The spirit is in need of nourishment. I look around and I see many Christians who's live are unfulfilled and they remain unsatisfied because they do not attend properly to the needs of their spirit. God knows how to give good gifts to those who ask Him and what better gift could any of you think of then a spirit unruffled by the storms of life. The peace of God is not a untroubled life. The love of God is not a passionate feeling aroused by beauty in another person. The joy of God is not an emotional high which comes from ideal circumstances. Peace love and joy all come from having one's spirit in communion with God, reveling in the passion of divine understanding. Their is no feeling so sweet, no experience so moving, no motivation so powerful as that which comes from seeing God through the eyes of our spirit and conversing with Him in the tongue's of angels through prayer. Bliss is the perfect word and it is to this state which God is directing His followers. If we would only attend to the needs of our spirit and come to know God with our spirit not just with our minds.
To often we neglect our spirit and try to satisfy its incessant longing for God with things such as tv, music, video games, hobbies, books and even people. I know I'm not saying this as clearly as I could, I wish I was a better writer. Basically I think that once we are saved our spirit longs for God. The only way to satisfy that spiritual longing is to go to God is through prayer, meditation, contemplation, study and thought. We are still human and so can not totally abandon the body for the sake of the spirit but as our spirits gradually ascend into the heavenly realms of joy and peace our bodies, which remain here on earth will mirror what our spirit is experiencing making it possible to no longer need the things which have been our source of satisfaction for so long. To often we settle for things that are not sinful but are still unproductive, they are broken cisterns who's waters run dry long before our thirst is quenched. If we allow our spirits to drink of the well everlasting we will never be thirsty again.
Just to clarify, I still know there is a place for things as movies and such but all these things must come after our spirit is at rest with God. So in essence we should not be sad if those things were to suddenly vanish forever because our spirits will be at rest and when our spirits are at rest in God not much else that happens here on earth matters.
I know in my last post I promised to talk about how girls and boys are supposed to be friends without being girlfriends or boyfriends. While this post doesn’t give a step by step method of having those friendships (because I’m not smart enough to do that) I think it addresses the key issue. Most of the problems that come out of such relationships are because people do not have their spirits at rest in God and so they become distracted by the other person. There is an interesting principle that is peculiar to Christianity which is that the more you pursue what you want the further away it gets and vice versa the more you pursue God the more real become the things you want. This is true partly because as you draw near to God your desires change and also because God is the only one who can give us what we actually want. So by pursuing relationships with the opposite sex for the sake of marriage might appear helpful in reality I think its more helpful to pursue God and let him take care of the marriage part because He knows what we want and He knows what’s best for us.
So those are my thoughts and as I read through it, it they seem very impractical but based on my own experience and on my own pondering it still seems correct. So let me know what you think. If I am correct then we must address the question, is impractically a deciding factor when it comes to doing what’s best? With that question I will leave you to your puzzling and pondering.
*makes some tea and waits around for people to comment*
*still waiting around*
ReplyDeletesorry, no one was up at 4:40 :P
ReplyDeleteI think you stated your point much better in this post... good job :)
and I'll totally agree... things here can satisfy us for a little, but it's not true satisfaction. Only God can give us that. I find that the more I'm in the Word and the more I'm praying and intune to God the happier I am even if my life totally sucks at the moment.
good job :)
Hi Caleb, this is Mary.
ReplyDeleteSo I've been reading your blog this week, and this is something I do actually disagree with...
(Not to give this post a "bump" since it IS kind of old, but the way I figure it these issues don't get "old" such as it is, and you did say to you wanted to know what people think).
Please correct me if I misunderstand what you were trying to say.
I agree that God fills a special place in all of our hearts, and that we need Him to fill that hole. However, part of what I disagree with lies with statements both from your previous post "Something I Think Very Strongly About." and from this post that I'm commenting on. To skip the latter for the time being, I'll start with the earlier post, since that one did come first anyway.
Something I don't think is entirely accurate is the first point of your second syllogism.
"I. God is the only being who can satisfy the desires of a human."
I see someone already mentioned Adam and Eve in the comments before, but I wanted to question this a little farther in, if you don't mind. :)
My thoughts on this are as follows:
Even in the beginning before the fall, when everything was perfect as God intended it to be, and thus man's relationship with God was as perfect and close as it was ever meant to be, God STILL knew that Adam needed someone to love who was human. He didn't say "Well.... Adam has ME...why can't he be satisfied?", He said in Genesis 2:18 "It is not good that the man should be alone".
The word used was "alone", not "dissatisfied with God".
Also, something interesting that I'll point out is that if you read through Genesis when the creation was taking place, the phrase "and God saw that it was good" appears frequently--He was satisfied with the way everything was.
Genesis 2:18 is the first time that God found something unsatisfactory-- and that was the fact that Adam was by himself, without another person to love EVEN though Adam was already as close to God as was ever intended by the Creator Himself.
God knew that man would need someone else besides Him, and understood perfectly.
So even if you were able to get as close to God as EVER was possible, that does not mean that you would stop needing a wife or husband in your life to love.
With that last bit in mind, this is why I disagree with this statment:
(you said)
"If we truly love other people we would spur them on towards God. We would not hinder them in their race to eternal bliss by getting them all wrapped up in us. This goes for boys and girls. The wives will be made by woman who do not need a man to satisfy them but who has allowed God to satisfy all the emotional needs of her heart."
I agree we should encourage other people with their relationship with God, but I don't think that we should be of the frame of mind that loving another person would hinder that relationship.
As my last statement put forwards, Biblically speaking it would appear that allowing God to satisfy ALL the emotional needs of one's heart isn't possible-- although I admit that God was the One Who gave Eve to Adam in the first place, which I address in this next segment (which isn't going to fit so I'll finish in a second comment).
*Ahem* continuing to a segment from this post that I'm commenting on:
ReplyDelete(you said)
"God is the only one who can give us what we actually want. So by pursuing relationships with the opposite sex for the sake of marriage might appear helpful in reality I think its more helpful to pursue God and let him take care of the marriage part because He knows what we want and He knows what’s best for us."
While yes, God did give Eve to Adam, I think this should also be put into perspective of the way things have changed. I'm not the type of person who ever tells anyone to "get with the times", and I'm not saying that God has changed, because He just plain doesn't. I'm merely saying that not Him but rather our RELATIONSHIP with Him has changed in the way that we can't close our eyes and expect God to drop a spouse on our doorstep.
A verse that I think illustrates my point rather nicely is Matt 4:6-7, when the devil takes Jesus to the pointed top of the temple in the holy city:
"6. And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear the up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
7. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."
The parallel I'm trying to draw between the two is that just as if someone (in this case, even Jesus) throws themselves off a cliff and expects God to save them He won't, and if you don't even make an attempt at finding love for yourself, you won't necessarily inevitably have someone GIVEN to you on a silver platter.
I agree that many boyfriend/girlfriend relationships are pointless if neither party are in it for the proper reasons.
Wow, sorry that was long. But I saw "So let me know what you think", and....did.
(By the way Caleb, you think too much. ;D)
-Mary Ionno
Alright, it sounds like you have two disagreements.
ReplyDelete1. You disagree with what God does for humans, you don't think God satisfied us entirely and so we need other people. To prove your first point you use Adam and Eve. My conter is this, why do you assume that God created Eve to satisfy Adam's emotional needs? Why do you assume that Adam was unhappy and so God created Eve to make him happy? What if Adam literally needed a helper to tend the garden, or what if God wanted them to have kids? I'm talking in this post about the spiritual needs of a person and I'm not saying a spouse isn't goood and awesome but what I am saying is that God must be the one to satisfy our spirit. And I'll add if you are right and God created Eve to satisfy Adam's emotional needs, it was still God providing. God did it, Adam relied on God and God came through. Thats the essential point, that if we trust in God to take care of us, He will.
2. You think that if you don't search for a spouse you'll never get one, God won't just drop someone in your lap. I'll agree with that, I'll only caution and say that searching high and low and wasting months of your highschool career dating, wondering, dreaming is simply a waste of time. Their are plenty of people out there to marry its not that big of a deal whether you meet them now or in six years.
Hopefully that helps, I apologize for the misspellings and such, if this didn't make sense we can chat on facebook.
*Ahem*
ReplyDeleteShall we begin? Haha.
1. A. You said
"You disagree with what God does for humans, you don't think God satisfied us entirely and so we need other people."
Firstly, before I say anything else, I would like to correct myself or rather verify what I meant when I said "As my last statement put forwards, Biblically speaking it would appear that allowing God to satisfy ALL the emotional needs of one's heart isn't possible" in my original comment.
I do so because in that statement I put a limit on God's abilities, and that was very wrong of me. So allow me to clarify what I inteded to convey.
It's not so much that I was saying He CAN'T satisfy our spiritual needs, because He most certainly can.
I meant only that even when our relationship to God is at its closest, He Himself said "It is not good that the man should be alone".
It's not for me to explain exactly *why* God decided that it's not good. But I'm willing to take His word for it that it isn't.
B. You said
"why do you assume that God created Eve to satisfy Adam's emotional needs?"
I never said that. I never said "Eve was created to satisfy Adam's emotional needs." I said
"God STILL knew that Adam needed someone to love who was human", and I wouldn't necessarily state that love must be boxed in to be purely emotional.
C. You said
"Why do you assume that Adam was unhappy and so God created Eve to make him happy?"
I don't assume anything of the kind.
In fact, I believe Adam was happy. But still, the fact remains that God said it was not good for him to be alone, thus initially Adam was not as happy as he could have been-- or rather he was not as happy as he was after he was given Eve.
Adam said "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh". In other words, finally he had a companion who was genetically like him.
2. Ok. It looks like you really misunderstood what I was saying here:
You said
"I'll only caution and say that searching high and low and wasting months of your highschool career dating, wondering, dreaming is simply a waste of time. Their are plenty of people out there to marry its not that big of a deal whether you meet them now or in six years".
Wait, wait. Are you talking about me? I NEVER suggested that people do anything of the kind! Your cautionary statement for me is therefore irrelevant. I have no idea where you might have gotten the idea that I meant we should spend our highschool years "dating, wondering, and dreaming", because I certainly didn't mean that at all. To me it most definitely IS a waste of time-- especially at an age when many people are prone to exercising very poor judgement and making foolish decisions.
-Mary