Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

God is not the person you might think he is.  Many people read the Old Testament and see a picture of an angry and vengeful destroyer.  This is the God experience without the personal experience of God.  It is one thing to seek God intellectually, but God likes to come to us though personal experience, and so you have a grounding from which you can seek him with your intellect.  God came to me, gently and slowly.  First he sought me out, making circumstances in my life work out for the better, redeeming my suffering (I have a condition that cost me the first half of my 20's), and bringing beauty into my life.  He came to me bearing gifts of happenstance and serendipity that were too numerous and too life changing to be mere chance.  From chance meetings with people who changed my way of thinking, to circumstances in my life coming together to provide a much better path than I could have orchestrated on my own. At the same time, prompted by these unus...

I was writing a blog post tonight, heatedly pouring out my thoughts on paper.  I had just read a chapter in “The Good and Beautiful God” by James Bryan Smith and was inspired to write.  Without much thought, I attacked the problem of modern Christians believing that suffering was the result of sin.  A large percentage of Christians, according to the book, saw a judgmental, vindictive God who repaid sin with suffering. And I had good evidence to support the pervasiveness of this view.  From people offering pat answers for horrific suffering, to televangelists proclaiming to the nation that 911 was the result of sins committed by our nation or New York or even better:  the gay lifestyle. I wanted to change people’s views and convict them of their error and prove to them that God is gracious and just and doesn't want or need suffering. But this was not what God wanted me to do.  While I was writing, I heard a still small voic...