Posts Tagged ‘God’
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This post is a personal situation I’m going through and would appreciate any input from my brothers, sisters in Christ and fellow friends in recovery.
There is a man at work who wants to pursue a friendship. He is a manager and has been awesome with helping me have a “voice” at work during times when I was having some issues with getting more shifts, more tables, etc. Essentially, making more money. Because of his input to the higher ups, on my account, I have made awesome money this week. I am grateful. Very grateful.
Now mind you, I am not naïve. I know that this “friendship” he wants to pursue will develop into stronger feelings. Feelings that I am not ready for. He knows I am a Christian. He is not a believer. He does not make fun of my beliefs (to my face anyway), but I have heard him scoff at the very mention of Jesus Christ and God. He made a comment yesterday about the church crowd coming in for lunch. He mentioned that “these people go to church and act all ‘good’ yet it’s obvious one of them is a homosexual”. I looked at him and said, “God loves everybody.” Someone gave him a little card about salvation, and he laughed and said “can you believe they gave this to me?” And threw it away. He knows how I feel about God and Jesus, and I was offended. It hurt my feelings. But I didn’t let him see that.
I was contemplating getting a second job, and was very torn about this decision. Reason being, I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot and have my current job be upset and take me off the schedule all together. I do appreciate this man’s input and advice. So I went to him for advice. He knows the restaurant owners better than I do and he told me they wouldn’t like it, especially with the busy season coming. There is always another person wanting my job. So I decided to not go for the interview at this other restaurant. I was up in the air about what to do. I prayed boldly about it.
My first thoughts are to seek God with my decision making and what choices to make. But I wasn’t positive of what to do and thought maybe God was opening a door for me to make more money. But I had never got a clear cut answer from God if this was His will or not. I had to make a decision within 3 days. So I sought other advice. And I believe I made the right decision now by cancelling the interview.
Now back to the whole “friendship” thing. He kept pressing me into talking about how we feel about each other. He says I’m running away from myself. This was my response to that comment, “I am not running away from myself. I am very confident in who I am, but at this point of my life, I am focusing on myself. I don’t have the emotional or mental room for others right now.” This is the truth. I found myself thinking too much about this man, when I should be filling my thoughts with Jesus. I was very uncomfortable allowing an unbeliever from the opposite sex filling my thoughts. I could tell it was wrong. The Holy Spirit was grieving about this and I felt it.
So today I put an end to it. I told him we can stay work friends and that’s it. He was very polite about it and backed off (at least for now).
Here are my questions:
- When do we seek human advice from man when we aren’t hearing from God, especially if we need an answer within a deadline?
- We have to work in a world of unbelievers, how dangerous is it for us to follow their advice about our careers?
- God works through people, do you believe God also works through unbelievers to bless us? Why do you believe this?
- How close are we to get to an unbeliever? Should we develop close friendships with them?
- Should we have an attitude of “us” and “them” ?
In the passage of Matthew 1:18-25, we read of Jesus’ birth. I would like to stress that these verses not only speak of Mary being a virgin and with-child, but more powerfully it speaks of Mary being with-child by the works of the Holy Spirit. Going back to the context and the time in which Jesus was born, the Jewish culture thought of the Holy Spirit of having very definite functions.
According to the Jewish idea, the Holy Spirit was the person who brought God’s truth to man. It is the Holy Spirit who taught men of God what to do. The Holy Spirit taught the prophets what to say. It was the Holy Spirit, throughout the generations and ages, that brought God’s truth to man. So then, Jesus is the one person who brings God’s truth to men.
To put it another way, Jesus is the one person who can tell us what God is like, and what God wants us to be. It is in Jesus alone that we can see what God is and what man ought 
to be. Before Jesus came into this world, the Jews only had vague ideas and quite often wrong ideas about God. But Jesus could say, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9).
In Jesus, we see the love of God, the compassion, the mercy, the seeking heart and the purity of God. This cannot be seen by anything else in the world. Before Jesus came into this world, man did not know what goodness really was. In Jesus alone we see true goodness, true manhood, true obedience to the will of God. Jesus came to tell us the truth about God and the truth about ourselves as well.
The Jews also believed that the Holy Spirit enabled men to recognize the truth once they saw it. So it is in Jesus that men’s eyes are opened to the truth. As humans we are usually blinded by our own ignorance. Our minds are darkened by our sins and we go astray because of our own prejudices. Jesus is the one who opens our eyes when we are ready to see the truth. Jesus is so glorious in this fact because He knows when we are ready to hear something and when we are not ready to accept something as the truth. He knows the perfect time to open our eyes. Life can be quite different when Jesus teaches us how to look at things.
Learning Jesus
Posted on: September 17, 2013
I recently started reading a book by Philip Yancey, “The Jesus I Never Knew”. I’ve been on a search of a book that will catch my attention in the first few pages and I am happy to say I have found it. I’ve been wanting to learn more about Jesus and have had an inner tug at the back of my thoughts recently to go back to the beginning. Life can be so hard at times and so confusing. I find myself slipping away from the very thing that has always kept me grounded and moving forward. That “thing” is my relationship with Jesus and all he has done for me. Simply reading and studying Jesus again undoubtedly brings me closer to Him but it also gives me a sense of peace and purpose in this life.
The birth of Jesus was so important that it split history into two parts. B.C. and A. D. When studying history we usually always see these dates Before Christ or After Death. But Jesus isn’t just someone who changed history but he is the one who holds the secret of eternity.
“I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God,” Jesus said in Luke 12:8 (nlt)
According to Jesus, what I think about him and how I respond will determine my destiny for all eternity. Many of us believe that Jesus was brave, sinless and emotionally stable. We regard him as easy to understand, physically strong and attractive, practical, warm and accepting. In spite of how we see perceive him, many of us who look for Jesus cannot see past our own noses.
Jesus himself, when challenged, didn’t offer airtight proofs of his identity. It’s as if he welcomed the risk of dissection by saying, “Examine me. Test me. You decide”. Jesus would drop clues here and there about who he was but he also said, after appealing to the evidence, “Blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”
The actions and behaviors of other people affected Jesus deeply: stubbornness frustrated him, self-righteousness infuriated him, simple faith thrilled him. Jesus seemed more emotional and spontaneous than the average person, not less. More passionate, not less.
Two words that could never be applied to the Jesus of the Gospels is: boring and predictable.
Much of what I’ve written above may be directly from the book because honestly I just couldn’t figure out a way to paraphrase it to make it any better than what was already written. So I give Philip Yancey the credit where credit it due. 
It is my hope that as I read more of this wonderful book I will have more posts about “Learning Jesus”. Thanks for reading everyone and God bless you all!
A little about me........my name is Michele and I am a born-again Christian. I was saved as a teenager and graduated from a Christian high school. I am a mother of one son who is the world to me. Despite my upbringing, later in life I fell into a life of self destruction which led me down many dark paths. I am a recovering addict and alcoholic and I have a great passion for Christ and His amazing power to heal even the worst cases. I am living proof of the miracle of God's power to change your life and way of thinking. Nothing is impossible with God. 
By His Grace 