You've Got the Q's, I've Got the A's

The following are some questions that many people wonder about God, but can't ever seem to get a straight answer for. Through hours of prayer, contemplation, reading the Bible, and writing, here are some of the straightest answers I can give. (If you have any more or you don't feel like I appropriately answered a question, let me know and I'll do my best to be a better light for you!) All of these answers are strictly based on scripture, and I would be more than happy to provide you with any of the citations that you need. Enjoy :)

Why does God allow people to sin?

When God created Adam and Eve, they were perfect in every single way; sin did not exist to them. He made them so that He could love them passionately, and He desired their love back. But see, God had to give them the choice to also not love Him, otherwise He would have just created some sort of robotic humans. This is to say, forcing someone to love you is not real love. I think this to be pretty obvious and self-explanatory. Ultimately, when Adam and Eve chose to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they chose to go against God's only rule that He had set for them. They loved their own interests over His interests for them. This was the "original sin". He allowed it because that was the only way real love could be established.

Why does Adam and Eve's sin have to affect me? I wouldn't have eaten the fruit like those idiots...

You know how you kind of look like your parents? You might have inherited the same nose, mouth, or eye color. Well, God sees that we look like our great-great-great-etc. grandparents, Adam and Eve. Although we might not have been in the Garden of Eden when they commited the original sin, we did inherit the stain placed on their heart. They were no longer perfect and pure. When God looks at our heart, He sees that same stain. It has been passed down from generation to generation, separating each and every person from God, exiling us from the perfect Eden we could have experienced. That's why our world is so screwed up. They did it, but we must reap the repercussions. In short, we are sinful by our own nature.

Why would God go through all the trouble of creating everything if it was just going to get corrupted by sin?

Trouble? What trouble? God spoke the universe into creation. By His words alone He created everything that has come into existence. That doesn't seem like a whole lot of trouble to me. I've had to put far more effort into writing this blog than He had to in creating the entire universe. Still though, there is the issue of our corrupting His creation with sin. In my opinion, I believe that God created us and gave us free will knowing that it was a chance worth taking, that we would rebel. To find those who would actually love Him by their own will, He must have deemed it a necessary course to allow those who rebel against Him without recognizing their need for Him to fall into judgement, and ultimately damnation. Furthermore, we were not meant for this world. We were made for a perfect world and this present world is far from it. Knowing this, God promises that those who believe in Him will soon be given perfect bodies and a perfect place in which to eternally live, always within His presence being able to praise and worship Him forever. Do I know what this looks like or how God plans on doing this? No. But I do know that in all of time God has never lied, so there is no reason for me to start believing that He will now!

How did God exist before time?

C.S. Lewis answered this question for me in his book Mere Christianity. This is my paraphrase: We live in the realm of time. It constantly moves forward as each passing second fades away into oblivion. I can no more re-do yesterday than a chimp can write Shakespeare's Hamlet; it just can't happen. With that being said, imagine my life were a part of a book (we'll call it the Doddyssey, hehe). I do things in chronological order because, of course, that's how life works. So, one day in the Doddyssey I study excrutiatingly hard for an exam, then the next day I ace the exam. To me, studying came first, then acing the exam came second. However, the amazing author who wrote the Doddyssey is not subject to this same A, then B, then C order. He could go to the first page or the last page in any order that he sees fit, all he has to do is turn the pages. The book is in front of him, and he already knows the storyline. He knows how it begins and how it ends. He created the world with his own mind. He loves his book and every character in it because he made it; it is his creation. All of this can be said of God and how He is not confined to our own little world. Although the analogy isn't perfect, it does allow for some insight into how God is so legitimately awesome.

What in the crap is the Holy Trinity (and how does it work)?

Simply put, the Holy Trinity is God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. All three are necessary for our salvation. God is necessary because He is our creator. Without His love, we cease to exist. Jesus is necessary because He is our intercessor. Without His perfect blood and resurrection, hope of eternal life ceases to exist. The Holy Spirit is necessary because He is our indweller. Without His presence in our life, salvation ceases to exist. That's why we must have all three. This is known as having a "triune" God. The Bible also explains that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all three the exact same thing, but are all completely different. Is that even possible? Here's the way I've found best to explain this conundrum: I am Brandon. To my mom, I am her son. To my brother, I am his brother. To my classmate, I am their friend. In all of these relationships, I never stop being Brandon though. I am the same person just seen in three different lights because of the types of relationships that are present within each. Much is the same with the Trinity. God is God, but when He came to the earth as Jesus, He never stopped being God. Jesus was simply God in the flesh. The same can be said with the Holy Spirit and His role in our lives as believers or future-believers. When the Holy Spirit, the supernatural conscience inside our hearts, minds, and souls, allows us to recognize sin and discern between God's will and our will, He never stops being God. Isn't that spectacular? Our God is so great.

Why did Jesus have to die?

The Bible makes it clear that the wage of sin is death. Obviously, a wage is something that is earned, so our sins have earned us death. This death goes far beyond the physical passing away that we will all go through. This death is a spiritual death, an eternal separation from God, resulting in all of the fire and brimstone that you've surely heard about before. With this being said, our lives are tainted with sin. God, being absolutely perfect, hates sin; it goes against His very character and perfect nature. So why would we expect that God would allow sinful beings into His presence in the perfect Heaven? As it turns out, He won't and never will. Well, wouldn't that mean that we are all destined for an eternity in hell if God hates our sins so much? If Jesus hadn't died, then yes. But God demonstrates His love for us in that Jesus, the Christ, died for us, taking our place, paying our wages. Before Jesus died on the cross, He had never once in His life sinned - never thought a bad thought, never was jealous of anyone, and had never lied. He had lived a perfect life, just as God had intended for us to do. This is to say, He had never felt what it was like for God to punish Him. However, when Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice on the wooden cross to take the place that we all deserve, He became sin. Galations 3:13 says, "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." God went from seeing His perfect Son to the cursed sins and lives of every human being who had ever lived. God's judgement was full and nothing was held back when He punished Jesus for OUR sins. That is precisely why Jesus had to die. Only He was perfect enough to pay our wages in full.

Do I have to be baptized in water to be saved?

This is a common misconception. The whole point of immersion baptism is that it is a public outward profession of faith. It symbolizes the old body dying away, and the birth of a new paid-for life arising, overcoming death. To be saved, one must truly believe in their heart that Jesus is Lord and paid for their sins because they couldn't do it on their own, and they must confess that same truth with their mouth. Never does the Bible require baptism for salvation, except by the Holy Spirit. When one is baptized, they are saying to the world that Christ has changed them and given them a new, better life, which is a direct result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us.

What's the point of prayer if God knows my thoughts?

God is omniscient. He knows everything and nothing is hidden from Him. Fact. But God still wants us to pray even though He already knows what I'm going to say or think; why is that? When we pray to God, our minds our centered directly on Him. We are giving Him the fullness of our attention, much like you would when speaking directly to anyone else. What prayer allows us to do is keep our minds and hearts faced towards God, much like the sunflower in one of my previous blogs, "A Quick Botanical Lesson". The second we stop thinking about God and what He has ultimately done for us, we usually fall into sin. This leads me to believe that praying is more for the believer than it is for God. However, this is not to say that God does not infinitely love and appreciate our prayers and supplication or that He doesn't take into account our wants and desires when we pray about things. On the contrary, God wants us to pray. Look to Jesus as an example! Throughout Jesus' ministry, He was found praying...all the time! Furthermore, the Bible points out that God's mind cannot be changed, but that does not mean His course of direction can't be changed. A simpler way of looking at it is this: say I'm wanting to go to Chicago from here in good ol' Benton, Kentucky. Well, I can either walk, take a car, a motorcycle, a bus, a train, or an airplane, among a whole host of other ways. I can also take a ton of different routes or layovers, but my final destination never changes. I can get there in an infinite amount of ways, but my mind won't be changed about where I'm going. This is how I view God's plan, especially in relation to our prayers. Don't ever underestimate the power of prayer because you could be the person who changes God's direction from using a "car" to a "train"!

What is grace?

Grace is going above-and-beyond mercy. In a nutshell, mercy is to take away something that you deserve. Going back to the Doddyssey, if I hadn't studied super hard for my exam, had decided to just cheat because video games looked a whole lot more appealing at the time I could have studied, and was subsequently caught by my professor, then I should have gotten suspended or even expelled. Mercy would be present if my professor just gave me a zero as opposed to kicking me out of college. Grace, on the other hand, is taking away something that I do deserve and giving me something else, something better, that I don't deserve. Instead of just giving me a zero, my professor might extend grace by allowing me to take the exam again and not penalize me for my lack of effort and superior stupidity that I previously displayed. God's grace is somewhat analagous to this. Although the Bible clearly states that our sins deserve death (like eternal, spiritual death beyond the physical death we will all succumb to), God gave us a way out. He gave us Jesus, who died the death that we surely deserve. If we accept that we cannot pay for our own sins, and that Jesus is the only one who can (and did!), then we have experienced God's grace. God effectively gives us the chance to retake the exam. We're still not going to get all the questions right, but God is amazing enough to just give effort grades in our now grace-filled lives! I think that's a superb deal.

Can I get to Heaven by being a really really super awesome person?

No. Nope. Nu-uh. Not gonna happen. I don't mean to sound cynical, but that's just the way it is. To restate our current condition, we are ravaged and depraved by sin. Any offering or sacrifice that we try and give to God will get rejected worse than Dwight Howard blocking Ty Lawson's lay up attempt into the fifth row of fans. Reeeeejected! God cannot accept sin, so He will never accept us in our sinful condition. How we overcome this is through Jesus. He paid our wages so that we can be seen as perfect, sinless, and righteous. That is what makes our offerings acceptable to God. Take a look at one of my previous blogs, "I've Learned To Spell The Word Faith: J-O-Y." It really speaks on what kind of appropriate sacrifices God is looking for in us.

Why doesn't God just let everyone into Heaven?

Although God loves us more than we will ever deserve, He still expects us to love Him back. If we don't choose to love Him and accept Jesus as Lord, then our sins are infinitely worse than the most nasty ketchup stain you've ever had on a white cotton shirt, except this stain is on your heart. God cannot accept imperfections, not even one. This is precisely why God can't allow everyone into Heaven. But now, I'm about to blow your mind. Did you know that God gets glory from sending people to hell? (Brandon, what in the world are you saying?! Have you gone mad?!) It is true. Again, God is perfect, so His judgement is perfect. When God condems people to hell for their unrepented sins, He is perfectly fulfilling what they deserve. In this perfect judgement God receives glory because, in fact, it is perfect, just as He receives glory in the perfect salvation of a once depraved sinner. That's intense, isn't it? This is also another reason why God cannot allow everyone into Heaven.

The moral of the story is: God is indescribably wonderful. No amount of words can even begin to describe a single iota of His epicness. His love never fails, even when every person who has ever lived, besides His own Son, has turned their back on Him. Wow. God loves you. I don't see why you wouldn't want so badly to love Him back with every fiber of your being. Consider your heart. Is that stain of sin still present, or has it been washed clean? I pray that it has been cleansed beyond measure with the perfect blood of Jesus.

With love.

An Intertwined Love

Ever feel like you aren't good enough? Maybe you've done some things thinking they would fill you up, but they've just left you even more empty. You've got a want in your heart, a longing to be loved, but no matter what you do people just seem to take you for granted. The people you want to love you start to ask more and more of you, until you've given away everything for them. The one thing you were so committed to saving for the future has now become a dirty stain of the present, a tiny thread holding the "love" together, a stitch of what has become the scarlet letter sewn across your life. The only point that is special about your past, or maybe even your present, is that it is especially painful. Your innocence is gone and so are they. So here you are - wadded up like a piece of trash, discarded like you never existed or ever were important. What hope do you have in finding that real, unquestionable, sacrificial love you've been searching for, but always seem to fall so desperately short of?

Believe me, there's more hope than you know! My life hasn't been spared of these poor choices, but I am more than the sum of my past mistakes. As it turns out, I was just looking for love in all the wrong places. I wanted so badly to manufacture this romanticized concept of love that is strewn across any form of media today, the propaganda that glorifies instant gratification, that I forgot about God. However, He gave me a second chance with every passing breath. Take a deep breath. Go ahead, I can wait... Feel the light air parade into your growing lungs as your chest begins to press back with every fleeting moment. That, friend, was a gift from God. You don't deserve it just as I don't deserve to be sitting here writing this, but God's love abounds for us. He passionately loves me more than any other love I will ever know. He gives people like me and you a chance at hope and abundant life.

Take Rahab, for instance (Joshua 2). Rahab lived in the city of Jericho roughly 1500-2000 years before Christ entered the world, her house a part of the city's outer wall. She lived her life as a harlot, selling her body as a means to get by. She was probably about as far away from pure as one could be, her scarlet letter lifestyle left behind scars and memories too deep to recount. So far, it seemed that she had no chance at ever living an upstanding lifestyle, let alone getting right with God. But God had other plans for her.

Knock, Knock, Knock. Two spies sent by Joshua (and ultimately God) from the land of Israel were at Rahab's door. They were scoping out Jericho on how to conquer it, and they needed a place to stay in order to evade possible capture. Not yet knowing their motives, she let them stay. However, it was soon gossip around town that Rahab was keeping two of Joshua's spies in her house; those nosey neighbors! The king of Jericho, not too fond of the Israelites, sent troops to dispose of the men. Rahab, apparently aware of the impending danger, hid the spies on her roof. When the troops came to question her, she lied and told them that the men had left and must be pursued quickly. The troops left, hustling to find the spies. Wow, who knew that the Bible had soap opera stuff like this?!

Rahab, the prostitute, after much talk exclaimed to the Israelite spies on the roof that it was obvious the Lord had given them the land and that the Lord had been doing great, miraculous things for the Israelites, like parting the Red Sea some 40 years earlier. Something seemed to be changing inside of Rahab. In exchange for her word that she wouldn't give away any information about the spies and their whereabouts, the spies promised Rahab safety in the destruction to come. They told her to hang a scarlet cord from her window so the troops would know which house to leave alone. If she wanted her family to be saved, they must be in the house as well.

Rahab undoubtedly hung that scarlet cord from her window. That was her and her family's only hope. The entire city, every inhabitant and every wall would fall, except for where that scarlet cord fluttered in the wind. What immense hope was resting on such a small piece of twine. A woman, a whore by no uncertain terms, placed all her faith in the promise of a second chance, a life past the death she deserved. Ultimately, when Rahab placed the scarlet cord in her window, she was acknowledging the power of the God the Israelites had been proclaiming. Finally when the dust settled, only one house remained. I bet you know which one it was.

If God can love Rahab, a harlot who had lived her life in sin and iniquity, enough to give her the opportunity to hang a scarlet twine outside her window as a second chance simply by having faith and proclaiming the truth of the God of Israel, then God can certainly love you enough. In all actuality, the scarlet cord is a precursor, representative of the blood of Jesus on the cross. Although the world will crumble and die, those who grip firmly to the power of the blood of Christ will not waiver. Not a speck of dust will come upon their salvation as the world crashes down. God has something better planned for them. He loves us so much that He gave His Son freely as a sacrifice to take the punishment that we deserve for our sins.

Have you placed the figurative scarlet cord in your window yet? Do you recognize that God is real, personal, and loves you more than you will ever deserve? He is a God of second chances. He is a God of hope. He is a God of love. His love is intertwined in your very being. The best thing you can do is love Him back while He's still blessing you with every breath you're breathing!

With love.

A Quick Botanical Lesson!

Have you ever wondered how it is that sunflowers are able to face the sun as it moves across the sky throughout the day? I mean, I'm pretty sure that they don't have brains or a nervous system to coordinate that movement. What actually happens is the leaves that are in the shade produce a growth hormone called auxin, which travels down the shady side of the stem stimulating cellular division. This unequal cellular division effectively rotates the stem, leaves, and flower so that it is always directly facing the sun. Whoa. Props to God on that.

This amazing botanical concept can transcend to our lives as Christians, as well. We all have pasts; most are full of faults like selfishness, hate, greed, prejudice, and iniquity. Check me down for all of those. But the thing is, those dark parts of our lives help us to understand just how much we need the Light:  Jesus. God allows us to make these mistakes because He gave us free will to either love Him or hate Him; after all, forcing us to love Him wouldn't be real love in the first place. When we choose to satisfy ourselves by succumbing to our own carnal desires, we are doing the opposite of what God intended for us to do: to constantly be facing the Light that is our life-source. A sunflower that turns away from the sun will not receive the proper amount of nutrition it needs in order to survive, and it will surely die. However, God gave us the Holy Spirit to act as our auxin. The Holy Spirit allows us to reflect upon our dark past and understand that the Light of the World is the only thing worth facing, stimulating growth in our faith. Friends, if you were a sunflower, which way would you be facing?

With love.

I've Learned To Spell The Word "Faith": J-O-Y.

So many people today regard born-again Christians as being unemotional, flat, fun-suckers who don't know how to have a good time and will be uber judgemental about you trying to do so. In my opinion, this perception is not far from reality, partially because I took up that role for many years of my life until recently. I falsely understood that the Christian faith was about doing the do's and not doing the don'ts. I served God with some sort of stoicness because I felt like I was just fulfilling my obligations as a Christian to be holier-than-thou (Afterall, that's what Christians do, right?). I couldn't have been further from the Truth.

 I'm gonna let Paul take the wheel on this one: "Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise, you should also be glad and rejoice with me." (Philippians 2:17-18). What in the world did he just say? First of all, he is alluding to the fact that his life had been full of sacrifices. The latter part of his life was spent being rejected, persecuted, arrested, and imprisoned, all on multiple occasions because he started to tell people about the whole Jesus-being-Lord-and-Savior-of-the-universe thing. Many of his friends were even killed. It's obvious that their message regarding Christ was not well-received by some of those they spoke to, much like the world today. We can see this in his mention of being "poured out as a drink offering". Taking a step back in history, a drink offering was in-effect the finishing touches during an animal or grain sacrifice to God. The sacrifice would be burned, then wine would be poured onto the offering to symbolize their giving "every last drop" to God, the "pouring out" of their life and possessions. So far it seems like Paul would have lived a better life had he not devoted it to God and just lived for himself, but he has the audacity to go on and say that he sacrificed it all with joy (and that we should be joyful in our sacrifices to God, as well)!! At first glance, it looks like Paul needs to lay off the wine a little, but there is more to this story...

What would possess Paul to sacrifice so much so joyfully? Simple: the Holy Spirit. Paul writes again in Romans 14:17, "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." You see, the Holy Spirit is God's way of conveying His joy to the believer. The indwelled presence of the Holy Spirit in the life, body, and soul of the believer results in true, unblemished joy because God Himself resides in them. God rejoices in His creation, in the salvation of sinners, and in the righteous actions of His children. Because believers are the children of God (Romans 8:14), we are to be in tune with the heart and character of God and should be characterized as joyful, too. What father enjoys having a child who has no personality and doesn't ever have a smile on his face, even after sacrificing everything he had for the child? God is not any different. God expects us to take joy in our salvation, even under the most dire of situations (Psalm 51:12). After all, He gave us Christ!

Oh man, you probably think I'm preaching to you now after that last part. No, what I just did was drop the most underappreciated truth in all of history. Christ, the Messiah of the human race, the most super of super heroes, sacrificed what we never could: spotless blood (Hebrews 9:22). He joyfully lived a perfect life, sacrificing possessions, dignity, and ultimately Himself, all so that we might have a chance at the same joy as Him.

 [Sidenote: One thing that is really cool about Christ is that He only died once. (Duh, Brandon, that's pretty obvious...) Well, back in the Old Testament temple, priests would constantly give sacrifices to God because of their ever constant sins (Romans 3:23). Because of this constant need for sacrificial blood to have remission of sins, the temple did not have a chair. This signified that their work was never done. With that being said, check out Hebrews 10:11-14: "And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet.  For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified."  Christ sat down after a single sacrifice, a single death, because His blood was so much more than that of animals. Pretty freaking awesome.]

Lastly, Romans 8:29 mentions how Christians are supposed to be conformed to the image of Christ, sacrifices, joy, and all. Don't just settle for a faith that sacrifices some of the worldly pleasures that your sinful nature wants so bad to do. Be joyful. Know that you serve a God who takes immense joy in you. Serve the Lord with gladness. Remember, you have the opportunity to serve a Lord who sat down! :)

With love.

The Birth of a Blog :)

Why, hello there! I'm sure that I don't have very much to say that you haven't already heard in some way, shape, or form. I just hope that I can be of some encouragement to you as I live my life and share my thoughts periodically. Alot of my posts are probably going to pertain to my faith in Christ, which I hope moves your heart in ways that might have been hardened beforehand. I've really been searching for ways to share just how awesome God is and how He has passionately shown His love for me throughout my few years here. Recently, I've tried to use Facebook as a tool to give little quips about Christ ("Christ Quips", perhaps?) and I've really been encouraged by many brothers and sisters to continue to be a light, to present my faith and my God for the whole world to see. holesinHishands is an avenue that I now feel led to take to give my message. Stay tuned for some insightful (hopefully :)) observations as to what I think the heart of Christ looks like, and how we are supposed to reciprocate His epicness.

With love.