This is the third part in a series I’ve been working on for several weeks. If you haven’t read parts one and two, be sure to go back and read them as well.
How have we defined and described success for humanity? Our success is based on our knowledge – knowing the facts about our existence, our wisdom- knowing how to apply the knowledge we have learned about our existence to our lives personally, and then knowing how to impart to all that we have learned about our existence to humanity for their understanding. To accomplish this we must –
- Know who we are
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- To ourselves, and
- To our Creator God
- Know why we are here – What our purpose for being here on this planet is
- Know how we are to live on this planet, being aware of right and wrong, and knowing how to make correct choices of conduct and behavior for the correct/right living of our lives
- Understand eternity, our eternity and our eternalness. Eternity without time, eternity with time and our individual and personal eternalness.
Most of our ability to correctly know and to correctly understand what our success is individually and collectively, relies upon our ability to communicate and to fellowship with our Creator God clearly and succinctly in a brief and a clearly expressed manner. Why do we have difficulty communicating and fellowshipping with our God? There are many misunderstanding about who our God is to us personally and collectively that hinder our ability to effectively and efficiently communicate and to fellowship with our Creator God. Personally, I am convinced that religion is one of our greatest obstacles. We are eternal, our Creator God is eternal, and He has clearly communicated to each of us that we cannot communicate or fellowship with Him through temporary or temporal means and methods. Religion is temporary. Will there be religion in heaven? I do not believe there will be religion in Heaven. Communication and fellowship with our God is always and completely through eternal means and methods, our eternity and our eternalness. Yet, we have been taught to communicate and to fellowship with our Creator God through religion and religious means and methods. To say that does not and will not work would be an understatement. I believe the great frustration that is experienced by humanity in their efforts to hear from and to fellowship with the true and the living God is primarily because we approach the process religiously and not relationally. The conversation that Jesus, (God with us – Emmanuel) had with the Samaritan woman at the well at Sychar, near Jacob’s well was very telling about how we are to communicate and to fellowship effectively and efficiently with our God, the eternal God. Expressing the difficulty for humanity brought on by religious customs and traditions – (where to worship, how to worship), Jesus – God Himself then said, none of those things matters. “God is sheer being itself – Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of (from) their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”
Hearing from our God is not supposed to be a frustrating practice. Fellowship and communication with our Creator is designed and meant to be as natural as speaking to your best Friend. Because of religious concepts we often believe to hear we must have a Damascus Road experience as Saul did, where we are knocked to the ground and blinded by a bright light. That method is recorded only one time in all of scripture. (Acts 9) Our fellowship and communication with our Creator may be more subtle than Saul’s experience, but our experience is no less powerful. Scriptures describe a living relationship with a living God. To be alive describes a continual and constant experience. We do not breathe occasionally or intermittently. We breathe continually. Our God does not communicate with us occasionally or intermittently, He is constantly speaking to our spirit and to our minds, and providing input and directions for our lives. Scriptures are full of information and directions on how this process works.
Proverbs 3: 5,6 – Trust in the Lord with all of your heart (spirit, the eternal you); do not depend on your own understanding (your mind, your developed intellect, your emotions), Seek His will in all that you do (first), and He will show you which path to take.(direction, clarity, purpose) NLT
We begin with our spirit, the eternal us, the forever us. The next part of our instructions is key. This is important, this is pivotal. We do not allow our intellect, our education, and our religious teachings to override our spirit. We are standing at the nexus where the temporary and the eternal meet. We are to always choose the eternal. At first this is difficult, because the voice of our spirit has to be developed to be the voice we hear (no matter how soft) and the voice that we follow.
Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you]. Romans 12; 2 AMPC
Here we are told not to allow this world, our environment to determine and to become the way that we think. We are encouraged to program our minds to think like our God thinks, eternally.
We are told to renew our minds so that we have new ideals (a standard of perfection; a principle to be aimed at) and a new attitude (a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something) that reflects what our God says about us in His Word, and we will know what is good and acceptable in His sight for us. Wow! This is the way to have clear direction and correct understanding.
Our mind is the battleground where the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness go to do battle for control of our lives through our thoughts. We often make it hard to recognize and respond to the voice of our Father. We question and debate the validity of the communication and its origin. In reality, He is always clear. It is our incorrect thinking and our lack of correct programming of our mind that creates the doubt and unresponsiveness. Scriptures declare with certainty that we hear and we recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd, we hear and we know our Father’s voice and the voice of a stranger we will not follow. Instantaneously we hear and we know that the message that we receive is from our Creator. That is not debatable. Yet we have allowed our minds to be influenced by our situations, our circumstances our relationships, what others will think about our actions, and we hesitate and we ponder the validity of the communication, often pausing to consider the Word until the opportunity to respond positively has passed. We miss the opportunity to enhance our hearing and our quickly doing ability. The more we exercise the process of hearing and quickly responding, the stronger the relationship becomes and the more powerful the pivotal impact and life changing outcomes in our lives and in the lives of those in our world.
The clutter of our lives can hinder our ability to receive and to respond. I sometimes believe that we need a declutter plan. How much of what we do is really progress? How much of what we do is simply habit? Do our habits prevent us from choosing progress? From beginning to the last recorded Words, the scriptures present a dominant message about priorities. Our priorities are very important in our relationship with our Creator. Our success is never about standing still or moving backwards. Our success is always a progressive moving forward.
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