Delightful Light

It was about 17 years ago. Harley and I had just recently started attending a CMA church in Draper. The call went out for volunteers to paint cartoon characters on the walls of the nursery and the children's church rooms. A lady named Tracy, who attended another church, graciously volunteered to lead our volunteers in the painting process. When we arrived, Tracy was almost finished drawing the figures on the walls using a projector and pictures in copyright protected books. We were told by the Pastor's wife, Vanessa, to follow Tracy's instructions. "Simple enough," I thought not having any cartooning experience. Tracy told us to choose whatever color we wanted and just start filling in the drawings, but, if we put too much paint on our pallet, we were to find someplace else to put it before it dried on the pallet and was wasted. Along about the time when one room had just about all the colors it needed and all the other women had moved on to the next room,...

It was the very first winter in our new home when the snow fell so thick I did not think Harley could get our Toyota out of the driveway. It was actually only about 10 inches but I did not have much experience with snow back then. So, out I went to shovel the snow before sun up. I wore my warmest winter coat I had at the time, a full length with flared out hem that I had made reversible with two layers of 100% wool and thick quilt batting. It was thick to say the least and there was a lot of fabric in it.  Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons While shoveling the snow, my neighbor let her  Airedale Terrier full grown dog, Charlie, out to do his business. Charlie stood on all fours at a height that placed his head at my waist line. The dog was huge. The moment out the door, Charlie came snarling and barking right towards me. He ran so fast that by the time I turned around to face him he already had a mouth full of my winter coat and succeeded at bruising my rump with his...

Consider, if language is required to communicate one's rulership within the boundary of peace, then man would have to have a language to communicate with everything in his sphere of authority. Genesis 11:1  declares that at one point in time there was literally only one language shared between all of creation.  Man's sphere of authority was defined by God in Genesis 1:26 . This verse lists these things which man was given rulership over: animals in the sea birds flying through the air beasts that walk on dry ground all the earth itself all the creepy crawly things on the ground Four out of five things listed here include all the living and breathing things taken from dust. The fifth item on the list is the dust from which everything was taken, the father of all dust. It is just as important to mention what man was not given authority to rule over. He was not given authority to rule over the heavens and all that is in them. In ...

A number of years ago, I had the privilege of having the experience of witnessing what happens when a person hears angels worshiping God. A group of approximately 15 of us were asked by a gentlemen in the group to pray for his daughter who was not present. She was in the middle of desperate circumstances that were about to come down upon her in a terrible way. We asked the dad to sit in the middle of our circle. We all gathered around him on her behalf so we could pray with the laying on of hands as described in the Bible. Because, I did not know the details nor did I know this family well, I took the stance to simply sing in tongues as soft as I could so I would not distract the others actually praying in our common tongue. After some time of intense prayer by all of us, the dad suddenly raised his head to heaven. Looking up he said, "I hear angels!" I looked up to see his profile and saw that his countenance had completely changed from utter down cast with w...

The authors who wrote the sixty-six books canonized in the Holy Bible used three methods to testify about God. First, they transcribed God's spoken word, His truth, that was dictated to them. Second, the authors recorded the works of God's hands, His ways or His enactments. These are the signs and parables of the Holy Bible. And finally, they recorded descriptions of God's countenance, His emotions of life. These three methods always agree with each other. There is never a contradiction between them even though these 66 different books were written over a period of more than 2000 years and by many different authors. God's Hermeneutics is a series of articles that explore how the apostles saw the Father by seeing Jesus through the lens of the "way" the "truth" and the "life." This series will not deal with revealing the Father to anyone. Rather, this series will point you to the HOW to see Him the same WAY the apostles saw Him....

Judge for yourselves what is right, to obey God or man's rules, Acts 4:19 . Making rules of etiquette and justifying those rules with good intentions does not prevent wrong doing of any kind. Instead, it merely displaces where the wrong is done. Rules of etiquette or today's traditions of the elders added to the scriptures actually nullify God's words the same way they did in the past. But rules of etiquette also set up the scenario for people in authority to lord those rules over others, Matthew 20:25 , Mark 10:42 , Luke 22:25 .  God's words are violated no matter the justification for rules of etiquette. Thus, rules of etiquette actually bind burdens upon people's shoulders and do nothing to help those people be set free from the chains that enslave them to burdens, Matthew 23:2-5 . In other words, people behave the way they do because of their chains. Adding rules of etiquette to those chains does nothing to remove the chains and set them free....

The Curse   Jesus used human body parts to represent individual members within the Body of Christ as a whole as He spoke in parables. The "Beatitudes" within the gospels will yield ample examples of this. The apostle Paul gave us further understanding of body part analogy here: For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the body. And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? Bu...