Do you Believe?

  PEOPLE often as me, "So...What do you believe?"

   My dad once told me, "Son, I pray to the GOD of my understanding..." His third wife, an ultra-conservative woman {Southern Baptist}, was very offended and hyperly sensitive to such topics. Dad and I spoke of such matters openly. Yes, Scriptures do teach us not to lean on "our own understanding," but upon everything taught in Scripture. However, whose version, translations, doctrine, religion, interpretation should guide you?THIS is what my father instructed me on. Son, think for yourself, read for yourself, study for yourself; when you pray it is YOUR "understanding" not the programmed "dogma" of a religious Cult [like the Jehovah's Witnesses], but the growth and personal journey you are developing in a "relationship" with the God of Your Understanding.

   Jesus in many things to many people. I think of original Truth like a huge mirror; shattered by opinions and now we all understand only the shards we perceive from our experiences and understandings. (Paul said "a glass darkly" - I love that!) Yes, lean not own your own understanding, but every utterance of Scripture. But it is still my understanding.

   Scientology says: God was an Alien who spliced our DNA with theirs.

   Mormons say; Lucifer and Jesus were brothers.

   Jehovah's Witnesses say: Michael the Archangel became a perfect human being and died on a telephone pole, and his vanished body is held somewhere for a future exhibition, That his spirit fooled the Apostles into believing a physical Resurrection by taking on various bodies and confused them.

The BIBLE says: Jehovah spoke the Invisible Word, and the Divine Word became flesh ; as the perfect "Undercover Boss" JESUS showed us the basic principals of dealing with man and being faithful to God. Faith is believing THAT, and then that he sacrificed himself in our place and in place of the daily slaughtering of animals, that our SIN penalty would be made void, cleared, and paid in full. Death holds no fear AFTERWARDS, because what follows is not condemnation, for the embracement of previously desired gifts to be bestowed upon children. Rather than the absence of such joy; due to our failed disavowing of HIM. Christ was resurrected in the same body that was murdered, the spirit that inhabited the body was the same that entered the body, it was the same that rose the body, and is the very same Spirit of God that empowers "Believers"!!! THAT is the Christian joy, the dancing feet, the raised hands, the laughter of excitement, the unpronounceable "tongues" of sheer praise of knowing that we know, we know - by faith; Death has no sting!!!! Death has is void of fear to the believer because HE is our reward. THIS is "why" we pray and to whom.

Well... that is my understanding, and what I believe.

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