Bullet Points

• The bible is a collection of  treasured literature. Topics included are on world creation, creation of man, early world civilization history, Jewish history, prophecy, poetry, wisdom, stories, life of the Messiah and letters to the early churches. 
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• Inspired by God written by mere men, the bible is a love letter to the entire world for the redemption of eternal souls.
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• God sent Jesus into the world to become flesh and blood and live among us. He came at the perfect time in history. 
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• Jesus is God. 
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• Jesus was born by a virgin woman through the power of the Holy Spirit.
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• Jesus became flesh and blood. God dwelt among His creation. Emmanuel.
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• Jesus was without sin. He did not miss the Father's mark. Jesus fulfilled the path the Father had laid out for Him before the foundations of the world were laid.
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• Jesus was mocked, beaten, humiliated and condemned to death on a Roman cross for all of us because we needed our debt to be paid in full. For all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.
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• Jesus was brought up as a child to follow the Torah, festivals and traditions of the Jewish religion and ultimately become the total fulfillment of God's perfect law. The perfect Lamb of God.
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• Fifty days after ascending into the earth's atmosphere,  Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to "help and come along side of us".
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• At second birth, we were all given spiritual gifts to use in building up the body of Christ and the kingdom of God.
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• We need to use our spiritual gifts to produce fruit or build up the body of Christ and the kingdom of God here on earth now and in the future that is to come.
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• We were all sealed by the Holy Spirit as a guarantee for the purchased possession until the day of redemption.
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• The "church" is not a building or piece of property. The "church" is made up of people, called out of the world to be saved by grace, sent back into the world to model the grace that has been given them.
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• Before His death, Jesus gave the world just two commandments in order to fulfill the law. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.
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• Before His death while still hanging on the cross, Jesus said "It is finished"  In the Greek literally "Paid in Full". Like when a debt instrument was literally blotted out and rendered "Paid in full".
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• All human beings born after the death of Jesus have had their debts paid for them. Although, the bible states that not all people will choose to reach out and receive God's gift of grace and mercy.
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• You cant loose what you never created or found in the first place. Abiding in Christ means that you will never loose your relationship with Him!
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• Its all about Jesus. It's all about relationships. Its all about freedom from the law. Its all about loving others first. Its a story all about love.
• To Be Continued.....

Puzzle Pieces

My wife loves to put together puzzles. During the Thanksgiving season she is already gathering the puzzle boxes down from the loft, choosing her next victim, extracting the pieces out of the box and onto the living room table. I think her love for puzzles is one of the reasons she was drawn to me and why she probably married me in the first place. I'm a human walking puzzle, incomplete with a few strategic missing pieces. Missing pieces that got lost somewhere along the way or maybe were never in the box to start. 

For what ever reason I have decided to give you all a brief testimony in a nut shell, which is an incredibly descriptive narrative for me. Lets see if we can crack the shell and look at the nut inside. What kind of person was god forming me into?  I grew up in the late nineteen sixties or early nineteen seventies. I was a completely screwed up kid for that time or any time. I preferred to be alone out hiking in the woods somewhere. I felt closer to my god that way I guess and I do mean god with a little g because I had not yet found God with a big G. The true and living God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob.

After surviving psychedelic drug use, missing out on Nirvana (the place not the band) and not being able to sit still long enough for my transcendental meditation to kick in I found myself getting more isolated. At that time in my life I probably could have been the Uni-Bomber's roommate holed up in some mountain cabin or something worse. I'll spare you all the tedious details. See, my life really was like a jig saw puzzle with a missing  God shaped piece at my core. Also, growing up and  living in the middle of the sexual revolution during the 1970's had its down side. My parents fought constantly, separated one moment, divorced the next than becoming friends again until my mom 's passing at the age of sixty-three from lung cancer.

I needed a miracle in my life and I got it through prayer, prayer works! When I was fourteen or fifteen years old I found God, spelled with a capital  G. Some of my relatives had been praying for me and their prayer s were finally heard so keep praying for all your loved ones. My early church experience looked like this: I went to Scott Memorial East, in El Cajon Ca., which later became the Mega Church Shadow Mountain. I had to capitalize mega church because it just doesn't look as cool spelled in lower case letters. Tim LaHaye was the pastor and loved to preach on missions and the book of Revelation. In fact, I was there when Dr. David Jeremiah first came to speak before he became the new pastor. Folks, I was invited to Scott Memorial and I probably would not have gone if it was not for Nick Maniscalco. Yes, we all need to be active and  invite un-churched people to church and pray that the Christians they meet there don't act too carnally. First impressions are important.

Puzzle pieces, right, lets go back to the table and find another piece. I liked to read my bible allot in the early days. I loved all the stories Jesus would tell and teach his friends. I also liked the men Jesus picked to be around Him. I think everyone of the apostles had distinct personalities that  mirrored our own. We can see ourselves in them and learn from them without suffering on our own. Most of the stories in the bible are applicable  to our own situations that we find ourselves in. So the story about the Prodigal son fits me.  I was a true Prodigal Son in every sense of the word. And you know for the next ten years of my life I walked away from God.  He ended up carrying me for the entire distance on His shoulders. Have you ever seen that picture of footprints in the sand when it starts out with two sets and then just turns into one set of footprints? The caption reads something like why did you leave me God? And Jesus says, I didn't leave you I was carrying you. That was a picture of my life.

In my late twenties while traveling in Colorado Springs, Colorado another friend invited me to go to Calvary Chapel there. I went with her  and really enjoyed entire experience including the new style of worship and sermon delivery which was like storytelling. I was immediately hooked on this new relationship we could have with God and became a Calvary Chapel man for life, or so I thought. Now, lets fast forward turning  the clock ahead twenty-four years to today. So why am I still  such a puzzle?  Why are my relationships with other human beings at such a low point ? One puzzle piece I found  to satisfy my church requirement is to go out with the Street Angels and minister to homeless people in downtown San Diego.

My education: I have been to seminary,  I have become a  licensed minister and ordained by a group of my peers. And now  I find the more I read, study and learn about the bible the more questions I have. I'm beginning to discover that there are holes in certain areas of what I thought was a "Rock Solid" belief system. Its like puzzle pieces have been lost from the box and have fallen under the table making for an incomplete picture. So now as I walk through the living room of my life and glance down at the table the puzzle remains to be finished. Where are the missing pieces?

Lets fast forward to today: As I sit here writing I'm no longer a part of this non-denominational, denomination called Calvary Chapel. However, I am still in the body of Christ and part of a larger kingdom view that Jesus attempted to teach us about. Even Pastor Chuck Smith never really wanted their fellowship to become a denomination. But now, beginning with the day of my departure I am feeling like I am breaking out of a cocoon. Trying to shed my caterpillar skin, warm my new wings in the warmth of God's Son and readying  myself for first flight!

I willingly dedicated the last twenty-four years of my life to my local Church in leading worship, preaching and teaching.the church body to love as Jesus did. I grew up spiritually through their "Home Fellowship" system which really is great way to learn about Jesus, The Way and the church or the "called out ones". So my question to all of you is this: Can Calvary Chapel be considered a cult?  I do not believe they are a cult. However, there might be some resemblance to cult  practices in their inability or inflexibility to consider other theological possibilities and view points.  In their defense the main thing Calvary Chapel  as a denomination got right was that they listened to the Holy Spirit and focused their attention and teaching on  Jesus. It really is all about Jesus. Knowing Jesus and having a relationship with  Him. Being like-minded with Him.

I use to think for somebody to go to church they had to be a  conservative, vote republican and be  politically motivated. I now however feel quite different.  For having been forgiven so much we ought not to be so judgemental and hateful of others who don't share our identical beliefs. We should be flexible and build relationships with people so that we can minister to them, not force feed our own dogma and belief systems down their throats. Jesus said that the truth would set us free. Its time for us to love people like Jesus did. To stop threatening people with hell and instead teach them about Jesus. We need to begin the  Divine process of healing through sanctification so that we are ready to love the people God sprinkles around us. I do feel as if I am  truly free now,  no bondage or entanglements, no longer producing energy for the Calvary Chapel Collective but more intent on becoming a brighter light for a larger kingdom here on earth and in heaven. So with the umbilical cord severed  I'm now breathing fresh air from outside and thinking of new ways to love others.  Oh God, Thank you so much for Jesus, the truth, the way and the life...Knowledge of Jesus really does set you free!

For The Hell of It!

How would you go about describing what the color blue looks like to a sightless person? Someone who has been blind from birth and has never seen light or the visible color spectrum would be unable to understand what blue was. If you were incredibly clever you might get a pan from the kitchen fill it with ice and water and then put the blind person's hand into the cold mixture. This might convey certain aspects of things that might be blue in color but it would not be the complete visual package. Bottom line, you still wont know what the color blue looks like.

We actually live in a universe where we can interpret four dimensions. Let's start by saying we exist as one point in infinite space. Now let's add another point to our universe and now we arrive at our first dimension which is "length". One more point added to the mix and suddenly we have our second dimension which is "width". Our last spacial dimension is "height" which gives us our X,Y and Z axis or our three dimensional universe. The last known dimension is "time". What really is time?

To have "time" in our universe we need to have matter and it needs to be set into motion. If objects are not moving then there is nothing to measure because you have to have time in order to travel distance. If we stood perfectly still somewhere in space and  nothing was in motion we would not feel the passage of time. Also without motion we would not have light waves or light particles so wondering what the color blue looked like would be a mute issue. It really would be a mute because we would not have sound waves either.

Now let's think back to being blind or sightless and wanting to discover the truth about the color blue. What story would you attempt to tell someone to describe the color blue? What props could you use to convey the color blue? Just think about this dilemma.How to pass information from one known dimension to another unknown dimension? This is what I  refer to as an extra-dimensional information transmission dilemma.

Do you believe in a literal place the bible calls Hades, Gehenna or Hell?  Jesus did and he spent allot of time warning us about the dangers of ending up there. Sounds like a real place to me. Although where it is and what it really is seems a little bit like describing the color blue to a sightless person. Some of the biblical descriptions of hell  include- A place where the worm never dies. The lake of fire. A lake burning with fire and brimstone. A place of wailing and gnashing of teeth. That last one bugs me a bit because I grind my teeth while sleeping.

Another couple of questions we need to ponder; Why did the new testament writers appear to have borrowed  the concept of Hades and Tartarus, two levels of punishment in Greek mythology, and imported them into their writings? We also have the concepts of Abraham's Bosom and Sheol to grapple with. In addition, in the book of Job, we find some clues to what early civilizations that were located in the fertile crescent might have believed about an after life.

We are given a word picture of an extra dimensional reality that we can not yet comprehend because I believe it literally does not exist in this universe. Before you grab that last sound bite, in an attempt to tie me to the burning  stake of heresy, consider this- Jesus was warning us of a situation so terrible, so wicked that the only reference point He had here on earth was the Jerusalem trash dump located in the valley of Hinnom (Gehenna). This place not only smelled bad, it was always burning with smoke and flame that continually filled  the sky. This horrible stench would probably drift into the city and remind people of the dump and all the discarded trash as the wind blew it into town. In older times child sacrifice to Molech also took place in this area outside the walls of Jerusalem. Just the casual mention of the name Gehenna in Jesus' day would have brought to mind some really wicked, horrible and detestable activities.

Do we have freewill to make choices during the day, week, month, year and through out our lives? Can you imagine for a second how much God respects you and loves you ?  He loves you so much He wont violate your freewill choices. Now suppose God designed "a way" for all humanity to exist with Him after death in another dimension. And what if you were foolish enough not to choose to be in God's presence? What word picture, from here on earth, would come close to describing such an awesome place? Think about the blind person's hand in the ice water in an attempt to describe the color blue. How would you describe a place void of God? A place lacking God's love, His light, His warmth and His fellowship. No wonder Jesus was warning us not to choose that place.

As part of the body or the bride of Christ we are not to divide over this issue. It actually is not a salvation issue. Our eternal destination is in eternity with God. We are to choose Jesus now, be like Jesus now, abide in Jesus now and hell will literally not exist for us in eternity. Show people around you, in your life how much you care for them. As you build relationships, the Holy Spirit, will give you not only an opportunity but the words to draw souls to Him. Let us not beat people over the head with hell but rather show them God's love for us. The gospel is well defined in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. So we don't have to invent any clever devices or add anything to what God has already given to the whole world. Freedom from the curse of sin, death and all the baggage that we seem so thrilled to drag with us! God's Son Jesus, is "The Way" seek Him and you will find Him!