Category Archives: Life College

Communion with God

Communion with God is intimacy with your creator.

The wonderful privilege of everyone who has been born again is the possibility of ongoing communion with the Creator of the universe.

As creatures we were made to be vessels carrying a treasure (2 Cor. 4:7).  That treasure is the Holy Spirit.  Intimacy with God is being what we were meant to be, filled with the Holy Spirit.

There is no more intimate picture than a vessel filled with a liquid.  The vessel itself knows nothing but containment of something greater than itself, something which it feels touching every inside surface.  Every so often the Owner comes and tips out the precious substance for someone else’s benefit and then tops it up again to overflowing.  Overflowing is the better state for a vessel.  Then it is not just containment and the inside surfaces that know the joy of intimacy but every part of the vessel, even those parts that are outward facing, feel the joy.

Jesus said that the first and greatest commandment was to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  You cannot love God in this way if you don’t have intimacy with Him.  You cannot love God in this way unless you are filled with the Holy Spirit.  You must be born again, yes, but you must also yield and let Him fill you on an ongoing basis.

Dedicate some time every day to intimacy with God your creator.  Hear what He is saying to you.  Do what He says. Repeat daily.

Pathetic Fallacy

Back when I was doing my Leaving Cert English course Shakespeare’s King Lear was on the curriculum.  I’m not sure was it my teacher at the time or a textbook but one of the phrases used was “pathetic fallacy”.  It referred to Shakespeare’s use of the weather in the play to reflect the action on the ground.  At the height of the worst tragedies that fell on King Lear the storms raged the worst:

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our teeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurour and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once
That make ingrateful man!”

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare

So the now forgotten commentator called this kind of matching of the elements to the moral events on the ground “pathetic fallacy”.

The attitude that such connections are pathetic lies is now so ingrained into our thinking that anyone who even remotely suggests in our “enlightened” western humanist society that God might have something to do with the weather is likely to face the worst of scorn.   And, indeed, caution is always advised when attributing any specific elemental actions (e.g. fires, earthquakes, floods, droughts, etc.) directly to God’s judgments especially at macro levels like nations (notwithstanding the fact that these acts are all called “Acts of God” for insurance and other purposes).

However, the bible is quite clear that God is in control of the weather whatever we might be told by English teachers or otherwise.   Here is one example taken from Zechariah chapter 10 in the Old Testament:

“Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime;
    it is the Lord who sends the thunderstorms.
He gives showers of rain to all people,
    and plants of the field to everyone.”

Zechariah 10:1

I have a number of reasons for drawing attention to this current drought and asking the question:  “Is God judging Ireland?”

One of the reasons is that I woke up with a vivid dream this morning.  In it, I was in a train travelling through the hills along the coast.  It could have been from Greystones to Bray or somewhere similar.  On hills away from the coast fires were breaking out all over.  There was a solitary fire man fighting one of them.  I didn’t see any houses go up in flames just gorse and hedges.  But there were a lot of fires and not enough firemen.

To be fair, you wouldn’t have to be much of a prophet to predict that in this weather in this country.

We are all enjoying the fine weather.  Ireland is known for its rain during the summer or indeed at any time of the year and so any respite from rain is usually welcomed by the majority of the people.  However when it comes to judging nations the bible does have quite a lot to say.  Usually judgement comes in the form of an invading force but in Zechariah chapter 14 there is this verse:

 If any of the peoples of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, they will have no rain.

Zechariah 14:17

The context in this case is (probably) the millennium rule of Christ on the earth which (probably) has yet to happen.  However the principle is the same:  When God holds back rain it is not a good thing.

Disciples, Saints and Overcomers

According to the bible, God’s eternal destiny for you is communion with Him and fellowship with the church.  Communion and fellowship starts from when you are born from above (John 3:8) and continues for eternity.  Evangelism, by contrast, just lasts for this life.  After God ushers in the new heaven and earth (Rev. 21) there is no more opportunity for people to transition from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of life.  This makes evangelism critically important and if you did nothing else but tell people the good news of Jesus’ death for our sins and resurrection, you will not have wasted your time on this earth.

However, the bible includes a lot about communion with God and fellowship with His people.  As examples, Jesus tells people about the narrow way in Matthew 7, Paul quotes a number of old testament scriptures on the subject of being God’s sons and daughters at the end of 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and John records Jesus’ words on abiding in John 15.  But there are many more examples, in fact, depending on how you read it, you could say the whole New Testament is mainly about these two things:  communion with God and fellowship with His church.

In fact I believe that when God inspired the Scriptures (particularly the New Testament) he inspired them with mainly one class of people in mind.  Jesus called these people “disciples”, Paul went on to describe them as “saints” and John wraps up the New Testament by calling them “overcomers”.   The three words are not synonyms but they are closely related and they also have a sense of progression in them.  Being a disciple/ saint/ overcomer is God’s ordained way of having communion with him and fellowship with the church.

According to the New Testament, if you want communion with God and fellowship with the church then you must be born again, be a follower of Jesus (a disciple), be made holy (a saint) and persevere to the end (an overcomer).

Evangelism, Communion and Fellowship

Jesus spelt out the way of connecting people to God when He told Nicodemus that “You must be born again”.  You can find an account of His conversation with Nicodemus if you read John’s gospel, chapter 3.

According to the bible, the aim of church should be to tell as many people as possible about the good news that God through Jesus Christ has reconciled the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:9).  Jesus is the only way to eternal life or heaven (see John 14:6).  Unless you are born again you cannot even see the kingdom of God, never mind enter it and live for ever (John 3:3).

So you must be born again (John 3:5).

There is a very good case for leaving it at that.  If us Christians all just spent our time bringing everyone we knew to the place where they were born again – or at least presented with that possibility – we would have spent our lives very profitably.  This approach to life is called evangelistic and some people who meet God are called to it almost exclusively and everyone who calls themselves a bible believing Christian is called to it to at least some extent.

However the bible has a lot more to say about what it means to be a follower of Jesus after that initial, critical, connection has been made.  If you have been born again God wants you to have two things that he talks a lot about in the bible: Communion with Him and fellowship with others who have been born again (i.e. with His Church).  The Scriptures spend a lot of time dealing with this.

Communion and fellowship are eternal (see, for example, John 17).  Once you are born again and transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of life (Colossians 1:13), communion and fellowship is your eternal destiny.  It is where God wants you to be now and forever.

Think on These Things

I have been taking a leaf out of Dr. Caroline Leaf’s book (sorry couldn’t resist that pun): “Switch on your Brain” and used a mind map to do a 21 day meditation on a single thought.

In this case the thought is Philippians 4:8:  “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable; if there is any excellence or anything praiseworthy; think on these things.”

In the mind map above I have taken the 8 words from the original New Testament Greek and put them in boxes around the central theme of the verse.  Then I have taken the most common translations of the Greek words and listed them against each box.  The words in a different colour (e.g. “true”) are the ones used most often, or, in some cases, exclusively by the main English translations (NIV, KJV, NKJV, NLT, NASB, ESV, NRSV).

I have also been spending quite a bit of time adding to the branches the things that are actually true, honourable, right, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent and praiseworthy.  It is quite amazing the amount of things that fall under those categories once you start to expand on them.  There are numerous elements to God, family, church, the bible, work, creation, music, books, films, etc. that fit into each category.  In other words, there are plenty of good things to think about.

Caroline’s basic thesis is that mind is over matter.  More specifically she says that thoughts are manifested in our brains as actual matter.  They grow on brain nerve endings like fruit on trees.  If we spend 21 days thinking on the same thing, that will turn it into a solid ripe piece of brain fruit that can modify your behaviour. Like it says in Romans 12:2: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

She advises that you hear what the Spirit is saying to you about a toxic thought to replace and what to replace it with.  Her book is well worth a read and implementation.

Biblical Creativity: Summary

God’s creation is wonderful as any, even cursory, look over it will reveal.  I have really enjoyed meditating in depth about the 6 days of creation as it is literally revealed in Scripture.  It seems every day I spend some quality time with God on this subject I get a new insight.

However, I realise that it is hard for any reader to understand the journey I have gone on with Jesus to get to this point.  I doubt if anyone is as excited as I am about the connection between the Sea in Heaven and the water present at creation. Or the fact that quantum physics has been explaining (since the beginning of the 20th Century) some of the connections between the physical and spiritual creations (e.g. quantum entanglement – the relationship between two entities that transcends space and time including the speed of light).

But for those who are still interested here are a couple of mind maps summarising what I have written in this series so far.

Of course you may not agree with the above.  Personally I’m a young earth, 6 day literalist currently which probably means I’m mad as far as many people are concerned.  But I didn’t always hold this position and I would hope that I’m open to having my mind changed on such secondary matters.  The truth about these things matters but not as much as the truth of Jesus’ Resurrection for instance.

Either way I’ve really enjoyed taking the Genesis account literally, matching it with what I know of science and, as a result, getting some neurons connecting in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise done.  God knows whether I am discovering some of  His thoughts in the process, or whether I am, in fact, mad 🙂

Physical Creation

In my blogs on Biblical Creativity to date I have tried to understand what God would have had to do to create something from nothing.  This includes trying to understand what the word “thing” means when there was no such “thing” before any “thing” was created.

It seems that water was there before anything else.  If the spiritual was created first then that water could have been created as the Sea before God’s throne in Heaven.  Formless and void at first, it was the womb from which everything else physical had its birth.

Day 1: We now know that light is a phenomena which has an electric and magnetic component to it mixed in such a way (with a precise range of frequency and wavelength) that we can see it.  It is just a small part of a much larger range of similar possible EM phenomena much of which we use in communication.  Once light was created, we perceive its absence as night.

Day 2: Once God created objects He created the space between them as a immediate consequence.

Day 3a: It seems to me that the idea of physical movement is only introduced at this stage.  One of the most common movements is spinning and that could have been used to separate out the land elements from the overall watery mixture.

Day 3b: Plant life is created before the sun which is just a strong source of the narrow band phenomena called light.  I’m not sure why God did it that way (or got it recorded it in this order if you like) but maybe He couldn’t wait to start doing something that He knew we would enjoy.

Day 4: He stretches out the heavens.  The macroscopic and microscopic levels are the best places to look for contradictions to any simple mechanical understanding of the universe or ourselves. Einstein found them at the macroscopic level and described them in the theory of Relativity and Bohr found them at the sub-atomic layer and described them in quantum physics.  Quantum physics helps us understand free will through Heisenberg’s uncertainty theorem for instance (see Dr. Caroline Leaf’s excellent work for more details of this and other connections between quantum theory and the Bible’s descriptions of spiritual realities).

Maybe one day I’ll write a book about it all.

Well done if you’ve read this far.

Biblical Creativity Day 4: Sun, Moon and Stars

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,

It is the glory of kings to find it out.

Proverbs 25:2.

14 Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. 15 Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. 16 God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, 18 to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

19 And evening passed and morning came, marking the fourth day.

Genesis 1:14-19

Of all the things mankind has done over the last few decades, the joy of finding out new things through space exploration and technology is, for me, something that gives us all a glimpse of the glory of God shining through the darkness of man’s moral decisions.

Since time immemorial the human race has stared at the stars looking for signs. One of the things the bible says about the Sun, Moon and stars that were created on the 4th day is that they would be used as signs.  We use them to determine years, months and days and set our clocks by them.

However when it comes to being signs in a broader sense there are two theories that I particularly like.

The first of these is more speculative and less verifiable than the second.  However I think it has enough support to justify a closer look by those who might be interested.  There are at least two books written by two different authors within a year of each other back in 1892/93 which go into the details.  The idea is that before Moses wrote the first five books of the bible, God had written the gospel in the stars and explained it to Adam who then passed it on to his descendants.

The first of these books is called: THE GOSPEL IN THE STARS by JOSEPH. A. SEISS (1892).  I haven’t read this one but I like the way it starts out.  The second book is called: The Witness of the Stars by E. W. Bullinger 1893 which I have read and found really interesting.  More recent commentators urge caution when following this line of reasoning.

The second, more easily verifiable, sign is the Bethlehem Star.  Click on the link and enjoy the science.  The reason it is easy to verify these days is because the stars and planets have always followed predictable paths through the sky.  This means you can use a computer program to predict where the stars were on any particular night any time in the past.  So when someone says that the Bethlehem Star was actually the placement of two planets (Venus and Jupiter) so close to each other in the sky that they looked like one star then you can get some off the shelf astronomy software and see for yourself.

Another fact about the stars that I really like is the deep space photos that the Hubble telescope took.  The Hubble telescope is the most powerful telescope we have ever placed in space where it can see far more than we can here below the earth’s atmosphere.  Astronomers controlling the telescope pointed it at an “empty” piece of the sky and left the shutter open.  What they saw is an astonishing amount of galaxies.  To say they weren’t expecting that is an understatement.

Like most things they have found out about space, there are usually more questions than answers opened up by discoveries like this.  For instance there is no sign of a “big bang” here.

Biblical Creativity: Light and Life

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. (John 1:1).

John the beloved disciple or follower of Jesus was a poet.  He inter-weaved the creation account throughout the opening verses of his gospel speaking of the two main principles of creation: Light & Life.  He wrote:

“In Him was life and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it.” (John 1:4,5).

According to John’s gospel, Jesus is for (or pro) life in the most fundamental way possible.  Like a pregnant woman He has life within Him.  Again, according to John, that life is intimately connected with light or understanding.  The life of Jesus gives understanding.

A few chapters later in the same gospel, Jesus ties together spiritual birth with physical life.  He says it is not enough just to be born as a human: “You must be born from above.”

The fundamental problems with our society stem from a lack of spiritual life.  The fact that so many otherwise seemingly sane people want to deny the rights of physical life to the most vulnerable members of our society can only be explained by this.  There is a darkness that comes over people’s minds when they refuse the light of Jesus’s words.

In Ireland many people have reacted vehemently against the hypocrisy of a religion which, on the one hand, promotes a pro-life campaign and, on the other, denies rights to women and covers up the abuse of children.  As a Christian with no denominational adherence I can fully understand that position.

However should we use that as a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Being for (or pro) life is a more fundamental issue than any religion.  It is tied in with the very nature of God Himself.

Biblical Creativity 3b (cont.): A Closer Look at Seeds

What is a seed?

A seed is a stored program.  A program is a set of instructions for doing something.  A seed stores a set of instructions for making a plant of some sort.  An acorn contains a set of instructions for making an oak, a hazelnut for making a hazel tree, etc.  So God’s idea was to enable plants to reproduce themselves by storing the instructions for making a new one in a secure capsule called a seed.seeds

The seed is perfectly designed to keep the information safe.  Keeping information safe in the event of an apocalypse is one of the things that mankind is concerned about.   The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is part of a global effort to preserve information and secure food supplies in the event of a nuclear winter or something equally as catastrophic. We can argue about how pointless that might be another time.

Seeds can last for millennia without decay and still work when planted in the right conditions.  They contain humidity, gravity and light sensors which constantly monitor external conditions.  When the right conditions occur the stored program is started and a plant begins to be born out of the death of the seed itself.

One of the reasons I think that God created seeds and plants first before He even made the Sun, Moon and stars is because a seed is such a fundamental idea:

  • We speak of something being seminal in the sense that it is the seed of an idea that gives birth to a whole series of consequences.  God’s idea of making seeds is, of course, the most fundamental of those ideas.
  • Jesus describes seeds as like the words of God.  If seeds fall into the right type of soil then they produce multiplicative fruit, seeds upon seeds.  Similarly if God’s word falls on the right type of soil in our hearts it also will produce fruit.  (Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8 -see also my previous blog on this subject).
  • The idea of a stored program is fundamental to all creation.  It is only in the last few decades that we have discovered just how fundamental it is.  Every person has a unique identity contained in our genes, stored in the DNA in every cell of our body more efficiently than any storage method man has yet devised. If you were to take any cell in your body and put it under a microscope it could be identified as yours.  The same applies to every single person in the world (except identical twins – but even they are unique because of other genetic factors).

Unfortunately I haven’t studied enough genetics to really explore this fascinating aspect of creation in more depth.  But there is more than enough in what I do know to cause me to gasp in wonder at God’s creativity.

Surely with such creativity in our Maker it is surprising we are not far more creative ourselves?  I believe that creativity is released in us as we connect more closely with the creator, think His thoughts after Him and seek to implement them into the fabric of our everyday lives.

Can I encourage you to go and seek the creative Face of God?

He has – perhaps surprising and unexpected – creative answers to your daily dilemmas.

Biblical Creativity 3b: Seeds and Plants

11 Then God said, “Let the land sprout with vegetation—every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.” And that is what happened. 12 The land produced vegetation—all sorts of seed-bearing plants, and trees with seed-bearing fruit. Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.

13 And evening passed and morning came, marking the third day.

Genesis 1:11-13

Up to the second half of day 3 God has been putting in place frameworks:

Day 1: Light and time

Day 2: Space and objects

Day 3a: Motion

Now He starts to have some real fun.

Seeds are stored programs of considerable complexity designed with sensors that determine when conditions are right for them to start running their internal programs (i.e. to germinate).  One set of programs produces an oak, another a wisteria, etc.  God’s creative brilliance begins to shine as he thinks up everything from roses to rhododendrons, figs to fruit trees and everything in between.

He couldn’t even wait for the boring sun 🙂

The major creation of this day is plant life.  What an idea!