We just moved!

We visited a church today near our new town. Mary and I now live in, Fairfax VA.  This group is relating with some of our personal heroes in the faith and we thought it would be fun....It was. There was much to be appreciated. It was also reminiscent. We have been there and done so much of that.

It has been three or four years since we began to come into a personal revelation of Father's love that has one by one challenged and then transformed religious bias's and lies that have been with us from childhood.

Little by little the process of The Word is taking effect in our lives and we are noticing transfiguration going on. It's kind of fun. It's quite super natural!

For instance. The Scripture, the hallowed scripture, that holy book is becoming my "favorite book". That was always something you were supposed to say but if asked now what my favorite book is, the one I will just pick up to read at leisure? I can honestly say it IS the Bible.....albeit for now in the Eugene Peterson's script "The Message". Who knows, I may get brave again some day and venture back to other varieties.

I don't use the words "The Word of God" though to describe it. The Word of God is our Fathers Son in the person of Jesus. There is a big difference and thankfully so. In fact most references to the "Word of God" in scripture are actually referring directly to the person of Jesus, the last and final word of God, the yes and amen of the Father in the embodiment of Christ.

Early on in this season I had gotten to a place where I couldn't read most of the scriptures. It was the end of the road. We had already left the institutional church 10 years earlier and now I was leaving most of the Bible out of my daily life except for "the promises". Everywhere else I read because of the colored lenses I was wearing only confirmed for me the utter impossibility of my ever measuring up. I didn't have the goods!

Almost 60 years of a mixture of Old and New Covenants had finally taken their toll and the shame introduced by religion, produced the schizophrenia between pretentious superiority and self loathing inferiority. Added to this mix was the never ending search for a father.

I read Jesus promises over and over, not venturing far from the Gospels. John was my favorite. He was also the Lords, or so he said...But for years Jesus words to his disciples on the night he was betrayed as shared by John were so confident and bold. I would tell the Lord (we were still on speaking terms) that those promises proclaimed so assuredly by Jesus to his disciples were as far away as the moon in my life. My life reflected precious little of the gold he had promised.

Today when the pastor said the answer for  a better year was to "spend more time in the Word of God", I actually cringed on his behalf. (He meant the Bible) He expressed his personal goal of reading the book through four times this year as well as 6 chapters from the psalms and one from the Proverbs daily.  Whew I hope it works! It will surely have some dividends. I just hope he has the right colored lens's on.

He also suggested that those in the audience who were not paying their fair share, I mean the tithe were under the curse, quoting the old covenant. And he invited them to find another place to fellowship lest this church, the one he pastored would also be cursed with them.

Now that is as far away from the truth as any thing I have ever heard. I was actually surprised at how old covenant this sounded to me. That was fun! Maybe I actually am changing.

I am not pointing these things out to be critical, only to demonstrate how far we all still have to go in becoming the New Covenant Saints He purchased at Calvary. And I'll bet that a year from now I'll be able to say this about some of the religion that is still in my own pores.

The new covenant is such good news! It's a never ending story about a father who loves us. Really loves us more than the religious will ever know. And when we mix the old with the new we leaven the whole loaf. The two are as far apart as the east is from the west. A little religion mixed in with grace is the spoiler. It kills! It steals. And it destroys!

The Gospel is the most freeing word in the universe and comes to us at great expense.
The Gospel is the ONLY route to a Glorious Life.
Good News to All People!

I really want to become this pastors friend.
Now that would be fun! Pray for us!