Well, this weekend has been a very big weekend for Geoff and I. Friday night was youth group, and Geoff gave the talk. I made a “tower” with spaghetti & marshmellows, and I think we ate and threw far more than we did anything productive with! AND, we coloured our lips blue with M&M’s. Saturday night was Catherine Carpenter’s First Birthday party. It was a blast – but we were totally pooped by 8:45 so came home.
Today, Sunday lunch, we had a homegroup BBQ at Ash & Alison’s place. It was a load of fun. James had one BIG sausage!
And Geoff ate quite a bit of Jo’s – now famous – Garlic Bread.
Unfortunatley, with myself being of the female variety, the camera batteries died just as I was starting to get into it, so we didn’t get a photo of Ash’s mega icecream sundae! Sorry guys, maybe next time… 1Corinthians 10:31
I can’t believe it (the not really famous garlic bread) was almost all finished!
I made HEAPS!
I choose to add no comment here…
The garlic bread is so famous Jo! Dont you deny it!
Lol, it’s cute 🙂
Man, there’s an extreme over-abundance of healthy food in that fridge!
That rabbit looks awfully wide awake for a resting creature.
It’s funny all the same.
I reckon his(or her) whiskers look frozen
Since your topic is From Physical To Spiritual and you wrote.
The ability for me to relate to my heavenly father in a spiritual way is directly hampered by the limitations and choices made in the physical realm.
I don’t know this gospel it is foreign to me. The gospel I know says this.
Hebrews 4:16
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Notice something, in times of need we BOLDLY approach the throne of grace. We are not limited by our fleshly choices if we be in Christ. Therefore I encourage you in this if you truly do desire to “draw near”
Lets again compare with scripture.
2 Cor 3:18
But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
You are asking yourself the wrong questions. You should be asking “who should the Christian be desiring to know more of”. You mentioned him not once.
I like discussion…
I like M&M’s… but you didn’t throw any at ME !!!!!!
Insofar as my experience goes, I would think that the Christian suffers the most when they feel far from God, and even though God says that we are free to approach Him at any time I think there are things that can get in the way.
Usually the obstacles take the form of choices that we have made – bad food, bad sleeping patterns, bad company, etc. I guess the more dangerous form of obstacles is when they turn us off trying to seek God.
I’m in the situation now where I feel like
I don’t really want to seek God. But I know the alternatives, and I can remember that it was great when I was close to God. So I guess the most accurate description of where I am at the moment is “Desiring to Want to Seek God”. Confused? I sure am…
To cut a long story short (this post has the potential to turn into a Novel) I guess I just wanted to point towards Psalms and James. Within Psalms we see a man desperately desiring that God would draw near, and yet in David’s later years (found in the more historical books rather than psalms) we see that due to choices that He made, there were consequences (bathsheba = all kinda bad stuff, making war = not able to build God’s temple, left to solomon).
So we see that our choices in the physical realm have spiritual ramifications, as opposed to the belief that “We are not limited by our fleshly choices if we be in Christ.” It is true that guilt need not hinder us now that we are within Christ, but I’d look to a more James-like view of suffering, where he encourages us to take joy in the tough times. Even though feeling far from God is tough and definitely undesirable, when we come back to Him we come back a little bit more grown up, a bit stronger (in most cases) and a bit closer.
I read a quote once:
“God, I don’t love you
I don’t even want to love you
But I want to want to love you.”
Geoff, please don’t be a monk, cos we’ll miss you 🙂 It’s so good that you are still desiring God 🙂
The other week I wanted to swear at, kill and maim my bus driver – because he was late.
(Like, very late.)
I was like this was due to a big lack of sleep.
So if you have to pick any options, try sleeping a little bit more – I find it makes a huge difference 🙂
Hmmm.. ramifications of M&M’s to the spiritual walk??
I too missed out on hurtfulness from M&M’s.
Its so true what you say, Noof/Luke…
I once heard someone say… that the worst place to be is to know God and not be near Him.. because you’re no longer naive to His existence AND you know how good it is to be close to Him… yet you’re not there!
So you know what you’re missing out on… and you yearn to be there…
From what Hales just said, that means if you missed out on the hurtfulness of M&M’s, then you really didn’t miss out…
I hope you’re not going to eat my rabbit