Why is God so good…to everyone else?  Why does He seem to ignore my pain, my journey.  Why does everyone else seem to ‘hear from God’, when I cry out from my pain and don’t even get a whisper?  Why do those who think they hear from God rub it into my face, don’t they know that it sends me into a deeper spiral of despair?  Don’t they know that my heart has screamed for ‘my God my God’ and his silence has caused me to be deaf to His voice?  (that is, if He still speaks).

Today is a day to be sensitive to those crying in the darkness.  Today is a day to remember those who suffer in silence.  Today is the day to remember that ‘joy boys’ are the painful salt to any emotional wound.  Continue reading →

Did The Father Forsake Jesus On the Cross? No! (Written by Steve McVey)

For many years I taught the seven sayings of the cross and when I came to the words of Jesus, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” I used the text as evidence that the Father had turned His back on His own Son when Jesus was on the cross. “The Bible is clear that God cannot look upon sin!” I would boldly proclaim. It seemed reasonable to me that God turned away from Jesus. After all, isn’t that what Jesus said?

The answer is, “No, that is not what He said. That is what He asked. There’s a big difference between making an assertion and asking a question.” Continue reading →

Tina Turner had it all wrong when she sang, “What’s love got to do with it, got to do with it.  What’s love but a second hand emotion.” Love has ‘everything’ to do with it.  Love is what runs our world, it is the fuel of all relationships and holds all things together.

The ‘love’ of God is farther reaching than you can possibly imagine!  Think for a minute how big  or how wide it ‘could be’.  Think again, because you aren’t even close.  The writer of Ephesians writes “May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.”  Clearly there is a sense that this love cannot be contained or fully explained, which makes me want to explore a deeper study into the word love.

The early church fathers  understood that the essence of God was ‘love’ (agape).  The word Perichoresis   Continue reading →

Ever since I was a kid, I was told that Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me so.  Isn’t that nice?   Where does it actually say that?  Then I heard He loves everybody, which really wasn’t true according to my tradition because we clearly had categories of people God did NOT love.  (Especially if you were a ‘really’ bad person).  I was confused.  Perhaps God just “kind of” loves everybody with the same ‘love covering’ and then He picks out His favourites.  I wasn’t sure.

So, I decided to find out what the Bible actually says about God and His love for humanity.  What I discovered has blown my mind.  Perhaps now is a good time to set aside your ‘childhood’ teachings on what God’s love is and revisit the subject with a new lens.  I am sure that you will find that some things you were taught are actually true, but other things have been tainted with a cultural bias.

Read very slowly and carefully, read what is says, not what it does not say: Continue reading →

His ‘Light’ shines in and through all darkness…regardless whether one believes it or not, either way, ….it is STILL there!

In order for us to have a proper concept of who God is, we must have some foundational truths in place.  I always begin with God’s DNA, His essence: God is Life, is Love, and is Light.  The second step we need to take in the quest to know the Father, is to look to the son, Jesus.  Since the Son holds all things together, as previously discussed, we now look at another way he has a connection with His entire creation.  Today I want to zoom in on how God is light and literally shines through anything and everything, especially darkness.  Continue reading →

I have discovered three major truths about God that have shaped my lens of him and how I view His creation.  God is life.  God is light. God is love.  In order to know who God is, we do not begin with any Old Testament verses that splash a vast array of depictions of ‘who’ God is, instead we begin with His son Jesus Christ.  If we start anywhere else, we will not have a proper picture of who ‘the Father’ is.

After all, Jesus himself claimed ‘HE’ was the only one who knew the father, meaning, no one else did!  Let’s take a look at some significant verses from the Bible that a groundwork for a better and more biblical understanding of ‘who God is.”  You could be in for a shock! Continue reading →

God is not distant from anyone.  This is a simple fact.  Hopefully you have read and meditated on the Bible verses in yesterday’s post.  If you have not, go back and read it through.  Today we will look at a few more verses that will bring comfort and hope to those believing the lie that is ‘God is far from us’.

I have grown up with the belief that if I am good, God will be near me, and when I sin, God will be far away from me.  It comes from a false understanding of Habakkuk 1:13 that God is too holy to be near sin, (Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, And You cannot look on wickedness with favor.)   The idea that God cannot stand ‘sin’ and is repelled by it, has fed a lie that I am separated from God.  This has completely messed up my trust in God especially in the area of coming to him in times of trouble.

While believing this lie, I lived out a religious expression of what that lie looked like.  It is called PBA – ‘Performance Based Acceptance’.  If I was going to ‘be close to God, it was up to me.  Likewise, if I screwed up, it was all on me and there was no hope at all that he would hear me when I call, until I ‘get cleaned up first’.  Guilt and Shame just kept building up.

As I came to discover my identity in Christ, it led me down a path Continue reading →

Nothing & No one is separated from God.  This is a simple fact.  There is however the illusion that one can feel separated, but that illusion is only in the mind.  It has taken me a long time to see this, and when I did see it, it took me a long time to admit it out loud.  I was forced to go look at what the Scriptures say, Scriptures I had not really zoomed in on and/or pondered their profound meaning.  Upon doing so I realized that my historical lens greatly impacts my perspective on God and on Christ our creator.   My theology had been shaped by my Bible College & Seminary teachers, Pastors and individuals who have spoken into my life.

So today, on the topic of ‘separation anxiety’, which I think evangelicalism and the entire Western church is obsessed with, Continue reading →

Last June, I was in Atlanta, Georgia for the release of Dr. Steve McVey’s newest book “Beyond An Angry God”.  Along with Steve, special guests C. Baxter Kruger and Wm. P. Young (author of The Shack) shared in 13 sessions that unpacked the lie that God is not angry with us.  If you have not read the book, it is a ‘must read’ especially if you are hungry for a much better and deeper understanding of God’s love towards you and everyone else (visit www.gracewalk.org or www.beyondanangrygod.com ).  It will resonate with the truth already ‘in you’ that your heavenly Papa is absolutely loving and accepting and there is nothing left to do in order to be made right with Him.

It was through Christ on the Cross that the world was reconciled to God.  It was God the Father who was IN CHRIST reconciling the world to himself.  This was a done deal, meaning, it is now finished.  There is nothing left to do.  What will your response be to the good news?  Will you believe it, or reject it?  Your response will determine what you will experience.

During the “Beyond An Angry God” conference, I discovered a profound personal truth that is changing my mind about how I see Papa God, and how I see my world around me, especially my family.

The Trinity Submits To Us:  that is a strange statement.   Continue reading →

HEARING FROM GOD, by my friend Reg Chute

How do we hear from God, or more specifically, how do we “hear” God? There are many accounts in the bible that start off by saying  “Then God told Moses” or “Then God said to Abraham” or “Then God told Joshua.” What did it sound like when God was talking to these patriarchs of the bible? Was there a big, booming voice that said “THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME?” Well, that’s the Hollywood version, but, like anything else, we can’t really trust the accuracy of Hollywood.

There are times in God’s Word that it seems pretty clear that God was speaking with an audible voice, I’m thinking particularly of Moses at the burning bush, but apart from accounts such as the Garden of Eden where God was actually walking with Adam and Eve, those times are few and far between. In fact, you can probably count on one hand the times in God’s Word that God most certainly spoke with an audible voice. There are many instances that we can make that assumption but to say with certainty that He often spoke with an audible voice is a stretch at best. Continue reading →