  “Probably not.  Remember, these were unlikely characters,”  “Mark and Luke weren’t even among the twelve disciples.  Matthew was, but as a former hated tax collector, he would have been the most infamous character next to Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus!”   “Contrast this with what happened when the fanciful apocryphal gospels were written much later.  People chose the names of well-known and exemplary figures to be their fictitious authors–Philip, Peter, Mary, James.  Those names carried a lot more weight than the names of Matthew, Mark, and Luck.  So to answer your question, there would not have been any reason to attribute authorship to these three less respected people if it weren’t true.”

3. What about John?  Ans.  “Yes, he’s the one exception,”  “And interestingly, John is the only gospel about which there is some question about authorship.  The name of the author isn’t in doubt–it’s certainly John.  The question is whether it was John the apostle or a different John.  You see, the testimony of a Christian writer named Papias, dated about A.D. 125, refers to John the apostle and John the elder, and it’s not clear from the context whether he’s talking about one person from two perspectives or two different people.  But granted that exception, the resst of the early testimony is unanimous that is was John the apostle–the son of Zebedee–who wrote the gospel.”  They go on discussing this a bit more and settled on the fact that they were both confident the gosples were written by who they say wrote them.

Lee now has trouble with the literary genre of the gospels.  He goes on to express, “When I go to the bookstore and look in the biography section, I don’t see the same kind of writing that I see in the gospels.  When somebody writes a biography these days, they thoroughly delve into the person’s life.  But look at Mark–he doesn’t talk about the birth of Jesus or really anything through Jesus’ early adult years.  Instead he focuses on the three-year period and spends half his gospel on the events leading up to and culminating in Jesus’ last week.  How do you explain that?”  Ans.  “The literary reason is that basically, this is how people wrote biographies in the ancient world.  They did not have the sense, as we do today, that it was important to give equal proportion to all periods of an individuals’s life or that it was necessary to tell the story in strictly chronological order or even to quote people verbatim, as long as the essence of what they said was preserved.  ancient Greek and Hebrew didn’t even have a symbol for quotation marks.  The only purpose for which they thought history was worth recording was because there were some lessons to be learned from the characters described.  Therefore the biographer wanted to dwell at length on those portions of the person’s life that were exemplary, that were illustrative, that could help other people, that give meaning to a period of history.”  Theologically–”Christians believe that as wonderful as Jesus’ life and teachings and miracles were, they were meaningless if it were not historically factual that Christ died and was raised from the dead and that this provided atonement, or forgiveness, of the sins of humanity.  So Mark in particular, as the writer of probably the earliest gospel, devotes roughly half his narrative to the events leading up to and including one week’s period of time and culminating in Christ’s death and resurrection.  Given the significance of the Crucifixion, this makes perfect sense in ancient literature.”

They go on chatting.  Lee was feeling satisfied with Blomberg’s initial answers concerning the first three gospels–called the synoptics, which means “to view at the same time,” because of their similar outline and interrelationship.  Next he turned to the book of John.  He then asked Blomberg to clarify the differences between John and the other three gospels.  Ans.  Blomberg told him that this was a HUGH question and that someday he had hoped to write a book about it.  Then he went on to explain. “Well, it’s true that John is more different than similar to the synoptics.  Only a handful of the major stories that appear in the other three gospels reappear in John, although that changes noticeably when one comes to Jesus’ last week.  From that point forward the parallels are much closer.  There also seems to be a very different linuistic style.  In John,  Jesus uses different terminology–that is, more direct and more blatant clams that Jesus is one with the Father; God himself; the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Resurrection and the Life.  For many years the assumption was that John knew everything Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote, and he saw no need to repeat it, so he consciously chose to supplement them.  More recently it has been assumed that John is largely independent of the other three gospels, which could account for not only the different choices of material but also the different perspectives on Jesus.”

As you can see by just this little bit of information, a lot of research is discussed in this book with several experts in the field.  I hope you learned a bit, maybe was intriged to learn some more.  But, what struck me was how much he had to know everything.  He had to have proof of everything.  Through it all, I believe that it is not knowing all the facts and getting all the proof.  It is God opening your eyes to the truth and changing your heart.  I knew very little facts that were written about in this little book but I believe what was written in the bible because God has opened my eyes.  Praise Him for that and for all those He does that to.

Question One:

DO YOU THIRST FOR GOD ?

Do you sing “Lord, I want to know you more.”  Are you still captivated by the sweetness of your spiritual walk.  “late in life Paul wrote of the passion that propelled him:”that I may know Him” (Philippians 3;10)  Reas Psalm 42:1-2–”As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God . . .

Three Kinds of Spiritual Thirst

1. THIRST OF THE EMPTY SOUL:  One who has not been converted has an empty soul.  He tries to fill his emptiness with maybe money, sex, power, houses, lands, sports, hobbies, entertainment, transcendence, significance, or education which is really just filling the desires of the flesh and mind.  (Eph 2:3).  Augustine said, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they fine their rest in Thee.”  As Solomon found that no matter who or what he at first finds exciting, or wonderful, “all is vanity and grasping for the wind.”  (Eccles 1:14.)  BUT–Jesus said”whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst” (John 4:14)  God also inspired King David and the apostle Paul to write “there is none who seeks after God” (Ps 14:2, Romans 3:11)  Until and if the Holy Spirit of God touches the spiritual tongue of the emty soul.

2. THIRST OF THE DRY SOUL:  This is different than the empty soul in that the dry soul is it has experienced the “rivers of living water” and knows what is missing.  So,  you may ask, How is it that a true believer can become dry.  There are three ways.  One way is by drinking to much from the fountains of the world and to little from “the river of God.”  An other way is what the Puritans use to call “God’s desertions.”  There are times when we feel overflowing with God’s presence and then other times we feel His absence.  This feeling is just a perception for Jesus promised:”I will never leave or forsake you” (Heb 13:5)  The third cause is prolonged mental or physical fatigue.

3. THIRST OF THE SATISFIED SOUL:  “the satisfied soul thirsts for God precisely because he is satisfied with God.  He has “taste(d) and see(n) that the Lord is good” (Ps 3:8), and the taste is so uniquely satisfying that he craves more.  Thomas Shepard, who founded Harvard University and who was also an influential New England minister, explained the cycle of satisfaction and thirst in this way:  “There is in true grace an infinite circle: a man by thirsting receives, and receiving thirsts for more.”  There is nothing this world has to offer that will safisfy.  Does this prayer of A.W. Tozer reflect your heart.

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.  I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace.  I am ashamed of my lack of desire.  O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be mane thirsty still.

These desires are marks of a growing soul.

I am really enjoying this study and will add things to the web site along the way.  I encourage you to pick up the book and dig in yourself.

Thomas a Kempis(1379-1471) was born Thomas Hammerken von Kempen in Germany.  He went to the Netherlands as a youth to become an Augustinian monk.  Throughout the rest of his life, he devoted himself to the copying of manuscripts and the training of other monks.  His devotional book Of the Imitation of Christ has had unequaled influence for a book of its kind through the centuries.  Using simple language and style, Thomas a Kempis advocates a spiritual rather than a materialistic life and seeks to clarify the rewards of the Christ-centered life.

He that follows Me shall not walk in darkness, says the Lord (John 8:12)

These are the words of Christ, by which we are urged to imitate His life and virtues, if we wish to be truly enlightened and freed from all blindness of heart.

Therefore, let it be our chief business to meditate upon the life of Jesus Christ.

The teaching of Christ excels all the teachings of the saints; and if a man have His spirit, he shall find therin a hidden manna.

But it so happens that many hear the Gospel frequently and are liffle affected, because they lack the spirit of Christ.

If you would understand Christ’s words fully and taste them truly, you must strive to form your whole life after His pattern.

What good do you get by disputing learnedly about the Trinity, if you be lacking in humility and are therefore displeasing to the Trinity?

Verily, sublime words do not make a man holy and just; it is a virtuous life that makes him dear to God.

I would rather feel compunction than know how to define it.

If you knew the whole Bible by heart, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would all that profit you without the love of God and His grace?

Vanity of vanities and all is vanity (Ecclesiastes1:2), except loving God and serving Him only.

This is the highest wisdom: to despise the world and aim at the kingdom of Heaven.

It is vanity therefore toseek perishable riches and to rely on them.

It is vanity also to pursue honours and raise yourself to a high dignity.

It is vanity to follow the lusts of the flesh and to desire that which hereafter will bring grievous punishment.

It is vanity to wish for a long life and care little about a good life.

It is vanity to attend only to the present life, and not to look ahead to the future life.

It is vanity to love what quickly passes away, and not to be hastening thither where abides everylasting joy.

Often call to mind the proverb: The eye is not sated with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing (Ecclesiastes 1:8)

Study therefore to wean your heart from the love of visible things, and to attend rather to things invisible.  For the man who indulges his sensual nature, sullies his conscience and loses the grace of God.

I was strolling through Costco one day and happened upon my favorite table.  You guess it, the book table.  This book that we are going to talk about caught my eye.  I read the comments on the front and back covers which were written by respected Christians and I decided to buy it.  I did not do any research on the author before the purchase and had known no one who had read it.  Come to find out I had friends at church who had read it when if first came out in hardcover.

Since that time, I have come to learn more about the controversy surrounding the book and attended a bible study at my own church on it also.  I want to present the information I have learned and also some scripture for you to ponder and look up for yourself.  After doing my homework I have reached my own conclusions about this book based on the truth of the bible.  What do you think?  Along with the book I am going to also add some information on two other Post Modern “spiritual” trends that have been very popular.

The Truth: 2 Timothy 3:15, 2 Peter 1:19-2:1

“So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.  but know this first of all that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy spirit spoke from God.  But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.”

THE SHACK’S “NEW” TEACHING:

The Warning-Mack gets a note seemingly from God.

In Seminary(Mac) had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course.  God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects…Nobody want God in a box, just in a book.  Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?” (pg 65)

How to find Truth–”You will learn to hear my thoughts in yours,” says Sarayu (the Holy Spirit in the book who is a “small, distinctly Asian woman-pg 84).  “Of course you will make mistakes; everyone makes mistakes, but you will begin to better recognize my voice as we continue to grow our relationship.”  And where will we fing the Spirit?  “You might see me in a piece of art, or music, or silence or through people or in Creation, or in your joy and sorrow.  My ability to communicate is limitless, living and transforming, and it will always be tuned to Papa’s goodness and love. (Papa is God in the story who is a “large, beaming African American woman (pg 82).  And you will hear and see me in the Bible in fresh ways.  Just don’t look for rules and principles; look for relationship-a way of coming to be with us” (pg 197-198)  (God the Son in the story appears to be middle eastern-pg 84).

Transition:

A New Earth, Awakening Your Inner Purpose: Book by Eckhart Tolle.  “…only the present moment can make us free.  That realization is the awakening…A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment…” (pg 308)

“There exists only the present instant…a Now which always and without end is itself new.: Meister Eckhart, from website.

“The Now is also central to the teaching of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.  Sufis have a saying: ‘The Sufi is the son of time present.’  And Rumi, the great poet and teacher of Sufism, declares: ‘Past and future veil God from our sight; burn up both of them with fire.’ Meister Eckhart, the thirteenth-century spiritual teacher, summed it all up beautifully: ‘Time is what keeps the light from reaching us.  There is no greater obstacle to God than Time.” (pg 38)- from The Power of Now.

SALVATION:

John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

Matthew 24:4-5

The Shack:

Jesus-”Those who love me come from every system that exits.  They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists, or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning ro religious institutions.  I have followers who were murderers and many who were self righteous.  Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians.  I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation in to sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved.”  “Does that mean,” asked Mack, “that all reads will lead to you?”  “Not al all,” smiled Jesus as he reached for the door handle to the shop. “Most roads don’t lead anywhere.  What it does mean is that i will travel any road to find you.” (pg 182)

OPRAH: “I am a Christian who believes that there are literally more paths to God other than Christianity.”

ECKHART TOLLE: “This book’s main purpose is to bring about a shift in consciousness…that’s the peace of God the ultimate truth of who you are is not I AM this (religion) or that but, I AM.” (pg 56-57)

“The esoteric spiritual traditions-whether Christian mystics, Hebrew Kabbalists, Zen Buddhists, Islamic Sufis, or Hindu yogis- all have specific practices to help individuals overcome this great ‘illusion of seperation’ and to experience the One True Self, which is in us all.” (pg 149)- A Course in Miracles.

SIN:

Romans 3:23 “For all have sined and fall short of the glory of God.”   also: Romans 6:23

“A Course in Miracles”

Sin is insanity–Sin is the home of all illusion–There is no sin

“The Shack”

“I’m not a bully, not some self-centered demanding little deity insisting on my own way.  I am good, and I desire only what is best for you.  you cannot find that through guilt or comdemnation . . .”(pg126)

“You don’t need me at all to create your list of good and evil.  But you do need me if you have any desire to stop such an insane lust for independence. . . Mackenzie, evil is a work we (the Godhead) use to describe the absence of Light. . . evil and darkness can only be understood in relation to Light and Good; they do not have any actual existence.” (pg 136)

“Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want. . .We carefully respect your choices. . . “(pg 123)