Recently my head has been swimming with ideas about dimensions beyond the four we live in (height, length, breath and time).  No more!  I’m going to play by the rules of the game God has set up in those four dimensions.  There is where sanity lies.

So what are the rules?  This is how I understand them:

1. We all make mistakes, fail, sin, whatever you want to call it. Perfection in this game is impossible except for Jesus.  The rule is that when you sin you confess it, receive forgiveness, get up and go again (1 John 1:5 – 10).
2. Love is the answer to everything.  As long as we keep on loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbours as ourselves we can’t go wrong (e.g. Matthew 22:37).
3. Love starts and ends with God and particularly with an understanding that Jesus died a horrible death on the cross for us.  Keep remembering this and it cannot but produce love in you (e.g. 1 John 4:19).
4. God’s means for remembering is what some denominations call “Breaking of Bread” and others “Holy Communion”.  Jesus wants us to meet together with others regularly and remember what He did together (e.g. 1 Corinthians 11: 23-25).
5. The mechanisms that God uses to enable us to please Him are grace working through our faith in Him we don’t see (see Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and Romans).  So we believe and God in response gives us a whole pile of good things we don’t deserve including peace, health and (dare I say it) wealth primarily in our relationships.  The thing is not to take them for granted, we really don’t deserve all the blessings we receive. God blesses us so we can bless others who He also loves just as much as us.
6. Faith is a gift of God which we receive when God first intervenes in our lives and grows as we continue to let Him intervene.  Some people call the first intervention the baptism of Christ, others the baptism of the Holy Spirit, others call it being born again.  The important thing is that you have it and continue to experience the reality of God’s presence in your life since it is He (the Living Word) that creates faith in you and without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6).  Most Christians acknowledge that they have had this encounter by being baptised in water – an outward sign of an inward reality (1 Peter 3:21).

That’s it!  Simple really.