God Our Covering…Everywhere

“If I take the wings of the dawn…”

“Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence?  If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there; If I make my bed  in Sheol, behold Thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” Psalm 139:7‑8

The Lord holds you in the palm of His hand. He is the Rock on which you stand. The Lord goes before you and is your rear guard. The Holy Spirit dwells within you and is called to walk alongside you. Angels are sent to minister to you. God watches over you in all your ways. Pretty thorough coverage, don’t you think?

Not only is He covering you, but He is with you wherever you go, in all the universe’s places and will be with you in all of Heaven’s places. He is omnipresent. Try to get a  glimpse of that, if you can.

The unrepentant may think that they are fleeing from His presence or that they can hide from Him in the darkness. Have you heard about the fellow who was “running into God.” Didn’t work too well for Jonah.

BUURRRP! Nice try. Now get back to work.

Designer of the Human Brain

Boggles the mind

Three pounds of grey matter, pinkish-beige jello. 200 billion neurons with 125 trillion synapses in the cerebral cortex.

It’s the computer that I operate at my will. It’s hotwired into my nervous system. Through it, I have access to 5 basic sensory systems: 3-D camera, touch (never duplicated), sound receiver, taste (never duplicated), smell (there are intelligently designed odor scanners, but none can touch a dog’s nose). Neurons, chemicals, information storing molecules  all part of a cerebral internet that relays and coordinates information by electrical impulses.

My brain stores information, 2.5 petabytes (one million gigabytes). It can: produce images, do math, formulas, and other abstract calculations, and remember all of it. It has an image generation program and an image-altering program. It’s a dream machine, I can daydream, which I control, but I have night dreams, which I do not control. I do not write the scripts but am cast as a player in each completely irrational scene that my conscious mind did not create. It also has a problem solving program and a language acquisition device. It’s all chemical and tissue, developed in my mother’s womb over 9 months.

But all this is only the tip of the iceberg in the mystery of the brain. Somewhere in my head dwells my self, my spirit, my soul, my consciousness, the one at the controls. You could call it my will or my personhood. Not so easily explained by chemistry. All the above data, impressive as it is, would be meaningless if there weren’t “someone” to run the programs and interpret the results. I can play anything I want on the “screen” inside my mind. No photons are involved. I just think and see something, or I think I see something.

In the six days of creation, God did not create my brain. He created Adam’s brain and Eve’s. After that, brains were reproduced in the billions over thousands of years. What kind of Mind could design and produce such an instrument? He breathed life into mud and the result was a “living soul,” not to mention a human body, of which the brain is only one small but phenomenal part. No, in this meditation you’re not going to understand the Maker or the brain, but you may get a glimpse.

Not intelligently designed, say some.

Mud + the breath of God =

Not intelligently designed? Don’t make me LOL!

“Male and Female created He them.” Genesis 5:2

Man and woman were the crown and rulers of God’s creation.  Since no one knows exactly what God looks like, we do not really know what His human creations looked like. To be sure, they were glorious and powerful creatures, created in His image. Consider even the post‑fall human body, pretty impressive. The sophistication of the design should tell you something about the Designer.

The human body has been reproduced in the billions, and it still looks amazingly good. Think about the skeletal system, the circulatory system, the muscles, digestive tract, the nervous system, etc.  We can only study these and try to describe their operations, but we have never been able to duplicate a single one of them, not even with all our “advanced” technology.

God has created an incredible network of systems, all operate in harmony; all are under the control of the brain; all are neatly packaged in an attractive 6X2X1′ being (size varies) that comes in male and female models.  Accidents happen, but accidents like that don’t happen.

SHEPHERD

Watching over little lambs

A SHEPHERD’S SONG OF PRAISE

By David, Jesse’s son

Just as I am a shepherd who watches over his sheep,
so also the LORD is my Shepherd
who cares for my every need.

For instance, when I am weary,
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
or when I feel stressed,
He leads me beside slow, soothing streams.
My time with Him renews me completely.
Like a sheep, I tend to wander off,
but He always steers me in the right way,
so that I may honor His Great Name.

Because the Lord is my Shepherd
I am never afraid.  Even if I were walking
through a dark valley in danger of imminent death,
I would fear no evil,
because You are with me.
It comforts me to know that,
like a shepherd armed with rod and staff,
You are fully able to protect me from any harm.

You prepare a feast for me, blessing me so openly
that my enemies look on with envy.
You pour the oil of gladness on my head,
welcoming me as a friend to your banquet.
The cup you offer me never runs dry.
In fact, it continuously overflows!

All this convinces me
that I will enjoy good things
every day of my life,
that I will always be secure in His love,
and that when this life is over
I will go to live in the house of the Lord
forever.

Amen.

–My translation, from my book, “A Harvest of Miracles.” Houston: Halcyon Press, 2009.

What is God like?

BUSTED!

According to Jesus, Satan came to “steal, kill, and destroy.” Look at the way the world is and the way it has been since time immemorial. Most have been following the “prince of this world,” and that evil fruit should give you an idea of what the devil’s like. But Jesus, in His own words, came to “seek and save,” “to give life, and that more abundantly.” It is God’s purpose through Christ to reclaim this world from the prince of darkness, to restore and renew. That should give you an idea of what He’s like.

I think about Jesus’ baptism. Once the Spirit came down, Satan noticed a “disturbance in the Force, the presence of his former Master,” so to speak, and so he showed up rather quickly to check Jesus out and test Him. In the wilderness, the real battle had begun, one that would culminate at Calvary. Whereas the powers of this world sought to kill Him and make a public spectacle of Him, He “disarmed the powers and authorities. He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15). That should give you an idea of what Jesus was like.

“Let there be light!”

God spoke, and it was so.  Gabriel told Mary, “With God, nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37), or literally from the Greek “No word of God is without power.” What did these words sound like when He spoke them?  I don’t think He said them in English, or even in a language as we think of languages, but I bet that when He spoke it, there was a BIG BANG!!!

Jesus healed the sick in this same fashion. He merely spoke, “Be healed” and all were healed. He cast out devils with His word (Matthew 8:16).

The Book of Job seems to suggest that the angels were watching God’s creative activity with interest and were praising Him with great joy (Job 38:6‑7).  Note the simplicity of this verse.  There is no build‑up, no committee meeting, no magic words, no incantations.  There was total darkness and blackness, and then God spoke simply and directly, “Let there be light.”  And there was light, and it was good.

Jehovah Shammah: The Lord is present.

Wake up, O sleeper. He will give you light.

That moment when you “wake up” and realize that God has just answered a prayer or worked something out or blessed you in some specific way, and you had been clueless, maybe even annoyed that He had not done anything for you in recent memory. I had such a moment today. Jacob had such a moment: “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.'” Genesis 28:6

What was God dreaming…?

God puts good dreams in our hearts

What was God dreaming for you when He formed you in your mother’s womb? It’s a great question, but unfortunately, we are born into a fallen world. So many wounds, traumas, and pressures distort your becoming your true self. God’s purposes in the cross are not just salvation of your soul but the redemption of the real you that He “dreamed about” in eternity past. He puts those good dreams in our hearts, just as He did with Joseph. They don’t always make sense to others in our world. Joseph’s brothers rejected them and him. But in time, he became ruler of Egypt, and they knelt before him, just as he had dreamed.

When I was a kid, I made a lot of weird noises, and I really liked to experiment with sounds. My mom thought that God had sent me to drive her crazy, but she eventually realized that God’s dream for me was that I would be a teacher of other languages and that I would travel to many countries and share the gospel in their languages. Have you discovered God’s good dream for you?

How awesome is God?

The Spiral Galaxy

Here’s a link to a study of the stars by Harvard astrophysicist Charlie Conroy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/01/number-of-stars-in-universe_n_790563.html

According to Dr. Conroy, there are an estimated 300 sextillion stars, twice more than previously thought. However many there are, God created them all  from nothing “by the breath of His mouth” (Psalm 33:6), and He knows them all by name (Psalm 147:4). Prof. Conroy notes that this mind-boggling estimate (Don’t think they actually counted them all) is the same as “the number of all cells in every human being alive.” He adds that “it’s kind of a funny coincidence.”

But that’s not how God created all of us. He began with an original pair (even science sometimes refers to the first humans as “Adam and Eve”). He created them with the power to reproduce, and we’re all descended from the first couple because He programmed them to reproduce their “seed” and did the same for their descendants and their descendants, etc. We have the ability to pass along coded genetic information that in 9 months or so produces a fully formed human being with billions of cells, all cooperating in the formation of a unique person.

Don’t forget the molecules and cells and other systems, a sublime machine of which I am an occupant.

The human body is awe-inspiring, with molecular machines busily assembling and organizing genetic codes, cellular machines and programs that are running non-stop, all of which make up organs and systems. My biological programs keep me running, many of which are operating 24-7, my heart, my brain, and other incomprehensible organs. (We may think we’re pretty smart, but we really don’t understand how the brain works or why it should.)

Of course, sin entered the world and nullified the miracle of creation by introducing “entropy,” a scientific term that refers to an inevitable breakdown and deterioration of all molecular and biological programs and systems (from order to disorder). The result? The eventual death of everything now living. Not even science disputes that death is universal.

Solution? The Creator took on human flesh and experienced death and by the power of the Eternal Spirit overcame death, never to die again. This means that our bodies lack the power to renew their molecular structure and thus live forever. We will die and decay, but how much more our souls (which no one can see under a microscope)?

Yet when we are born of that eternal Spirit, we are given the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead. His Spirit resides in us and makes us heirs to eternal life, allowed to enter the Celestial City and eat of the “Tree of Life,” which Adam and Eve were denied. We will drink from the River of eternal renewal. For this reason, death has no power over us.

I ask again, how awesome is God?

Seeking Shepherd, Lamb of God

The dumb, careless sheep who got himself in trouble is you. Jesus is the Shepherd who came to rescue you. This painting illustrates His love for you and His mission on the earth. He is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. To do that, He became the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The Shepherd became the Lamb. A paradox and a mystery worthy of meditation.