God's plans are bigger than us

I thought it was interesting that when the Israelites where angry at Moses for the Pharaoh's punishment on them for his actions; Moses turns around and reminds God of his promise to deliver his people from their suffering and he protests when he does not do anything for the Israelites. Then, God reprimands  Moses by saying he has not forgotten about the Israelites and their suffering. Later on God punishes the Egyptians for not letting his people go and ultimately they reach the promised land. This goes to show that God's plans in more than one situation prove to be too mind boggling for us humans to understand.

PS I commented on "Back to Dust"

The Master's Plan

What is sin?  How could it come to be?  Where is the line between good and evil?  We constantly discuss "The Fall" and how man is inherently sinful due to Adam and Eve's mistakes, but what exactly did they do that was evil?  These are questions that have haunted my mind for years, but after much contemplating, this is what I have found.  It is no secret that humans are special to God.  We were created in His image; therefore, we are set apart from other created things.  Since we were created to be unique and special, I realized that being created in the image of God meant that we retain traits that He has (creativity, discernment, reason, the ability to think critically, etc.)  I also realized why we were created.  In Genesis, God physically walked in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.  This is the epitome of our purpose in life: to literally walk with God.  This means that He doesn't want robots who only do what He says because He is God.  He desires for our hearts to be overjoyed within His presence and to truly enjoy time with him.  In order to create humans so that they would choose to be with Him, God instilled within them the ability to have free will.  This is the same free will that would have allowed Satan to choose to rebel against a sovereign God.  That means that God allows us to choose Him or reject Him.  This choice is essential.  By understanding the idea that God gives us our own free will, the line between good and evil becomes blatantly obvious.  Good and evil are nothing more than God or not God.  God IS good.  Hence, evil is the absence of God.  Therefore, sin is simply anything that is not of/from God, and its wage is death.  What Adam and Eve started in the Garden was not due to a particular thing that they did; instead, their fault was that they disobeyed God's command and denied his authority.  They rebelled against God.  However, let us not assume that God created evil.  Such a thought is absurd and out of the very character of a Holy God.  He gave us the freedom to choose Him or deny Him; as a result, evil was born from the decision to rebel.  Thus, Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden where the Tree of Life stood.  What a tragedy it would have been for Adam and Eve to live forever with their newly adopted nature to rebel against God.  That is why death is essential to life.  The good news is Jesus Christ.  He is the final piece to the puzzle: the "Second Adam."  Jesus is the revelation of the Master's perfect plan.  When He willingly sacrificed His perfect life on the cross, Jesus conquered death and bridged the gap between God and man.  Jesus is God's way of reversing the effects of mankind's wrongdoing.  In order for God to conquer evil, He had to give the world a choice. For as long as Adam and Eve sought to serve God alone, evil would never be apparent to them.  Since they chose to rebel against Him by partaking of the fruit, they chose death.  However, since God is omniscient, He made a way when there was no way: Jesus.  The Cornerstone of our faith.  Mankind may once again "walk with God" in life.  Although death still exists as punishment for our evil choices, the beauty of Jesus is that our walk continues after death.  Death has become the new beginning.  We must only choose to follow Him wherever he leads.

ehyeh asher ehyeh

I AM... When speaking of God, what more is there to say? This thought brought me back to Wednesday as I was sitting by the pool with a couple of friends and we were discussing love and how messed up most peoples’ view of it is. Since yesterday, I have been thinking hard on the idea of love. Our discussion brought us to the idea that none of us can truly define love. All we know is the parts of love that we have experienced. Therefore, man cannot truly know what love is. 

This connected directly with our conversation about the "I AM" statement in class. Who is God? I can’t tell you 100% who God is just like I can’t tell you 100% what love really is. The best thing about this is that we don’t know!!! I mean if I could wrap yourself up completely in God or something like love, I would never want to pursue either of those things. The mystery that surrounds God is the thing that keeps us coming back to the search and causes us to dig in deeper. Just like we, yes guys too, want to figure out what love is, so we keep searching. 

Ignorance of Man

Genesis tells us that originally man was created to be ignorant of the concepts of good and evil. God made us this way because when He created all things, they were good. To know what was evil wasn’t to know what God had created, but to be given desires that weren’t meant for humankind. The tree of knowledge gave mankind desires and conceptions that distorted their view of God and their relationship with Him. Ignorance was not God’s plan for mankind it was relationship with him. God did not desire to keep knowledge from humans. He desired to keep a relationship with them, which could only be continued so long as their hearts remained pure. Once Eve and then Adam ate from the tree of knowledge, they became aware of what wasn’t pure. God’s desire wasn’t to keep his creation ignorant, but it was to keep them from becoming arrogant. 

P.S. I commented on Sam Weeks's "The Holiness of God"

The Holiness of God

Something that stood out to me in the Exodus reading that hasn't really before was when God told Moses to take off his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. This is something that we as humans truly cannot grasp. What I want to focus on, however, is not the fact that Moses was standing on holy ground, but that this encounter was when God called Moses to such a great task. Its interesting to me that God gives Moses a brief glimpse of his glory almost as a prelude to his instructions. What I realized here is that this is how God approaches me in my walk over and over again. Whenever God calls me to do something or convicts me about something, it is always in light of who He is. I can't speak in absolutes, but I think its safe to say that whenever I'm diligent about pursuing God in the word and in prayer, He convicts me about things in my life and calls me to action. This is exactly what happened to Moses at the bush. He was confronted with an absolutely perfect, holy, God and immediately prompted to action. I think this is the mindset that God calls us to have as we approach life and ministry in general. We have to live our lives in light of who He is, regardless of anything and everything else.

P.S. I commented on Amanda's

Why does it have to be an apple?

I never understood why people say the forbidden fruit is an apple. I mean when i was little  I thought I was sinning when i ate an apple. it ever actually says what kind of fruit it is. It could be a fig for all we know. I just think it is misleading when sunday school teacher talk about how adam and eve ate the apple and were kicked out of eden. and was that even the reason they got kicked out? there are so many questions yet so few answers. For all we know it could have been a vegetable, who knows.But thats the greater question.

P.S. I commented on Danielles the larger Question

Showing Himself once again...

In Exodus, we see many times God showing us just how powerful he truly is. We see him placing someone to find Moses as a baby, and then making Moses into a great leader. We see him telling Moses to tell the people "I Am sent you." I think this statement of I Am, is God saying in a way, that there is really no need for any further explanation, he was God from the beginning, he still is and will always be God over everything. As someone brought up in class, why did God not just stop after one plague? My answer to that would be that he once again was showing the people then and even now, just how powerful he is, and how he has control over everything.

P.S. I commented on Amanda's post.