Redefined...provoking thoughts from this morning

So I sit here, same desk, same chair, same computer but things seem... well, a lot different. As my sister once wisely spoke to me each quarter is a different balance. We should not expect things to stay the same

This morning I woke up at about 3am or so to some coyotes howling. I sat in bed for a while thinking .I do not exactley remember where my thoughts went but they were trying to make some sense out of my very...well, scattered thoughts as of late. I presume that these coyotes, often depicted howling at the moon, are a perfect example for God to show me that things have in a sense changed very drastically. Light has in a sense begun to pierce through darkness in the literal and figurative. It is by no means a full light only a reflection of the sun but it is light in much darkness and for that I am very grateful.

Here are the thoughts I came to this morning:

God led me to Romans 3:20b it says" ...that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God." I would encourage all of you to read this section of scripture because it points out two oftentime missed points in Christianity. One, our ultimate accountability is with the Father in heaven not with our christian brothers.I cannot beging to count the times that my fellow brothers in Christ have made stumbling blocks for me, I am done with that, my ultimate accountability is with God from now on. Two, we as christians cannot sit idle and apathetic. We as Christians must start looking at things correctly, no more of this sin is not really bad if you sleep with someone before you are married, if you look at a woman with lust you are an adulterer, if you eat too much you are a glutten, sin is serious . It is my belief and I will stick to it until God convicts me of perhaps being wrong that the reason there does not exist a true representation of christianity in our culture is because we refuse to be holy as scriptures tells us to be and we do not make it about the personal relationship dealing with the exterior not the heart.

God has been like a skilled surgeon cutting out this part of me for a while I guess you could call it sanctification. My apathy is by no means gone and my laziness is by no means cured but it is on the mend because God is teacing me something quite profound...

This section of scripture comes from Paul explaining the advantage afforded to the jew. He says that they were entrusted with what the NASB calls "oracles of God". That sounds pretty classy I must say. Paul gets really excited about the fact that the jews had these and that they in a sense couldn't screw up the message of salvation because a prophet would come around every so often and turn the people back.These oracles of God are pretty much the prophets, utterances of God, apostles, and basically anyone who has any type of inspiration by God in the time before Paul. Basically the old testement. He explains though that to us as christians we have responsibilities because of the importance afforded to us by being on this side of slavation. This is because Jesus is the last prophet. As it talks about in Hebrews 1:1-2 God...has in these last days spoken to us by His Son" We let Jesus be our prophet, our divine utterance in this age as the Christian. It is all about Jesus and we need to not be apathetic anymore because without a prophet as the old testament has every generation or so we have been two thousand years without our prophet. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us and that is a greater gift. We need to be careful though that we are not so far off and repent. We must understand that the spirit of God is emotional in the same way that Jesus wept when he found out Lazarus had died and he does get grievous. The same heart that makes us shed tears for the lost is within the Spirit of God. He desires earneslty to enter into the unbelieving heart but because of sin he is grieved and has intense pain. We've got to get rid of this sin thing. I suggest we start with the apparent sins that damage out communities first. That is different for each place. Sin has to go.

JG